In the campfire chat they kept alluding to +skill levels mattering way more and scaling better. Does anyone know why? Maybe something mentions it in the patch notes? I would love for +skills to matter more like in D2, but interested in what changes they made to accomplish this as currently the scaling is awful on additional skill ranks.
I apologize if this is a little long but I wanted to give you as complete an answer as possible.
They alluded to changes in the math several times during the stream. Basically, Blizzard wants to avoid two things - massive damage and power creep. Also, they mentioned two other things. You can triple down on some things and adjusting how Vulnerable and Critical Strike work.
However, this means many people will do less damage. So, in the coming weeks, you will see changes to skills - especially from the paragon nodes as well as paragon glyphs. In turn, that means more damage from the skill itself. Even without this, the first damage bucket is Weapon damage, skill damage, stat damage. As such, you have more to build on with higher skill levels. Blizzard is designing (re-designing) the system so that it is easier to triple the effects of skill levels.
Remember, they are trying to avoid massive damage and power creep but the Shako is part of Duriel’s loot system. Why is this important? The Shako has at least +2 to all skills and the version shown on most sites is ancestral with +4 - with 820 items power. Highest item power right now is 920. So, that means there could be a version of the Shako with +5 or better.
And that means one of two things. One, +9 (points to +5 and +4 from Shako) to all skills. In turn, that means at least almost doubling the base power of the skill from 1 item. Two, you can shift points to passives. Even at +2, that means 12 or more points. So, for a Druid (which I played in S1), that means at least 1 point into Wild Impulses (increases damage with more spirit) and Predatory Instinct (increases crit strike) as well as Call of the Wild (enhances companion damage), Nature’s Reach (increases damage to distant enemies), Envenom (increases crit damage to poisoned) and Crushing Earth (increases Earth skill damage). Or it means I can put 2 more points into all of the above.
Add Paragon nodes and glyphs to that and you have only God knows how many adds to damage without even touching Vulnerable. Additionally, it makes it rather easy to get max out critical strike and damage without needing items. So, you can concentrate on resistances, armor, etc. instead of damage output.
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So you are saying there are more opportunities to get +skills, but that doesn’t address the question of what changes are being made to make getting those +skills worthwhile? Right now on live I can get +12-15 of a skill and most of the times it is pointless to do that because each skill level either barely increases the damage, or in the event of support skills it barely increases anything past a certain point. I was hoping the actually per-level scaling was going to increase making it more attractive to get a skill as high as possible.
Think it’s more so the fact that since crit+vuln damage were changed they’re trying to express that there are other ways to get that power back, either through +skills, the new passives to boost affixes, etc. Not to mention enemies have been adjusted accordingly to all of these changes. Won’t know until you actually get into the game as to how it will feel later on. I personally feel you won’t see much of a difference then now, just lower numbers across the board until you start to mess with some of the new changes, but those lower numbers don’t mean anything when the enemies have lower health as well.
Makes sense I guess… it’s not that skill levels are directly good, just indirectly cuz crit and vuln are worse. That’s kinda sad Lmao
+Rank to skill is good since some skills cooldown gets lowered with higher ranks. I highly doubt blizzard will allow skills to get to 5 second cooldown with +12 Rank. So there’s much to be seen. Another thing is not much other affix can directly influence tool tip base damage. +Rank to skills should help with damage over time skills as well as minion skills.
Everything is relative to the damage being made.
Yes, in the “old world system” it wouldn’t matter that much on how +skill impacts damage because vuln + crit was just doing so much damage. If we eliminate that damage though then weapon damage and skill become (maybe) some of the best ways to increase damage in theory.
We’ll need to see how it plays out over time; however, even previously a lot of builds would still try to get +ranks to their main skill so this will likely continue but be of increased importance.
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When you are your mutiplier to all damage for example, say 50%x while barrier is up, those skills damages are going up, so whatever aspect muti you are using you hover over the SB when its active and see the change, my serpent for example sits at a base of around 45k , with all multipliers running at peak its close to 100k,
so yes if a rank gain doent increase your base skill damage that much, maybe spend that point on something stronger, or different utility. Thats another way to use free ranks on skills that maybe dont gain as much, because also some skills have additive percentage buffs from glyhps and thats the puzzle, to figure out the best spot to put it in.
Blizzard did allude to changes in how +skill worked. But:
That was my read too. +skill is relatively better because it is one of the only scaling affixes that are still standing.
A sad thing about this… it encourages even more one-sided focus on a single dmg skill in a build.
Game should go in the other direction.
On way to accomplish that would be of +skills were for categories of skills instead of individual skills.
+1 Fire skills, +1 Core skills, +1 DoT Skills etc.
Some of these already exist. But all +skills should be like that tbh.
im not sure the +# is going to change just things like health which had infinite scaling based on ips.
but i guess we’ll see def a chance
That depends upon the class, aspects and such. For instance, Destructive Incinerate has burning enemies do less damage. So, that indirectly allows for health. Greater Ice Shards procs with barrier (which extends health). Fierce Earth Spike has fortify proc which means you can have three layers of protection (barrier being the second, Earthen Bulwark being the third). Speaking of Earthen Bulwark, the base skill has a barrier that will proc at the same time as other barriers. Primal Pulverize reduces damage taken. Primary Blade Shift has a couple of procs. One for damage reduction and one for CC break.
Similarly, if you are talking about enemy health, there are aspects, skills, etc. that have additional effects - like chill, slow, knock back, extra damage. Storm Claw aspect still adds lightning damage to shred. Great Staff of the Crone turns claw into a storm skill and will proc with Nature’s Fury or Perfect Storm. You just have to look for stuff that is not linked to vulnerable or crit strike.