Not all belts are made equal

Keep this in mind as you read: The Rustic Sash comes with Increased Melee Physical Damage % as an Implicit Modifier and it can always roll the "Increased Life" as an Explicit Modifier.

What I don't understand is: Why would a melee character that does physical damage (which is many, if not most of them) use any other belt? Other belts cannot roll "Increased Melee Physical Damage %" as a Modifier, so no matter what other belt you use, you cannot have "Increased Life" and "Increased Melee Physical Damage %" together on the same belt.

Not to mention that all of the belts, including the Rustic Sash, can roll the Implicit Modifiers of all of the other belts as Explicit mods on themselves. But none of them can roll the Implicit Modifier from the Rustic Sash of course.

Do any melee physical damage builds actually choose any other belt over the Rustic Sash?

Suggestion: If non-Rustic Sash belts are not being used by melee builds, perhaps it's time to add Increased Physical Damage 5%-18% as a possible Modifier to roll on all belts? Or at least all belts but the Rustic Sash, whatever works. This new explicit Mod would not be as good as the implicit on the Rustic Sash, but it might make using other belts more plausible.

Have you ever wondered about this? What do you think?

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Tuftronic wrote:

Do any melee physical damage builds actually choose any other belt over the Rustic Sash?

Hell yeah.

Leather belt is the go-to belt, not Rustic.
Rustic is a strong choice. You forgot how good it is for EK and SWT builds.
Obviously Chain belt for any eshield-based melee (CI/GR).
Studded belt is amazing for stun builds.

The only really crappy belt is Cloth. If it was stun avoidance instead of stun recovery (and stacked with the other %stun avoidance sources), it could be a powerful alternative to stuff like US or Chayula.

Belts are in a pretty decent spot right now for how few bases there are.

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pneuma wrote:

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Tuftronic wrote:

Do any melee physical damage builds actually choose any other belt over the Rustic Sash?

Hell yeah.

Leather belt is the go-to belt, not Rustic.
Rustic is a strong choice. You forgot how good it is for EK and SWT builds.
Obviously Chain belt for any eshield-based melee (CI/GR).
Studded belt is amazing for stun builds.

The only really crappy belt is Cloth. If it was stun avoidance instead of stun recovery (and stacked with the other %stun avoidance sources), it could be a powerful alternative to stuff like US or Chayula.

Belts are in a pretty decent spot right now for how few bases there are.

+1

Altough I do use rustic sash when I can, other belts have been useful many times, for the strength while leveling or other.
More belt variety would be nice in the future, but for now I would rather have the game have more possible viable builds instead of only life/armor being dominant.

If most of the other belts are just as useful, then why is the Implicit Mod from the Rustic the only mod not available to be rolled on the other belts? If it is no more powerful, then why is it not available as an explicit mod? :)

Oh whoops, I completely forgot Heavy Belt.

Yeah, that exists too, and it's absolutely the best belt for a lot of builds on the dex/int side of the tree that are lacking strength (to run stuff like CwDT or red supports).

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Implicits give this game variety. To counter your argument, why not have implicits that aren't also explicits? It's arbitrary, but the current system I believe stops everything from feeling like a same-y grey mush.

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pneuma wrote:

Implicits give this game variety. To counter your argument, why not have implicits that aren't also explicits? It's arbitrary, but the current system I believe stops everything from feeling like a same-y grey mush.

I never said Implicits don't give this game variety. Nothing I mentioned was about removing any Implicit mods, so lets just not use that as an argument, ok? :)

In my opinion, it doesn't feel like GGG is adding much variety and depth by choosing just one out of all of the Implicit belt Mods to not be available as an explicit mod. It seems like it's either an oversight or that GGG feels the Increased Melee Damage % is more powerful than the rest. Perhaps they feel nobody would use the Rustic Sash if it's mod could roll on other belts? But then again, lower Mod % value ranges usually solve that problem.

I don't necessarily want everything to be the same, but in this instance, only having one of the Implicit belt mods not available on other belts is not adding depth or variety, but limiting the use of some of the belts.

Just my opinion of course.

Adding an increased physical damage explicit mod for belts wouldn't solve the problem which you suggest exists. It would just mean that the rustic sash would then be the only belt on which you could get both an implicit and an explicit increased physical damage roll. Just like, right now, even though I can roll decent life on any base belt I'm still going to use a leather belt if life is my main concern because I can get the same life roll as on any other belt, but then I have the leather belt's implicit life on top of that. Your suggestion won't solve anything.

More than this, I suspect that if GGG did add an explicit increased physical damage mod for belts it would then just be perceived as 'power creep' and would thus have to be 'balanced' by a strategic nerf to something else.

I agree with honeybadgerman, forcing the player to have a choice between different belts is a better thing to do.
The problem is that there aren't enough belts.
Some chaos resist belts could be interesting, or maybe move speed belts... it could be quite interesting.
But as I always say, bugfixes > balance > new features, so this can wait :P

A perfectly rolled Heavy Belt will give you +85 Strength (35 implicit and 50 explicit).
Which, will give you +17% melee damage and +42.5 HUGE maximum life.

So yeah, while Rustic is good it is not the only alternative for melee characters.