Weapon Scaling: A balance issue

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Skivverus wrote:

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wyldmage wrote:

...Going to present a few examples here to illustrate the current system and new system, using a 2h weapon...

I think those examples are biased in favor of percentage physical damage mods - given that two-handed weapons have to have higher DPS to make up for the lack of blocking or shield defenses. Not only that, you've picked axes for your example, which specifically deal more damage than other weapons.

Also, all of the other damage mods have other considerations beyond baseline DPS: elemental damage burns/freezes/shocks (and is affected by the "weapon elemental damage" mods), and straight physical damage is multiplied by the increased weapon damage mods.

After all, if you could do the same listed DPS with fire damage, you'd actually kill faster thanks to the burning.

1) I also suggested improving elemental mods for 2h weapons.

2) Physical vs elemental on 1h weapons is currently a problem as well (or even vs static physical, when you don't consider "both")

3) I suggested a tweak to elemental damage for 2h weapons to make it viable in both situations (currently it is either "weak" on 2h, or "strong" on 1h.

4) Avatar of Fire. Turns ALL your physical into fire (with OP multiplicative results). Makes considering physical vs elemental balance trivial.

5) Added Fire support gem, likewise adds a % of your physical as extra fire damage, far surpassing anything you'll do with mods on the weapon (30k dps adds 10k fire damage, while an awesome fire mod would be 50ish damage 5 times/second).

6) Base damage versus IPD% is not biased for 2h weapons except when comparing to other mods. Relative to "just" how long it takes a weak (or white) weapon to surpass an IPD weapon, 1h and 2h are identical (or virtually so).

/Offtopic

To continue playing with words:
-fact:its been that way in many games
-opinion:theres a good reason for that

There cant be much logic behind the first, hence if you call something worst logic ever, it must be the second, thats my reasoning at least (=

/Discussion

Variety: difference between the items we find and roll (=
You cannot expect there to be a huge variety of items that people will actually want to use, those will always be the highest %ED and %IAS weapons, even if the changes you want would be implemented.

To sum up since its already taken too many words without acutally adding anything constructive after my first post: I still agree with elemental mods being too weak to make a difference over all, while I don't find much need for other changes youre offering. But thats just me, no need to get all defensive about it ;)

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nermind wrote:

Variety: difference between the items we find and roll (=
You cannot expect there to be a huge variety of items that people will actually want to use, those will always be the highest %ED and %IAS weapons, even if the changes you want would be implemented.

It doesn't have to be that way though. Mods *can* be balanced so that reasonable levels of %ED (ie, not 2 damage mods stacked) are comparable or marginally better than elemental damage.
Currently, even a minor %ED (50%) blows any other mod out of the water, even high level elemental/physical static damage.

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wyldmage wrote:

Local enhanced damage is applied before (and multiplicative) with passives.

100 dps weapon
100% enhanced damage
100% weapon damage from passives
results in 400 dps.

Well if that's true than how to fix the problem is obvious.
Change it.

I guess:
For caster
100 dps spell
100% spell damage weapon
100% passivs
->300 DPS

same should be true for melees.

multiplicative elements are always hard to balance, right now there are enough of these elements in game alreay, for example:
*speed
*accuracy up to a certain point (only melee)
*crit rating
*crit damage
*extra elemental damage and things like burning.
*the weapon itself (only melee)
*certain mods like +phys damage. (only melee)

That's by the way the reason why casters are so much easier to balance and they are obviously better balanced then melees witch rate between totaly useless and totaly dominating depening on the gear. Casters aren't useless because of bad gear they are always playable.

Btw just an itneresting thought: currently theres 2 main mods the best dps weapon should have. That makes it reasonably hard to get, but still very doable.

Now if you make for example all 3 elemental damage mods a lot more powerful relatively to %ED, theres now 5 (!!!) must have mods (also with a good roll on them) for a great dps weapons, which makes it unbelievably rare, only increasing the difference between "average" and "godly".

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nermind wrote:

Btw just an itneresting thought: currently theres 2 main mods the best dps weapon should have. That makes it reasonably hard to get, but still very doable.

Now if you make for example all 3 elemental damage mods a lot more powerful relatively to %ED, theres now 5 (!!!) must have mods (also with a good roll on them) for a great dps weapons, which makes it unbelievably rare, only increasing the difference between "average" and "godly".

There are 6 main "tiers" to a weapon, assuming that the 'base' item is level-appropriate.

Crap
Okay
Good
Great
Godly
Perfection

Crap Tier: Zero damage mods.
Okay Tier: Does about 30-50% more damage than a Crap Tier weapon.
Good Tier: 80-130% more damage than a Crap Tier weapon.
Great: 150-250% more damage than a Crap Tier weapon.
Godly: Anything better than that.
Perfection: About 400% or more damage above Crap Tier.

So, the 3 tiers that most people use are "okay", "good", and "great". Great weapons, for example, include your 125% damage bonus with 20% attack speed. Or 125% damage and two good elemental mods.
Okay tier is typically 1-2 medium mods that make a weapon "just barely worth using".
Good tier is that nice middle ground that most players would like to have while leveling.

So, in theory, the goal is to make sure that all players have the ability to get/craft Good Tier items.

The big issue though is how hard it is to have a Good Tier weapon without %IPD.
That said, I'm 100% in favor of requiring %IPD as a requirement on Great/Godly/Perfect weapons. Having one "best" mod isn't the problem, its how FAR past everything else it is.

So by simply tweaking the numbers, you can lessen the impact of %IPD, and increase the effect of static damage mods (mainly elemental).

And yes, it makes a perfect weapon require more/different mods. How is that a bad thing? An old godly weapon will still be Godly. It just won't be perfect. And increasing the difficulty of achieving perfection is *not a bad thing*. That goal overall is that Good weapons are reasonbly easy to get (throw a bunch of orbs, expect success). Great weapons are hard, but achievable (50-100 chaos, or spamming alterations then regal). Godly weapons are near impossible (see Chop's thread for how many he got out of a ridiculous amount of orbs).
And perfect weapons? Those should be the things that we see 1 per year appearing.