[D4] Itemisation suggestion guidelines

[anon88344807]

@Dusty-21868

To reward actual skill you need to have lower complexity to allow the devs to actually balance the game for co-op and pvp.

Otherwise you’re just rewarding people finding broken builds, not actual mechanical skill.

The more complex the game the harder balancing becomes. No way around that.

This is only partially true

The MOST IMPORTANT thing when designing or “coming up” with a system is to make sure of as much as close to zero (as minimal as possible) overlapping

A “Broken” build is when you have items that give you the very same thing that a skill does, in a direct way… A “Broken” build can be maximize Strength and then have every single item in gear be able to roll it, bad example but shows the problem… Items should give other things that skills or Attributes do (for the most part), and if there ARE the possibilities to have that happen, make sure it’s well tested on limit

That’s why I went broader a bit to introduce different types of hit-effects for type of skill, MINIMIZES OVERLAPPING, with minimal overlap can immediately know whether the Crit for example is broken or a certain skill of the Rogue tree is (just a very simple example to understand how it is)

Overlap also allows to avoid “unintentional connections” between things, say you have decided to spec for Crit build but also somehow/someway/unintended but it’s there cause of overlaps and whatever = Stun should benefit from it

I mean, unless SPECIFICALLY TARGETTED and invested into such a possibility gear alone (or yet even more than that, the system of skills, gear, and builds) shouldn’t do it

That’s how a good system works, it has a well-defined basic ground for everything that when new “cards” get put on top they can immediately seen whether or not they fit (or make things overlap thus rendering less efficient everything else indirectly)

@Dusty-21868

Making Diablo resemble POE more and more just makes it POE.

POE are making a POE 2.

Diablo shouldn’t try to be POE it should be Diablo 4.

Never even touched PoE, as said myself wanted to combine suboptimal experiences and suggest some guidelines to not repeat mistakes that I consider them to be

The super high arching goal was to:

1 - Minimize overlap and severely limit it (overlaps are the biggest problems of everything, it’s like putting many spices in every meal and when everything goes south can’t determine whether a certain spice is the problem or perhaps a whole meal wasn’t good to even begin with, e.t.c.)

2 - Minimize accidental success… IDK about you but I find it odd and bad really… Sure some people want to “rave” into summons and other kinds of “unexpected factors” or “ridiculous” builds but the point is those too should feel well “themed” and work with/in a certain purpose, i.e. not be a “cookie cutter” for everything

And if it would require for D4 to be more like PoE then let it be (at least to some point where it’s still within a grasp of intuitivity)

@Saidosha-1136

I’d say there is such a thing as being too reliant on proc chances, especially depending on the outcome. “Just smack the mob and hope for the best!” can lead to some frustrating dry spells.

This is only the case if your build REALLY relies on hit-effects to proc in order to work (that’s why again have divided hit-effect pools by types of skill)… I mean is it possible for someone to equip 4-5 AoE skills at the same time and HIGHLY RELY on curses and debuffs ?, maybe, but is it recommendable ? (probably not), ESPECIALLY if the items equipped can say increase damage or debuff durations and stuff as opposed to proc % chances…

@Saidosha-1136

That said, DoT abilities can be tricky for a few reasons. The first simply being that these kinds of games tend to thrive on speed, and subsequently, efficiency. That means burst damage. If it takes a strong DoT 3 seconds to what a burst can do in 1, you’re probably not going to see many people running DoT builds

What do you think I introduced the “Unavoidable damage” damage type in the pool of Affixes ?

But even better, it’s not just for DoTs, it’s also applicable for “Shotgun” builds , equip lots of of “Unavoidable damage” affixes and find an item that says “Fireball now splits in 3 and travel in an Arc hitting ground as an AoE”, see if it works for sniping brutes and other “tough” guys from close range

@Saidosha-1136

Pragmatically, I agree with the idea of “stacking”, especially if you have 2 or more people using the same ability so one isn’t rendered useless, but how these stacks manifest their strength is also important. Going 1+1+1+1+1 over 10s isn’t going to inspire people. 1+2+3+4+5 starts looking beefier on output, but you can also do interesting things at stack level like diminishing healing on the 2nd, improving total duration with the 3rd, increasing vulnerability to other forms of damage with the 4th, while the 5th could start doing things like increasing resource costs to use skills, slow attack speed, and so on

That’s wayy too specific but the good news is as I mentioned, there isn’t only one but 4 types of DoTs (could introduce more but whatever), Poison, Dark, Fire, Bleed

First one has the ability to empower the other 3 but Bleed doesn’t actually require wither (just lots of hits, or a combo and then some displacement to finish :P)

Another alternative is to stack Dark, these baddies proc Curses (there are quite a few good ones to capitalize on, a bit of difference can exist but in ideal situations should overperform Poison I think)

And fire ?, well they generally make your skills no longer obsolete (no matter the resistance, longer durations of Ignite should soften up tougher targets to be able to kill)

But yeah, I think that “Unavoidable damage” is a nice touch to affect DoTs more than probably anything (except Multicast procs maybe)