Unique Item Balance
Problem:
March of the Legion is a very low-cost method to gain four extra auras on some builds due to the change where Mana is not being required in order to cast an aura. It also took full advantage of the Supreme Ego keystone in a way that goes against the intent of the mechanic and gained a significant amount of power in the process.
Solution:
Rework the Blessing mechanic of March of the Legion to limit the number of Blessings you can have to one. Change the skill to cost mana instead of temporarily reserving mana. The process of making this change also highlighted a number of problems with other mechanics which has led to a ripple effect of other changes being required. Release Blessing as a Support gem, to make the mechanic available to builds that are not using the unique item. This is intended to be useful for high mana-use characters who wish to leave their mana unreserved and for characters using the Blood Magic keystone. Improve the aura level granted by March of the Legion so the item excels at using a Blessing aura. Remove Mortal Conviction and the life passives from behind the Blood Magic keystone and make a Mortal Conviction-style support gem that makes an aura free, and prevents you reserving mana. It will be mutually exclusive with Blessing skills, so you won’t be able to use both simultaneously. This support gem provides slightly less aura effect to the skill than the Blessing Support but has no cost or upkeep involved. Change Blood Magic to also grant 10% more life to compensate for the removal of the efficient life passives behind the keystone. Change Supreme Ego to not limit you to one aura and instead give more aura effect based on how much mana an aura reserves.
Problem:
The Shade Form skill (granted by the Shroud of the Lightless and Replica Eternity Shroud unique items) could, with heavy investment, have its duration extended to be longer than its cooldown, granting permanent immunity to physical damage.
Solution:
Change Shade Form’s cooldown to pause while the skill is active. Reduce the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40 seconds.
Problem:
The damage reduction granted by the Strength of Blood keystone (from the Lethal Pride unique jewel) incorrectly scaled with modifiers to life recovery rate, allowing it to reach 100% and for characters to be immune to damage.
Solution:
Strength of Blood’s damage reduction no longer scales with modifiers to life recovery rate.
Problem:
The Dancing Dervish unique item has no accessible way to sustain its mechanic on Boss fights, mostly due to Rampage stacks being difficult to activate in these fights and the summoned minion’s behaviour feeling sluggish while clearing.
Solution:
Change The Dancing Dervish to cause you to gain rampage on melee hits and improve its minion behaviour.
Problem:
Perfidy’s Dread Banner Fortification duration mod was causing issues with the new Fortification system that could not be reconciled.
Solution:
Replace Perfidy’s Dread Banner mod.
Problem:
The unique Voidfletcher quiver massively outclasses the single target damage bonuses of the best rare quivers for many builds. Its effective power is further improved by Bow damage changes, as it is capable of more than doubling the single target damage for many bow builds that have a large number of additional projectiles.
Solution:
Lower the damage multipliers of Voidfletcher arrows.
Problem:
The “All Attacks with this Weapon are Critical Strikes” modifier on Trypanon causes the critical strike chance of the weapon itself to display as 100%, as though it was modifying the weapon’s critical strike chance, which it doesn’t actually do. This would mean that Destructive Link would not grant 100% critical strike chance to the linked target.
Solution:
Change this modifier so that it does affect the critical strike chance of the weapon.
Problem:
The modifier to Total Mana Cost of Skills on Voidbringer and Apep’s Rage did not function correctly after the Mana cost rework in 3.14, as it applied after other modifiers, including Blood Magic.
Solution:
Replace these modifiers with an effect with a similar downside, which would no longer count as a cost. This means they will no longer prevent the skill being used if no mana is available.
Problem:
Stormfire’s “increased Burning Damage for each time you have Shocked a Non-Shocked Enemy Recently” can be used with a number of specific mechanics to count as shocking a non-shocked enemy hundreds of times per second. This interaction provides problematic levels of damage.
Solution:
Update the Stormfire Unique Ring so the increased Burning Damage for each time you have Shocked a Non-Shocked Enemy Recently will be capped at 120%. To compensate, the base values of the damage increase will be raised to 8-12% increased Burning Damage. Existing items will be affected by this cap, but a Divine Orb will need to be used in order to update the increased Burning Damage values.
