Suggestion for improved ground loot: Start with magic and rare item drops on bosses

In a classical ARPG fashion there are reasons to farm bosses, both during the campaign and end game. The reason typically being to farm gear upgrades to continue with the rest of the game. I know it's not the typical PoE way to kill the same boss again and again during the campaign, and in the end game regular map bosses are killed just for the Atlas progression. But I would still want meaningful loot from killing bosses. A meaningful loot would be something that has enough potential to be great and follows a natural progression curve that improves the drops as the game progresses.

Improving the ground loot has been one of the goals for GGG, and they have commented that the Memory Strands is there for it. While Memory Strands are cool, they are also localized only on the very end of Atlas maps. To explain, it is initially limited to memory influenced maps, and after when you gain the Originator Voidstone, Memory Strand items can drop from any map on the Atlas, but with lower quality. That leaves out the Campaign, Pinnacle bosses, Abyssal Liches, Oshabi, Delve encounters, Sanctum, Heists, Catarina and probably something I forgot to mention. Granted that they can have other important drops besides magic and rare items, but I specifically want to focus on the quality of upgrades on the ground.

Memory Strands can stay with their own progression and acquisition. But it would be cooler if there were more mechanics to gain quality rolls on a gear that wasn't dependant on the main quest storyline.

# Meaningful boss drops and progression curve suggestion
In case of the boss having the same drop pool as the area he is in, a higher chance for rares is always an option to have meaningful drops. Until that alone is not enough, bosses could then typically drop higher droplevel basetypes. And until these two alone are not enough, GGG could use tiered rarities from PoE2, which is the new suggestion.

I know some readers have quite strong opinions of the suggestion, and I do apologize if there's any discomfort. I'm trying to keep a neutral emphasis on things, as this is is just my way to analyze features for their possibilities.

Continuing with the tiered rarities, I'll explain the progression curve I have on mind, which is based on increasing the item rarity modifier. Beginning Act 8 unique enemies can start dropping T1-T2 magic and rare items as an introduction to the mechanic. Then near the end of Act 10 unique enemies drops T1-T2 items more often to allow preparing for the resistance penalty and for mapping in general. Then in yellow map similar level areas bosses can drop T1-T3 items, with them becoming more common as the game progresses further in difficulty. Finally the Pinnacle and similar bosses can drop the rare T3-T5 items to compensate for the fact that most of them cannot have Memory Strands. In dropping tiered rarities, I would emphasize the bosses niches to curate tiered rarities to specific drops only to create very different drop characteristics.

For example in the end game this would mean that Abyssal Liches can drop T1-T5 Abyssal Jewels and Belts, Shaper and Elder can drop up to T5 influenced items, while their guardians can drop up to T3 influenced items. In addition Catarina can drop T5 veiled items, Immortal Syndicate members to drop up to T3 veiled items, Atziri could drop up to T5 corrupted items, and major and minor Delve bosses can drop up to T5 and T3 regular items respectively. Then after the Originator Voidstone most map bosses and unique enemies could drop up to T3 items with Memory Strands in addition to their previous influences and mechanics.

# Thoughts on tiered rarities in PoE1
The tiered rarities are not expected to be good definately, but they should feel they have great potential. It's fine if some of the identified tiered items can be straight up farmed and equipped by players, but you're not gathering crafting currency for no reason. The goal is to not invalidate other gear drops, but to be paired with other crafting options that do not involve rerolling with the same currency item indefinately, like Metacrafts and Recombinators.

Using tiered items carefully GGG can have great opportunities in adjusting how it affects the item modifiers. And by limiting the tiered drops with scarcity we can see if they become desirable in the economy when not every mob can drop top tiered items. Just as a side note, some random rare enemies could still have a loot conversion to include tiered rarities just to have those adrenaline surprises on loot. Assuming tiered rarities can be good identified.

PoE1 does not have the tiered crafting currencies that are in PoE2, so rolling high tier mods in PoE1 crafts is very limited in comparison. In this sense tiered rarities would fit as a source of high tier item mods for crafts to help limit the required amount of rerolls to get high tier mods, when paired with metamods and recombinations.

# Bonus: Jewels and new tag mechanic on unidentified items
Regular jewels don't have tiers to their mods, so they would not benefit much from tiered rarities. But as a new system regular jewel drops could have tags with specific bosses, for example from Lycia in Sanctum. The tag on an unidentified item would mean it will have at least 1 modifier with the tag, with increased chance to have more mods with the tag. Much like a combination of Fossil + Horticraft slam without special fossil mods. For example an unidentified crimson jewel with life tag on it could roll %life mod, with an increased chance to also roll %totem life and damage recoup and life leech mods.

It is related to my old post, where I did make a suggestion to add tags to filter rules. It could give you more insight how I would holistically add the tag system to the game: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3914761

# Ending
GGG has a lot of different mechanics spread across both games. The games do not have to mimic each other 1-to-1, and I do prefer it that way. But it would also be kinda foolish not to try differentiating implementations of shared mechanics, because they could have different results between the games.

Thank you for reading and for your feedback. Have a nice weekend!