No problem reading, eh? "Now if you think having utility on primaries would get them a slot in "spender" builds then actually suggest some utility effects (rather than free damage, which is what every one of the suggestions I read are)." Your response: oh, all the passives are just free damage because it does this which is a damage thing...." Or my personal favourite "that loh? lol means nothing" <- this point is particularly hilarious simply because 1000 LoH number could be anything (you even made a comment about this, then did a 180 in another response :/). 130% WD is practically worthless, especially at the top end. You were originally referring to the effects of the runes, the English is pretty plain here as much as you spew forth post hoc.
Almost every core bonus provided by the listed changes is just free damage. The WD primaries have probably the most utility room. Whether or not the LoH is worth it is, yes, dependent on how much LoH you get. However LoH is not a compelling stat for almost every build, especially for a class predicated on total lockdown or complete damage avoidance. The uptune would have to be massive. As far as the damage added being good or not, the upper damage values are 190% or 245% weapon damage. For non-harvester builds that's a significant damage bonus. You could go look at the Crusader pitch to see the worst of the "here's damage, grats" bonuses where the primaries are offering almost no actual personal utility and converting utility stats to damage stats (not terrible but not particularly amazing or utility oriented). If the central theme of the skillset is going to be utility then it should be utility. Almost every primary proposal for Crusader, Barbarian and Monk is just damage buffing.
With regards to oversimplification of the design process: I am well aware it's more complicated than assign X to Y. My central point is they've already focused development in a certain way. As someone who's had to switch development focus midstream it is in my experience not a particularly smooth change. It would be smoother in a software environment because changing which ideas you spitball is relatively easy, but given that as you've so kindly underscore the "development team is limited by definition" the most effective use of manpower and resources is the one that produces the most balanced content quickest.
If you have a compelling reason as to why a total overhaul of the primary system would be faster and easier than updating old legends that are already being updated I'm all ears. But you haven't given a compelling reason. So far though you haven't actually enlightened me as to how my position is wrong with regards to development only stated what amounts to "you're ignorant". Which is, I suppose, true form the perspective of an actually developer but I'm far more enlightened than the average person.
With regards to an actual primary rework: Scrap inherent damage bonuses, focus on bonuses to utility or defensive effects. Add items that provide the damage if its needed. If it was a total rework I'd clean up the functionality of a number of the skills (Shock Pulse, Firebomb, Cleave). Delineate primaries along functional purposes. If there are spender synergies they also be utility or defensive. Good design areas here are +Melee DR, +Resistances, +Crowd Control, RCR, CDR. Significant mechanical functional changes are also good. An interesting idea would be (rather than buffing spender damage) receiving a bonus to your primary skill after spending. Free damage bonus is a relatively boring incentive. If primaries are going to be used they need functional tuning more than anything else.
"After X uses of this skill your next spender has no attack animation"
Would be an example of a way to make the primary compelling in damage without actually buffing your damage. The best primary to put this on would be one like Electrocute or Frenzy. This allows the "gotta keep attacking" nature of the primary to translate into a more fluid playstyle which will attract more players. Placed on a pseudo-channel like electrocute it allows for an uninterrupted stream of lightning unbroken by other casts. On a mobile skill like Frenzy it becomes all about enabling "long" animation skills without interrupting the fluidity of your motion.
I'm on board with making primaries more compelling. I'm just not on board with a rework focused on "more damage" in (napkin math) like 2/3 of the bonuses.
I respectfully disagree and no matter what your post hoc comments are, it is right there in plain English. I think you need to think through and analyze a little more coherently, with a much more open mind. Adding new items is not as much of a drain as changing something that affects all of the current items. I don't think you even read thoroughly what I suggested. I wonder if this close mindedness is a product of the newly 'educated' youths that universities and colleges are producing these years. Everyone thinks they're correct 100% of the time without allowing any new ideas or thoughts to be introduced into their thinking. Makes me sad, really.
Having been involved in the development of multiple video games, I can say that your analysis of the development process is quite off. Since there definitely seems to be a problem with reading everything, I won't bore you with details you don't care to read. So, I could go on and try to point out the miscellaneous mistakes, but the conversation is very clearly not open and with that said I wish you gl on your thoughts and you'll see what is being talked about happen in the future.
Ps: I wouldn't say relatively limited development team. It is literally a limited development team by definition
I have no problem reading actually. At no point do you make a statement suggesting anything but agreement with the OP's general design idea (change the skills themselves). However the math of actually making large changes is very simple.
You have X developers who have to get Y done. If we assume they all have to work together for balance than any changes to one system need crosstalk to communicate and test for balance in all other systems. You could argue that the team working on skill balance is different form the team working on item balance (and they could be) but when it comes to actually implementing a large scale change (a complete rework of the design intent and purpose of primary skills) you not only have to get "Skill team" working on the actual rework of the skills but "Balance team" has to go and check every change made by "skill team" to make sure nothing breaks. Then since there will definitely be something broken (any change similar to the OP's suggestion is a massive net buff for builds that already use primary skills) then either "Skill team" needs to compensate by making changes to skills or "Item team" needs to address item issues.
On the other hand everything in the OP could be added through the itemization system in utility/defense item slots. "Skill team" more or less gets a pass unless "Balance team" finds a problem and the biggest difference is "Art team" has to do visuals. However there's a lot of empty real estate in the legendary item pool and that real estate can be co-opted by "Item team" during their already planned design cycles.
It's literally the difference between using an already planned cycle system and already allocated development focus and refocusing manpower on a completely new development focus. There's a huge difference in how much effort it takes to retask an ongoing effort (updating old legendaries) vs starting an entirely new rework of part of the skill system. Unless Blizz is internally looking at reworking large portions of the skill system I feel it's highly unlikely we'll see a primary skill rework. On the other hand since Blizz is already updating items with legendary affects it's much more likely they will respond to requests for new legendary effects making primary skills more fun. Hell look at the seasonal patches so far. Triumvirate, Delsere's, Omnislash, Blessed of Haull, Leonine Bow, Spirit Guards, Raiment, Depth Diggers, etc.
I'm not saying there's no benefit to be gained form working on primaries. I'm saying that there's already development time devoted to creating new legendary effects which make primary skills useful/fun. I am saying that the OP's "rework" would be just as effective as a collection of legendary affixes. And as a bonus if implemented as itemization it creates an opt-in situation (choices are healthy) as well as creating an itemization moment "I just found this set of pauldrons that does X for Y skill time to test it".
You're welcome to actually talk about my general PoV on the design process. I actually do read everything you say and think about it. Obviously far more than you think about what I say because obviously you're completely right and I'm completely wrong, why else would nothing I say have any affect on your stance.
I'm willing to change my stance if you can come up with an actually compelling reason to do so. I have yet to see such a reason.
Well, no. But using the most efficient build will get him to the point where he can try fun builds safely faster.
To use the most efficient build, he needs the items to support it.
Since OP is new to the game, and asks starter questions here, it shows he has no "friends" that play the game.
Suggesting he should get powerlevelled is the worst thing you can do: he will have to find someone to level him (taking away actualy playtime), he would miss out on the story and the feeling of progression, he will not have items at level 70, he will not learn anything about the game mechanics and will have to become a leecher to get his items (taking away the fun again).
On top of this, depending on what you are doing, the most efficient build is difference: rifts/bounties/low grifts are based around maximum speed, high grifts are based around maximum damage stacking and controlling the mobs.
Once you have the set, basically any build goes for T6. Before you have the set, you build around the items you have and the skills you enjoy. As long as you are not pushing for the high ranks, the most efficient build will always be the one you enjoy the most, as it will allow you to actually play instead of feeling like work
I never suggested he be powerlevelled. I stated that the best builds are best for a reason (and there are several best builds that are itemization agnostic depending on class).
Also you state that Grifts are about max damage and enemy control. That's just a fancy way of saying maximum speed and some degree of experience.
so i got 2 quivers with allmost the same stats . one has 200 more dex (59% double hit) the other 1 more diszipline (51% double hit) wich should i take . the higher dex one would give me 1.1% dmg
Clear winner is the 59% quiver. Going from 51% to 59% should be a ~7-9% dmg increase by itself.
Quick sanity check on math. Double hit on X% life bar should result in an effective life reduction of (X/2)%. That is a 50% quiver should reduce effective life of enemies by 25% and a 60% quiver should reduce effective life of enemies by 30%. With that metric the 59% quiver should be granting 5.6% DPS from its legend effect over the 51% quiver (1-.255)/(1-.295). How do you estimate a 7+% increase off the legend effect (the maximum possible increase should be ~7.5%)?
With regards to a bow needing 5% DPS over a crossbow how do you make that conclusion? Are you using the flat damage spikes as a metric or... /curiosity
Your analysis is not really true/flawless, either. When you went through the classes, you're forgetting that the reason there are spenders is not because spenders themselves are extremely attractive, it is because of specific item/build choices. The reason to use primaries (in the case of Barbarians) is because Bash is a perfect candidate for FnR, the time intervals are close and it offers another source of a damage buff; for non-seasonal, it was optimal out of the remaining bad choices for a damage increase. DH's use spenders primarily for this reason, I didn't quite get that comment about spenders (or even if you meant primaries..) on DHs, unless even this comment is kept to the old DH set, exclusively. WD's tend to be more skewed towards group/buff/minion play and require cooldowns to be as low as possible (which also makes quick parsing of their gear pretty irrelevant since it will most likely change from solo to group play), which involves the use of primaries....and so on and so forth. I can pretty much counter all of those arguments, as the point of his post is about improving primaries to be of value for using them outside of secondary or tertiary reasons, much like spenders are. One of the game tips literally says "find a legendary you like and build a character around it", the problem is that a lot of skills are not good enough as a base to justify using them, even with a legendary buffing them.
If the goal is getting primaries represented in use then the method of attaining that goal is irrelevant. That's why FnR exists in the first place (to have primaries existing). Additionally I only parsed top builds in solo, which is more meaningful for quickly determining build power due to the reaosns we have both outlined in group play. In solo there's been more use of primaries on DH since S3 primarily because FnR exists, though the top performing builds are still using Kridershot over generators when possible. If some promaries need buffing specifically you buff those primaries. You don't rework the entire system because a few runes stand out.
The op is trying to suggest that we strengthen our primaries so that they are attractive at the early game as well as at the late game. The reason for using them is for a secondary reason A) to proc this B ) to keep this buff up C) some combination. I think your reading into the use of the word outdated is not the same thing as underperforming. When he speaks of representation, he is not referring to people outside of the top; as he has stated.
Which is why I specifically parsed top performing builds and showed that primaries are not being ignored. Yes different classes are using them for different reasons, no not every class is just using them for a damage buff.
haps you read up to a certain point and made your own assumptions, which is a little disappointing honestly. "rather than free damage..." ->
Plague of Toads -
Trance Healer: The Trance Healer attacks targets hit by your Mana spenders with Plague of Toads. Your Mana spenders have 1000 Life On Hit while your Fetish Assistant is active.
Unless this is expected to be used in conjunction with that loh legendary, I do not see how this is damage oriented. A lot of his suggestions centre on utility effects.
I read the entire thing by the time I wrote my last analysis. And reread both the effect of that bonus (+1 primary skill damage worth of weapon damage with all spenders) as well as the initial effect (+1 free sycophant). Both of those are direct damage buffs. That HP regen? That's a joke compared to adding a minimum 130% weapon damage to every one of your spenders.
I don't think you realize how complicated 'your simple' solution is. First, Blizzard appreciates making new items with different kinds of legendary powers. On top of that, there is also the compounding of current and future legendaries. Just on these two points alone, making 'new legendaries that support skills' is not an easy task. Then there is the balancing act of playing around with each individual new item to see its potential. The amount of development time required per item for your solution is pretty substantial. Expanding the set pool to legendaries only exacerbates this problem. Blizzard is going for, as much as they possibly can, a balanced experience. You're suggesting Blizzard gives every class a steroid version of Royal Ring of Grandeur ("Start designing "flexible sets" built up from legendary parts rather than greens. Expand itemization to support more things at similar power to what currently exists."), then suggesting that this would be a simple solution. Not a very coherent or thought through response, honestly. Just for one class, this would have incredible ramifications, and for reference's sake there are six classes with access to a variety of items that buff all classes. That's an insanely difficult task to balance, especially for such a small development team. I don't see this happening anytime soon and I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't happen until season 5 or later. Seriously, the suggestions the OP is mentioning are at least a possibility and are interesting. Yours are beyond the foreseeable future and really lack foresight.
My simple solution follows the current development schedule and does not in any change the effort the design team will be putting into itemization. It's not asking for more sets or legends per patch and can achieve saturation in as few as 4 seasons (or if the design team wished to push hard it could take two seasons). What you're backing is a concerted design effort in addition to current development allotment of itemization expansion which will not only be replacing current itemization design progress but require going over all existing itemization to ensure that there's no significant set or legend balance disruptions (case in point proposed Crusader changes). This sort of overhaul would be appropriate for an expansion, and since any next expansion is already well into development at this point it would be expansion 4. Which would have a similar ETA to adjusting itemization each season as blizzard has already said they intend to do to promote build diversity. That is not to say primaries shouldn't see change, just saying that change should be focused on making them attractive for the playstyle originally intended. Many sets have begun supporting builds which rely on the "outdated" generate -> burn playstyle and they're some of the top performing builds for their classes in solo. Continuing to iterate in this manner will produce build diversity at least as quickly as any giant rework and will do so with active playtesting instead of limited internal alphas.
I mean no disrespect, but I do not have a lot of faith in someone who makes claims about a piece they clearly didn't read, but decided to offer their analysis on said piece regardless of taking the time to read it :/
I read. I analyzed. I concluded that deviating from current design maxims (items with seasons) would only slow development times and result in significant need for testing and balance on the live (PTR) servers because such a change is beyond the scope of the relatively limited development team to test.
Experiment with the skills for your class and enjoy the story. If you get power levelled you'll be overwhelmed with the choice of skills and runes available at 70. This is your best opportunity to make your own build, rather than be forced into playing 1 of the 2/3 'correct/efficient' builds.
If your goal is efficiency and climbing the leaderboards you'll be playing those correct builds. They're correct for a reason.
What I disagree with is not reworking primaries, many do need some work, it is simply piggybacking damage onto the primaries. As it stands the rate of change for builds is approximately one set for each class every other season (plus reworks of existing sets) and one legend per class each season (plus reworked legends).
If the primary focus every season was to include one primary enabler per class (whether as a legend or as a set) then we could have "enabled" builds for every primary in as little as 4 seasons (just over a year depending on season length). That's about the timeframe I would expect for the kind of rework you're proposing, especially given that the large-scale rework you would propose also requires revisiting every legendary and set item in existence (so they don't break) as well as a lot of tuning.
Stuff like Mirrorball and Omnislash is currently quite fun IMO. Some more interesting affixes wouldn't hurt (BLESSED OF HAULL!) but as a whole there are a lot of currently existing "enablers" and just so few sets that actually leave room for an enabler.
I'm pulling form the exact pool of players you are - The top performing per class limited to the top 1/2 rift levels. And the reason they tend to be a little skewed is because at the point where you're doing 50's for GRs you're looking at relatively fractional differences in clear speed and the general progression made is 100% RNG based (did you get the right rift? wait is that an ancient Serpent Sparker?). Basically you have skew due to the way progression works at levels 50+. And in the top performers are every build I've said. Which is averaging 1 non-primary and one primary skill per class (ish).
With regards to your secondary effects: None of the primaries will be taken for those. Realistically you've just piled on enough free damage to make having a primary maybe attractive depending on just how hard your spenders are hitting. The problem with that is equal parts power creep and design intent. The intent is that baseline performance involves resource highs and lows. Sets change how spenders work. Some sets equalize the highs and lows (Wrath, Unhallowed) some sets increase the frequency of oscillation (Roland's, Akkhan's) and some sets just reward flowing properly (Tal's, Raiment). What you're doing is "forcing" primaries into play by converting them into damage buffs, which messes with the way sets change design focus. In your world not using a primary is giving up your largest damage buff. What that means is "equalizer" sets now need to make up for that and "reward" sets need to account for it. "Oscillator" sets won't care one way or the other most of the time unless the primary skill buff relies on buildup.
Now. Many primaries do need some tweaking but so do an appalling number of spenders. This is a consequence of the way "power" is apportioned. Sets generally focus on one or two skills, which means that if the skill doesn't have set support it's bad and if it's over-supported it's mandatory. Queue DH having literally no usable primaries and every single Wizard running Hydra.
My proposal is simple - Focus on expanding available skill support through items. Buff some of the terrible outlier skills (primary and spender alike looking at you Justice and Arcane Orb). Address the actual core issue within the constraints of the design framework and actually recognize the fact that 50% of top performing builds are actually using Oscillator/Reward scheme sets rather than Spender sets.
Analyze sets based on how they reward a player with regards to resource. Start designing "flexible sets" built up from legendary parts rather than greens. Expand itemization to support more things at similar power to what currently exists.
Barbarian: Top 4 slots are Leapquake / Waste barbs sets designed specifically to eliminate resource production. Of barbs in the top .0001% of progression (I'm not going to get into how skewed sampling can be because RNG) 1 is at 59, 6 are at 58. We'll assume for simplicity that that's an RNG disparity (it probably is). 7 Barbs, one of which is using Bash (+% damage, Wrath/IK combo). The other 6 barbs are using the aforementioned sets. We can reasonably say from the performance sampling that as far as non-seasonal is concerned Wrath/Leapquake/"IKWrath" (possibly IK proper) are comparative with each other. We can also conlude from sampling across a wider number of players (involving S3, where barbs are roughly equivalently geared) that Bash is a preferred skill for builds including IK pieces because they don't have Bul-Kathos resource regen.
Barbarian Conclusion - Of the top 3 performing builds they all perform similarly in the "established" environment and 1 of them relies on a primary.
Demon Hunter: We all know that spenders are terribad for DH due to MANY factors. Moving on.
Monk: 3 monks are in 57. One of which is using Raiment w/ WotHF. The others are using Sunwoku. Further sampling concludes that the two are performing similarly and Raiment prefers having a primary.
Witch Doctor: Three similarly performing builds. Two are using primaries. Note that WD is skewed toward primaries due to lack of their seasonal belt on the "established" community.
Wizard: Every single top performing player non-season uses a primary.
Crusader: Sweep Attack is the top performing non-seasonal build. It does not use a primary. Condemn performs similarly and does use a primary. From my recollection Shield Bash should be performing similarly to both of those builds and does use a primary, however everybody keeps screwing around with their gear trying new things and changing their minds so I'm not going to commit to that.
Final Conclusion: Your assertion that builds using primary skills are underrepresented or underperforming is flawed. They are only underrepresented on a per-class basis at the highest levels of progression within any given class. In reality most classes have both spender and primary builds performing similarly and the primary difference in representation is driven almost entirely by itemization (and some primaries being weak). Both paradigms are seeing significant representation in solo. Group play skews representation due to several factors (mostly involving free resource generation) so relying on group leaderboards for information will provide significantly different data compared to solo and the accuracy becomes dubious (highest 4man barb is 10 levels behind highest 4man WD for instance).
Now if you think having utility on primaries would get them a slot in "spender" builds then actually suggest some utility effects (rather than free damage, which is what every one of the suggestions I read are). In reality though primaries are seeing plenty of use for non-DHs and group play skews loadout due to class role idiosyncracy (spam CC with no costs, fill slots with buff, if you're DPSing you're a DH of course you have no primaries).
It works with shield block. Which is basically the entire point of its design (offense for defense)
Very very interesting... Has anyone tested it's interaction with Salvation. Could be interesting if the 20/30% heal procced from Blood Brother's block as well.
Why wouldn't it? It adds to your block chance. Anything that procs off of block chance will benefit from Blood Brother. But what build would you use it with? Every build I can think of requires a specific shield or weapon or both.
An alternative support build? Of course at that point I'd probably end up using a Criterion if the goal is pure personal survival (and lots of provoke). For non-50+ builds there's the "Thorns" Punish build in T6. I've seen it work to mid 30's personally, but it's definitely not really a progression build.
The last option is a Blessed Hammers build, but honestly I think Blessed of Haul w/ Justice would outperform melee hammers.
Two of the top performing crusader builds use a primary skill. The top performing Wizard spec uses a primary skill (Electrocute woot). Monk uses a primary skill in top performing builds. Apparently top performing seasonals are still using bash on barbarian. Top performing WD on seasonals is using carnevil it looks like.
The problem with primary skills is that it's too easy to achieve infinite resources. Compounded with the fact that most sets focus on amplifying non-primary skill damage specifically this results in a situation where most builds simply have no reason to use their primary skills.
The simplest fix is to add item sets with high synergy but without infinite resources. Tal's and Roland's are both good examples of this. They both rely on items which make resource ups and downs an important part of the playstyle. Contrast with Wrath of the Wastes and/or every demon hunter BiS weapon or offhand ever where you just have infinite resources through pure mechanical power.
Adding more layers of "utility" (which apparently means "damage buffs) to primary skills is unlikely to get them seeing any use, and if it did it's just to press for a damage buff. That's not the correct way to address the lack of builds which rely on primary skills. Also apparently primaries aren't being ignored by at least one build for most classes.
Yes, I understand they are two very different games from design perspective, but after all, it's been called the FPS of Diablo, so that's why I compared them. And very nice of you explain the pros and cons in details. But see, I was hoping that D3 passive could achieve this kind of state, as you have described for BL
"and the ones where you absolutely HAVE to make a choice generally have little enough crunch that it becomes preference."
Of course this will probably take major work, and the energy can be used to expand on itemization aspect of the game.
"because (from a designer perspective) balancing one system is far easier than balancing two."
That's why never in my post I show strong urge to push the ideas because in reality, it will take too much work and they might as well develop another new game. But then, I am just reluctant to see skill point system totally neglected.The thing is we got a skill point s
The thing is we *have* a skill point system. You have 6 points to spend on actives and 4 points to spend on passives. increasing the number of points you have to spend won't improve the system any, you need to make spending those points matter in new ways. Just adding more points will only result in making your choices less meaningful to what you want to do, and will only add more disparity between "good" builds and "bad" builds.
The reason BL's skill system works (FYI D2's did not) is because you get a LOT of points relative to the number of skills you choose form and each skill is extremely niche. You don't have to choose between two ways to increase your fire rate, you have to choose between what weapon or damage mechanic you use (or between multiple uncrunchable effects). That just doesn't translate into D3 because the core design is so drastically different.
Would it be wonderful if skill point systems worked? Yes it would. The problem is that time and again they've proven themselves to both not work and be nearly impossible to balance, and other methods of personal customization far outstrip skill systems in balance and effectiveness.
Now some part of the stuff I wholeheartedly agree. For example, adding an legendary that gives special affix that benefits the Health Globe Bonus.
And actually I was one of those people who actually defended D3 when it came out, telling D2 that stats point and skill point were illusion of player's freedom to choose their own builds because there were only a few viable builds in D2. But then not all players, including me, just want to build characters that has the most optimal and viable builds. I don't mind building characters that are good to own Tier 6 and only able to do up to Grift 35, as long as it's fun and interesting for me. I just feel like choosing how much bonus I can get from my passive would make it more fun, even though it might be an illusion of free choice. In fact, I think most players will probably have 1 or 2 characters that are optimally built, and the rest are just for fun and experimentation, and it would be more fun for me and some players if we could choose more than 4 passives (or 5 with Hellfire Amulet). After all, games are to provide entertaining value. A game that is not fun to you, may be fun for others. Truth is, they will never to balance the game with itemization anyway, so skill point system in passive skills is definitely an option to make the game "FEEL" more entertaining without further wrecking the balance.
Like I said, I integrated this concept with other concepts which I have posted somewhere else. So it's not just simply skill points in passive skills I have in mind.
I like the game now, and I like the way it's going. And I really don't mind if they never implement skill point system, since you have made it sound like an obstacle to make a game fun (however games like Borderland and Borderland 2 are actually pretty fun to me).
I don't disbelieve that you've defended D3 in the past. My point is that there's nothing to be gained from a skill point system from a design perspective. Any customization of passives would be better placed in itemization because (from a designer perspective) balancing one system is far easier than balancing two. And the balance for itemization has consistently gotten better as D3 has matured. Those "feels" you're looking for can be achieved with lower-impact systems which alter non-combat potentials and by increasing the viable palette of runes available to players (currently lower level runes are on average less viable than higher level ones rather than equivalent). Combined with better balance and more itemization you'd have the freedon to "personalize" your build that you're looking for while also feeding the crunch that optimizers want.
On the subject of BL and BL2 (which I've player extensively :P) the actual skill trees involved are small enough and the trees niche enough that the balance remains tight. And because many of the bonuses don;t have "crunch" it results in a system that feels really good. That hasn't stopped optimizers from finding "best" builds, but the general balance of any given build is closer simply because of the niche nature of skills. the abundance of skill points helps to ensure you can get nearly every skill relevant to your build and the ones where you absolutely HAVE to make a choice generally have little enough crunch that it becomes preference. The entire design of the game basically ensures that the majority of how you perform is dictated by your items rather than your skill loadout as any given skill means much less in BL1/2 than it does in D3.
One of the better skill systems but it's more a flair which serves to allow a player to tailor their niche to a specific style rather than determining the raw power they have (since each "niche" skill group results in similar potential power). Give a Siren an Anarchy in BL and it doesn't matter what her skills are, she's gonna shred anything and everything. It really is apples to oranges from design perspective.
0
With regards to oversimplification of the design process: I am well aware it's more complicated than assign X to Y. My central point is they've already focused development in a certain way. As someone who's had to switch development focus midstream it is in my experience not a particularly smooth change. It would be smoother in a software environment because changing which ideas you spitball is relatively easy, but given that as you've so kindly underscore the "development team is limited by definition" the most effective use of manpower and resources is the one that produces the most balanced content quickest.
If you have a compelling reason as to why a total overhaul of the primary system would be faster and easier than updating old legends that are already being updated I'm all ears. But you haven't given a compelling reason. So far though you haven't actually enlightened me as to how my position is wrong with regards to development only stated what amounts to "you're ignorant". Which is, I suppose, true form the perspective of an actually developer but I'm far more enlightened than the average person.
With regards to an actual primary rework: Scrap inherent damage bonuses, focus on bonuses to utility or defensive effects. Add items that provide the damage if its needed. If it was a total rework I'd clean up the functionality of a number of the skills (Shock Pulse, Firebomb, Cleave). Delineate primaries along functional purposes. If there are spender synergies they also be utility or defensive. Good design areas here are +Melee DR, +Resistances, +Crowd Control, RCR, CDR. Significant mechanical functional changes are also good. An interesting idea would be (rather than buffing spender damage) receiving a bonus to your primary skill after spending. Free damage bonus is a relatively boring incentive. If primaries are going to be used they need functional tuning more than anything else.
"After X uses of this skill your next spender has no attack animation"
Would be an example of a way to make the primary compelling in damage without actually buffing your damage. The best primary to put this on would be one like Electrocute or Frenzy. This allows the "gotta keep attacking" nature of the primary to translate into a more fluid playstyle which will attract more players. Placed on a pseudo-channel like electrocute it allows for an uninterrupted stream of lightning unbroken by other casts. On a mobile skill like Frenzy it becomes all about enabling "long" animation skills without interrupting the fluidity of your motion.
I'm on board with making primaries more compelling. I'm just not on board with a rework focused on "more damage" in (napkin math) like 2/3 of the bonuses.
0
I have no problem reading actually. At no point do you make a statement suggesting anything but agreement with the OP's general design idea (change the skills themselves). However the math of actually making large changes is very simple.
You have X developers who have to get Y done. If we assume they all have to work together for balance than any changes to one system need crosstalk to communicate and test for balance in all other systems. You could argue that the team working on skill balance is different form the team working on item balance (and they could be) but when it comes to actually implementing a large scale change (a complete rework of the design intent and purpose of primary skills) you not only have to get "Skill team" working on the actual rework of the skills but "Balance team" has to go and check every change made by "skill team" to make sure nothing breaks. Then since there will definitely be something broken (any change similar to the OP's suggestion is a massive net buff for builds that already use primary skills) then either "Skill team" needs to compensate by making changes to skills or "Item team" needs to address item issues.
On the other hand everything in the OP could be added through the itemization system in utility/defense item slots. "Skill team" more or less gets a pass unless "Balance team" finds a problem and the biggest difference is "Art team" has to do visuals. However there's a lot of empty real estate in the legendary item pool and that real estate can be co-opted by "Item team" during their already planned design cycles.
It's literally the difference between using an already planned cycle system and already allocated development focus and refocusing manpower on a completely new development focus. There's a huge difference in how much effort it takes to retask an ongoing effort (updating old legendaries) vs starting an entirely new rework of part of the skill system. Unless Blizz is internally looking at reworking large portions of the skill system I feel it's highly unlikely we'll see a primary skill rework. On the other hand since Blizz is already updating items with legendary affects it's much more likely they will respond to requests for new legendary effects making primary skills more fun. Hell look at the seasonal patches so far. Triumvirate, Delsere's, Omnislash, Blessed of Haull, Leonine Bow, Spirit Guards, Raiment, Depth Diggers, etc.
I'm not saying there's no benefit to be gained form working on primaries. I'm saying that there's already development time devoted to creating new legendary effects which make primary skills useful/fun. I am saying that the OP's "rework" would be just as effective as a collection of legendary affixes. And as a bonus if implemented as itemization it creates an opt-in situation (choices are healthy) as well as creating an itemization moment "I just found this set of pauldrons that does X for Y skill time to test it".
You're welcome to actually talk about my general PoV on the design process. I actually do read everything you say and think about it. Obviously far more than you think about what I say because obviously you're completely right and I'm completely wrong, why else would nothing I say have any affect on your stance.
I'm willing to change my stance if you can come up with an actually compelling reason to do so. I have yet to see such a reason.
0
I never suggested he be powerlevelled. I stated that the best builds are best for a reason (and there are several best builds that are itemization agnostic depending on class).
Also you state that Grifts are about max damage and enemy control. That's just a fancy way of saying maximum speed and some degree of experience.
0
Quick sanity check on math. Double hit on X% life bar should result in an effective life reduction of (X/2)%. That is a 50% quiver should reduce effective life of enemies by 25% and a 60% quiver should reduce effective life of enemies by 30%. With that metric the 59% quiver should be granting 5.6% DPS from its legend effect over the 51% quiver (1-.255)/(1-.295). How do you estimate a 7+% increase off the legend effect (the maximum possible increase should be ~7.5%)?
With regards to a bow needing 5% DPS over a crossbow how do you make that conclusion? Are you using the flat damage spikes as a metric or... /curiosity
0
Well, no. But using the most efficient build will get him to the point where he can try fun builds safely faster.
0
If the goal is getting primaries represented in use then the method of attaining that goal is irrelevant. That's why FnR exists in the first place (to have primaries existing). Additionally I only parsed top builds in solo, which is more meaningful for quickly determining build power due to the reaosns we have both outlined in group play. In solo there's been more use of primaries on DH since S3 primarily because FnR exists, though the top performing builds are still using Kridershot over generators when possible. If some promaries need buffing specifically you buff those primaries. You don't rework the entire system because a few runes stand out.
Which is why I specifically parsed top performing builds and showed that primaries are not being ignored. Yes different classes are using them for different reasons, no not every class is just using them for a damage buff.
I read the entire thing by the time I wrote my last analysis. And reread both the effect of that bonus (+1 primary skill damage worth of weapon damage with all spenders) as well as the initial effect (+1 free sycophant). Both of those are direct damage buffs. That HP regen? That's a joke compared to adding a minimum 130% weapon damage to every one of your spenders.
My simple solution follows the current development schedule and does not in any change the effort the design team will be putting into itemization. It's not asking for more sets or legends per patch and can achieve saturation in as few as 4 seasons (or if the design team wished to push hard it could take two seasons). What you're backing is a concerted design effort in addition to current development allotment of itemization expansion which will not only be replacing current itemization design progress but require going over all existing itemization to ensure that there's no significant set or legend balance disruptions (case in point proposed Crusader changes). This sort of overhaul would be appropriate for an expansion, and since any next expansion is already well into development at this point it would be expansion 4. Which would have a similar ETA to adjusting itemization each season as blizzard has already said they intend to do to promote build diversity. That is not to say primaries shouldn't see change, just saying that change should be focused on making them attractive for the playstyle originally intended. Many sets have begun supporting builds which rely on the "outdated" generate -> burn playstyle and they're some of the top performing builds for their classes in solo. Continuing to iterate in this manner will produce build diversity at least as quickly as any giant rework and will do so with active playtesting instead of limited internal alphas.
I read. I analyzed. I concluded that deviating from current design maxims (items with seasons) would only slow development times and result in significant need for testing and balance on the live (PTR) servers because such a change is beyond the scope of the relatively limited development team to test.
And I very clearly did read it.
0
The build in question is more about endless Roar+Retaliate procs rather than actual thorns damage.
0
If your goal is efficiency and climbing the leaderboards you'll be playing those correct builds. They're correct for a reason.
1
What I disagree with is not reworking primaries, many do need some work, it is simply piggybacking damage onto the primaries. As it stands the rate of change for builds is approximately one set for each class every other season (plus reworks of existing sets) and one legend per class each season (plus reworked legends).
If the primary focus every season was to include one primary enabler per class (whether as a legend or as a set) then we could have "enabled" builds for every primary in as little as 4 seasons (just over a year depending on season length). That's about the timeframe I would expect for the kind of rework you're proposing, especially given that the large-scale rework you would propose also requires revisiting every legendary and set item in existence (so they don't break) as well as a lot of tuning.
Stuff like Mirrorball and Omnislash is currently quite fun IMO. Some more interesting affixes wouldn't hurt (BLESSED OF HAULL!) but as a whole there are a lot of currently existing "enablers" and just so few sets that actually leave room for an enabler.
1
I'm pulling form the exact pool of players you are - The top performing per class limited to the top 1/2 rift levels. And the reason they tend to be a little skewed is because at the point where you're doing 50's for GRs you're looking at relatively fractional differences in clear speed and the general progression made is 100% RNG based (did you get the right rift? wait is that an ancient Serpent Sparker?). Basically you have skew due to the way progression works at levels 50+. And in the top performers are every build I've said. Which is averaging 1 non-primary and one primary skill per class (ish).
With regards to your secondary effects: None of the primaries will be taken for those. Realistically you've just piled on enough free damage to make having a primary maybe attractive depending on just how hard your spenders are hitting. The problem with that is equal parts power creep and design intent. The intent is that baseline performance involves resource highs and lows. Sets change how spenders work. Some sets equalize the highs and lows (Wrath, Unhallowed) some sets increase the frequency of oscillation (Roland's, Akkhan's) and some sets just reward flowing properly (Tal's, Raiment). What you're doing is "forcing" primaries into play by converting them into damage buffs, which messes with the way sets change design focus. In your world not using a primary is giving up your largest damage buff. What that means is "equalizer" sets now need to make up for that and "reward" sets need to account for it. "Oscillator" sets won't care one way or the other most of the time unless the primary skill buff relies on buildup.
Now. Many primaries do need some tweaking but so do an appalling number of spenders. This is a consequence of the way "power" is apportioned. Sets generally focus on one or two skills, which means that if the skill doesn't have set support it's bad and if it's over-supported it's mandatory. Queue DH having literally no usable primaries and every single Wizard running Hydra.
My proposal is simple - Focus on expanding available skill support through items. Buff some of the terrible outlier skills (primary and spender alike looking at you Justice and Arcane Orb). Address the actual core issue within the constraints of the design framework and actually recognize the fact that 50% of top performing builds are actually using Oscillator/Reward scheme sets rather than Spender sets.
Analyze sets based on how they reward a player with regards to resource. Start designing "flexible sets" built up from legendary parts rather than greens. Expand itemization to support more things at similar power to what currently exists.
0
Let's take a snapshot of SC sampling...
Barbarian: Top 4 slots are Leapquake / Waste barbs sets designed specifically to eliminate resource production. Of barbs in the top .0001% of progression (I'm not going to get into how skewed sampling can be because RNG) 1 is at 59, 6 are at 58. We'll assume for simplicity that that's an RNG disparity (it probably is). 7 Barbs, one of which is using Bash (+% damage, Wrath/IK combo). The other 6 barbs are using the aforementioned sets. We can reasonably say from the performance sampling that as far as non-seasonal is concerned Wrath/Leapquake/"IKWrath" (possibly IK proper) are comparative with each other. We can also conlude from sampling across a wider number of players (involving S3, where barbs are roughly equivalently geared) that Bash is a preferred skill for builds including IK pieces because they don't have Bul-Kathos resource regen.
Barbarian Conclusion - Of the top 3 performing builds they all perform similarly in the "established" environment and 1 of them relies on a primary.
Demon Hunter: We all know that spenders are terribad for DH due to MANY factors. Moving on.
Monk: 3 monks are in 57. One of which is using Raiment w/ WotHF. The others are using Sunwoku. Further sampling concludes that the two are performing similarly and Raiment prefers having a primary.
Witch Doctor: Three similarly performing builds. Two are using primaries. Note that WD is skewed toward primaries due to lack of their seasonal belt on the "established" community.
Wizard: Every single top performing player non-season uses a primary.
Crusader: Sweep Attack is the top performing non-seasonal build. It does not use a primary. Condemn performs similarly and does use a primary. From my recollection Shield Bash should be performing similarly to both of those builds and does use a primary, however everybody keeps screwing around with their gear trying new things and changing their minds so I'm not going to commit to that.
Final Conclusion: Your assertion that builds using primary skills are underrepresented or underperforming is flawed. They are only underrepresented on a per-class basis at the highest levels of progression within any given class. In reality most classes have both spender and primary builds performing similarly and the primary difference in representation is driven almost entirely by itemization (and some primaries being weak). Both paradigms are seeing significant representation in solo. Group play skews representation due to several factors (mostly involving free resource generation) so relying on group leaderboards for information will provide significantly different data compared to solo and the accuracy becomes dubious (highest 4man barb is 10 levels behind highest 4man WD for instance).
Now if you think having utility on primaries would get them a slot in "spender" builds then actually suggest some utility effects (rather than free damage, which is what every one of the suggestions I read are). In reality though primaries are seeing plenty of use for non-DHs and group play skews loadout due to class role idiosyncracy (spam CC with no costs, fill slots with buff, if you're DPSing you're a DH of course you have no primaries).
0
An alternative support build? Of course at that point I'd probably end up using a Criterion if the goal is pure personal survival (and lots of provoke). For non-50+ builds there's the "Thorns" Punish build in T6. I've seen it work to mid 30's personally, but it's definitely not really a progression build.
The last option is a Blessed Hammers build, but honestly I think Blessed of Haul w/ Justice would outperform melee hammers.
0
Two of the top performing crusader builds use a primary skill. The top performing Wizard spec uses a primary skill (Electrocute woot). Monk uses a primary skill in top performing builds. Apparently top performing seasonals are still using bash on barbarian. Top performing WD on seasonals is using carnevil it looks like.
The problem with primary skills is that it's too easy to achieve infinite resources. Compounded with the fact that most sets focus on amplifying non-primary skill damage specifically this results in a situation where most builds simply have no reason to use their primary skills.
The simplest fix is to add item sets with high synergy but without infinite resources. Tal's and Roland's are both good examples of this. They both rely on items which make resource ups and downs an important part of the playstyle. Contrast with Wrath of the Wastes and/or every demon hunter BiS weapon or offhand ever where you just have infinite resources through pure mechanical power.
Adding more layers of "utility" (which apparently means "damage buffs) to primary skills is unlikely to get them seeing any use, and if it did it's just to press for a damage buff. That's not the correct way to address the lack of builds which rely on primary skills. Also apparently primaries aren't being ignored by at least one build for most classes.
0
The thing is we *have* a skill point system. You have 6 points to spend on actives and 4 points to spend on passives. increasing the number of points you have to spend won't improve the system any, you need to make spending those points matter in new ways. Just adding more points will only result in making your choices less meaningful to what you want to do, and will only add more disparity between "good" builds and "bad" builds.
The reason BL's skill system works (FYI D2's did not) is because you get a LOT of points relative to the number of skills you choose form and each skill is extremely niche. You don't have to choose between two ways to increase your fire rate, you have to choose between what weapon or damage mechanic you use (or between multiple uncrunchable effects). That just doesn't translate into D3 because the core design is so drastically different.
Would it be wonderful if skill point systems worked? Yes it would. The problem is that time and again they've proven themselves to both not work and be nearly impossible to balance, and other methods of personal customization far outstrip skill systems in balance and effectiveness.
0
I don't disbelieve that you've defended D3 in the past. My point is that there's nothing to be gained from a skill point system from a design perspective. Any customization of passives would be better placed in itemization because (from a designer perspective) balancing one system is far easier than balancing two. And the balance for itemization has consistently gotten better as D3 has matured. Those "feels" you're looking for can be achieved with lower-impact systems which alter non-combat potentials and by increasing the viable palette of runes available to players (currently lower level runes are on average less viable than higher level ones rather than equivalent). Combined with better balance and more itemization you'd have the freedon to "personalize" your build that you're looking for while also feeding the crunch that optimizers want.
On the subject of BL and BL2 (which I've player extensively :P) the actual skill trees involved are small enough and the trees niche enough that the balance remains tight. And because many of the bonuses don;t have "crunch" it results in a system that feels really good. That hasn't stopped optimizers from finding "best" builds, but the general balance of any given build is closer simply because of the niche nature of skills. the abundance of skill points helps to ensure you can get nearly every skill relevant to your build and the ones where you absolutely HAVE to make a choice generally have little enough crunch that it becomes preference. The entire design of the game basically ensures that the majority of how you perform is dictated by your items rather than your skill loadout as any given skill means much less in BL1/2 than it does in D3.
One of the better skill systems but it's more a flair which serves to allow a player to tailor their niche to a specific style rather than determining the raw power they have (since each "niche" skill group results in similar potential power). Give a Siren an Anarchy in BL and it doesn't matter what her skills are, she's gonna shred anything and everything. It really is apples to oranges from design perspective.