+skills also affects healing and defensive skills, while x% increased skill damage only affects certain skills, so there is a difference.
Also, if they make it so that 1/2 of the damage of a skill comes from the skill itself as flat damage (which increases with character level and skill level), then x% increased skill damage might be better in this case because it would also affect the weapon damage component (assuming the weapon damage component remain static).
I would be fine with that.
What I meant is that it wouldn’t feel impactful if all you get from having a higher Attack rating than the enemies Defense rating would be 20% increased damage.
So far I would rate the different ways of how Attack/Defense can work from worst to best in this order:
#1 (worst) basically attack rating and defense from D2, which determines if an attack hits or misses (which in D4 could also include spells)
#2 subtracting the defense from an attacks damage basically attack rating and defense from D2, which determines if an attack hits or misses
#3 doing 20% more damage to an enemy if your attack is higher than its defense
#4 Attack, which is a flat number, translates into a % damage multiplier and Defense translates into a % reduced damage taken multiplier
#5 Defense is basically just Armor, which reduces all damage taken by x% but also physical damage taken by x% on top of that (of gives flat physical damage reduction or both)
#6 (best) depending on what kind of armor you wear, you gain either +x life, +x dodge rating, +x armor, +x energy shield, +x resistances, etc
imo it shouldn’t fall apart due to it just being medium complicated.
It depends on the drop balance. If I’m fighting 1200 Defence enemies with a 1500 Attack (+25%), finding a weapon with 2400 Attack (+100%) would make a very big difference. I fully expect to meet these kind of scenarios in a ARPG.
It’s less about being complicated than about forcing you to make very decisive choices early in the game without even knowing. At least that’s what PoE system feels like.
There needs to be complex/deep systems at some point in the game but they should come at the right time, not in the very beginning.
It’s not just about adding more sources of damage and defense, it’s about adding those sources of damage and defense and also adding their effects and synergies.
I will give some examples:
Damage: Magic Fire.
Effects: Magic burn (cannot be stopped); Ignores 50% of fire resistance; can be absorbed by fire absorption.
Damage: Common Fire.
Effects: Burn (can be stopped); it cannot be absorbed by the absorption of fire.
With these differentiations more types of gameplay would be added. It would be more than seeking critics and increasing critical damage as the game is at that moment.
I thought you were mentioning a system where if your Attack is lower than an enemies Defense, regardless of by how much, you deal normal damage, but if it is higher, regardless by how much, you deal 20% more damage.
But it wouldn’t be a lasting choice, since you can swap equipment everytime you want to and also because you did not had to commit to talents/passive skills in the early game (or even in advance) like in PoE, so it is not really a big deal.
If “Magic Fire” is not “Common Fire” and needs other stats to be increased or mitigated, then these are two different types of damage. I don’t see the difference in terms of mechanics, except one is affected by half the resistance of the other, which seems unecessary complicated.
To achieve what you want, it would be easier to have a talent like “Magic Fire : half your Fire damage becomes Magic damage.”
No no no ^^ It was an example of the formula Damage modifier = Attack / Defence (of the target)
If I had 1000 Attack, I would inflict + 25% on 800 Defence and - 20% on 1250 Defence.
That’s true, though it’s not easy to change all your equipment once you’ve discovered you made the “wrong” choice. I still feel it’s better to start very simple and then add more elaborate systems.
Think that the Crit could just as well be a flat damage increase (as opposed to percentage), or combine both but never really allow the damage % be over 20-25% or sth
Reason being ?, if the Crit as an extra/secondary source of damage works INDEPENDENTLY from the baseline damage, allows much more diversity in builds. Do you sacrifice baseline damage for higher Crit spikes (or the other way round). It ALSO allows the possibility for semi/reasonable fights where the DEF rating of the target is higher than the ATK rating of the attacker (at some point there will be a higher ATK value to “pierce through” the armor and deal the damage)
Think that’s a quite nice way to solve some issues about the whole Crit as a damage-source sort of thing
What I’m basically saying is the following: swap the “chance to hit critical for % extra damage” with another stat called “chance to hit with a higher attack rate by X”, that way the Crit as a build will no longer depend on the baseline damage [I mean it probably would, but not necessarily]
You might have a weapon that has an ATK rating of 8k and a 30% chance to hit 1k extra, or a weapon that has an ATK rating of 6k but has a 30% chance to hit extra 4k. First one is genuine being high performing, the 2nd one is more interesting cause you might rely on talents to specifically at certain situations and after some debuff stackings to deal the crit
MAybe there can also be an affix like ‘Pierce through x% of enemies Defense’, so it treats your attack as if the target has x% less Defense, which is very similar to ‘Pierce through x% of enemies Armor/Resistances’.
That affix would be more helpful against enemies with hier Defense than against those with lower Defense (same for enemies with higher/lower Armor or Resistances).
Critical Hits ignore x% of enemies Defense.
Crushing Blow ignores x% of enemies Defense.
What I like so much abut Ignore x% of enemies Armor/Resistances is that its efficiency is very dependent on what enemy you are fighting. It is more powerful against enemies that have a higher resistance/armor than on those that have a lower one.
e.g. if an enemy has 6000 Lightning Resistance and you have ignore 80% of enemies Lightning Resistance (an absurdly high number, but lets just go with it for now), it treats your attacks as if the enemy has 1200 lightning resistance, but when you fight against an enemy that already has low lightning resistance, e.g. 300 lightning res, it treats your attacks as if it only has 60 lightning res.
It means these kind of affixes are much more useful against enemies with a high resistance/armor or defense, than against those with a low resistance/armor/defense.
It can help single elemental builds against enemies with high res/armor/defense.
Clearly that’s good mechanics. I like everything that changes the ratio between monsters, making some more or less dangerous depending on the build you’ve chosen. Something D3 didn’t have enough, every encounters felt the same more or less.
IDK about regular affixes but think this affix “mechanic” would be cool for Set items:
On Equip pick one
So that they don’t feel too “blunt”, and instead of getting some "ridiculous random sht" on a full set complete you also gain the affixes you didn’t pick on the way but with 50% (or X%, say it like 20+10x where the X is number of items in set) power diminished
For example:
Arcanna’s Ward (Amulet)
+1 to all skills
+5% max Resource
Choose one on equip:
+[15-20]% AoE radius
+[6-10]% bonus damage to Elites
Arcanna’s Deathwand (Staff)
ATK rating [3000, + 100 per character level]
X% chance to cast lvlY chain lightning on hit (X is half of your Lightning resist. Y is 3 + +1 to all skills times equipped)
+20% elemental damage from melee range
Choose one on equip:
+[10-15]% hit effect chance
+[15-20]% Weak skill damage increase
Arcanna’s Flesh (Armor)
[2000-2500] DEF rating
+[10-15]% all resist
+50% reduced duration of DoT and Curses
Choose one on equip:
+[15-20]% chance to negate hit-effect of an attacker from melee range
+[30-50]% trap/summon HP
Ofc. you won’t get any of the bonuses if you have only 1 of these, so still requires a bit of commit
I’d also kinda like to see more curse/scroll/trap charges addition, but unless carefully approached having these might juts be a “waste of space” on your item affixes. I mean some players might like to have a lvl5 dim vision (25 charges) or IDK sentry (10 charges), some might prefer something else that would be more directly valuable and less dependant on “casting”, still, would be nice to have it as an option should someone choose to try something “unordinary”
Another category I’d like them to explore more a bit is add more “hit effects” that are more about strategy. For example chance to shackle an opponent (rendering it unable to escape and have reduced damage output for the time being) or levitate (making it less vulnerable to melee attacks but more vulnerable to projectiles), or even the reverse - knockdown (making it vulnerable to melee/close attacks while on ground but take less spell/projectile damage). Or even a plain chance to cast a random (or specific) curse/blessing per hit
I think all sets should be smaller sets, and not class-based. Like 2-3 pieces, similar to the smaller D3 sets.
Part of the problem with D3 sets, other than their silly numbers in the current game, is how much of the gear slots they lock.
oof, this sounds more like a mechanic for a card game or maybe a MOBA or an RTS. I would not like it for an ARPG tbh, especially since you already can “pick one” item over another with similar stats.
If anything, I would rather go for something like this on legendaries:
If you have more than x of A, gain B
That would translate into things like:
If you have at least 3000 Physical Resistance, gain 25% Crushing Blow
If you have at least 250 Attribute Points in Strength, gain +3000 Life per Attack
If you have at least 50% Dodge Chance, gain +2000 Armor
Or the invert could also work:
If you have less than 5% Crushing Blow, gain 20% Critical Hit Chance
If you have less than 600 Physical Resistance, gain +1400 to all other Resistances
etc.
I personally don’t like charges on items, but maybe that is just because I did not like the execution in D2.
Instead of that, I’d rather like to see more things like +x to Fireball, so that other classes can have access to that skill as well and not just the Sorceress.
Imagine something like:
“The Gauntlets of Flame”
7% chance to cast Fire Nova on hit
Increases burning damage by 15%
+14 to Fireball (maybe the skill could have 3 charges or a cooldown, dunno)
+16 to Firewall
12% increased Fire Damage
14% increased Spell Damage
+246 Fire Resistance
I think stuff like that would be neat. They probably would not be the BiS Gloves, but they could be interesting to play around with and make a build from it. D2 had items like these as well
Yes, indeed. The devs should not just focus on BiS legendaries, but also on more ‘niche’ stuff, since there are people who are especially interested about this like that. It also keeps the theorycrafters and YouTubers happy. Not everyone is interested in just BiS items.
And more chances of buffs and debuffs in general.
There is a Diablo 2 mod called D2: Resurgence, that has some very interesting buffs that can proc: https://imgur.com/7HqOnZd
I think 5 set pieces to unlock the full set bonus is fine.
Also they can think about having like 10-13 set pieces, but you only need 5 to unlock the full bonus, so that you can choose which pieces you wear.
Ok, some of that makes sense… The charges mechanic probably wouldn’t work well with skills, but probably would with curses, blesses and traps I think
As for skills, I’d say I agree. Higher CD at start (15-ish sec), and each new equip of same type of skill reduces the CD by some 30%-ish
The “choose one on equip” I guess isn’t “standard” but think it comes down to execution if anything… Think the examples above are quite good and quite intriguing
1st item allows you pick between AoE enhance and bonus vs Elites
2nd item makes you choose between high hit effect chance and “low-tier” spells relatively damage increase
3rd item makes you choose between being resistant vs melee or making your summons/traps survive longer therefore doing some more “cannon fodder” tanking
I mean, the whole set still has a relatively-obvious THEME that revolves around, it’s about:
Providing necessities for melee mage build (available for every class preferably)
The “stimpack” buffs don’t seem fit IMO, you’d probably gain something like that from effects of Rune trigger system, or Talent trees… However the defensive ones don’t seem that bad (maybe)
Here’s a couple more that might work as well:
Gain shield against X type of damage for X sec.
Wither - reduce attack damage and movement speed of target hit
Conflagrate - reduce target’s spell resistances
Electrocute - render the target “disoriented”, i.e. stand in place and not fight for a longer time, but when they wake up they usually crit the closest target right next to it (ok, I guess I’m not really that good with this :P)
Oookay… I guess it’s similar but you value the drop chance more than item-itself having the flexibility… That could work too probably
I can add that to the list, although I personally prefer to have a single stat for that.
It also could be like that with 2, 3, 4 and 5 pieces you gain special effects (and several with the 5 piece bonus, which would be the full set bonus), and then for every additional set piece you wear above 5 pieces, it increases the power of the special affixes you got from the 2, 3, 4 and 5 bonus.
E.g. the 3 piece bonus is that your damage is increased by 20% while no enemies are within a 20 yards radius around you and you gain a chance to cast a Meteor on hit that deals 700% damage, and you have 8 set pieces equipped, it could increase the power of these bonuses by 10% for every additional set piece above 5, which would be an increase of 30% in this case.
So the damage increase while no enemies are close to you goes from 20% to 26%, and the damage of the Meteor goes from 700% damage to 910% damage.
That would give players an incentive to equip more of the set and you also do not have to give every set 13 special bonuses or so.
The idea of having a cooldown on oSkills has more to do with e.g. Fireball costing Mana (since it is a Sorceress skill) and when you have to oSkill on a Barbarian via the gloves, the resource costs either have to be translated into Fury (and all the other resources, which might be complicated), or you simply give these oSkills a CD or charges, but no resource costs.
yes, these could work as well.
not sure what you mean by that, but thanks for the response.
