Optimistic idea for a Paragon update
For a long time now players have recognised that the current paragon system not only has a few problems (the unlimited paragon grind incentivizes botting, for example), but is also pretty uninspiring (you fairly quickly reach the point where you simply max everything, and past 800 you simply add to mainstat). There have been many great ideas put forth by the community to address one or both of these issues, and here I’ve tried to collect a lot of those ideas and combine them together and present them in the form of some colourful pictures (everyone likes pictures).
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(A sort of TL; DR)
This idea for a new paragon system has two main objectives:
- Address the infinite paragon grind which incentivizes botting. This is done by having a ‘soft cap’ on paragon (only for those wanting to compete on leaderboards)
- Address the tedium of the current system. This is done by providing players with actual choices and different ways to customize their builds
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Don’t worry too much about the particular values suggested for each of the stats – I won’t claim that they’re perfectly balanced, although I did spend a decent amount of time math’ing through them to attempt to balance them, but I could obviously be way off the mark on many of them. If you think any of the numbers are particularly off, throw your feedback this way.
Basic outline:
Paragon is divided between ‘Core’ and ‘Bonus’. This simply divides your first 800 paragon levels (Core paragon) from anything above 800 (Bonus paragon).
There are 5 Categories (Offense, Defense, Resource, Utility, Adventure).
There are 10 Stats per category.
Almost all Stats max out at 50 points per Stat (like the current system), with a few exceptions.
While below paragon 800.
Points can be spent on any stat in any category at any time (unlike the current system), up to 200 points per category (like the current system). This equates to being able to max out 16 stats across the 5 categories, and 4 out of 10 stats within a category. So, if using the maximum 200 points per category, only 4 out of 5 categories can be accessed (or, alternatively, one could spread the points across all 5 categories).
Beyond 800 paragon.
The restrictions of 200 points per Category disappear. Perhaps there could be brackets: Paragon 800 – 1600, the cap is increased to 400 points per category; Paragon 1600 – 2400 the cap is increased to 600, etc.
Why the paragon 800 threshold?
This deserves its own separate discussion, but as a basic summary: I feel the general consensus of the community is that there needs to be some ‘restrictions’ in place to curb the incentives for botting i.e. the infinite progression systems that are present in almost every aspect of this game only serve to enhance the benefit botting gives – and botting will never be got rid of (it exists in every game and always will), so one ‘solution’ (the only realistic solution) is to minimise the impact botting has, and minimise the incentives for botting.
So, there’s nothing special about 800 in particular, and the threshold could be set anywhere, but Paragon 800 should be an ‘achievable’ paragon level to reach for most people interested in the leaderboards. Now, what we can do is have some kind of ‘Competitive’ Rift system (which would be the only Rift system tied to leaderboards – there would be no more need to tie Leaderboards to GRifts, which is really getting more and more ridiculous as can be seen by having well-documented botters holding top places on the leaderboards). In this Competitive Rift system your paragon would be capped at this 800 threshold. Outside of this Competitive Rift system (i.e. everywhere we currently play: Adventure Mode, Rifts, Grifts, etc.) players could use their uncapped paragon points. Ideally (and now I’m really digressing here) these Competitive Rifts would not be exactly like current Greater Rifts, with their heavy dependence on RNG – however, that’s definitely a topic for another thread, and I’d settle for the Competitive Rifts being effectively identical to Greater Rifts, and see it as a move in the right direction.
(Another alternative could be simply to have Seasonal paragon cap at 800, while non-season has uncapped paragon.)
Picture Examples
In the following images, this player has a Paragon level of 1123, and has currently applied only 200 points of their 800 Core points into the Offense tab, maxing that tab out.They have not placed any more points in any other tabs, leaving 600 Core points to distribute. The 323 (1123 - 323 = 800) Bonus points would not be able to be used while inside a Competitive Rift.
Offense
Attack Speed (10% @ 50 points)
Critical Hit Chance (5% @ 50 points)
Critical Hit Damage (50% @ 50 points)
Elemental Damage [10% @ 50 points]
Elite Damage [10% @ 50 points]
Area Damage [10% @ 50 points]
Primary Skill [15% @ 50 points]
Increase all damage of Primary skills, as Depth Diggers and such do. There is a problem deciding on appropriate values due to additive dilution, but oh well.
Secondary Skill [15% @ 50 points]
Increase all damage of your Secondary skills. Same issue with Primary skills: additive dilution with new items in 2.4 increasing Secondary skills damage by up to ~100%.
Pet Damage [10% @ 50 points]
Increase the damage of your Pets. Currently Pet Damage is additive with Elemental damage, which once again makes finding appropriate values difficult.
Cooldown Reduction [10% @ 50 points]
Defense
Armor [20% @ 50 points]
Single Resists [250 @ 10 points]
The only stat that maxes out at 10 points instead of 50 points. The idea is that spreading out your points into all the single resists should give you roughly equivalent mitigation as the same number of points put into Armor, while also being able to specialise in particular resistances if one wishes to.
Elite damage reduction [20% @ 40 points]
Maxes out at 40 points. Greater damage reduction than either Armor or All Resists, but specifically for Elite damage.
Ranged/Melee damage reduction [20% @ 50 points] Similar to Elite damage reduction in that each category provides more mitigation than straight Armor, but is specific to a damage type.
Resources
Life% [25% @ 50 points]
Vitality [2000 @ 50 points]
Health Globe Bonus [40,000 @ 50 points]
Life per Second [15,000 @ 50 points]
Life per Hit [10,000 @ 50 points]
Life per Kill [10,000 @ 50 points]
Life per Resource Spent [800 @ 50 points]
This one is a bit tricky. Only Barbs, Monks and Crusaders have LpRS, and in different quantities, so the particular value would be adjusted per these classes. For the other 3 classes, either this stat could remain (which might be an interesting option in itself), or could be replaced by Arcane per Crit, Max Discipline, and flat increase in Mana regen for Wiz, DH, and WD respectively.
Resource Cost Reduction [20% @ 50 points]
Primary Resource Generation [25% @ 50 points]
Increases all sources of resource generation/regeneration by 25%.
Max Primary Resource [50 @ 50 points]
Amount varies from class to class, just as in the current system.
Utility
Some of these stats are technically ‘Defensive’ or ‘Offensive’, but in the interest of keep 10 stats per category they are placed here.
Dodge [10% @ 50 points]
Thorns [10,000 @ 50 points]
CC Reduction [40% @ 50 points]
Block Chance [10% @ 50 points]
Chance to Bleed for 5 seconds [40% @ 50 points]
Bleed could do 350% weapon damage (the same as the weapon roll), but it would not primarily be for damage, but instead be for use with Pain Enhancer for builds that might not crit.
Chance to Stun [10% @ 50 points]
Chance to Freeze [10% @ 50 points]
Chance to Charm [10% @ 50 points]
Chance to Blind [10% @ 50 points]
Chance to Knockup [10% @ 50 points]
Adventure
Movement Speed [25% @ 50 points]
Material Multiplier [100% @ 50 points]
Doubles all white, blue, yellow and forgotten soul mats that drop.
Gold Find [50% @ 50 points]
Gem Enhance [15% @ 50 points]
15% increase in the power of all your non-legendary gems, similar to how Leoric’s Crown works, but for all of your sockets. Ideally this would accompany an overhaul of the current non-legendary gems to make all of them more interesting/useful.
Pickup Radius [7 @ 50 points]
Health Globe Chance [100% @ 50 points]
100% increase in base chance to drop HGs (e.g. double health globe amount) – probably shouldn’t interact with Solanium.
Nephalem Globe Chance [100% @ 50 points]
Doubles number of NGs produced. Ideally this would coincide with a rework of NGs, to make them actually good.
Shrine Duration [100% @ 50 points]
Double the duration of shrines (they currently last 2 minutes) – could multiply with Gloves of Worship as well.
Teleport Duration [100% @ 50 points]
Reduction in TP channeling time. Currently channeling lasts 5 seconds. 50% would reduce to 2.5 seconds, 100% would make it instant, like you were using a waypoint.
Follower Damage [100% @ 50 points]
Multiplicative increase in your Follower damage – ideally this would accompany a full rework of Followers that made them actually do non-negligible damage.
2
With this post I want to show how items could have looked like, if D3 would have been more true to D2's item design. I will showcase some rare and legendary items that I created myself with the help of photoshop, but before that, there are a few things that I want to point out (if you just wanna see the items, scroll down):
1) The numbers that I use here are just examples and need to be adjusted properly if this here would would not just be for the purpose of illustration.
2) In my concept of D3's items, magic items have 2 random affixes, rare items have 4-6 random affixes and legendaries have predetermined affixes. Legendaries are not necessarily better than rare items, they just have something special about them, like a special effect (one or more procs for example) that can only spawn on this item, or affixes that ordinarily do not spawn on this item category, or both, however, a well rolled rare item can be better than a legendary for some builds, like it was in D2. The best rolled rare items are very rare.
3) Rare items can also roll with procs like "chance to cast skill X on attack", as it was in D2, so don't be surprised when you see a rare item with a chance to cast Chain Lightning on attack for example.
4) In D2 special affixes were not separated from normal affixes and were also not orange colored like in D3 and they were also not so massively powerful like in D3, were a special affix gives 300-800% increased damage to a single skill. That is why in this presentation you will see these special affixes as a part of the other, normal affixes, like in D2.
5) Items always have the maximum amount of sockets. You can add sockets for a cost at the blacksmith. Two handed weapons have 6 sockets, one handed weapons and off hand items have 3 sockets, chest armor also has 6 sockets, helms have 3 sockets, belts have 2 sockets and rings & amulets have 1 socket. Also, you wouldn't just put emeralds in weapons, because in my concept I removed the Critical Hit Damage affix and drastically redesigned gems, but showing you my redesign of gems is a thread for another time.
6) In this concept of D3's items I got rid of mainstats (strength, dex and int) and replaced them with more universal useful attributes from which all classes can benefit from. These affixes can also spawn on items.There are four different attributes: Power, Agility, Constitution and Spirit.
Power is the offensive stat which increases your damage and gives a few other offensive oriented bonuses.
Agility is for speed and it increases attack speed, movement speed and dodge chance.
Constitution is the defensive stat and it reduced damage taken, increases healing and reduces the duration your character suffers from crowed control effects like stun.
Spirit is a support stat and it reduces cooldowns and resource costs and also increases your experience gained.
Having gotten all of this out of the way, here are some examples of how Diablo 3 items would look in D2's style:
The first one is a rare one-handed axe. It has fire damage and a chance to cast Meteor on attack. It also ignores 11% of targets armor, which means it pierces through armor and therefore your attacks deal more damage. Overpower means that your attacks have a chance that they cannot be dodged or blocked and deal more damage.
https://imgur.com/CI77LYw
The second rare weapon that I showcase here has an interesting proc: it has a chance to activate Ignore Pain when you attack. Ignore Pain reduces your damage taken by 50% for 5 seconds. Besides that this weapon increases your damaged against crowed controlled (CC'ed) enemies, which means that you deal increased damage against enemies that are stunned, frozen, feared, charmed etc. This weapon also gives a bonus to all four attributes.
https://imgur.com/I3hmVV5
Next is a rare wand that might be very interesting for a Lightning Wizard: it has +2 to all skills and ignores 13% of targets lightning resistance, which allows your lightning skills to neglect some portion of enemies lightning resistance and therefore deal more damage. It probably would have even been better for a Lightning Wizard if it rolled with x% Increased Lightning Damage (which is possible) instead of Reduced Resource Costs or Life on Attack, but that is RNG...
https://imgur.com/ibSbGvy
Now I wanna showcase some legendary weapons: first is a legendary one-handed sword called the Blade of Time and what makes it special is that it has a chance to proc Slow Time on attack, a proc that only can be found on this weapon. It also gives a bonus to all resistances, dodge chance and cooldown reduction (three affixes that in my concept do ordinarily not roll on weapons) and. If you wanna have a defensive weapon that is also fun to use, this might be what you are looking for.
https://imgur.com/uRtcFBY
The next legendary weapon is The Chieftain, which is recognizable by its several procs (a rare weapon can only roll with a single proc at maximum, which is why this weapon is quite special). You already know Ignore Pain, Sprint and Taunt (the Crusader skill) from Diablo 3, but Frenzy is a new buff that I came up with: Frenzy increases your attack speed for a few seconds. The weapon also gives a bonus to Power (the offensive attribute) and Spirit (the support attribute).
https://imgur.com/UHGOSEM
Before we get to rare and legendary armor pieces, I wanna show the legendary bow Windforce, which you know from D2 and D3, however, I wanted to give it some more flavor: it now rolls with a chance to cast Tornado on hit (which is basically Energy Twister) and also has a chance to proc Sprint. Besides having a chance to proc Sprint, it also increases your movement speed, which is another affix that ordinarily does not spawn on weapons – with that, you are basically fast as the wind, so to speak... It also gives your missiles a chance to pierce through enemies, which we also know from D2.
https://imgur.com/Lb69kon
Now we are coming to rare armors. This rare armor is one of the more well rounded rares. It has +2 to all skills and gives a bonus to all resistances. It also increases all sources of healing and reduces the duration your character suffers from crowd control effects (CC resistance).
https://imgur.com/eLt9lQT
The next rare armor has a chance to proc a spell when you get hit and deals thorns damage to attacks as well. Besides that it gives a big bonus to three different resistances. As you might have noticed, the bonus to a single resistance is much bigger than the bonus to all resistances the previous armor had, because it only buffs a single resistance, while +x to all resistances obviously buffs all resistances.
https://imgur.com/54KFjvk
The last rare armor is one with some random affixes. It reduces the damage you take from ranged attacks, but also increases your armor and two different resistances. It regenerates some of your life per second and gives a bonus to the Agility attribute, which increases attack speed, dodge chance and movement speed.
https://imgur.com/xP2ewoS
Now some legendary armor pieces as promised! Here we have a legendary belt that gives your health potions an additional charge, which makes it a powerful defensive option for this slot.
https://imgur.com/v42nEM1
The legendary War Traveler boots are offensive oriented boots, that give you a small chance to cast War Cry when you kill an enemy, but also give you critical hit chance and increase your maximum damage, two affixes that ordinarily do not spawn on boots.
https://imgur.com/q8TUd2H
Spirit Walkers on the other hand are more defensiv. They give you a chance to cast the Witch Doctor skill Spirit walk, which allows you to get out of the combat situation if it gets to dangerous.
https://imgur.com/CsjEhzf
Remember our lightning wizard that I mentioned earlier? She might also be happy if she finds these boots that periodically casts lightnings from above at enemies and ignore some of the targets lightning resistance (again, an affix that ordinarily does not spawn on rare items)!
https://imgur.com/I5oCApD
The next legendary is something for people who like damage dealing procs: gloves that have a chance to cast Hydra and Firewall on attack (gloves ordinarily do not roll procs).
https://imgur.com/pU507IS
The Undead Crown has a chance to automatically reanimate some of the enemies you slay as Skeletons. That is a very powerful affix and it also increases your maximum damage, which is why this item also reduces all sources of healing to make up for that power.
https://imgur.com/LT0hEoN
Bonus Item Showcases
The next items, I will just show without any additional comment, because I assume you already got the idea about how it works!
https://imgur.com/ZBsNesC
https://imgur.com/mJIJAa4
https://imgur.com/UxSIhs3
https://imgur.com/INx7eU6
https://imgur.com/Ua66aRx
2
MissCheetah, a MVP on the official Diablo 3 forums said that she tweeted with Blizzard and they told her that Travis Day and a few other guy are working on another Diablo project.
Here is what she wrote on the official forums
Here is a second post from her, right after the first
Source:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/20749007930?page=1#4
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/20749007930?page=1#8
Here is the tweet from Wyatt Cheng she talks about:
Source:
https://twitter.com/candlesan/status/771006224032727040