Make T4 Julra drop a consumable currency to craft legendaries.

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Title.

I've seen a few threads about this topic and the debate is heated. T4 Julra, which is required for many build enabling items generates a lot of frustration among players.

I'm not here to talk about whether or not the statistics are fair or how many hours of grinding it takes in average to get a decent lvl80+ legendary.

I'm here to suggest an easy improvement: make T4 Julra drop a currency that allows to craft any legendary level, and then give us a badass PNJ in end of time that consumes this currency and has the crafting UI.

In most grinding games, when a craft is hard to get it is itemized to avoid context switching. Grinding games players are hunter gatherers: they like to hoard things until they can spam it without sweating.

Let us spam Julra, hoard our Stones Of Time Manipulation or whatever, and THEN craft our legendaries peacefully.

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1 day ago - /u/ekimarcher - Direct link

I really like this idea. I think each tier would probably want to drop a key like item and not have it be limited to T4. I don't know if we've ever debated this idea before or not. I'm generally a fan of itemizing stuff like this. I think it makes the reward more tangible and let's you build up a few all at once. One downside might be that it allows for a stronger compromised opinion of the statistics to be formed through a very rapid small sample size. While missing three 3LP slams in a row is extremely rare, with enough people doing it, eventually it will happen to someone. Probably not a strong enough reason to not do it though.

Kinda just thinking out loud here and I like it. I'm out of the office this week but I'll suggest it. I would like to suggest that the amount of fun that the dungeon is to actually do plays a huge role in the issue. We are in the process of a very significant fun upgrade in the dungeons. We never wanted the "fixed grid with random blockers" system that we have for making a semi randomized dungeon. It was a compromise we had to make because it was the only way we could get randomization to work at the time. The inability to pay a key to try the boss again on death also makes it quite difficult to do with any sort of smooth flow.

Also, can we get a quick gut check on the claim that T4 Julra is "...required for many build enabling items"? I'm not sure it's actually required for any build enabling items off the top of my head. But I don't know all the stand out builds backwards and forwards or anything.

1 day ago - /u/ekimarcher - Direct link

Originally posted by apalacrypto

I posted as a main reply, but didn't see your reply. Going to add my thoughts here too..

I’m just thinking out loud here, but I’ve been seeing a lot of these discussions and here would be my recommendation. Flavor included! A new inventor has just re-created an “instant eternity cache” and brought it to the end of time. The problem is, he has no way to power it, and it requires “temporal essence” to power.

1LP Slam – Requires 10 Essence

2LP Slam – Requires 25 Essence

3LP Slam – Requires 50 Essence

4LP Slam – Requires 100 Essence

Maybe Have Julra Drop 10, 25, 50, and 100 Essence per Tier. Someone could run a T3 to get 50 essence, and be able to slam 5x1LP’s, 2x2LP’s, or 1x3LP. Maybe they aren’t strong enough yet to take down T4 Julra, but they could run 2 T3’s to farm enough essence for the slam. Maybe there could be some tweaks to the costs and drops, but this seems fair while also providing incentive to run the dungeon.

Thoughts?

It's a good thought in general. I think the issue comes from higher tier dungeons restricting the level of unique that can be used, not the LP amount.

about 12 hours ago - /u/ekimarcher - Direct link

Originally posted by tadrinth

Twisted Heart requires level 80 and therefore T4, and is a fairly popular item, at least for Warlocks. I don't think any builds require it, but it is a huge defensive upgrade for hybrid life+ward builds that have leech.

I am fairly casual. I have had exactly one drop. I used Nemesis to upgrade it, and it gained a legendary potential. I'd almost rather have had it get an affix, I'm probably never going to get around to slamming it. If I ever do slam it, it'll be better, but if I never do, the LP is useless. The fact that dying to Julra wastes the key, and my desire to get the perfect item to slam with, together make me not at all inclined to try. There's just too much opportunity cost involved.

Other uniques that require level 80:

Vessel of Strife: I would argue this is build defining.

Seed of Ekkidrasil, defensive item but eventually mandatory for Harvest Lich. Arguably build defining.

World Splitter is build defining for the most recent featured Forge Guard built using Smelters Wrath.

Wrongwarp and Scales of Lemniscate are not really build defining, they're just boosts.

I would push back on all of those by suggesting that each of those builds is online and functional long before a legendary version of any of those items is necessary and the normal unique version is plenty to make the build function if any of them are build enabling.

Your feelings towards the system in general are well heard though.

about 12 hours ago - /u/ekimarcher - Direct link

Originally posted by tadrinth

I like the consumable idea a lot, I'm hesitant to run TS unless I have a slam I am absolutely confident in.

Another idea for solving problems with itemization would be to have slams generate an item which can eventually be used to force a slam to apply the desired affix. Right now if I slam a 1 LP unique and I get the wrong affix, the next slam is just as likely to fail. I would prefer if each failed slam somehow gave progress towards getting the affix I wanted. If I knew that after ten or twenty slams that I would get the item I want, guaranteed, I think I'd be more willing to slam things. This would possibly be really complicated, it would almost have to be a crafting item which specifies the unique item and the affix which failed to apply, and that would be a pain to store from a DB perspective.

We explored a cumulative approach to it but it encourages a really degenerate burden of optimal play. With that system, now you're just slamming useless uniques and whatever exalteds until you build up enough "luck item resource" then you funnel it all into the one you actually care about. Now suddenly the optimal way to do a slam is to get a dozen keys, run Julra a dozen times and then do 1 more with the "real" item.

I do like the idea of having ways to put resources into improving your odds. I don't think having it guarantee 1 specific mod is necessarily ideal but maybe being able to force it to pick at least 1 prefix by handing in a rare drop modifier item or something might be an option.

about 12 hours ago - /u/ekimarcher - Direct link

Originally posted by tadrinth

I didn't go through all uniques, just hats, body armor, 2h axes, wands, and relics.

I think it's fair to say that most of the uniques that require T4 are things that define a build variant, not a build.

Harvest Lich is the build. Harvest Lich with damage to mana is a variant.

But the legendary versions of those items are not so they don't count.

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Make T4 Julra drop a consumable currency to craft legendaries.