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.
For example the more casual player might feel more comfortable using a wand that although lacks in damage has a very appealing cast rate enabling them to spam spells at will. On the other hand, other more adventurous players might make different skill choices that might have better synergies when using a high damage yet slower weapon.
As I mentioned before, if they do this properly they can open up endless variations of VERY viable builds that players will enjoy using.
Like any tool that increases man's efficiency in doing something, wands and other magical weapons should increase damage of the caster.
Some nice picture or videos about how skills are affected by different weapons?
Barbs using wands gives you a faery aura which turns all other players within 45yards into females wearing pink armor.
Wizards using 2h battle axes lose 100% movement speed and are unable to attack.
I just went through all the 2 handed weapons, just the 2 handed weapons (for consistency reasons). The best ones from each type of 2 handed weapons' damage was very similar to each other, whether it's staves or axes. This makes obvious sense, since every class' skill damage depends on WD. OK, this was straightforward and everybody probably knew it beforehand, so yeah was just sayin.
And the only downside to this is that it wasn't initially implemented!
But it does feel strange, not only by making a wizard make strong spells with a big bad mundane axe, but also by making the high-end wands, daggers, staffs, etc do comparable damage to the high-end swords and axes. It does feel very strange to see a barbarian stomping Diablo with a giant Axe and a witch doctor stabbing him in the back with a tiny nice looking ceremonial dagger doing about the same damage.
Early game will be fun to see a lot of wizards walking around with an axe or a maul since these common items should have a lot more base damage than the others. If they don't we should also see some dual-wielding barbarians wearing wands.
At least that's how I'm looking at it - point the sword at enemy - channel disintegration spell using sword as focus = more dead baddies.
I don't think it's a game breaker or anything, and I'm not upset over it. Definitely disappointed though.
oh, I thought I could get those lovely unicorns...
On a side note it would be great if all the inner workings of the game were transparent enough that I don't have to leave the game to go look something up. I always wished D2 was like this.