Fun fact: The devs that work on cosmetics in basically every development studio do not have much (if anything) to do with the "actual issues" that need addressing.
The absolute value difference is completely meaningless though. It's a nonsensical metric that doesn't express comparative power between characters and the only way to eliminate it is to completely remove the level system as a product of playtime.
The "absolute power difference" you're talking about is just a product of relative stat totals (compounded a small amount by player efficiency). Barring capping XP gains per day there's no way to guarantee players with arbitrary playtime differences are on an "equal field".
Now if you wanted to "accurately" reflect player leaderboard standing then every player would need to be placed on a leaderboard respective to other p[layers in their playtime bracket. It would theoretically reflect player skill and efficiency of their leveling. If you wanted to perfectly reflect player efficiency then you'd have a leaderboard which ranks players based on their XP gain rate rather than their absolute XP total.
But it all boils down to there being no "scaling power gap". It's a figment of your imagination. The only time one EVER exists as you describe is if two players play at two different points in the season. A 20% paragon level difference in two seasons is the exact same level of competitive fairness no matter the absolute level differences. It's the same competition with bigger numbers.
The effect that XP inflation has on non-seasonal is a total non-issue of course. It's not intended to be "balanced" it's just a dumping ground for testing and casual play. The fact that there are even leaderboards at all is idiotic to be honest.
And FYI blizz is destroying XP bonus gear and XP calculation last I checked.
PoE has kept a relatively stable upper cap on gear for a long time. Endgame is made enjoyable by making the map system (analogue to rifts) a combination of levels and random affixes which means that you have two forms of progression through the endgame. It also lets you tailor what enemies you fight based on what you want to fight rather than randomness. Don;t want enemies that deal lots of cold damage? Avoid the cold damage affix and use maps that include primarily other damage types. The relative scarcity of legends (I get about one every day or two when I'm playing) and presence of an actual trade system and more or less stable economy gives further goals to work towards in the endgame. It's not perfect but it rewards players who put in time. Numbers are nowhere near as bad as they are in D3 and are at a more or less instantly understandable level (let's face it the human brain isn't really designed to comprehend tens of billions of anything).
D2 gave a hard cap to level maintained relative item scarcity but had runewords. Playing solo some of them can take months or years to finish depending on how much you play but the payoff is ridiculous. A bit too grindy but it rewards player dedication with a huge power increase.
As far as skill with classes. To be honest the skillcap in D3 is low. Really low. It doesn't take much to more or less master solo play. Enemies aren't particularly clever and it's more bullet hell than it is about clever tactics. In party play it has consistently been about chaining CC which is another skill that has a very low ceiling. Then the paragon point system doesn't tangibly reward players who stay playing (and combos well with the season system) but eventually you've got a level ceiling. But between being slow and having no big power spikes it feels unrewarding past about p400 or so.
I take issue with all the "rewards" for playing being big patch changes and ridiculous power creep more than anything else though. If patches stopped and numbers were a tenth of what they are I'd still play this game regularly until the servers went down just to do seasonal marathons. If patches quit with the power creep and started downscaling numbers and diversifying sets (instead of just doubling my damage and health EVERY patch like they are doing) I'd keep playing until the servers went down because omg new things to try.
So it boils down to I'm getting more and more bored with the whole "Here's a patch, have double damage and defenses and do higher GRs" thing. I'm not earning anything they're just handing me more numbers. It's pretty much the reason I never got back into WoW once the expansions started coming. Blizzard has it in their head that the only way to keep a playerbase is to exponentially scale numbers since apparently we're all children who are awed by them. I'd much rather see something that takes real time or skill to complete, or just give me new toys that aren't ridiculously broken. They don't need to be broken to get me to use them. If you add an endgame to that that isn't as simple as enemies have more HP and damage you'd have a recipe for a more enjoyable experience as a whole.
I agree that the set needs some buffing, but the way you modified the set makes so that you are forced to play ( ground stomp, Earthquake, Threatening shout, Seismic slam) which will never EVER happen. At most you may go for 2 skills, but even that's a bit far fetched.
And also "Standing inside earthquake-affected ground reduces damage taken by 50%" that's far too good to be in the game if you ask me.
I also think it's stupid to give names to additional set pieces. They will never take your names and put them into the game. At least you could say these names and values are placeholders. Though as a placeholder you can easily put a "x" value instead.
On a personal level, I like the leaping aspect of the set. I see no reason to change it.
Name a single class set that has three or more variable abilities in their optimum build. The answer is that you can't. All classes have abilities across all builds that are an unwritten rule to have, such as laws, Magic weapon/armor, Companion, gargantuan, mantra, Warcry/battle rage. I like the idea of pushing for Threatening shout because it is never used, and is intended to take the place of an ability that is always used.
I will admit that I had a singular build in mind when constructing the set and associated legendaries, but I cannot stress enough that this is how sets work in the game currently.
I'm not a numbers guy. I don't work for blizz. I don't pretend to believe that I can theorycraft up perfectly balanced and fair numbers at all. These are all ballpark numbers intended to give the reader an idea of what my goals are.
Meh to the names. If by some stroke of ungodly luck that blizz not only reads this, but loves it enough to implement everything but say "fuck your names, i do what i want" and then go make their own - cool. Again, this is all ballparking for the sake of entertaining the idea that this set might not suck ass at some point in time.
On a professional level, the leaping aspect is accomplished for this class via the Rakor's build. Leapquake will never come back because it is entirely too similar to another 6-piece set on the same class. This build/set is entirely designed (in my mind) to be unique in gameplay to the class.
There are more than a few sets which leave a lot up to the player. Sure players end up finding perfect cookie cutter skill choices but nothing's stopping a Zunidoctor from not running gargantuan (note: IIRC currently gargy is inferior to doges due to body blocking), nothing stops a tal wizard from not using an armor (in fact many builds simply drop it altogether in favor of mobility). Yes there are plenty of skills that are "required" but items are changing and "best" options change with them. Locking a set into an excessively narrow skillset is only detrimental to the health of the set (and the game) in the long run.
And FYI: Leapquake should come back. It behaves way differently than raekor's.
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.
If unavoidable damage was % Current HP then total lockdown wouldn't be absolutely required to survive rifts since unavoidable damage would no longer be one shotting you every 5 seconds. Stuff like Jailer, Orbiter, or Thunderstorm just scales far too high in damage to let a character without total lockdown be able to progress through rifts as the level gets higher.
The infinite damage scaling on all damage sources is broken and terrible design and it's hurting composition flexibility. It's good that support classes exist, and good that they pull tehri weight, it's bad that they HAVE to exist because any fight where the enemies can take actions is a fight where everyone dies every 5 seconds.
I think that new locations, classes and items are quite obvious. However, from the less obvious things I would like to see revamped stat system (D2 system please), revamped blocking system (I want block to be useful and viable for higher grifts, make it so the block amount rises with monsters damage, so the block value skyrocks on higher grifts). I'm also looking forward to see life steal and crushing blow in the new expansion! Crushing blow was the thing in D2.
D2 Stat System: Every point goes in Vit.
D2 Block System: Not a paladin? Not happening. (Yes block is pretty bad, but it's better than it was in D2)
Life Steal: It's called Life on hit (It was broken and trivializing incoming damage to essentially one shots. Yes the irony is awesome)
Crushing Blow: Becomes immediately mandatory just like in d2. No thanks.
Seriously. D2 mechanics, when you actually think about them, are pretty bad.
3
Fun fact: The devs that work on cosmetics in basically every development studio do not have much (if anything) to do with the "actual issues" that need addressing.
1
It's filtered out of classes that cannot use polearms. Wiz cannot use Polearms so you'll only get it as an off class drop.
1
The absolute value difference is completely meaningless though. It's a nonsensical metric that doesn't express comparative power between characters and the only way to eliminate it is to completely remove the level system as a product of playtime.
The "absolute power difference" you're talking about is just a product of relative stat totals (compounded a small amount by player efficiency). Barring capping XP gains per day there's no way to guarantee players with arbitrary playtime differences are on an "equal field".
Now if you wanted to "accurately" reflect player leaderboard standing then every player would need to be placed on a leaderboard respective to other p[layers in their playtime bracket. It would theoretically reflect player skill and efficiency of their leveling. If you wanted to perfectly reflect player efficiency then you'd have a leaderboard which ranks players based on their XP gain rate rather than their absolute XP total.
But it all boils down to there being no "scaling power gap". It's a figment of your imagination. The only time one EVER exists as you describe is if two players play at two different points in the season. A 20% paragon level difference in two seasons is the exact same level of competitive fairness no matter the absolute level differences. It's the same competition with bigger numbers.
The effect that XP inflation has on non-seasonal is a total non-issue of course. It's not intended to be "balanced" it's just a dumping ground for testing and casual play. The fact that there are even leaderboards at all is idiotic to be honest.
And FYI blizz is destroying XP bonus gear and XP calculation last I checked.
2
PoE has kept a relatively stable upper cap on gear for a long time. Endgame is made enjoyable by making the map system (analogue to rifts) a combination of levels and random affixes which means that you have two forms of progression through the endgame. It also lets you tailor what enemies you fight based on what you want to fight rather than randomness. Don;t want enemies that deal lots of cold damage? Avoid the cold damage affix and use maps that include primarily other damage types. The relative scarcity of legends (I get about one every day or two when I'm playing) and presence of an actual trade system and more or less stable economy gives further goals to work towards in the endgame. It's not perfect but it rewards players who put in time. Numbers are nowhere near as bad as they are in D3 and are at a more or less instantly understandable level (let's face it the human brain isn't really designed to comprehend tens of billions of anything).
D2 gave a hard cap to level maintained relative item scarcity but had runewords. Playing solo some of them can take months or years to finish depending on how much you play but the payoff is ridiculous. A bit too grindy but it rewards player dedication with a huge power increase.
As far as skill with classes. To be honest the skillcap in D3 is low. Really low. It doesn't take much to more or less master solo play. Enemies aren't particularly clever and it's more bullet hell than it is about clever tactics. In party play it has consistently been about chaining CC which is another skill that has a very low ceiling. Then the paragon point system doesn't tangibly reward players who stay playing (and combos well with the season system) but eventually you've got a level ceiling. But between being slow and having no big power spikes it feels unrewarding past about p400 or so.
I take issue with all the "rewards" for playing being big patch changes and ridiculous power creep more than anything else though. If patches stopped and numbers were a tenth of what they are I'd still play this game regularly until the servers went down just to do seasonal marathons. If patches quit with the power creep and started downscaling numbers and diversifying sets (instead of just doubling my damage and health EVERY patch like they are doing) I'd keep playing until the servers went down because omg new things to try.
So it boils down to I'm getting more and more bored with the whole "Here's a patch, have double damage and defenses and do higher GRs" thing. I'm not earning anything they're just handing me more numbers. It's pretty much the reason I never got back into WoW once the expansions started coming. Blizzard has it in their head that the only way to keep a playerbase is to exponentially scale numbers since apparently we're all children who are awed by them. I'd much rather see something that takes real time or skill to complete, or just give me new toys that aren't ridiculously broken. They don't need to be broken to get me to use them. If you add an endgame to that that isn't as simple as enemies have more HP and damage you'd have a recipe for a more enjoyable experience as a whole.
1
There are more than a few sets which leave a lot up to the player. Sure players end up finding perfect cookie cutter skill choices but nothing's stopping a Zunidoctor from not running gargantuan (note: IIRC currently gargy is inferior to doges due to body blocking), nothing stops a tal wizard from not using an armor (in fact many builds simply drop it altogether in favor of mobility). Yes there are plenty of skills that are "required" but items are changing and "best" options change with them. Locking a set into an excessively narrow skillset is only detrimental to the health of the set (and the game) in the long run.
And FYI: Leapquake should come back. It behaves way differently than raekor's.
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.
1
If unavoidable damage was % Current HP then total lockdown wouldn't be absolutely required to survive rifts since unavoidable damage would no longer be one shotting you every 5 seconds. Stuff like Jailer, Orbiter, or Thunderstorm just scales far too high in damage to let a character without total lockdown be able to progress through rifts as the level gets higher.
The infinite damage scaling on all damage sources is broken and terrible design and it's hurting composition flexibility. It's good that support classes exist, and good that they pull tehri weight, it's bad that they HAVE to exist because any fight where the enemies can take actions is a fight where everyone dies every 5 seconds.
1
One word: No.
1
D2 Stat System: Every point goes in Vit.
D2 Block System: Not a paladin? Not happening. (Yes block is pretty bad, but it's better than it was in D2)
Life Steal: It's called Life on hit (It was broken and trivializing incoming damage to essentially one shots. Yes the irony is awesome)
Crushing Blow: Becomes immediately mandatory just like in d2. No thanks.
Seriously. D2 mechanics, when you actually think about them, are pretty bad.