Discussion--Damage Types and Status Effects

Request for Comments

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Article Summary.

1. Introduces a physical status ailment called "Wounded" that causes a small puncture effect and also slows the attacks and movements of wounded enemies. Is biased towards melee weapons.

2. Introduces a chaos damage status ailment called "Weakness" that is similar to a lightweight version of Enfeeble.

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Hi,

I am opening a forum thread specifically to discuss the various damage types, their purpose and role in the game, and status effects that are or aren't presently associated with them.

Damage types currently fall into 5 categories: physical, lightning, cold, fire, and chaos. The first discussion point I'd like to bring up is this:

Should each of these damage types have a strategic purpose or flavor, and if so, what?

For example, it would appear to be that cold, through the chill and frozen status elements has a defensive strategic purpose. However, the various damage types do seem to be struggling just a bit from lack of purpose, such as physical damage, which has no status effect, and therefore... at least according to many people in the community... fares less well than elemental damage for this purpose.

Examing the issue, I don't feel strongly enough about any proposed answers to suggest them with any degree of confidence. At most I can say, let's talk about it. And as part of that, I'd like to propose this:

Lightning Damage. Strategic Purpose: kill low HP (generally multiple) targets best.
Fire Damage. Strategic Purpose: kill high HP (generally single) targets best.
Cold Damage. Strategic Purpose: best type of damage for purely defensive purposes.
Physical Damage. Strategic Purpose. Hybrid of offense and defense.
Chaos Damage. Strategic Purpose. Hybrid of offense and defense.

Since the elemental status effects are well-understood at this time, I won't dwell. If you don't like my description of their current strategic purpose, that will just be semantics, because I am not proposing they be any different than they are presently. So ignore that please.

Regarding Chaos Damage. Should it have a status effect? I think maybe that it should. I suggest that in addition to its present shield-piercing characteristics that it also should have Weakness as a status effect. This would mimic the Enfeeble curse in character, although not in either power or duration. It also wouldn't be a curse. It would be a status effect. This would give various chaos related skills a bit of a boost, but make them not contend at all with the primary damage dealing skills one bit. If anything, it would bring chaos around more into the category of cold damage in its use. It would also lure some lightning arrow and other users back to poison arrow, but for survivability reasons. That would be a good thing.

As a side note: I wonder if chaos damage shouldn't be decreased a tad if Weakness becomes a status effect to give it some balance?

Regarding Physical Damage. Should it have a status effect? I think that it also should. However I have struggled with what should happen here. Stun sounds right at first, but it's just too much. It risks making physical fulfill an identical purpose cold. So here's what I propose instead. I propose a new status ailment called Wounded. Wounded would be a weak mix of both Puncture and Temporal Chains. To wit; the target would be taking a small DoT, and while they are, they cannot move or attack as fast until the DoT wears off. As with Weakness, this is not a curse, and as with Weakness, these effects would not be nearly as strong as the curses. I envision this drawing melee players specifically towards the various melee weapon and/or damage passives, although I acknowledge that it wouldn't hurt Rain of Arrows either. Note however, that this again draws the ranged folks away from lightning arrow a bit, and that's a good thing.

With regards to the Wounded status effect. I suggest that melee weapons be given a behind the scenes higher chance to trigger this status than ranged. Wounded would then be a subtle way of addressing the presently open community issue with melee.

Edit: Nurvus suggests that the Wounded status effect vary by the source of physical damage: arrows (piercing), blades (cutting), maces/hammers (smashing), and axes (cleaving). This could be a useful construct; for example the puncture effect might be increased with arrows, but the weakness impact decreased.

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to the discussion to follow,

--C

I really think that gems should be the only thing determining whether a damage type is good for AoE, killing weak mobs, killing strong mobs, or single target, should be the Skills themselves - not the base "effect".

- Chaos already has the ideal effect - ignores energy shield, armor and elemental resistances. It's the nemesis of highly defensive characters.

- Lightning and Cold effects are perfect as they are.

- Fire is perfect in concept, but its Burning needs to be able to stack properly.

- Physical damage should have an effect.
Actually, I think it should be split into 3 sub-types:
Slashing - Swords, axes, daggers - something like Wound, reducing healing effects on the target
Piercing - swords, daggers, bows - something like Penetrate, ignoring part of the target's Armor
Bludgeoning - maces, wands - effect such as Crush/Daze, making target temporarily easier to interrupt

Extra Brainstorm:
Each Weapon Type could have a coefficient for each Physical Damage Type.
Example:
- A Rapier (sword with crit multiplier) might have Piercing 1,0; Slashing 0,8 and Bludgeoning 0,5.
- A Morning Star might have Bludgeoning 8,0, Piercing 0,6 and Slashing 0,4, but add Piercing damage equal to 25% its physical damage as Piercing (afterall, it deals bludgeoning but also has spikes).

Skills would have Damage Types instead of Weapon Requirements:
Slashing, Piercing and Bludgeoning.

This means using Cleave (Slashing) with a Morning Star would be possible, but deal alot less damage due to its low Slashing coefficient.

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2 - Chaos already has an "effect" - ignores energy shield, armor and elemental resistances.

I know it already has an "effect". But in my opinion it's not quite enough, on the one hand; and on the other hand, increasing the DPS of chaos related skills is crazy talk. Hence the suggestion for the (mild) status effect, unrelated to doing damage at all.

It's even thematic: chaos is really a proxy for poison, and poison make people... veeek and disssy. ;-P

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1 - I'm completely against your notion of fire and lightning.

My notion of fire and lightning isn't really relevant. If you don't like the way I described them, I really don't care, and I already said why. It's merely language; I am not proposing they be changed. Are you proposing their strategic purpose be changed, from whatever they are now, however you would describe them? Or are you arguing with my language, which I suggested you not to do? I am confused.

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In my opinion, Physical damage might even get split into 3 types:

This is not a bad idea, because it lets arrows be treated specially. I might even go so far to have melee have 3 types: crush, cut, and tear: mace, blade, and axe. I can see some interesting possibilities for variations on that theme. They could all be one Wounded effect, but each could have a slighly different flavor. I like.

--C

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Courageous wrote:

Lightning Damage. Strategic Purpose: kill low HP (generally multiple) targets best.
Fire Damage. Strategic Purpose: kill high HP (generally single) targets best.

This is what I was disagreeing with regarding your notion of Fire and Lightning.
It should be the Skill Gems to determine whether a Skill is good for kill low HP or kill high HP, single or multiple.

There might be a single target hard hitting Lightning Orb spell of sorts - the possibilities are endless as long as it "feels" logic.

Sorry if I seemed harsh.

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Courageous wrote:

Regarding Chaos Damage.

While I disagree that Chaos damage should get an added "status" effect, I think all Chaos damage Skills should always have an additional effect - but I think that additional effect should be specific to the Skill.

I say this, because Chaos should never be balanced around pure damage - it would not be balanced that way.

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Courageous wrote:

If you don't like my description of their (present elements) current strategic purpose, that will just be semantics, because I am not proposing they be any different than they are presently. So ignore that please.

Anyway, regarding your notions like Piety's lightning ball, I would presume that, because of burn, that it is likely if we saw something like that ball, we'd be even more likely to see something with fire that does an even better job to high HP targets. This is a guess about the dev's intended strategic purpose for these elements. It is not proscriptive in any way. That's why I wrote what I wrote above.

There's a kind of "market dynamic" reason why burn needs to do more total damage than anything else. Waiting has a negative value, and if something, like more total damage over time, does not act as a counter value, then the thing will fail in the market. Your other proposal to buff burn in a specific way would only make what I am saying more true, and not less true.

Regarding Chaos, another reason pick it currently is that it is not reflectable. That already nudges it towards a psudeo-defensive strategic purpose. Generally, I think chaos damage skills likely need a bit of a buff, although definitely not a DPS buff. Other ideas are perfectly fine. Weakness, modeled after lightweight Enfleeble, is merely one way.

--C

stłuczka

I think, as the game currently is - without introducing my Piercing/Slashing/Bludgeoning Physical damage types idea, here's how I see things:

Fire
Fire skills are focused around Splash or pure AoE damage.
On Crit Status Ailment - Burning
High damage potential, but due to the fact that it doesn't stack or prolong duration with multiple applications, it makes Fire feel oriented towards AoE damage.

Cold
Cold skills are more limited, or have conditions to unlock their full damage potential, like Ice Spear, but the defensive nature of the Status Ailments compensates this.
On Hit Status Ailment - Chilled
Defensive and self-explanatory.
On Crit Status Ailment - Frozen
This is the cold damage's "Stun". It's more offensive than Chilled, allowing you to go full throttle on your helpless enemy instead of running away.

Lightning
Lightning Skills are multi-target oriented, either through multiple projectiles or chaining.
On Crit Status Ailment - Shock
This makes it ideal to destroy single targets, as it takes 3 applications before you start doing your maximum damage to the target, but once you do, you deal more damage with it than with anything else.

Chaos
This stat single-handedly forces players to stack Health or use Chaos Innoculation.
Status Ailment - None
To me, the "special effect" of Chaos damage is its ungodly nature.
Hard to resist.
Can't be reflected.

Usually Chaos damage skills have something else attached to them, like Poison.
I think any status ailments tied to Chaos should remain Skill-specific.

Physical
This stat is prone to Armor and Evasion.
It depends more heavily on gear than spell damage.
Status Ailment - None

My Suggestions:
On Hit Status Ailment - Wound
Reduces life and energy regeneration on the target.

On Crit Status Ailment Melee - Trauma
Temporarily reduces the target's current and max HP and Energy Shield by a percentage.
It counts your HP before CI is applied, thus affecting how easy you are to freeze, stun, and reducing the effectiveness of Life Leech and Energy Shield regeneration speed.
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I think something like the above would do.

Those are equally valid suggestions.

Re: role of fire in the game.

To me, the thing that really sticks out about fire is its status ailment burn. Burn, being delayed DPS, needs to have with it something to make the delay worthwhile. Flee does not seem to be it. Without any idea to the contrary, it would seem to me that the obvious counterbalance to the delay in burn is more total DPS over time.

However, if you do a lot of DPS over time, there's a fair chance it matters pretty little to low-life mobs. It will matter quite a lot more to high-life mobs, where that burn can really stick to them like napalm to take them down.

This is why I described the (now current) situation with fire as good for taking down high HP targets. Of course, it does what it presently does, which is to say, how I am describing it doesn't really matter.

--C

What burn needs, as I said, is to stack properly.

Currently, what prevents Fire from being truly good to defeat strong enemies, and makes it more useful for AoE, is that no matter how much you crit, you will be capped at a certain burn damage per second, as they don't stack.

They need to stack somehow.
I suggested it in another thread, but a less "proportionate" alternative might work as well:
If you have 200 damage over 5 seconds and apply another 200 damage over 5 seconds, maybe instead of becoming 400 over 5, it becomes 400 over 7,5, and if you add another 200 over 5, it becomes 600 over 10, essentially adding the damage, and half the new duration.

This way it's half stacking, half queueing.

You might be interested in an older post of mine, Burn Change Proposal. I'm not really sure it's the right thing for burn.