Solution for Ground Loot, make it a "Special Roll" table?

After listening to the Q&A for Mirage league, one of the main questions was making ground loot "catch up" to the mechanic-crafted gear.
I saw one or two other people sort of mention this, but what if Rares when generally dropped had a unique set of "standard looking" rolls that would get blocked off after crafting certain ways?

Such as a rolled stat like Abyssal or Influenced does, but crafting items and mechanics will prioritize rolling those "Special base rolls" out first to not just stack the best of both worlds and make the entire change a moot effect.

Of course I'd be interested in hearing counterpoints, but I feel like that would MAJORLY enhance checking the Rares that randomly drop instead of ignoring/filtering it all out to see just currency/Mechanic loot.

Just realized that having the rare gear rolls on their own variant table would make buffing/nerfing Ground Rares compared to crafted counterparts easier as well, maintaining the relationship between what ground loot gets versus learning/using mechanics to make the gear you want late-endgame.

The problem is the only solution to shitty ground loot is curated drops and/or bound loot. Every other form just shifts power creep to be drastically higher or drops to be worthless.

If you have players clearing 100x the content that other players do while still being considered within range participants no other outcome is possible.

SSF players (and players that fundamentally play SSF even if they do some light trading) are the only ones that genuinely would see a benefit from improved ground loot. Trade league players would shift the baseline then filter the now improved loot out within a week then roll that filter for all subsequent leagues.

I'm not trying to rain on the parade here because I've always thought ground loot is terrible I'm known amongst the crew I play with to basically never pick rares up but what people asking for improvements don't really get is short of a very defined moment in your character progression there is no solution while still having free trade.

If they change trade restrictions they gain options but we very rarely see them deviate from this, though honestly I think they should bind far more than they do.

I do think for endgame changes like the "Ground roll" table wouldn't affect anything, but honestly I dont think people ACTUALLY care about ground loot at that level. If I have all my proper base gear with just okay stats and I'm just trying to max out my per-gear optimization, there are close to zero things you could do to ground loot outside of having randomly already-mechanic rolled drops show up. (Like opening a normal chest and an 3-time desecrated chest piece falls out).

I think the main focus for improving ground loot is the 2nd half of the campaign going into maps, where you had decent gear for early game, but now you're trying to find replacements without gutting some stats you built up. That for example has always been one of my sticking points in both PoE1 and 2, I see all these people breeze through the campaign with a stick and Magic gear, meanwhile I'm struggling to replace my gear to push like Act 4 or Preludes. I know how gear works, but getting what I need was the problem. Once I hit endgame, I'm fine at working on the mechanic-crafting, so its just that mid-level push.

Thats why I imagine the improved "Ground Roll exclusive" table would be the biggest benefit, helping everyone from mid- to early late-game, up until they can start switching out gear with the specialty rolls to max their per-gear stats.

To the point of the Market ruining most of what could be a decent change, they dont even have to bind the gear, just REALLY amp up the gold trade costs, especially for higher stat/Rare gear. Its all too easy to buy random gear at a 1x-5x exalt amount and not even remember there's a gold cost. I remember when gambling was effectively useless early-game because gold costs were abysmally high, just make that the Market standard. If you really want to buy the gear and not play/craft it yourself, it needs to be an actual investment regardless of the currency the player market settles on, especially for gear during the campaign. You should at least be self-sufficient up to maps, then at that point the floodgates can open a bit, but not so much like it is currently.

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TeckTheBlooded#9330 wrote:

To the point of the Market ruining most of what could be a decent change, they dont even have to bind the gear, just REALLY amp up the gold trade costs, especially for higher stat/Rare gear. Its all too easy to buy random gear at a 1x-5x exalt amount and not even remember there's a gold cost.

I dont think the gold cost can be raised higher than what players feel is a 'convenience fee'. If gold becomes too prohibitive to trading gear some players will just get around it by using the method of trading that requires 0 gold.