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Make all legendary changes retroactive!
Nevalistis / Community Manager
If you've tested with us in the past, you may have noticed that, often when we make changes to Legendary or Set items, only changes to Set Item powers are retroactive. There is a reason for this.
The powers as they exist on Set Items have no variables. You always get a particular value, regardless of whether that item is Ancient or Primal.
Powers on Legendary items, however, generally include variables. Retroactively applying an update to these kinds of items is much trickier, especially when it comes to generating unintended consequences or bugs. Do we issue rerolls to all the existing items? Are players okay with the potential that their existing item may turn out worse than it was prior to the patch? Does making the change create cases where legacy items might end up more powerful than the intended new level?
Simply put, it creates a lot of potential database issues, and the best way to ensure everyone stays on equal footing is to deprecate the older version of the items. When items are updated like this, they are technically dropping as entirely new items, which is why existing ones don't update.
This accomplishes two important philosophical goals: Ensuring legacy versions of items don't stay more powerful than newer, obtainable versions and maintains an equal playing field for everyone (everyone has the same new goal).
Primals with their static nature raise an interesting question, but similar complications. I'm happy to pass this concern on, but to stay consistent with our item change philosophy, we will continue to only retroactively change Set Items.
Since I know the bot doesn't capture updates, here's the additional post I made in response to a question in the thread.
"What exactly are the variables on primals? They always roll max value, and thus have no variable numbers, like set items. Why is this an issue then?"
A legendary affix on an item is different than the set bonus granted by a group of items. This is why sets can be retroactively changed; set bonuses aren't tied to one particular item.
Think of it this way: A legendary power is a "bonus" affix on an item. As a hypothetical situation, if we were to just change an existing power, the game may want to (a) add a new affix on the old item or, more likely, (b) want to reroll the whole item in order to make sense of the change. The latter could still happen to a Primal, which could theoretically result in you having a very different item than the one you had before.
Totally personal opinion here: Given the options, I'd prefer to spend the time hunting for a new item with my pretty-good-but-not-perfect Primal over risking my existing Primal potentially losing power. By creating new versions and deprecating the old ones, no one will lose power. There will just be a higher potential ceiling to reach after the patch.
Nevalistis
Since I know the bot doesn't capture updates, here's the additional post I made in response to a question in the thread.