Weapon types balance

You apparently don't read the skill feedback threads :P Cleave does hit with both weapons, but that damage is halved for each strike.

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ardikus wrote:

You apparently don't read the skill feedback threads :P Cleave does hit with both weapons, but that damage is halved for each strike.

To compensate for the AoE, yes. Pretty much a perfect example of how such things can easily be balanced whilst still giving you the benefit of all your mods.

I'm a bit surprised there's so many people talking about this, because it's a rather straightforward issue in my opinion. Maybe not everyone knows about it and/or they want to share their own experience.


Anyway, I've watched aimless' and you post on this (and talked a bit with him about it), and it's pretty clear what the issue is:

DW needs a bit of a attack speed (or damage — cause man, they attack DAMN FAST when you get some IAS going as well as frenzy charges) boost, as well as such a boost needs to be a BASE boost (multiplicative), not a modifier that gets ADDED on to all the other IAS modifiers.

I think at least for now, shooting at a DPS value 20-25% lower than 2H is reasonable, since they will crit more frequently, deal damage more fluidly (which will kill things significantly faster in the right circumstances), AND get the ability to spec into block chance (which staff has, but ATM I don't think staff is as viable as 2H axe/hammer/sword)

If it's still found to be too underpowered (or even overpowered), then an additional [smaller] change could be made.


One other thing: As far as I recall, differences of DPS among different weapon types change from lvl 1 to lvl 60. I find this a bit of an odd behavior, and don't see why 1h do lets say 70% of a 2Hs DPS at lvl 1, but only 60% by lvl 60. Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seemed that this was the case. It's certainly the case for wands vs 2H as far as I remember, though.

Assuming I'm not mistaken, what is the reasoning for this? It doesn't seem to be that god of an idea — wands get less and less powerful as the levels go higher compared to another weapon. Is it because critical rating is not factored in? (I thought it was — I'd like to know, as I've never had the time to cross-check the values the website has with the game ones)

Additional effects and damage penalties both get applied twice with dual wield (DW), which is an important distinction between DW and two handed (2H) weapons.

Example:
2H Weapon 100 Damage
1H Weap/Weap 50 Damage x 2

These two attack styles should be equal in damage if they are equal in speed. But now let's assume you hit a target with damage taken -5 on it.

100-5 = 95
50-2 = 45x2 = 90

The DW guy does less. If you reverse that and add an additional effect to your weapon strikes (say, with a ring), then you get two procs of the effect for boosted damage.

The result of this is that you have a method to improve DW. That method is by putting passives in STR near DW passives and passives in INT near DW passives that proc on melee hits (or crits if you want to tone it down). ex: Life Leech, Mana Leech, +cold/fire/shock, etc. Such things would offer possible benefit to anyone, but give the highest benefits to fast attacking DW specialists, and if carefully chosen would allow for a distinction between a DEX/int guy using two weapons and a DEX/str guy using two weapons. (Maybe the INT guy gets Leech procs and the STR guy gets the elements; whatever.)

Another possible improvement to DW is to allow any or all stats on the off-hand to affect the main hand, and/or vice versa. This already happens in some cases (like if you were to find two weapons with bonuses to HP, you get the total bonus of both). If you wanted to boost DW, simply extend this logic to everything (so that a weapon with ACC and additional Ice damage applies the bonuses to all of the character's melee strikes, not just the hand it's held in).

So there are 2 suggestions if you want to make DW stronger, one via passives and one via mechanics.

Here are my ideas. Keep in mind I've not progressed far in the game so I've not reached high/end game.

Since the actual weapon range from a two handed weapon is higher, this means that skills based on weapon damage should also be higher. Because of this, I think two Handed weapons should have a higher focus on skill based damage rather than damage from the weapon itself. What I mean is that your 'auto attacks' from a two handed weapon should be relatively low, but damage from your weapon based skills should be significantly higher.

For One handed/Off hand (Shield, Armguard, Foci, etc?) the weapon based skills should be centred more around utility/movement. I.e. Charge, active Stuns, etc. A corolary of this is that 'passive stuns' should be removed from the game. The ONLY stuns should be from actual active skills (again, I've not progressed that far in the game so I'm not sure if this is the case already?). Stuns could be the main aim of 1H/Off-hand style as well as the benefit of greater defense.

For Dual Wielding, the pinacle attack speed would be to aim for both weapon attacks to occur at the same speed as the slowest weapon. So, if your slowest weapon is 2 sec, BOTH weapons should have comepleted their attacks within those two seconds. In effect, at optimal speed, every attack you make is essentially a double strike. In addition, all weapon skills should appy to both weapons (not just specific ones). Needless to say with this strategy, the skill Double Stike could probably be removed from the game (since your standard attack routine will start to approach this the more IAS you get).

To summarise, Two Handed style for me is all about big numbers (I think some sort of combat text would be nice!). Your attacks are slow but the hit hard. 1H/off hand is about about control and survivabillity. Dual Wielding is about fast, sustained damage and resource management.

I'm having a hard time killing just about anything with my dual-wield marauder on ruthless, act 2, for several reasons :

Firstly, I lack good skills. Dual strike at 15% quality still sucks against 1 mob, let alone against a horde. Cleave also misses alot. So does infernal blow. I have 85% hit chance and sometimes I can't hit anything at all. Magic mobs can almost insta kill me, while rare ones are very tough experience even when I'm fighting 1v1, which is almost never. Right now, with DW I can't stun most of the enemies and it is doable only with dual strike and with cleave, to some extent.
Overall the DW play right now does not reward the player, it irritates him and makes him wish that he chose something else. Or at least that's how I'm feeling right now.

P.S. - I noticed, that with increased difficulties not only do the monsters get stronger, but also increase in count, resulting in 2-3 rares at once, backed up by 6-7 magic and 10-12 normal mobs, especially in the fell ruins (the skeleton and zombie count there is ABSURD). I would suggest lowering the number of enemies so that melees can actually do something in this game.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Nate_Prawdzik wrote:

If you reverse that and add an additional effect to your weapon strikes (say, with a ring), then you get two procs of the effect for boosted damage.

That part is still true, and an advantage to the dual wielder.
Seems like there's a general feeling that dual wielding isn't up to snuff, but I think this thread has sparked some interesting discussion.

So if my ring has 10 fire damage, that effect will proc twice from a cleave?

Furthermore, does this mean dual wield must stack elemental damage to weapons to be effective?

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Xapti wrote:

One other thing: As far as I recall, differences of DPS among different weapon types change from lvl 1 to lvl 60. I find this a bit of an odd behavior, and don't see why 1h do lets say 70% of a 2Hs DPS at lvl 1, but only 60% by lvl 60. Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seemed that this was the case. It's certainly the case for wands vs 2H as far as I remember, though.

Assuming I'm not mistaken, what is the reasoning for this? It doesn't seem to be that god of an idea — wands get less and less powerful as the levels go higher compared to another weapon. Is it because critical rating is not factored in? (I thought it was — I'd like to know, as I've never had the time to cross-check the values the website has with the game ones)

It is not the case that dps gap between 1h and 2h is increased as the ilevel goes up:

lvl 3 one-hand sword: 13.4 dps
lvl 3 two-hand sword: 22.5 dps

vs.

lvl 60 one-hand sword: 86.1 dps
lvl 60 two-hand sword: 144.8 dps

13.4/22.5 = 0.6
86.1/144.8 = 0.6

In both cases the one-hand version does 60% of the dps of the two-hand version. Wands are different because they do less physical dps inherently than other weapon types.