You mean like, the only stat that matters is vit?Doub" wrote:Vanilla has simplified stats that mean little, some useless skills, etc. But hey, these ppl claim its the best.... Fan boyzzz.
Well, that's somewhat true; on some slots it's good, I think, but on others all items feel similar (weapons *cough* *cough*).Right now item-isation feels too simplified.
Uniques can have negative stats (is that what you were asking?).I dont know why u claim that uniques ruin build options. I mean, its up to you to design uniques, sure u can make them OP which will result uniques replacing rares but thats up to HOW you will design uniques. So i suggest u introduce uniques in the mod and i will give you some examples of uniques. BTW i dont know if you can add uniques if negative effects as well, let me know.
My main problem with uniques is: players look for the strongest items. If those items are uniques, players will only want uniques. If those items are rares, players will only want rares. Similar to how blue items are much weaker than rares.
The second problem is that to make them truly interesting, they need a lot of time. Balancing, figuring out the right effects, etc. We don't have that amount of time right now
The third problem - somewhat related to the second - is that the game is so long. This means you might need unique variants of nearly every item (like vanilla has). But that makes it nearly impossible to really have useful, unique effects. Also, the uniques would be useful only in low levels (who gives a crap about the angelic set? Or the unique hatchet?). If the uniques are balanced like that, then the low-level uniques can not be relevant to builds, because they are just too weak. Unless, of course, each unique effect (like +1 oskill X) is copied on multiple uniques, but do you really want "Doub's Tooth" (unique dagger with +20 str), "Doub's bigger Tooth" (nightmare version with +40 str) and "Doub's really big Tooth" (Hell version with +50 str)?
The other option would be to only have high-level uniques. Those would not appear until very late in the game (e.g., until hell difficulty), which is quite close to not having any unique items to begin with!
The fourth problem are that if uniques are too generic, they're just like rares; but if they are too specific, only very few uniques will actually matter to your character. At that point, it will be very hard to get excited for a unique, especially since the item type already gives the unique away (unless I manage to put 5 uniques on each item type - yeahhh.... XP).
I would rather add more different unique abilities to the rare items, for example:
+30 strength, -15 vitality
+100% life regeneration
+100% extra damage, but increases monster defense every time you hit
+30% attack speed, but -30% damage
or gimmicky ones, like
+1000% gold find, -100% experience gain
+running no longer costs stamina
or really special ones, like
+1 maximum raised skeleton
+1 missiles to teeth
+1 missiles to firebolt, -20% fire damage
+50% of berserk damage dealt as magic
+2 seconds duration to firewall
All of these could appear as the third property on rares, making them more exciting without the need for carefully designed uniques. What do you think?
Now, a unique based on Broad Sword could appear with:
+200% damage
or
+75% attack speed
or
+40% damage and -35 defense per hit from monster
or
+4 to all skills
or
+15% attack speed, +15% damage, -15 def per hit from monster, +5-10 elemental damage (gives 4 properties but lower amounts compare to a rare)
etc.
Do you consider these examples of uniques for Broad Sword OP compare to the properties with which the rare Broad Swords can appear considering they will appear with standard number of 3 properties?
The problem with open wounds is that it can not be really balanced; the damage dealt by it is hard coded and depends on the level. In order to balance it, I would need to adjust the life of all mobs, weapons, skills, etc., to be consistent with the damage dealt by open wounds.BTW, more properties on weapons are needed indeed.
I want to suggest: + Crushing Blow and + Open Wounds . BUT im not sure whether they should appear as properties on items OR its better to make them passive skills. Because for example, Open Wounds more than about 25% is meaningless, because it lasts a specific amount of seconds and if your weapon is fast, with 25% you can trigger it easily again before the effect ends.
So if you are to make it a passive skill, it would be something like 1% Open Wounds per lvl (20% at lvl 20).
But if u are to make it appear as property on items then i think its better if it appears at higher amounts, like, +7% chance to Open Wounds. 7% as the lowest amount and around 30% as the highest amount, i guess it will depend on the difficulty (norm/nigh/hell) and the weapon type. Because these kind of properties work better with faster weapons. So maybe the slower weapons will have higher % of Open Wounds compare to the faster weapons.
Same goes for Crushing Blow with the exception that MAYBE Crushing Blow could appear as a passive skill as well along with property on weapons because more than 25-30% of Crushing Blow is actually wanted, unlike Open Wounds.
So again, Crushing Blow works better the faster the weapon is but unlike Open Wounds, more than 25-30% for Crushing Blow is still ok. I believe if someone has 50% chance of Crushing Blow, he wont ask for more %.
All these being said i think u know how u can balance those based on the difficulty and the weapon type.
For crushing blow, I have thought about it, but I found it a rather annoying mechanic. Since each hit reduces a fixed percentage of current life, it favors fast weapons with high dex over slow weapons with high damage; in fact, unless a slow weapon can reduce a bosses hitpoints by 1/16, a fast weapon with a sufficient chance of crushing blow would likely be stronger -- which isn't what I really want. I don't want Diablo stabbed to death with a toothpick, I want him slain with a two handed sword, or two axes, or impaled with a spear.
That's such a cool idea : )Another thing u could do.
Give Open Wounds only to weapons that can cut or pierce, like: swords, daggers, spears, axes, etc. Ofc a dagger can have more chance to Open Wounds compare to a lets say an Axe, but an axe still has a chance to Open Wound, just a lot lower i guess.
So for example a Dagger/spear (weapons that use only their pierce type of attack) can appear lets say with 20-30% chance to Open Wounds, while Axes can appear with 7-12% chance to Open Wounds.
To give you my perspective. For my mod i was thinking to do this based on HOW the weapons animations looked liked in-game and what kind of swing they used for attack, and based on that i wanted to give them their properties (yes, realistic looking).
For example Blunts with no sharp edges at all wouldnt have Open Wounds at all.
There is no blocking, except with the assasin's dual wield. Blocking has been replaced by additional protection on shields. The main idea was to stop "dex" from being the "get 75% block chance" stat, and to prevent the crazy "Oh, I leveled up! Now I am less good at blocking things! Yay!"With Barb the chance to Block doesnt appear, is it normal ( didnt notce if i actually BLock or not....).
Thanks for the feedback! We weren't planning on increasing the things too much; maybe +20% damage (to characters without protection) and +50% def.Regarding my feedback on Duriel and general monster defense.
I dont know if i told u but i did most of Act 2 with 75 base DEX and a weapon that gives -21% monster def. So i mean, maybe they dont need that much boost on their def? dunno. Lets see how i do in Act 3.
Also, dont boost Duriels dmg too much, his slow is already PAINFUL