Vulnerable should have diminishing returns and buff the base damage. Vulnerable should be additive not multiplicative, and make the Sorc skill tree not trash and do good base damage, that way people can play different builds, instead of being restricted to the meta which is the only way to do any damage. Really and class design honestly
Quite a few people seem to be massive fans of just making everything additive. My question then is when an item drops and you look at it, what stats do you care about?
With additive vulernable and crit damage my wand can be summed up as one affix that just says: +120% damage.
If you’re talking about making just crit and vuln additive, then crit and vuln are still different. Crit doesn’t work on barriers, as well as certain classes have skills that situationally increase crit damage (Rogue’s Dash for an example). Vulnerability still needs to be applied before it does anything (which is easy to forget because its so easy to apply for most classes).
If you’re talking about making EVERYTHING additive, then you still have to respect how the current additive modifiers work. Damage to close requires you to be close, damage to frozen requires mobs to be frozen, etc.
To get the full value from your wand, you still have to make meaningful decisions, in your build and/or in your gameplay, to actually receive that 120%. Better yet, you can tailor your gear to your playstyle. Don’t like getting close? Reroll that damage to close affix and pray for a damage to distance affix.
Rather than the current gameplay loop which is like… Do you like playing close? Reroll that damage to close for vulnerability. Like to freeze mobs? Reroll that damage to frozen for vulnerability.
In order to compete in endgame buffing probably be a short term fix. Giving us a Glyph that applies vulnerable might be a better solution for the long run. Examples worth considering core skills apply vulnerable or conjuring skills apply vulnerable or basic skills apply vulnerable
All the other classes need to have a specific skill that applies vulnerable as well. Yes, sorc uses the freeze/cold mechanisms for this. Lightning uses stun mechanics and fire uses crit mechanics. This is how the class is built. Other classes have to pick other skills to get vulnerable on their builds.
Barbarians have 9 skills which can apply Vulnerable.
Stun does not get you a damage multiplier. Damage while stunned is in the Everything bucket.
Three is a second way, vulnerable as lucky hit on a froozen target through gear.
So a chance on chance, which doesn’t work on booses…
that says everything.
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Every skill can apply vulnerable with a common Aspect of Biting cold and a simple enchant for Sorc with 5 skills that apply vulnerable as well directly. So? You have lots of options. There is no good single element build for sorc. Ice builds need to add fire for crit damage for instance.
When i look at meta build lists sorc actually comes on top. Necro/Rouge/Druid usually show 2 or 3 builds that are viable with Barb/Sorc having 5 or 6 options. Yes, everyone of them requires frost nova, teleport, frost shield. But every Barb build has Rallying cry, Challenging Shout, and War Cry. It’s about even.
I would like to see some more build diversity, but sorc isn’t the problem child you are making it out to be.
Aspect of Biting Cold is percent based and not guaranteed.
Which is at complete odds with, “Play your way”. If we are going to come down to using the same skills, why bother with a skill tree? Instead just give every Sorcerer those skills, no ability to modify to anything else, and call it a day.
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You don’t understand the basic mechanics of the game… Vulnerable is its own special damage multiplier whereas all of the various “damage to crowd controlled enemies” affixes are additive with the rest of your damage. Frost’s equivalent to Fire’s Paralyze and Shock’s Stun is FREEZE not VULNERABLE. Frost has access to a whole other damage multiplier on top of its own unique crowd control. That is terrible design and simply unfair.
It simply needs to be multiplicative with the base 20% debuff that Vulnerability is supposed to provide in the first place. That is, if you have +100% Vulnerability Damage on your gear, the Vulnerability Damage will be 40% (which is +100% from the base 20%). Then other stats could be competitive. Of course, it would also mean that the damage of all classes is nerfed by like 50%.