A while back in a previous post I made, I argued that one of the particular runes for the Familiar spell was largely useless. This rune was Vigoron, which at level 60 gives you 310 Life Per Second. Now, 310 LPS is pretty good as regen goes - the maximum LPS on any non legendary slot is 340 (according to D3MaxStats), which means Vigoron comes close to providing a max roll for this particular stat. And yet, Vigoron is still as useless as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, by virtue of LPS being said man's missing leg.
In an early blue post for Diablo 3 (I can't find the exact thread, but I'd be grateful to whoever can supply the link), the devs touted LPS as one of the four major sustain options (the others being life steal, life on hit, and health globes; before the advent of Archon builds, life after kill was seen more as a minor leveling/farming quality-of-life advantage). It was supposedly a major cornerstone of Monk gameplay, as well as Witch Doctors to a lesser degree, and was advertised as being useful for all classes. Nearly eight patches later, we now all know better.
Missing The Goal: Life per second started out as a humble, yet useful affix called Replenish Life in Diablo 2. Oddly enough, in those days when everyone and their follower had life steal, Replenish Life still had its place. The average run through Harrogath could see you chugging down entire stacks worth of potions, and buying those pots was a significant gold sink. Replenish Life allowed you to ease the fiscal damage of profligate potion use and ensured you started each fight relatively close to a full hp orb. Nobody really stacked it, but it was a good stat to have, and you didn't lose anything by having it on you.
Now, fast forward over 10 years later. Potions now have a 30 second cooldown, and you'll find more of then in the course of a run than you can ever consume. Monster density and run efficiency means that LPS is significantly devalued as a between-fight heal; you simply don't want to spend any time not killing anything. LPS also takes up an affix slot that could easily be something more worthwhile - even in a shoulder slot, with no direct dps stats, the 'perfect roll' of mainstat, mainstat + vit, all res, +armor means that 4 out of 6 mods have already been consumed. For the last two, pickup radius, +life%, and bonus to health globes are all much better choices, and even mfind/gfind sounds pretty good if you're below Paragon 100. And this is on the most versatile armor slot - can you seriously imagine giving up LoH on jewelry or +crit chance on gloves for LPS? Didn't think so.
A World With More Options: Okay, so the whole healing-between-fights thing has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Well, what about LPS in combat? Why use the other options when LPS can roll on every item slot except weapons? Well, why eat chopped liver when you can have Kobe beef?
Referring again to D3MaxStats, the absolute maximum LPS you can ever have with the current patch is 5217. This assumes max rolls on every slot and a max roll on a Sky Splitter (don't get me wrong, it's a great weapon, but not everyone will want or be able to use it). This also means that you gave up potential stats on the other slots - for example, an optimal rare (non class-specific) helm will have mainstat, vit, crit, armor, all res, and a socket. And we haven't even started talking about the Helm of Command, Storm Crow, or god forbid, a Mempo. In other words, you gave up either DPS or EHP for that couple hundred hp worth of regen. If you could argue that it was worth it, I wouldn't be here telling you how bad it is. Let's see how the other life sustain sources stack up against it.
Life Steal - The sustain of choice for two-hander barbs, bell monks, non-CMWW wizards, and a lot of heavy, slow hitting builds. Devalued by difficulty level, it nevertheless scales directly with your damage output, meaning the better your gear is, the better it gets. At 100k DPS (which is entry level into the big leagues) and with good crit damage modifiers, this adds up to significant life recovery. 1.5% life steal, which is the average for a 1-handed weapon, will still heal for 1,500 in Inferno if you get a 500k crit. And you can still multiply that for area targets. Life Steal tends to jack up a weapon's price by a lot - since it can only roll on weapons unless you're a barb - but by the same token, once you get a good weapon with life steal, that purchase will last you a long time.
Life On Hit - A popular option, this has been a staple of the most popular builds in D3; WW barbs, CMWW wizards, witch doctors with Rain of Toads, and two-weapon monks of all stripes. Another expensive stat, this rolls only on jewelry (and legendary pieces like the Storm Crow and Jousting Mail). This skill is limited by the proc coefficient of the spells you're using - with the wrong skills, it's dead weight. With the right skills, it renders you nearly immortal. It maxes out at over 4100 LoH with legendaries, realistically capping at 2876 with rares. While on paper, this number is greatly lower than the maximum possible LPS, in practice this easily overtakes it depending on the number of targets, cooldown/attack speed, and the skill's proc coefficient. In fact, a popular guide for wizard gearing indicates that 500 LoH should be enough for endgame needs, depending on the rest of the gear. Since LoH caps out at nearly 500 on rings (and nearly 1000 on amulets), this is easy to get provided you're willing to spend a good deal on a single jewelry piece.
Health Globes - While rarely geared for specifically (Gruesome Feast witch doctors and Pound of Flesh barbs come to mind), this mechanic particular to Diablo 3 is one of the most reliable options for healing between fights, and sometimes in mid fight too. Globes heal a percentage of your max health, meaning that it scales with your health pool. All monsters have a chance to drop it, and elite packs can drop it multiple times. While not as strong in terms of pure sustain as the previous options, it's easy to use provided you can survive between health globe drops, and it's dead easy to gear for. A single bonus affix caps out at almost 13000(!) extra life, and this applies to potions as well, which is just GREAT. It doesn't significantly increase the price of gear, and one affix somewhere on your set is good enough to be noticeable without negatively impacting your DPS or EHP.
Life After Kill - One of the least used recovery options, this affix is nevertheless useful to note in high speed farming runs at low MP. Archon wizards benefit greatly by it, as their main mechanic involves fast killing, and Rend Barbarians can also make use of this. Like Bonus Health To Globes, this affix doesn't usually increase a piece's cost, and one should be enough somewhere on your set. It caps out at 2878 life per piece, which is pretty good by itself. While killing large amounts of white trash (or Illusionist packs), this pretty much negates the need for any other kind of healing on lower difficulties.
(Note that there are other niche options for recovery not mentioned here. For example, monks have Life Per Spirit Spent and some barbarian pieces have Life Per Fury spent. These are too class specific to be included in this discussion.)
The first two options completely outclass LPS for combat life recovery, while Life After Kill is clearly superior for post-fight recovery. Health globes are somewhere in the middle, healing for a static amount relative to life pool that can be used both in combat and out of it. All of them reward aggressive gameplay and high DPS. Compare that to LPS, which is a completely static amount regardless of the player's actions, and which heals for an insignificant amount in comparison, and you'll understand why it's not a very impressive stat.
The 411: As it is, LPS is currently a very underwhelming affix that could use some improvment to be a competitive recovery option. Even in combination with certain skills (Mantra of Healing or the aforementioned Vigoron rune), it's still not very good. Worst of all, those skills are subpar options that have much better analogues; Mantra of Conviction and the Sparkflint rune come to mind.
It's true that LPS is still an important factor in a tiny number of builds. The biggest one that comes to mind are glass wizards specs, which rely on the Force Armor rune, small life pools and large EHP values. To a lesser extent, witch doctors with Blood Ritual and/or Fierce Loyalty benefit from stacking LPS. Still, this is far too small a sample size to justify the existent of LPS in the current state of D3.
In my opinion, LPS needs to be buffed, and bad. I'll go out on a limb and say that LPS on gear should be DOUBLED. By doing so, a player needs less pieces of gear with smaller rolls, making it easier and more practical to stack LPS to a useful amount. I would argue that there's no real harm if said player chooses to go ahead and stack it on all his gear pieces; as I've already pointed out, all this does is negatively impact his overall DPS and EHP.
Skills that affect LPS should be tweaked on a case by case basis - Galvanizing Ward and Vigoron could be doubled with little harm, I would think. However, skills like Blood Ritual or Mantra of Healing (which is percentage based or affects the whole party) could be kept as is. Or maybe the opposite could be applied - keep LPS on gear the same while greatly increasing the amount skills recover. This in turn could promote build diversity, effectively transferring the burden of EHP to the skills, allowing the player to gear more offensively instead. In any case, Life Per Second is a stat that needs watching and improving, and hopefully we can make this case to the devs in an upcoming patch.
I think their main concern with Life/Second was that it could easily work to mitigate all damage done, if we could get like 10-15k health/sec and enough mitigation, we could have 20k HP (anyone remembers Force Armor + Regen?) and tank higher MPs with just the mitigation and regen.
This isn't much of a problem in itself (it would require testing though), and I'd love to see more "sustain" options other than just LoH and LS.
But the other concern is that it could be just too good if paired with just a little bit of Life Steal or LoH. I think my US Wizard had 600 LoH and Lifesteal for quite some time (before changing to a new weapon that gave me 20k+ dps) and her survivability was pretty amazing for my gear level. Combining a buffed L/sec (10-15k Life/sec) + Lifesteal or LoH would be insane.
I think one of the first things they'd have to do is make it specific to some gear slots. Or at least high rolls of it specific to some slots (like a really high 2k Life/Sec roll only possible on weapons, and then something like 400-500 Life/Sec on jewelry). And then restrain L/sec rolls to only Shoulders and Pants. All these particular slots imho desperately need more options.
Another interesting idea would be if L/sec could be a "recovery" stat, a glass-cannon stat, useful on hit-and-run builds/tactics that don't want to facetank mobs. I've actually tried L/sec on my Wizard that has an Oculus (to spam teleport) and focuses mostly on hit'n'run tactics, but it's just not worth it. To make it such a stat, it could have a mechanic that triples its effectiveness when you haven't taken damage for 2-3 second (thus giving us a solid 15-20k life/sec and allowing us to prepare for the next round of attacks).
If I managed to stack 10K life per second regeneration on my gear (without downgrading my other stats), I can assure you, I will probably never, ever die again in-game. Right now, on MP7-8, normal Phasebeasts actually do no damage to me. None. Elites tickle me, but I can still manage about 20-50 hits before I actually need to run and heal.
I'm not the only player in the world with high life and mitigation... and I'm a wizard. Use a barb or monk as an example (counting the 30% damage reduction) or a DH/monk with their 50-60% dodge rate, highly buffed life regeneration is going to be rather broken.
There are many players focusing primarily on PvP who regularly run 2.5-5K life per second. That's already enough to cancel out a ton of incoming damage. With life steal or LoH factored into the vast majority of players that take farming seriously, additional regeneration will make everything far too trivial. No one's going to feel threatened again. Where's the fun in that?
There's a wizard running around the official wizard forum with 18K HP, very little mitigation, but well over 400K DPS. He runs Force Armor and relies heavily on life steal to quickly replenish HP with minimal kiting on MP7+. If you throw in 10K life regeneration—hell, even 5-7K—he's not going to die... ever, unless he stays still and doesn't attack.
Perhaps, though, they can keep life regeneration as is, but when you're out of combat for X seconds, the regeneration doubles until you go back into combat. That, at least, will make things a little bit more interesting. Yes, you did say it's old-fashioned and gone the way of the dinosaurs, but at least it's better than nothing. Perhaps people who do enjoy kiting will make better use of it.
P.S. it's late over here and I probably misread some things or haven't thought some things out too clearly. But this is a good topic and healing is quite boring, so there's potential here for some tweaks and new features.
I would politely like to argue that, although 10k LPS sounds broken, a lot of things need to be sacrificed in order to achieve it. I would further argue that, again, gearing for that amount of LPS would cripple a character's EHP/DPS to the point that it wouldn't make him invincible.
Let's take Jaetch's wizard as an example, if I may. The only natural life regen on her comes from the shoulders to the tune of 248 lps, all well and good. If we tried to add more LPS, the only slot I can imagine putting it on are the gloves, by dropping the strength(which is still 33 armor). We could also drop the cold res from the bracers for more regen. With hypothetical perfect rolls at the proposed 200% increase, we're looking at another, oh 1364 lps. Pretty good, right?
If we tried adding it to the Mempo, the crit would have to go. 684 lps sounds like a very poor bargain in exchange for 6 crit. Ditto with the Allegiance - we could possibly sacrifice the extra vit roll, but would it be worth the EHP loss? Again, ditto with the Pox - would losing 86 vit be worth 684 lps? At some point, while the regen numbers keep going up, DPS and EHP begin to go down. However, with the doubled amount of regen, the 1364 lps we theorized above sounds like a fair bargain for the stats he dropped. If we used current stats however, it goes down to 684 (for perfect rolls!) which sounds a lot less attractive. My napkin math might be wrong, and of course both of you have more experience than I do in these matters, but increasing LPS by a straight value just doesn't seem to be gamebreaking to me in any way. Also take note, to get to the 10k lps value, you're assuming both max rolls and the use of specific legendaries like the Sky Splitter. Take that out, and the max drops to 9000 LPS, thereabouts.
I'm totally down with the idea of shoving LPS into a few select pieces though. As I pointed out, Life Steal and LoH are helped by their specificity. If we took the current absolute max of 4618 LPS (no legendaries) and divvied it up among three or four pieces instead of 12, that would definitely increase its attractiveness and give it more bang per armor piece.
Awesome read. Very well put together, and absolutely true.
I've seen some wizards asking for gear advice on these forums, and realized there are still quite a few people stacking LPS (~1500), but like you say, it can never keep up with LoH and LS, especially since it doesn't scale. Even LaK and health globes at least scale with kill speed. LPS does not scale at all. I remember that in the beginning of the game (started off with a barb) I beat Diablo with a 8k DPS barb, and obviously at this point LS was useless, LoH was awesome, and LPS was still a bit useful. Nowadays everyone has 100k+ DPS, and many even have more than 1 million real DPS (check with timed Ghom runs). 1 million DPS means that even the 0.5% Inferno LS of a 2.5% LS weapon give you 5000 LPS, which is impossible to reach without Skysplitter.
And don't even get me started with CMWW/LoH; with 800 LoH (Stormcrow+BT pants), 50% crit chance, and 2.74 APS, you gain almost 17k LPS against two targets (i.e., uber fight). And that with a 88k sheet DPS char, see example calc here.
=> I completely agree, LPS needs to be buffed. And I wouldn't say even double it is not enough. The problem is that, like I said, in the early days having 100k DPS was a huge feat, while now it's just the starting setup of everyone. The game has evolved, and certain stats have evolved with it, while others don't (in particular Thorns, which is getting buffed, and LPS). LPS should scale and benefit, for example, from vitality bonus.
Oh and... I'm so flattered that you linked my guide in your line of argument... I'm gonna link this discussion thread back in my guide for "further reading" in the respective life regeneration section :-) Cheers and +1!
First off, thanks to everyone for throwing in your ideas into this discussion! Now, on to the main points.
Another interesting idea would be if L/sec could be a "recovery" stat, a glass-cannon stat, useful on hit-and-run builds/tactics that don't want to facetank mobs. I've actually tried L/sec on my Wizard that has an Oculus (to spam teleport) and focuses mostly on hit'n'run tactics, but it's just not worth it. To make it such a stat, it could have a mechanic that triples its effectiveness when you haven't taken damage for 2-3 second (thus giving us a solid 15-20k life/sec and allowing us to prepare for the next round of attacks).
This IS one of the more interesting suggestions for LPS I've seen - it would definitely make it a stronger choice for post fight life recovery.
My main issue with it is that the whole 'in-and-out-of-combat' mechanic is something that fits MMO's better than an action RPG. Not to mention that people would probably try to use it with Teleport/Spirit Walk to punch way above their weight (MP8-10, for example, with sub-100k dps) and take down elites via sheer attrition. Hit-and-run tactics are one thing, hit-flee-heal-repeat just sounds like a chore. It would be an ineffective way to farm, true, but it makes it possible and just feels more like some Korean MMO than D3. Second, I feel like LaK and Health Globes are already a good source of post fight recovery. If I had to choose, I'd rather try to find a mechanic that makes LPS viable during combat than after it, simply because it would make it more interesting.
The other big issue is that having LPS have different mechanics in combat and out of combat sounds too complicated for an affix. Don't get me wrong, Zero(pS), I love the idea, it's just that it feels better as a legendary ability, or better yet, a skill (active or passive, either could work, though I'd lean towards actives since the passive slots are too crowded as it is to fit in a non DPS skill).
Making LPS percent based would solve the biggest issue it currently has, which is scaling.
Not quite sure what you're leading to here. Should it be percent based meaning a percent of your life or your vit?
=> I completely agree, LPS needs to be buffed. And I wouldn't say even double it is not enough. The problem is that, like I said, in the early days having 100k DPS was a huge feat, while now it's just the starting setup of everyone.
Bagstone, brother, I'm with you here... but it's just depressing to hear you say 100k is beginner Inferno, and realize that I've logged nearly 700 hours on my wizard and still haven't broken 200k dps, lol.
LPS should scale and benefit, for example, from vitality bonus.
I can see how that might make the vitality stat a little too good. Scaling to vit in a percentage fashion, like say how mainstat applies to DPS, could yield some scary numbers. However, I like where this idea is going in general, and agree that vit could benefit LPS.
One of the biggest annoyances while still playing in lower levels is having to spend potions and trips to the healer, since your gear usually has nothing in the way of LoH, nevermind Lifesteal while your DPS hasn't even hit 4 digits. So I remember thinking up of something while trying to hit 60 with my alts.
What if ALL characters had a base LPS equal to their vit score? This would be a QoL improvement for lowbies, allowing their leveling pace to have less breaks, while higher level characters would get an amount that's just enough to keep them going between fights. At the same time, it rewards defensive minded players who gear vit in significant amounts by also giving them an extra life recovery option, and allows others to boost existing LPS on their gear without making it too high.
I'm gonna link this discussion thread back in my guide for "further reading" in the respective life regeneration section :-) Cheers and +1!
:Thumbs Up: Lots of thanks! Your guide helped me out big time when my wizard was stuck in a gearing rut, and I'm glad to have been of some help.
My main issue with it is that the whole 'in-and-out-of-combat' mechanic is something that fits MMO's better than an action RPG.
IIRC we had the mechanic in D3 before, with the passive Brooding from the DH. They would recover a % of their life "if not taking damage for 'x' seconds". It was a pretty sweet idea for hit'n'run tactics. I do think people didn't choose that passive because the dps-focused ones are arguably better, and you couldn't really trade an active like Smokescreen or Shadow Power for it, which prompted the change (and people still don't use it).
Not to mention that people would probably try to use it with Teleport/Spirit Walk to punch way above their weight (MP8-10, for example, with sub-100k dps) and take down elites via sheer attrition. Hit-and-run tactics are one thing, hit-flee-heal-repeat just sounds like a chore.
I know the dev team thinks differently, but I certainly wouldn't mind a PTR to test things like these. Again we've had this before in the game, it's precisely what Wizards did early on. LpS + Force Armor and then Hydra + Blizzard for attrition.
I don't think it's an issue at all to have it again. Bad positioning and burst damage (or things like Vortex, or swarming enemies) can still burst you down if you're careless, it just adds another type of sustain to combat - and one that's practically non-existent in MP 8-10 (everyone uses LS and LoH, if even 10% of those would switch to an "op" LpS it would be a win-win situation).
Second, I feel like LaK and Health Globes are already a good source of post fight recovery.
Indeed. But post-fight recovery isn't really a big issue. If you're leaving every fight at 10-15% HP, you're probably not able to handle that MP already. My idea is really making LpS fill a specific niche (old school Wiz/DH hit'n'run tactics). It would also help value those underrated defensive skills (Frost Nova, Horrify, Mass Confusion, Smokescreen, etc.) by giving a very specific window for the character to recover (instead of facetanking everything).
If I had to choose, I'd rather try to find a mechanic that makes LPS viable during combat than after it, simply because it would make it more interesting.
Absolutely
The other big issue is that having LPS have different mechanics in combat and out of combat sounds too complicated for an affix.
Indeed, that's probably why Blizzard leans heavily against this sort of change though. I do think they need to lift this philosophy at times, because some of these changes must happen in order to improve the game.
LPS should scale and benefit, for example, from vitality bonus.
That's a good idea, but I think it would benefit only top-end players (like Jaetch) who have insane dps PAIRED with 1200-1500+ Vit alone (from very high-end items/pants/chests). Mid-lvl players and Inferno-entry players already have a very hard choice to between Vit and Mainstat (barely making to 700-900 Vit), so I really doubt they'd go for a much lower (say, 60-70k) DPS to have the mechanic work in their favour.
Very interesting topic... when I started out in hardcore I was stacking LoH exclusively until a shining beacon in the sky turned out to be a 500 LPS Skysplitter. For the next 10 paragon levels or so while I was getting my feet wet in hardcore, LPS+LoH was how I lived. I was very close to feeling like I was immortal (at least on low MP) - and the side benefit was that I felt like a random disconnect wouldn't necessarily kill me.
With passives and various other skills, my undergeared barb was able to manage around 3400 LPS with another 800 LoH. Resistances were probably around 700-800, with maybe 8k buffed armor and 55-60k health. Overkill, most likely, but I wanted to get through Inferno for the first time without dying so it made sense for me at the time. I also had no money and no viable gear options.
Point being: even now, for some classes, LPS is definitely viable for a super tank experience. I still have a lot of that LPS/LoH combo gear and if I ever did decide to go and farm higher MP I feel confident I could live.... it just might take an hour or two to kill an elite pack
If I remember correctly, Blizz once explained that there is no in/out of combat check in Diablo 3 at all.
They very much did say that. It was not too long after launch, IIRC. That's why you had some abilities that would activate after not taking damage for a certain period of time. There is no "in combat" in D3, at least not the same as there is in WoW.
That being said, I tend to agree with the OP that Life/sec is a property that just doesn't pack much punch currently. This is due mostly to the fact that even if you could stack it, in too many slots you'd have to sacrifice other stats which are far better. I have 92 Life/sec on my shoulders and I'm OK with that because it didn't "cost" me anything else. However, 92 Life/sec does precisely nothing for me, honestly. A roll that low is completely negligible, even if I can stack it on several pieces.
Problems aside, I have no doubt that Life/sec is probably part of the itemization changes. Blizzard has to know that 3% Life Steal (a single good roll on a single item) is far better for damn near every player than a single good Life/sec roll. I can't imagine this isn't one of the many item properties they are planning to look into.
As some of you already said that certain builds will become broken if you can get too much life regen, I still think that abilities which provide it should be buffed. Atm a lot of runes are obviously better than others. This problem extends further than life regen. I hope that in a patch not far away, Blizz will look at all the abilities and runes and replace/change them so there will be more skills to choose from.
I don't think anybody will argue that a lot of the skills need to be looked over. At the same time, we're talking about a mechanic, and not about skill buffs in general. I focused on LPS in this post because changing or buffing it could lead to better ideas to specific skill changes. Also, it would take too long to talk about every darn skill in the game... though I do plan to tackle that some day.
Very interesting topic... when I started out in hardcore I was stacking LoH exclusively until a shining beacon in the sky turned out to be a 500 LPS Skysplitter. For the next 10 paragon levels or so while I was getting my feet wet in hardcore, LPS+LoH was how I lived. I was very close to feeling like I was immortal (at least on low MP) - and the side benefit was that I felt like a random disconnect wouldn't necessarily kill me.
No one is arguing that survivability is the paramount concern in hardcore. However, I didn't post this in the HC threads, and am therefore assuming everyone knows this discussion mostly revolves around softcore play.
Point being: even now, for some classes, LPS is definitely viable for a super tank experience. I still have a lot of that LPS/LoH combo gear and if I ever did decide to go and farm higher MP I feel confident I could live.... it just might take an hour or two to kill an elite pack
As I'm posting this, one of my browser windows is currently open to DiabloProgress. None of the top 5 softcore characters on the Heroscore ranks are packing much more than 500 LPS, which I'm certain is incidental in their gear. The only wizard there has none.
If the build works for you and you're having fun with it, by all means good on you. Nevertheless, at least for a large number of softcore players, the enjoyment of feeling invincible is usually tempered by the fact that, with a little more dps and a little less defensive stats, they could be killing elites at twice the speed. I provide as proof of this argument the fact that Blizzard has consistently lowered monster defensive abilities per patch; for example, in the upcoming 1.08 patch, the devs have announced a reduction in monster hp for multiplayer. Secondly, sword-and-board builds are rarely listed as popular for softcore - I've dedicated a blogpost on my site examining and analyzing this occurrence -archmagelezard.blogspot.com/2013/03/state-of-play-whatever-happened-to.html
Problems aside, I have no doubt that Life/sec is probably part of the itemization changes. Blizzard has to know that 3% Life Steal (a single good roll on a single item) is far better for damn near every player than a single good Life/sec roll. I can't imagine this isn't one of the many item properties they are planning to look into.
I honestly wish I could share your optimism. From what I gather on the proposed itemization changes, the fixes to rares and magicals would revolve around increasing the lower end of the roll table for high ilvl equipment. While on paper, this would make LPS seem more appealing, the fact of the matter is that even at god roll, LPS still cannot justify its space on your gearset when there are much, MUCH better options for recovery or even just EHP.
That takes care of the skill-based life regeneration. Let's make sure they do the same (or better) for item-based life/sec! I'll go ahead and assume that's on their radar for the itemization patch, though, since these changes are an obvious acknowledgement that something needed to be done!
This could definitely make those ranged kiting builds more viable.
Can't wait to try a sort of hybrid LS/Life-sec or LoH/Life-sec character who knows, maybe we can simply let go of LS/LoH altogether and go full Life-sec!!!
Its great that they atleast took the first step towards this, but doubling the numbers to ~600 doesn't really make too big of a difference for a class that gets destroyed if something gets into melee range.
I think the idea is that these "ranged" classes really aren't supposed to be facetanking mobs, but instead rely on mobility and positioning to be safe from dmg.
In that sense, something along the lines of 7-10k Life/sec could definitely allow them to cast that Teleport/Vault/Smokescreen/Spirit-walk/Mirror-Image and recover to full life very quickly.
Converting everything to a percent based digit would nerf the sub60 players but let the ability actually scale from the choices you make.
The problem with anything % based is that it scales only from Vit/Life%. Most top-notch players have about 40-50k HP, even at 4% Life/Sec that's 2k~ health-regen, I doubt these would trade off their DPS or Lifesteal for such low regen. And for the others at 100k HP, it's still only 4k~ health-regen (I'm either adding together multiple 2% LPS sources, or one 4%).
It also would kill the possibility of any sort of high defense/mitigation (through Armor, All-res or something like Force Armor) to work with the life regen sources.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not sure if they took the best approach, but they probably have tested this and the fact that something is being done is great.
Bumping party buffs is fine but the question still remains: how many players are really willing to sacrifice personal benefit for strangers?
I'd say quite a few. I have played public games just for the lulz (knowing it was less efficient). You see all types of players there, from 150-200k Barbarians to 35k Squishy DHs. Not everyone (I'd go as far as say most people don't) care about "efficiency", you know, cause it's a game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
archmagelezard.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-case-for-buffing-life-per-second.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A while back in a previous post I made, I argued that one of the particular runes for the Familiar spell was largely useless. This rune was Vigoron, which at level 60 gives you 310 Life Per Second. Now, 310 LPS is pretty good as regen goes - the maximum LPS on any non legendary slot is 340 (according to D3MaxStats), which means Vigoron comes close to providing a max roll for this particular stat. And yet, Vigoron is still as useless as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, by virtue of LPS being said man's missing leg.
In an early blue post for Diablo 3 (I can't find the exact thread, but I'd be grateful to whoever can supply the link), the devs touted LPS as one of the four major sustain options (the others being life steal, life on hit, and health globes; before the advent of Archon builds, life after kill was seen more as a minor leveling/farming quality-of-life advantage). It was supposedly a major cornerstone of Monk gameplay, as well as Witch Doctors to a lesser degree, and was advertised as being useful for all classes. Nearly eight patches later, we now all know better.
Missing The Goal: Life per second started out as a humble, yet useful affix called Replenish Life in Diablo 2. Oddly enough, in those days when everyone and their follower had life steal, Replenish Life still had its place. The average run through Harrogath could see you chugging down entire stacks worth of potions, and buying those pots was a significant gold sink. Replenish Life allowed you to ease the fiscal damage of profligate potion use and ensured you started each fight relatively close to a full hp orb. Nobody really stacked it, but it was a good stat to have, and you didn't lose anything by having it on you.
Now, fast forward over 10 years later. Potions now have a 30 second cooldown, and you'll find more of then in the course of a run than you can ever consume. Monster density and run efficiency means that LPS is significantly devalued as a between-fight heal; you simply don't want to spend any time not killing anything. LPS also takes up an affix slot that could easily be something more worthwhile - even in a shoulder slot, with no direct dps stats, the 'perfect roll' of mainstat, mainstat + vit, all res, +armor means that 4 out of 6 mods have already been consumed. For the last two, pickup radius, +life%, and bonus to health globes are all much better choices, and even mfind/gfind sounds pretty good if you're below Paragon 100. And this is on the most versatile armor slot - can you seriously imagine giving up LoH on jewelry or +crit chance on gloves for LPS? Didn't think so.
A World With More Options: Okay, so the whole healing-between-fights thing has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Well, what about LPS in combat? Why use the other options when LPS can roll on every item slot except weapons? Well, why eat chopped liver when you can have Kobe beef?
Referring again to D3MaxStats, the absolute maximum LPS you can ever have with the current patch is 5217. This assumes max rolls on every slot and a max roll on a Sky Splitter (don't get me wrong, it's a great weapon, but not everyone will want or be able to use it). This also means that you gave up potential stats on the other slots - for example, an optimal rare (non class-specific) helm will have mainstat, vit, crit, armor, all res, and a socket. And we haven't even started talking about the Helm of Command, Storm Crow, or god forbid, a Mempo. In other words, you gave up either DPS or EHP for that couple hundred hp worth of regen. If you could argue that it was worth it, I wouldn't be here telling you how bad it is. Let's see how the other life sustain sources stack up against it.
Life Steal - The sustain of choice for two-hander barbs, bell monks, non-CMWW wizards, and a lot of heavy, slow hitting builds. Devalued by difficulty level, it nevertheless scales directly with your damage output, meaning the better your gear is, the better it gets. At 100k DPS (which is entry level into the big leagues) and with good crit damage modifiers, this adds up to significant life recovery. 1.5% life steal, which is the average for a 1-handed weapon, will still heal for 1,500 in Inferno if you get a 500k crit. And you can still multiply that for area targets. Life Steal tends to jack up a weapon's price by a lot - since it can only roll on weapons unless you're a barb - but by the same token, once you get a good weapon with life steal, that purchase will last you a long time.
Life On Hit - A popular option, this has been a staple of the most popular builds in D3; WW barbs, CMWW wizards, witch doctors with Rain of Toads, and two-weapon monks of all stripes. Another expensive stat, this rolls only on jewelry (and legendary pieces like the Storm Crow and Jousting Mail). This skill is limited by the proc coefficient of the spells you're using - with the wrong skills, it's dead weight. With the right skills, it renders you nearly immortal. It maxes out at over 4100 LoH with legendaries, realistically capping at 2876 with rares. While on paper, this number is greatly lower than the maximum possible LPS, in practice this easily overtakes it depending on the number of targets, cooldown/attack speed, and the skill's proc coefficient. In fact, a popular guide for wizard gearing indicates that 500 LoH should be enough for endgame needs, depending on the rest of the gear. Since LoH caps out at nearly 500 on rings (and nearly 1000 on amulets), this is easy to get provided you're willing to spend a good deal on a single jewelry piece.
Health Globes - While rarely geared for specifically (Gruesome Feast witch doctors and Pound of Flesh barbs come to mind), this mechanic particular to Diablo 3 is one of the most reliable options for healing between fights, and sometimes in mid fight too. Globes heal a percentage of your max health, meaning that it scales with your health pool. All monsters have a chance to drop it, and elite packs can drop it multiple times. While not as strong in terms of pure sustain as the previous options, it's easy to use provided you can survive between health globe drops, and it's dead easy to gear for. A single bonus affix caps out at almost 13000(!) extra life, and this applies to potions as well, which is just GREAT. It doesn't significantly increase the price of gear, and one affix somewhere on your set is good enough to be noticeable without negatively impacting your DPS or EHP.
Life After Kill - One of the least used recovery options, this affix is nevertheless useful to note in high speed farming runs at low MP. Archon wizards benefit greatly by it, as their main mechanic involves fast killing, and Rend Barbarians can also make use of this. Like Bonus Health To Globes, this affix doesn't usually increase a piece's cost, and one should be enough somewhere on your set. It caps out at 2878 life per piece, which is pretty good by itself. While killing large amounts of white trash (or Illusionist packs), this pretty much negates the need for any other kind of healing on lower difficulties.
(Note that there are other niche options for recovery not mentioned here. For example, monks have Life Per Spirit Spent and some barbarian pieces have Life Per Fury spent. These are too class specific to be included in this discussion.)
The first two options completely outclass LPS for combat life recovery, while Life After Kill is clearly superior for post-fight recovery. Health globes are somewhere in the middle, healing for a static amount relative to life pool that can be used both in combat and out of it. All of them reward aggressive gameplay and high DPS. Compare that to LPS, which is a completely static amount regardless of the player's actions, and which heals for an insignificant amount in comparison, and you'll understand why it's not a very impressive stat.
The 411: As it is, LPS is currently a very underwhelming affix that could use some improvment to be a competitive recovery option. Even in combination with certain skills (Mantra of Healing or the aforementioned Vigoron rune), it's still not very good. Worst of all, those skills are subpar options that have much better analogues; Mantra of Conviction and the Sparkflint rune come to mind.
It's true that LPS is still an important factor in a tiny number of builds. The biggest one that comes to mind are glass wizards specs, which rely on the Force Armor rune, small life pools and large EHP values. To a lesser extent, witch doctors with Blood Ritual and/or Fierce Loyalty benefit from stacking LPS. Still, this is far too small a sample size to justify the existent of LPS in the current state of D3.
In my opinion, LPS needs to be buffed, and bad. I'll go out on a limb and say that LPS on gear should be DOUBLED. By doing so, a player needs less pieces of gear with smaller rolls, making it easier and more practical to stack LPS to a useful amount. I would argue that there's no real harm if said player chooses to go ahead and stack it on all his gear pieces; as I've already pointed out, all this does is negatively impact his overall DPS and EHP.
Skills that affect LPS should be tweaked on a case by case basis - Galvanizing Ward and Vigoron could be doubled with little harm, I would think. However, skills like Blood Ritual or Mantra of Healing (which is percentage based or affects the whole party) could be kept as is. Or maybe the opposite could be applied - keep LPS on gear the same while greatly increasing the amount skills recover. This in turn could promote build diversity, effectively transferring the burden of EHP to the skills, allowing the player to gear more offensively instead. In any case, Life Per Second is a stat that needs watching and improving, and hopefully we can make this case to the devs in an upcoming patch.
I think their main concern with Life/Second was that it could easily work to mitigate all damage done, if we could get like 10-15k health/sec and enough mitigation, we could have 20k HP (anyone remembers Force Armor + Regen?) and tank higher MPs with just the mitigation and regen.
This isn't much of a problem in itself (it would require testing though), and I'd love to see more "sustain" options other than just LoH and LS.
But the other concern is that it could be just too good if paired with just a little bit of Life Steal or LoH. I think my US Wizard had 600 LoH and Lifesteal for quite some time (before changing to a new weapon that gave me 20k+ dps) and her survivability was pretty amazing for my gear level. Combining a buffed L/sec (10-15k Life/sec) + Lifesteal or LoH would be insane.
I think one of the first things they'd have to do is make it specific to some gear slots. Or at least high rolls of it specific to some slots (like a really high 2k Life/Sec roll only possible on weapons, and then something like 400-500 Life/Sec on jewelry). And then restrain L/sec rolls to only Shoulders and Pants. All these particular slots imho desperately need more options.
Another interesting idea would be if L/sec could be a "recovery" stat, a glass-cannon stat, useful on hit-and-run builds/tactics that don't want to facetank mobs. I've actually tried L/sec on my Wizard that has an Oculus (to spam teleport) and focuses mostly on hit'n'run tactics, but it's just not worth it. To make it such a stat, it could have a mechanic that triples its effectiveness when you haven't taken damage for 2-3 second (thus giving us a solid 15-20k life/sec and allowing us to prepare for the next round of attacks).
If I managed to stack 10K life per second regeneration on my gear (without downgrading my other stats), I can assure you, I will probably never, ever die again in-game. Right now, on MP7-8, normal Phasebeasts actually do no damage to me. None. Elites tickle me, but I can still manage about 20-50 hits before I actually need to run and heal.
I'm not the only player in the world with high life and mitigation... and I'm a wizard. Use a barb or monk as an example (counting the 30% damage reduction) or a DH/monk with their 50-60% dodge rate, highly buffed life regeneration is going to be rather broken.
There are many players focusing primarily on PvP who regularly run 2.5-5K life per second. That's already enough to cancel out a ton of incoming damage. With life steal or LoH factored into the vast majority of players that take farming seriously, additional regeneration will make everything far too trivial. No one's going to feel threatened again. Where's the fun in that?
There's a wizard running around the official wizard forum with 18K HP, very little mitigation, but well over 400K DPS. He runs Force Armor and relies heavily on life steal to quickly replenish HP with minimal kiting on MP7+. If you throw in 10K life regeneration—hell, even 5-7K—he's not going to die... ever, unless he stays still and doesn't attack.
Perhaps, though, they can keep life regeneration as is, but when you're out of combat for X seconds, the regeneration doubles until you go back into combat. That, at least, will make things a little bit more interesting. Yes, you did say it's old-fashioned and gone the way of the dinosaurs, but at least it's better than nothing. Perhaps people who do enjoy kiting will make better use of it.
P.S. it's late over here and I probably misread some things or haven't thought some things out too clearly. But this is a good topic and healing is quite boring, so there's potential here for some tweaks and new features.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Let's take Jaetch's wizard as an example, if I may. The only natural life regen on her comes from the shoulders to the tune of 248 lps, all well and good. If we tried to add more LPS, the only slot I can imagine putting it on are the gloves, by dropping the strength(which is still 33 armor). We could also drop the cold res from the bracers for more regen. With hypothetical perfect rolls at the proposed 200% increase, we're looking at another, oh 1364 lps. Pretty good, right?
If we tried adding it to the Mempo, the crit would have to go. 684 lps sounds like a very poor bargain in exchange for 6 crit. Ditto with the Allegiance - we could possibly sacrifice the extra vit roll, but would it be worth the EHP loss? Again, ditto with the Pox - would losing 86 vit be worth 684 lps? At some point, while the regen numbers keep going up, DPS and EHP begin to go down. However, with the doubled amount of regen, the 1364 lps we theorized above sounds like a fair bargain for the stats he dropped. If we used current stats however, it goes down to 684 (for perfect rolls!) which sounds a lot less attractive. My napkin math might be wrong, and of course both of you have more experience than I do in these matters, but increasing LPS by a straight value just doesn't seem to be gamebreaking to me in any way. Also take note, to get to the 10k lps value, you're assuming both max rolls and the use of specific legendaries like the Sky Splitter. Take that out, and the max drops to 9000 LPS, thereabouts.
I'm totally down with the idea of shoving LPS into a few select pieces though. As I pointed out, Life Steal and LoH are helped by their specificity. If we took the current absolute max of 4618 LPS (no legendaries) and divvied it up among three or four pieces instead of 12, that would definitely increase its attractiveness and give it more bang per armor piece.
I've seen some wizards asking for gear advice on these forums, and realized there are still quite a few people stacking LPS (~1500), but like you say, it can never keep up with LoH and LS, especially since it doesn't scale. Even LaK and health globes at least scale with kill speed. LPS does not scale at all. I remember that in the beginning of the game (started off with a barb) I beat Diablo with a 8k DPS barb, and obviously at this point LS was useless, LoH was awesome, and LPS was still a bit useful. Nowadays everyone has 100k+ DPS, and many even have more than 1 million real DPS (check with timed Ghom runs). 1 million DPS means that even the 0.5% Inferno LS of a 2.5% LS weapon give you 5000 LPS, which is impossible to reach without Skysplitter.
And don't even get me started with CMWW/LoH; with 800 LoH (Stormcrow+BT pants), 50% crit chance, and 2.74 APS, you gain almost 17k LPS against two targets (i.e., uber fight). And that with a 88k sheet DPS char, see example calc here.
=> I completely agree, LPS needs to be buffed. And I wouldn't say even double it is not enough. The problem is that, like I said, in the early days having 100k DPS was a huge feat, while now it's just the starting setup of everyone. The game has evolved, and certain stats have evolved with it, while others don't (in particular Thorns, which is getting buffed, and LPS). LPS should scale and benefit, for example, from vitality bonus.
Oh and... I'm so flattered that you linked my guide in your line of argument... I'm gonna link this discussion thread back in my guide for "further reading" in the respective life regeneration section :-) Cheers and +1!
This IS one of the more interesting suggestions for LPS I've seen - it would definitely make it a stronger choice for post fight life recovery.
My main issue with it is that the whole 'in-and-out-of-combat' mechanic is something that fits MMO's better than an action RPG. Not to mention that people would probably try to use it with Teleport/Spirit Walk to punch way above their weight (MP8-10, for example, with sub-100k dps) and take down elites via sheer attrition. Hit-and-run tactics are one thing, hit-flee-heal-repeat just sounds like a chore. It would be an ineffective way to farm, true, but it makes it possible and just feels more like some Korean MMO than D3. Second, I feel like LaK and Health Globes are already a good source of post fight recovery. If I had to choose, I'd rather try to find a mechanic that makes LPS viable during combat than after it, simply because it would make it more interesting.
The other big issue is that having LPS have different mechanics in combat and out of combat sounds too complicated for an affix. Don't get me wrong, Zero(pS), I love the idea, it's just that it feels better as a legendary ability, or better yet, a skill (active or passive, either could work, though I'd lean towards actives since the passive slots are too crowded as it is to fit in a non DPS skill).
Not quite sure what you're leading to here. Should it be percent based meaning a percent of your life or your vit?
Bagstone, brother, I'm with you here... but it's just depressing to hear you say 100k is beginner Inferno, and realize that I've logged nearly 700 hours on my wizard and still haven't broken 200k dps, lol.
I can see how that might make the vitality stat a little too good. Scaling to vit in a percentage fashion, like say how mainstat applies to DPS, could yield some scary numbers. However, I like where this idea is going in general, and agree that vit could benefit LPS.
One of the biggest annoyances while still playing in lower levels is having to spend potions and trips to the healer, since your gear usually has nothing in the way of LoH, nevermind Lifesteal while your DPS hasn't even hit 4 digits. So I remember thinking up of something while trying to hit 60 with my alts.
What if ALL characters had a base LPS equal to their vit score? This would be a QoL improvement for lowbies, allowing their leveling pace to have less breaks, while higher level characters would get an amount that's just enough to keep them going between fights. At the same time, it rewards defensive minded players who gear vit in significant amounts by also giving them an extra life recovery option, and allows others to boost existing LPS on their gear without making it too high.
:Thumbs Up: Lots of thanks! Your guide helped me out big time when my wizard was stuck in a gearing rut, and I'm glad to have been of some help.
I know the dev team thinks differently, but I certainly wouldn't mind a PTR to test things like these. Again we've had this before in the game, it's precisely what Wizards did early on. LpS + Force Armor and then Hydra + Blizzard for attrition.
I don't think it's an issue at all to have it again. Bad positioning and burst damage (or things like Vortex, or swarming enemies) can still burst you down if you're careless, it just adds another type of sustain to combat - and one that's practically non-existent in MP 8-10 (everyone uses LS and LoH, if even 10% of those would switch to an "op" LpS it would be a win-win situation).
Indeed. But post-fight recovery isn't really a big issue. If you're leaving every fight at 10-15% HP, you're probably not able to handle that MP already. My idea is really making LpS fill a specific niche (old school Wiz/DH hit'n'run tactics). It would also help value those underrated defensive skills (Frost Nova, Horrify, Mass Confusion, Smokescreen, etc.) by giving a very specific window for the character to recover (instead of facetanking everything).
Absolutely
Indeed, that's probably why Blizzard leans heavily against this sort of change though. I do think they need to lift this philosophy at times, because some of these changes must happen in order to improve the game.
That's a good idea, but I think it would benefit only top-end players (like Jaetch) who have insane dps PAIRED with 1200-1500+ Vit alone (from very high-end items/pants/chests). Mid-lvl players and Inferno-entry players already have a very hard choice to between Vit and Mainstat (barely making to 700-900 Vit), so I really doubt they'd go for a much lower (say, 60-70k) DPS to have the mechanic work in their favour.
With passives and various other skills, my undergeared barb was able to manage around 3400 LPS with another 800 LoH. Resistances were probably around 700-800, with maybe 8k buffed armor and 55-60k health. Overkill, most likely, but I wanted to get through Inferno for the first time without dying so it made sense for me at the time. I also had no money and no viable gear options.
Point being: even now, for some classes, LPS is definitely viable for a super tank experience. I still have a lot of that LPS/LoH combo gear and if I ever did decide to go and farm higher MP I feel confident I could live.... it just might take an hour or two to kill an elite pack
They very much did say that. It was not too long after launch, IIRC. That's why you had some abilities that would activate after not taking damage for a certain period of time. There is no "in combat" in D3, at least not the same as there is in WoW.
That being said, I tend to agree with the OP that Life/sec is a property that just doesn't pack much punch currently. This is due mostly to the fact that even if you could stack it, in too many slots you'd have to sacrifice other stats which are far better. I have 92 Life/sec on my shoulders and I'm OK with that because it didn't "cost" me anything else. However, 92 Life/sec does precisely nothing for me, honestly. A roll that low is completely negligible, even if I can stack it on several pieces.
Problems aside, I have no doubt that Life/sec is probably part of the itemization changes. Blizzard has to know that 3% Life Steal (a single good roll on a single item) is far better for damn near every player than a single good Life/sec roll. I can't imagine this isn't one of the many item properties they are planning to look into.
I don't think anybody will argue that a lot of the skills need to be looked over. At the same time, we're talking about a mechanic, and not about skill buffs in general. I focused on LPS in this post because changing or buffing it could lead to better ideas to specific skill changes. Also, it would take too long to talk about every darn skill in the game... though I do plan to tackle that some day.
No one is arguing that survivability is the paramount concern in hardcore. However, I didn't post this in the HC threads, and am therefore assuming everyone knows this discussion mostly revolves around softcore play.
As I'm posting this, one of my browser windows is currently open to DiabloProgress. None of the top 5 softcore characters on the Heroscore ranks are packing much more than 500 LPS, which I'm certain is incidental in their gear. The only wizard there has none.
If the build works for you and you're having fun with it, by all means good on you. Nevertheless, at least for a large number of softcore players, the enjoyment of feeling invincible is usually tempered by the fact that, with a little more dps and a little less defensive stats, they could be killing elites at twice the speed. I provide as proof of this argument the fact that Blizzard has consistently lowered monster defensive abilities per patch; for example, in the upcoming 1.08 patch, the devs have announced a reduction in monster hp for multiplayer. Secondly, sword-and-board builds are rarely listed as popular for softcore - I've dedicated a blogpost on my site examining and analyzing this occurrence -archmagelezard.blogspot.com/2013/03/state-of-play-whatever-happened-to.html
I honestly wish I could share your optimism. From what I gather on the proposed itemization changes, the fixes to rares and magicals would revolve around increasing the lower end of the roll table for high ilvl equipment. While on paper, this would make LPS seem more appealing, the fact of the matter is that even at god roll, LPS still cannot justify its space on your gearset when there are much, MUCH better options for recovery or even just EHP.
Second, I honestly doubt Blizzard knows how bad LPS is. When monk skills were buffed in 1.07, Mantra of Healing was COMPLETELY untouched. The only reason to use it is for Circular Breathing, for two-hander bell and Tempest Rush monks. Even then, it's widely agreed upon that it's better to get your Spirit Regen from gear and move away towards Conviction. I have the sinking feeling that, for the average D3 player who doesn't visit the forums often, they've come to the conclusion that LPS is one of those beginner stats that you're supposed to leave behind as you pick up LoH/LS. In fact, when I posted this concern on the official forums, I got ONE reply. ONE. I highly doubt that Blizzard is aware of the full extent of the disparity between LPS and the other recovery stats.
Blizzard: We'll double it!
That takes care of the skill-based life regeneration. Let's make sure they do the same (or better) for item-based life/sec! I'll go ahead and assume that's on their radar for the itemization patch, though, since these changes are an obvious acknowledgement that something needed to be done!
Can't wait to try a sort of hybrid LS/Life-sec or LoH/Life-sec character who knows, maybe we can simply let go of LS/LoH altogether and go full Life-sec!!!
In that sense, something along the lines of 7-10k Life/sec could definitely allow them to cast that Teleport/Vault/Smokescreen/Spirit-walk/Mirror-Image and recover to full life very quickly.
The problem with anything % based is that it scales only from Vit/Life%. Most top-notch players have about 40-50k HP, even at 4% Life/Sec that's 2k~ health-regen, I doubt these would trade off their DPS or Lifesteal for such low regen. And for the others at 100k HP, it's still only 4k~ health-regen (I'm either adding together multiple 2% LPS sources, or one 4%).
It also would kill the possibility of any sort of high defense/mitigation (through Armor, All-res or something like Force Armor) to work with the life regen sources.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not sure if they took the best approach, but they probably have tested this and the fact that something is being done is great.
I'd say quite a few. I have played public games just for the lulz (knowing it was less efficient). You see all types of players there, from 150-200k Barbarians to 35k Squishy DHs. Not everyone (I'd go as far as say most people don't) care about "efficiency", you know, cause it's a game.