Thanks for clarifying. I can see this as workable.
I hadn’t considered the mercs, and that is an important point. I could get behind your idea. Do you have proposed numbers?
this is such great post
but i have a question
did you took WSM + WIAS into account?
This is a major factor in my thinking too. I don’t think we’re going to get a lot of big changes, so I’d like to focus on something simple and easy to implement, while also bringing a large amount of variety. Bang for buck.
I haven’t considered any sources of off-weapon ED in any of the numbers because I was trying to focus on the weapon alone. In this case, those who aren’t using Last Wish would commonly use a Might merc, so I would consider the aura on Last Wish more about adding options for a different merc rather than adding damage.
It’s not really something I can add to a simple chart. I would need to into account all other equipment the player was wearing, plus their inventory, their class, their skill points, their stats… My intention was to simplify it down to the raw weapon damage only.
The 19% potential power-creep that I mentioned was the difference in damage between the current Grief (447) and the proposed new EBOTD (534).
I completely agree. I had only run the numbers on the late game, so I didn’t think I could assert that in the conclusion, but I definitely am in favor of bumping at all levels.
I don’t think we’re going to get major skill rebalancing across all the classes, and my suggestion would require significantly less dev resources.
I do hear you on the merc damage, though. It’s something that I hadn’t originally considered, but it is something that would need to be addressed. Thanks to you and Zax for pointing it out.
Would adjusting the merc damage scaling be a simple task, or is there a different way we could attack this?
Thank you. The numbers are raw damage without any off-weapon ED, charms, or speed taken into consideration. The tops are still knowable because Grief and BOTD have enough IAS to reach top attack speed breakpoints, but for the rest it would be a consideration in utility trade off depending on your other gear.
i see
in any discussion of item balancing, i always try to use the logic of rarity vs power to decide what should be “best” and what should be “worst”
i mean, if i farmed 3 jahs + 1 ber over a Lo+mal it should feel better, more powerful right?
Compared to doing a massive database pass of every single weapon on every single character/stash adjusting skills is a cakewalk really. Hobbyist modders do that all the time. It’s literally just adjusting a few synergies percentages. The alternative would be having “new” weapons, and “old” weapons. Which looks kinda of bad.
Weapon damage is changed retroactively (the game reads it directly from weapons.txt), no need for database updates. Not that they’d ever do a database update anyways, way too risky for negligible gain. See BK Sword, they didn’t update all the pre-2.7 ones to not have knockback.
I believe i did +3 min/max dmg per char level. It does seem huge but playthrough was still slower than caster classes 
I think that calculation would have to be adjusted to be stronger above level 90 so it makes more sense to gain levels.
Generally I’m all for enhancing weapons via better base damage and attribute frequency.
Two questions, Just making sure I understand you correctly:
- In the 2nd table, you compare against Grief. Has this Grief also enhanced base damage or do you compare against and unmodified one?
- What exactly do you mean by “brings the field together”? A scaling operation has the effect of widening the numerical range (e.g. Doom to Eth BotD distance in second table, goes from 79.64 - 49.89 = 29,75 up to 113.38 - 70,91 = 42.47 for the +50% base damage case)
Im not decided on amounts, but the 50% would be not out of the question. It would bring the damage of the lower damage weapons a bit more into Grief range. The close contenders would get the chance to slightly surpass Grief, but not in every roll. Grief would become outshined, but would be still a cheap alternative. I think it would make sense.
The next step could be improving the rares by increasing higher ed occurences, and by improving uniques. It would just have to fall in balance, thats probably the hard part.
Thanks for the comparison! Makes it easier to imagine things.
At the end you will just make Grief stronger. But sure, why not 
Things that I would do:
- Nerf grief. I hate to admit it, but it is just too strong. I’d change it to 340-400% ED and +40 flat damage.
- Remove level from the CTH calculation. Should not be level dependent - this just penalizes melee characters for no reason.
- Dex should contribute more to AR than it currently does.
- Str should contribute more to damage than it currently does.
- Lower the physical resistance of monsters in hell difficulty. Sure some physical immunities and resistances are expected, but every monster having at least 50% physical resistance is again penalizing melee classes for no reason.
- Nerf Mosaic. I mean really, it’s OP. Even more so than Grief.
- Add physical rainbow facet jewels that add 3-5% lower physical resistance and 5-10% ED. Maybe they can cast Fade on level up and War Cry on death.
- Unnerf WW slightly so that 2h weapons can reach 4fpa again.
- Fix any bugs with jewels and damage or IAS.
That’s kinda all I’d do. Slightly lowering physical resistance and giving players the tools to lower physical resistance will improve the viability of all melee builds irrespective of what weapon you’re using. Plus attack rating calculation changes mean you’ll hit more often at lower levels, and at all levels if you want to invest a bit more into dexterity. We’ll see more builds not over invest into vitaility, especially barbarian builds, because it won’t be needed. Maybe we’ll see the return of the Zeal/Fanatacism build?
You don’t have to add skills or other gear into the calculation.
Just simply calculate the damage of a current grief pb, grief ba @ 4fpa with 20%ds as 1/5 extra damage and compare with ebotdba @ 4 fpa (+30ed) and death @5fpa (+DS) if you want to compare those weapons in context of a WW barb. CB is hard to calculate in this context, but anybody that understands the game enough to understand the comparison can rate the benefits between the weapons. Same goes for dmg vs undead/demons, ITD, etc people should be able to sort it out depending on the content they want to use it.
But it would show that eBotdBA with 50% isn’t 19% better than grief PB, but barely as good. Your intention was good, but it makes grief look less powerful than it is and suggest a powercreep that is just not there. Maybe with godlike rare eth selfrep 2 sox weapons, which are currently still worse than grief…
More transparency helps your argument. and 1-5 % powercreep get less opposition than 20%, especially from the PvP community.
I personally think that dual edeathBA could be the better PvM weapon after a 50% increase, but only because of CB, not because of raw damage.
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I don’t know… this seems like a nerf to Act1 merc.
And as others have noted, when Aura’s, Deadly Strike, Crushing Blow, Amp Damage, Decrep, Open Wounds, Ignore Defense, etc etc. - are present on weapons, that needs taken into account…
I believe OP was basing all this on 1-handers IIRC… but… what happens to 2 handers?
In the end, I think I lean towards the above talk regarding dex adding more AR and strength adding more damage… that way you’re not jacking with merc’s and leave the build up to the player/character, rather than items/mercs.
In the end this comes across more of a “how to de-throrn Grief” (which, fine if that’s what it is)… but the boost that Act2 and Act5 merc’s will receive is gonna make them even more OP… is that really needed?
Mercs have ST and Dex as well so changing those calculations effects the mercs too.
Adding base damage to all weapons includes bows, thus the A1 merc damage increases. The only negative I see is the A2 merc damage goes up as well but in all honesty I don’t see that as a real thing. Even on my nec where Emilio is the main damage dealer he still isn’t mowing things down. For just about every other build Emilio is generally there just to hold Insight or Infinity. Most things drop dead before he gets close to them.
I wouldn’t call it de-throning Grief, but more like Grief is the only option for melee chars to run P8 just like the casters. Thus this is a proper level of damage needed to run P8. So how do we bring other high end weapons up to the level of Grief so we can have variety while bringing up the normal and nightmare level weapons at the same time.
I love the idea.
Also, I love this idea:
Again the level based portion of the hit forumla doesn’t hurt melee in most cases outside of the early levels, and for most of the endgame helps them. Why buff them 1-85, then nerf them 86-99? You know where the VAST majority of time is spent.
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But why is it there at all? It’s unnecessary. Anyway it has a bigger impact on 1-85 than it does on 86+.
what is even the point of attack rating? i think it should be removed. its the only mechanic that is required for you to build for you to be allowed to deal damage. its not like any other mechanic that you can optionally build. itd is the most popular attack rating stat for weapons, and then its fools which gives a bunch of flat AR, and then every melee skill in existence grants huge bonuses to attack rating. why have it to begin with if everyone’s goal is to either be granted a billion attack rating just for using the skills as you would otherwise use them OR ignore the mechanic entirely by using ITD (which grief has, which is another reason why its so strong).
just base everything on block. if you as a player don’t want to get hit by a melee attack, build up your block chance. act bosses and several monsters already have block chances to begin with, which is another thing melee has to progress through. dont make monster block absurdly high, of course. but i think diablo should be allowed to parry a sword with his hand every now and then.
i’ve always found it crazy that melee has to pass an attack rating check which is penalized by level twice (monster’s defense scales with level, and then penalized again by level itself), and then block. most melee is single target and in close range. meanwhile casters just cast their ability and hit. why don’t monsters dodge? you’re telling me my behemoth barbarian with a large 2 handed sword swinging at a huge venom lord is somehow going to miss? or a pesky fallen can somehow block it? meanwhile a monster that is across the map and has several seconds to react to a missile traveling at snail speed to reach them is guaranteed to hit no matter what. lets not forget they also get the safety of distance and mass aoe while doing as much if not more individual damage than melees. its just wild.
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The +dmg is a stat that was meant to be hidden to supplement Smite and melee in general. The evidence is how +dmg only works with smite and melee, but not kick or missile weapons.
Fortitude +300% ed is no bug because off hand ed% has existed since jewels from 1.07. You can even find enhanced damage % on circlets, and auroric shields.
For the same reason we don’t use hearts for Life, weapons don’t hit for 1 damage, and we don’t kill things by jumping on their heads.
Sometimes extra complexity is a thing to be enjoyed.
Example, I can’t stand 5th edition D&D because somewhere in it’s streamlining, it lost it’s magic.
Not at all considering 1-85 is all of a few hours of play, and still not all that much if you go about it the slow way. A small benefit for hundreds of hours > a moderate penalty for 10 hours.