Hey guys, this is a topic about what would you personally like to see be added next patch. We got a long ways from the next one so lets incorporate some ideas and maybe we might just see them add it?
Should reset/swap skills reset valor?
Recently there was a vote, it was about "Should Valor reset if you change/swap skills." I believe there was more No then Yes. In my opinion you should not be punished if you reset your skills as this is a way to promote build diversity and its the main reason why you even get loot. This should be discussed more as this could very well happen.
Weapon Swapping.
As heroes of the sanctuary we should be as powerful as possible. For a long time now people have been going into their inventory to gear swap. How painful is that...open inventory click on the item and re-close it. What a yuck design we should NEVER have to open our inventory unless we need to sell/identify items! This would not only add more flavor to our heroes and their build diversity but it could promote using different weapon types and what stats are offered on them.
Build diversity and you. Our heroes have plenty of moves, but no where near enough slots to use them though. This is the hard part of making things still balanced but not turning people into OP machines and cookie cutters. We really only should have ONE extra slot 1-5 up from 1-4. Adding that one slot can make a huge difference and some of the builds we play and would like to play. We could also add another slot for passive though as well. Regardless I think just think one skill slot or passive slot is needed. With this extra slot we can easily find new builds and solutions for our heroes/classes.
Now this issue is directed towards loot and how it can roll on certain stats. Along with improving the paragon leveling experience.
The power of paragon leveling!
Woah! Level 50 paragon ding alert! How awesome is that you are half way there..but its felt like a lifetime and the rewards aren't getting any greater.. =/. Paragon is awesome and gives us a reason to keep going, why not improve paragon more by adding some of these random stats on gear into the paragon system.
Each Paragon level gives you 3 of your main stat, and 1 on each other. 3% GF and 3% MF.
I feel like with a new reward system like this paragon would be more effective AND more rewarding.
One level of Paragon should be 3% MF and 6% GF
Five level of Paragon should be 250 health globe/potion bonus with 3 yard radius increase
Ten level of Paragon should be 3% movement speed, 6 main stats, 2 other stats, 25 AR, 150 armor, 6% MF, 9% GF.
Personally I would love to see all 3 of these in a new patch. This is just all my opinion though but I feel like we almost need these in order for the game to get even better. Thanks for taking the time to read my post and comment on it if you do. Give out some of your ideas guys, lets try to give some ideas to Blizzard. Because you just never know.
[EDIT] - Wow a lot of feedback from you guys, and plenty of great ideas that I never even thought of. Lets keep up with the ideas guys. You never know if a Blue is watching.
I agree with the skill swap without resetting NV only because sometimes it's necessary when facing high MP ubers and coordinating with teammates.
I also agree with opening up more skill slots, but I feel those should be earned over time with higher paragon levels. As for other bonuses, they won't be necessary since that'll take away from the loot game.
1.) Remove NV stack requirement for Uber organ drops. It's a stupid restriction. There's nothing LESS FUN than attempting to kill an uber by yourself or with a group and then either A) Kill it just after your stacks run out or B.) Seeing that your timer is low and then having to go back out into the world to find a rare pack to reset your timer.
2.) Increased rewards for MP. If the rewards for attempting higher MP were actually worth the effort, there would be an actual reason to pay a premium for "best in slot" gear compared to just picking something up for pennies that is good enough to farm anything in the game. Currently, the only reason to go beyond this "good enough" gear level is for key/uber farming.
3.) Make MF/GF from paragon levels account bound. Stat based rewards from paragons should remain per character though. Finally, we'd have a reason to play alts again.
The high end rolls of these items would make them just barely passable. And of course you will almost never roll the high end. I cant fully grasp why they did such a good job on some of the Legendary items, and completely borked others.
IMO the single biggest design flaw left to be fixed is the importance of the AH. Crafting needs to be overhauled as a truly viable alternative.
Completely agree. The BS should be an alternative for players who doesn't want to use the AH, instead, it just doesn't work.
Make it viable, allow the players to add sockets to items, add stats (not random), etc. For a price, of course. I don't mind to have to farm for example, 2mil, if I can add/change an affix in an item.
Should reset/swap skills reset valor?
Recently there was a vote, it was about "Should Valor reset if you change/swap skills." I believe there was more No then Yes. In my opinion you should not be punished if you reset your skills as this is a way to promote build diversity and its the main reason why you even get loot. This should be discussed more as this could very well happen.
Terrible, terrible, terrible idea.
This idea = rearrange your skills for every tough fight or else you're gimping yourself. Horrible game design.
Should reset/swap skills reset valor?
Recently there was a vote, it was about "Should Valor reset if you change/swap skills." I believe there was more No then Yes. In my opinion you should not be punished if you reset your skills as this is a way to promote build diversity and its the main reason why you even get loot. This should be discussed more as this could very well happen.
Terrible, terrible, terrible idea.
This idea = rearrange your skills for every tough fight or else you're gimping yourself. Horrible game design.
I think there is some merit in the idea, but maybe with some modification. The idea behind 5 stacks was to make you stick with your build. But maybe some compromise can be had. For instance, one of the following 3 penalties for sawpping ONE skill (penalty is imposed everytime you swap).
1: Drop 1 stack of NV per skill change. This has a problem though, if you change one skill to a defensive one, you go to 4 stacks, kill the pack and are back to five. You might as well have just skipped the pack.
2: Give you 1 free skill change every X (10 minutes, or X elite kills etc)
3: My favourite: Let every skill change subtract X (5) minutes from your NV cooldown. 5 minutes means that a complete switch out always drops NV, but just one skill only gives a small overcomeable penalty.
Another idea is to impose no (or smaller versions of above) penalties for changing only the active rune on a skill.
I agree, some build flexibility (not diversity) is required with the possibility of super bad affix pack rolls.
Oh, and PvP of course. And free legendaries if your battletag starts with an F.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I used to shoot people in the knee with arrows, then I took an arrow to the knee.
Support my photography. A hobby, but starting to make some money out of it. Brett Delport Photography
I think NV should still reset when swapping skills. It's an interesting concept that gives some value to the combination of skills I'm using for that run. If I didn't have that, I'm sure I'd be switching stuff back and forth (maybe even for specific elite affixes).
3: My favourite: Let every skill change subtract X (5) minutes from your NV cooldown. 5 minutes means that a complete switch out always drops NV, but just one skill only gives a small overcomeable penalty.
That's a pretty good idea - I'd have the penalty go higher (15 min) so it's actually a hard decision. But his point stands, that we would probably feel "forced" to swap out less useful skills on specific packs I'm kinda ok with the current system.
Weapon Swapping would be nice, and I'd definitely make good use of that (I usually have 2 sets of weapons/shields/sources on my inventory for more messy situations).
Paragon system is working as intended in my book. And I don't think giving us another skill slot wouldn't exactly increase build diversity. At first, when they reduced the number of slots from 7 to 6, I thought they were messing up real bad, but then I realized how much better the current system feels (compared to what I tested on Blizzcon with 7 active skills).
My personal list would be:
Crafting becoming useable. In the sense that if you put a considerable amount of gold in it, there's at least some sort of control over what affixes you'll get. So that we can use it to actually improve our own builds (+bonus to skill, for instance). I think something like this would require some sort of Bind on Account system though, so I don't see it happening.
Critical Hit Dmg being tweaked to be less of a mandatory stat. They could do this by setting the current 100% max to 75%. The higher tier gems could give improvements of 5%/lvl. And current weapons/gems that have 100% would be tweaked (similar to what happened to AS - if you have 90% currently, it would drop to 67% - which is 90% of 75, the new max). Yes, it would piss a lot of people off. Yes, they'd have to give some sort of massive bonus to people's current power to make up for it. Yes, people would still cry over it. But to be fair, I think it would improve the "affix game" tenfold if they started doing something about it.
Gems on Weapons reworked. A radiant star Ruby giving you a +30 dmg base is not even a contender. You could tweak it to give +100-200 and it would still fall waaaaaay behind the current Emerald bonus. This is a system that's not giving us any choice whatsoever, the choice is already made, you either go along with it or considerably hinder yourself. Life on Hit and Thorns gems also need an obvious rework.
The whole Thorns system (paired with the rework to the gem). You could have gems give you 10k dmg/hit and it would still not be a solid choice of build. Firstly because it doesn't work on ranged enemies (I'd change that to deal half dmg to ranged enemies). Secondly, with MP and how high your dmg can go with Crit Chance/Crit Dmg (the top notch people are probably doing 500k-1mil in actual dmg/sec - not character chart), it's obvious why a Thorns build won't work at all. So we would need a tweak on the maximum values that these can get on gear (to be actually useful even for non-thorns builds).
Frankly I'd like to see a buff to all the Legendary items that are still worthless.
This. Paired with a rework of the current absolute BiS stuff to have more "random" affixes (instead of guaranteed +200 mainstat +70-80 res all, +150-200% crit dmg + guaranteed socket 2-handed).
I agree with Zero totally.
Also, while we are talking about thorn att, the thorn mantra skill for monk definitely need to be reworked...Hell, all mantra skills need to be reworked so that I can finally see monk players use something else other than the OP Overawe mantra...(+24% damage, +48% at peak).
Proper randomization. Currently Diablo 3 is 95% static and 5% random. It should be 95% random and 5% static.
Take a leaf outta Diablo 1's book.
Everyone (especially random players in the official forums) seems to be scratching their heads, wondering why Diablo 3 was such a flop. They say it's lack of PvP, or the fault of the AH. It's neither of those. It's level randomization. Until the randomization issue is fixed, Diablo 3 will continue to be a sub-par game.
A lot of things could make this game 10 times better.
But, almost every damn thing that cross my mind that could be improved/changed goes against the mandatory use of the AH, and that, obviously, goes against Acti-Blizzard's number one priority.
I like the idea of a 7th skill slot being added to RMB and LMB and 1-4. However, I think this skill slot should be locked to 3 new skills that each class would get with 1.0.6. These skills would be powerful buffs that would benefit both solo and group play with longer cooldowns, something like 2-3 minutes. I play a demon hunter so something with options for the new skill slot like this might work.
1. your next 5 shots/hits have a 100% crit chance and double crit damage
2. your next 5 shots/hits restore 8% of your health
3. double all damage you and allies do for 10 seconds but you (not your allies) lose all resistances and 50% armor for 10 seconds
These would all apply to people that you're playing with so there could be some strategy involved in choosing cooldowns when fighting tough packs or bosses. If monks were given skills for this new slot like "reduce the damage you and your allies take by 20% for 5 seconds", the demon hunter could use the skill to double all damage done by everyone for 10 seconds and not have to worry as much about getting one-shot while his resistances are down.
I'm a fan of anything promoting group play and I think these skills would help with that and just provide more interesting choices. I would also not be opposed to them adding a way to join public games with monster power enabled. They would need a safe guard to make sure people with bad gear were not jumping into MP8 games, so maybe something like gearscore requirements like the have in WoW for queing for dungeons would work. I can run MP4 pretty efficiently and would love to join public games, but losing that MF and GF really stinks. Even if my theoretical gearscore only allowed me to join MP2 public games, I would still do it to have some fun rather than be stuck joining public games without monster power.
I agree with Zero totally.
Also, while we are talking about thorn att, the thorn mantra skill for monk definitely need to be reworked...Hell, all mantra skills need to be reworked so that I can finally see monk players use something else other than the OP Overawe mantra...(+24% damage, +48% at peak).
True. Overwae is another "no brainer" cookie cutter skill. It simply takes a pretty useful aura, and doubles it (no meme intended).
No Monk with the proper defenses (which should be elsewhere and not really the mantra) would give up a near permanent +48% bonus to all dmg done by him and his party. The other runes can't even compete with Overawe.
Overawe needs an obvious tweaking to more reasonable numbers, and other Mantras need a decent buff to be contenders (specially the dodge and healing mantras, not their runes - some of them are actually fine).
Mantra of Retribution simply needs more interesting runes (and maybe even active effects) and its useful +attackspeed one to be buffed to compete with Conviction.
Even at its full effect (80% dmg suffered is reflected) assuming a high 80k HP character, you'd have to lose most of your HP bar to deal 64k dmg, and that's spread out amongst enemies. You'd need to lose your whole HP bar at least 100 times to deal 640k dmg, also spread out, that's what a well-geared crit Monk can deal in a couple seconds by attacking.
It's a Mantra that, technically speaking, punishes you for having decent dmg mitigation/defenses. Btw, I've tried it. My Monk had a shitload of Vit and +life%, over 110k HP and a ton of life on hit (3k~). It still couldn't kill things even on Act 2 (patch 1.0.4). Yeah, I'm a hipster.
Proper randomization. Currently Diablo 3 is 95% static and 5% random. It should be 95% random and 5% static.
Take a leaf outta Diablo 1's book.
Everyone (especially random players in the official forums) seems to be scratching their heads, wondering why Diablo 3 was such a flop. They say it's lack of PvP, or the fault of the AH. It's neither of those. It's level randomization. Until the randomization issue is fixed, Diablo 3 will continue to be a sub-par game.
I think if they give us enough incentives to actually go through the random dungeons and less popular areas (aka Highlands in Act 1, Sewers and first Desert in Act 2, mini-dungeons Dungeons in Act 3/4) this should be fine. Some people really dislike the absolute random nature of the game (see all the complaints about drop quality, legendaries and crafting being useless), we all like to have some sort of control.
They've definitely done stuff to improve this problem in the last patch, imo - so we're moving to the right direction.
We get NV from events now, so doing these is actually pretty efficient time-wise. Resplandecent Chests give NV AND good loot now, so exploring dungeons feels pretty good as well. And the Hellfire Ring "quest" encourages exploring less popular areas. All they need to do imo is improve the other less popular areas (that I previously mentioned for instance)
They need to rework the Critical Hit Damage stat, and everything associated with it.
In order to do well at higher MP levels, you need to be dealing high amounts of damage. As it stands, the only way to do this is to have a large critical hit chance and critical hit damage. Because of the shear OP of Emeralds in weapons, the three classes that can dual-wield weapons (Demon Hunters, Barbarians, Monks) can quite easily get 400%+ critical hit damage by using two one-handed weapons with sockets and critical hit damage. Witch Doctors and Wizards can only use off-hands which do not allow for boosts in Critical Hit Damage, and socketing off hand items only gives a relatively small boost to a stat.
I think it could be as simple as making off-hand items (Quivers, Shields, Mojo's) able to roll Crit Damage, and give them the same socketing rewards as weapons. It still doesn't change the fact that given you can quite easily get 50% crit chance, Crit builds are the way to go, but it's a start.
They need to rework the Critical Hit Damage stat, and everything associated with it.
In order to do well at higher MP levels, you need to be dealing high amounts of damage. As it stands, the only way to do this is to have a large critical hit chance and critical hit damage. Because of the shear OP of Emeralds in weapons, the three classes that can dual-wield weapons (Demon Hunters, Barbarians, Monks) can quite easily get 400%+ critical hit damage by using two one-handed weapons with sockets and critical hit damage. Witch Doctors and Wizards can only use off-hands which do not allow for boosts in Critical Hit Damage, and socketing off hand items only gives a relatively small boost to a stat.
I think it could be as simple as making off-hand items (Quivers, Shields, Mojo's) able to roll Crit Damage, and give them the same socketing rewards as weapons. It still doesn't change the fact that given you can quite easily get 50% crit chance, Crit builds are the way to go, but it's a start.
You can very easily get above 400% without dualwielding. My barb is at ~450% crit dmg with a two hander.
My wish list for D3;
Other gems / jewels with more stats to put into sockets.
Public games list
Ability to check off an option making every WP for every act available in one game, and having every boss and miniboss up.
There's still a lot of legendaries that just suck no matter their rolls, and I'd love to be able to use other legendaries without taking a 50k + dps loss.
I'm in all legendaries except for 1 ring. PLEASE for the love of god let my dye my red boots, black shorts and blue chest. I look goofy as balls.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Should reset/swap skills reset valor?
Recently there was a vote, it was about "Should Valor reset if you change/swap skills." I believe there was more No then Yes. In my opinion you should not be punished if you reset your skills as this is a way to promote build diversity and its the main reason why you even get loot. This should be discussed more as this could very well happen.
Weapon Swapping.
As heroes of the sanctuary we should be as powerful as possible. For a long time now people have been going into their inventory to gear swap. How painful is that...open inventory click on the item and re-close it. What a yuck design we should NEVER have to open our inventory unless we need to sell/identify items! This would not only add more flavor to our heroes and their build diversity but it could promote using different weapon types and what stats are offered on them.
Build diversity and you.
Our heroes have plenty of moves, but no where near enough slots to use them though. This is the hard part of making things still balanced but not turning people into OP machines and cookie cutters. We really only should have ONE extra slot 1-5 up from 1-4. Adding that one slot can make a huge difference and some of the builds we play and would like to play. We could also add another slot for passive though as well. Regardless I think just think one skill slot or passive slot is needed. With this extra slot we can easily find new builds and solutions for our heroes/classes.
Now this issue is directed towards loot and how it can roll on certain stats. Along with improving the paragon leveling experience.
The power of paragon leveling!
Woah! Level 50 paragon ding alert! How awesome is that you are half way there..but its felt like a lifetime and the rewards aren't getting any greater.. =/. Paragon is awesome and gives us a reason to keep going, why not improve paragon more by adding some of these random stats on gear into the paragon system.
Each Paragon level gives you 3 of your main stat, and 1 on each other. 3% GF and 3% MF.
I feel like with a new reward system like this paragon would be more effective AND more rewarding.
One level of Paragon should be 3% MF and 6% GF
Five level of Paragon should be 250 health globe/potion bonus with 3 yard radius increase
Ten level of Paragon should be 3% movement speed, 6 main stats, 2 other stats, 25 AR, 150 armor, 6% MF, 9% GF.
Personally I would love to see all 3 of these in a new patch. This is just all my opinion though but I feel like we almost need these in order for the game to get even better. Thanks for taking the time to read my post and comment on it if you do. Give out some of your ideas guys, lets try to give some ideas to Blizzard. Because you just never know.
[EDIT] - Wow a lot of feedback from you guys, and plenty of great ideas that I never even thought of. Lets keep up with the ideas guys. You never know if a Blue is watching.
I also agree with opening up more skill slots, but I feel those should be earned over time with higher paragon levels. As for other bonuses, they won't be necessary since that'll take away from the loot game.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
2.) Increased rewards for MP. If the rewards for attempting higher MP were actually worth the effort, there would be an actual reason to pay a premium for "best in slot" gear compared to just picking something up for pennies that is good enough to farm anything in the game. Currently, the only reason to go beyond this "good enough" gear level is for key/uber farming.
3.) Make MF/GF from paragon levels account bound. Stat based rewards from paragons should remain per character though. Finally, we'd have a reason to play alts again.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/ageless-might
or
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/the-gidbinn
The high end rolls of these items would make them just barely passable. And of course you will almost never roll the high end. I cant fully grasp why they did such a good job on some of the Legendary items, and completely borked others.
Completely agree. The BS should be an alternative for players who doesn't want to use the AH, instead, it just doesn't work.
Make it viable, allow the players to add sockets to items, add stats (not random), etc. For a price, of course. I don't mind to have to farm for example, 2mil, if I can add/change an affix in an item.
Sorry, your post must be at least 10 character(s) long.
Terrible, terrible, terrible idea.
This idea = rearrange your skills for every tough fight or else you're gimping yourself. Horrible game design.
I think there is some merit in the idea, but maybe with some modification. The idea behind 5 stacks was to make you stick with your build. But maybe some compromise can be had. For instance, one of the following 3 penalties for sawpping ONE skill (penalty is imposed everytime you swap).
1: Drop 1 stack of NV per skill change. This has a problem though, if you change one skill to a defensive one, you go to 4 stacks, kill the pack and are back to five. You might as well have just skipped the pack.
2: Give you 1 free skill change every X (10 minutes, or X elite kills etc)
3: My favourite: Let every skill change subtract X (5) minutes from your NV cooldown. 5 minutes means that a complete switch out always drops NV, but just one skill only gives a small overcomeable penalty.
Another idea is to impose no (or smaller versions of above) penalties for changing only the active rune on a skill.
I agree, some build flexibility (not diversity) is required with the possibility of super bad affix pack rolls.
Oh, and PvP of course. And free legendaries if your battletag starts with an F.
I think NV should still reset when swapping skills. It's an interesting concept that gives some value to the combination of skills I'm using for that run. If I didn't have that, I'm sure I'd be switching stuff back and forth (maybe even for specific elite affixes).
That's a pretty good idea - I'd have the penalty go higher (15 min) so it's actually a hard decision. But his point stands, that we would probably feel "forced" to swap out less useful skills on specific packs I'm kinda ok with the current system.
Weapon Swapping would be nice, and I'd definitely make good use of that (I usually have 2 sets of weapons/shields/sources on my inventory for more messy situations).
Paragon system is working as intended in my book. And I don't think giving us another skill slot wouldn't exactly increase build diversity. At first, when they reduced the number of slots from 7 to 6, I thought they were messing up real bad, but then I realized how much better the current system feels (compared to what I tested on Blizzcon with 7 active skills).
My personal list would be:
Crafting becoming useable. In the sense that if you put a considerable amount of gold in it, there's at least some sort of control over what affixes you'll get. So that we can use it to actually improve our own builds (+bonus to skill, for instance). I think something like this would require some sort of Bind on Account system though, so I don't see it happening.
Critical Hit Dmg being tweaked to be less of a mandatory stat. They could do this by setting the current 100% max to 75%. The higher tier gems could give improvements of 5%/lvl. And current weapons/gems that have 100% would be tweaked (similar to what happened to AS - if you have 90% currently, it would drop to 67% - which is 90% of 75, the new max). Yes, it would piss a lot of people off. Yes, they'd have to give some sort of massive bonus to people's current power to make up for it. Yes, people would still cry over it. But to be fair, I think it would improve the "affix game" tenfold if they started doing something about it.
Gems on Weapons reworked. A radiant star Ruby giving you a +30 dmg base is not even a contender. You could tweak it to give +100-200 and it would still fall waaaaaay behind the current Emerald bonus. This is a system that's not giving us any choice whatsoever, the choice is already made, you either go along with it or considerably hinder yourself. Life on Hit and Thorns gems also need an obvious rework.
The whole Thorns system (paired with the rework to the gem). You could have gems give you 10k dmg/hit and it would still not be a solid choice of build. Firstly because it doesn't work on ranged enemies (I'd change that to deal half dmg to ranged enemies). Secondly, with MP and how high your dmg can go with Crit Chance/Crit Dmg (the top notch people are probably doing 500k-1mil in actual dmg/sec - not character chart), it's obvious why a Thorns build won't work at all. So we would need a tweak on the maximum values that these can get on gear (to be actually useful even for non-thorns builds).
And last, but definitely not least:
This. Paired with a rework of the current absolute BiS stuff to have more "random" affixes (instead of guaranteed +200 mainstat +70-80 res all, +150-200% crit dmg + guaranteed socket 2-handed).
Also, while we are talking about thorn att, the thorn mantra skill for monk definitely need to be reworked...Hell, all mantra skills need to be reworked so that I can finally see monk players use something else other than the OP Overawe mantra...(+24% damage, +48% at peak).
Take a leaf outta Diablo 1's book.
Everyone (especially random players in the official forums) seems to be scratching their heads, wondering why Diablo 3 was such a flop. They say it's lack of PvP, or the fault of the AH. It's neither of those. It's level randomization. Until the randomization issue is fixed, Diablo 3 will continue to be a sub-par game.
But, almost every damn thing that cross my mind that could be improved/changed goes against the mandatory use of the AH, and that, obviously, goes against Acti-Blizzard's number one priority.
1. your next 5 shots/hits have a 100% crit chance and double crit damage
2. your next 5 shots/hits restore 8% of your health
3. double all damage you and allies do for 10 seconds but you (not your allies) lose all resistances and 50% armor for 10 seconds
These would all apply to people that you're playing with so there could be some strategy involved in choosing cooldowns when fighting tough packs or bosses. If monks were given skills for this new slot like "reduce the damage you and your allies take by 20% for 5 seconds", the demon hunter could use the skill to double all damage done by everyone for 10 seconds and not have to worry as much about getting one-shot while his resistances are down.
I'm a fan of anything promoting group play and I think these skills would help with that and just provide more interesting choices. I would also not be opposed to them adding a way to join public games with monster power enabled. They would need a safe guard to make sure people with bad gear were not jumping into MP8 games, so maybe something like gearscore requirements like the have in WoW for queing for dungeons would work. I can run MP4 pretty efficiently and would love to join public games, but losing that MF and GF really stinks. Even if my theoretical gearscore only allowed me to join MP2 public games, I would still do it to have some fun rather than be stuck joining public games without monster power.
No Monk with the proper defenses (which should be elsewhere and not really the mantra) would give up a near permanent +48% bonus to all dmg done by him and his party. The other runes can't even compete with Overawe.
Overawe needs an obvious tweaking to more reasonable numbers, and other Mantras need a decent buff to be contenders (specially the dodge and healing mantras, not their runes - some of them are actually fine).
Mantra of Retribution simply needs more interesting runes (and maybe even active effects) and its useful +attackspeed one to be buffed to compete with Conviction.
Even at its full effect (80% dmg suffered is reflected) assuming a high 80k HP character, you'd have to lose most of your HP bar to deal 64k dmg, and that's spread out amongst enemies. You'd need to lose your whole HP bar at least 100 times to deal 640k dmg, also spread out, that's what a well-geared crit Monk can deal in a couple seconds by attacking.
It's a Mantra that, technically speaking, punishes you for having decent dmg mitigation/defenses. Btw, I've tried it. My Monk had a shitload of Vit and +life%, over 110k HP and a ton of life on hit (3k~). It still couldn't kill things even on Act 2 (patch 1.0.4). Yeah, I'm a hipster.
I think if they give us enough incentives to actually go through the random dungeons and less popular areas (aka Highlands in Act 1, Sewers and first Desert in Act 2, mini-dungeons Dungeons in Act 3/4) this should be fine. Some people really dislike the absolute random nature of the game (see all the complaints about drop quality, legendaries and crafting being useless), we all like to have some sort of control.
They've definitely done stuff to improve this problem in the last patch, imo - so we're moving to the right direction.
We get NV from events now, so doing these is actually pretty efficient time-wise. Resplandecent Chests give NV AND good loot now, so exploring dungeons feels pretty good as well. And the Hellfire Ring "quest" encourages exploring less popular areas. All they need to do imo is improve the other less popular areas (that I previously mentioned for instance)
In order to do well at higher MP levels, you need to be dealing high amounts of damage. As it stands, the only way to do this is to have a large critical hit chance and critical hit damage. Because of the shear OP of Emeralds in weapons, the three classes that can dual-wield weapons (Demon Hunters, Barbarians, Monks) can quite easily get 400%+ critical hit damage by using two one-handed weapons with sockets and critical hit damage. Witch Doctors and Wizards can only use off-hands which do not allow for boosts in Critical Hit Damage, and socketing off hand items only gives a relatively small boost to a stat.
I think it could be as simple as making off-hand items (Quivers, Shields, Mojo's) able to roll Crit Damage, and give them the same socketing rewards as weapons. It still doesn't change the fact that given you can quite easily get 50% crit chance, Crit builds are the way to go, but it's a start.
You can very easily get above 400% without dualwielding. My barb is at ~450% crit dmg with a two hander.
My wish list for D3;
Other gems / jewels with more stats to put into sockets.
Public games list
Ability to check off an option making every WP for every act available in one game, and having every boss and miniboss up.
There's still a lot of legendaries that just suck no matter their rolls, and I'd love to be able to use other legendaries without taking a 50k + dps loss.
I'm in all legendaries except for 1 ring. PLEASE for the love of god let my dye my red boots, black shorts and blue chest. I look goofy as balls.