This is an idea for management of classes as unique characters but also as customizable and generally open ended. I rewrote what I did in the "So... the other 3 classes?" thread. I'm sorry for The Great Wall of Text. The important stuff is after the text anyway, this is more of an intro, explaining why did I make this system in the first place.
My problem with Diablo II is the weakness of attributes. The vast majority of the builds out there involves pumping Vitality for health, and Dexterity for chance-to-block. Strength is not used to increase damage, it is used to wear heavy armor, and Energy is largely ignored all together. I tried to find out what do attributes in Diablo II do, actually, and it's somewhat hard to find, if anyone has this information, I'd want to take a look at it.
In Diablo I, increasing STR led to increase in melee damage, increasing DEX led to increase in ranged damage, and I never used sorcerers so I am not sure if MAG increased their damage, as well. I generally expected to see the same concept in Diablo II, but it came out drastically different. In truth, attribute points don't really matter anymore, and the game switched onto skills.
The problem with Diablo II is that many things are disbalanced, restrictive, and sometimes very linear. For instance, every class can get their chance-to-block very high, and since nobody really needs ENG, they don't mind putting points into DEX. We get Sorceresses running around with shields. Whether or not it's realistic in the world of Sanctuary I can't really know but I guess they made one-handed orbs for a reason. Still, I think the fact that every class seems to be wearing a shield in most builds says that there is something wrong with shield block.
Another thing that I really dislike is the way the Amazon was made. 2/3 of her skills are geared to specific weapons. In truth, the Amazon is not all that far away from the Sorceress. The arrow, spear, and javelin skills do not really depend on physical damage, or they depend on pure weapon damage. In other words, you are quite well of with walking around with a level 1 javelin as long as you have all those javelin skills. Is the Amazon an Amazon, or a Sorceress in disguise?
With this is that it makes the character extremely limited in weapon choice. When you make your Amazon, you have to decide: bow/crossbow, javelin, or spear. You cannot use javelin skills with throwing axes or knives, nor empower a sword with lighting. You are glued to those 3 weapons. The Amazon has never saw any other weapon except bow, javelin, and spear? Surely she may not be as adept with them, but it does not mean her skills would not totally work.
Not to mention that the developers totally got away with the Amazon by just making elemental spells from her weapons. Multishot, Strafe, and Guided Arrow are the only truly interesting spells.
In contrast, the Paladin was built more openly. Skills such as Sacrifice, Zeal, Vengeance do not require a sword, you can just as well use an axe, or two-handed hammer. I often used hammers and scepters because of their +50% against undead bonus. The only skills that the paladin has that restrict in weapon choice is Smite and Holy Shield, but these skills are a minority, not a majority, allowing the player to either go with shields or go without, and even with shields he can use any one-handed weapon. If it wasn't for ridiculous shield block and weak two-handed weapons perhaps more players would go for 2-handed weapons in Paladins.
What else. Heavy armor. Many, many people like to go for STR even as mages to be able to wear heavy armor, or maybe Ring Mail. The speed penalty doesn't seem to stop them. Under exceptional circumstances a Sorceress wearing heavy armor is fine but mostly I imagine spellcasters as weak, slow, but cunning and deadly.
What I propose is a more complex and diverse attribute system that would make players think more about their attributes, as well as pay attention not just to their build order, but also to the weapons and armor that they are equipping (considering Enigmas and uber-super-wow-power axes are not present in Diablo III in high abundance).
The idea is that every character gets different bonuses from increasing STR, DEX, VIT, and ENG. This is a rough example of what it would look like. This isn't anything that's easy to balance, mind you, and I don't want to spend my time on it, my goal is to describe the general idea. So don't give me: "that's too much regen you noob that's totally disbalanced!" These calculations are ethereal and not based on DII, but I did use the DII chars for simplicity.
These are weapon specifications:
Heavy Melee: Any melee 2-handed weapon except Spear and Staff, including all polearms except spears; most one handed weapons.
Heavy Ranged: Crossbow, heavy throwing axe
Light Melee: spears, staffs, hand axes, short swords, knives, all daggers, scimitars, maces, clubs.
Light Ranged: All bows, most throwing weapons (including javelins) except heavy axes.
Chance-to-block for all classes maxes at 75%
All other properties never max
Armor - this is my lousy attempt to give VIT some more use. Armor is something used in RoM (Rage of Mages) as an addition to Defense. While Defense decides how often people will miss you, Armor decides what damage does your character actually absorb when he's finally hit. It roughly makes sense because the healthier you are, the harder your skin and bone is etc., but generally it makes no sense... you decide.
Speed is speed, it's a complex parameter to deal with without some kind of offset, so I use percentages, but I think it's also tied to Vitality because Vitality affects Stamina, and Stamina is somewhat close to how endurant your character is, hence, how fast he can move. (you may try to say that endurance makes people run longer, not faster, but since they are wearing armor and everything, endurance is going to matter in making sure they don't slow down as much with it)
When I say heavy throwing axe, I mean a pretty large throwing axe that many people in our world wouldn't be able to even pick up, let alone throw. http://www.swordsandarmor.com/images/AX882433_Executioners_Axe.jpg
Not THAT big but somewhat in the vicinity of an average one-handed melee axe. These require awful amounts of STR to use, so they would be barb-only and cause massive damage, and thus bonuses to them are a bit lower than to heavy melee. These are for your axe throwing barb.
As you should know, in DII certain classes were disadvantaged against using certain weapons by speed. We could mess around more with this. Make an amazon slow with axes. Make a paladin quick with swords and maces. And so on. Preferably, make hte speed differences less BIG as "fast, very fast", but more like put something in between those two, because in DII "fast" and "very fast" were very different. As long as these restrictions are not rigid and do not restrict a character from using a given weapon, just make him vaguely worse off. Vaguely, enough to make hybrids possible.
The efficiency percentages (see Paladin) are recombined. Efficiency is not based of your "base" condition, but of the original condition which is Base + any bonuses + pre-existing efficiency. The reason I did this is because once a skill gets to 500% and such, improving it makes little difference because the base damage is still as low as it has been, making putting point here for borderline skill improvement pretty ineffective. Charge is an example of this.
Barbarian:
+1 STR
+1 damage for heavy melee
+.70 damage for heavy ranged (+.30 for crossbow)
+.10 damage for light melee
+.05 damage for light ranged
+1 DEX
+75 to attack rating for heavy melee
+.30 damage for heavy ranged; +30 to attack rating (+.10 for crossbow and +10 to attack rating for crossbow)
+.15 damage for light melee; +5 to attack rating
+.10 damage for light ranged; +5 to attack rating
+1 to Defense
+.15% more chance-to-block (requires 500 DEX for 75% chance-to-block)
+1 VIT
+5 to Life
+.2 to Life Regeneration
+.3 to Armor
+.3% more Speed
+1 ENG
+2 to Mana
+1 to Mana Regeneration
Comments: the barbarian is more geared towards using heavy weaponry and is not too agile or skilled with the light stuff. He is also OK for throwing axes but has a penalty with crossbows. He is not all that good with a shield. The barbarian is the only class who has primary life regeneration. He also has high mana regeneration because most of his skills require little of it, and I hate to see a barbarian drinking blue pots or putting points into ENG. He can put points there for a big capacity but there won't be any point to it since his skills don't require a lot of it and he regenerates fast. Realistically, I'd use stamina instead but that's a whole other story and is for some other thread.
The barbarian is able to dual wield any one handed weapons without any penalty whatsoever. Most of his skills are not weapon-geared and do rely on the damage the weapon deals, so I am pretty happy with the way he was in DII.
Paladin
+1 STR
+.75 damage for heavy melee
+.20 damage for heavy ranged
+.20 damage for light melee
+.05 damage for light ranged
+.5 to Smite damage
+1 DEX
+.5 damage for heavy meleee; +90 to attack rating for heavy melee
+.90 damage for heavy ranged; +40 to attack rating (.30 for heavy throwing axe and +10 to attack rating for heavy throwing axe)
+.30 damage for light melee; +20 to attack rating
+.15 damage for light ranged; +20 to attack rating
+5 to Defense
+.4% more chance-to-block (requires 188 DEX for 75% chance-to-block)
+1 VIT
+4.5 to Life
+.5 to Armor
+.2% more Speed
+1 ENG
+4 to Mana
+.5 to Mana Regeneration
+1 to damage for divine spells
+.15% more efficiency to divine spells.
Comments: the paladin can be a balanced warrior, given his good defense and shield block that come from dexterity, or he can be a holy man, with high energy and powerful heavenly spells. Or a combination of both, of course. He is also good with crossbows because I felt like it. He has the best chance-to-block improvement percentage. 188 DEX to max is good enough for me, especially consdering that a paladin can make great use of DEX. He gets a damage bonus from it, unlike the barb. He also has higher attack rating for most weapons because he is not as hot-headed and would place his blows with more attention.
The .15% efficency thing means that auras work better, basically. So, if your aura is +10 defense, an extra point in ENG would make it 10 + 10 x .0015 = 10.015. Remember that it affects ALL spells and abilities categorized as Divine, and in case of damage dealing spells, it stacks additionally. ENG is not balanced at this point, you can see it pretty clearly, but I don't think it's THAT hard to do.
I am happy with his abilities, if one wants to go for smite they'd really go for STR this time because Smite is NOT a divine spell in my book. Holy shield is, Smite isn't. There would be small modifications like these for many classes, so that attributes would affect skills.
Moving on to some spellcaster:
Sorceress
+1 STR
+.5 damage for heavy melee
+.1 damage for heavy ranged
+.10 damage for light melee
+.10 damage for light ranged
+1 DEX
+.5 damage for heavy meleee; +5 to attack rating for heavy melee
+.10 damage for heavy ranged; +5 to attack rating
+.10 damage for light melee; +5 to attack rating
+.15 damage for light ranged; +5 to attack rating
+2 to Defense
+.19% more chance-to-block (requires 395 DEX for 75% chance-to-block)
+1 VIT
+1.5 to Life
+.1 to Armor
+.05% more Speed
+1 ENG
+7 to Mana
+3 to Mana Regeneration
+2 to damage for elemental spells
+.30% more efficiency to elemental spells.
Comments: Sorc is pure magic here, as always, and I tried to give ENG some serious advantage over STR so that if Sorcs do want to go for something else, it would be DEX. The sorcerer is designed for magic-magic-magic over here. I may need to buff some things maybe but even then I am not sure if a character such as a sorceress is supposed to improve in anything except magic.
Note: The Sorceress has very bad bonuses for STR, but, her spells that enhance weaponry, such as Enchant, add pure elemental damage, not in any way based on physical damage. You can still make an Enchant Sorceress without ever putting a point in STR due to the awesome mechanics DII employed here.
Amazon (I wanted to fix this class so I am adding it here)
+1 STR
+.70 damage for heavy melee
+.5 damage for heavy ranged
+.90 damage for light melee
+.5 damage for light ranged
+1 DEX
+80 to attack rating for heavy melee
+.5 damage for heavy ranged; +10 to attack rating
+.75 damage for light melee; +90 to attack rating
+1 damage for light ranged; +100 to attack rating
+6 to Defense
+.35% more chance-to-block (requires 214 DEX for 75% chance-to-block)
+1 VIT
+4 to Life
+.4 to Armor
+.4% more Speed
+1 ENG
+2 to Mana
+.25 to Mana Regeneration
+1 to damage for elemental spells
+.10% more efficiency to elemental spells.
Comments: First of all, I wanted to attack the skills Amazon has right now. Particularly the arrow, spear, javelin tress. I hate the idea of skills that are geared toward one particular weapon. This is dumb, simple, and lame. If an Amazon can empower an arrow with fire, she can empower a javelin with fire. I'd take the whole 2 trees and basically turn them into one. Skills would be divided into those that are for ranged (bows AND throwing) and those that are for melee (spears and the rest). You say amazon is going to use axes now? That's up to the player, but look at the STR bonuses, she's much better of with spears, but the player has a CHOICE of what he's going to use.
Another thing about skills - they are mostly elemental. Not based on physical damage. Perhaps I am wrong here, but I never imagined amazons as spellcasters. And that's basically what they are in Diablo II. Your weapon doesn't matter, only your skills do. I believe this is not correct for a battle class, and skills should be modified to depend on weapon used, just as paladin and barbarian skills. Otherwise, the amazon will be a spellcaster in disguise, so whichever you prefer is up to you, I guess.
With my setup the amazon is better at aiming. Much better at aiming than any other class, even paladin. She is also pretty good with shields. Not as awesome as the paladin but still pretty good. Note, she's also fastest of all classes. I imagine someone with a bow needs to run around fast eh? But, if you want to make a spear amazon, you'd look at STR a bit closer, or you may not because the DEX also adds a considerable bonus, that's with all the other bonuses that DEX adds. And, you can basically improve both bows and spears because DEX gives big bonuses to both. So, players may funk around with this.
Better yet, you can still make a sword wielding class. The difference between my system and the Diablo II system is that a sword wielding class is not going to be as heavily disadvantaged. In DII, if you use a sword, all the spear-javeling-bow skills are automatically disabled for you. With my system, not only can you pump STR, but you can still use all the skills that are designed for melee weaponry. You will still, theoretically, be better off with spears and bows but the possibility to create a swordazon that won't be totally horrible is there, especially considering that DII swordazons weren't that bad, either.
The amazon has skills that aren't exactly fit for certain weapon types. Such as strafe, which I don't imagine working for axes, or Impale, which would only work for spears and polearms. Skills would work differently for different weapons, or not work for some weapons at all. Right now, Smite requires a shield. So we can say, Impale - requires Spear or Polearm (please note, halberds are heavy melee, spears aren't). You won't be so quick in what skills you intend for your sword wielding amazon, if you feel like making one.
For a necromancer, I was thinking of giving him more melee capability, and possibly even crossbow capability, because he strikes me as a hybrid, but in DII he was limited towards his wands. I think that if you take his curses, and modify their system, such as make amplify damage more deadly as you put points into it, the necromancer could come out as a strange hybrid melee cursing kind of thing, with a blood golem following, or something.
Basically, what I want is a freer, more realistic, immersive, more open system, that keeps characters unique, but doesn't lock them in one position for all eternity, and while it disadvantages hybrid classes, it makes them less useless and weak than they would be with the DII system. It also allows people to really go for weapon damage, with their attributes, not just skills, and trying to find a situation where attributes and skills benefit each other the best, and also balance it all with the health, speed, and defense/armor of the character. I want a Diablo player be a bit more careful with his attributes, not just "STR for armor, DEX for block, VIT for life".
Imagine a Druid that can go for his DEX because it gives him nice archery bonuses, and he can also summon pets. You don't really need all that archery stuff to make a proper archer anymore. He would be weaker than an amazon, true, but he has pets, she doesn't. You get a ranger without any ranged skills whatsoever - he's just a hybrid variation of a druid. There was a glass cannon in DII, but he's made of glass (dies easy), our new druid doesn't have to be.
I'm sorry if I contradicted myself somewhere or wrote some incorrect stats because I was copy-pasting some stuff...
There was another thing in Rage of Mages (please note, RoM is somewhat of an SP party-based Diablo clone that went in its own direction) that I liked implemented in there. Whether or not can it fit, or benefit Diablo, can't say 100%, I am not sure if it even makes a great difference. Anyway, in Diablo, every character starts with base stats that are pre-defined for him. A barbarian has more starting STR than a sorc does. It is somewhat realistic, but truly, if a barbarian already has better bonuses for his STR, he would be better than a sorc even if the amount of STR is the same. What was done in Rage of Mages:
Every character gets 10 points in every quality he has. RoM had tons of things like elemental resistance which Diablo doesn't have, so Diablo characters could just start with 0. Then, before the game begins, you get like 80 points. What you can do is distribute those 80 points however you like. They also put descriptions of how each point would affect your character (so we can add, if it's a barb, like "improves melee damage with heavy weapons" for STR). This way you can start with a 30 STR, 20 VIT, 20 DEX, 10 ENG Amazon instead of a 30 DEX 20 STR amazon, just because you are going for spears or melee this time. You can even go for 0 ENG if you want to totally disregard any speck of magic. This may sound good for power leveling people who want to totally hyper-max-out their character.
So, if you read all of this, thank you, because whether you like all the ideas or not it's a big thing to read, so I want your feedback. I am not saying this SHOULD be used in Diablo III but I simply wanted to brainstorm on something and see how it would work out. I am pretty sure there are 100 gaps in my idea as of right now, and an author can't see his problems, usually...
umm...ok first off, i do like the amazon as it was in d2, but i also like the idea of making 'elemental' skills work for javs, spears, and everything else. but an amazon really only uses bows and javs. since there wont be an amazon in d3 (but there probably will be a ranged bow wielding class) i cant say anything about skills, but i can say that bows will be encouraged more by skill selection. however javs were used by a lot of dual throw barbs in post 1.10 d2, because of enigma really.
sorcs obviously used shields efficiently in d2, there were sorc type shield, like lidless, so that at least makes sense. but staffs were mainly rejected because of the 'broken' shield block effect that helped so much.
(you really like crossbows dont you :P)
i do want to see a very hybrd class in d3, like a swing-man type class that can switch styles on the go, and the word 'ranger' caught my attention. a ranger is someone with both bow and melee skills, he travels around by himself usually, so he might have some enchant and healing type spells as well as some summoning and offensive spells. that would really make a very unique class that im sure blizzard will have to really balance out because he sounds to strong to me atm lol. EDIT: i didnt notice all the ranger build suggestions in this forum lol, but none of their ideas are good, i mean an assassin/zon/druid? lame. melee/ranged/spellcaster is way better isnt it?
for blizzard to make so many builds for each class, which im sure they might, it will require a lot of skills and weapons to use. this is me thinking to myself and getting excited. but i do want to point out that there should be more emphasis on crafted and rare items as well as runewords, granted they still exist, and jeweled items, also if not scrapped. this also adds to uniqueness, which should be in this game more than its predecessors.
but i have to wonder, why give so much hybrid-evity to somewhat specific classes in terms or attribute and skill bonuses? im all for bonuses and negativities in attribute points, but it seems that it would put a class outside its intended 'character' in theater-analogy. a necro, a frail amazingly pale and sickly looking fellow, using a melee weapon? and all because he has found a skill to further enhance damage? the necro is strictly a summoning and spellcaster character, to give him a sword is like giving a barb a wand. and i also find that the necro is actually really well balanced when it comes to his skills. the right curses for the right necro, reduce resistances for bone skills, while amp dmg or iron maiden for summoners.
id agree that the sorc is the most out of place when it comes their str attribute. sorcs dont run around with superhero str and wearing full plates and carrying extra large shields intended for the most heated melee battles. but you have to wonder then, tal-rashas armor, lidless wall, that cold helm (i think nightwing or something?) and frostburn, which are all sorc based items, and all are seemingly out of place on a sorc.
i think what im saying is that d2 is almost completely item based. to make a new char, for me, i look at my mules and my currency, and then decide what to make. if i want a fb sorc, i dont care about anything other than my equips, and to get the best ones for her. i think d3 would be better for uniqueness if it were more build and stat based then item based. not saying i want d3 that way, but for a more open and expansive system that would be ideal.
i dont have any disagreement in your attribute suggestion other than some of the bonuses and small stuff blizzard will perfect. d2 was made years before so i think we can blame its age on an outdated attribute system, and it is high time for a change that we can all expect. if this system is used, i guess we can all expect many more builds, but its a great undertaking for blizzard to balance this kind of system. eventually players will find the best and most efficient build/gear/skills/attributes for their class unless their is some serious time spent calibrating stats, skills, and items. however, since we dont know exactly what the stats will be, along with skills and items and all that jazz, this could be completely different. but the concept should be present.
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Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
These are weapon specifications:
Heavy Melee: Any melee 2-handed weapon except Spear and Staff, including all polearms except spears; most one handed weapons.
Heavy Ranged: Crossbow, heavy throwing axe
Light Melee: spears, staffs, hand axes, short swords, knives, all daggers, scimitars, maces, clubs.
Light Ranged: All bows, most throwing weapons (including javelins) except heavy axes.
not always. that does seem buggy though, .10 bonus for light while 1.0 for heavy, items will get looked over if differences are to drastic.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Remember the String of Ears
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
By light I am mostly geared at weapons that an assassin/amazon would dual wield, not the barbarian. The barbarian is adjusted to dual wield big, scary weapons. Knives and small swords or daggers are not really for him, they require more agility and dexterity.
I was thinking about "medium weapons" but I didn't want to include them in there to avoid confusion.
Quote from "applesoffury" »
(you really like crossbows dont you :P)
I played too much Nox (crossbow is pretty much 1 shot 1 kill weapon in PvP lol)
Quote from "applesoffury" »
i do want to see a very hybrd class in d3, like a swing-man type class that can switch styles on the go, and the word 'ranger' caught my attention. a ranger is someone with both bow and melee skills, he travels around by himself usually, so he might have some enchant and healing type spells as well as some summoning and offensive spells. that would really make a very unique class that im sure blizzard will have to really balance out because he sounds to strong to me atm lol. EDIT: i didnt notice all the ranger build suggestions in this forum lol, but none of their ideas are good, i mean an assassin/zon/druid? lame. melee/ranged/spellcaster is way better isnt it?
Well, I can see a lot of versions of what this class may look like, and the divisions are these:
amazon, ranger, archer, arcane archer
I think the main difference is if the archer is arcane (like the D2 amazon) and the weapon he's using doesn't really matter, of if he's physical (like the archer I'd prefer). If the archer is arcane, his DEX bonus would improve shooting but only on the physical side, not improving his arcane side. Perhaps he can be half and half. Say, spell "fire arrow" would deal 50% set elemental damage, and 50% will be a percentage of physical damage added as fire damage. This way he is still arcane, but still has to watch his DEX, as well as ENG.
Whether or not he has pets/summons is a matter of preference. I do kinda find them fitting with someone who lives in the woods, but not with someone who, say, is a city guard archer or something. The ranger can be done in many different ways...
Quote from "applesoffury" »
for blizzard to make so many builds for each class, which im sure they might, it will require a lot of skills and weapons to use. this is me thinking to myself and getting excited. but i do want to point out that there should be more emphasis on crafted and rare items as well as runewords, granted they still exist, and jeweled items, also if not scrapped. this also adds to uniqueness, which should be in this game more than its predecessors.
I don't mind items as long as they are evened out.
For instance, I don't like it when the best weapon in the entire game is an axe. And all other weapons are worse than that axe. I want there to be a pool of good weapons that can balance each other out with player skills and attributes. Not everyone wearing the same exact armor and using the same weapon. My system would pretty much crumble, and become disbalanced for a melee class that is not good with axes.
Quote from "applesoffury" »
but i have to wonder, why give so much hybrid-evity to somewhat specific classes in terms or attribute and skill bonuses? im all for bonuses and negativities in attribute points, but it seems that it would put a class outside its intended 'character' in theater-analogy.
I don't think it would, only if you agree to make an intentionally weak class.
Quote from "applesoffury" »
a necro, a frail amazingly pale and sickly looking fellow, using a melee weapon? and all because he has found a skill to further enhance damage? the necro is strictly a summoning and spellcaster character, to give him a sword is like giving a barb a wand. and i also find that the necro is actually really well balanced when it comes to his skills. the right curses for the right necro, reduce resistances for bone skills, while amp dmg or iron maiden for summoners.
I guess necro doesn't strike me as a weak guy at all. Look at his gorgeous armor. It's huge, and pretty intimidating. He's standing opposite the paladin, who's a warrior. He always kind of felt like a guy who can fight but doesn't feel like it. But when I think of necromancers, life stealing, uncurable wounds, and other things from various universes crop up itno my mind. A lot of necro skills are not really usable for him. Like, life tap. Mostly a party skill.
I have to warn you, my preferences towards what classes should be usually do not stem from the Diablo lore since I was never really interested, so don't be surprised to see me adding strange stuff to classes. In the end, it doesn't matter, what matters is my idea.
Quote from "applesoffury" »
id agree that the sorc is the most out of place when it comes their str attribute. sorcs dont run around with superhero str and wearing full plates and carrying extra large shields intended for the most heated melee battles. but you have to wonder then, tal-rashas armor, lidless wall, that cold helm (i think nightwing or something?) and frostburn, which are all sorc based items, and all are seemingly out of place on a sorc.
Sometimes I really wander what the hell did Blizzard intend to do with DII.
Quote from "applesoffury" »
if this system is used, i guess we can all expect many more builds, but its a great undertaking for blizzard to balance this kind of system. eventually players will find the best and most efficient build/gear/skills/attributes for their class unless their is some serious time spent calibrating stats, skills, and items. however, since we dont know exactly what the stats will be, along with skills and items and all that jazz, this could be completely different. but the concept should be present.
I don't think this system is all that hard to balance. It has a lot of variables, but they are all pretty clear, except maybe things like the relation of speed to damage, of defense to offense, of varying characters, to make them balanced for PvP, an for PvM.
I'm getting all these ideas about that sword man. I had never thought of that before.
First of all I can just imagine an amazon chucking a sword with lightning bolts striking it in the air. Then when it hits the target maybe it splits like fury, then the swords all stick in their target and do lighting damage over time, then shatter for physical damage.
With the Sorceress, at least, or the equivalent class that we all know will be in Diablo III, I think it should also be possible to just go without hand-held gear and not get penalized for it. I think in just about every fantasy book out there, the majority of the casters do not even have weapons- they just use their magic because that is what they learned to use. Some don't even use staves. Hand magic is a growing trend in today's fantasy literature.
Anyway, I think that with a caster holding a staff, they should be able to enchant it with whatever element they primarily use (as in, there should be an enchanting spell with each element, besides poison since it is not considered a real element by developers and since it would make more sense to lacquer a weapon in poison than magically cover it with it.) It was kind of lame that enchanting only worked with fire in Diablo II and most of the monsters were fire immune in Hell, so it became useless in many respects.
Weapons should be like a bonus for the untrained caster- you have the additional backup of physical damage if you aren't prepared with your mana or your skills aren't spread out enough over various elements to kill certain immunes.
However, with the pure caster, one without a weapon, or prehaps even a shield, it should be possible to have spell damage increased without holding said weapons, and spells that create shields should have increased defense or resistance when the player is without a shield. The drawback would be that you would have to continually cast, which would require a high amount of mana. That would be the sacrifice you'd made, however.
Also, casters would be able to move faster and more agile than your standard Sorceress in Diablo II with full Tal Rasha's set, which was composed of very heavy pieces of metal that any caster in their right mind (or realistically to caster stereotype standards) would not wear. In Diablo II, I don't know how many people actually know this, but wearing heavier pieces of armor or weapons actually makes you walk and run slower. Yes, it does happen. It goes hand-in-hand with stamina (which got largely played-out in Diablo II because of its stupid stat system) and % Faster Run/Walk attributes.
And, my god, we need robes again! Casters in nearly any fantasy book you read do not wear full plate mail!
I agree with what you said about the casters "hand magic" these days. Along with that I don't see why a caster couldn't magically create a weapon to use. Maybe it has a time limit or something. I'm thinking something along the lines of a sword but you get to choose which element of damage you want it to do, which also effects the way it looks. That way if you're out of mana you still have something you can use that isn't a caster carrying a real weapon.
Also, the Tal'Rasha set was really ridiculous. Casters IMO are more appropriate wearing barely anything at all for defense. You should have some kind of spell that gives you more defense.
i think it more realistic that mages have thick armor. Barbarians would think, "Wow, this guy's shooting lightning from his fingertips. I'm glad I didn't bring my steel plate armor!" While the wizard's going,
"That's a big f\/<k!/\/ hammer! I'm glad I brought some armor!"
but all in all, I guess if you spend most of your time training beside mages you learn to adapt to fighting mages, thus mages wear cloth. The same could be said for barbarians.
i think it more realistic that mages have thick armor. Barbarians would think, "Wow, this guy's shooting lightning from his fingertips. I'm glad I didn't bring my steel plate armor!" While the wizard's going,
"That's a big f\/<k!/\/ hammer! I'm glad I brought some armor!"
but all in all, I guess if you spend most of your time training beside mages you learn to adapt to fighting mages, thus mages wear cloth. The same could be said for barbarians.
i had to lol.
you just brought up an entirely different topic; elemental effects on characters in relation with real-world chemistry and physics. aka, metal as a conductor to electricity. water + lightning = expandable dmg in an elemental char?
By light I am mostly geared at weapons that an assassin/amazon would dual wield, not the barbarian. The barbarian is adjusted to dual wield big, scary weapons. Knives and small swords or daggers are not really for him, they require more agility and dexterity.
well the barb had a dual throw skill in d2 that combined well with javs for dmg and combined well with throwing daggers for speed. i mean wc javs were the main secondary wep set for a barb, but thats not the point, the point is dual throw might make a comeback, and i want to see them used.
Whether or not he has pets/summons is a matter of preference. I do kinda find them fitting with someone who lives in the woods, but not with someone who, say, is a city guard archer or something. The ranger can be done in many different ways...
i imagine a gritty, loner-rogue type character, skilled with all kinds of battle techniques and many weapons. i basically imagine aragorn from lord of the rings. lol.
For instance, I don't like it when the best weapon in the entire game is an axe. And all other weapons are worse than that axe. I want there to be a pool of good weapons that can balance each other out with player skills and attributes. Not everyone wearing the same exact armor and using the same weapon. My system would pretty much crumble, and become disbalanced for a melee class that is not good with axes.
it gets real annoying when every barb used a fury bb, and then ith, then botd. no other weapon other than the cheapo Armageddon runeword was even near good. needs more specific uniques.
as for sorcs and using hand magic, i neither like or dislike it. i dont mind either way d3 goes. but cmon, seriously? did anyone actually wonder, "gee, i hope this gothic plate wont make my r/w speed to slow, or drain my stamina too fast...," i sure didnt. especially for a sorc, but that just proves some of the brokenness.
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i think it more realistic that mages have thick armor. Barbarians would think, "Wow, this guy's shooting lightning from his fingertips. I'm glad I didn't bring my steel plate armor!" While the wizard's going,
"That's a big f\/<k!/\/ hammer! I'm glad I brought some armor!"
That kinda reminds me of Nox where wizard electrical spells (lighting bolt and etc.) deal higher damage to warriors in full armor lol.
But mostly wizard should use utility defense spells, such as Spell Mantle or w/e that spell was called: it minimizes everything cast on the wizard and there is no way to kill him in one shot without breaking the spell mantle first.
Other wizards, or, rather, their hybrids, like necromancer, paladin, and druid, should have better armor and weapon possibilities. This is roughly how Nox balanced their system, and they only had one patch lol...
Quote from "Christ" »
You could give negative effects to the magic from a sorc when equipping weapons (since they normally don't train with weapons, it downgrades their combat effectiveness) Thus decreasing their magic but increasing their normal damage.
And when removing this weapon the magic will increase again, as the caster's battle effectiveness increased as he/she can fight as he/she is used to, unarmed, but armed with spells.
I don't really see how this makes any sense. In DnD games, armor had a penalty since it's something you wear, but why holding a weapon would hinder you in any way if you are not even using it?
RoM, as well as TQ, had charged staves they could use, and charged meant not having a bunch of charges that you can cast, but literally the staff working as an elemental weapon. For the most part their damage was much lower (in RoM) than the spells you can cast, but they just had other bonuses. What I am saying is, rather have a staff shoot some elemental damage instead of the sorc going melee and "Whacka on your head with a stick!"
Quote from "applesoffury" »
well the barb had a dual throw skill in d2 that combined well with javs for dmg and combined well with throwing daggers for speed. i mean wc javs were the main secondary wep set for a barb, but thats not the point, the point is dual throw might make a comeback, and i want to see them used.
I do not believe barbarians and javelins go together all that well. The reason javs worked is because DII had no melee bonuses from attributes, making any weapon you centered in equally useful. I'd rather have him throw axes. Javelins are for lighter classes.
Quote from "applesoffury" »
i imagine a gritty, loner-rogue type character, skilled with all kinds of battle techniques and many weapons. i basically imagine aragorn from lord of the rings. lol.
Frankly, that sounds like an amazon. Ranged, melee, and possibly wood traps, I dunno.
Quote from "applesoffury" »
it gets real annoying when every barb used a fury bb, and then ith, then botd. no other weapon other than the cheapo Armageddon runeword was even near good. needs more specific uniques.
Yes, that's what I mean. This happens in all games, somewhat...
Quote from "applesoffury" »
as for sorcs and using hand magic, i neither like or dislike it. i dont mind either way d3 goes. but cmon, seriously? did anyone actually wonder, "gee, i hope this gothic plate wont make my r/w speed to slow, or drain my stamina too fast...," i sure didnt. especially for a sorc, but that just proves some of the brokenness.
Yes... they should actually make some use of the darned stamina. I did not include stamina on my list but it was floating in my mind.
Took me about like 25 min to read all that lol.... I actually liked the system in D2, i really didnt care or even mind. Putting all points in vit was a must, because most items that ppl wanted would give that energy bonus, or dex bonus. I cant remember the name but there are 2 green rings and if u wear them together u get somthing like 10k Attack rating, which comes from dex, if im not mistaken.
If the D3 system needs you to put points in str for ur char to operate propely, i dont think imma like it. Cuz every point that was put in str ( in d2 wud add like 2-5 damage or somthing) i found str pointless, unless you needed to wear some kind of high req str armor.
They couldn't possiblly implement this, if no weapon wasn't the best option, everyone would use sword / sheild or staff or whatever is better, if it was the best option, giving the sorc the best possible weapon option at the start of the game would be unbalanced with respect to other classes...
I don't think I grasp your point.
Quote from ".KILLING-HAZARD." »
If the D3 system needs you to put points in str for ur char to operate propely, i dont think imma like it. Cuz every point that was put in str ( in d2 wud add like 2-5 damage or somthing) i found str pointless, unless you needed to wear some kind of high req str armor.
Well, isn't that my whole point? Make points put in STR valuable?
My problem with Diablo II is the weakness of attributes. The vast majority of the builds out there involves pumping Vitality for health, and Dexterity for chance-to-block. Strength is not used to increase damage, it is used to wear heavy armor, and Energy is largely ignored all together. I tried to find out what do attributes in Diablo II do, actually, and it's somewhat hard to find, if anyone has this information, I'd want to take a look at it.
In Diablo I, increasing STR led to increase in melee damage, increasing DEX led to increase in ranged damage, and I never used sorcerers so I am not sure if MAG increased their damage, as well. I generally expected to see the same concept in Diablo II, but it came out drastically different. In truth, attribute points don't really matter anymore, and the game switched onto skills.
The problem with Diablo II is that many things are disbalanced, restrictive, and sometimes very linear. For instance, every class can get their chance-to-block very high, and since nobody really needs ENG, they don't mind putting points into DEX. We get Sorceresses running around with shields. Whether or not it's realistic in the world of Sanctuary I can't really know but I guess they made one-handed orbs for a reason. Still, I think the fact that every class seems to be wearing a shield in most builds says that there is something wrong with shield block.
Another thing that I really dislike is the way the Amazon was made. 2/3 of her skills are geared to specific weapons. In truth, the Amazon is not all that far away from the Sorceress. The arrow, spear, and javelin skills do not really depend on physical damage, or they depend on pure weapon damage. In other words, you are quite well of with walking around with a level 1 javelin as long as you have all those javelin skills. Is the Amazon an Amazon, or a Sorceress in disguise?
With this is that it makes the character extremely limited in weapon choice. When you make your Amazon, you have to decide: bow/crossbow, javelin, or spear. You cannot use javelin skills with throwing axes or knives, nor empower a sword with lighting. You are glued to those 3 weapons. The Amazon has never saw any other weapon except bow, javelin, and spear? Surely she may not be as adept with them, but it does not mean her skills would not totally work.
Not to mention that the developers totally got away with the Amazon by just making elemental spells from her weapons. Multishot, Strafe, and Guided Arrow are the only truly interesting spells.
In contrast, the Paladin was built more openly. Skills such as Sacrifice, Zeal, Vengeance do not require a sword, you can just as well use an axe, or two-handed hammer. I often used hammers and scepters because of their +50% against undead bonus. The only skills that the paladin has that restrict in weapon choice is Smite and Holy Shield, but these skills are a minority, not a majority, allowing the player to either go with shields or go without, and even with shields he can use any one-handed weapon. If it wasn't for ridiculous shield block and weak two-handed weapons perhaps more players would go for 2-handed weapons in Paladins.
What else. Heavy armor. Many, many people like to go for STR even as mages to be able to wear heavy armor, or maybe Ring Mail. The speed penalty doesn't seem to stop them. Under exceptional circumstances a Sorceress wearing heavy armor is fine but mostly I imagine spellcasters as weak, slow, but cunning and deadly.
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What I propose is a more complex and diverse attribute system that would make players think more about their attributes, as well as pay attention not just to their build order, but also to the weapons and armor that they are equipping (considering Enigmas and uber-super-wow-power axes are not present in Diablo III in high abundance).
The idea is that every character gets different bonuses from increasing STR, DEX, VIT, and ENG. This is a rough example of what it would look like. This isn't anything that's easy to balance, mind you, and I don't want to spend my time on it, my goal is to describe the general idea. So don't give me: "that's too much regen you noob that's totally disbalanced!" These calculations are ethereal and not based on DII, but I did use the DII chars for simplicity.
These are weapon specifications:
Heavy Melee: Any melee 2-handed weapon except Spear and Staff, including all polearms except spears; most one handed weapons.
Heavy Ranged: Crossbow, heavy throwing axe
Light Melee: spears, staffs, hand axes, short swords, knives, all daggers, scimitars, maces, clubs.
Light Ranged: All bows, most throwing weapons (including javelins) except heavy axes.
Chance-to-block for all classes maxes at 75%
All other properties never max
Armor - this is my lousy attempt to give VIT some more use. Armor is something used in RoM (Rage of Mages) as an addition to Defense. While Defense decides how often people will miss you, Armor decides what damage does your character actually absorb when he's finally hit. It roughly makes sense because the healthier you are, the harder your skin and bone is etc., but generally it makes no sense... you decide.
Speed is speed, it's a complex parameter to deal with without some kind of offset, so I use percentages, but I think it's also tied to Vitality because Vitality affects Stamina, and Stamina is somewhat close to how endurant your character is, hence, how fast he can move. (you may try to say that endurance makes people run longer, not faster, but since they are wearing armor and everything, endurance is going to matter in making sure they don't slow down as much with it)
When I say heavy throwing axe, I mean a pretty large throwing axe that many people in our world wouldn't be able to even pick up, let alone throw. http://www.swordsandarmor.com/images/AX882433_Executioners_Axe.jpg
Not THAT big but somewhat in the vicinity of an average one-handed melee axe. These require awful amounts of STR to use, so they would be barb-only and cause massive damage, and thus bonuses to them are a bit lower than to heavy melee. These are for your axe throwing barb.
As you should know, in DII certain classes were disadvantaged against using certain weapons by speed. We could mess around more with this. Make an amazon slow with axes. Make a paladin quick with swords and maces. And so on. Preferably, make hte speed differences less BIG as "fast, very fast", but more like put something in between those two, because in DII "fast" and "very fast" were very different. As long as these restrictions are not rigid and do not restrict a character from using a given weapon, just make him vaguely worse off. Vaguely, enough to make hybrids possible.
The efficiency percentages (see Paladin) are recombined. Efficiency is not based of your "base" condition, but of the original condition which is Base + any bonuses + pre-existing efficiency. The reason I did this is because once a skill gets to 500% and such, improving it makes little difference because the base damage is still as low as it has been, making putting point here for borderline skill improvement pretty ineffective. Charge is an example of this.
Barbarian:
+1 STR
+1 damage for heavy melee
+.70 damage for heavy ranged (+.30 for crossbow)
+.10 damage for light melee
+.05 damage for light ranged
+1 DEX
+75 to attack rating for heavy melee
+.30 damage for heavy ranged; +30 to attack rating (+.10 for crossbow and +10 to attack rating for crossbow)
+.15 damage for light melee; +5 to attack rating
+.10 damage for light ranged; +5 to attack rating
+1 to Defense
+.15% more chance-to-block (requires 500 DEX for 75% chance-to-block)
+1 VIT
+5 to Life
+.2 to Life Regeneration
+.3 to Armor
+.3% more Speed
+1 ENG
+2 to Mana
+1 to Mana Regeneration
Comments: the barbarian is more geared towards using heavy weaponry and is not too agile or skilled with the light stuff. He is also OK for throwing axes but has a penalty with crossbows. He is not all that good with a shield. The barbarian is the only class who has primary life regeneration. He also has high mana regeneration because most of his skills require little of it, and I hate to see a barbarian drinking blue pots or putting points into ENG. He can put points there for a big capacity but there won't be any point to it since his skills don't require a lot of it and he regenerates fast. Realistically, I'd use stamina instead but that's a whole other story and is for some other thread.
The barbarian is able to dual wield any one handed weapons without any penalty whatsoever. Most of his skills are not weapon-geared and do rely on the damage the weapon deals, so I am pretty happy with the way he was in DII.
Paladin
+1 STR
+.75 damage for heavy melee
+.20 damage for heavy ranged
+.20 damage for light melee
+.05 damage for light ranged
+.5 to Smite damage
+1 DEX
+.5 damage for heavy meleee; +90 to attack rating for heavy melee
+.90 damage for heavy ranged; +40 to attack rating (.30 for heavy throwing axe and +10 to attack rating for heavy throwing axe)
+.30 damage for light melee; +20 to attack rating
+.15 damage for light ranged; +20 to attack rating
+5 to Defense
+.4% more chance-to-block (requires 188 DEX for 75% chance-to-block)
+1 VIT
+4.5 to Life
+.5 to Armor
+.2% more Speed
+1 ENG
+4 to Mana
+.5 to Mana Regeneration
+1 to damage for divine spells
+.15% more efficiency to divine spells.
Comments: the paladin can be a balanced warrior, given his good defense and shield block that come from dexterity, or he can be a holy man, with high energy and powerful heavenly spells. Or a combination of both, of course. He is also good with crossbows because I felt like it. He has the best chance-to-block improvement percentage. 188 DEX to max is good enough for me, especially consdering that a paladin can make great use of DEX. He gets a damage bonus from it, unlike the barb. He also has higher attack rating for most weapons because he is not as hot-headed and would place his blows with more attention.
The .15% efficency thing means that auras work better, basically. So, if your aura is +10 defense, an extra point in ENG would make it 10 + 10 x .0015 = 10.015. Remember that it affects ALL spells and abilities categorized as Divine, and in case of damage dealing spells, it stacks additionally. ENG is not balanced at this point, you can see it pretty clearly, but I don't think it's THAT hard to do.
I am happy with his abilities, if one wants to go for smite they'd really go for STR this time because Smite is NOT a divine spell in my book. Holy shield is, Smite isn't. There would be small modifications like these for many classes, so that attributes would affect skills.
Moving on to some spellcaster:
Sorceress
+1 STR
+.5 damage for heavy melee
+.1 damage for heavy ranged
+.10 damage for light melee
+.10 damage for light ranged
+1 DEX
+.5 damage for heavy meleee; +5 to attack rating for heavy melee
+.10 damage for heavy ranged; +5 to attack rating
+.10 damage for light melee; +5 to attack rating
+.15 damage for light ranged; +5 to attack rating
+2 to Defense
+.19% more chance-to-block (requires 395 DEX for 75% chance-to-block)
+1 VIT
+1.5 to Life
+.1 to Armor
+.05% more Speed
+1 ENG
+7 to Mana
+3 to Mana Regeneration
+2 to damage for elemental spells
+.30% more efficiency to elemental spells.
Comments: Sorc is pure magic here, as always, and I tried to give ENG some serious advantage over STR so that if Sorcs do want to go for something else, it would be DEX. The sorcerer is designed for magic-magic-magic over here. I may need to buff some things maybe but even then I am not sure if a character such as a sorceress is supposed to improve in anything except magic.
Note: The Sorceress has very bad bonuses for STR, but, her spells that enhance weaponry, such as Enchant, add pure elemental damage, not in any way based on physical damage. You can still make an Enchant Sorceress without ever putting a point in STR due to the awesome mechanics DII employed here.
Amazon (I wanted to fix this class so I am adding it here)
+1 STR
+.70 damage for heavy melee
+.5 damage for heavy ranged
+.90 damage for light melee
+.5 damage for light ranged
+1 DEX
+80 to attack rating for heavy melee
+.5 damage for heavy ranged; +10 to attack rating
+.75 damage for light melee; +90 to attack rating
+1 damage for light ranged; +100 to attack rating
+6 to Defense
+.35% more chance-to-block (requires 214 DEX for 75% chance-to-block)
+1 VIT
+4 to Life
+.4 to Armor
+.4% more Speed
+1 ENG
+2 to Mana
+.25 to Mana Regeneration
+1 to damage for elemental spells
+.10% more efficiency to elemental spells.
Comments: First of all, I wanted to attack the skills Amazon has right now. Particularly the arrow, spear, javelin tress. I hate the idea of skills that are geared toward one particular weapon. This is dumb, simple, and lame. If an Amazon can empower an arrow with fire, she can empower a javelin with fire. I'd take the whole 2 trees and basically turn them into one. Skills would be divided into those that are for ranged (bows AND throwing) and those that are for melee (spears and the rest). You say amazon is going to use axes now? That's up to the player, but look at the STR bonuses, she's much better of with spears, but the player has a CHOICE of what he's going to use.
Another thing about skills - they are mostly elemental. Not based on physical damage. Perhaps I am wrong here, but I never imagined amazons as spellcasters. And that's basically what they are in Diablo II. Your weapon doesn't matter, only your skills do. I believe this is not correct for a battle class, and skills should be modified to depend on weapon used, just as paladin and barbarian skills. Otherwise, the amazon will be a spellcaster in disguise, so whichever you prefer is up to you, I guess.
With my setup the amazon is better at aiming. Much better at aiming than any other class, even paladin. She is also pretty good with shields. Not as awesome as the paladin but still pretty good. Note, she's also fastest of all classes. I imagine someone with a bow needs to run around fast eh? But, if you want to make a spear amazon, you'd look at STR a bit closer, or you may not because the DEX also adds a considerable bonus, that's with all the other bonuses that DEX adds. And, you can basically improve both bows and spears because DEX gives big bonuses to both. So, players may funk around with this.
Better yet, you can still make a sword wielding class. The difference between my system and the Diablo II system is that a sword wielding class is not going to be as heavily disadvantaged. In DII, if you use a sword, all the spear-javeling-bow skills are automatically disabled for you. With my system, not only can you pump STR, but you can still use all the skills that are designed for melee weaponry. You will still, theoretically, be better off with spears and bows but the possibility to create a swordazon that won't be totally horrible is there, especially considering that DII swordazons weren't that bad, either.
The amazon has skills that aren't exactly fit for certain weapon types. Such as strafe, which I don't imagine working for axes, or Impale, which would only work for spears and polearms. Skills would work differently for different weapons, or not work for some weapons at all. Right now, Smite requires a shield. So we can say, Impale - requires Spear or Polearm (please note, halberds are heavy melee, spears aren't). You won't be so quick in what skills you intend for your sword wielding amazon, if you feel like making one.
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For a necromancer, I was thinking of giving him more melee capability, and possibly even crossbow capability, because he strikes me as a hybrid, but in DII he was limited towards his wands. I think that if you take his curses, and modify their system, such as make amplify damage more deadly as you put points into it, the necromancer could come out as a strange hybrid melee cursing kind of thing, with a blood golem following, or something.
Basically, what I want is a freer, more realistic, immersive, more open system, that keeps characters unique, but doesn't lock them in one position for all eternity, and while it disadvantages hybrid classes, it makes them less useless and weak than they would be with the DII system. It also allows people to really go for weapon damage, with their attributes, not just skills, and trying to find a situation where attributes and skills benefit each other the best, and also balance it all with the health, speed, and defense/armor of the character. I want a Diablo player be a bit more careful with his attributes, not just "STR for armor, DEX for block, VIT for life".
Imagine a Druid that can go for his DEX because it gives him nice archery bonuses, and he can also summon pets. You don't really need all that archery stuff to make a proper archer anymore. He would be weaker than an amazon, true, but he has pets, she doesn't. You get a ranger without any ranged skills whatsoever - he's just a hybrid variation of a druid. There was a glass cannon in DII, but he's made of glass (dies easy), our new druid doesn't have to be.
I'm sorry if I contradicted myself somewhere or wrote some incorrect stats because I was copy-pasting some stuff...
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There was another thing in Rage of Mages (please note, RoM is somewhat of an SP party-based Diablo clone that went in its own direction) that I liked implemented in there. Whether or not can it fit, or benefit Diablo, can't say 100%, I am not sure if it even makes a great difference. Anyway, in Diablo, every character starts with base stats that are pre-defined for him. A barbarian has more starting STR than a sorc does. It is somewhat realistic, but truly, if a barbarian already has better bonuses for his STR, he would be better than a sorc even if the amount of STR is the same. What was done in Rage of Mages:
Every character gets 10 points in every quality he has. RoM had tons of things like elemental resistance which Diablo doesn't have, so Diablo characters could just start with 0. Then, before the game begins, you get like 80 points. What you can do is distribute those 80 points however you like. They also put descriptions of how each point would affect your character (so we can add, if it's a barb, like "improves melee damage with heavy weapons" for STR). This way you can start with a 30 STR, 20 VIT, 20 DEX, 10 ENG Amazon instead of a 30 DEX 20 STR amazon, just because you are going for spears or melee this time. You can even go for 0 ENG if you want to totally disregard any speck of magic. This may sound good for power leveling people who want to totally hyper-max-out their character.
So, if you read all of this, thank you, because whether you like all the ideas or not it's a big thing to read, so I want your feedback. I am not saying this SHOULD be used in Diablo III but I simply wanted to brainstorm on something and see how it would work out. I am pretty sure there are 100 gaps in my idea as of right now, and an author can't see his problems, usually...
umm...ok first off, i do like the amazon as it was in d2, but i also like the idea of making 'elemental' skills work for javs, spears, and everything else. but an amazon really only uses bows and javs. since there wont be an amazon in d3 (but there probably will be a ranged bow wielding class) i cant say anything about skills, but i can say that bows will be encouraged more by skill selection. however javs were used by a lot of dual throw barbs in post 1.10 d2, because of enigma really.
sorcs obviously used shields efficiently in d2, there were sorc type shield, like lidless, so that at least makes sense. but staffs were mainly rejected because of the 'broken' shield block effect that helped so much.
(you really like crossbows dont you :P)
i do want to see a very hybrd class in d3, like a swing-man type class that can switch styles on the go, and the word 'ranger' caught my attention. a ranger is someone with both bow and melee skills, he travels around by himself usually, so he might have some enchant and healing type spells as well as some summoning and offensive spells. that would really make a very unique class that im sure blizzard will have to really balance out because he sounds to strong to me atm lol. EDIT: i didnt notice all the ranger build suggestions in this forum lol, but none of their ideas are good, i mean an assassin/zon/druid? lame. melee/ranged/spellcaster is way better isnt it?
for blizzard to make so many builds for each class, which im sure they might, it will require a lot of skills and weapons to use. this is me thinking to myself and getting excited. but i do want to point out that there should be more emphasis on crafted and rare items as well as runewords, granted they still exist, and jeweled items, also if not scrapped. this also adds to uniqueness, which should be in this game more than its predecessors.
but i have to wonder, why give so much hybrid-evity to somewhat specific classes in terms or attribute and skill bonuses? im all for bonuses and negativities in attribute points, but it seems that it would put a class outside its intended 'character' in theater-analogy. a necro, a frail amazingly pale and sickly looking fellow, using a melee weapon? and all because he has found a skill to further enhance damage? the necro is strictly a summoning and spellcaster character, to give him a sword is like giving a barb a wand. and i also find that the necro is actually really well balanced when it comes to his skills. the right curses for the right necro, reduce resistances for bone skills, while amp dmg or iron maiden for summoners.
id agree that the sorc is the most out of place when it comes their str attribute. sorcs dont run around with superhero str and wearing full plates and carrying extra large shields intended for the most heated melee battles. but you have to wonder then, tal-rashas armor, lidless wall, that cold helm (i think nightwing or something?) and frostburn, which are all sorc based items, and all are seemingly out of place on a sorc.
i think what im saying is that d2 is almost completely item based. to make a new char, for me, i look at my mules and my currency, and then decide what to make. if i want a fb sorc, i dont care about anything other than my equips, and to get the best ones for her. i think d3 would be better for uniqueness if it were more build and stat based then item based. not saying i want d3 that way, but for a more open and expansive system that would be ideal.
i dont have any disagreement in your attribute suggestion other than some of the bonuses and small stuff blizzard will perfect. d2 was made years before so i think we can blame its age on an outdated attribute system, and it is high time for a change that we can all expect. if this system is used, i guess we can all expect many more builds, but its a great undertaking for blizzard to balance this kind of system. eventually players will find the best and most efficient build/gear/skills/attributes for their class unless their is some serious time spent calibrating stats, skills, and items. however, since we dont know exactly what the stats will be, along with skills and items and all that jazz, this could be completely different. but the concept should be present.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
Assuming you mean heavy melee as two handed and light as one handed. That would make twohanders a lot more powerful than dual wielding wouldn't it?
No because light melees are faster.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
Didn't catch that part. It still seems a tad buggy though.
And dual wield speed is not going to make up near enough damage for that big a gap.
I was thinking about "medium weapons" but I didn't want to include them in there to avoid confusion. I played too much Nox (crossbow is pretty much 1 shot 1 kill weapon in PvP lol)
Well, I can see a lot of versions of what this class may look like, and the divisions are these:
amazon, ranger, archer, arcane archer
I think the main difference is if the archer is arcane (like the D2 amazon) and the weapon he's using doesn't really matter, of if he's physical (like the archer I'd prefer). If the archer is arcane, his DEX bonus would improve shooting but only on the physical side, not improving his arcane side. Perhaps he can be half and half. Say, spell "fire arrow" would deal 50% set elemental damage, and 50% will be a percentage of physical damage added as fire damage. This way he is still arcane, but still has to watch his DEX, as well as ENG.
Whether or not he has pets/summons is a matter of preference. I do kinda find them fitting with someone who lives in the woods, but not with someone who, say, is a city guard archer or something. The ranger can be done in many different ways...
I don't mind items as long as they are evened out.
For instance, I don't like it when the best weapon in the entire game is an axe. And all other weapons are worse than that axe. I want there to be a pool of good weapons that can balance each other out with player skills and attributes. Not everyone wearing the same exact armor and using the same weapon. My system would pretty much crumble, and become disbalanced for a melee class that is not good with axes.
I don't think it would, only if you agree to make an intentionally weak class.
I guess necro doesn't strike me as a weak guy at all. Look at his gorgeous armor. It's huge, and pretty intimidating. He's standing opposite the paladin, who's a warrior. He always kind of felt like a guy who can fight but doesn't feel like it. But when I think of necromancers, life stealing, uncurable wounds, and other things from various universes crop up itno my mind. A lot of necro skills are not really usable for him. Like, life tap. Mostly a party skill.
I have to warn you, my preferences towards what classes should be usually do not stem from the Diablo lore since I was never really interested, so don't be surprised to see me adding strange stuff to classes. In the end, it doesn't matter, what matters is my idea.
Sometimes I really wander what the hell did Blizzard intend to do with DII.
I don't think this system is all that hard to balance. It has a lot of variables, but they are all pretty clear, except maybe things like the relation of speed to damage, of defense to offense, of varying characters, to make them balanced for PvP, an for PvM.
Sounds contradictory to me.
Strong and deadly are not the same thing. A frail old lady could stab someone in the neck with a knife.
I'm pretty sure he's talking about a physically weak caster being magically deadly.
First of all I can just imagine an amazon chucking a sword with lightning bolts striking it in the air. Then when it hits the target maybe it splits like fury, then the swords all stick in their target and do lighting damage over time, then shatter for physical damage.
Anyway, I think that with a caster holding a staff, they should be able to enchant it with whatever element they primarily use (as in, there should be an enchanting spell with each element, besides poison since it is not considered a real element by developers and since it would make more sense to lacquer a weapon in poison than magically cover it with it.) It was kind of lame that enchanting only worked with fire in Diablo II and most of the monsters were fire immune in Hell, so it became useless in many respects.
Weapons should be like a bonus for the untrained caster- you have the additional backup of physical damage if you aren't prepared with your mana or your skills aren't spread out enough over various elements to kill certain immunes.
However, with the pure caster, one without a weapon, or prehaps even a shield, it should be possible to have spell damage increased without holding said weapons, and spells that create shields should have increased defense or resistance when the player is without a shield. The drawback would be that you would have to continually cast, which would require a high amount of mana. That would be the sacrifice you'd made, however.
Also, casters would be able to move faster and more agile than your standard Sorceress in Diablo II with full Tal Rasha's set, which was composed of very heavy pieces of metal that any caster in their right mind (or realistically to caster stereotype standards) would not wear. In Diablo II, I don't know how many people actually know this, but wearing heavier pieces of armor or weapons actually makes you walk and run slower. Yes, it does happen. It goes hand-in-hand with stamina (which got largely played-out in Diablo II because of its stupid stat system) and % Faster Run/Walk attributes.
And, my god, we need robes again! Casters in nearly any fantasy book you read do not wear full plate mail!
Also, the Tal'Rasha set was really ridiculous. Casters IMO are more appropriate wearing barely anything at all for defense. You should have some kind of spell that gives you more defense.
"That's a big f\/<k!/\/ hammer! I'm glad I brought some armor!"
but all in all, I guess if you spend most of your time training beside mages you learn to adapt to fighting mages, thus mages wear cloth. The same could be said for barbarians.
you just brought up an entirely different topic; elemental effects on characters in relation with real-world chemistry and physics. aka, metal as a conductor to electricity. water + lightning = expandable dmg in an elemental char? well the barb had a dual throw skill in d2 that combined well with javs for dmg and combined well with throwing daggers for speed. i mean wc javs were the main secondary wep set for a barb, but thats not the point, the point is dual throw might make a comeback, and i want to see them used.
i imagine a gritty, loner-rogue type character, skilled with all kinds of battle techniques and many weapons. i basically imagine aragorn from lord of the rings. lol.
it gets real annoying when every barb used a fury bb, and then ith, then botd. no other weapon other than the cheapo Armageddon runeword was even near good. needs more specific uniques.
as for sorcs and using hand magic, i neither like or dislike it. i dont mind either way d3 goes. but cmon, seriously? did anyone actually wonder, "gee, i hope this gothic plate wont make my r/w speed to slow, or drain my stamina too fast...," i sure didnt. especially for a sorc, but that just proves some of the brokenness.
"to the worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish."
But mostly wizard should use utility defense spells, such as Spell Mantle or w/e that spell was called: it minimizes everything cast on the wizard and there is no way to kill him in one shot without breaking the spell mantle first.
Other wizards, or, rather, their hybrids, like necromancer, paladin, and druid, should have better armor and weapon possibilities. This is roughly how Nox balanced their system, and they only had one patch lol...
I don't really see how this makes any sense. In DnD games, armor had a penalty since it's something you wear, but why holding a weapon would hinder you in any way if you are not even using it?
RoM, as well as TQ, had charged staves they could use, and charged meant not having a bunch of charges that you can cast, but literally the staff working as an elemental weapon. For the most part their damage was much lower (in RoM) than the spells you can cast, but they just had other bonuses. What I am saying is, rather have a staff shoot some elemental damage instead of the sorc going melee and "Whacka on your head with a stick!" I do not believe barbarians and javelins go together all that well. The reason javs worked is because DII had no melee bonuses from attributes, making any weapon you centered in equally useful. I'd rather have him throw axes. Javelins are for lighter classes.
Frankly, that sounds like an amazon. Ranged, melee, and possibly wood traps, I dunno.
Yes, that's what I mean. This happens in all games, somewhat...
Yes... they should actually make some use of the darned stamina. I did not include stamina on my list but it was floating in my mind.
If the D3 system needs you to put points in str for ur char to operate propely, i dont think imma like it. Cuz every point that was put in str ( in d2 wud add like 2-5 damage or somthing) i found str pointless, unless you needed to wear some kind of high req str armor.
The increase in damage should be useful relative to increase in damage of skills, and dependency of skills on physical damage.
just out of the blue, are you really 30 years old ? lol :P:D just wonderin..