Subjective Impressions (Various Items)

21 Consider improvement to player dodging of melee attacks, that is being able to dodge projectiles by moving your character is currently very good (other than de-sync net-code problems) melee attacks suffer in this regard because the "range" on the melee attack is larger than the "cast" range for the ability, so even if you start running when they start to swing, you will still be hit by a melee attack. Conversely (and this isn't a bad thing) if you are constantly running in a circle almost nothing can hit you, which feels cheesy even if it does save your characters from dying.

Anyone who has played dark souls will understand what I'm talking about.

22 Consider rebalancing the way spells vs attacks gain damage, having so many stats like +ele damage not apply to spells significantly limits gear selection, conversely attack based abilities gain so much from gear that gear variance makes most items not worth even considering = significant limitation of gear selection, this problem also extends to the HP debate, but that's a different beast.

23 (see 22) Gem level ups for attack abilities have almost no effect on player performance and and while I don't want to homogenise classes, a gem levelling up should yield rewards not just to spells. (There are specific exceptions to this)

24 Consider adding parry to ALL melee weapons, with the current problems of HP and incoming damage exacerbation the situation, and melee dodging not possible (see 21) all melee characters WILL take more damage than their ranged counterparts, limiting build selection and viability. (may start to cause problems with the number of overlapping 100% damage avoidance (parry, dodge, evade, block), but you could have them all linked)

I have had more but I cant think of them right now....

Regarding item #21, not everyone has played Dark Souls. Can you elaborate?

Regarding #22, Spell Users gravitate towards increased Spell Damage and sometimes Crit. Melee gravitates towards increased everything-else-damage (and sometimes crit). What end state would you envision?

Regarding #23, I don't follow. Are you saying that melee / attack gems are inadequate when they level?

Regarding #24, as a spell user, I use a dagger. How do you envision this working in this use case?

As a side note, one thing I am attempting to accomplish in this thread is record various suggestions for improvement that are otherwise not particularly controversial in nature. Note how the one subject on FFA that I even address is a minor change to the loot stand off timer. So, for example, I won't suggest a huge change to the FFA system here at all. And that's not because I don't have an opinion. :-P The basic idea is that this thread works with the game as it is currently designed, and touches it up without redesigning.

I am taking the lack of various "I hate you" responses to this thread so far that it is going well, actually. :-P If an item got particularly heated, I'd likely remove it, or reinvent the front page to document subjective areas upon which perhaps the community disagrees.

@21 In dark souls while you have armour a fair bit of the game is evading attacks simply to by moving you character(Jump back/side roll, weaving between 2 attackers ETC, in the context of this if you watch and know something is about to attack you, if you move away from the mob it shouldn't hit you if the swing animation is still happening, but due to my comment about different apparent "ranges" if the swing animation starts, it will always hit regardless of the movement of your character from that point onwards.

@22 Im not 100% sure, and im not even 100% sure its a problem for spells, but I think the fact that you don't need to update your gear to get a potentially huge DPS boost puts casters at a significant advantage. A way of explaining my point might be make increased spell damage from a level 1 item yield less total % when you are at level 50, this might make it hard to compare items for casters, but attackers already have to.

@23 I think that its gotten to the point where melee gems are BAD to level up (exception elemental hit) because it increases the mana cost for no significant gain that you couldn't get more so from support gems. Because of this id like to see a gain from the extra mana im paying that gets multiplied by support gems, the obvious example to me is poison arrow, with any significant multiplier this will empty your mana bar in only a few shots.

@24 For the most case I would expect you to do most of your dps from range... but dager wielding casters isnt something I considered.

as to your comment, that is the main reason why im only posting suggestions on things I consider could use improvement, and not specifically how the could be improved, because thats where the arguments start.

Re @21, are you suggesting that the game have more interactivity on damage avoidance?

Re @22, I think the problem you are identifying is this. I have a spellcaster, and I got this for two Chaos:



I've found similar weapons for similarly cheap. I wonder why that is? I don't envision upgrading it soon. :-P

Re @23, is your statement that some gems increase in mana cost too much relative to the benefit scaling? On this subject, I think my preference is as follows:

"Gems should not increase in mana cost as they scale." That's a big change, however, and I would require that the total available mana pool be adjusted downwards a great deal. So I'm not sure it's feasible right now, what do you think?

Regarding your comment that not recommending specific changes or getting caught up in them is what leads to arguments. I think you are quite right about that.