Hello everyone, as we “ramp up” for a new Quarterly update, would like to point out a one thing I’ve noticed recently playing some RPGs
1 - Skills should not (almost exclusively) depend on builds, they should be gear-dependant, the only question of dependency is HOW (rather than IF). That’s a very nice “niche” to define but don’t think the “way to go” is a bunch of separate “spec trees” for each/specific skill
This idea is mainly based upon the idea/fact of = no ability should be felt SAFE BET to kill things either safely or efficiently (unless well combined with gear for specific purpose/s) even early/er in the game
2 - Gear should not be too specific, but it’s IMPACT should be really felt when a piece of gear changes
So based upon those TWO core ideas/concepts think I’ve found a “way” to incorporate “everything” be affected by gear (or not) depending on playstyle rather than opponent types or environment specifics
That being said, here are 6 main/core DAMAGE TYPES by playstyle (that a game could provide)
1 - Hit-Effects
2 - Ramp-Up/Stackable
3 - Close-combat/Multicast
4 - AoE/Channel
5 - Buff/Debuff
Since we defined types of skills by playstyle (or damage inflicted by a certain playstyle), we can go onto the next step and that’s define TAGS for skills:
1 - Stackable/Ramp up (repeatable, fast damage, can be stackable for damage or some buff)
2 - Close-combat (abilities that are mostly skillshots but aren’t designed to go far, Caltrops, FoK, Ancient-Spear, Arc lash, CoC, e.t.c.)
3 - Projectiles (self-explanatory, these can’t get a multicast/shotgun damage bonus but can gain distance/speed bonuses)
4 - AoE (can be targetted and melee, targetted get affected by cast-range bonuses as well, for ex. Meteor distance cast, most often affixes for these would be Radius, Overload bonuses, Corpse-effect chance)
5 - Wind-up (abilities that usually have mid/larger CDs but become stronger at certain phases, either by having them channeled longer or waited longer to cast)
6 - Buff/Debuffs (pretty self-explanatory, Overload could be considered a form of buff but decided for the sake of balance decided to have skills that do buff/debuff things Overload-separated, at least not if not talented)
And ofc, we got the “generic” categories for spells such as: “melee”, “defensive”, “spell-primary”, “physical-primary”, “summon” and similar…
Based upon the basic tags above a skill can have we can go onto the next step of defining possible affixes for each:
Stackable/Ramp-up:
- X (or X%) bonus physical/spell damage per stack gained
- X (or X%) bonus physical/spell damage per stack on target
- Stackables/Ramp-ups gain +X extra-gained/target-maximum stacks
-
- X% stack duration (mostly/especially usable for DoTs)
- +X% Overload/Overcharge bonus per stack gained/inflicted
-
- X% Overload/Overcharge bonus while/vs maximum stacks gained/inflicted
- +X% hit-effect chance/power increased per stack
- +X% hit-effect chance/power increased on maximum stacks
Close-combat:
- % chance to gain X Life
- % chance to gain X Resource
- % chance to inflict X% Hit-effect frailty (reduce target’s hit-effect % “dodginess”/CC-resistance/s)
- % chance to gain Shield/Ward on successful hit
- % chance to inflict Shield/Ward nullification on successful hit
- % chance hit-effect increase on successful hit/s
- % chance hit-effect power increase on successful hit/s
- % chance to Multicast for X% on successful hits (for ex. extra cast can be 50% original spell damage)
(NOTE: Successful hit = more than 75% of maximum skill damage done, some “generic” affixes or Uniques may increase/decrease this threshold ofensively/defensively by quite a bit)
Projectiles
- +X% maximum projectile distance (can also be affected by “generic” cast range increase)
- +X% travel speed and damage (can also be affected by “generic” cast speed increase)
- +X% chance to pierce/corpse-effect on hit
- +X% chance to hit-effect target-hit
- +X% chance to gain ward on successful target-hit
- +X% chance to multicast for X%
- +X% damage from close distance hits
- +X% hit-effect chance on long distance hits
AoE:
- CDR by targets hit
- Bonus damage on next cast by targets hit [Overcharge]
- Radius increase
- Corpse-effect (explode or freeze/solidify corpse) on hit
- % Chance to gain-buff by targets hit
- % Chance to debuff-target on hit
- +X% hit-effect chance on successful single-target hit
- +X% chance multicast on successful single-target hit
Wind-Up:
- +X% chance to hit-effect on a “well-channeled” ability
- +X% chance to gain buff/target-debuff after a “well-channeled” ability
- +X% primary stat X while channeling
- +X% secondary stat X while channeling
- +X% bonus damage/AoE/hit-effect-power on fully-channeled ability
- +X% bonus damage/AoE/hit-effect-power per wind-up %
(NOTE: Well-channeled ability means 50% wind-up/duration or more, Fully-channeled means 100%, or more with bonus/es)
Buffs/Debuffs
- +X% Buff/Debuff power on first/last stack (if stackable)
- +X% Radius/Duration on cast
- +X% Primary stat X per targets affected for X
- +X% Secondary stat X per targets affected for X
- -X% Primary stat X per targets affected for X
- -X% Secondary stat X per targets affected for X
- -X% Primary stat X per single-target successful hit
- -X% Secondary stat X per single-target successful hit
Hit-Effects:
[available by close-combat, projectiles, melee]
- Stun, Knockback, Shred-Armor/Resist, CB, Blind, Bleed
[available by AoE/Wind-up/De/buffs]
- Shred-Armor/Resist, Blind, Slow, Re-stack (reset duration of all buff/debuff stacks to full duration back)
GENERIC
- Increased Hit-Effect chance (addition, from basic and weapon/talent-tree)
- Increased Hit-Effect power (additional with basic/talent values and then multiplied as %… some, say stun affects duration, knockback affects distance, shred-armor/res affects % amount, Corpse-effect means AoE-affected or HP%, e.t.c.)
- Gain X% primary stat while moving/standing still
- Gain X% secondary stat while moving/standing still
- +X% Cast range for skills of tier (1/2/3/4)
- +X% Cast speed for skills of tier (1/2/3/4)
- X% reduced cost rate for skills of tier (1/2/3/4)
- +X skills of tier (1/2/3/4)
e.t.c.
Notice that there’s no “+X% fire damage” or “+X% physical”, it’s all/more about “skills of tier X”, or melee/projectile/wind-up/stackable/AoE
And the REASON of that is simple: can afford greater fluctuations in numbers for those and as a result AFFECT a build/skill more rapidly, for example:
Staff 1:
+35% Overload bonus damage
+35% chance to root on melee or close-combat hit
+5% of damage done by wind-up and AoE is returned as a Ward for up to 3 seconds
+5 to skills of tier 2 (temporary bonus, player choice to assign those 5 temporary bonuses for skills of tier 2)
The cool part is that this is obviously more impactful (at least per certain playstyle/skill) than something like:
Staff 2:
- +20% Fire damage
- +10% chance to root on hit
- 15% of damage absorbed goes to mana
- +1 to Fire skills
EVEN THOUGH the first staff has more “Specific” bonuses, they’re obviously catered towards a certain playstyle (regardless of class or if high the possible variety, build), and the best part of that is that the player knows UPFRONT what/why/where/how are they gonna use it the moment they see it… The last affix itself even if say that there are multiple classes (which should be the case) that have skills marked as “Fire skill” primarily, it’s LESSER of an impact than having the player choose to assign to WHICH
That’s the basic idea I wanted to share: don’t “overload” us with “trees” for each skill, instead combine them with a nicely-defined/separately-categorized system for skills on a more shared/generic level (across multiple classes/builds) but have the IMPACT of those affixes targetted more specifically
(such as +35% hit-effect power to Close-Combat skills, rather than a more “generic” stat as +15% stun/slow duration for ex., it’s a hit-effect that has an “inflated” value but has a very OBVIOUS/well-defined and yet relatively highly-impactful usage), similar to this instead of having things like +2 to Frost-bolt (or tier 1 skills whatever), can afford to “start” with a “gimped” Frost bolt that has smaller range and the player can choose which direction do they go (higher range and projectile speed, or keep it more “closer” and gain some close-combat bonus/es), and ALL that being INTERCHANGEABLE by gear (as opposed to one tree-click and then have gear almost not affect anything, at least not as impactfully as one would like a gear impact to be I think )
NOTE: Didn’t focus on Armor or Jewelry to “keep it simple”, even though it turned out to be a true wall of text at the end lol
Either way, wanted to share this “approach”/view of a bit higher/specified variety of skill/gear synergy (without going all on D3 exclusivity) for a bit…