POE2 uniques and why they feel so lackluster
With the new tiering system of items of normal, advanced, expert:
Current uniques are only based off normal items, whereas in POE1 you had all the bases named differently, for example Zodiac Leather being the equivalent of an "expert" tier item in POE2 and the unique based off this is an actual sought after item: https://poedb.tw/us/Hyrris_Ire
This means that uniques had far better base stats and are much more useful even as transitional items to either better uniques or high tier rares.
I don't know if this is an intentional decision by GGG or maybe we will see new uniques in the future being based off higher tier items, though their last pass at "buffing" uniques appears to suggest they want to keep them based off the lowest tier
It's possible they will add more in the future but an easy fix for a lot of unique items now would just to base them on a higher tier of item, then some may actually be used purely because of their implicit modifiers and better base stats
Take this for example:
https://poe2db.tw/us/Quecholli
150% increased physical is a pretty good stat and if this was based off an expert crumbling maul instead it could even see some usage in mid and endgame after the inevitable herald nerfs
Comments
I'm gonna get shot down for this but itemization in general in PoE 2 is just not there yet. Bases lack meaningful distinguishing properties, crafting lacks agency, and the upgrades people are spending hundreds of hours chasing are just things with bigger numbers rather than stuff that would actually have a transformative effect on your gameplay which is supposed to be the whole point of loot. There's a handful of build defining uniques but for the most part the itemization is just a barren wasteland of slot machine pulls and really lacks any soul or fun factor for me.
The "advanced" / "expert" thing is just a play testing tag.
We do not currently have bases of items that are higher item level than roughly 35. These items aren't made and don't exist. So, to be able to test any content higher than that cut off point they added a play test tag "advanced" / "expert" which just scales the items base stats by a certain percentage. Doing this allows them to have the needed items for testing content. This is not a permanent fix. It is a very common programming strategy utilized throughout videogames.
The reason that uniques feel bad currently is because with the exception of a few special cases there are no "end game" bases in the game.
When an item turns into a unique item it loses the "play test" tag meaning advanced/expert uniques do NOT exist.
Look at the uniques that are desirable currently. They only fall on items that the base really doesn't matter (ingenuity, unique rings, amulets...etc) OR they are an unique item that has a special base that is unobtainable elsewhere. (Temporalis, morior, howa...etc)
It's not GGG pushing for uniques to be weak, it's literally just that the bases do not currently exist to make the unique. So the uniques we do have are being put into the game on bases that we do have as a placeholder allowing them to be tested and utilized.
When the game comes out in 2-5 years as a full release we will not have the "advanced"/"expert" items.
REMIND ME! 5 YEARS
I feel most uniques in the game are low level, presumably because they wanted to introduce uniques people could use during the campaign first. I imagine they also wanted to gauge unique item power level
Uniques need to have better stats. They have cool powers but without the right stats they are not worth the trade off.
In their most recent update they said they were looking at the lack of uniques that defined builds. It’s also in AE with only half the weapon types in the game.
its kinda insane coz in other ARPGs usually the incredibly-hard-to-get uniques are build defining. there is no point to using any unique weapon over a level 79+ rare item that has good rolls.
There's already items like that in poe2, e.g. Brass Dome which is right up there with the very best rares for armour.
But the problem with uniques has nothing to do with their stats.
There are already some cool uniques in the game that demonstrate this, like Plaguefinger unique gloves.
Plaguefinger doesn't need stats to be good. They could remove every modifier besides the last one, and it wouldn't change anything, Plaguefinger would still be beyond BiS for the builds that use it.
The problem is that the majority of the uniques were deliberately made to be bad.
This is purely a question of design philosophy.
GGG believes that most uniques should be useless dead ends, something a new player maybe uses for a few levels.
They want new players to get excited about making a Brynhand's Mark build, so they can enjoy the journey of discovering that it's a dead end.
For some reason I will never understand, this seems to be the dominant design philosophy today, from Mark Rosewater to League of Legends.
Their vision of peak design is making a bunch of shit that is deliberately bad.
Most of the time I need one or two of the modifiers that are good for me, so of course the game gives me all the rest instead of what I need more of. I was severely underpowered right after Act 3 and stayed that way for many map tiers simply because a real upgrade is dependent on random chance.