I could but why would I want to when Intelligence is the superior stat for me?
Choice has to be about more than just “Well you can do it”. You could put a lot of points into strength or dexterity in Diablo 2, but they were garbage stats outside of gear requirements and your character was basically always worse off for choosing them over vitality.
and as a result the stat system in Diablo 2 is bland and uninteresting, because it’s a “choice” in the same way a multiple choice test is a choice: There’s 4 options, but only 1 is the correct option.
Also I’m not sure we should be saying calling it power is not original given that strength is used in almost every RPG with stats ever =P
2 Likes
well the issue in D2 is basically just bad balancing
but the idea is not bad
well as i said
if you focus on multiplayer and want to build a defensive support sorc you might put all points into life and mana
unusual builds dont have to be troll builds
also if you give secondary effects, you can increase the usability of those attributes
vitality: hp and hp regen
energie: mana, mana regen and manashield
strength: melee damage, physical resistance
dexterity: range/stab damage, attack rating, defense rating, critical change, movement speed
intelligence: magic damage, elemental resistance
“Attribute-system” (or equivalent) can definitely be way more interesting & balanced than in D2. There doesn’t need to be a single superior stat. But even if each class has exactly 1 “primary” stat for damage, you could at least have a choice between versatility (survival/cc) vs. “glass cannon”.
I’d argue it is a fundamental flaw in the idea because even if strength and dexterity were pure trash for everybody outside of gear requirements, they’re still not good stats for the casters to have. They offer too little value in their actual mechanics so while you can take them and there is some benefit to them the correct choice would still have been vitality stacking.
I should also note you don’t have to remove vitality or even change it much. A stat that increases health basically sells itself to every class in the game. It’s why we all defaulted to it in Diablo 2 when every other stat was trash.
Energy can stay too but it might need a rework, because as we saw in Diablo 2 if we at all can maintain our mana through other means we’ll just ignore the stat entirely outside of Energy Shield builds. Also because it appears that they’re not going with mana in Diablo 4 and using unique secondary resources again.
My problem is mostly about the Strength/Dexterity/Intellect triangle. It’s boring when my class has one clearly superior choice, and giving me a small amount of physical resistance isn’t going to make strength more attractive.
At that point it’s functionally the same as if you had just combined them into a single stat that did a different effect depending on which class you were on.
Stats were bad in D3 because main stat directly increased damage. The stats need to be more abstract in their benefits not tie directly to damage.
thats why i said “bad balancing”
the “idea” is just having str. dex. vit. int. energie
what those do and to what amount comes all to balancing
It’s also why I noted the value of the mechanic itself and not its number tuning.
Strength is never really going to lend itself to casting in a way that makes any sense in combat, and this isn’t a pure blooded RPG where you can give strength valuable non-combat benefits like carry capacity or strength checks in dialogue.
The whole reason I even suggested a renaming of strength is so that we can get away from everything that word brings with it, because it’s not something that’s really going to make sense in a way that doesn’t invalidate it as a choice for casters.
It also doesn’t have to be called power. That’s just the first thing that came to mind. I’d hope they would think about it more than taking the first suggestion somebody on the forums came up with in 2 seconds =P
1 Like
i dont understand how str. can not be viable, if just tuning up the melee damage and maybe adding physical resistance, so it can possibly outmatch vitality
Yeah, I completely agree with that.
I wouldnt mind strength giving direct benefits to casters - actually, a good attribute system would need to do that imo. But it seems like some people might be more comfortable with it, if the name was changed.
Maybe Force?
Push that fireball harder!
so force will increase both melee and magic damage and taddaaa, 1 attribute less
whats the exact goal here?
why not just call it “attack”? :v
That’s what they did.
https://diablo.blizzplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/blizzcon-2019-diablo-4-demo-25.jpg
And no, it’s not the right way to do it.
it was a joke off you, combining physical and magic damage, resulting in the same thing
It wasn’t a joke to me, I wasn’t even in that conversation.
yea those two who ever, i dont pay attention, to who is posting what xD
Jokes aside, you could call it attack. The problem with D4 isn’t that they called it attack, it’s that there’s only 2 of them and you don’t get stats on your actual character.
You also don’t have to drop how many stats the game would have, as you can just shift things around so offensive stats don’t give you everything. Why would you want Strength to outmatch Vitality? Vitality should be the premiere not dying stat because that’s the only thing that it does.
and even if it doesn’t, why would you ever bother with str or dex on a class that is assigned to be an int based class? You wouldn’t unless you didn’t know better, or were making an intentionally bad build.
The goal is a stat system that offers real choice and rewards thinking about your build rather than blindly putting everything into whatever your primary stat is assigned to be and ignoring the other 2 “primary stat options”.
With outmatch i mean, the damage provided is more attractive than the bonus HP so u have the choice of DD or tanky
Hybrid classes like palas can always choose int or str
If you have an attack rating system, which i doubt because gen. D3, all melee classes will also be kinda dependent on dex, if it provides attack rating and mages can also choose between vitality, energie and int
Its not necessary, tha that every class takes the same use of all attributes
No arpg does that
Its simply there for you, to tune ur char in a direction
Do i want my fighter more tanky or full DPS?
Do i want my mage full glass canon or more sustain?
And also item rolls can just happen to give u all of your prefered attributes
Being able to spend different kind of atributes open up more customization.
You could decide for example to either get more physical damage,increased attack speed, increased cast speed, increased projectile speed, defense, evasion,Mana/Ressource regen, spell damage amplification, extra life and life regen based on atributes BUT IN SMALL NUMBERS per level until you reach your cap and NO INFINITE PARAGON (without there being items that MAINLY give you a load ton of atributes to increase your damage this way thats where D3 went wrong)
I believe its also more fun to be able to use your characters like they are not meant to as well than following the strict role of your hero as well.
Having say a sorceress in D2 with enchant and hexfire sword and deal fire elemental damage through physical attacks you could give her Dextirity for higher shield block rate and extra accuracy/attack rating.
This build is something completely off what a normal sorceress going straight elemental damage with spells and wands do.
There was also a ballista for the Necro in D2 that gave you +2 to all necro skills and physical poison damage.
You could basically wear that weapon as viable even though a necro profits more of wands and an offhand/necro shield.
There was also Beast runeword as a weapon where for example as a summon necromancer all your skelleton profit from your fanactism aura on equip instead of having +to spells in a wand.
Binding requirements of atributes to wear gear seemd ok too, this way you could for example wear a high defense Breast/Archon plate with a sorceress instead of leather armor.
Heavy armor should have more defense than leather armor but leather armor should allow you to move faster, thats the right balance.
These “frail wizards” are only frail compared to the melee warriors, otherwise I guarantee that they are more “ripped” & physically-capable (strength + endurance) than 90% of us (visual design notwithstanding).
Anyway, the “frail wizard” archetype is arguably less realistic in this context of: “Extremely hands-on warrior runs a marathon, tackles an army singlehandedly!” But with an “attribute-system” you are free to create the “frail wizard” nonetheless. Why can’t we also have our badass wizard?
the concept of the melee sorc actually implifies that
i just hope it works different than just like in D3, your staff disapperaring and just hitting with some lightning in your hands
actually give the sorc the possibility to fight with melee weapons and enhance her hits with lightning
i think, a major problem in D3 was, blizzard wanted to give the characters suuuuper cool fighting animations, resulting in, the characters didnt use their actual weapons in 90% of the time, which ruins character identity completely
Agree. Weapons should give damage (flat or a force multiplier), armor should give armor and maybe a deflect chance, shield should have block and deflect, but don’t know what jewelry should have, but i don’t know if it need something, it could give an extra affix.
Doesn’t need to be like that. Str could be needed as a requierement to equip armor (need more the heavier it is), could also increase vitality/life, and could be needed to have more stamina (if they add that to the game).
We need all the stats to be important, that way there is a choice (a real one) of how much we spend of each point in each place.
Maybe make them less useful the higher you go? And then rise your defense would be more important.
Dex could add accuracy to missiles (physical and magical), that way you would need dex for some mage builds, and at the same time you get more evasion and the other things that comes with Dex.