Legendry Items Are Mostly Trash in Poe 2

Just putting this here to remind that uniques are meant to be built around, not "the best item".

GGG doesn't want full builds of uniques which is exactly what's being asked for.

Or at least, if you could basically fuse rare affixes onto uniques, that's what would happen.

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Redthorne82#3177 wrote:

Just putting this here to remind that uniques are meant to be built around, not "the best item".

I would love if there was a unique that makes me think "oooh I can build around that". Everything that dropped for me in 100 hrs of PoE2 was either utter trash or some weapon that was maybe useful for 10-12 levels max before falling too behind on dps compared to rares. If they want unique weapons to be useful, they need level/attribute scaling (like Pillar of the Caged God which is the only usable unique weapon other than Widowhail).

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Redthorne82#3177 wrote:

Just putting this here to remind that uniques are meant to be built around, not "the best item".

That is correct and that is how it should be.

But the current situation is (and the buffs that were shown in the teaser do not change this!), that almost all uniques with decent and/or interesting effects have SUCH bad basestats and/or massive downsides and/or no other relevant affixes, that they are unusable.

The only desirable uniques are the ones with an absolutely cracked effect (Ingenuity, Temporalis, Mahuxolotl, HoWA, Ghostwrithe...), overpowered affix(es) (Dream Fragments...) or bugged/unintended behaviour (Polcirkeln...).

Take a look at Pragmatism for example. That's basically Mageblood on a chest. That should be a really cool and buildenabling effect. But the downsides are SO massive that it's just not worth it. Like, the basestats are like 40% of what a toptier hybrid ar/eva chest could provide and it gives negative chaos-res to boot... the one resistance that is the hardest to get by a mile. It would actually be better if it gave +17% chaosres and -10% to -20% all elemental resist. But the worst part is, that while the effect is interesting, Charms just aren't good enough to sacrifice your most impactful defensive slot (second, if your character can use a shield) for their effect. And the charms still have to be triggered, so you don't even get their effect permanently.

Or look at The Surrender. Amazing, life recovery on block. Awesome! Except, since you can't properly scale life and damagereduction largely sucks and neither groundeffects nor DoT-effects nor Boss-slams are blockable, those 4% of life recovery on block really don't help all that much. Besides, I can get a rare shield with higher basestats, higher blockchance, massive life, %phys-reduction AND maximum resist. And I can actually get that from Alva for gold and not as a level-36-shield (hi elon) from one of the hardest bosses in the game.

On the other hand, look at Dream Fragments. Cannot be chilled or Frozen is an effect that has no competition, none, zero. You can't become Chill- AND Freeze-immune with an Aura or from the passive tree or anything. Even the charm has at least a 50% downtime. Then that ring also gives a top-tier roll of manaregen AND %increased maximum mana on a mindblowing level. AND it's a Sapphire ring. That item is completely overpowered. But wait... is it really? The unique stat is only really good since we don't have Purity of Elements, Ascendancies don't grant immunities, the passive tree offers no viable counter to ailments and Charms are terrible. And the manarolls are OP since archmage manastacking is basically the only way to properly scale spelldamage. But those are completely different problems... or are they?

Totally agree here. Its so underwhelming for a unique to drop. I get more excited when i see exalted orbs drop. My reaction to unique drops are oh look another chance shard.

There are no legendary items in this game. (Nor PoE1)
That's not a thing.

There are unique items.
Their purpose isn't to be best or better, it's to be unique.

This distinctions is not just a pedantic difference of names.
They are outright different concepts.
You should not equate a unique to a legendary.
There is something you could and maybe should equate to legendary status, but its not uniques.

Some uniques are versions of a low level base item.
Being a unique doesn't defeat being a low level base.
They are not meant for endgame characters, they are meant for early game characters still leveling.
The special version of the weakest mace, is still from the weakest mace.
Loot them, stash them, use them on new characters, replace them when you level up.
It's worth nothing that right now, for the most part, high level bases are missing from the game, and as such the uniques of high level bases are missing from the game. We'll both be happy when they are added I'm sure.

Some uniques are from high level bases, meant to be useful endgame.
Some uniques are useful endgame despite not being from high level bases.
In both cases, being that they are unique, not legendary, they aren't automatically better, they're just better if you're doing the specific build they align with.
Like how my poison Pathfinder likes to use Snakebite, and poison + element builds love Plaguefinger.

What would constitute a "legendary item" in this game is not an orange item.
It's a yellow item that rolled the highest tier of the 6 affixes you would want most for your build.

Death's Harp is cool because it has the unique ability to fire 5 arrows at once (it's a special dualstring, so +1 arrow implicit, then +3 arrow unique explicit). No other weapon can do that. And it can do it as early as item level 28.

But the best bow for a multi arrow build is going to be a yellow Dualstring of at least item level 82, that rolled +2 arrows (-2 requires ilvl 82, +1 only requires 55), + 5 levels to projectile skills, and high tier damage modifiers.

That yellow Dualstring is a legendary item. Death's Harp is a unique.

They could learn from D3 and let players extract unique item mods to be grafted onto other items, but maybe as a first step the unique drops should be scaled to players level and item level?

Making unique items too powerful would take away from the games player progression mechanics. They are specific use items rather than just stat sticks. They can be OP in the right builds with skillful tinkering and balancing with decent rares or tree passive skills.

If every unique item was just a stat stick with high damage mods and unique mods that make skills overly powerful, EVEN IF they were really rare, every build guide would just point straight to them and give players no incentive to craft decent items and trade would just get saturated with players farming these specific uniques and nothing else.

Essentially what you're looking for is Diablo 3/4. Once you have 10-20 uniques in your stash you can stop farming for decent gear and just rely on them. This is piss poor incentive to keep playing and would get boring too fast.

Legendary = something worth being recorded in writing (used to be a big deal)
Unique = does something other things dont do.


So if you think the legendaries are trash, that's because they are not legendary. merely unique.

Its a systemic problem even the devs are aware of but seemingly unable to fix right now.


They didn't understand the disconnect between valuation of Divines and the market, divines intended to be currency sinks for re rolling uniques aren't getting used and instead have become the flagship currency of the game.

Why?? Because theres literally only about 2 to 4 Uniques in the game right now that people WOULD EVEN CONSIDER using a divine on.

The quality of Unique gear needs to improve, whether that means buffing what is in the game or actually feeding more chase / desirable uniques into POE 2 faster because right now there is a vacuum.

Sounds like you come from a diablo background where legendries are more powerful overall.

Uniques in POE just means they come with a pre-defined set of stats and modifiers.
I do agree most of the uniques are underwhelming at the moment.
Most are niche and has their uses early game. At the end of the day, they're worth 1 chance shard!