Replace item tiers with just a range

Instead of item tiers, juts display the full range that can roll for the specific item, like:

+14 (10-32) TO STRENGTH

Or enlighten me why do we use tiers (when each mod has different max tier)?

Jonathan already said in the last stream, they will introduce some sort of highlighting, if you hit the highest tier.

The reasons why they flipped it actually make sense:

1) If you have tiers like in PoE1 where T1 is the highest, you always have problems introducing new tiers, as you need to shift everything around. Instead of just adding another tier on top.

2) For other parts of the game, like maps, the new introduced Tier list of unidentified items in maps its confusing because there is T1 the lowest tier.

So to not confuse new players with different tier mechanics they've decided to turn it so it actually makes more sense.


Edit - to your actual question: Why tiers at all?

Tiers already are ranges. Every tier has a different range, tiers make it easier to restrict items for specific rolls. Its especially from a development point of view.

Otherwise you always need to work with all the different numbers when restricting affixes on items. Every stats has different rarnges, some are in hard numbers, some are in percentage.

Its horrifying as a developer to need to consider every range. It also make it way more error prone if you need to deal with all that numbers, instead of having a set of tiers from where you can choose from.

I guess, the decision to tiers overall is mostly a design decision to make it easier to handle from a development point of view.

Imagine an item drops and the server needs to decide, what rolls it will get. It rolls a dice for each affix in the range of tiers. So its a dice with that much sides as the affiix has tiers.

Now try to do that with the numbers. Its incredibly more commplex. As every affix has different stats, sometimes there are not even numbers. How to deal with that?

I really don't like their reasoning for switching them. People across the board are already used to numbers meaning different things in different contexts. No one is confused that 1st place is the winner in a race because $1 is the least amount of whole dollars. No one is confused that you want your bank account to go up but you want your speed run times to go down. That argument just falls flat.