Disclaimer: I was a prot-warrior in WoW so I have a very specific definition for defense-related mechanisms.
You should never compare a trinity MMORPG to a Hack&Slash. Ultra-specialized classes just do not go well with half-specialized classes of all other games.
We're talking about the definition of words. I can assure you, the idea of mitigation applies equally no matter what game we're discussing. When calculating how incoming damage affects you, mitigation is a distinct number applied in a damage calculation stack. Diablo3 is just as reliant on this mechanism as WoW.
Mitigation is (and only is) the reduction of raw incoming damage by a certain percentage.
This term has no value.
In video games (any of them), mitigation or survival rating (or w/e you want to call it) refers to the total sum of all negative health effects and all positive health effects that are consistent and continual. Which is, basically, damage after defense and damage enhancement vs healing after negation and healing enhancement.
No, not whatever I want to call it.. what I specifically call it.
I see combat as a combination of mathematical functions. I see incoming damage as one factor (negative), and incoming healing as a separate and distinct mechanism (positive). The fact that they work at the same time has no bearing on the fact that they are distinct.
Mitigation is the mathematical alteration of incoming damage. Life leech is the mathematical alteration of incoming healing (based on damage DONE).
If you choose to see them as one mechanism, have at it. But they are not. Just because you choose not to see the inner-workings of a system does not mean that those inner workings do not exist, and cannot be discussed.
The distinctions you discuss are irrelevant to the structure of the video game. They're just semantic distinctions and nothing else. Dodges and the like get added in like anything else by statistical value.
They are absolutely not irrelevant. It's like saying arithmetic is irrelevant to algebra.
You say lifesteal has nothing to do with incoming damage but that is incorrect. It has to do with incoming damage after calculation. If incoming damage (after all calc) is 300 and you heal yourself for 250 (after all calc) you are losing 50 HP and that becomes a variable in how much time you have to kill the enemy.
This value is pretty pointless in WoW since your healer will heal you to oblivion.
It doesn't have anything to do with incoming damage, of itself. Mitigation is one part of a full equation. Mitigation is not the entire equation. That's my point.
Mitigation, as it is used in the overwhelming majority of theorycrafting cases that I've studied, is calculated by how long you can stand and take damage without attacking, normalized to remove avoidance. It's one piece of the puzzle, yes. But if you make the argument "any one piece of the puzzle is irrelevant" then you won't have any puzzle at all.
Survivability is a measure of the entire equation, which is more what you're talking about.
I don't care if we disagree about terms. I am simply trying to describe to you the definitions that I (and Blizzard) use in discussing these mechanics. I did so to specifically avoid a semantic debate, but I failed, and perhaps for the better. It's good we at least agree on terms, if we can't there's no point in using those terms to agree on anything else.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
We're talking about the definition of words. I can assure you, the idea of mitigation applies equally no matter what game we're discussing.
Your idea applies only to games where the term has been used.
If we're gonna dig that far into semantics, games do not come with terms, they come with numbers, people just make up the terms, and I do not want to see any terms from WoW, I don't even want to feel the stench of WoW, that game needs to stay so far away from Diablo III it should avoid using even the same names.
If you choose to see them as one mechanism, have at it. But they are not. Just because you choose not to see the inner-workings of a system does not mean that those inner workings do not exist, and cannot be discussed.
Um, they are. There are no inner workings besides questions of time and the like.
You get attacked. There's first a roll against your defense, parry, dodge, etc. (vs their attack rate and w/e). If that roll succeeds, then there's a calculation of derived damage after damage reduction or resistance. But this all doesn't matter in game balance.
Game balance doesn't do that. Game balance calculates the hit first, it calculates how fast it is, it calculates how often it is (defense parry dodge), and how often the player in question can recover from it via healing of sorts. Per game calculations, life steal = life regen on a different timer.
They are absolutely not irrelevant. It's like saying arithmetic is irrelevant to algebra.
That analogy doesn't really apply here.
Game balance is not going to say "there's a 30% chance that you will get one-shotted".
It says "you will get one-shotted".
It won't say "you will be critically hit 25% of the time."
It's going to average out into being critically hit every 4th time and sum it up and divide it.
It doesn't have anything to do with incoming damage, of itself. Mitigation is one part of a full equation. Mitigation is not the entire equation. That's my point.
Does it matter? You know what my point was. It was that lifesteal is an easily manipulatable number. Whether it's part of mitigation or not is just WoW talk.
Mitigation, as it is used in the overwhelming majority of theorycrafting cases that I've studied, is calculated by how long you can stand and take damage without attacking
This is useless to any game that has lifesteal. It's like saying you are calculating how much money you have to pay for college while ignoring the 60k in your bank. I don't know what cases you have seen but if you were looking at only MMO's that may have been it.
Apparently the poor jungler in LoL who starts with he Vampiric Scepter on 12% lifesteal is just gonna die because mitigation doesn't include his lifesteal eh?
@ Equinox - I appreciate the way you look at combat, it helps give some perspective. I definitely do have a WoW mentality when it comes to considering combat, but when it comes down to brass tacks, the combat system of D3 uses an attack-based stack - meaning, the damage you take is calculated on a per-attack basis. Same for the damage you do.
Without knowing the exact inner-workings, it will look something like this. Disclaimer: this is not representitive of the actual steps, but the principles are intact:
1. Incoming attack for X
2. Avoidance? if yes, 0dmg taken
3. Native damage mitigation (+defense) (X - %X = Y)
4. Skills damage mitigation (+defense) (Y - %Y = Z)
5. Player takes damage of Z
Now, simultaneously, you'll have a similar (but distinctly different) mechanism modifying your outgoing damage. The proof being that you can take damage until you die without ever swinging. They are separate and distinct activities:
1. Basic attack for X
2. Is Crit? if yes, X = 2X
3. Avoided/Missed? if yes, 0dmg
4. Native +Defense of target (X - %X = Y)
5. Skills +Defense of target (Y - %Y = Z)
6. Enemy takes damage of Z
7. (Player takes healing of %X) - life leech
The whole reason I brought it up was to point out that Blizzard has many, many mathematical and arithmetic knobs that they can twist, and that is precisely how they achieve balance . Bliz has stated that the "Mitigation" part of the player's defensive combat stack will effectively play a much larger role than before. That means, basically, that steps 3 and 4 in the incoming damage stack are going to be bigger numbers.
That's confirmed from Bliz. I'm not seeing how talking about the mitigation knob is a moot point. I'm also not seeing how balance is achieved without actually altering the individual components of the system.. But my perspective still may be limited, so maybe try explaining it a different way? I'm unfortunately bound by the fact that I am, myself, a computer programmer so I tend to see things through that viewpoint.
As far as "WoW talk," well I can sympathize with your dislike of that vein of thinking, it can be tedious and nonsensical, but some of us derive great joy from it.
Game balance is not going to say "there's a 30% chance that you will get one-shotted".
It says "you will get one-shotted".
It won't say "you will be critically hit 25% of the time."
It's going to average out into being critically hit every 4th time and sum it up and divide it.
So when you say "game balance" in this context, you're talking about the entire combat system. But when you talk about "life leech," you're talking about one particular knob in the "game balance" system. When I talk about "mitigation," I'm talking about a different knob in the same "game balance" system. The point I was trying to get across is this:
Blizzard is turning the "mitigation" knob up, and the "life leech" knob down. Does that jive with you?
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
Well that really depends though on the average health:dmg ratio we will have. If I use the example given before as 10:1(HP/DMG) for D3, then lets say 1000 HP and 100 DMG per hit. That would be giving back 3 HP out of 1000 HP. Who knows though, tough to say until beta.
True, but 3% on a level 2 gem sounds awfully lot. What do they have on level 14 gems? 21% life leech? (3%/2*14=21%)
It could just be 15% if each gem increases by one and lvl 1 gem grants 2% or it could be based on base damage (as was mentioned previously) or it could be a percentage of your health (possibly a smaller number). Needles to say, I don't think that the number given is all that important because of how much change has probably occurred since then.
As to the mitigation debate and whether or not Life-steal will be useful, I think that the idea they will try to go for will be based around which states you want your weapons/armor to enhance. Each stat (other than damage) will likely have the ability to defensively increase your survivability (as opposed to offensively as in everything dies too fast to damage you) So health globes may add a certain %of total health, giving the most benefit to players who stack health, then there is armor/dodge allowing a player to not focus so much on health and instead control incoming damage, then there is willpower, increasing the ability to use skills (which can go either way in terms of defensive or offensive strategy as well as hybrid strategies). Then we have precision. Like I said earlier I believe they wanted life steal to be an 'on-crit' effect, so if you choose to maintain a low health and armor value, then this is how you can increase your survivability. If done right it is neither 'meh' nor necessary, just another path to follow when determining what kind of survivability you wan to have.
Imagine you have two monks of equal level. the Monk who chooses to boost precision rarely picks up health globs because he uses skills and life-steal to survive, but the Monk with an absurd amount of HP picks them up all the time because one will heal 10% of his HP, which equals 50% of the precision Monk's HP
I don't know if any of this is the slightest bit accurate, but I feel that its the situation that Blizzard is aiming for because it gives the player more ways to differentiate a character. It also does not destroy the combat mechanic, because it forces character to fight if they are under heavy assault and not attempt to move around as much or run away to survive. Sure it sidesteps some of the health globe system, but it introduces a new system for players who prefer this method of play. More options= more customization= more replayability (hopefully).
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If that made sense to you, Bravo! I think I even confused myself...
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We're talking about the definition of words. I can assure you, the idea of mitigation applies equally no matter what game we're discussing. When calculating how incoming damage affects you, mitigation is a distinct number applied in a damage calculation stack. Diablo3 is just as reliant on this mechanism as WoW.
No, not whatever I want to call it.. what I specifically call it.
I see combat as a combination of mathematical functions. I see incoming damage as one factor (negative), and incoming healing as a separate and distinct mechanism (positive). The fact that they work at the same time has no bearing on the fact that they are distinct.
Mitigation is the mathematical alteration of incoming damage. Life leech is the mathematical alteration of incoming healing (based on damage DONE).
If you choose to see them as one mechanism, have at it. But they are not. Just because you choose not to see the inner-workings of a system does not mean that those inner workings do not exist, and cannot be discussed.
Good point, I agree.
They are absolutely not irrelevant. It's like saying arithmetic is irrelevant to algebra.
It doesn't have anything to do with incoming damage, of itself. Mitigation is one part of a full equation. Mitigation is not the entire equation. That's my point.
Mitigation, as it is used in the overwhelming majority of theorycrafting cases that I've studied, is calculated by how long you can stand and take damage without attacking, normalized to remove avoidance. It's one piece of the puzzle, yes. But if you make the argument "any one piece of the puzzle is irrelevant" then you won't have any puzzle at all.
Survivability is a measure of the entire equation, which is more what you're talking about.
I don't care if we disagree about terms. I am simply trying to describe to you the definitions that I (and Blizzard) use in discussing these mechanics. I did so to specifically avoid a semantic debate, but I failed, and perhaps for the better. It's good we at least agree on terms, if we can't there's no point in using those terms to agree on anything else.
-Thomas Jefferson
If we're gonna dig that far into semantics, games do not come with terms, they come with numbers, people just make up the terms, and I do not want to see any terms from WoW, I don't even want to feel the stench of WoW, that game needs to stay so far away from Diablo III it should avoid using even the same names.
Um, they are. There are no inner workings besides questions of time and the like.
You get attacked. There's first a roll against your defense, parry, dodge, etc. (vs their attack rate and w/e). If that roll succeeds, then there's a calculation of derived damage after damage reduction or resistance. But this all doesn't matter in game balance.
Game balance doesn't do that. Game balance calculates the hit first, it calculates how fast it is, it calculates how often it is (defense parry dodge), and how often the player in question can recover from it via healing of sorts. Per game calculations, life steal = life regen on a different timer.
That analogy doesn't really apply here.
Game balance is not going to say "there's a 30% chance that you will get one-shotted".
It says "you will get one-shotted".
It won't say "you will be critically hit 25% of the time."
It's going to average out into being critically hit every 4th time and sum it up and divide it.
Does it matter? You know what my point was. It was that lifesteal is an easily manipulatable number. Whether it's part of mitigation or not is just WoW talk.
This is useless to any game that has lifesteal. It's like saying you are calculating how much money you have to pay for college while ignoring the 60k in your bank. I don't know what cases you have seen but if you were looking at only MMO's that may have been it.
Apparently the poor jungler in LoL who starts with he Vampiric Scepter on 12% lifesteal is just gonna die because mitigation doesn't include his lifesteal eh?
I'm saying you are using semantics to avoid what I am saying.
Without knowing the exact inner-workings, it will look something like this. Disclaimer: this is not representitive of the actual steps, but the principles are intact:
1. Incoming attack for X
2. Avoidance? if yes, 0dmg taken
3. Native damage mitigation (+defense) (X - %X = Y)
4. Skills damage mitigation (+defense) (Y - %Y = Z)
5. Player takes damage of Z
Now, simultaneously, you'll have a similar (but distinctly different) mechanism modifying your outgoing damage. The proof being that you can take damage until you die without ever swinging. They are separate and distinct activities:
1. Basic attack for X
2. Is Crit? if yes, X = 2X
3. Avoided/Missed? if yes, 0dmg
4. Native +Defense of target (X - %X = Y)
5. Skills +Defense of target (Y - %Y = Z)
6. Enemy takes damage of Z
7. (Player takes healing of %X) - life leech
The whole reason I brought it up was to point out that Blizzard has many, many mathematical and arithmetic knobs that they can twist, and that is precisely how they achieve balance . Bliz has stated that the "Mitigation" part of the player's defensive combat stack will effectively play a much larger role than before. That means, basically, that steps 3 and 4 in the incoming damage stack are going to be bigger numbers.
That's confirmed from Bliz. I'm not seeing how talking about the mitigation knob is a moot point. I'm also not seeing how balance is achieved without actually altering the individual components of the system.. But my perspective still may be limited, so maybe try explaining it a different way? I'm unfortunately bound by the fact that I am, myself, a computer programmer so I tend to see things through that viewpoint.
As far as "WoW talk," well I can sympathize with your dislike of that vein of thinking, it can be tedious and nonsensical, but some of us derive great joy from it.
So when you say "game balance" in this context, you're talking about the entire combat system. But when you talk about "life leech," you're talking about one particular knob in the "game balance" system. When I talk about "mitigation," I'm talking about a different knob in the same "game balance" system. The point I was trying to get across is this:
Blizzard is turning the "mitigation" knob up, and the "life leech" knob down. Does that jive with you?
-Thomas Jefferson
It could just be 15% if each gem increases by one and lvl 1 gem grants 2% or it could be based on base damage (as was mentioned previously) or it could be a percentage of your health (possibly a smaller number). Needles to say, I don't think that the number given is all that important because of how much change has probably occurred since then.
As to the mitigation debate and whether or not Life-steal will be useful, I think that the idea they will try to go for will be based around which states you want your weapons/armor to enhance. Each stat (other than damage) will likely have the ability to defensively increase your survivability (as opposed to offensively as in everything dies too fast to damage you) So health globes may add a certain %of total health, giving the most benefit to players who stack health, then there is armor/dodge allowing a player to not focus so much on health and instead control incoming damage, then there is willpower, increasing the ability to use skills (which can go either way in terms of defensive or offensive strategy as well as hybrid strategies). Then we have precision. Like I said earlier I believe they wanted life steal to be an 'on-crit' effect, so if you choose to maintain a low health and armor value, then this is how you can increase your survivability. If done right it is neither 'meh' nor necessary, just another path to follow when determining what kind of survivability you wan to have.
Imagine you have two monks of equal level. the Monk who chooses to boost precision rarely picks up health globs because he uses skills and life-steal to survive, but the Monk with an absurd amount of HP picks them up all the time because one will heal 10% of his HP, which equals 50% of the precision Monk's HP
I don't know if any of this is the slightest bit accurate, but I feel that its the situation that Blizzard is aiming for because it gives the player more ways to differentiate a character. It also does not destroy the combat mechanic, because it forces character to fight if they are under heavy assault and not attempt to move around as much or run away to survive. Sure it sidesteps some of the health globe system, but it introduces a new system for players who prefer this method of play. More options= more customization= more replayability (hopefully).