The problem is that Crit in D3 was the only option, not that it was AN option
The 10000% increase of damage is a bad design flaw and never even advocated for it
LE has some affixes like increase Crit Chance by 60% on a weapon, and the reason why THAT works is cause they’re not addictive but multiplicative of baseline value (i.e. 10% becomes 16%, BUT if your skill has baseline increased crit% to say some 15% then that 60% increase will result in somewhere around 23% absolute value)
I’m ALSO using an affix that’s “hit effect power” and that doesn’t work only with crits but with ALL hit-effects (increases stun duration, root duration, knockback distance/damage, armor-reduction ratio, bleed-ratio-per-distance, power of free spell per multicast, damage multiplied compared to original value, e.t.c.), and if need be can put it separate value from Crits so the “separation of purpose” on benefits becomes even more obvious/greater
So when you have DIFFERENT OPTIONS then you won’t get “stuck” into stacking only crits… Think that alone would fix the D3 trifecta problem
Overall the conclusion - it’s really not THAT bad to have a nice dynamic system, the thing is HOW (not IF)… D2 had +X to X skill from gear (or +X to all skills whatever), the only difference is that the ONLY way to impact skills via gear in D2 was to buff damage (since 9 times out of 10 + level to skill = more damage)
With endgame equipment, the balance between the power that comes from your skills vs what amount of power comes from your items will and should automatically go from maybe 50/50 to ~70/30.
Otherwise your endgame equipment would be as powerful as mediocre equipment.
I think that the problem with Crit stems from the synergistic effect of Crit Chance and Crit Damage, and that Crit Damage is a commonly available stat.
If you balance these affixes around each of them being useful on their own, then they become too powerful in combination with each other, and when you balance them around them being used together, then they are weak on their own and you also have to use them together for them to be useful (aka reducing affix / item diversit).
However, if Crit Chance still would be common, but Crit Damage would only roll on some very few Legendaries, Passive Skills and Active Skills, then you could balance it around Crit Chance being useful on its own, and when you wanna make a build that dives deeper into that, you have to take the Legendary, Passive Skill and/or Active Skill that have Crit Damage, but you then also had to sacrifice something more hefty for it.
And the amount of Crit Damage you get from these few Legendaries, Passive & Active Skills should not be too high either. That is how I imagine Crit Chance and Crit Damage could have been much better balanced.
There are other factors that have to be true for this to be true. First your character would have to reach max level long before endgame where you have no more points to spend leveling your character. Also the combat power of the gear would have to be maxed out long before endgame. But to do that runs the danger of making your character appear weaker which isn’t good. I would dare say that the gear portion of the 50% wouldn’t be at max till you have all of your GG pieces you can get from the game. So you are not truly at your full power yet. That would mean you might be at 50% character (max level no more points) and 40% gear (due to it not being at max strength).
Yes, obviously. When you can accumulate up to +6-10% Crit Chance and +50-130% Crit Damage on 6 different slots, plus some passives, things quickly get out of hand.
With a more sober approach, especially on the Crit Damage, limited to a small selection of items and passives, there’s no reason for this problem to carry on to D4.
That may be overkill tbh. Assuming the basis Crit Damage is the same as in D3 (+50%) then there’s a large margin for progression. Especially if Crit Chance doesn’t reach the 50% limit (I don’t think a character should ever be able to do more crits than normal strikes).
Well first of all one of my problems with Crit as was in D3 is that it “happens” with every single spell… Why would a Meteor Crit ?, why would Earthquake Crit ?, why would some DoT stuff crit ?, aren’t those things supposed to work for Precision-based attacks (as opposed to Collateral type) damage ?
I get it, for simplicity’s sake devs do that but I’d personally keep Crit only for “Precision strikes” and “Basic damage” spells (i.e. largely/based on single-target effect), the AoE stuff should have something different
Say for ex. the Multicast one I mentioned quite a few times already (say by Default Multicast has a 5% chance to cast additional, free, spell with 25% damage of the original one)
THAT WAY, when you SEPARATE the two (by spell type) going for Crit and going for Multicast (as opposed to getting both by going for one stat) will result in a nice dynamic/different gameplay
The OTHER WAY to make things work against putting “everything in one basket” is by mobs (either by affix or by family type)… Say some Steel/Metal knights that are simply Immune (or highly resistent) to Crit damage, so that going for that specific type of “RNG gift” has some chance to backfire or even cast/proc a defensive shield for few sec everytime when a Crit happens (Protoss Immortal effect… :P)
But again, IMO a very big part of the problem is that EVERY SPELL has every single type of proc, including Crit (which IMO shouldn’t quite be the case), and even if you “scale it down” to whatever a small proc rate can be, STILL think it’s the wrong approach on the long run tbh
This ALSO contributes to Crit dominance, it’s called Trifecta for a reason, IN FACT that’s why I applaud for D4 devs not tying AS into a basic stat (like Dex for example), cause that would’ve led once again the same outcome/problem
I’m playing a demon hunter. in this beta I’ve tried everything I can think of to remain stationary when firing my crossbows and I am constantly moving forward when firing. No matter how I reset the keys it still moves. any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you
