"+x% dam to basic" is broken

PC General Discussion
1

I’ve been socketing topazes in all my weapons for most of my Barb’s run (lvl 70 now). My total basic dam bonus was shown as +313,8% .

I unsocketed all weapons, to upgrade the topazes. And I noticed my basic dam was THE SAME. So I checked, and my bonus +% is also the same.

Even weirder, is the fact that if I socket JUST one topaz, my +% goes 17,5 LOWER (matching the topaz’ bonus, except as a PENALTY). And my listed dam decreases accordingly. If I socket a second topaz, it goes back up to 313,8% but it never gets any higher afterward as I socket more topazes back in.

This is clearly broken. I Googled around, and found no evidence of an intentional cap to this damage bonus. Only what I already knew: That the higher your bonus already is… The lower the actual increase when you try to get it even higher.

UPDATE: While writing this, I decided to craft the 6 royal topazes and socket my weapons with them anyway. Once again, the bonus behaves erratically. It goes higher (+328,8% is the highest), then lower, then back up again as I add more topazes while keeping an eye on it. If I unsocket them all, it actually stays at its highest.

All this meant that I would reach that highest +% without needing to socket put 6 royal topazes. Only 2 were enough. So, I removed 4 and put some royal skulls. The result? The lowest +% yet… I had to put all 6 topazes back, to get back up to +328,8%. And only then, did the game do the math properly and in a timely manner.

It really does feel like the game is really broken regarding how it updates this. I tried “refreshing” things by unequipping then re-equipping my gear, or even restarting the game. But that doesn’t update things. The stats only get updated at some random point during the unsocketing/socketing process.

Does this happen to anyone else?

P.S.: I know some people will tell me I should focus on other kinds of damage bonuses, but this one seems like the one I get to use most often. Even if it’s not as potent.

I’ve been avoiding the idea of playing a Barb that focuses on Crit+Vulnerable, like so many people do. And so far, I’ve been doing well. The game only gets challenging if I go for enemies 10 levels above me in Tier 4, so my current build feels fine for now.

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Cannot contribute to the thread just wanted to say thanks for the informative post about a serious issue, we need more of this

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Can you please add this to the Bug section in this Forum?

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Basic attack is useless anyway

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the basic “attack”, sure.

but we arent talking about the “basic attack”. we are talking about “basic skills”. which is what the topaz gems affect.

if you think basic skills are useless, you are doing something incredibly wrong.

quite a lot of builds use basic skills. just because yours doesnt, doesnt mean they are all useless. thats not how it works chief.

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Worth looking into but i don’t play D4 anymore so i have nothing to add

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You use them as Conditionals to apply status effects and build your Fury. If it kills weak mobs, great. Because Basic Skills only affect a single target, even IF the damage somehow surpassed your Core Skills, it still probably would not be worth building for.

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Arc Lash sorcs crying rn

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Regardless of whether it’s “meta” or ‘viable’ or ‘useless’ - It’s FUN to experiment.
It’s about the only fun this game has left to offer and reductions to re-spec costs aside - it’s still painful to roll alts(leveling/stash space) or to swap builds on a main(reroll costs/stash space etc).
Fun is in short supply unless fun to players is running hundreds of NMDs all day every day.
Which is perfectly fine.
Just don’t come in as some smug “basics are useless”.

Also if something is acting or interacting improperly - especially a Skill regardless of what it is - it should be reported and fixed.

OP - I might be wrong but don’t gems in weapons/items improperly display on the Character sheet?
Or was this fixed?
Edit: The next step is to record gameplay and look at attacks with gems and without gems to get a baseline.

Anyway props for noticing this and diving into it. I was considering messing with a Basic build for my Rogue as I’m having a very hard time logging in at all except for World Bosses and I’ve missed the last 7…if that’s any indicator of my ‘interest level’ at this point.
Needed something different to try out.

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10

Not all builds. Stormclaw build gets the dmg from basic attack.

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11

Agreed 100% to this and now I need 20 characters

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