Making Rare and Magic Items useful in D4

General Discussion
142

It depends. Some procs may only proc from melee attacks.
And some procs are on attack while others proc on hit.

That could also work with a polearm that is used in a medium range.

It could also work with Hammer of the Ancients, or Whirlwind and also with Seismic Slam (though it still would only hit enemies in front of you).

But regardless of all of that, your point was that only Primary Skills should proc effects, and I don’t think this is good design wise since the idea is that all your attacks can trigger procs, especially when the proc is on your weapon, so it would be counter intuitive if e.g. a Hammer of the Ancients couldn’t proc it.

And all of that just to put a Proc-related Affix onto a Core Attribute seems unnecessary imo.

143

Yet another reason to not allow it, not just only that will “outproc” the rate of a normal attack, but in this case you might have a 4x the AoE (2x radius) of your primary reach, i.e. directly outperform (potentially significantly)

Here’s the thing: you can have 2 types of hit-effects, primary, and secondary

  • Proc per hit = Primary hit effect (only activated by primary attack or primary skill)
  • Secondary proc per proc hit (let’s say knockback causes bleed or sth)

So, let’s say you play a HotA Barb, let’s say you wield a 2H Hammer

The hammerhead (maul)

  • Primary proc = 15% to cause 125% bleed for 5 sec on attack
  • Secondary proc = 15% for stunned targets to run in fear for 1 sec after waking
    ** Targets take 200% bleed damage while moving

So, sure, you can use HotA and fear sh*t, but won’t proc bleed, primary attacks on the other hand will, you MIGHT find it in a rune or talent or socket of some type, but chances are won’t do as much bleed damage as % of your primary attack hit

So, in this particular case the item has “a bit too much” but you could have the 3rd affix on a gloves item for ex., just going through “synergies”

Or even let’s say your “hit effect” is a cast random curse, that curse might be dim iron maiden, might be decripify, but your skill will probably not have those unless by rune or talent or some special (late-game) affix, instead chances are your (harder hitter) skill would be “limited” to weaken or amplify damage (from a class talent, or rune, or socket, or something)

Regardless, I’m going a bit too “long” here, let’s just say it like this:

  • HIT-EFFECTS are primary-attacks only
  • AILMENTS are skill-related (these can come from the class itself, rune, socket maybe, or a separate affix that says specifically X type skill does X)
144

If we get crafting mats in D4 they should be like gold with auto pickup.

145

The Cleave shouldn’t get emanated from the enemy that gets impacted from the polearm hit, but from your char, so no increased AoE.

I agree to the extend that there should be various types of hit effects and proc-coefficients.

For example there also could be a separate Life-per-Attack-Coefficent for each skill, that varies for each Skills with higher resource costs can give back more Life.

E.g. Seismic Slam can give you 250% Life per Hit for the first enemy you hit and 15% additional Life per hit for the next 10 enemies you hit and every enemy above that can give an additional 3% Life per Hit.

Hammer of the Ancients can give 175% Life per Hit for the first enemy hit and the next 3 enemies you hit give an additional 10% Life per Hit and every enemy after that gives x% LpH.

And for some other things as well, however I still don’t see a good enough reason for not letting Resource Spending Skills proc certain effects just to make a proc related affix a core attribute.

But why shouldn’t HotA proc the bleed as well? I see no reason for why it shouldn’t. I don’t think that wanting to make a proc-related affix a core attribute is not a good enough reason for not letting Resource Spending Skills proc certain Effects like Chain Lightning or a Buff.

146

If I had to guess I’d say balancing reasons…

Let’s for the sake of argument say that the opponent’s defence rates should be around 200-400 lower i.e. the hammer dealing 200-400 primary damage (at that area against that kind of certain opponents), let’s say the damage dealt in bleeding is 50/sec (+200% while in motion)

Let’s say HotA skill has a level progression like the following:

  • 60-80
  • 70-100
  • 95-135
  • 125-150
  • 145-205
  • 180-260
  • 240-320
  • 300-400
  • 360-500
  • 450-620
  • 600-800

So, if you have a lvl6/7 HotA will out-do your primary damage (cause no matter what you’ll end up hitting more targets at once), furthermore, it has an EMBEDDED knockback, which means immediate capitalization of the bleed effect also

NOW, let’s say you also have a rune in that skill which gives it an extra X effect, for ex. primary target hit suffers additional lightning damage for 50% of the damage of equipped skill (shouldn’t THAT affect the primary attack also ?, your logic b.t.w. :P), it’s simpler to keep skills/spells separate from primary attacks, not only makes balance easier, keeps numbers under control, but also makes the player think/invest into a choice

It’s better to keep spells and primaryattacks/hit-effects as a separate damage source, kinda get the “insurance” that things won’t get out of control, and more importantly, keeps the “pie chart of damage dealt” more evenly spread between the 4, in your case if a “secondary” skill could also proc a primary hit effect you could easily end up with a 80%+ of damage dealt coming out just from a skill (or even worse, one single skill while at it)

By keeping them separate gives the player (based upon their playstyle) a broader choice, what if someone wants to play with little-to-no skills ?, I’d say there should even be a “mechanism” in which unspent skill choices could go in extra primary stats (in one way or another)

147

And this is one of the issues I have with PoE. Feels too slow with having to dig in the trash in case there is a useful item. I’d rather have the “simplified” but fast and functional approach in which a tier is guaranteed to be better than the tier below.

148

Defense does not has to be a flat reduction. Or e.g. 30% of the flat damage reduction could be bypassed by default (like in Grim Dawn).

no, because that would be a skill specific effect.

If each skill has its own proc coefficient for procs like Chain Lightning or Bleed, then there is no issue with balance since you can tune them for each skill individually.

149

Well, isn’t that a different affix though ?, like 5% for projectile to proc CL hits ? :smiley:

Static wand

  • 15% to cast level 3 CL per hit
  • 3% to cast lvl3 CL per projectile or DoT

Static wand of charging

  • [20-25%] to cast level [5-7] CL per hit
  • 3% to cast lvl5 CL per projectile or DoT

Static wand of lightning

  • 15 to cast level 3 CL per hit
  • [5-8]% to cast lvl[5-7] CL per projectile or DoT

That’s exactly what we’re talking about, I just lean on the side for skills to be a separate types of affixes whilest you “prefer” having some “default” rate/s ? :thinking:, what if I want to play say with DoT skills only, say for ex. have gloves that say “chances for effects caused AoE and DoT are doubled” of sth like that ?, could I spec into such a build ? :thinking: :stuck_out_tongue:

I could see how you might want to “milk every possibility” from each affix for everything but also leaves some “hidden trail rates” behind the scenes… No offence, it’s better to keep it separate for skills on separate/different/additional affixes

Not just for the sake of clarity but also for extra versatility, some might want to equip a weapon with like 3 primary hit-effects (if roll on a certain weapon/item), another may forego these and go for a combination of 2 or 3 “ailments” from certain types of skill/s

Now that’s interesting, you can imagine it exclusive in one direction/way (but not the other) :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley:

150

No, not exactly, I’ll explain below, but Proc-Coefficients are already in Diablo 3.

A Proc Coefficient is basically a multiplier for the chance that a proc triggers from a specific skill.

I wouldn’t make it so complicated.

You could have a 1handed Sword and it could have a 15% Chance to cast Chain Lightning on Attack.

A Primary Skill like Bash could have a Proc Coefficent of 0.2, so with a 15% Chance to cast Chain Lightning Bash gets:
15% * 0.3 = 4.5% Chance to cast Chain Lightning.

Hammer of the Ancients could have a Proc Coefficent of e.g. 1.2
15% * 1.4 = 18% Chance to cast Chain Lightning

Seismic Slam could have a Proc Coefficient of e.g 1.8
15% * 1.8 = 27% Chance to cast Chain Lightning

Of course “on Attack” is different than “on Hit”.
“On Hit” is it procs one for every attack you make (regadless of melee, ranged or spell). “On Hit” is everytime an attack hits an enemy (regardless of melee, ranged or spell). So “on Hit” procs would be lower than “on Attack” procs.

You can simply show the Proc Coefficent on the skill itself, then it is not hidden.

A rune on a skill only effects a specific skill, but a bonus on the attribute system should effect everything and not a single skill, that is the difference.