rebalancing crit

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

That being said, I would hope that the goal of the changes is to solidify crit as the best way to get raw damage (because that's it's thing) but not also the best way to accomplish defensive things like screen perma-freeze, leech rate, or status ailment immunity. I don't comprehend a world where the best offense also giving the best defense makes sense.

Sorry, but crit can't be balanced to have the best raw damage. Crits are directly tied to freeze, damage-amplify-debuff, and damage-over-time, support effects all.

I think crit multiplier should be a physical damage exclusive, filling a niche similar to increased burning damage.

That's actually quite the insightful suggestion!

Perhaps have the crit-applied status effects (Ignite, Burn, Freeze) not apply from triggered effects (CoC and CWDT spells, for example)--only direct attacks and "hard cast" spells. Spells with non-crit CCs could still apply theirs, though.

This wouldn't completely shut out CC and status-inflicting options for those builds, but it does take away the "free" ones. Things like Herald of Ice/Ash/Thunder and Hatred/Anger/Wrath could possibly still do it, but it would be a little less "safe" to rely on, as well as requiring some reserved health/mana to gain that benefit. There would be an actual decision to make--an opportunity cost.

Scrotie, you're assuming the argument. I was saying it might be high time to change the link, not that the link must exist therefore you can't unlink them.

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Note that GGG has added a metric fuckton of "chance to status ailment" sources both on the tree and on gear over the last year.

For example, a build that specs into chance to ignite (via support gem, uniques, tree, uses skills with chance to ignite, casts Flammability) and crit would have big damage that also ignites.

A build that specs into chance to freeze (similarly) and crit would have big damage that also freezes.

A build that specs into chance to freeze and not into crit would have less overall damage, but possibly could freeze more (by investing more into chance to freeze) or could focus more on things like extra curses, minions, movement/attack/cast speed, and so on.

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It would be nice to have party members that actually focus on shocking and freezing instead of just getting those effects incidentally because they built crit (for damage reasons) and are running HoI and HoT...

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

"Balancing crit" is really more about balancing weapons - mostly against other weapons, to a lesser extent against spells.

I mean, what this is really all about is daggers (and harbingers) OP.

No. It is more about balancing melee vs ranged first, and then balancing weapons. A crit melee will always sacrifice defenses compared to a non crit melee, while crit ranged is the way to go, unless you can't afford it. Harbringer, wands mainly. Daggers are mostly for cast on crit nowdays.

People always seem to ignore this. Crit ranged and crit melee are not in line, and every crit nerf hits crit melee way more than it's ranged counterparts. The fact that GGG has introduced so many -not really- melee skills that can be used with melee weapons is also pretty bad, and making balancing an even bigger nightmare.

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Poutsos wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

"Balancing crit" is really more about balancing weapons - mostly against other weapons, to a lesser extent against spells.

I mean, what this is really all about is daggers (and harbingers) OP.

No. It is more about balancing melee vs ranged first, and then balancing weapons. A crit melee will always sacrifice defenses compared to a non crit melee, while crit ranged is the way to go, unless you can't afford it. Harbringer, wands mainly. Daggers are mostly for cast on crit nowdays.

People always seem to ignore this. Crit ranged and crit melee are not in line, and every crit nerf hits crit melee way more than it's ranged counterparts. The fact that GGG has introduced so many -not really- melee skills that can be used with melee weapons is also pretty bad, and making balancing an even bigger nightmare.

Weapon type / subtype rebalance is something I am in favor of. They have varying base values, but are largely subject to the same affix and reference the same mechanics. I believe for starters poorer performing weapons (I'd guess those lower base attack speed and crit chance) should have access to notably better affix. They should have varying degrees "global damage added" effectiveness, implicits by individual weapons rather than (sub)type, and most relevant here, varying base crit multiplier.

I think one of the things that basically need to happen is to give weapons a certain effectiveness, that would make slow weapons more interesting.

Right now weapons basically need to be fast and have a high base crit-chance. Although considering that Harbingers are picked over Thickets or Highborn bows crit seems to be a lot more important (although this is also tied to the hit-and-run style a crit-ranger uses, due to mobility being the main defense).

And yes giving some weapons like daggers higher crit-chance but lower multiplier with others like maces maybe getting higher multiplier and lower crit-chance would add some diversity and offer different weapons for different styles, although you could even switch things up within a certain weapon-class.

As far as i have understood the momentan crit situation regarding weapons it is clear that rangers who do not utilize crit are non existant and therefor there has to be changed something not only the effectiveness of crit on specific weapon types. What i mean is more radical, create bows who have a crit chance of zero but give them in return greater physical damage. However here come the status effects into play, because how viable are bow build who make use of these higher base damage no crit bows really without the ice damage and therefore the freeze gain by using hatred?

Melee isnt such a problem child as bows are because it can be seen in the class subforums that there are plenty of viable non crit melee builds which of course have a rather slow clearspeed if they cost under 50ex and they also use mostly aoe melee skills (side questions are they even melee anymore if they have a huge range like lightning strike?).

At least let me speak my mind regarding casters, many spells are made with crit in mind like ice spear, freezing pulse, arc and glacial cascade. These are of course better with crit because of, firstly damage and secondly status effects, but thankfully there are two skills that are possibly better without crit these are flameblast and incinerate (well it cannot crit). So i would say that this playstyle is halfway balanced.

I came to the concluse that crit is balanced beside in the ranger section for the reasons stated above.

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vangrandson wrote:

As far as i have understood the momentan crit situation regarding weapons it is clear that rangers who do not utilize crit are non existant and therefor there has to be changed something not only the effectiveness of crit on specific weapon types. What i mean is more radical, create bows who have a crit chance of zero but give them in return greater physical damage. However here come the status effects into play, because how viable are bow build who make use of these higher base damage no crit bows really without the ice damage and therefore the freeze gain by using hatred?

If you want a bow like this, you resolve the status effect with implicit mod that looks something like this:

Cannot critically strike. Has 10% chance to Freeze/Shock/Burn.

Then give it about 20% more physical damage to boot--less overall than crit bows when they crit, but more than those when they don't--and you have a non-crit viable bow option.

Then it's up to RNGesus to get good phys rolls on it.

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AlbinosaurusRex wrote:

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vangrandson wrote:

As far as i have understood the momentan crit situation regarding weapons it is clear that rangers who do not utilize crit are non existant and therefor there has to be changed something not only the effectiveness of crit on specific weapon types. What i mean is more radical, create bows who have a crit chance of zero but give them in return greater physical damage. However here come the status effects into play, because how viable are bow build who make use of these higher base damage no crit bows really without the ice damage and therefore the freeze gain by using hatred?

If you want a bow like this, you resolve the status effect with implicit mod that looks something like this:

Cannot critically strike. Has 10% chance to Freeze/Shock/Burn.

Then give it about 20% more physical damage to boot--less overall than crit bows when they crit, but more than those when they don't--and you have a non-crit viable bow option.

Then it's up to RNGesus to get good phys rolls on it.

Cannot critically strike would be a waste of words, since it would have 0% implicit crit chance :).

I also don't like the 10% chance, it could be abusive with other builds.

I would much more favor a

15% stun reduction implicit for example.

The tree obviously has stun modifiers on bows and it seems there actually was an intend for a stun/phys based arch-type bow wielder.

(think str based with the stun circle near iron grip key-stone and the stun duration bow nodes etc)

And chill always occurs on cold damage so that combined with stun would yield a similar CC ability.

Peace,

-Boem-

(i agree with the non-crit bow arch-types statement btw)

But how do you resolves that certain bow skills need their elemental status effects to be worth using?
(LA comes to mind)

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AlbinosaurusRex wrote:

But how do you resolves that certain bow skills need their elemental status effects to be worth using?
(LA comes to mind)

You could completely divorce the crit/status effect relationship by just treating status effects like stun. If your spell/attack does a certain percentage of the monsters life as cold damage, you chill. Increase the percentage, it freezes. Same with shocks and ignites.

The cool thing is that this would change essentially nothing for crit builds, as they reach the highest DPS anyway. Non-crit would benefit hugely, and I think most people want that.