Analysis of hybrid vs single stat armors at max level

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DoctorZuber wrote:

Now if you do away with that and try to scale the game with purely +mods there are hazards to that.

I guess I could have been more clear? but I kind of blame you for not understanding my first post. I didn't mean (or even ever say?) remove all % mods, just said to remove 3 of them: increased armor %, increased evasion %, and increased energy shield %. The +evasion +armor and +energy shield mods which currently exist as well would remain in the game (being more common and buffed)

Yes, percentages for many other things are very useful.

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Xapti wrote:

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DoctorZuber wrote:

Now if you do away with that and try to scale the game with purely +mods there are hazards to that.

I guess I could have been more clear? but I kind of blame you for not understanding my first post. I didn't mean (or even ever say?) remove all % mods, just said to remove 3 of them: increased armor %, increased evasion %, and increased energy shield %. The +evasion +armor and +energy shield mods which currently exist as well would remain in the game (being more common and buffed)

Yes, percentages for many other things are very useful.

I really don't want even those three %mods to go away. I like %mods on items. It could be possible to balance things with that method. I personally would prefer it was handled in a different way.

Did you read my suggestion above where I split the mods off into different enchantments for each armor type?

in my opinion, there have been several strange tiers of items when leveling up that have hidden these problems.

However, I do not like hybrid gear in general, cause you have no passives to persue.

For a marauder speccing is easy: Armour or life as primary defensive attributes and the true choices relates to weapons, which is fine. I generally like the class.

For a witch you have a lot of mana-choices and defensively its only really energy shield that counts. This is meant to be a damage-dealer and it easily can be! I like the general design of the class.

For a ranger it is a lot more iffy. You can choose the bow-route and you are doing ok, though there might be some damage-scaling issues for bows late-game. With a melee ranger things get dicy mostly because of lack of aoe-skillgems and at the same time evasion against multiple mobs. It is bound to be hard untill more aoe-skillgems are available.

For a templar it seems like a good idea to go both armour and energy shield. However the reduction in both is expensive and since energy shield is the first to take hits it is almost always a good choise to go for that primarily and down-prioritize armour a bit. I am not sure how viable a melee-damage templar is, but a caster templar is strong so no worries there.

The duelist is the hardest class overall. It suffers the same problems as melee ranger, though it is easier to go for armour and tank the damage. However the dual gear does not make much sense since you cannot allocate passives that will give both.

I see one of the most important issues as a lack in the passive tree of multiple but low bonus to both armour-types. Also: I have seen some extreme %-age numbers sometimes in later parts of normal and later. It seems like the %-age bonus is increasing some with level and that is crazy. Anything from one stat with more than +30% to physical damage or armour is completely crazy as a single stat. I propose making that stat reverse proportional with level and therefore give a lot less at higher levels(essentially making it a lot cloaser to a constant, but with more possibility for shaping the damage-curve).

I am curious though, what is the stance from ggg on these issues?

With the change to ES its is only a very little bit better than HP now so pure int gear is as a mitagation tool like armor and evasion a very distant third making the 20% ES but 1 hp keystone very very bad indeed just one of the huge range of witch nerfs (which they may or may not have been needed).

So in order of usefullness armor is first evasion is second as the OP mentioned as its harder to stack and ES is basicly HP now and has almost no mitagation properties.

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radiatoren wrote:

However, I do not like hybrid gear in general, cause you have no passives to persue.

That . . . is a very good point. I didn't think about how the passive tree is inherently weaker for passive armors as well.

What if they added new types of passives as well as new armor enchantments and applied them appropriately on hybrid armors.

for example the STR/DEX hybrids (and passives)
+armor AND +evade
%armor AND %evade

Similar solutions can be easily applied to all the hybrid armors, and figure out how to fit in similar passive abilities in the passive tree as well. And tuning it all up, they just adjust the drop tables so that each type of armor gets the appropriate enchantments so everything balances properly.

Rather than adding more nodes and complicating the skill tree (or adding more mods and complicating the item pool), it might be easier to just change the mechanics of both to provide scaling effectiveness boosts to items based on their required attributes.

For example, you might have the "Dodgypants" prefix which gives +30% effectiveness to any armor that has a dexterity requirement -- so +30% evade to pure dex armor, +30% evade and +30% armor to str/dex armor, +30% evade and +30% energy shield to dex/int armor.

Same goes for passive nodes, which would improve any item based on the corresponding stat.

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SinisterDexter wrote:

For example, you might have the "Dodgypants" prefix which gives +30% effectiveness to any armor that has a dexterity requirement -- so +30% evade to pure dex armor, +30% evade and +30% armor to str/dex armor, +30% evade and +30% energy shield to dex/int armor.

I had considered (and rejected) this idea because once again. I don't like it. It's a question of readability. No doubt there will be a ton of item/passive geeks that take one look at that and have to ask the question . . .

What does that actually do?

Which will invariably lead to big long complicated wiki pages where players outline exactly how the math works to the best of their understanding from experimental testing and try to explain which mods are good, which mods are bad, and why.

Better to keep it as simple as possible so that the average guy can understand what the mod does without having to resort to looking it up on a wiki.

There are a number of modifiers that appear in tooltips broken out into several effects, most obviously on flasks of various kinds (e.g., instant recovery + reduced recovery is a single mod).

These could just be displayed as "+30% evade" on one line and "+30% armor" on the next, and you don't have the issue you're describing.

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radiatoren wrote:

However, I do not like hybrid gear in general, cause you have no passives to persue.

This is how I feel generally as well. I would rather each gear only gave 1 type of defense. Then, if a player want's to diversify, they could mix and match armors. I even feel more strongly about shields in this case. I feel that there are too many gear types even with just 3 defense types. Having the hybrids doubles the amount of armor (and therefore halves the likelihood of finding a niche piece)

Also/otherwise there could be a passive node boost to "protection", which could give a percentage boost to all defense types.

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SinisterDexter wrote:

There are a number of modifiers that appear in tooltips broken out into several effects, most obviously on flasks of various kinds (e.g., instant recovery + reduced recovery is a single mod).

These could just be displayed as "+30% evade" on one line and "+30% armor" on the next, and you don't have the issue you're describing.

Okay, that's true they do that. And that's certainly clear and readable enough. But now you've basically circled around to exactly what I said in the first place.

Many people I think underestimate how much complexity is actually buried under the hood in the item system.

Think about just a plain old fashioned piece of armor. What enchantments are possible on it? There is a list of them, which enchantments apply, which don't. No doubt it's all spread-sheeted out somewhere back at the developers office too.

And then there's the level range. Notice how many pieces of equipment start getting different enchantments, and more powerful versions of the same enchantments as you get higher level versions of items? So it's not just a single list, it's a whole series of list likely broken down into tiers and spread out across the entire playable level range of the game.

So even more massive than a single list for every item in the game, we have multiple lists, for each and every item in the game. It's an incredibly complex system, which the average player, never even needs to think about. It just does what it does, and we get cool loot.

All I'm asking, is to use what they've got, and re-arrange things slightly. Target the hybrid armors, replace the pesky enchantments that are half as strong here.

Here is an example of what that list looks like for a single item a piece of STR/DEX armor. The current list, looks something like this. I make no promises that this list is complete. And for clarity, I am ignoring the fact that the item actually has a different list for each level range so it can get more potent versions of enchantments and even new enchantments as we get into higher level versions of the same item type.

STR/DEX armor possible enchantments
+armor
%armor
+evade
%evade
%resistances fire/cold/light/chaos/all
%stunresist
+mana
+health
...

Just adjust the list. Rescale or even remove the troublesome enchantments (+armor/%armor/+evade/%evade) that are making hybrid armors weaker than other varieties. These enchantments will of course still exist unchanged on their respective single stat armor types. Meanwhile each of the hybrid armors should get a new enchantment.

STR/DEX armor
+armor/+evade
%armor/%evade

And naturally similar changes for each of the other hybrid armors.