http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/9499900990#16
My response to someone posting about why bother farming when the itemization patch will make all of that effort worthless.
There will be an itemization patch but after listening and reading through the actual transcript from the Incgamers podcast where they discussed it for a bit, it is clear at least to me that what they will eventually deliver, won’t be a dramatic change as far as how the players will perceive the items when it comes to really making their characters unique (yet another lost opportunity that this dev team has become synonymous with where they talk a good talk, but end up under delivering).
Thus rather than attempting to even fix the underlying design, it’s just going to be more of the same (stopgap bandaid fix) where the loot will continue to be mostly uninspiring. Sure, one of the things they are working on is scaling lower level legendaries such that they will actually be usable in Inferno and trying to make some of their proc effects less of a novelty and something that is actually viable to build around. But just like the other underwhelming bandaid fixes (Paragon, Ubers, and Monster Power), it will be enough to get a percentage of the player base to get on the hamster wheel.
However, Wyatt did mention the following; “We do want to be careful with existing gear, that’s something we talk about a lot. I don’t want to log in one day and suddenly my character is completely broken.”
Thus, most items in this patch will likely be in the same vein like how better jewelry dropped in patch 1.0.5 (where the roll range was increased). Thus, there will be newer/better items that pushes the tier of some currently higher end items down (items will go through the same sort of devaluation that occurred during that patch – this is to be expected though and I have no problems with this). The small percentage of current BiS items will still retain their value though since Wyatt also mentioned the following; “So as much as trifecta or quadfecta items are bad in terms of being universal for all characters, it would be a different story if they were rare, hard to get, and I dreamed of getting one some day.”
In other words, this is implying that such trifecta drops will become even more difficult to roll compared to now; it wouldn’t surprise me they will make the entire RNG on that more favorable towards BoA crafting since one of their desires is to also make more of the best items, soul bound (such that those items cannot be found by simply going onto the AH).
Why is it taking so long when it isn’t going to be a full reset of the core systems? Their iteration in “re-designing” the loot and doing more of this numbers tweaking to said items is likely exposing fundamental flaws with the underlying design when it comes to scaling certain lower level legendaries to max level. They have to go and test every single class mechanic and how it scales with proc coefficients/skill synergies in order to come up with a tuning that scales accordingly from normal through inferno.
But until this team actually over delivers for once, I’m just reading these interviews with a great deal of skepticism. And just to reiterate, I was one of those who were optimistic they would fix and get this game on better footing (by this, I mean when it comes to customizing and building characters that are more unique/personalized for the player) within the first year. When I stopped playing my mains back in March, it was in the hopes that the itemization patch would take place around 6 months later. I guess it doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that I was way too optimistic about the timeframe…
