Every Class Uses Attack Power
If you’re not sure quite what I’m talking about, go take a look at the calculators for each class. You’ll notice that regardless of your class, if you’re doing damage, it’s based on attack power. Traditionally, in Diablo II, the damage of the Sorceress and the other classes was based on arbitrary base values that scaled with skill point allocation. For example, Icebolt has a base cold damage of 3-5, and as you allocate points there’s a simple (albeit arbitrary) formula to curve it. (See The Arreat Summit for greater detail).
Now, before you yell bloody murder, allow me to explain why this move is both insane and brilliant. And no, it’s not because I’m a fanboy.
Firstly, it’s very simple and straight-forward. We all know Blizzard loves to make game mechanics and features as straight-forward as possible (this is a positive thing, by the way).
Secondly and more importantly, balancing items against skills across all classes is far and away easier. Let me give you an example of what I mean: If skill ‘A’ from the Demon Hunter does 120% attack power and skill ‘B’ from the Barbarian does 145% attack power, regardless of what item I throw on them, the comparability of the two skills is straight-forward. Now, skill ‘A’ and ‘B’ are two completely different skills with different cooldowns and there’s a whole lot of other factors that go into balancing them (i. e. weapon speed), but we can at least be sure with a brief look at the attack power what the differences are.
Thirdly, it streamlines the idea that, regardless of your class, your weapon is your most important tool against Diablo’s minions. I think that’s pretty compelling. And, there are plenty of non-weapon items in the beta that increase attack (which overall makes you do more damage).
Finally, one of the cruxes of the ol’ Diablo II model which Diablo III has attempted to solve is that if you wanted to increase the damage of one of your abilities as a Sorceress, you had to resort to finding certain really hard-to-find attributes like +1 to skill points and +% to fire damage (which, I theorize, is why there were a plethora of these ‘fringe’ attributes by Diablo II’s downturn). There was no in-game item attribute that increased spell damage across the board and that’s what I think the goal here is for Diablo III.*
To be fair, the penalty for this new model is fairly obvious: Why in the world would wielding a sword increase the Wizard's ability to conjure fire lasers? Also, I think we as gamers are accustomed to seeing the 'elemental class' with some staff or wand, but those items are still viable. But in the end, Blizzard decided that such a minor dissociation from the norm was worth a lifetime of consistently simple gameplay mechanics.
*On a side note, I hate to rat on one of the greatest games of all time (Diablo 2), but let’s turn off our hindsight goggles.
I like the new system though, and how on your character sheet the DPS number takes into account all your attributes - attack, crit, crit damage bonus, etc.
And I completely agree with MCMXCIX, making it clearer how the game actually works makes it more fun. Or else you're spending all your time trying to figure out numbers, and less time out killing stuff!
I think that is what I have been hearing - that cast rate is the main value of orbs and wands/staffs....but like I say - the attack damage will need to be upped cos starve's are generally puny weapons where even in Act 3 of D2 if you hit something you are doing like 5 damage heh
I think the issue is that most of us can't make any serious criticisms because we haven't played yet!!
Anyway, I'd love to hear your argument.
Orbs are offhand, so they aren't weapons. They just have a bunch of killer mods on them. Wands don't have increased damage (I don't think), but they do allow for much higher FCR, like you said. FCR is determined by weapon speed now, just like spell damage is determined by weapon damage.
I sure as hell know that even if I was in beta, I wouldnt point out anything that I thought was going to create a delay. Simple put, Im tired of waiting. Tired of going over the skills on paper and have stopped with that until I get the final copy in my hands. I could care less if every single class only used ATT as the only stat in game as long I get to play it before the end of this decade.
If Diablo 3 has little problems that need balancing, Im sure they could be done after release. So, if blizz is happy with the current system, Im happy. Can patch later if need be.
The above image sums this whole issue up quite simply.
Honestly I think a Witch-doctor wielding a giant battle axe or poleaxe might look quite BA.
Personally, I feel it adds cohesion to the classes. In D2 and some other games, physical and spellcaster classes feel disjointed, almost as if they form part from a separate game altogether. The worst part is that sometimes it means that one will function better than the other.
Sure, some might say that it adds diversity, but I'd disagree. I see it as poor choice for developers to create separate systems just to make classes feel different. Blizzard has made an attempt here to build classes that function diversely all on their own merits without resorting to an divergent mess, MF is a good example thereof.
Yeah, some will disagree with me, saying that all classes are the same now, or that Blizzard is unimaginative for not finding a better solution. No, this is the best solution, working from the same system, an item driven system, is still a very Diablo system. Class skills and gameplay set them apart, not how you use their items. Besides, if Blizzard pulls this off just right, it would mean orbs are comparable and in some cases more desirable than melee items, which would still make the popular melee wizard build viable and practical.
Good job Blizzard.
As far as stat balancing goes, I agree that a lot of games seem to be really different between caster and melee stats. Vanilla WoW was pretty bad, especially at lower levels, with almost nothing aside from spell rank and talents contributing to caster damage; you almost never saw anything with +spell damage, +crit, etc until Molten Core. Even after vanilla though, things were still different until they changed Int to give spell power (before Cataclysm, Strength or Agility were key stats for melee, while the Intelligence stat was nothing but a slightly bigger mana pool and a little crit for casters, not something that increased damage by very much). League of Legends also has this problem, with physical classes/builds getting attack damage, attack speed, crit, life leech, and cooldown reduction, while ability power classes/builds getting ability power, cooldown reduction, and sometimes mana/mana regen, if they actually used mana.
And just looking at the tooltip of the skill while swapping weapon clearly showed the difference.
I liked it a lot.
Yes, we all are accustomed to the idea that a wizard wield staves and not a huge two handed hammer but I trust Blizzard is making both viable.
edit: almost forgot: thanks CherubDown, nice writeup!
Btw, Monks with daggers = Ninjas
But,
I still find it strange for a caster to be wielding an axe though. hehe. (Is it strange to think that different classes should have different weapons? @.@)
I am guessing that eventually they will limit people to using items for their own class, eventually.
Why?
No good reason really. Just a hunch.
-ZTZaorish