Something I just noticed was that increasing player count only increases physical damage. It does not increase elemental damage or spell level. This creates serious balance problems for bosses that rely heavily on elemental spells such as Mephisto.
Solution: Non-spell Elemental damage should scale just like physical damage and spell level should increase as more players are added. If +1 per level is too harsh, perhaps +1 every other extra player added.
Why, so elemental attacks can one shot players? They are already strong.
I think its perfectly fine as it is now.
Because higher player count is supposed to increase monster damage, but it currently only applies to physical damage. This creates lopsided and imbalanced difficulty between physical damage dealers and elemental damage dealers.
I see no reason why one should scale with player count but not the other. And it’s hardly 1-shot territory unless you were practically being 1-2 shot already. Current physical damage scaling is only +6.75% per extra player, which is all I want to see.
It’s probably because Elemental attacks are almost universally AoEs, so they’re already multiplying damage by hitting multiple players.
I think more likely it was just an oversight that didn’t get much thought beyond the initial implementation.
This is actually a reasonable suggestion.
I feel like elemental damage still kills me more at higher player counts than physical even with max resists, though. I can’t imagine Souls doing like 43% more damage or whatever the p8 increase is. A mercenary would have an even rougher time of it.
It doesn’t really feel like the game was balanced with this in mind. But that’s just a guess on my part.
Burning Souls: “Yesssss I want this change! Muahahahalol!”
NoOOOOOoooooo I take back what I said. BAD IDEA
BAD
I
DEA!!
I mean if you’re playing player 8 by yourself, you’re looking for a challenge right? In my experience actually playing with 8 players together as one party honestly feels way too easy even when I’m very undergeared. Bumping up the difficulty seems warranted in my eyes.
Just to make sure people are on the same page. When you’re farming mephisto on ladder, nothing would be different. You’re on /player 1, so no change. This will only affect single player if they up the player count and group play.
Be careful what you wish for… -Dirty Harry
Or just desperately trying to get anything to actually drop, lol. Offline solo self-found on p1 is pretty dire. Well, not that I have any characters in D2R yet who can handle p7/8 without taking a hundred years to clear, anyway.
Perhaps making it only scale on Hell difficulty would be better. I do realize that bosses can be pretty tough on Normal even in groups when half the party is still using that rusty sword they found in Act 1.
I’m not against the idea. I would rather the game become harder than easier, and it’s nice to see a suggestion that does that.
I think if Sorc had to worry about aoe projectiles teleport wouldn’t feel as powerful, but instead necessary to dodge and survive combat. It’s a lot easier to kite melee attackers. Archers are a much bigger threat because you have to dodge around.
Most classes have a way to mitigate elemental damage or use summons to absorb hits, but not sorceress. And it would be nice to feel a bit more fragile on her to truly cement her role as glass cannon DPS.
I think it will make paladin even more desirable than it already is given their exclusive access to high resists shields and access to resistance auras that also raise max resists. So now they do high damage and access to aoe damage as well with foh/aura changes, high block chance(base chance and holy shield is a 1 point wonder), best resists (so least affected by the elemental damage change of out of all classes). Ontop of being able to benefit from leech and other melee only item mods with a point into smite while using a caster weapon(doesn’t require ar so hybrid builds using it are common).
You have yourself a very desirable class when you compare them side by side. What is paladins weakness supposed to be exactly with this damage increase that highly benefits them?
Even a paladin can’t have it all. If a paladin is investing tons of points into his resist auras, or switching from an offensive aura to a defensive one, that will impact his offensive capabilities.
I don’t see it as a problem. If anything I think it’s good if this change encourages people to mind their defensive stats a little more.
Ultimately, even without resist skills, there are plenty of items out there that can boost a player’s max resist. There are also elemental absorb modifiers, so I’m confident all classes could adapt if the situation warrants it.
Sorc does have energy shield, but until they fix mana burn bug it’s unreliable.
Smite does not benefit from leech. Life tap is from Exile, Lash Wish, Drac’s, or a wand with charges.
Paladin has no weakness as a character and probably has the most build diversity in PvP and PvM both.
Edit… Paladin’s weakness is not being able to put spells on right click because of auras so you have to shift + left click like an A-hole or use the buggy quick cast system that doesn’t let you name lock.