thats the point
but having overall “damage attribute” and “defense attribute” is just not immersive imo
being able to hit hard has nothing to do with casting strong spells
Sure. You can have one attribute that increases “weapon dmg” (or kinetic dmg, or whatever the best description is), and another that increases spell dmg.
I wouldn’t mind having a single attribute that does both though. One could easily come up with an appropriate attribute name that works for both.
Both systems could work fine however.
One negative aspect of splitting them up is that you make hybrid builds weaker (same problem multi-dmg types faces vs. single.dmg type builds).
But as long as each attribute offer valuable bonuses other than the dmg, that could work.
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i think he means 5 years for it to become common knowledge to the entire community, like the amount of builds online were so many and they almost all fit the rule over time. i loved the attribute system because it made me care even more about stats like dex and str on gear. now str on my cap isn’t just making me stronger, it’s also giving me satisfaction by allowing me to wear the boots i might have not otherwise been able to. either way, even if it was just a few years before everyone knew the general rule, it’s still a lot more interesting with a system like this than without one and there is real value in it.
i have faith in them. i think they can pull something off. i want each level to have weight to it and the stats really gave me that feeling.
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the important thing is just to balance the values and stats provided by those attributes
it had a reason, everyone was specing into VIT
because everything else didnt really make you any stronger
now if you have
STR: melee damage, physical resistance
VIT: HP, HP regeneration
DEX: pierce damage, dodge
INT: magic damage, recource cost
ENE: max resource, magic resistance
just for example
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On any given character I’d still ignore most of your stats there though:
- Get VIT/ENE until you feel comfortable
- Melee stacks STR
- Ranged stacks DEX
- Caster stacks INT
Which isn’t all that different from Diablo 2’s “Get STR/DEX for gear, then stack VIT” with the exception that your stacking stat is about 1 step away from just being mainstat rather than just being more HP.
and i know this is just an example and you can tweak things but it’s a fundamental problem of splitting up the functions of the stats. If the main draw of Strength is melee damage, a non-melee character just isn’t going to care about it.
People are always going to figure out the mathematically best option, so if you have a stat clearly designed for a class that’s all they’re ever going to want to stack.
The best you can really hope to do is have, say, one stat lets you attack faster while another lets you crit more. People will still stack whichever is better, but at least it’s determined by the rest of your build and not at the class selection screen.
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hm, give me a second
it depends ofc
in any game, you could argue that everyone is just stacking damage
however, there are soft caps and there are games that are so punishing that you are straight getting wiped when you are not specing into defense
thats probably why everyone was specing into VIT in D2
because str wasnt strong enough to be viable im comparison to the good defense from VIT
You generally do get just enough defense to survive then stack offense in games that focus on combat. At least, that tends to be what the meta builds are.
It doesn’t matter if Strength was better in Diablo 2, my Sorceress never would have cared about it because what it offers is just fundamentally bad for my class. It wasn’t a case of number balance being off.
That’s why I said the best you can really hope for is that your stacking stat is determined by build(crit vs haste) instead of by class(melee vs magic).
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yea sure, but thats not attributes
thats the core debate
combat specializations are not attributes, they are passive skills
attributes are “being strong, being agile, being intelligent, being robust”
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noted. thanks for the feedback.
The Increased Melee Damage on the Barbarian also could get replaced with something like Critical Hit Damage or something completely different.
Then Barbarians would benefit from that as well, even if they are using bows or throwing weapons.
I would totally be fine with giving a Sorc melee skills that are like Median XL’s Bladestorm:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/median-xl/images/b/b7/Bladestorm.gif/revision/latest?cb=20180206205358
^^ that could be considered a melee skill as well as a spell.
Class-specific attributes also build up on the innate strengths of the characters.
Sorcs have an innate affinity to magic and Barbarians have innately stronger muscles, etc and the class specific attributes reflect these.
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Yeah but my point is that if everything about what you should do with attributes was decided the moment you selected a class, why even have attributes?
It adds nothing to character building and feels like little more than a newb trap for players who don’t know they need to just stack VIT or whatever the new stack stat is.
Which while a well designed system will allow for mistakes, it shouldn’t feel like the main thing that a system is bringing to the table is trapping new players who don’t know better.
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i get that
most barbs will spec into str because it buffs their damage and their defense in melee combat
and most rangers will spec into dex because it buffs their pierce damage and dodging attacks
but in a free system, you could also play a mage that is specing into STR and beats up mobs in melee
and you could play a barb with a lot of DEX who is using throwing weapons
and you might wanna play a barb who is using a lot of skills and spec into energy a lot or just a barb who is basic attacking and you wanna spec mainly into STR
just because there are attributes that are LIKELY to be picked by a class, doesnt mean that everyone is going to main that attribute
to me, attributes are more of a fine tuning
probably the way of specing into attributes should be changed
choosing several points, every level to a point where you have no idea what they are doing in that amount, is not very player friendly and very confusing and respecing is taking a lot of time
My only problem is that the stats doesn’t feel very “Diablo”-like. Strength, Dexterity and Vitality is a stable part of the games. In early beta they even tried to change them into a system similar to this one.
Another issue I take is that items are going to be locked to certain classes the names of the stats doesn’t really carry over. So the item I found on my Barbarian I can’t give to my Sorceress. Like the big issue of D3’s itemization, but you’ve just expanded the main stat in to 4 categories.
I’d much rather go back to a system similar to Diablo 1;
- Strength gives armor and damage with melee weapons, and allows to wear heavy armor types and eventually removes movement penalty.
- Dexterity yields chance to hit (could be changed to crit chance) and damage with ranged weapons.
- Magic allowed you to learn higher tier skills and use more of them, which would essentially translate into skill effect increase and resource cost reduction.
- Vitality just giving you HP is actually fine.
D2s big issue was that Strength only added 1% damage per point, and it was added in to another +x% damage stat. Which meant it basically gave too little, just like stacking DIBS in D3. So the gains from it was non existence, then nobody bothered putting stacks into it.
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this whole system is really so complicated and controverse that i understand when they just wanna get rid of it all together^^
get your weapons and gear of choice and they will support your preferred play style
You could do that in Diablo 2 as well but we both know how that turned out.
and if Strength is balanced to be a viable stat for a character with no melee capability, it’s going to be overpowered on the class that is actually built for it unless you want to start getting into the stats having different formulas for different classes(which hits the immersion factor).
The problem with D2’s attributes isn’t just a matter of tuning the numbers.
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i mean, every character could have melee capability
ofc, its not just about numbers
its also about what they give
and with all the potion spam in D2, noone needed energy ofc
now if potion spaming wouldnt be a thing and energy would provide a reasonable amout of mana regeneration, it could have been a very attractive attribute for all caster classes
Both systems have advantages and disadvantages.
Your preferred attribute system has “useless” attributes, while what I suggest might give a little less freedom in regards to weapon choice, but allows for overall more choice in useful attributes.
I personally like to often strike a middle ground, so in this case it would neither be totally open, nor would it move away too much from RPG realism. That is what I tried with my proposed attribute system.
I would say that Throwing Weapons could also get buffed by STR.
And increased Melee Damage could get replaced by Critical Hit Damage or something else, so it would also buff Throw Barbs.
The Rangers Precision could get renamed to Dexterity, although I thought DEX would fit on some sort of agile melee fighter better, like an Assassin or a Monk.
In my opinion a petite Sorc should not be able to wear a large 2handed hammer or axe in the first place.
And a Barbarian would simply refuse to wear a wand.
A sorc could still wear a 1h sword, but then spells should probably benefit from that.
They could but then is every class also going to have casting and ranged?
Not that I’m against hybrids(and I would love a Mage Knight specifically even), but it feels like classes start getting a bit samey if they’re all going to have the same styles of builds just to accommodate the D2 attribute system.
While potion spam was definitely a problem in D2, removing it wouldn’t entirely make the energy problem go away.
i think that blizzard has a point with just placing “attributes” on items and not on characters because you would end up, wanting to respec them all the time and thats always going to be a thing and maybe its better to just have all that stuff on items^^
maybe charms would be a good place for that stuff
Imo they should have yeah. Count barb shouts as casting. Have throw barbs and so on. I dont see a problem that you can make a sorc build that plays more like a barb, or vice versa. They will still have their differences in resource systems, and maybe even different gimmicks like D4 barbs supposed Arsenal system. As well as different types of skills and talents supporting those builds.
Like with stat design, builds are what should play differently from one another, more so than classes imo.
Or just dont allow easy respecs 
but theres the problem
when you want to min max, you HAVE to change your stats, depending on what items you find
so maybe its better to just let you swap out stuff and place it on items in the first place so you dont have the question of respecing
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