If I had the money to do so. I would by my way to the director of D3. And this is what id do.
1.) Crit damage nerf. Simply add a decimal point in the middle of all crit damage stats on gear. Crit damage is now balanced. Move along..
2.) Add increase specific skill damage mod from 1%-100%. Melee skills (Barbs/Monks) will show up on melee weapons. Caster skills will show up on caster items (wands/daggers). Class specifc items will have class specific skills. And random + damage % skills can show up on rings/amulets and uniques.
3.) Add cast speed to only work on casting skills.. Cast speed only appears on rings, amulets, wands, staves and daggers. OR WD/Wiz specific items. IAS no longer works for casting skills.
These changes would force people to gear up outside the mindset of stack crit. This would actually make items the new skills/passive tree. These changes would promote actual builds.
No longer can one set up easily work for all skills. And its exactly D3 needs.
All good ideas. Resists need to be looked at as well though.
Change the stat to have a cap and % based would be a good start. It would be nice to get all the resists you need in 4-5 peices of gear and focus on other stats elsewhere.
Well, I'd rather see a nerf of both critchance and crit damage (making an item roll only either CC or CD, not on the same item). We need more useful utility affixes instead of other dps increases... by that new affixes similar to pick up yard, thorns and so on that certain builds can benefit from.
Well, crit chance would be nerfed by default if all crit damage mods simply added a decimal point in the middle.
Example being an item with 40% crit damage. Now becomes 4.0% crit damage. So if aplayer has like 300% crit damage they now will have 30% crit damage.
Also, increase damage to skills by 1%-100% would make actual builds.
Example if I was a WD who used bears I could stack as much Bears damage% as possible.
This would make 'builds' actually be builds. Because you would to actually think about what skills you could max out on items.
This would also remove the whole 1 gear set up works for all skills mentality on each class.
Blizzard decided that a 2H Axe Wizard was acceptable for this game. I just don't know what to say to that one, talk about immersion killer. At least the guy with the archery skills wields a bow/crossbow, I guess?
That's why I thought that caster weapons should have cast speed and + WD/Wizard skills damage mods on them.
That way melee weapons would only have IAS and melee skills mods (Barb/Monk) skills would be totally useless to casters.
To put it briefly, adding +% to skills to dropped items would make itemization a nightmare.
Imagine how many skills there are in the game. Then imagine how many different ways items can roll. Then imagine how hard it would be to find an item that has your desired stats (str, vit, IAS, crit%, AND specific barb-related +skill%). It would be virtually impossible to find items like this. Imagine getting shoulders with 300 str, 150 vit, 80 AR, +250 armor, and +10% bonus damage to energy twister (wizard). Just... no. There are what... over a hundred active skills. That means if you are going for a specific +%skill "build," and find a good item, you have less than a 1% chance of that item being relevant to your "build."
It would be more rare than rolling current trifectas.
Perhaps if the Mystic is added back into the game, you can use the mystic to imbue items with power and give it a random %chance of a specific skill. Say you select your item and choose "fists of thunder." The mystic would then imbue items with a random +%skill for fists of thunder. Items can be un-imbued for a certain penalty (gold? reagents? both?) to ensure that you can't just keep re-imbuing items till infinity before getting perfect rolls.
There's really no simple way to nerf critical hit damage without making some other stat immediately become the new flavor-of-the-month. Not to mention that if one stat is nerfed without monster difficulty being rebalanced, you'll have lots of people screaming that content that was beatable yesterday (and many many months before yesterday) is now no longer beatable. It's a step backwards to many people.
The only way (that I see) that you can have many unique stats which are all useable is that certain stats must be amazing in certain builds and situations while simultaneously *awful* in other builds and situations. For example, perhaps make 2H barbarians want crit damage (and penalize them for having attack speed) while dual wield barbarians want attacked speed (and penalize them for having crit damage). I totally concede that this idea has many other issues with it, but something has to be done to combat certain stats being appealing to every class. Otherwise, things like the "trifecta" are mandatory.
In terms of stats, I kinda think CMWW is really one of the more inventive builds. (Yes, it has balance issues but it's interesting to me at least). In this case, crit chance is as much about *survivability* as it is damage. And if you're doing CMWW on a budget, it's viable to sacrifice INT and crit damage in order to pick up more attack speed and crit hit chance. Not that every build should necessarily work like CMWW, but it's in keeping with the direction Blizzard wants to take itemization. (i.e. What's vital to me isn't vital or even good for everyone else.)
To put it briefly, adding +% to skills to dropped items would make itemization a nightmare.
Imagine how many skills there are in the game. Then imagine how many different ways items can roll. Then imagine how hard it would be to find an item that has your desired stats (str, vit, IAS, crit%, AND specific barb-related +skill%). It would be virtually impossible to find items like this.
Im sorry but its that kind of thinking that made D3 itemization bad in the 1st place.
Yes, imagine all those skills in the game having a chance to roll % damage mods. That would be amazing. Say hello to actually building and thinking. Instead of simply stacking crit on all gear possible you now have options to tweak out skills.
BTW, it would not be virtually impossible to find items like this if they exists. See D2 for the prime example of this.
There's really no simple way to nerf critical hit damage without making some other stat immediately become the new flavor-of-the-month.
Well, crit can be easily nerfed by dropping a decimal point in the middle. And really, blizzard can do this very easily. It says in their terms that they have the right to change anything, anytime. Just like they did to ias really.
Getting the highest DPS should come from %skill damage modifiers. Crit damage will count as a character wide increase on damage but at a smaller fraction of skill damage mods.
This would promote a nice balance and actual building. There is no longer any flavour of the month simply because you will define your build on your Increase skill damage mods. Crit would just be like the icing on the cake instead of the only taste in town.
BTW, it would not be virtually impossible to find items like this if they exists. See D2 for the prime example of this.
Are you trying to say that single-skill bonuses in D2 were more prevalent than +all skills?
Becuase that's simply untrue. +all skills completely dominated the itemization and it was just as generic (if not moreso) than primary stats.
Im just saying it would not impossible to find or make happen.. Also, D2 pretty much ruined itself after the enigma/synergies patch. I mean D2 was actually better in its earlier states. D2 lost its charm after everyone started to teleport.
But... +skills where used. But also + certain skills. Even down to charms which also tied into the skill tree.
What im saying is. You could not just have a really well built fire sorc one second and and a cold sorc the next second. And while there is no skills in D3 we could at least have the 'items' be the ground work for the builds. And I mean actual builds.
I don't think this will work. As Kamisei2400 said, doing this will just push players to stack another stat instead. If you were going to do something like this, you'd be better off placing a hard cap on crit chance, crit damage and attack speed, or putting a rule that only 3 pieces of gear could have those stats on and no more. Putting a decimal point in like that, similar to what they did for IAS before is a little too crude to be effective.
Well, that's exactly the point for me.. To push people to stack what they need for the skills they use. They can no longer stack a single stat to achieve high DPS. I think capping it is kind of wrong. There should never be a cap since it restricts itemization. Just make it less effective and more balanced.
That's why a simple decimal point slide would make Crit a nice support mod instead
Wow, you apparently have no idea what's actually wrong with itemization in this game OP.
Please feel free to explain why. Personally I think I hit it right on the head. I mean dead on.
We need specific gear for specific skills. Not just crit all day every day.
Well, I didn't mean to sound like a dick, but here's why;
A; Cutting crit damage won't solve a thing. This will just push players toward another stat. The root problem is that we can get all the damage increasing skills that one item slot carries, on one piece. Instead, we need to introduce MORE damage increasing affixes. This will make by far more varied gear and it will also make more gear valuable. Blizzard has already acknowledged this by stating they plan on adding more affixes there there is room. (viable affixes at that).
B; Your second idea wraps into your first one. Adding more affixes is the answer, not nerfing current ones.
C; Same thing as my first point; Add more. More = diversity. I personally don't care whether attack speed gets split between casting speed and melee attacks, but I can see the merits on it.
Pretty much the reason for my initial post here was because the root problems of itemization, you don't address. Those roots being;
Completely weak legendaries, why would anyone farm for them? Re-do legendaries, and add actual game-changing unique affixes for each one, while simultaneously equalizing DPS for weapons. Deciding on a legendary should be about what unique affixes it has and how it will change your gameplay. The current state proves that the most important thing for a legendary for players is the viewable DPS
Players can achieve every DPS stat allowed on any given item slot, on one item. Add more affixes then there are slots.
Affix ranges for max level items vary too much, resulting in an overflow of 'bad' items. Decrease the gap between the ranges.
Current affixes such as thorns, health globe (to an extent) life after kill, and LoH are next-to-worthless for most players. Fixing these stats to compete with other current stats would help a lot. Such as thorns being a direct % weapon damage to attackers, ect.
The legendary pool is pretty small. Creating 'scaling' legendaries (to drop with their stats based on the monster that dropped it) will increase that pool dramatically, making hunting for legendaries all the more fun.
You see where I'm going with this. The problems are having actual GOOD legendary drops, and a bigger pool of them, creating new and making all affixes appeal to most players, and lessening the gap between good - godly items.
A; Cutting crit damage won't solve a thing. This will just push players toward another stat. The root problem is that we can get all the damage increasing skills that one item slot carries, on one piece. Instead, we need to introduce MORE damage increasing affixes. This will make by far more varied gear and it will also make more gear valuable. Blizzard has already acknowledged this by stating they plan on adding more affixes there there is room. (viable affixes at that).
There's another part to this problem. On slots like weapons, rings, amulets, gloves you basically have no room for "defensive" stats. So we need more item properties, but we also need a mechanism by which if you get life/sec on a pair of gloves it doesn't automatically become terrible because that's a BIG problem at the moment.
"They can no longer stack a single stat to achieve high DPS. "
At the moment, I believe people with top dps are stacking main stat, IAS, crit chance and crit damage, that's four stats to achieve high dps. Crit chance with low crit damage isn't great, and high crit damage with low crit chance is also kind of pointless. By reducing crit chance so drastically, you're removing two stats from the desired item pool, and making it even easier to gear to the (new) effective best dps model by only requiring main stat and IAS.
People (top notch players) also definitely want as high Base Damage as they can get, as well as Average Dmg (kinda the same as Base Damage, except on Rings/Amulets). So that's 5-6 very important offensive stats.
My grudge with the current system is that no matter what you simply cannot go without CHC/CHD. You can definitely build a character with 0 attackspeed and no Average Damage (these seem a lot less effective than Crit), but without Crit you're not only locked out of a lot of builds but you're also way waaaay behind the power curve.
1.) Crit damage nerf. Simply add a decimal point in the middle of all crit damage stats on gear. Crit damage is now balanced. Move along..
I'm not sure, if it is, but crit damage should be the core stat that increases paperdoll dps the most. The reason being, it does nothing else. Primary stats have defensive side effects. Crit chance and attack speed have synergies with many skills/builds to the extent that items with those are often better than ones giving more dps/ehp. This aspect of the game (core offensive stats) is absolutely fine imo.
Core defensive stats (resist, armor, vit etc) could use some tuning. I really wonder who came up with the idea to let all resist roll higher than single resists, effectively removing any distinction between damage types. Must've been high.
But a rework of those still isn't the fix to itemization that everyone talks about. To be honest, I don't have a solution at hand myself. More affixes, more skill affecting affixes, unique affixes are nice thoughts, but it's extremely tough to actually do.
2.) Add increase specific skill damage mod from 1%-100%. Melee skills (Barbs/Monks) will show up on melee weapons. Caster skills will show up on caster items (wands/daggers). Class specifc items will have class specific skills. And random + damage % skills can show up on rings/amulets and uniques.
3.) Add cast speed to only work on casting skills.. Cast speed only appears on rings, amulets, wands, staves and daggers. OR WD/Wiz specific items. IAS no longer works for casting skills.
Well, skill affecting affixes are an idea, don't know, if it would work. Imagine having multiple SoJs, that would decrease HotA cost by 5 each.
I do agree with your flavor stuff. Casters wielding brutish melee weapons are not right. But that's the least of my concerns. It's not like we have Navy Seals running around in our dark fantasy world. If you ask me, the worst, Blizz did in this regard, were guns in the WarCraft world.
1.) Crit damage nerf. Simply add a decimal point in the middle of all crit damage stats on gear. Crit damage is now balanced. Move along..
2.) Add increase specific skill damage mod from 1%-100%. Melee skills (Barbs/Monks) will show up on melee weapons. Caster skills will show up on caster items (wands/daggers). Class specifc items will have class specific skills. And random + damage % skills can show up on rings/amulets and uniques.
3.) Add cast speed to only work on casting skills.. Cast speed only appears on rings, amulets, wands, staves and daggers. OR WD/Wiz specific items. IAS no longer works for casting skills.
These changes would force people to gear up outside the mindset of stack crit. This would actually make items the new skills/passive tree. These changes would promote actual builds.
No longer can one set up easily work for all skills. And its exactly D3 needs.
Am I wrong?
Prove it? Seems like this is exactly whats missing in D3.
Theres no skill trees. Hence no way to max out certain skills and become an actual build.
Unless of course you think max crit with simple skill swaps with no actual builds is better.
What other stats? Theres no +skill mods therefore all stats are useless.
Change the stat to have a cap and % based would be a good start. It would be nice to get all the resists you need in 4-5 peices of gear and focus on other stats elsewhere.
Well, crit chance would be nerfed by default if all crit damage mods simply added a decimal point in the middle.
Example being an item with 40% crit damage. Now becomes 4.0% crit damage. So if aplayer has like 300% crit damage they now will have 30% crit damage.
Also, increase damage to skills by 1%-100% would make actual builds.
Example if I was a WD who used bears I could stack as much Bears damage% as possible.
This would make 'builds' actually be builds. Because you would to actually think about what skills you could max out on items.
This would also remove the whole 1 gear set up works for all skills mentality on each class.
That's why I thought that caster weapons should have cast speed and + WD/Wizard skills damage mods on them.
That way melee weapons would only have IAS and melee skills mods (Barb/Monk) skills would be totally useless to casters.
IAS should not work on casting skills.
Imagine how many skills there are in the game. Then imagine how many different ways items can roll. Then imagine how hard it would be to find an item that has your desired stats (str, vit, IAS, crit%, AND specific barb-related +skill%). It would be virtually impossible to find items like this. Imagine getting shoulders with 300 str, 150 vit, 80 AR, +250 armor, and +10% bonus damage to energy twister (wizard). Just... no. There are what... over a hundred active skills. That means if you are going for a specific +%skill "build," and find a good item, you have less than a 1% chance of that item being relevant to your "build."
It would be more rare than rolling current trifectas.
Perhaps if the Mystic is added back into the game, you can use the mystic to imbue items with power and give it a random %chance of a specific skill. Say you select your item and choose "fists of thunder." The mystic would then imbue items with a random +%skill for fists of thunder. Items can be un-imbued for a certain penalty (gold? reagents? both?) to ensure that you can't just keep re-imbuing items till infinity before getting perfect rolls.
The only way (that I see) that you can have many unique stats which are all useable is that certain stats must be amazing in certain builds and situations while simultaneously *awful* in other builds and situations. For example, perhaps make 2H barbarians want crit damage (and penalize them for having attack speed) while dual wield barbarians want attacked speed (and penalize them for having crit damage). I totally concede that this idea has many other issues with it, but something has to be done to combat certain stats being appealing to every class. Otherwise, things like the "trifecta" are mandatory.
In terms of stats, I kinda think CMWW is really one of the more inventive builds. (Yes, it has balance issues but it's interesting to me at least). In this case, crit chance is as much about *survivability* as it is damage. And if you're doing CMWW on a budget, it's viable to sacrifice INT and crit damage in order to pick up more attack speed and crit hit chance. Not that every build should necessarily work like CMWW, but it's in keeping with the direction Blizzard wants to take itemization. (i.e. What's vital to me isn't vital or even good for everyone else.)
Ha. Bagstone.
Im sorry but its that kind of thinking that made D3 itemization bad in the 1st place.
Yes, imagine all those skills in the game having a chance to roll % damage mods. That would be amazing. Say hello to actually building and thinking. Instead of simply stacking crit on all gear possible you now have options to tweak out skills.
BTW, it would not be virtually impossible to find items like this if they exists. See D2 for the prime example of this.
I mean really, that would be real itemization.
Well, crit can be easily nerfed by dropping a decimal point in the middle. And really, blizzard can do this very easily. It says in their terms that they have the right to change anything, anytime. Just like they did to ias really.
Getting the highest DPS should come from %skill damage modifiers. Crit damage will count as a character wide increase on damage but at a smaller fraction of skill damage mods.
This would promote a nice balance and actual building. There is no longer any flavour of the month simply because you will define your build on your Increase skill damage mods. Crit would just be like the icing on the cake instead of the only taste in town.
Are you trying to say that single-skill bonuses in D2 were more prevalent than +all skills?
Becuase that's simply untrue. +all skills completely dominated the itemization and it was just as generic (if not moreso) than primary stats.
Im just saying it would not impossible to find or make happen.. Also, D2 pretty much ruined itself after the enigma/synergies patch. I mean D2 was actually better in its earlier states. D2 lost its charm after everyone started to teleport.
But... +skills where used. But also + certain skills. Even down to charms which also tied into the skill tree.
What im saying is. You could not just have a really well built fire sorc one second and and a cold sorc the next second. And while there is no skills in D3 we could at least have the 'items' be the ground work for the builds. And I mean actual builds.
Well, that's exactly the point for me.. To push people to stack what they need for the skills they use. They can no longer stack a single stat to achieve high DPS. I think capping it is kind of wrong. There should never be a cap since it restricts itemization. Just make it less effective and more balanced.
That's why a simple decimal point slide would make Crit a nice support mod instead
Please feel free to explain why. Personally I think I hit it right on the head. I mean dead on.
We need specific gear for specific skills. Not just crit all day every day.
Well, I didn't mean to sound like a dick, but here's why;
A; Cutting crit damage won't solve a thing. This will just push players toward another stat. The root problem is that we can get all the damage increasing skills that one item slot carries, on one piece. Instead, we need to introduce MORE damage increasing affixes. This will make by far more varied gear and it will also make more gear valuable. Blizzard has already acknowledged this by stating they plan on adding more affixes there there is room. (viable affixes at that).
B; Your second idea wraps into your first one. Adding more affixes is the answer, not nerfing current ones.
C; Same thing as my first point; Add more. More = diversity. I personally don't care whether attack speed gets split between casting speed and melee attacks, but I can see the merits on it.
Pretty much the reason for my initial post here was because the root problems of itemization, you don't address. Those roots being;
Completely weak legendaries, why would anyone farm for them? Re-do legendaries, and add actual game-changing unique affixes for each one, while simultaneously equalizing DPS for weapons. Deciding on a legendary should be about what unique affixes it has and how it will change your gameplay. The current state proves that the most important thing for a legendary for players is the viewable DPS
Players can achieve every DPS stat allowed on any given item slot, on one item. Add more affixes then there are slots.
Affix ranges for max level items vary too much, resulting in an overflow of 'bad' items. Decrease the gap between the ranges.
Current affixes such as thorns, health globe (to an extent) life after kill, and LoH are next-to-worthless for most players. Fixing these stats to compete with other current stats would help a lot. Such as thorns being a direct % weapon damage to attackers, ect.
The legendary pool is pretty small. Creating 'scaling' legendaries (to drop with their stats based on the monster that dropped it) will increase that pool dramatically, making hunting for legendaries all the more fun.
You see where I'm going with this. The problems are having actual GOOD legendary drops, and a bigger pool of them, creating new and making all affixes appeal to most players, and lessening the gap between good - godly items.
There's another part to this problem. On slots like weapons, rings, amulets, gloves you basically have no room for "defensive" stats. So we need more item properties, but we also need a mechanism by which if you get life/sec on a pair of gloves it doesn't automatically become terrible because that's a BIG problem at the moment.
My grudge with the current system is that no matter what you simply cannot go without CHC/CHD. You can definitely build a character with 0 attackspeed and no Average Damage (these seem a lot less effective than Crit), but without Crit you're not only locked out of a lot of builds but you're also way waaaay behind the power curve.
I'm not sure, if it is, but crit damage should be the core stat that increases paperdoll dps the most. The reason being, it does nothing else. Primary stats have defensive side effects. Crit chance and attack speed have synergies with many skills/builds to the extent that items with those are often better than ones giving more dps/ehp. This aspect of the game (core offensive stats) is absolutely fine imo.
Core defensive stats (resist, armor, vit etc) could use some tuning. I really wonder who came up with the idea to let all resist roll higher than single resists, effectively removing any distinction between damage types. Must've been high.
But a rework of those still isn't the fix to itemization that everyone talks about. To be honest, I don't have a solution at hand myself. More affixes, more skill affecting affixes, unique affixes are nice thoughts, but it's extremely tough to actually do.
Well, skill affecting affixes are an idea, don't know, if it would work. Imagine having multiple SoJs, that would decrease HotA cost by 5 each.
I do agree with your flavor stuff. Casters wielding brutish melee weapons are not right. But that's the least of my concerns. It's not like we have Navy Seals running around in our dark fantasy world. If you ask me, the worst, Blizz did in this regard, were guns in the WarCraft world.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450