Now, I understand that datamining is far from final information, but it does look like the bell is tolling for the life steal era of diablo 3. That's fine in all honesty, as life steal did tend to make health feel irrelevant. I'd like to ask the developers for RoS to please consider some changes to life on hit.
1. Functionality transparency: life on hit is governed by hidden coefficients on every skill and rune. This makes choosing skills to function with it difficult. Please assist the player population in propery integrating life on hit choices into their gear.
2. Coefficient change/removal. With how life on hit currently functions, removing life steal may make several fast hitting, high coefficient skills mandatory as healing abilities. I'd like to see coefficients removed, there's no reason that, for example, rain of toads should return 80% of my life on hit and zombie bears return 20. The game is starting to bias away from hard hittin slow skills towards faster skills.
Those are my two issues with life on hit in its current iteration, and honestly they are interrelated. I also, as stated at the beginning of the post, understand that data mined information is not final. However, life on hit implementation does have some problems that make it unwieldy and hard to understand for the common player. It needs some sort of change, if only being explained better on tooltips, before being rolled out as out only gear-able life taking skill.
I can definitely understand the issue people have with proc coefficients. I don't mind when a tooltip says "X has a chance to Y" without defining it when it comes, in particular, to skills that either hit bazillions of times, or that can be spammed tons of times...because at least if the proc coefficient isn't defined, you're still likely to get it to proc a certain amount of times in all those hits. But Life on Hit isn't a skill with a percentage chance, it's just very direct..."Each Hit adds +X Life." Boom. Done. That likely shouldn't have a proc, the "chance" isn't defined in that anywhere.
That being said, I'm willing to agree that procs on Life on Hit should be adjusted somewhat...I'm hesitant to say the proc should be removed, though. On the one hand, fast hitting skills and really high Attack Speed can probably end up amping this way up. Then again, even if Life on Hit efficiency is boosted huge, for high Vitality and high Life characters, even a good 2k Life on Hit may not be enough to seriously exploit it. It definitely wouldn't be as game-breaking as Life Steal is now, that's for sure, and would still require a good amount of attention put into Armor, Elemental Resistance, Block, Dodge, Vitality, Life, Life Regen, and other methods of staying alive.
While I don't think today's datamined changes express it, other batches might...the devs are kinda looking to buff skills (at least for some classes, not all) that reward a player with Life by spending resource. For instance, you'll notice my Monk uses Transcendence...has been for a long time, as I was able to raise my damage big time with the Skorn and Inna's pieces I found, and the gear I crafted, but never got around to adding in any Life Steal or Life on Hit. But I read in some of the datamined changes that the Life rewarded for Transcendence (at least as it looks now) is going to be buffed pretty huge. If they do that with other classes as well (I think the Witch Doctor might get that, though I don't think the Wizard is...card subject to change, though, don't quote me on that), Life on Hit won't need much of a change from where it is now...as the dev's idea behind it is for people to use things like Life on Hit as a booster, not a survivable aspect to life off of. Know what I mean? :-)
First they need to balance the game to where playing in hardest difficulty isn't completely reliant on having some form of LOH. Having good defense, good HP, life regen, health globes, should also be an effective way to gear. I'm not saying it has to be 1 to 1, but that you can make it work in other ways.
At least balancing Life on Hit and Life Regen are easier for Blizzard because they do not involve DPS as a variable. It is the same concept as balancing Reflect Damage to be a flat damage return. The less variables involved in balancing a mechanic the easier it becomes to balance.
2. Coefficient change/removal. With how life on hit currently functions, removing life steal may make several fast hitting, high coefficient skills mandatory as healing abilities. I'd like to see coefficients removed, there's no reason that, for example, rain of toads should return 80% of my life on hit and zombie bears return 20. The game is starting to bias away from hard hittin slow skills towards faster skills.
So you want every skill that hits 5 times a second to now give 5x the life of every skill that hits 1x per second?
Coefficients are *the* way to balance this, and they already do so better than the above sentence would suggest. They could be more transparent and balanced better, but I don't follow how removal is going to magically fix anything.
I can definitely understand the issue people have with proc coefficients. I don't mind when a tooltip says "X has a chance to Y" without defining it when it comes, in particular, to skills that either hit bazillions of times, or that can be spammed tons of times...because at least if the proc coefficient isn't defined, you're still likely to get it to proc a certain amount of times in all those hits. But Life on Hit isn't a skill with a percentage chance, it's just very direct..."Each Hit adds +X Life." Boom. Done. That likely shouldn't have a proc, the "chance" isn't defined in that anywhere.
I think what he means with hidden coefficients is that some abilities gain more from Life on Hit than others and that this should at least be indicated somewhere.
Blizzard should probably just aim to normalize the procs from all skills, so it turns into the same average procs per minute.
Of course that likely is what they already tried the first time, it just didnt work very well. Since some skills are quite a bit better for procs than others.
Maybe this time take the last step too, and make attack speed irrelevant for procs per minute.
I think I've read already somewhere that they intend to change how skills proc, so there are no must-have skills anymore to trigger stuff like loh or cm etc most efficient. they "want" to get all skills equal proc-wise
It was Wyatt and it was along the lines of "we don't want there to be a right choice." They plan on changing the coeffs for all abilities.
edit: It's also worth noting that they have mentioned they do not intend LOH or Life per spirit/fury spent to be the primary source of health regen/sustainability. There is likely to be big emphasis on health globes and + health from globes/potions.
Even now getting a single 12000 + health from globes/potions mod is a world of difference. If they do end up making elites drop health globes every 20-25% as they've suggested, it would mean we wouldn't need much secondary healing to get us from globe to globe.
2. Coefficient change/removal. With how life on hit currently functions, removing life steal may make several fast hitting, high coefficient skills mandatory as healing abilities. I'd like to see coefficients removed, there's no reason that, for example, rain of toads should return 80% of my life on hit and zombie bears return 20. The game is starting to bias away from hard hittin slow skills towards faster skills.
So you want every skill that hits 5 times a second to now give 5x the life of every skill that hits 1x per second?
Coefficients are *the* way to balance this, and they already do so better than the above sentence would suggest. They could be more transparent and balanced better, but I don't follow how removal is going to magically fix anything.
Current coefficients balance nothing, hence my post. The example I used is the exact opposite of coefficients balancing anything. The faster/ higher hits per second skill is rain of toads, and it has 4x the coefficient.
Maybe to clarify how this is messed up in plainer terms (still WD skills):
Acid cloud with no rune is approximately .5 proc coefficient. Each time it hits you get .5(LoH) in life returned.
Acid cloud with acid rain rune is +12 yard radius to acid cloud, and a change of coefficient to somewhere around .8.
These skills return their life on hit each time the acid pool ticks (so a lot).
For flavor we will add zombie charger: zombie bears. This skill is MUCH slower and also carries a sub 20% proc coefficient. Not only is it far slower than acid cloud in terms of damage interval, it also returns a lot less health per hit.
This is more what I was discussing. There is variance amongst the runes, as well as skills. Things function in a very hidden and non-intuitive manner. If console is any indication of where loot is going- there is LoH on gloves, pants, chests, belts, and bracers... It seems they are going to be pushing LoH as a pretty hard and viable stat. Now I know coefficients make sense for other procs, but when applied to life on hit, it makes a fairly intuitive stat much more confusing. It should, in my opinion, just be at face value... Or maybe a reduction based on difficulty. I expect a slow skill to return less health with life on hit... Because it hits slowly, not because the coefficient is terrible. There will be other life return solutions that will most likely be viable, but since they appear to be leaving LoH in game, shouldn't it be fixed to be more intuitive and functional?
Procs coefficients all changed to 1 - 500 Life on Hit is at least 500 LoH no matter what you use or how few targets you hit. Same goes for disabling effects.
Cap it so it doesn't go waaaaay overboard on multiple targets (but still allows it to proc off of 4-5 targets and have some benefit).
Skills that hit 500 times every second have their procs properly adjusted to be as close to 1 as possible.
2-handed Weapons increase proc coefficients by "x%" and Fast-hitting Weapons decrease proc coefficients by "y%", so there isn't such a huge gap between these (which makes 2-handers pretty much useless for these effects in such a fast paced game).
I'd like to see them go crazy with it. The current system isn't intuitive or deep, and makes balancing nearly impossible.
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1. Functionality transparency: life on hit is governed by hidden coefficients on every skill and rune. This makes choosing skills to function with it difficult. Please assist the player population in propery integrating life on hit choices into their gear.
2. Coefficient change/removal. With how life on hit currently functions, removing life steal may make several fast hitting, high coefficient skills mandatory as healing abilities. I'd like to see coefficients removed, there's no reason that, for example, rain of toads should return 80% of my life on hit and zombie bears return 20. The game is starting to bias away from hard hittin slow skills towards faster skills.
Those are my two issues with life on hit in its current iteration, and honestly they are interrelated. I also, as stated at the beginning of the post, understand that data mined information is not final. However, life on hit implementation does have some problems that make it unwieldy and hard to understand for the common player. It needs some sort of change, if only being explained better on tooltips, before being rolled out as out only gear-able life taking skill.
DiabloProgress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/mannequin-1116/Stitches/14628018
That being said, I'm willing to agree that procs on Life on Hit should be adjusted somewhat...I'm hesitant to say the proc should be removed, though. On the one hand, fast hitting skills and really high Attack Speed can probably end up amping this way up. Then again, even if Life on Hit efficiency is boosted huge, for high Vitality and high Life characters, even a good 2k Life on Hit may not be enough to seriously exploit it. It definitely wouldn't be as game-breaking as Life Steal is now, that's for sure, and would still require a good amount of attention put into Armor, Elemental Resistance, Block, Dodge, Vitality, Life, Life Regen, and other methods of staying alive.
Okay, I guess I can get on board, :-)
While I don't think today's datamined changes express it, other batches might...the devs are kinda looking to buff skills (at least for some classes, not all) that reward a player with Life by spending resource. For instance, you'll notice my Monk uses Transcendence...has been for a long time, as I was able to raise my damage big time with the Skorn and Inna's pieces I found, and the gear I crafted, but never got around to adding in any Life Steal or Life on Hit. But I read in some of the datamined changes that the Life rewarded for Transcendence (at least as it looks now) is going to be buffed pretty huge. If they do that with other classes as well (I think the Witch Doctor might get that, though I don't think the Wizard is...card subject to change, though, don't quote me on that), Life on Hit won't need much of a change from where it is now...as the dev's idea behind it is for people to use things like Life on Hit as a booster, not a survivable aspect to life off of. Know what I mean? :-)
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So you want every skill that hits 5 times a second to now give 5x the life of every skill that hits 1x per second?
Coefficients are *the* way to balance this, and they already do so better than the above sentence would suggest. They could be more transparent and balanced better, but I don't follow how removal is going to magically fix anything.
I think what he means with hidden coefficients is that some abilities gain more from Life on Hit than others and that this should at least be indicated somewhere.
Of course that likely is what they already tried the first time, it just didnt work very well. Since some skills are quite a bit better for procs than others.
Maybe this time take the last step too, and make attack speed irrelevant for procs per minute.
It was Wyatt and it was along the lines of "we don't want there to be a right choice." They plan on changing the coeffs for all abilities.
edit: It's also worth noting that they have mentioned they do not intend LOH or Life per spirit/fury spent to be the primary source of health regen/sustainability. There is likely to be big emphasis on health globes and + health from globes/potions.
Even now getting a single 12000 + health from globes/potions mod is a world of difference. If they do end up making elites drop health globes every 20-25% as they've suggested, it would mean we wouldn't need much secondary healing to get us from globe to globe.
Current coefficients balance nothing, hence my post. The example I used is the exact opposite of coefficients balancing anything. The faster/ higher hits per second skill is rain of toads, and it has 4x the coefficient.
Maybe to clarify how this is messed up in plainer terms (still WD skills):
Acid cloud with no rune is approximately .5 proc coefficient. Each time it hits you get .5(LoH) in life returned.
Acid cloud with acid rain rune is +12 yard radius to acid cloud, and a change of coefficient to somewhere around .8.
These skills return their life on hit each time the acid pool ticks (so a lot).
For flavor we will add zombie charger: zombie bears. This skill is MUCH slower and also carries a sub 20% proc coefficient. Not only is it far slower than acid cloud in terms of damage interval, it also returns a lot less health per hit.
This is more what I was discussing. There is variance amongst the runes, as well as skills. Things function in a very hidden and non-intuitive manner. If console is any indication of where loot is going- there is LoH on gloves, pants, chests, belts, and bracers... It seems they are going to be pushing LoH as a pretty hard and viable stat. Now I know coefficients make sense for other procs, but when applied to life on hit, it makes a fairly intuitive stat much more confusing. It should, in my opinion, just be at face value... Or maybe a reduction based on difficulty. I expect a slow skill to return less health with life on hit... Because it hits slowly, not because the coefficient is terrible. There will be other life return solutions that will most likely be viable, but since they appear to be leaving LoH in game, shouldn't it be fixed to be more intuitive and functional?
DiabloProgress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/mannequin-1116/Stitches/14628018
Cap it so it doesn't go waaaaay overboard on multiple targets (but still allows it to proc off of 4-5 targets and have some benefit).
Skills that hit 500 times every second have their procs properly adjusted to be as close to 1 as possible.
2-handed Weapons increase proc coefficients by "x%" and Fast-hitting Weapons decrease proc coefficients by "y%", so there isn't such a huge gap between these (which makes 2-handers pretty much useless for these effects in such a fast paced game).
I'd like to see them go crazy with it. The current system isn't intuitive or deep, and makes balancing nearly impossible.