become the only go to stat for late end game? It just gets boring after a while. Why is it that the absolute majority of specs out there, that iare capable of doing late stage content at a reasonable pace, end up in a crit build? I mean, I can stack attack speed and chew through HP bars. But it always ends up being so much slower than crit. Meaning you end up having to sacrifice a ton of damage for survivability because it takes longer to kill mobs. Which means it takes even longer to kill mobs because you gave up damage. Which means you have to stack more e-hp. It’s this never ending cycle that feels massively punishing for not going crit.
As I said before. It just gets boring to get on almost every character and be like, “Oh look I want gear with crit on it.”
I think there is room for flexibility. Critical damage is a conditional bonus (does not affect every single attack, only when it procs) but it’s in the additive bucket so it shouldn’t really outshine other similar bonuses. Although it does seem stupid easy to stack…for instance you can generally use a glyph to get a ton of it to start, but there’s nothing similar just for like, +damage% or attack speed (which isn’t an additive stat, but worth mentioning.)
It also can proc (and thus effect) every attack except DOTs (which I don’t think there are many builds really relying on DOT damage.) And, not every build benefits from attack speed+ either.
It’s just a stat that is really viable across the board, and is easy to stack. That’s my guess.
That’s only partially true. The inherent 50% you get is actually (x). It’s only the extra you stack from para and gear stats are additive. Just like the inherent 20% from vuln is (x) and the rest is additive. And therein lies a decent portion of the issue. It has the highest inherent multiplicative multiplier in the game. And getting up to ~50% crit chance is pretty easy. At that rate your getting an average of ~25%(x) inherent multiplier which still outshines all others. And, as you said, stacking crit damage is typically insanely easy compared to others.
Even a number of DoT builds want crit. Poison rogue (imbue scales with crit), bleed barb (bleed scales with crit dmg), burn sorc (burn scales with crit dmg).
I could be wrong but arnt they changing this in S5? I recall them saying something in the campfire a month ago but its been along time and its early in the morning.
I want to say static damage in D3 was increased by crit chance x crit damage so what would be the average multiplier of critical damage across attacks was just included in every instance of the damage. Could be wrong but if they did that to all DOT damage at least it would count consistently (and the same over time as if it COULD crit.)
It needs a lot of love right now. It may even need additional functionality beyond just damage buffs to keep it relevant. But I agree, it’s fun to watch your lycanthropy germs spread to an entire crowd of mobs.
I wish there was more care for the lucky break. In some skills it is useless. We could have unique ones like lucky strike gatantido.Etc. There are few skills that use damage over time that don’t have a crit. So it will always be strong.
I could never get into the druid in D2. I was always playing a meteorber or trapsin. I mean I had the obligatory Hammerdin for farming end game. And smiter for ez ubers. But I preferred a frostfire sorc.
I hope not. One of the best things ever is that DoTs cannot naturally Critically Strike. This means you do not need Critical Strike Chance, Critical Hit Damage, or Overpower whatsoever.
The problem is before you just got outright punished because you did not have those buckets. Hemmhorage for example would not have necessarily needed to be capped and players who focus on Bleed could stack Vulnerable Damage instead of CHD.
Unfortunately the way Gushing Wounds works, this breaks things. Instead of reworking Gushing Wounds, they capped Hemmhorage and nerfed the crap out of GW.
There should be more build diversity, not less. Having players have to stack all buckets or hit a magic number in one buckef then dump everything else into a nother is silly.
Damage While Berserking
Vulnerable Damage
Critical Strike Damage
For Barbarians have all gotten effective caps put on them. There is no point to really make the investment after a certain point.
We are in a situation now where we lack build diversity BECAUSE of a lack of scaling options for some dot builds (in addition to the current fast pace of combat rewarding only builds that can press a button and aoe instant wipe the screen). You aren’t creating build diversity by blocking a stat from being useful, you are creating a barrier to entry. Certain DoT builds lack scaling options and itemization synergy with other skills in the class tree. You want to take shred in your rabies build? Then you need crit and attack speed, two stats you cannot use for rabies. Pulverize? Max life, overpower, attack speed, crit. This is anti-synergy, it removes build options.
They reworked Gushing Wounds (this is the nerf) and they capped all paragon legendary nodes not only Hemmhorage because they cannot balance this game otherwise.
Gushing Wounds was multi damage with crit, what other key passive was as strong. so it’s ok that these key passive was reworked.
otherwise they would have had to rework all the other key passives also for other classes to keep up.
We’re lacking build diversity, because instead of focusing on the core skills, making every skill as equally viable as the next (i.e., any skill you base your build around can clear NMD100 and Uber Lillith), those chose to release a year early (because of pressure to get some money coming in), and are now scurrying to make a FOTM build for each class.
Hopefully, this won’t still be the case in VoH. But D4 is not the only game that suffers from this issue.
Take PoE for instance, they have the most diverse talent tree and skill setup of any other ARPG i know of, and there’s only about 6 viable endgame builds (according to the experts and maxroll), based on just 2 or 3 of the main classes.
They need to focus more on D4s skill trees, making each ability as good as eachother, just for different use cases. Then use uniques and aspects to alter how they interact with the world, rather than granting massive power.
Rather than using those buckets, it can and should be a unique investment.
Damage Over Time is an additive bucket that has no multiplicative scaling - but could
Extending the Duration of Damage Over Time effects increases the total damage output, especially when abilities like Rupture can consume that DoT for Burst.
Vulnerable Damage, contribution of primary stat etc. could all be more effecient and effective to make up for less buckets.
Damage While Berserking could add unique effectiveness for Barbarian.
Having every Class basically have to take every bucket means everyone is building pretty much exactly the same but you just swap out a few Glyphs and Aspects.
