Unique drops never feel good

I don't understand why always when they talk about a new patch they mention how they added so many new uniques. I don't care there are more when all of them except the select few are complete trash.

I don't even bother picking them up anymore. Might as well just drop chance shard.

I wish every unique would be updated to actually be an upgrade for some build. Now those few uniques that are worth anything are mostly for general build anyway which is definitely not how it should be.

Might as well put uniques tier below rare items because they definitely are.

And even if every build has one "auto include" unique that is not a bad thing at all. It's not any different from someone wanting plus to spells on their wand for example.

Like, we get this shiny orange drop with a cool sound for a completely worthless item. I don't understand.

Biggest problem of uniques in my opinion is horrible implicit stats.
Yeah, the unique might have some cool or interesting mechanic, but then it also gives 100 armour or 50 ES....like...lmao, useless.

Some uniques are great for the very start of the game, and some uniques are great for endgame and meta and are very expensive.

Every unique inbetween these two states are for some reason absolutely useless and are just lore pieces for collectors. In short, yes, I'd wish more uniques were simply at higher base item level, or at the very least give some trickle amount of defences or resists next to their interesting mechanic.

The thing with uniques is they require theorycraft to be included in a build. There is no insta-equip unique. I think that's fine. I also think there is a lot of not exploited yet uniques sleeping in the sea of theorycraft.

And with expansive late game uppgrade, there is many ways to include those bad base stat into your build.

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Henide#3803 wrote:

Biggest problem of uniques in my opinion is horrible implicit stats.
Yeah, the unique might have some cool or interesting mechanic, but then it also gives 100 armour or 50 ES....like...lmao, useless.

Some uniques are great for the very start of the game, and some uniques are great for endgame and meta and are very expensive.

Every unique inbetween these two states are for some reason absolutely useless and are just lore pieces for collectors. In short, yes, I'd wish more uniques were simply at higher base item level, or at the very least give some trickle amount of defences or resists next to their interesting mechanic.

That's why most tier-s builds use uniques, because they are useless. Right.

Not every single item can be of use, that's _way_ too complex to manage.

Very disappointed in GGG for consistently getting uniques wrong. Calling them uninteresting garbage is an insult to uninteresting garbage.

I think lvling uniques are a total mistake. Uniques should he designed to be used on complete builds. Otherwise they are trash you see on the ground occasionally. The odds you actually find a lvling unique that you would use for a brief moment are small.

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bloomhead#3858 wrote:

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Henide#3803 wrote:

Biggest problem of uniques in my opinion is horrible implicit stats.
Yeah, the unique might have some cool or interesting mechanic, but then it also gives 100 armour or 50 ES....like...lmao, useless.

Some uniques are great for the very start of the game, and some uniques are great for endgame and meta and are very expensive.

Every unique inbetween these two states are for some reason absolutely useless and are just lore pieces for collectors. In short, yes, I'd wish more uniques were simply at higher base item level, or at the very least give some trickle amount of defences or resists next to their interesting mechanic.

That's why most tier-s builds use uniques, because they are useless. Right.

Not every single item can be of use, that's _way_ too complex to manage.

No, a select few uniques are used by most build and the rest (so 90%) are just leveling garbage which, unfortunately, never drops while leveling.

Something needs to be done because indeed, uniques are not interesting drop the vast majority of the time.

This is especially true for weapons which obviously cannot be mitigated. No matter how cool the weapon effect might be, if a trash blue lv 75 grants 2000% more dps, it can't compete.

This is also why as usual, rings and amulet are the most used uniques because their opportunity cost aren't game breaking.
I don't care that Snakepit has litterally 0 stats, the effect is worth the slot and I can compensate with other slots.

I can't compensate the Wicked Quill dps, no matter how nice the wither on hit is, it won't replace an actual wand.

It this applies to the vast majority of non accessories uniques.

Accessories need to be upgradable or something in order to compete with yellow. It is fine that a good yellow brings better DPS than a unique. This is not what they're about, but there's a limit to that.

Taking back the Wicked Quill, if through some means this item could get up to +3 chaos spell level, some chaos damage/skill duration or something else, it'd be fine. Surely not the greatest, but a good alternative or perhaps even a build base in the future when enough "wither effect" would exist. Atm it's just trash unless you get it in act 1-2.

I can kind of understand GGG's position and argument.

For uniques to be "build-defining", it follows that it would be less useful or even useless outside of that build which it defines.

At the same time, GGG has been adamant that this is a trading game, not a looting game, everything is designed to make sure that trade happens. That means there is a real need to make sure that people are trading non-unique items.

So if uniques are always better than rares, then there would be no reason to ever use rares, and the market will consist almost solely of uniques.

Hence, uniques must be clearly worse than rares outside of the builds they serve to define.

Although I also believe that often, there are unques that are just absolutely useless due to builds that can use it being garbage in the first place.

So why does it feel mostly "meh" when we get an unique?

I believe it's because most of the time we lack the knowledge to know what build it can be used for, and even if we do, most of the time we only value extremely powerful builds or extremely fun builds, and we dismiss all other builds, so getting a unique for those other builds feel underwhelming.

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How can this mostly psychological issue be fixed?

How about we give unique drops another layer of value? For example allow chance orbs to work on any unique that hasn't been corrupted, which will "re-drop" that item as any unique of the same item type (can still drop as the same item but rerolled).

It's just yet another cue that this team cannot create anything new, and is recycling everything from poe1 including the problems.

I think overall in many cases they are just too weak or niche. Niche is fine, but in exchange the niche the items are for need to be way stronger in how hard it hits that niche. I've gotten many uniques and most of them aren't even worth 1 exalt on the market.

The only uniques that seem to actually have value are the minion build aimed ones because minion gear in general is so incredibly lacking and nonexistent.

A good unique is corrupted with better stats and 1 more socket. That is valuable. Basic unique is worth nothing but can be use as starter for builds using it.