I do not believe in the existence of weak builds, I desire a game so well designed that there are none.
This would of course be a perfect game.. and none of us will ever see it. However I do believe that weak builds can be relegated to being the minority, by good game design.
I think you underestimate peoples creativity, simply because everyone can have a nice pet doesn't mean they will want one. The WD has plenty of powerful crowd control abilities that can be relied on for survivability, not to mention several traits to make him more beefy. And lets not forget that trait points are extremely limited, much much more so than skill points. We won't have traits to max out your skills, pets and resource management/survivabilty all at once, there simply aren't enough points to go around.
We also need to remember that +pet damage is only a pseudo defensive stat, because it doesn't directly increase your survivablity. Having a dedicated +skill/pet damage stat doesn't give you some magical survivabilty buff, its all damage. With the happy side effect of a possibly tanky little summon. (which might no even hold aggro for all we know)
But how much pet tanking is a factor is something that could swing far one way or the other. It could be really great or totally useless, and I get the feeling that will be not only a function of how much you pumped the summon skill but that your traits will have a huge impact and possibly your defensive stats as well.
Of course until we know base stats and scaling numbers this is all conjecture, and theory will only go so far in proving the viability of different systems as numbers changes can have such a drastic skewing effect on these arguments.
I truelly believe the summons power (dps potential, survability, et...) must depend more on itens then traits and skills, like anything else in the game. Creat great summons by only pumping up skills and traits might creat a unbalance in class itemization and it's communly known that blizz want all classes equally scalable and item dependent.
In my opnion, the more specific the gear, the better. Different classes and builds should look for entirely different set pieces. Everyone hated how one armor worked for every class in D2, how one weapon was the best for multiple casters (hoto), how everyone used CTA in the secondary weapon slot, etc... Imo if all WD builds use the same freaking staff the game will have a terrible itemisation.
One way to force different builds use different items is execly creating different mods that the same class need. What you called headache in your first post i call the essense of the game lol (farm to build new characters).
And restriction might actually improve the amount of viable builds. IF one restriction destroy a proeminenet and obviously stronger strategy, you creat the possibility of people playing with the weaker ones, creating diversity. For exemple: not allowing the concentration aura to increase blessed hammer damage (restriction) will surely nerf it's damage and allowing for more types of paladins to play (diversity) while also forcing hammer builds too choose different auras (more diversity).
And yeah. Viable builds = builds that are not severely outshined by others. I don't take weak builds in consideration because majority of players will ignore then.
I do not believe in the existence of weak builds, I desire a game so well designed that there are none.
This would of course be a perfect game.. and none of us will ever see it. However I do believe that weak builds can be relegated to being the minority, by good game design.
I think you underestimate peoples creativity, simply because everyone can have a nice pet doesn't mean they will want one. The WD has plenty of powerful crowd control abilities that can be relied on for survivability, not to mention several traits to make him more beefy. And lets not forget that trait points are extremely limited, much much more so than skill points. We won't have traits to max out your skills, pets and resource management/survivabilty all at once, there simply aren't enough points to go around.
We also need to remember that +pet damage is only a pseudo defensive stat, because it doesn't directly increase your survivablity. Having a dedicated +skill/pet damage stat doesn't give you some magical survivabilty buff, its all damage. With the happy side effect of a possibly tanky little summon. (which might no even hold aggro for all we know)
But how much pet tanking is a factor is something that could swing far one way or the other. It could be really great or totally useless, and I get the feeling that will be not only a function of how much you pumped the summon skill but that your traits will have a huge impact and possibly your defensive stats as well.
Of course until we know base stats and scaling numbers this is all conjecture, and theory will only go so far in proving the viability of different systems as numbers changes can have such a drastic skewing effect on these arguments.
I truelly believe the summons power (dps potential, survability, et...) must depend more on itens then traits and skills, like anything else in the game. Creat great summons by only pumping up skills and traits might creat a unbalance in class itemization and it's communly known that blizz want all classes equally scalable and item dependent.
In my opnion, the more specific the gear, the better. Different classes and builds should look for entirely different set pieces. Everyone hated how one armor worked for every class in D2, how one weapon was the best for multiple casters (hoto), how everyone used CTA in the secondary weapon slot, etc... Imo if all WD builds use the same freaking staff the game will have a terrible itemisation.
One way to force different builds use different items is execly creating different mods that the same class need. What you called headache in your first post i call the essense of the game lol (farm to build new characters)
How can you not see this decreases the ammount of viable builds? And the itemization was a problem with the items, not the system. What's bad about there being a legendary WD weapon? Really, tell me, because it's not like it would be the best weapon for every class.
All skills should be effected by items equally. If there's a problem with the skill, fix the skill and don't do it in a roundabout manner like items.
This does not decrease the amount of viable builds. This decrease the amount builds, while increasing the amount of viable builds. The itemization is a problem with the system when everyone is looking for the same mods. Diablo 2 had a wide variety of eqipaments and the items were brilhantly designed, but the system only favored one kind of build.
You can't analyse the skill alone without the context of other skills, items and traits existent. The skills are not choosed because of it's power. The skill is used because of it's power inside certain strategy and metagame context. And i'm not telling to fix a skill with items. I'm just saying that there should be items that buff summons without buffing your spells, items that buff spells without buffing summons and items that buffs both (in a smaller scale). I'm wishing for the witch doctor to have many paths in terms of item builds(diversity) instead of a straight forward one.
Personaly i find really retarded if everyone of the same class choose the same items. Theres no strategy, no effort and no satisfaction in just picking the item with bigger numbers. A game with good itemization is a game were whenever you choose something, you loose in another aspect. The trade off between multiple characteristics (spell damage, cc disponility, defence, mobility, summons, etc..) should exist in all dimensions of the characters (items, skills and traits).
Less restrictions allow for more diversity.
Bullshit. Things are not that simple.
The automatic stat destribution is an perfect exemple of an restriction that was added in the game to promote more diversity. If people would be able to choose their stats by thenself surely a OP stat build would arise soon, destroying many skill combination possibilities.
I fully expect to be able to spec into high dps summons as well as tanky ones, so I do not see summons as some sort of CC spell or survivabilty measure. (I also don't care for the sacrifice skill and won't be using it)
What comes to my mind is a scenario where having to choose between 2 +damage stats punishes hybrid builds by only offering mediocre damage from both sources.
While in stark contrast summon only or spell only builds obtain full damage from all of there skills.
I think that would make hybrid builds non-viable in pvp due to sub par dps output and I don't like that. Mainly because it restricts build choice to a single "school" of skills in order to achieve competitive dps.
Take a second to in vision summons not as just solid tanks, but as having glass cannon variants and everything in between. And where each summon falls on that spectrum being decided by traits and runestones NOT by the summon skill itself.
Bullshit. Things are not that simple.
The automatic stat destribution is an perfect exemple of an restriction that was added in the game to promote more diversity. If people would be able to choose their stats by thenself surely a OP stat build would arise soon, destroying many skill combination possibilities.
The fact that stats were imbalanced in D2 wasn't a systemic issue with personal stat allocation. The problem was that the stats were poorly balanced against one another.
It is entirely possible to create a balanced stat system WITH the feature of personal stat allocation. Blizzard simply executed it poorly.
I fully expect to be able to spec into high dps summons as well as tanky ones, so I do not see summons as some sort of CC spell or survivabilty measure. (I also don't care for the sacrifice skill and won't be using it)
What comes to my mind is a scenario where having to choose between 2 +damage stats punishes hybrid builds by only offering mediocre damage from both sources.
While in stark contrast summon only or spell only builds obtain full damage from all of there skills.
I think that would make hybrid builds non-viable in pvp due to sub par dps output and I don't like that. Mainly because it restricts build choice to a single "school" of skills in order to achieve competitive dps.
Take a second to in vision summons not as just solid tanks, but as having glass cannon variants and everything in between. And where each summon falls on that spectrum being decided by traits and runestones NOT by the summon skill itself.
I think they can easilly avoided that with a smart item and traits design. Traits that buffs both summons and spells already exist. They could easilly implement items that increase both summon and spell damage, while also adding items that increase only one fo the two, but with small amount of other bonuses.
Imo all three kind of Witchdoctors should be able to be have a chance in PvP. If you don't take firepower from the hybrids, the other two are just seriously outshined. DPS is easilly traded by utility and variety in arena pvp games.
1. Mixing summon and spells will decrease your damage potential but increase your versatility. In Diablo DPS is hardly the most important stat. Resistance, mobility and versatility is just important as damage or even more. To be honest, i'm not even taking a pure summoner WD in consideration because he just don't have enough summon skills for that. I'm thinking about the balance between WD with zombie dogs/gargantua and WD that choose to not play then.
If the WD that use summons can throw firebombs of the same strength as the WD that choose to not use summons, the second build is outshined by the first. This happen because in diablo, the gain of having 2 different damage skills is much smaller then the gain of having a new type of skill (summon, debuff, buff, etc...). Basically because one skill like Fireblast will problably be enough to kill anything in the game (since theres no immunities in D3) while a new kind of skill "stack" with ur main attack skill.
2. The thing is, we are not analysing skills, we are analysing builds and builds = traits + skills + items. And skills can't be balanced out of the build context, wich include items.
You think D3 items will be like what world of warcraft ones ? You truelly think you will decide: wow i need spell damage. Then all your items will be +spell damage, and thats it ?
Why pick a few items with +summon level would make your spells useless ? It's not like you will choose only one mod and stick with it forever. Mix different mods was a 100% viable strategy in D2 (and actually the best strategy in most cases) I don't see why it wouldn't work like that in D3.
In other words, pick 1 or 2 legendary items that improve your summons instead of picking 1 or 2 legendary items that improve your spell damage would be a interesting choice IMO.
Now if you think good itemization is: Spell Damage for the Wiz and the WD, Weapon Damage for the Monk and the DH and 1/2 HP + 1/2 Weapon damage for the barbarian, then thats your opnion. I'm hoping for something much better then that.
3. Like what ? Anything that favor one kind of strategy will remove build versatity. It's like you guys want every item to cover all your skills equally, so you don't have to make any choices. Just because one of your skills are a little weaker because you didn't pick all items to buff it doens't mean it's useless. Only a really poorly designed stupid game work like that.
4. What item req. have to do with stats alocation ? They could've easilly made the requeriments only based on level and still allow manual stat alocation. But they implementated a restriction (stat restriction) in order to make the game more diverse.
I didn't see this anywhere throughout reading this post, so I figured I'd throw it in, sorry if I missed it somewhere. With the new passives system, a passive called Fierce Loyalty has been introduced for the Witch Doctor- "Fierce Loyalty: All your pets gain % of the benefit of your items." I obviously can't say how exactly those stats are going to benefit your pets, though. From what I've seen in the recent beta streams, the stats screen shows things like attack giving % based boosts to all damage done, where as defense is giving % based reduction to damage taken. Precision giving critical hit %. Vitality though is just a boost to hitpoints, and generally a small one per point. But pets will be able to scale with your gear to some degree.
If you have something to report about someone's post, use the proper function for that, and let the mods decide whether it's a necroed thread or just a post continuing a discussion on a thread whose subject might still be valid. Pointless posts will not help anyone, specially when they are dead wrong.
Now, Gallowbraid, I know your post is on topic, since that passive is directly related to Summon Scaling, but still I'd like to suggest, if you want to further discuss the effects of that specific Witch Doctor passive, that you create a new thread so that people can focus specificaly on that point, instead of reading the walls of text previously posted in this thread, and which focus on a different aspect of that same discussion (Summon Scaling).
If by any means your thread is flagged as a duplicate and it's closed by another mod, let me know.
I truelly believe the summons power (dps potential, survability, et...) must depend more on itens then traits and skills, like anything else in the game. Creat great summons by only pumping up skills and traits might creat a unbalance in class itemization and it's communly known that blizz want all classes equally scalable and item dependent.
In my opnion, the more specific the gear, the better. Different classes and builds should look for entirely different set pieces. Everyone hated how one armor worked for every class in D2, how one weapon was the best for multiple casters (hoto), how everyone used CTA in the secondary weapon slot, etc... Imo if all WD builds use the same freaking staff the game will have a terrible itemisation.
One way to force different builds use different items is execly creating different mods that the same class need. What you called headache in your first post i call the essense of the game lol (farm to build new characters).
And restriction might actually improve the amount of viable builds. IF one restriction destroy a proeminenet and obviously stronger strategy, you creat the possibility of people playing with the weaker ones, creating diversity. For exemple: not allowing the concentration aura to increase blessed hammer damage (restriction) will surely nerf it's damage and allowing for more types of paladins to play (diversity) while also forcing hammer builds too choose different auras (more diversity).
And yeah. Viable builds = builds that are not severely outshined by others. I don't take weak builds in consideration because majority of players will ignore then.
This does not decrease the amount of viable builds. This decrease the amount builds, while increasing the amount of viable builds. The itemization is a problem with the system when everyone is looking for the same mods. Diablo 2 had a wide variety of eqipaments and the items were brilhantly designed, but the system only favored one kind of build.
You can't analyse the skill alone without the context of other skills, items and traits existent. The skills are not choosed because of it's power. The skill is used because of it's power inside certain strategy and metagame context. And i'm not telling to fix a skill with items. I'm just saying that there should be items that buff summons without buffing your spells, items that buff spells without buffing summons and items that buffs both (in a smaller scale). I'm wishing for the witch doctor to have many paths in terms of item builds(diversity) instead of a straight forward one.
Personaly i find really retarded if everyone of the same class choose the same items. Theres no strategy, no effort and no satisfaction in just picking the item with bigger numbers. A game with good itemization is a game were whenever you choose something, you loose in another aspect. The trade off between multiple characteristics (spell damage, cc disponility, defence, mobility, summons, etc..) should exist in all dimensions of the characters (items, skills and traits).
Bullshit. Things are not that simple.
The automatic stat destribution is an perfect exemple of an restriction that was added in the game to promote more diversity. If people would be able to choose their stats by thenself surely a OP stat build would arise soon, destroying many skill combination possibilities.
What comes to my mind is a scenario where having to choose between 2 +damage stats punishes hybrid builds by only offering mediocre damage from both sources.
While in stark contrast summon only or spell only builds obtain full damage from all of there skills.
I think that would make hybrid builds non-viable in pvp due to sub par dps output and I don't like that. Mainly because it restricts build choice to a single "school" of skills in order to achieve competitive dps.
Take a second to in vision summons not as just solid tanks, but as having glass cannon variants and everything in between. And where each summon falls on that spectrum being decided by traits and runestones NOT by the summon skill itself.
The fact that stats were imbalanced in D2 wasn't a systemic issue with personal stat allocation. The problem was that the stats were poorly balanced against one another.
It is entirely possible to create a balanced stat system WITH the feature of personal stat allocation. Blizzard simply executed it poorly.
I think they can easilly avoided that with a smart item and traits design. Traits that buffs both summons and spells already exist. They could easilly implement items that increase both summon and spell damage, while also adding items that increase only one fo the two, but with small amount of other bonuses.
Imo all three kind of Witchdoctors should be able to be have a chance in PvP. If you don't take firepower from the hybrids, the other two are just seriously outshined. DPS is easilly traded by utility and variety in arena pvp games.
If the WD that use summons can throw firebombs of the same strength as the WD that choose to not use summons, the second build is outshined by the first. This happen because in diablo, the gain of having 2 different damage skills is much smaller then the gain of having a new type of skill (summon, debuff, buff, etc...). Basically because one skill like Fireblast will problably be enough to kill anything in the game (since theres no immunities in D3) while a new kind of skill "stack" with ur main attack skill.
2. The thing is, we are not analysing skills, we are analysing builds and builds = traits + skills + items. And skills can't be balanced out of the build context, wich include items.
You think D3 items will be like what world of warcraft ones ? You truelly think you will decide: wow i need spell damage. Then all your items will be +spell damage, and thats it ?
Why pick a few items with +summon level would make your spells useless ? It's not like you will choose only one mod and stick with it forever. Mix different mods was a 100% viable strategy in D2 (and actually the best strategy in most cases) I don't see why it wouldn't work like that in D3.
In other words, pick 1 or 2 legendary items that improve your summons instead of picking 1 or 2 legendary items that improve your spell damage would be a interesting choice IMO.
Now if you think good itemization is: Spell Damage for the Wiz and the WD, Weapon Damage for the Monk and the DH and 1/2 HP + 1/2 Weapon damage for the barbarian, then thats your opnion. I'm hoping for something much better then that.
3. Like what ? Anything that favor one kind of strategy will remove build versatity. It's like you guys want every item to cover all your skills equally, so you don't have to make any choices. Just because one of your skills are a little weaker because you didn't pick all items to buff it doens't mean it's useless. Only a really poorly designed stupid game work like that.
4. What item req. have to do with stats alocation ? They could've easilly made the requeriments only based on level and still allow manual stat alocation. But they implementated a restriction (stat restriction) in order to make the game more diverse.
Now, Gallowbraid, I know your post is on topic, since that passive is directly related to Summon Scaling, but still I'd like to suggest, if you want to further discuss the effects of that specific Witch Doctor passive, that you create a new thread so that people can focus specificaly on that point, instead of reading the walls of text previously posted in this thread, and which focus on a different aspect of that same discussion (Summon Scaling).
If by any means your thread is flagged as a duplicate and it's closed by another mod, let me know.
Couldn't help but thinking it was just a sarcastic post, since there was no opinion about what he posted.