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The State of Balance: Weapon Sockets

by - 10 years ago

Game balancing is a subtle art. Small oversights often lead to some skill, character or item being absurdly overpowered and chosen by most players in spite of the rest of the content the devs worked so hard to produce. In this series, we will look at Balance in Diablo 3 and see how fair things are right now.


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Welcome back to BlizzPro. I’m Dannie “Immortality” Ray, and this is your weekly state of balance.

 

We’ve looked at the Balance of weapon gems before, but what about the sockets themselves?

 

Just like the Emeralds you are likely to put on them, Sockets are considered mandatory for Weapons. It is so mainly because of the sheer power of an Emerald, but even Rubies and Diamonds are likely to be better than any other affix you can find in weapons.

People have long complained about weapons without socket being useless, but then again the Blizzard community is very notorious in their overreactions to balance issues.

Weapons without sockets aren’t strictly useless, though we have to admit that they are mostly unoptimal. For almost every build out there, the BiS Weapon will need a socket on it.

But this begs the question; if Weapon Sockets are the best affix in the game, shouldn’t they be the most rare?

Shouldn’t we be struggling to find that perfect weapon with the perfect damage roll, the perfect affix, and our precious socket.

Diablo players often display their lack of patience, and Blizzard has constantly made compromises to keep the beast happy. But considering the repetitive nature of the game,  a “most powerful = most rare approach” is just a natural fit for Diablo.

If we are able to acquire our BiS gear ona few days, then how long can you keep farming T6 before you lose interest?

Regardless ,  Blizzard seems to have given the people an answer in the form of the patch 2.1 PTR.

 

ITEMS

  • A new Legendary consumable has been added
    • Ramalandi’s Gift
      • Use on an unsocketed weapon to add the maximum number of sockets that item type allows

 

This gift has made some people salivate at the possibilities, but it has also been met with harsh criticism. @Drothvader took it to the official forums with his thoughts on the matter, a lot of discussion on the subject has also sparked at different Diablo communities on the web.
Personally, I believe this item to be a tremendous step on the right direction. By the end of this post, I will have shown you how a refined Ramaladni’s Gift could be a huge improvement for Diablo 3.  But first, we have to provide some context.

Are Required Weapon Sockets a Problem?

WeaponGems

Like most questions of this kind, the question is both yes and no.

As I mentioned above, having a “best affix” creates a natural form of progression. Following that line of thinking, Weapon sockets wouldn’t be a problem at all; in fact, it is a boon if we look at it from a game design perspective.

But then again, there’s more to it than that. While the game is just numbers and formulas under a pretty skin, the players have feelings and experience emotions. Frustration in particular, is something that Diablo Players are very familiar with.

The required weapon sockets issue isn’t a problem by itself, but it is a consequence of a way bigger problem.

RNG is a Cruel Mistress

Malthael-featuredIn Diablo 3, almost everything is heavily tied to RNG. This is inherently frustrating as you can be farming your set for months while you see a friend getting it in just a few days. Patch 2.0.6 took away Legendary Materials, one of the few targeted farming options we had. Killing ubers could also be a nice form of target farming. Alas, the Hellfire Ring pales in comparison to the Stone of Jordan and the Ring of Royal Grandeur.

Weapon Sockets are not an exception in this RNG-filled universe. The progression feel that getting a weapon with a socket should provide, is heavily maimed by the fact that actually getting a socketed weapon is mostly a luck-based effort.

The big problem of having everything tied to RNG is a topic that is too wide to be discussed here, we will remember that and tackle it in a future article.

The Gift of Ramaladni

On this current development phase, this is how the item is supposed to work:

  • It will add a socket to an unsocketed weapon
  • It only works on weapons
  • It will work on enchanted weapons, so long as they don’t have a socket
  • It effectively adds an item affix in the form of a socket
  • It will be consumed on use

You can immediately tell that Ramaladni’s extends and enhances the feel of natural progression, while at the same time attacking the frustration of getting exactly the special legendary you needed and realizing that it would be a downgrade just because RNG didn’t give you the right affixes.

The concept of Ramaladni is pretty awesome, but it is not perfect yet. It doesn’t need to be perfect yet, that’s why we have the PTR on the first place.

Ramaladni’s Flaws and Fixes

PTR 2

 

Randomlandi’s gift:

Like 99% of the things on this game, the acquisition of Ramaladni’s Gift is tied to RNG drops. The Big Problem with Sockets was the RNG involved on it, fixing it by a RNG-dependant item is just redirecting the problem.

The Uniqueness of Ramaladni’s Gift makes it perfect for something that can be target farmed. Maybe it could be a way to make story mode worth playing again.

Adds power, but is tied to sockets:

Ramaladni’s Gift gives you an extra affix, this means that you want to have one on your weapon. Sadly it is tied to sockets, and this becomes a problem.

Imagine you already spent a lot of resources to reforge a socket into your weapon, now you will have to spend that all over again to get your new desired affix. Even worse, your gold costs are already going to be sky high from all the socket searching.

But even with brand new items, sockets will become an auto-reforge. Getting drops with sockets will suck, it will be comparable to getting a movement speed legendary.

There are also a few gimmicky builds out there that don’t really want sockets on their weapons, those get the short end of the stick here.

Ideally, Ramaladni’s Gift should allow you to give your weapon a new affix of your choosing powered to the max. When you use the item you would see a list of possible affixes, just like Myriam can show you all the possible affixes that you can get from here. Then you would pick one and get its maximum numeric value.

Summarizing

caincut2

 

Ramalanni’s Gift has the prime opportunity to finally fix some issues that have been plaguing the d3 community for ages. But we don’t need more bandaids over our gunshot wounds, lets hope that this item sees a good number of iterations on the PTR so the dev team can iron out the finer details and make it a definitive solution to our problems.

 


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


0 responses to “The State of Balance: Weapon Sockets”

  1. SilverX2 says:

    I’d like to see a varient that will let you change the type of elemental damage your weapon does.

    • Dannie Ray says:

      It would be nice that the elemental damage your weapon does had an actual effect, besides being purely aesthetical.