Vulnerable Damage and Critical Damage should be removed as gear rolls

PC General Discussion
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The issues with this game have been discussed ad nauseum on here, and most of them are valid criticisms but are things that I think will be remedied over time. Mob density, inventory management, balance, and a lack of end game content are things that I believe are relatively easy to fix given additional development time, so I’m not going to harp on them.

I’m more concerned about what appears to be a foundational issue with the way the game is set up, and one that results in a total lack of build diversity and stale itemization - Vulnerable and Crit Damage.

Most people are here are familiar with the concept of damage buckets, and the fact that Crit and vulnerable are 2 of the only mechanics in the game that are standalone multipliers. Basic math would tell you that stacking these stats is far more value than adding to your already massive conditional damage bucket, and yet these additive stats are expected to compete with crit and vulnerable on gear rolls. Why would anyone ever choose anything else? In fact, any build that doesn’t invest as much as possible into these 2 mechanics is completely doomed to fail.

I don’t think these mechanics are intrinsically bad for the game - they both could, in theory, add choice and diversity to how you build out a character. But given how the game is built now, they are a mandatory first step for any build - once you have crit and vulnerable, you can fill out the remaining gear and skills slots.

Instead of removing these mechanics entirely, I would like to see crit damage and vulnerable damage removed as gear rolls. These 2 mechanics should be something that certain builds can utilize through investments in the paragon board, skill tree, and legendary affixes. It should be a choice and an investment rather than a mandatory, game breaking system. Even with only the 20% baseline bonus damage, vulnerability could still be a decent choice for certain builds. Maybe allow for an additional 20-30% vulnerable damage from paragon and the skill tree and it becomes a viable but not mandatory damage boost. Same with Crit. If it remains something you can stack with gear rolls, it will win out vs every other affix and continue to dominate the game because math.

The game would definitely need to be rebalanced around this change, but I think the only way to open up build diversity is to make these 2 mechanics a choice rather than a requirement. Other offensive mechanics like Overpower, additive damage rolls, and Lucky Hit are complete garbage because of how good these 2 are.

10 Likes
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I agree, but I think they should be removed entirely.

Any instance of these two stats will forever result in the ridiculous pigeon holing that makes these stats MANDATORY on almost every single build.

3 out of 4 stats on offensive items are taken up by Critical Chance (which I like), Critical Damage (which I can live with), and now Vulnerable (which I despise). Fill in the final stat with your class specific damage(Overpower, Lightning, Etc) or plus to skill roll and you’re done.

What really makes me despise Vulnerable is how it has seeped it’s way into becoming a foundational gameplay mechanic of Diablo 4. You literally cannot push content in this game if you do not have a way to steadily apply Vulnerable. This fact is evident for many builds that attempt the “Vulnerable Resist” affix while trying to PUSH a nightmare tier above their comfort level. So as a result of this system, we have a game in which build variety revolves around changing 1-3 abilities while the other 3-5 are required on every build for your survival and vulnerable application and the same can be said about the base items you are using. There is nothing outside of reroll costs stopping you from reusing items that have the perfect Vuln, Crit and Crit Dmg rolls as long as the last roll is the only one you need to change for your build.

What ever happened to creating a thematically cool character out of some unique class fantasy? If I want to be an ice only mage, I should be able to do that without the need to use a flame shield or lightning teleport. Why are these abilities even tied to a specific element beyond the reason that it was done this way in previous entries? I’m not a big fan of path of exile and I haven’t played it in maybe 2-3 years, but I must say they have blizzard beat on the aspect of allowing you to take any skill and turn it into whatever it is you want it to be.

So in short, Vulnerable sucks. It’s like Critical Damage, but worse in the fact that you have to build around being able to apply it and in doing so, you end up with very minimal build variety between skills on some classes and only a single stat variety on many of the items that can roll it.

I’m sure there are many holes in my argument, but regardless, I don’t think I will ever change my stance that this game could be better without it…at least in it’s current state

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You might be right, but I think you can make vulnerable into a build specific mechanic that can add value to the game. The only reason it’s “foundational” right now is because you can stack insane damage in that bucket and its pretty easy to proc on all builds.

If specific skills had a +10%-30% Vulnerable damage bonus but there were no gear rolls, vulnerable would become a priority for that build (but not break the game like it does now). On the other hand, if the skills you’re using don’t have vulnerable damage bonus, the x20% baseline is decent but far from mandatory, especially if compelling alternatives are offered. I think to make this work they also have to remove all the “free” vulnerable procs like Frost Nova and Exploit glyph so it requires a real investment to keep vulnerable up. In that case, if your build has no bonus dmg vs vulnerable, the investment probably wouldn’t be worth it. Now its a situation mechanic instead of the entire game.

I would apply the same logic to crit - some skills or passive should add crit damage, and so crit chance rolls on gear matter for builds that use them. If not, crit chance is maybe worth it but far less mandatory than it is now. You could also flip this and keep Crit Damage on gear but move Crit chance to specific skills or nodes on the tree, but as long as both stats roll on gear, they will mandatorily occupy 2 affixes on every slot that rolls them.

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You see the issue is that once you allow the mechanic it becomes mandatory to play around it or suffer the consequence of doing less damage.

Directly connecting vulnerable to specific skills will continue to pigeon hole players into using those skills unless a wide variety of skills (basically all of them) can proc vulnerable.

The only solution I can see outside of removing it would be to make Crowd Control proc vulnerable for it’s duration which would make sense as being CC’d inherently should make you vulnerable. This would allow players to focus more on creating builds that benefit them in the end game by incorporating meaningful forms of CC through various combinations of aspects and paragon nodes and not just skills directly linked to applications of CC or vulnerable in general.

We already have skills on almost every class that can perform CC, but we also have and can create various items that give access to CC on different skills. CC also has diminishing returns and doesn’t work on bosses so the reliance on vulnerable in general would disappear outside of speed farming trash mobs and elite packs. Because of these diminishing returns, the stats, passives and paragon nodes that increase CC duration will gain greater importance and make way for builds that use CC in various amounts for various reasons, but I would also be cautious about CC Duration becoming a mandatory stat.

In the end though, I don’t know the correct answer to this problem as predicting player interaction is incredibly difficult. All I think I understand is that the more damage increases you give the player, the less they will want to use anything else. It also doesn’t help that Resistances are implemented horribly which further reduce the pool of meaningful stats

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No, not necessarily. Vulnerable is only mandatory now because you can basically 3-4x your damage with it. If vulnerable damage gear rolls were removed and certain skills allowed you get a modest vulnerable damage bonus, it would be far from mandatory to run these skills. This would especially be true if the free vulnerability procs were removed from the game (i.e. exploit glyph). Other skills with comparable damage multipliers from other sources would be competitive with the skills that do bonus vulnerable damage in this case. If properly balanced, it would just become another mechanic in the game that you can invest into, along with all of the others. I don’t think the design of the mechanic is intrinsically broken. It’s just a matter of balancing the game.

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Well, while they remain in their current form, you are nerfing yourself not slotting them wherever you can

i’d call that a broken itemization system overall

because it’s not like, build dependent, really. maybe a DoT build cares less about crit. But yeah vuln should be slotted always for everyone eh?

It seems bad I see “+15% Damage” and delete it because +damage is somehow awful in a diablo game

it’s bonkers

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I don’t think they can remove it entirely without buffing alot of other stats because w/o vuln or crit every class will hit like a wet noodle

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Why would anybody choose skills that do not apply vulnerable if it continues to give a damage increase? People are currently using it because it gives a damage increase and to remove the stat rolls would mean you need to adjust the entire game to account for the differences. I think the problem with your solution can explicitly be seen on Sorceress who practically needs certain frost skills to apply vulnerable or suffer doing no damage.

You see, there really isn’t any great solution for this and that goes for my idea with CC as well.

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Yeah, that’s kind of what I think they need to do. It’s also why I don’t see the issue with vulnerable being resolved until an expansion at least.

Because the increase would be modest in comparison to what it is now, and it would require you to use one or more skill bar slots on a skill that could reliably proc vulnerable. For certain builds, losing a skill slot for an a conditional 20% damage wouldn’t be worth it. For others it would. That would make it a balanced mechanic.

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What I think we can all agree on is that Vulnerable needs a change. What that change looks like/the perfect solution can be discussed and worked through, but Vulnerable really does limit creativity for builds as is.

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Yeah, this is definitely not something they can fix in a patch update. This is calling for a total rework that will result in the 2.0 era of the game

EDIT: since you added to yours.

I still want to know why the player has to be pigeon holed into using specific skills though? How is this better than the idea of making Vulnerable into a CC mechanic? Just slapping “Applies Vulnerable” shouldn’t make a skill appealing if that skills overall gameplay interaction isn’t fun to begin with.

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I only have a problem with vuln in this regard, but yeah vuln needs to go.

The reason I feel a difference between vuln and crit damage, is that vuln often mandates a specific skill on your bar, even if you hate the playstyle of using said skill, the player has no choice because they require vuln based on how the games scaling works. Tendrils, or Frost nova or whatever else where you are forced to cast it every pack to set up your dmg spell, this is truly cancerous for the game, completely restricting the player from hand crafting a gameplay that they enjoy, because what they make, if it don’t include these spells, it won’t be viable.

Crit damage on the other hand, sure it encourages the use of dmg skills that have capability to crit (aka, DoT gets screwed over) but this is most skills anyway, and in truth the skills that can’t crit are a seperate discussion that just needs to be buffed up with this lack of crit scaling in mind.

Crit and crit damage itself at least isn’t as bad for the freedom of the player to use the skills they enjoy, at least in my opinion, and it’s not too horrible of a thing for there to be some “clear” winners in terms of item stats where you see double crit ring and think, hey nice I got a good one here etc. Of course, this relies on other skills like DoT getting those buffs they need though and stays competitive.

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Yes, and that is exactly what we are doing here. Discussions like these can catch the attention of the developers if enough people engage with it.

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I agree that vulnerable is the main problem, and if I could rewrite the post I’d probably just focus on that. But I still think that crit damage, as it was in diablo 3, is just way too good. I think they have to remove either crit chance OR crit damage as a gear roll, because they scale off of each other, and tie the other one to skills or specific builds. With only 4 affixes on gear, having 3 completely mandatory stats (crit chance, crit damage, and vulnerable damage) is extremely limiting.

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You could as well remove ALL AFFIXES, and make it an arcade game about Attack power and Armor.

What a trash take.

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Yes, that is the fundamental problem with Vuln. It pigeon holes your entire experience from skills and stats to gameplay.

I can live with Critical Damage, but you have to understand that it actually does NOTHING for the game beyond creating a necessary increase to enemy health bars. Also, why do I need to program such a stat when I could remove it and just increase the base damage of the skill to do the same exact amount upon a critical strike to begin with? I hope you’re understanding my point on why Critical Damage is kind of a fluff stat. Critical Strikes are Critical strikes, they are a direct blow to an enemies weakspot that warrant an inherent increase of damage.

I would prefer increasing my base damage or converting my damage into another element which the enemy is weak to. Remember Elemental Weakness? Our characters have it, but the enemies don’t really do.

Many real RPG aspects are lost in modern gaming.

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You might as well just remove items since the only things you want on any of them are automatically taken up by CDR, CC, CD, and Vul Dmg. LOL.

Trash tier itemization. Lawl build diversity.

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Yeah, because removing one broken affix out of the dozens of them is the exact same thing as replacing the whole game with attack power and armor. Makes total sense, great comment and highly productive.

1 Like
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They just need to give way more ways to proc Vulnerable with skills and potentially more ways to amp up crit chance with skills.

If you remove those conditionals then you make the game a lot more flat and you will just spam your biggest DPS attack. Right now you have to build resource AND apply vulnerable (and for some builds also create other conditionals). I agree that too many conditionals, such as what Sorc has, becomes really cumbersome, but removing conditionals completely creates flat boring gameplay.

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Productive for what?

You are suggesting removing the affixes that actually matter on endgame, neglecting proper power upgrades through gear.

My satire take is just as stupid as yours. This is an ARPG, getting power through gear is part of the game.

Some affixes are almost always better than others, this is because itemization is simple. You want to go another step further and remove powerful upgrades? Lets just remove gear progression entirely besides weapon damage and armor, that’s the end result of your initial problem.