They better think about the ugly word "downtime" when changing life gain mechanics. What am I supposed to do after a battle when I'm not at full health?
Back in 2002, in DAoC (first big game after D2's life steal paradise), I'd have to sit down and wait for several minutes to slowly gain health back. Then came Blizz with WoW and its food, which meant sitting down and waiting again, but not for so long. Keep in mind, both games were MMORPGs and designed to have dedicated healing classes around you.
Now how are they going to adress this in a game without those? Town portal and visit the new Akara?
I'm not a big fan of these health globes, they're ok for the 1-60 part, but I don't want to rely on them in the endgame. My favorite aspect of the game so far are the uber boss encounters and I wouldn't know how to best them with an hp pool that only goes into one direction: down.
Keep in mind, I'm mostly talking out of a melee pov. I've played (and killed Diablo with) an ~8k hp DH that would die to the sandstorm in a2, but I wouldn't want to go back to that anti-melee game.
Here is my 2 cents from playing multi classes in MP10.
We will go after elites and rare mobs only if we know we will live. Why? It's not worth our time in a run to even kill a elite/rare with PGL 90+
They need to make the kill more rewarding. 1-4 useless rare items are not cutting it. Now if there was a 25% chance of a super rolled item. Then we would take the risk of death to beat the elite/rares.
I'm not a big fan of these health globes, they're ok for the 1-60 part, but I don't want to rely on them in the endgame. My favorite aspect of the game so far are the uber boss encounters and I wouldn't know how to best them with an hp pool that only goes into one direction: down.
Keep in mind, I'm mostly talking out of a melee pov. I've played (and killed Diablo with) an ~8k hp DH that would die to the sandstorm in a2, but I wouldn't want to go back to that anti-melee game.
He already mentioned making health globes drop every 20% of an elites hp. Health globes are actually really good, even now, if you even have a single + health globe stat. In my case I have 1 item with +10k or something like that. That makes a world of difference and I have a 60k HP pool.
Hi guys, I've seen some great feedback so far. Let me answer a few questions and address some concerns.
Regarding the existing monster affixes. We'll be keeping an eye on these. For example, Reflects Damage internally has been changed to a flat amount rather than a percentage. I don't know if it's going to ship this way but that's the current internal version.
If we don't want a game defined by one-shot deaths, then we can't have damage that is defined by it's burstiness. Some people have suggested that the solution to making the game more tactical is to make all mechanics 100% avoidable. This sounds good on paper but unfortunately doesn't address one-shot deaths. What we want to do is avoid the extremes. Maybe in one case you can avoid all of the damage, but in another case "good play" means you avoid half of the damage. Having a broad spectrum of attacks with varying degrees of avoidability means both combat decisions and gear matter.
There have been some concerns that we'll swing back to the extremes of hyper-defensives builds such as when the game first came out. This is not the intention. As DrothVader pointed out, there's a middle ground here where you're able to gear and play offensively, but you still have to concern yourself with the dangerous affixes and other mechanics.
A clarification: When I said "After we pull in the rate of healing, next we analyze the patterns in which monsters deal damage" I meant those as steps in the development process. Sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean for a moment that we were going to release in between those two steps. As TheTruth posits, this is an iterative process. There are actually MANY steps involved, those are just the first two. We're changing a lot of things and we'll do a lot of testing of the whole package before putting it all live.
I also share ComposMentis' concerns that although we're trying to adjust how combat feels, we should make sure the result isn't a game that feels slow. Diablo is still an action RPG. As Bomdanil says, there's still a lot of room to "hack and slash through endless piles of monsters". Creating room for players to mitigate incoming damage through smart play is not mutually exclusive with being able to blow them up at a fast pace. A few people have jumped to the conclusion that tactical = slow, or created a false dilemna between "fast paced action RPG" and "strategic prolonged tactical combat". There are more possibilities than this. The goal is a game where the combat can still be very fast, and you are mowing down enemies, but you also get to make quick decisions about when to use a CC ability, when to pop a defensive ability or who to prioritize as a target. These are tactical decisions that don't detract from a fast pace.
I want to thank everybody for the really solid and constructive discussion. It's good to see so many thoughtful posts. I can't realistically respond to everything (such as the suggested modified damage model or some of the potion ideas) but I do appreciate that so many people put effort into stating their reasons and opinions clearly.
Regarding the existing monster affixes. We'll be keeping an eye on these. For example, Reflects Damage internally has been changed to a flat amount rather than a percentage. I don't know if it's going to ship this way but that's the current internal version.
WTF? That sounds horrible. So Reflect Damage would just be another flat damage type like Plagued or Desecrator. I hope this get changed back, I actually think the current RD ain't that bad.
Regarding the existing monster affixes. We'll be keeping an eye on these. For example, Reflects Damage internally has been changed to a flat amount rather than a percentage. I don't know if it's going to ship this way but that's the current internal version.
WTF? That sounds horrible. So Reflect Damage would just be another flat damage type like Plagued or Desecrator. I hope this get changed back, I actually think the current RD ain't that bad.
Agreed. As much as RD was a pain in the ass sometimes, it is a unique and interesting mechanic and it should stay that way.
RD is not interesting it is nothing more than a gear check. Got enough LS/resists/armor to survive? Ok ignore it completely. Don't have enough to survive? Have fun waiting for the pulses or insta-gib yourself.
My friends and I are at the point where we can ignore it on MP10. No idea why people like reflect except to laugh at people who haven't hit the gear level to ignore it or something.
Regarding the existing monster affixes. We'll be keeping an eye on these. For example, Reflects Damage internally has been changed to a flat amount rather than a percentage. I don't know if it's going to ship this way but that's the current internal version.
WTF? That sounds horrible. So Reflect Damage would just be another flat damage type like Plagued or Desecrator. I hope this get changed back, I actually think the current RD ain't that bad.
Agreed. As much as RD was a pain in the ass sometimes, it is a unique and interesting mechanic and it should stay that way.
RD is not interesting it is nothing more than a gear check. Got enough LS/resists/armor to survive? Ok ignore it completely. Don't have enough to survive? Have fun waiting for the pulses or insta-gib yourself.
My friends and I are at the point where we can ignore it on MP10. No idea why people like reflect except to laugh at people who haven't hit the gear level to ignore it or something.
But life steal is being removed/nerfed, so I don't see how this is relevant for the upcoming expansion.
^It's relevant because without LS, its impossible to mitigate against reflect damage. They have to reduce damage reflect somehow with the LS nerfs. If you have high dps even with extremely high levels of mitigation, without LS you would pretty much instantly kill yourself.
I like the change. Exploding palm is one of my favorite monk skills, always hated instantly killing yourself if you a palm explosion gets reflected.
^It's relevant because without LS, its impossible to mitigate against reflect damage. They have to reduce damage reflect somehow with the LS nerfs. If you have high dps even with extremely high levels of mitigation, without LS you would pretty much instantly kill yourself.
I like the change. Exploding palm is one of my favorite monk skills, always hated instantly killing yourself if you a palm explosion gets reflected.
I meant his post was irrelevant, not the actual discussion about life steal. He's complaining that reflect damage is an easy monster affix to counter but is referencing life steal to back up his claim; but Wyatt, and the people that are referencing Wyatt by discussing reflect as a flat damage return, are talking about changes for RoS, not gameplay right now. Since gameplay in RoS probably won't include life steal, or it will be greatly reduced in efficiency, his post about how easy it is to ignore reflect damage with enough life steal is pretty irrelevant when we are all discussing upcoming changes where life steal more than likely won't exist.
I think we're both on the same page, I probably just wasn't quite clear about what in his post I was critiquing.
Regarding the existing monster affixes. We'll be keeping an eye on these. For example, Reflects Damage internally has been changed to a flat amount rather than a percentage. I don't know if it's going to ship this way but that's the current internal version.
WTF? That sounds horrible. So Reflect Damage would just be another flat damage type like Plagued or Desecrator. I hope this get changed back, I actually think the current RD ain't that bad.
This, as others have pointed out, is probably a sure sign that Life Leech is going to disappear, or be severely nerfed and simply a consequence of that change. Granted, it's speculative, but I can't see any other reason why they'd be touching reflects damage at this point, except for the fact that they don't like Life Leech - and that seems reasonable given Wyatt's post about incoming damage versus healing.
If you have high dps even with extremely high levels of mitigation, without LS you would pretty much instantly kill yourself.
That's the whole point: the DPS of players was growing at a much larger rate than their mitigation, namely via de CC/CD combo (which they are apparently nerfing). That's gonna change, so I expect RD to stay as a % rather than a flat value.
Even with the caps, with the new much higher dps weapons and higher stat roll lv70 items, DPS will go up, not down. Even higher dps without LS? Instant death against damage reflect if it stays as is. Doesn't really matter even if you have extreme levels of mitigation.
It has to be remembered too that the reflect damage aura turns on and off... so if it is punishing when it is on you will really have to time your attacks better.
Why are you not considering that they might just fiddle with the % of damage reflected? I think that's a possible solution.
Because it's worse than a flat dmg as a solution.
We already know they don't want any 1 shot mechanics, at the very least on normal elites, and that they are focusing on more constant dmg(than we even have now) and less burst. They aren't going to make it so reflect dmg can turn on and you kill yourself a % dmg will certainly do that.
That would make it so early on when you're gearing up, it's a free mod that may as well not be there. Meanwhile when you're at the gear ceiling, you 1 shot yourself. So what they would have to do is impose more rules to make that solution work. That seems like more work for little gain.
Besides a flat dmg increase makes your character feel more powerful as it gets gear. Instead of the % which makes you feel weaker and goes against the whole idea of the game. The only way you can outgear a scaling percentage of incoming dmg is to have a scaling percentage of incoming healing. Which they don't want anymore.
Why are you not considering that they might just fiddle with the % of damage reflected? I think that's a possible solution.
Because it's worse than a flat dmg as a solution.
We already know they don't want any 1 shot mechanics, at the very least on normal elites, and that they are focusing on more constant dmg(than we even have now) and less burst. They aren't going to make it so reflect dmg can turn on and you kill yourself a % dmg will certainly do that.
That would make it so early on when you're gearing up, it's a free mod that may as well not be there. Meanwhile when you're at the gear ceiling, you 1 shot yourself. So what they would have to do is impose more rules to make that solution work. That seems like more work for little gain.
Besides a flat dmg increase makes your character feel more powerful as it gets gear. Instead of the % which makes you feel weaker and goes against the whole idea of the game. The only way you can outgear a scaling percentage of incoming dmg is to have a scaling percentage of incoming healing. Which they don't want anymore.
So, it's a problem that the % reflected is a free mod when you're gearing up, but it's not a problem that the flat damage becomes a free mod when you're geared?
Yeah, no contradiction there.
Also, I don't 1-shot myself anymore on RD, so, if you do, maybe you should rethink your character.
In the situation behind "% vs. flat damage" what needs to be ultimately accomplished is having it be difficult when you're starting off and not well geared, but then when you become better geared it is less difficult but still somewhat difficult. When comparing these two scenarios, we have to ignore life steal, because in RoS that won't be able to be counted on so readily to counterbalance the incoming reflected damage.
To me, flat damage is a lot easier for Blizzard to manipulate because it takes one variable out of the equation: DPS. All they have to do is look at EHP when determining a flat value returned to your character as damage. All they have to do is consider these extremes: (1) what damage a character with low EHP would take and (2) what damage a character with high EHP would take and pick an appropriate flat damage rate to return. Because there's only the variable of EHP they can easily pick a flat value that is punishing no matter what your EHP, but different degrees of punishing based off that EHP. They can easily pick a flat value that is neither overwhelming or negligible.
When calculating a percent of damage you throw in that extra variable which concerns the character's DPS. What would a character (1) with low DPS and low EHP (2) with low DPS and high EHP (3) with high DPS and low EHP (4) with high DPS and high EHP. Factoring in DPS creates a more compelling mechanic concept, but it also creates possible imbalances if not done properly. Note that I am not saying it can't be done or that it shouldn't be done, I just think it is a lot more difficult for Blizzard to balance.
So the question lies really in whether or not Reflect Damage should be a mod that punishes high DPS/low EHP but is more or less ignored by low DPS/high EHP, or should it just return a flat value that is easier to balance and punishes low EHP more than high EHP but is difficult no matter what. I think both individually are possible it just depends on how Blizzard wants Reflect Damage to ultimately work as a game mechanic, but to me they are mutually exclusive and can't work in tandem. One gives us a more compelling dynamic that can be extremely punishing or completely negligible while the other is easier to balance and if done properly will always be different degrees of punishing.
I personally like the flat damage choice, because I find dying to one mechanic based on gear choices to be pretty excessive. It doesn't feel good to be to have to stack EHP just because I might run into one affix when otherwise if I never saw it I would have been fine without the extra EHP. I don't think one affix should hold that much individual power to influence gear choice. But it should also be noted that reflect damage pulses so maybe it is fair to have it be that punishing since you shouldn't be attacking when it is triggered? That's really up to Blizzard to decide if that is to be the deciding factor. But then again, I don't like the idea of it being negligible either by just stacking enough EHP in comparison to your individual DPS. A flat damage return would be easier balanced to not cause that to happen.
So, it's a problem that the % reflected is a free mod when you're gearing up, but it's not a problem that the flat damage becomes a free mod when you're geared?
Yeah, no contradiction there.
Well, yeah, the whole idea of a game like this is that as you get more gear the monsters become easier, not harder. That seems like a pretty fundamental tenet to a game that's about becoming more and more powerful through Paragon & items, right?
Why are you not considering that they might just fiddle with the % of damage reflected? I think that's a possible solution.
Because it's worse than a flat dmg as a solution.
We already know they don't want any 1 shot mechanics, at the very least on normal elites, and that they are focusing on more constant dmg(than we even have now) and less burst. They aren't going to make it so reflect dmg can turn on and you kill yourself a % dmg will certainly do that.
That would make it so early on when you're gearing up, it's a free mod that may as well not be there. Meanwhile when you're at the gear ceiling, you 1 shot yourself. So what they would have to do is impose more rules to make that solution work. That seems like more work for little gain.
Besides a flat dmg increase makes your character feel more powerful as it gets gear. Instead of the % which makes you feel weaker and goes against the whole idea of the game. The only way you can outgear a scaling percentage of incoming dmg is to have a scaling percentage of incoming healing. Which they don't want anymore.
So, it's a problem that the % reflected is a free mod when you're gearing up, but it's not a problem that the flat damage becomes a free mod when you're geared?
Yeah, no contradiction there.
Also, I don't 1-shot myself anymore on RD, so, if you do, maybe you should rethink your character.
Not sure if you read the last paragraph but I already pointed out the logic in that. If you disagree with more gear = more power. Perhaps you should design the first ARPG to deviate from that.
Why are you not considering that they might just fiddle with the % of damage reflected? I think that's a possible solution.
Because it's worse than a flat dmg as a solution.
We already know they don't want any 1 shot mechanics, at the very least on normal elites, and that they are focusing on more constant dmg(than we even have now) and less burst. They aren't going to make it so reflect dmg can turn on and you kill yourself a % dmg will certainly do that.
That would make it so early on when you're gearing up, it's a free mod that may as well not be there. Meanwhile when you're at the gear ceiling, you 1 shot yourself. So what they would have to do is impose more rules to make that solution work. That seems like more work for little gain.
Besides a flat dmg increase makes your character feel more powerful as it gets gear. Instead of the % which makes you feel weaker and goes against the whole idea of the game. The only way you can outgear a scaling percentage of incoming dmg is to have a scaling percentage of incoming healing. Which they don't want anymore.
So, it's a problem that the % reflected is a free mod when you're gearing up, but it's not a problem that the flat damage becomes a free mod when you're geared?
Yeah, no contradiction there.
Also, I don't 1-shot myself anymore on RD, so, if you do, maybe you should rethink your character.
In the situation behind "% vs. flat damage" what needs to be ultimately accomplished is having it be difficult when you're starting off and not well geared, but then when you become better geared it is less difficult but still somewhat difficult. When comparing these two scenarios, we have to ignore life steal, because in RoS that won't be able to be counted on so readily to counterbalance the incoming reflected damage.
To me, flat damage is a lot easier for Blizzard to manipulate because it takes one variable out of the equation: DPS. All they have to do is look at EHP when determining a flat value returned to your character as damage. All they have to do is consider these extremes: (1) what damage a character with low EHP would take and (2) what damage a character with high EHP would take and pick an appropriate flat damage rate to return. Because there's only the variable of EHP they can easily pick a flat value that is punishing no matter what your EHP, but different degrees of punishing based off that EHP. They can easily pick a flat value that is neither overwhelming or negligible.
When calculating a percent of damage you throw in that extra variable which concerns the character's DPS. What would a character (1) with low DPS and low EHP (2) with low DPS and high EHP (3) with high DPS and low EHP (4) with high DPS and high EHP. Factoring in DPS creates a more compelling mechanic concept, but it also creates possible imbalances if not done properly. Note that I am not saying it can't be done or that it shouldn't be done, I just think it is a lot more difficult for Blizzard to balance.
So the question lies really in whether or not Reflect Damage should be a mod that punishes high DPS/low EHP but is more or less ignored by low DPS/high EHP, or should it just return a flat value that is easier to balance and punishes low EHP more than high EHP but is difficult no matter what. I think both individually are possible it just depends on how Blizzard wants Reflect Damage to ultimately work as a game mechanic, but to me they are mutually exclusive and can't work in tandem. One gives us a more compelling dynamic that can be extremely punishing or completely negligible while the other is easier to balance and if done properly will always be different degrees of punishing.
I personally like the flat damage choice, because I find dying to one mechanic based on gear choices to be pretty excessive. It doesn't feel good to be to have to stack EHP just because I might run into one affix when otherwise if I never saw it I would have been fine without the extra EHP. I don't think one affix should hold that much individual power to influence gear choice. But it should also be noted that reflect damage pulses so maybe it is fair to have it be that punishing since you shouldn't be attacking when it is triggered? That's really up to Blizzard to decide if that is to be the deciding factor. But then again, I don't like the idea of it being negligible either by just stacking enough EHP in comparison to your individual DPS. A flat damage return would be easier balanced to not cause that to happen.
Well said. I'm for the flat damage change. One shotting yourself with a well placed EP taking out the whole pack and yourself isn't fun. Even with a % reduction, you'd still die from reflected EPs as elite monster health is a huge number. It's like iron-maiden all over again.
Well, yeah, the whole idea of a game like this is that as you get more gear the monsters become easier, not harder. That seems like a pretty fundamental tenet to a game that's about becoming more and more powerful through Paragon & items, right?
Mostly yes, but I think, RD is a decent means to force certain classes to consider defensive stats for their gear. If it weren't for RD, which Wiz/DH/WD would have LS at all? Physical resist? They could forsake those stats in favor of pure offense, creating an imbalance vs melee characters.
Blizz could in theory achieve something similar with a flat thorns aura, that would just mean you need physical resist of x to mitigate it vs needing y% of your dps. Balancing this absolute x might be very tough compared to a relative y.
Back in 2002, in DAoC (first big game after D2's life steal paradise), I'd have to sit down and wait for several minutes to slowly gain health back. Then came Blizz with WoW and its food, which meant sitting down and waiting again, but not for so long. Keep in mind, both games were MMORPGs and designed to have dedicated healing classes around you.
Now how are they going to adress this in a game without those? Town portal and visit the new Akara?
I'm not a big fan of these health globes, they're ok for the 1-60 part, but I don't want to rely on them in the endgame. My favorite aspect of the game so far are the uber boss encounters and I wouldn't know how to best them with an hp pool that only goes into one direction: down.
Keep in mind, I'm mostly talking out of a melee pov. I've played (and killed Diablo with) an ~8k hp DH that would die to the sandstorm in a2, but I wouldn't want to go back to that anti-melee game.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
We will go after elites and rare mobs only if we know we will live. Why? It's not worth our time in a run to even kill a elite/rare with PGL 90+
They need to make the kill more rewarding. 1-4 useless rare items are not cutting it. Now if there was a 25% chance of a super rolled item. Then we would take the risk of death to beat the elite/rares.
Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
He already mentioned making health globes drop every 20% of an elites hp. Health globes are actually really good, even now, if you even have a single + health globe stat. In my case I have 1 item with +10k or something like that. That makes a world of difference and I have a 60k HP pool.
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Regarding the existing monster affixes. We'll be keeping an eye on these. For example, Reflects Damage internally has been changed to a flat amount rather than a percentage. I don't know if it's going to ship this way but that's the current internal version.
If we don't want a game defined by one-shot deaths, then we can't have damage that is defined by it's burstiness. Some people have suggested that the solution to making the game more tactical is to make all mechanics 100% avoidable. This sounds good on paper but unfortunately doesn't address one-shot deaths. What we want to do is avoid the extremes. Maybe in one case you can avoid all of the damage, but in another case "good play" means you avoid half of the damage. Having a broad spectrum of attacks with varying degrees of avoidability means both combat decisions and gear matter.
There have been some concerns that we'll swing back to the extremes of hyper-defensives builds such as when the game first came out. This is not the intention. As DrothVader pointed out, there's a middle ground here where you're able to gear and play offensively, but you still have to concern yourself with the dangerous affixes and other mechanics.
A clarification: When I said "After we pull in the rate of healing, next we analyze the patterns in which monsters deal damage" I meant those as steps in the development process. Sorry for the confusion. I didn't mean for a moment that we were going to release in between those two steps. As TheTruth posits, this is an iterative process. There are actually MANY steps involved, those are just the first two. We're changing a lot of things and we'll do a lot of testing of the whole package before putting it all live.
I also share ComposMentis' concerns that although we're trying to adjust how combat feels, we should make sure the result isn't a game that feels slow. Diablo is still an action RPG. As Bomdanil says, there's still a lot of room to "hack and slash through endless piles of monsters". Creating room for players to mitigate incoming damage through smart play is not mutually exclusive with being able to blow them up at a fast pace. A few people have jumped to the conclusion that tactical = slow, or created a false dilemna between "fast paced action RPG" and "strategic prolonged tactical combat". There are more possibilities than this. The goal is a game where the combat can still be very fast, and you are mowing down enemies, but you also get to make quick decisions about when to use a CC ability, when to pop a defensive ability or who to prioritize as a target. These are tactical decisions that don't detract from a fast pace.
I want to thank everybody for the really solid and constructive discussion. It's good to see so many thoughtful posts. I can't realistically respond to everything (such as the suggested modified damage model or some of the potion ideas) but I do appreciate that so many people put effort into stating their reasons and opinions clearly.
WTF? That sounds horrible. So Reflect Damage would just be another flat damage type like Plagued or Desecrator. I hope this get changed back, I actually think the current RD ain't that bad.
RD is not interesting it is nothing more than a gear check. Got enough LS/resists/armor to survive? Ok ignore it completely. Don't have enough to survive? Have fun waiting for the pulses or insta-gib yourself.
My friends and I are at the point where we can ignore it on MP10. No idea why people like reflect except to laugh at people who haven't hit the gear level to ignore it or something.
But life steal is being removed/nerfed, so I don't see how this is relevant for the upcoming expansion.
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I like the change. Exploding palm is one of my favorite monk skills, always hated instantly killing yourself if you a palm explosion gets reflected.
I meant his post was irrelevant, not the actual discussion about life steal. He's complaining that reflect damage is an easy monster affix to counter but is referencing life steal to back up his claim; but Wyatt, and the people that are referencing Wyatt by discussing reflect as a flat damage return, are talking about changes for RoS, not gameplay right now. Since gameplay in RoS probably won't include life steal, or it will be greatly reduced in efficiency, his post about how easy it is to ignore reflect damage with enough life steal is pretty irrelevant when we are all discussing upcoming changes where life steal more than likely won't exist.
I think we're both on the same page, I probably just wasn't quite clear about what in his post I was critiquing.
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This, as others have pointed out, is probably a sure sign that Life Leech is going to disappear, or be severely nerfed and simply a consequence of that change. Granted, it's speculative, but I can't see any other reason why they'd be touching reflects damage at this point, except for the fact that they don't like Life Leech - and that seems reasonable given Wyatt's post about incoming damage versus healing.
Even with the caps, with the new much higher dps weapons and higher stat roll lv70 items, DPS will go up, not down. Even higher dps without LS? Instant death against damage reflect if it stays as is. Doesn't really matter even if you have extreme levels of mitigation.
It would have to be a pretty drastic cut. I'm not certain but I believe damage reflect currently is 10% back. They would have to cut it to like 1-2%.
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Because it's worse than a flat dmg as a solution.
We already know they don't want any 1 shot mechanics, at the very least on normal elites, and that they are focusing on more constant dmg(than we even have now) and less burst. They aren't going to make it so reflect dmg can turn on and you kill yourself a % dmg will certainly do that.
That would make it so early on when you're gearing up, it's a free mod that may as well not be there. Meanwhile when you're at the gear ceiling, you 1 shot yourself. So what they would have to do is impose more rules to make that solution work. That seems like more work for little gain.
Besides a flat dmg increase makes your character feel more powerful as it gets gear. Instead of the % which makes you feel weaker and goes against the whole idea of the game. The only way you can outgear a scaling percentage of incoming dmg is to have a scaling percentage of incoming healing. Which they don't want anymore.
In the situation behind "% vs. flat damage" what needs to be ultimately accomplished is having it be difficult when you're starting off and not well geared, but then when you become better geared it is less difficult but still somewhat difficult. When comparing these two scenarios, we have to ignore life steal, because in RoS that won't be able to be counted on so readily to counterbalance the incoming reflected damage.
To me, flat damage is a lot easier for Blizzard to manipulate because it takes one variable out of the equation: DPS. All they have to do is look at EHP when determining a flat value returned to your character as damage. All they have to do is consider these extremes: (1) what damage a character with low EHP would take and (2) what damage a character with high EHP would take and pick an appropriate flat damage rate to return. Because there's only the variable of EHP they can easily pick a flat value that is punishing no matter what your EHP, but different degrees of punishing based off that EHP. They can easily pick a flat value that is neither overwhelming or negligible.
When calculating a percent of damage you throw in that extra variable which concerns the character's DPS. What would a character (1) with low DPS and low EHP (2) with low DPS and high EHP (3) with high DPS and low EHP (4) with high DPS and high EHP. Factoring in DPS creates a more compelling mechanic concept, but it also creates possible imbalances if not done properly. Note that I am not saying it can't be done or that it shouldn't be done, I just think it is a lot more difficult for Blizzard to balance.
So the question lies really in whether or not Reflect Damage should be a mod that punishes high DPS/low EHP but is more or less ignored by low DPS/high EHP, or should it just return a flat value that is easier to balance and punishes low EHP more than high EHP but is difficult no matter what. I think both individually are possible it just depends on how Blizzard wants Reflect Damage to ultimately work as a game mechanic, but to me they are mutually exclusive and can't work in tandem. One gives us a more compelling dynamic that can be extremely punishing or completely negligible while the other is easier to balance and if done properly will always be different degrees of punishing.
I personally like the flat damage choice, because I find dying to one mechanic based on gear choices to be pretty excessive. It doesn't feel good to be to have to stack EHP just because I might run into one affix when otherwise if I never saw it I would have been fine without the extra EHP. I don't think one affix should hold that much individual power to influence gear choice. But it should also be noted that reflect damage pulses so maybe it is fair to have it be that punishing since you shouldn't be attacking when it is triggered? That's really up to Blizzard to decide if that is to be the deciding factor. But then again, I don't like the idea of it being negligible either by just stacking enough EHP in comparison to your individual DPS. A flat damage return would be easier balanced to not cause that to happen.
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Well, yeah, the whole idea of a game like this is that as you get more gear the monsters become easier, not harder. That seems like a pretty fundamental tenet to a game that's about becoming more and more powerful through Paragon & items, right?
Not sure if you read the last paragraph but I already pointed out the logic in that. If you disagree with more gear = more power. Perhaps you should design the first ARPG to deviate from that.
Well said. I'm for the flat damage change. One shotting yourself with a well placed EP taking out the whole pack and yourself isn't fun. Even with a % reduction, you'd still die from reflected EPs as elite monster health is a huge number. It's like iron-maiden all over again.
Mostly yes, but I think, RD is a decent means to force certain classes to consider defensive stats for their gear. If it weren't for RD, which Wiz/DH/WD would have LS at all? Physical resist? They could forsake those stats in favor of pure offense, creating an imbalance vs melee characters.
Blizz could in theory achieve something similar with a flat thorns aura, that would just mean you need physical resist of x to mitigate it vs needing y% of your dps. Balancing this absolute x might be very tough compared to a relative y.
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