Season 14 is one week old, and things are already heating up, but not in a way that Blizzard wanted. This season did a major overhaul to the game’s itemization, particularly when it comes to Diablo 4’s most elite items – Mythic Uniques, and fans have a lot of strong feelings about it.
In a rework dubbed Mythics 3.0, devs have completely redefined the concept of a Mythic item, as now almost every Unique in the game can drop as its Mythic variant. In theory, this should increase the longevity of the season by providing players with more diversity in endgame items. In practice, however, this system has managed to create several major issues that left players with a frustrating experience.
On top of that, old Mythics from before S14 (now called Iconic Mythics) feel left behind in the new system, with both their drop rates and power scaled down dramatically.
Mythic Item Crafting
We’ve covered this before, but one major issue with the new system is how Diablo 4 handles Mythic item crafting in Season 14.
Before this season, there were only two ways to craft a Mythic Unique. The jeweler would take two of your Resplendent Sparks and some required runes to give you a Mythic item of your choice, while the blacksmith would provide a random Mythic Unique without the rune requirement.
The jeweler was the main way for players to target farm a specific item that their build needed. This method changed in S14, and now players can only pick the desired item slot for their Mythic Unique and hope that they get exactly what they want. The problem is, they rarely do.
Another way to craft these items came this season – with a Cube recipe allowing players to convert a random Unique into a Mythic. This new addition is a source of a lot of controversy within the community.
While the tooltip for the Cube recipe is clear about what it does – giving players a random Mythic that is not related to their input item, plenty of players still reported that this recipe ruined their items. And it’s clear why.
The recipe itself is very counterintuitive. If you put something into the Cube, you expect the same thing to come back, but better. Especially because the recipe literally calls it an upgrade.
This was also heavily criticized by Rhykker in his Season 14 review video, where he stated that words mean something. And you can’t call something an upgrade if it doesn’t actually upgrade. Changing the wording around this recipe would help prevent a lot of people from making this mistake again.
Another controversy surrounding Mythic Unique crafting is the new Crafted item tag. Since devs clearly did not want players to craft all of their Mythics, they introduced a new tag for any item created by the Cube, a restriction that prevents players from wearing more than one crafted Mythic. The problem with this is that this Crafted tag also applies to the jeweler and the blacksmith.
The Hidden Cost of More Mythics
The general idea behind these changes is sound. Before Season 14, every single endgame build used the same Mythic items. Heir of Perdition, granting huge bonuses to damage and critical strike chance, was the best-in-slot item for literally every build. And before Lord of Hatred, Shroud of False Death reigned supreme. So it is understandable to want Diablo 4 to have more late-game diversity.
The problem is that not every Unique item deserves to be a Mythic. Unique items that are useful for a number of builds are always great. Getting a Banished Lord’s Talisman as a Mythic drop is like winning the jackpot. You know that you can use this item for something, even if your current build has no use for it.
But what about Yen’s Blessing? Rakanoth’s Wake? Temerity? These are items that are completely useless in their current state, and getting excited over a Mythic drop only for it to end up being Tassets of the Dawning Sky feels insulting.
Between generic and class-specific Unique items, there are around five to six Unique items competing for every item slot. For jewelry, it’s even worse. This massive dilution of the Mythic item pool, combined with already low rates for Mythic drops this season, is the main reason why players have flocked to social media to voice their dissatisfaction.
The result of all of this is a system that feels completely unsatisfying. How do we get our Mythic items now? Upgrade from the Cube? Sure, but good luck getting the item that you actually want. Farm bosses? You can, but with the Mythic item pool so large now, your chances of getting an actual upgrade are slim to none.
Finally, even if you somehow do get your desired item, it may still not even be an upgrade. With Mythic Uniques also getting random affixes now, your current Unique might simply have better stats anyway.
Where Have the Iconic Mythics Gone?
While getting a Mythic Unique for your particular build feels great, one thing that made the old Mythic items so powerful is that their effects were always useful. Heir of Perdition gave you a huge damage multiplier no matter what build you played, and Shroud was particularly notorious with its +1 to passives bonus.
Sometimes you still want these old Mythics, as even now, an item like The Grandfather is often a best-in-slot item for many builds, outperforming the existing skill-specific Uniques. But there is a very unusual thing happening to all of the Iconic Mythics in the game: they simply don’t drop.
In one of his latest videos, Wudijo – a veteran D4 content creator – killed over 2,000 lair bosses, and then reported his findings. Most of the things that he found were nothing out of the ordinary: over 100 Mythic items, Mythic Seals, billions of gold, etc. But one thing he noticed throughout his experiment was that not a single Iconic Mythic dropped.
Even though the Iconic Mythics are outnumbered in S14 (around 50 available Uniques can drop as a Mythic per class, as opposed to only 8 or so Iconics), not a single one dropping is a statistical improbability. We’re talking about a player who is already Paragon 300, and he simply wasn’t able to find an upgrade that he needed for his build.
This isn’t an isolated event, as another highly prolific content creator, Rob2628, recently shared a similar story. During his feedback video regarding Mythic Uniques, Rob also mentioned his inability to find an Iconic Mythic needed for his build.
This is again a player who, at the time of the video, already had Paragon 300. Not only that, but he racked up an impressive 100 hours of playtime while the season was only six days in. Despite all of this, he still couldn’t find The Grandfather – the only upgrade left for his build. Of course, he can still craft one, but because of the crafted item rule, he still wouldn’t be able to wear it, as he already crafted another Iconic, Melted Heart of Selig.
Rob further explained that, if someone like him isn’t able to find these items, then an average player simply doesn’t have a chance.
Whether this is just a bug, an oversight, or something else, the Iconic Mythic problem is yet another issue in a season that’s been plagued with problematic decisions. And so far, it fails to deliver the same excitement and hype as Season 13 did. We’re looking forward to seeing whether or not the upcoming patch addresses some of these concerns.
