Paragon 2.0 was one of the best change introduced to the game to reward players for their time but at it's current state, it pretty much end up as a flat-increase to primary stats because eventually everyone will max out the stats that are capped and put remaining points into primary stats.
Some of the problems with current functionality are:
You have useless utilities (e.g. gold find) which doesn't really help you in Greater Rifts or once you have billions of gold
You cannot spend Utilitiy paragon points on Core paragon stats even if you wanted to due to capping and restrictions per category
Having a cap on most paragon stat end up with everyone having those maxed out with only primary stats to spend on (e.g. no creativity / choice)
With next version of Paragon System, I would like to propose some changes that will not only address above issues but allowing Paragon System to open up massive number of ways to create your own builds and diversify the existing skills and item synergies.
Introducing Paragon System v.3.0
Goal of the new Paragon System is to make all under performing skills viable by lifting whatever major limitation / flaw of those skills and at the same time address pretty much all current outstanding issues that are limiting us from having build diversity, whether it's from gears (1h / 2h / shields) or skills. This makes your imagination the most important performance factor instead of number of paragon points you have.
There are 4 major categories with 6 paragon stats each (but no restriction on where you spend paragon points as with current system).
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Category : OFFENSIVE
Offensive Stat 1.
Each point reduce your damage done to more than 3 enemies by 0.5% but increases your damage to 3 or less by 2% (max 100 points)
This helps builds with massive AOE damage but very low single target damage.At max points = Sacrifice 50% AOE Damage for +200% S.T.Damage.
Offensive Stat 2.
Each point deals 0.1% of your elemental resistance as increased elemental damage of same type. Does not stack with existing bonus from gears (max 100 points)
At max points = 10% of your highest elemental resist (fire/cold/physical etc.) are added to elemental damage of same type. e.g. If you have 1000 cold resistance, it will add +100% (minus any cold damage bonus from gear) to cold damage. This opens up multi-elemental type builds.This stat will be more favorable to INT-primary classes (WIZ/WD) who gets all resist with primary stats as it should be, they are the elementals of the game, but it generally make use of single resistance secondary stat.
Offensive Stat 3.
Each point increases proc chance and multiplies damage of your Area Damage by 0.2% (max 100 points)
At max points = You will have 20% additional chance to proc area damage (=40%) and total area damage you deal are increased by 20% multiplicatively. This will synergize well with single target skills and single target paragon stat above.
Offensive Stat 4.
Moving every 1 yards increase your critical hit damage of your next critical hit by (0.01% per point) then reset (0.05% per point) second after successful critical hit (max 100 points)
At max points = 1% critical damage increase for each 1 yard moved allowing some serious initial impact through high cooldown spender and pet builds. Bonus is reset after 5 seconds of successful critical hit. Mobility skills such as teleport suddenly becomes interesting.
Offensive Stat 5.
Each point grant you 10% weapon damgage as thorn damage. Thorn damage in gears are now changed to (thorn stat / 1000)% chance to proc thorn. (max 100 points)
At max points = 1000% weapon damage to attacker per thorn proc. e.g. If you have 40000 thorn damage from gear, you now have (40000/1000=40%) chance to proc thorn that deal 1000% weapon damage when hit.
Offensive Stat 6.
Each point increases your base damage of weapon by 2 (max 100 points)
At max points = Your weapon base damage is increased by 200. Dagger has 323.25 average base damage so maxing this paragon stat effectively increase your damage by 61.8%! This paragon stat makes fast weapons like dagger or one-had weapon in general more competitive against 2H weapons. 2H weapons benefit less from this stat. For example, 1 aps 2H mace has 1830.5 average damage and maxing this stat only grants 10.9% increased damage.
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Category : DEFENSIVE
It is important that defensive not only increase your defence but also improve the playstyle and effectiveness of your offensive ability indirectly to be a worthy competitor against other categories.
Defensive Stat 1.
Each point increase your chance to dodge by 0.1%. Every time you dodge an attack, you get (0.2 per points) movement speed for 1 second (max 100 point)
At max points = You get 10% chance to dodge and each dodge grant you 20% move speed bonus for 1 second.
Defensive Stat 2.
Each point increase your chance to block attacks with shield by 0.5% and reduces damage received from blocked attack by 0.2% per point (max 100 point)
At max points = You have 50% chance to block attacks as well as 20% damage reduction from blocked attack. This make shield viable option for all classes and further improves crusaders offensive skills based on shield block chance as well as defensive passives using block chance.
Defensive Stat 3.
Each point reduces duration you are affected by Crowd Control by 0.5% and damage taken during Crowd Control by 0.8% (max 100 points)
At max points = You will have 50% reduction in duration of Crowd Control and take 80% less damage while under Crowd Control. This will be favorable defensive stat for those who decide not to embrace perma CC immunity build setup.
Defensive Stat 4.
Each point increases your Recovery stats (e.g. life per hit, life regeneration) effectiveness by 2% (max 100 points)
At max points = You will have 3 times the life per hit, life regeneration, life per resource spent stat invested.
Defensive Stat 5.
Each point increases your chance to dodge fatal attacks by 0.1%. Every death dodge increase your damage by 10% until the stack is reset upon death (max 100 points)
At max points = You have 10% chance to dodge attacks that would normally have killed you instantly. No internal cooldown to this proc. Each death dodge increasing your damage until it is reset upon death.
Defensive Stat 6.
Each point increases your armor and resistances by 0.5% (max 100 points)
This is the primary base defence boost. At max points = 50% increased all resistances and armor stat invested.
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Category : UTILITY
Utility Stat 1.
Each point increase your movement speed by 0.5% (max 100 points)
At max points = 50% increased movement speed. Bonus MS from this paragon is added on top of your current MS speed. e.g. If you have 12% already on boots, you will have 62% MS with full 1000 points assigned. This will synergize well with mobility offensive stat #4 above.
Utility Stat 2.
Each point increase duration of your Crowd Control abilities by 1% (max 100 points). Duration bonus is halved for elites.
This will be powerful paragon stat choice for support roles in group play. Elites CC reduction is respected and this bonus is applied as multiplication to existing CC reduction so that it does not grant perma CC. At max points = Doubles your CC abilities duration.
Utility Stat 3.
Each point increase chance that you will be refunded 50% of your resource spent by 0.5% (max 100 points)
At max points = You have 50% chance that 50% of your resource spent will be refunded. This makes faster attack speed build more viable. Note this is a refund so life per resource spent is not affected.
Utility Stat 4.
Each point increase chance that your skill cooldown will be reduced by 10% of remaining cooldown by 0.05% (max 100 points)
At max points = You have 10% chance that your attack or skill reduces remaining cooldown of all your skills by 5%. For example, when this procs, and you had 30 seconds remaining, you will now have 28.5 seconds remaining. If you have 5 seconds remaining you will have 4.75 seconds remaining after the proc.
Utility Stat 5.
Each point increase item stat bonuses of gears (excludes set items) by 0.2%(max 100 points)
Makes all rubbish gears viable. At max points = 20% extra benefit from all item stats (attack speed, stats, crits, cdr, rcr) from gears. e.g. Item with 500 str, 10% crit chance, 50% crit damage, 20% Elemental Damage will provide (600 str, 12% crit chance, 60% crit damage, 24% elemental damage)
Utility Stat 6.
Each point increase the bonus stats from follower gears by 3% (max 100 points)
At max points = Your follower will have 300% bonuses they receive from their gears. This will make them more competitive against invincible follower mode as they can use their CC skills much more often, do more damage and survive better when they have access to all skills or have 50% reduced cooldown which will benefit the additional CDR or AS from their gears.
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Category : SKILLS
Skills Stat 1.
Each different elemental damage type you deal increases your damage by0.1% per point for 3 seconds, cooldown refreshed upon stack (max 100 points)
At max points with 4 different elemental type skills you use within last 3 seconds, you will deal 40% additional damage. Encourage multi elemental builds.
Skills Stat 2.
Each point increases chance that your resource generator attacks will deal double damage by 0.5% (max 100 points)
At max points = You have 50% chance that resource generators will deal double the skill weapon damage.
Skills Stat 3.
Each point increases your DoT skill damage by 0.1% for every 1% of health you are missing (max 100 points)
At max points = If you have 95% health missing, grants your DoT skills 950% damage boost! Generally improves the current under-performing DoT skills (i.e. all of them). Especially for classes with DoT build with temporary but massive damage reduction(e.g. WD spirit walk, Barb rend with new Nerves of Steel, Crusader Falling sword with Stop time etc. at the right moment)
Skills Stat 4.
Each point increases damage and resource cost done by each stacked (continuous) channeled attack by 0.1% (max 100)
At max point = For example you have stacked channels 20 times, you will deal 200% increased damage but the channel will cost 200% resource cost. This will make faster attack speed build viable for channeled skills as well as resource cost reduction a favorable stat. You will be able to do effective short bursts even with channeled skills at the cost of requiring additional resource generation methods.
Skills Stat 5.
Each point increase the area size of all your attacks by 0.1 yard (max 100 points)
At max points = You will do 10 yard increase to any skills you deal. Single target attack becomes 10 yard AOE with full damage. This will synergize very well with Area Damage as well as improving single target skills to be more viable.
Skills Stat 6.
Each point reduces the area size of all your attacks by 0.5 yard (minimum single target) but increases the damage done by 0.5% per point. (max 100 points)
At max points = You will have 50 yards reduced radius of all attacks but deal 50% additional damage. This makes AOE damage more viable. Note the bonus is restricted to skill's AOE radius. So radius cannot be reduced below single target radius. Basically you will only get maximum benefit if your skill has 50 yards or more damage radius. Thus making this more favorable to larger AOE skills and runes that increase radius more attractive.
You can add points to both of above two stats to create a mixed and most effective damage output of your skills to the desirable radius. e.g. skill with 40 yards radius can be increased to 50 yards using the maxed out stat #5 then also max out stat #6 to create a single target concentrated damage spender from the 40-yard AOE skill.
Well I hope you will also see huge benefit and diversity these paragon stats will bring to the game. Of course they need some fine tuning but hopefully you can see how these address major build-stopping flaws we have in the game due to skill and gear mechanics.
Paragon 2.0 was one of the best change introduced to the game to reward players for their time but at it's current state, it pretty much end up as a flat-increase to primary stats because eventually everyone will max out the stats that are capped and put remaining points into primary stats.
Some of the problems with current functionality are:
With next version of Paragon System, I would like to propose some changes that will not only address above issues but allowing Paragon System to open up massive number of ways to create your own builds and diversify the existing skills and item synergies.
Introducing Paragon System v.3.0
Goal of the new Paragon System is to make all under performing skills viable by lifting whatever major limitation / flaw of those skills and at the same time address pretty much all current outstanding issues that are limiting us from having build diversity, whether it's from gears (1h / 2h / shields) or skills. This makes your imagination the most important performance factor instead of number of paragon points you have.
There are 4 major categories with 6 paragon stats each (but no restriction on where you spend paragon points as with current system).
--
Category : OFFENSIVE
-----------------------------------------
Category : DEFENSIVE
It is important that defensive not only increase your defence but also improve the playstyle and effectiveness of your offensive ability indirectly to be a worthy competitor against other categories.
-----------------------------------------
Category : UTILITY
-----------------------------------------
Category : SKILLS
You can add points to both of above two stats to create a mixed and most effective damage output of your skills to the desirable radius. e.g. skill with 40 yards radius can be increased to 50 yards using the maxed out stat #5 then also max out stat #6 to create a single target concentrated damage spender from the 40-yard AOE skill.
Well I hope you will also see huge benefit and diversity these paragon stats will bring to the game. Of course they need some fine tuning but hopefully you can see how these address major build-stopping flaws we have in the game due to skill and gear mechanics.
Official forum thread: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/16719302314
max
Introducing a sort of "trade-off" to the Paragon system sounds like a really neat concept. Interesting perspective.
Anything to spice up the Paragon system later on is a good suggestion imho =]
@Zero Thanks! Just added some Paragon Tab U.I. previews as TLDR