That is generally not how it works in Grim Dawn either. “Uniques” (or whatever they are called) have pre-determined stats, like in D2.
But even for random affix items, it would be relatively simple to make sure that affixes cant spawn like that. D3 does that too. You dont get %dmg to whirlwind and Rend on the same item.
You might be able to chose to craft %rend dmg unto an item that already had whirlwind dmg of course. Maybe your build uses both.
And then, the point of rares is to be kinda random, so to some degree (within limits) it couldbe okay to get a "% whirlwhind dmg " and “% Rend duration” rare item, that fits some very specific build. But shouldn’t be possible to get a rare with like 4-5 different skill-related affixes of course.
Not going to comment on each of those, but we certainly agree on a lot of itemization questions.
As for crit/crit chance, and procs in general, imo one thing the D4 skill system should do, is to add all kinds of various ‘tags’ to the skills. Like “Fire dmg”, “AoE”, “Single-target”, “Dot”, “Arcane school of magic”, “Defensive skill”, “Summoning skill”, etc. Which the itemization can the interact with (+% dmg to AoE, +DoT duration, chance to proc on fire attack, and so on).
But it could also be something like “Can crit” or “Cant Crit” - or maybe make it simple; AoEs cant crit, single target can, that could help with something many A-RPGs struggle with; the balance between single target and AoE abilities.
Likewise some skills could be balanced around the ability to increase the crit dmg through affixes, while others could not - it wouldn’t necessarily need a specific crit dmg affix. A skill could simply state “increases crit dmg based on 0.25% of your life steal” etc.
I like that list with the examples you have shown.
My implementation of that would be a bit different, more streamlined and simplified. It would basically give every melee weapon physical damage without differentiating further into slashing, thrusting, bludgeon, piercing damage, etc, but rather their additional innate power would be something that is characteristic of these kinds of weapons.
Each weapon could have one random innate affix. MAybe you can reroll the innate affix with a consumable that you can find into another one.
Or there are several types of swords and one type of sword always has the same innate affixe, which other swords have other innate affixes. You still could reroll them, but only get innate affixes from the sword type, so you couldn’t roll chance to stun on a sword as a innate.
Hammers would have innate affixes like
° chance to stun
° pierces through x% of targets armor
° chance to crushing blow
Axes
° Culling Strike
° chance to cripple the target (aka slow attack and movement speed for x seconds)
° chance to cause bleed
Swords
° x% chance to parry (block a melee attack)
° x% increased attack speed
° x% increased base weapon damage
° x% increased melee damage
° x% reduced attack speed, but increased base weapon damage
° chance to cripple the target
Bows
° critical hit chance
° attack speed
° x% reduced attack speed, but increased base weapon damage
Crossbows
° x% chance to pierce
° pierce through x% of enemies armor
° x% increased base weapon damage
° crushing blow
° x% chance to pierce & pierce through x% of enemies armor
Quivers
° critical hit chance
° chance to pierce
° chance to cause bleed
° fire damage
° cold damage
° lightning damage
° poison damage
° arcane damage
° thorns (Spiked Arrows)
° increased area of effect ???
Sorcerer Wands
° resource cost reduction
° ignores enemies resistances
° increased area of effect
° increased spell damage
Sorcerer 2h Staves
° +x to all skills
° increased spell damage
° area damage
Sorcerer Orbs & Spellbooks
° +x maximum Mana
° reduced resource costs
° +x to all skills
° spell damage
° +x energy shield
° increased area of effect
===============================
For armor, my idea was
Cloth Armor
° +x Energy Shield
° +x Life
Leather Armor
° x% dodge chance
° +x to all attributes
Chain Mail
° x% reduced physical damage
Plate Mail (all of the three following)
° +x% reduced phyiscal damage
° +x flat physical damage reduction
° x% reduced movement speed
This is like a middle ground between what you are suggesting and te system that was in D2, whre if basically made no difference what type of weapon or armor you were wearing.
Thanks for your feedback!
As Dustan said, some have exoskeletons, some skeletons have hard bones, some of their skin can be thick and hardened, etc.
I wouldn’t give every enemy an armor class, just an armor number. That should do it.
high resistances are fine, but immunities are not.
I can’t post picture since I am not a TL3 poster, so I have to use other means.
I am fine if things like x% increased Whirlwind damage have a small chance to spawn on magic and rare weapons, but not too often.
I am okay with most of what you listed. But I prefer armor damage reduction of all element type like D3. Otherwise it will be a balancing issue like PoE where energy shield are SO MUCH better than armor, as energy shield works for all damage type. Dodge…they are just the least favored of Defence as you eventually get hit and unreliable ( easily one shot). I said put dodge chance as core stats of boots, not body armor. Body armor always rolled armor but can have combination of armor/ energy shield & dodge.
Then also have affix, skills, gears that can enhance armor / energy shield/ dodge as multiple layer of Defence.
I also think that Armor should mitigate all types of damage, regardless of element.
However, Chain Armor would get a small bonus to x% physical damage reduction and Plate Armor would give a bonus to x% physical damage reduction and flat physical damage reduction, but also slow you down.
My idea was you could find a let’s call it Tier 10 chest armor piece in various forms, with various innate secondary bonuses:
This is not bad. I would add you can have armor with bonus cold / lighting resist etc
Wool ones for additional cold resistance, leather one for lighting resist for instance.
Anyway there should be a balance between tri Defence of damage mitigation ( armor, shielding, resistance, HP) , damage avoidance ( dodge, , cc reduction, move fat S) and recovery ( life Regen) .
The issue with D3 is , damage avoidance are very weak. Shield block are useless expect for niche builds, and dodge/ evasion are not core design.
POE issue is shoehorning builds into either energy shield, high life and evasion due to their relationship with main stats of dex, str and int.
A balance ( you can have one more than others) would be preferred by me for D4.
I would make it 2/3, 3/4 and above you need meta builds but the number of mobs and bosses countering your builds should not be excessive at all. A few only.
IMO armor should only reduce physical damage while shield block mitigates all types of damages. There should be a real prize for equipping a shield, because you do make your sacrifices on offensive stats. Make people appreciate shield build and the meaning of choice and opportunity cost.
At the same time, a shield should have more resist stats than other items, some of which can help deal with magical damages.
No if the build isn’t good. And which will be the harddest mode?
I think a way to make immunities and high resistance to, could be to use the stagger bar as armor (for enemies).
For example, an enemy immune to fire: it would have a stagger bar (shield: something like mana shield) that make it immune while the shield is there. But once you bring it down, with fire damage, the monster is no longer immune to fire (permanently or until the bar is up again).
This way, an enemy will be hardder to kill if is immune to your skills, but it won’t be unkillable.
Ofc, this mechanic should be mostly for elites.
Another example could be a monster with a shield and a high block chance. Once the stagger bar (shield stance) goes down, the monster can suffer damage normally.
Shield should be damage avoidance, so it’s a different form of defense. Also you an have on successful block procs that make shield valuable for certain build.
If armor only give phy resist, than people will mostly ignore the armor…on an armor, like Path of exile, and go for Hp or energy shield that imigate all damage types. If you wear a rubber shoe, it does insulate you from static, and wool for cold so armor giving element resistance is not far fetch from reality.
I rather a generic armor rate for all type of element & specific armor type ( like leather, mail) that give bonus to certain element types or a combination.
Grim Dawn has proven that with good design, HP and shield are very much useless without good resist to all types of damage. 80k HP builds in GD is never as tanky as 15k HP with decent resist and good shield-supporting stats. And if you insist so much, I would love to introduce an element from LoL too, shield-ignoring mobs and bosses.
Nobody dares to ignore physical damage, just ask people playing GR130 and above, or any decent ARPGs like Titan Quest, GD and so on. Physical damage is the thing you get hit the most from all kinds of mobs. No mobs should only have spells, spells from mobs should be few and far between.
This is the clear difference between melee and ranged builds, the former suffering more from melee attack and physical damage, thus wearing heavy armors such as platemail to negate physical strike. Meanwhile, ranged builds don’t need to worry too much about physical hits, but more about spells and ranged attacks.
The good design is that heavy armor items should have more armor to ONLY MITIGATE PHYSICAL DAMAGE, more HP, but less magical resist. Meanwhile, light and caster armors should have less armor, less HP, but more magical resist.
That would make shield completely useless. Shield is a key feature in many games and shouldn’t be treated as an easily replaceable piece of armor. Make it stand out, make people think twice whether to dual wield or to equip sword and board. Do you want that caster offhand or a shield. Make people think, and make their choices matter.
im not talking about stupid people, making fun builds
but diablo was always a game where you decided to create a fire sorc or a bowazon
and if most of the content is not taking damage from your damage type then, you bought the game for nothing, lol
imo, 1/2 or even 1/3 is already way too much
and if you go like a hammer barb and you cant kill all the unarmoured demons in hell, wheres the point of playing it?
I said shield to to avoid damage taken ( assume a successful block means you take 0 damage) , armor is damage reduction so they already served Different kind of defense ( mitigation vs avoidance)
Also for sure phy Damage is most common type in most arpg, but my point is not that it is not significant to have phy resistance but between something that give ONE element type ( even if it’s the most common) vs ALL element type, most people will favor the latter, & PoE is an example.
Why demons would be unarmored? Some would, some wouldn’t: plus, the armored thing was just a reference to avoid to talk about resistances, but it isn’t a thing about all or nothing.
And it wasn’t suggested that hammer wouldn’t deal damage to them. Just less compared to other weapons. If someone is using a helmet will suffer more damage to the head from a hammer than from a sword (unless the sword hit an uprotected part), and if the person doesn’t have a helmet, the hammer still could kill them but the sword would be a more effective weapon.
Plus, you still have magic damage, so it wouldn’t be 1/3 in any case.
Nope. What makes you think shield block helps you take 0 damage? May exist in Dark Souls or the like, but definitely not in ARPGs. It only mitigates a flat amount of damage, regardless of damage type. This means shield is especially useful against DoT while moderately useful against attack per hit.
PoE is not a good example. It’s a dated game, being released at the same time with D3, with many illogical gameplay concepts.
Armor is exclusively for physical damage, doesn’t mean there can’t be no other resist on armors. In Grim Dawn, prerequisite for all builds requires all resist (except physical) to be at least 80%. I’m not sure why you are so persistent with the idea that players are allowed to be lazy stacking armors instead of finding different pieces to mix and match certain types of resist so that in the end you have a decent resist of all elements. Armor stacking is a stupid concept that only D3 has, and its role apart from resist is not clear also. D3 sure has something good to learn from but armor mitigating all types of damages is definitely and very obviously not one of them.
No offense, but that would be horrible design and is one of the Issues D3 already has.
Elemental damage should unique, have an identity and only be reduced with resistances with a fix % cap, and this maximum cap can be increased by itemization or quest rewards/passive skilltree.
If armor can reduce any damage and resistances arent deisgned by cap it makes no difference to specialize in one or two element affinity or physical damage… also infinitely increasing resistances through armor to lower elemental damage follows AGAIN to power creep… please dont do the mistake to implement this design.
The lower your resistances are (and yes i mean negative resistances) the more the side-effects apply for you… for example cold slow % increases as your cold res are lower, poison damage increasee DoT duration and lesser % of regained health the lower your resistances are.
Memory of D2 maybe fading, but I am pretty sure when you successfully block, you take zero damage.
Also block taking no damage is far more common in games than blocking taking some damage.
My stand on physical damage is simple. It should be treated like every other element. Physical damage mitigation being a separate way to handle adds unnecessary complexity.
As far as resistance stats. You can have armor on top of resistance as DR multipliers. Having armor reduced all damage make the most important part of any armor important. It allows gears , skills & team synergy by buffing armor. If armor only buff physical, then skills that buff it will I will be Less valuable than flat Hp boost or energy shield.
Also I don’t think the adding complexity of physical damage as a different mitigation calculation enhance the gameplay at all. It’s just fancy complexity for sake of complexity.
No, your way of doing it oversimplify things, treating all players like simpletons who can’t balance resists and have to mindlessly stacking armors. We don’t want to be treated like idiots OK?
As I said, flawed argument. 80k HP builds in GD can’t beat 15k HP builds with proper resists. It’s a matter of design and balancing. PoE is a very bad example to borrow argument from.
And no armor in any lore, in any culture, describe armor as something that can protect people from magic. Magic can only be protected by magic-imbued items. You don’t create fake lore just for the sake of making us feel like we are idiots. At least have some common sense?