Rarity affix

In my opinion, the game should remove rarity affix because it will ruin character build fun part. I love how I must think or create a build. However, when compare to those who care about only drop value and use only simplest build to stack rarity it's kinda sad that if I want to fight inflation of this game I must build rarity also (bot rarity stack also annoying), which I think it is not a challenge that fun to conquer, but it is annoying part that make character building not fun at all. Please remove it or fix it anyway that make people focus on create creativity build more than just rarity stack would be great.

Rarity stacking goes for meta builds. Rich gets richer, and there goes the build variety. The fact that 40% percent of player base playing the same build tells a story but who fuckin cares...I don't think that is up in the priority list.

Rarity as a stat to build is just bad design.
It's that simple.

It inherently makes any builds that need more different stats worse than any builds that need less.

It's not about combat effectiveness of the builds.
It doesn't matter that one build has more/less dps/survivability than another.

All it comes down to is "this build needs both X and Y while that build only needs X, so that build is inherently better as it has more freedom to stack rarity, since there's no desire for Y affixes."

That alone makes it a better build, because if rarity as a stat exists, it's automatically the best and most important stat.

I like to use Chaos Inocculation.
Do you think that's just for the gimmick, or the chaos immunity?
Nah, those are bonuses. I like it because it removes all reason to build life.
Less separate stats I'd like on my gear, more affixes open for rarity.

Did you think the best thing about Blood Mage was the crit? The bleed?
No, it's making it so you don't care about building mana anymore by letting yourself use life for spellcasting, enough to make mana meaningless to you. So you can have more rarity instead of mana on your gear.

I'd love a build that doesn't want resists.
Solely so that all those affix slots in my loadout would be available for rarity.

I don't like building crit.
Partly because it requires so much overinvestment to get it to a value that feels any good.
But also because if I've decided that my build just isn't a crit built, I don't need to build any crit, so that's slots open for rarity.

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

Rarity as a stat to build is just bad design.
It's that simple.

No, it’s really not, unless you think every stat in the game should only exist to boost combat numbers.

Rarity isn’t a power stat, it’s a reward stat. Its job isn’t to make you stronger in combat, it’s to give players who value farming efficiency a different axis of progression. That’s what’s called a tradeoff, not a design flaw.

If every line on your gear only affected DPS or defenses, the entire economy and build diversity would implode into one boring dimension of "how fast can I delete a boss."

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

It inherently makes any builds that need more different stats worse than any builds that need less.

That sounds neat until you actually try to play one.
Chaos Inoculation doesn’t free you from stats, it forces you into massive ES investment. Blood Magic doesn’t liberate you from mana, it replaces it with permanent life management. You’re not gaining affix freedom, you’re just paying the bill in a different currency.

Also, unless you enjoy being one-shot by a blue goat, you’re still going to need resists, movement speed, and attributes so no, you can’t just slap +rarity on every slot and call it design-breaking.

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

because if rarity as a stat exists, it's automatically the best and most important stat.

Rarity doesn’t ruin builds, it just exposes who understands itemization tradeoffs and who wants everything for free.

If your argument boils down to "I wish there were no stats that make me choose" then yeah, you’re asking for less design, not better design.

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Oinkaments#6390 wrote:

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

Rarity as a stat to build is just bad design.
It's that simple.

No, it’s really not, unless you think every stat in the game should only exist to boost combat numbers.

Rarity isn’t a power stat, it’s a reward stat. Its job isn’t to make you stronger in combat, it’s to give players who value farming efficiency a different axis of progression. That’s what’s called a tradeoff, not a design flaw.

That IS the design flaw. Reward should not be a stat that one builds.
It's not a tradeoff, it's an obligation and a worsening of the game.
It makes every build but the rarity build feel like trash.

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Oinkaments#6390 wrote:

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

It inherently makes any builds that need more different stats worse than any builds that need less.

That sounds neat until you actually try to play one.
Chaos Inoculation doesn’t free you from stats, it forces you into massive ES investment. Blood Magic doesn’t liberate you from mana, it replaces it with permanent life management. You’re not gaining affix freedom, you’re just paying the bill in a different currency.

It's not total stat amount, it's count of different stats. Amount of seperate affix slots being used for things that aren't rarity.

If I have a build that needs to raise up both life and energy shield, that's 3 prefix slots on every armor piece. Life, #ES, and %ES. I can have no rarity prefixes. If I do take one, I make the build less effective, not as a tradeoff, but as a fulfilling of the obligation to the only stat that really matters, which again, is trash.
If I have CI build that doesn't care about life, then that's only 2 affixes on the armor pieces, so I can use the 3rd prefix on rarity.
The CI build is inherently better than the Life and ES build because the CI build does not sacrifice an affix slot to get the rarity. It just gets the rarity, for free, because it didn't have something else to put there.

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Oinkaments#6390 wrote:

Also, unless you enjoy being one-shot by a blue goat, you’re still going to need resists, movement speed, and attributes so no, you can’t just slap +rarity on every slot and call it design-breaking.

It's design breaking because each slot that could have rarity but doesn't means your build is worse, regardless of how combat effective your build is.

If you work out a build that finds and excuse to not want movement speed, not want resits, not want whatever arbitrary thing other builds would need to include, then your build is better. Period.
Because you now get to have more rarity where those other stats would have been. Instead of picking an armor piece that could have rarity and making it not because you need another resist affix, you take the extra rarity affix, and have more fun than any other build because your loot experience is better.
It feels like garbage to not have rarity on every piece of equipment that can have it.

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Oinkaments#6390 wrote:

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

because if rarity as a stat exists, it's automatically the best and most important stat.

Rarity doesn’t ruin builds, it just exposes who understands itemization tradeoffs and who wants everything for free.

If your argument boils down to "I wish there were no stats that make me choose" then yeah, you’re asking for less design, not better design.

I absolutely want to have to choose between different stats.
"the looting experience is either tolerable or garbage" should not be one of the stats we are choosing between.

I want to choose between more dps vs more survivability, more of this element vs that element, more crit vs more ailment, between being a glass cannon or a tank with low damage.
Never between "looting is acceptable because you ignored other stats" and "you actually made your build so looting is ruined".

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

That IS the design flaw. Reward should not be a stat that one builds.
It's not a tradeoff, it's an obligation and a worsening of the game.
It makes every build but the rarity build feel like trash.

That’s not a flaw, that’s the core loop of ARPG design for Diablo 2 and Path of Exile. If rewards were detached from gear and build choices, then every character would get the same loot output. At that point, what’s even the point of gearing or theorycrafting?

Rarity (and quantity) are reward stats, not combat stats. They exist to create tension between fighting power and farming power. You give up combat effectiveness to gain efficiency, that’s a tradeoff by definition.

Calling it an obligation is like saying damage mods are bad design because I feel obligated to deal damage. You’re not being forced, you’re being offered another axis of progression.

If you feel compelled to stack rarity everywhere, that’s not a design issue, that’s just your min-max brain refusing to leave value on the table. The system didn’t force you, your optimization instinct did.

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

It’s not total stat amount, it’s count of different stats.
CI builds can stack rarity for free since they don’t need life.

Except they don’t get it for free, they pay the price elsewhere.
CI builds lose access to life scaling, recovery, hybrid defenses, and flask synergy.

Hybrid life/ES builds absolutely need more categories, and in return, they get more layers of sustain and flexibility. That’s the point of diversity: each archetype trades simplicity for depth.

And the "3rd prefix for rarity" argument doesn’t hold in practice. Rarity rolls are weak. The gain from one extra rarity line is negligible compared to losing armor, suppression, recovery, or utility. It’s only free when content is trivial, which is precisely where rarity is supposed to be viable.

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

Each slot that could have rarity but doesn’t makes your build worse.

Only if your entire metric for better is loot yield per hour.

Rarity doesn’t make non-rarity builds worse, it just makes loot-focused builds different.

The existence of one axis of optimization doesn’t invalidate others.

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

I want to choose between combat stats, not between looting is tolerable and looting is ruined.

And that’s exactly what you’re already doing, rarity doesn’t replace combat stats, it competes with them.

That’s what makes itemization interesting. Every affix is a choice: damage vs. defense, sustain vs. utility, profit vs. power. Remove that tension, and the game collapses.

Also, you’re not being punished for ignoring rarity, you’re just not being rewarded for it.

That’s a critical distinction. Incentive is not an obligation. The fact that rarity feels tempting means it’s doing its job, it’s pulling you toward an alternative optimization path. That’s literally good design.

You’re not describing a design flaw, you’re describing a psychological itch, the compulsion to optimize every axis simultaneously.

Rarity doesn’t make other builds bad, it just reminds players that not every build is meant to do everything equally well.

If everything dropped the same loot regardless of your setup, you wouldn’t have better design, you’d just have less reason to care about your build at all.

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Oinkaments#6390 wrote:

That’s a critical distinction. Incentive is not an obligation. The fact that rarity feels tempting means it’s doing its job, it’s pulling you toward an alternative optimization path. That’s literally good design.

It is well beyond incentive, to the level of obligation, and that makes it bad design.

The minimum tolerable looting experience should be obtained on a white, no mods waystone, with no tablets, and no rarity on gear.
Then finding means to improve looting should push above minimum.

Instead, in order to just reach the bare minimum of looting being tolerable, it takes 6 mods on the stone, 3 tablets, and at least 150% rarity on gear.

And at that point, you still can't afford anything in trade, because somebody is no life-ing with a high rarity build that still rockets through the most juiced content, destroying the economy for everyone but them.

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Oinkaments#6390 wrote:

If rewards were detached from gear and build choices, then every character would get the same loot output. At that point, what’s even the point of gearing or theorycrafting?

Every character SHOULD have the same loot output.
Then the point of theorycrafting and buildmaking becomes actually making builds instead of optimizing for looting at the expense of actual builds.

That's the point where it becomes good.

Stats should compete. Rarity should not be one of the competing stats.

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

It is well beyond incentive, to the level of obligation, and that makes it bad design.

That's like your opinion man.

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

The minimum tolerable looting experience should be obtained on a white, no mods waystone, with no tablets, and no rarity on gear.

Taking it to an extreme i see. I hope GGG never fall for this rethoric, because it would see the same faith as totally ruined franchises like D3/D4

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

Then finding means to improve looting should push above minimum.

Instead, in order to just reach the bare minimum of looting being tolerable, it takes 6 mods on the stone, 3 tablets, and at least 150% rarity on gear.

There are valid concern on the way rarity is implemented, like in abysses or pinnacle area because only the rarity on gear is taken in effect. That is the problem, not rarity on gear. This is the bad implementation of rarity right now. But rarity on gear is there to stay.

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

And at that point, you still can't afford anything in trade, because somebody is no life-ing with a high rarity build that still rockets through the most juiced content, destroying the economy for everyone but them.

This game is for devouted players. It's a meritocracy, the more time you put in it the more you are rewarded and it's not an easy game for casual players unless they copy paste a deadeye build, which renders the game experience a total joke.

The best builds can stack the most rarity. Which means Build diversity get reduced by rarity on gear. Because people will play the strongest builds and go stack rarity.
Welkl and then there is ritualist which will alway sbe good becasue one mroe ring slot means more rarity.