Attribute system revamped?

[Sensuki]

I didn't say anything about making talents that buff accuracy more valuable, I always take them anyway.

 

In the first version, the #1 build was - Max Might, Dex and Int and Per and Res down to 3.

 

Current BB is max Perception and then you sorta pick and choose between the others, depending on class and build. While Perception is the most important, there is choice between the others.

 

Their change skews it again. Might will be maxed for every character who wants to deal damage, because there's no Perception and Might grants the most DPS increase. Dex (if working correctly) would probably be next as it allows you to attack faster. For casters, Max Int at all times no matter what and either leave Per and Res at 10, or just dump them.

 

In other words, worse than what we have now and almost as bad as v257 etc.

 

The problem with Accuracy is the damage multiplier stacking, it puts *so* much importance on the resolution of attacks, because crits add a multiplier to total damage, and grazes cut total damage to 50%. If multipliers were additive, having a high might (eg. 20) and an average perception would actually be fine, because graze damage would become base (let's say 10) * 0.8 (1+0.3-0.5) = 8 damage, instead of base (10) * 1.3 * 0.5 = 6.5 damage.

 

It's also the same for durations as well. Duration mults are multiplicative rather than additive too, making hits/crits considerably more important than duration itself.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Sensuki

[Endrosz]

Something that no one talked about so far, AFAIK:

 

Since Accuracy feeds into Critical Hit chance (which is very much disapprove of, but that's another topic), removing a SOURCE of Accuracy tightens up the interval of minimum/maximum Accuracy possible for a character build, therefore tightening up the damage interval, too. Which is a very good thing, because that interval was way too wide. And it still probably is, and needs the linear changes Sensuki's pushing for (and I agree with), but it's better now.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Endrosz

[PrimeJunta]

@Sensuki You know, you're right. Before we had one attribute that's too strong, now we have two attributes that are two weak. That is a step backwards.

[Sensuki]

I'm quite willing to give it a try but I don't think it will be that great for character building (even if it is better for game balance). It would be nice to be able to make a lot of effective builds with different stat arrays in the full game.

[aeonsim]

Glad to see interrupt back but a bit sad to see the range boost go, it was useful for some spells.

 

Can any one remember if Blast has an Interrupt chance? If so a high perception caster with a focus on implements + Blast + interrupting attacks could be rather interesting (AoE interrupt). Barbarians could also be interesting with a Interrupt focused build if the interrupt bonus carries over to there carnage, hearty of fury and barbaric blow abilities.

[Luckmann]

@Sensuki You know, you're right. Before we had one attribute that's too strong, now we have two attributes that are two weak. That is a step backwards.

Also, I maintain that having Intelligence being such an obvious "dump-or-pump" stat is a bad idea.

[Sensuki]

I believe Blast and Carnage just use the Interrupt of the weapon itself. AoE attackspeed/interrupt build would be interesting, but remember that in order to win combat you have to actually kill stuff.

 

I personally think that Action Speed and Interrupt together on Dex would have been quite interesting.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Sensuki

[Stun]

So, help me power-build a Barbarian under these new stat values.

 

Obviously Might....gonna want to pump that to 18.

 

Ok, next.... would one want to max out Dex or Int? Dexterity would make him attack faster, but Intelligence would make his carnage have a larger Area of effect.

 

Constitution: bluh. I suppose we wouldn't want negative health and endurance values on a front liner, but the way the game seems to be set up, there's no great harm in leaving it at 10, or even dumping it to 5 or 6.

 

 

Perception: No more accuracy boost, thus no more reason to pump it to 18 for a Barbarian. so, leave it at 10?

 

And that leaves Resolve... not sure how useful Concentration is for a Barbarian, In v392, I never had problems getting my attacks/abilities off in the middle of melee even when my Concentration bonus was 0 or in the negatives, so this seems to be a relatively safe stat to dump... or half-dump.

 

So...

 

Mig: 18

Con: 5

Dex: 18

Per: 10

Int: 15?

Res: 3

Edited January 16, 2015 by Stun

[aeonsim]

I believe Blast and Carnage just use the Interrupt of the weapon itself. AoE attackspeed/interrupt build would be interesting, but remember that in order to win combat you have to actually kill stuff.

 

I personally think that Action Speed and Interrupt together on Dex would have been quite interesting.

 

Sure you need to kill stuff but while your doing it if your Wizard is playing a support role and managing regular interrupts with Blast + Interrupt then it's certainly going to reduce the amount of damage your chars doing the killing are taking.

 

A lot of interrupts with a fast attack speed may also help a bit with the Barbarians survivability.

 

I've been playing through on Path of the Damned and been pleasantly surprised how effective Blast is with an accurate wizard, especially with penetrating blast (Really want to add burning lash as well). Once you've got a group of enemies clustered and hobbled you can easily hit 4 or so at once and with a Chanter in the party that damage can add up quickly. Also noticed if someone paralyses or stuns a group then you can be hitting 4 or so enemies at once for ~20DP each, if interrupt was added to that it'd be a lot of fun .

[IndiraLightfoot]

I like that Deflection is split on two attributes - pretty clever.

 

So...

 

In order to avoid any one-attribute-to-rule-them all-syndrome, why don't have increased damage on another attribute, say Int or Dex, and also, why don't have more Health and Edurance on not only Con, but also Res?

 

Mad, I know, but the basic premise is pretty neat.

Edited January 16, 2015 by IndiraLightfoot

[Sensuki]

 

 

I've been playing through on Path of the Damned and been pleasantly surprised how effective Blast is with an accurate wizard, especially with penetrating blast

 

Yeah as I said in another thread, Blast is actually so good (especially with Penetrating Blast), and it would be awesome if there was a Wizard talent that gave them an accuracy boost with implements like what Priests get with their deity proficiency stuff.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Sensuki

[aeonsim]

So, help me power-build a Barbarian under these new stat values.

 

Obviously Might....gonna want to pump that to 18.

 

Ok, next.... would one want to max out Dex or Int? Dexterity would make him attack faster, but Intelligence would make his carnage have a larger Area of effect.

 

Constitution: bluh. I suppose we wouldn't want negative health and endurance values on a front liner, but the way the game seems to be set up, there's no great harm in leaving it at 10, or even dumping it to 5 or 6.

 

 

Perception: No more accuracy boost, thus no more reason to pump it to 18 for a Barbarian. so, leave it at 10?

 

And that leaves Resolve... not sure how useful Concentration is for a Barbarian, In v392, I never had problems getting my attacks/abilities off in the middle of melee even when my Concentration bonus was 0 or in the negatives, so this seems to be a relatively safe stat to dump... or half-dump.

 

So...

 

Mig: 18

Con: 5

Dex: 18

Per: 10

Int: 15?

Res: 3

 

Maybe move a couple of points into perception (depending on what the Interrupt % is per point) if your using a two handed weapon with Strong or Stronger Interrupt + another 10% + from Perception and possibly the Interrupting Attacks Talent (50/60 + 10 + 15 = 75/85) then combined with Carnage you could be locking down a decent group of foes and reducing the damage your taking while doing so. That combined with the minor Deflection bonus from perception could help keep your Barbarian alive a fair bit longer.

[Sensuki]

 

 

Interrupting Attacks Talent (50/60 + 10 + 15 = 75/85)

 

That's not how it's calculated.

 

It's 50/60 * 1.15 * 1.10, so you'd end up with 63.25 and 75.9

[aeonsim]

 

I've been playing through on Path of the Damned and been pleasantly surprised how effective Blast is with an accurate wizard, especially with penetrating blast

 

Yeah as I said in another thread, Blast is actually so good (especially with Penetrating Blast), and it would be awesome if there was a Wizard talent that gave them an accuracy boost with implements like what Priests get with their deity proficiency stuff.

 

 

Taking the Noble Specialisation is decent for a Wizard gives you +5? accuracy for both Sceptre and Rod (gives you both ranged crushing and slashing damage options) which combined with the range bonus from the Wood elf background give around +10 in on top of the weapon.

[aeonsim]

 

Interrupting Attacks Talent (50/60 + 10 + 15 = 75/85)

 

That's not how it's calculated.

 

It's 50/60 * 1.15 * 1.10, so you'd end up with 63.25 and 75.9

 

Right had been reading the old wiki article need's an update.

[Sensuki]

Yeah but Priests and Wizards get +15 Accuracy by default, compared to Fighters/Rogues/etc +25.

Priests can pick talents that give them +10 acc with certain weapons which makes up the deficit. Wizards cannot.

[Karkarov]

@Sensuki You know, you're right. Before we had one attribute that's too strong, now we have two attributes that are two weak. That is a step backwards.

Actually he is not.  Going from a system where one stat was important "no matter what" to a system where your stat choices are based on character and build is not a bad thing.  He is also wrong about there being two dump stats.  It is now based on what kind of character you are making.  If you guys think making a front line melee tank for example with 3 resolve by all means go ahead.  Don't be shocked when they almost never get to take an action and they are constantly getting interrupted by enemies.  Meanwhile dex was buffed to 3% action speed and with interrupt back on perception both are very valid choices for DPS now.  The reason Dex was a "dump or ignore it" stat was because perception was godly and might was better.  Might is still better for DPS but dex is no longer totally over powered by perception

 

So we don't have "two dump stats" we have two stats strong for most characters but not "must have" for everyone (might and int), and 4 other stats that based on class and intended build purpose may or may not be useful.

 

Explain how that is worse than one stat that is must have period, two stats that are really good for most classes/builds (might and int), and a total dump stat that is almost never a good choice no matter what (dex).

 

If anything we finally have a return of the option to make a melee skirmisher who can be a fast attacker who scores lots and lots of interrupts but maybe doesn't do "as much" damage.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Karkarov

[Sensuki]

In v257 and v278 you could completely opt out of the Interrupt and Concentration system, they are just not very important as a primary attribute. I agree that dumping Resolve to 3 would be a silly idea for a melee character, but certainly not for a ranged character. Adding +1 Deflection to those old attributes only mildly (and I mean mildly) improves them.

 

The only difference with this new one is that instead of Accuracy on Dexterity you have Action Speed, which is automatically now not as good as Might, but because of the lack of Accuracy it's actually viable to spend points into. Might, Dexterity and Intellect are still much better than Perception and Resolve. Not sure about where CON will stand in regards to survivability increase vs Deflection this build.

 

To me that's only mildly better than the v278 system, which I *think* you actually preferred to the v301+ one ?

 

Were you one of the people that said to remove Accuracy? Because if so, I can see why you'd be defending your idea.

[GordonHalfman]

Pretty sure dexterity is 3% right now. It hasn't been buffed. 

[tdphys]

You know,  as much as we proclaim about accuracy being the modifier to get damage...  You've got to realize that by symmetry ,   DEF  is the way to avoid it.

 

Res and Per should be more valued by people... just saying.  I'm glad accuracy doesn't show up on the stats board, since Might and Crit are the same modifier.  Now at least there's less redundancy.

 

I'm very curious to see if they modified base accuracy ranges for classes and what the overall range of acc and def they foresee in the game.

[tdphys]

So the defense stats are all on the bottom left side,  I'm assuming the shield is deflection, and the rest are saves?    Is the to hit calculation for spells accuracy vs saves value as opposed to deflection? 

 

This guys deflection is pretty high for 0 per, 0 res... twice his accuracy.    Actually,  now that I think about it... they're probably showing defense as 50 + mod and 

accuracy as only the mod,  so his accuracy is moderately better then deflection. (base 50+, I think)

[PrimeJunta]

In BB392 Deflection really isn't worth all that much.

 

I just tried making a fighter with maxed-out Deflection. Pumped INT, took all the feats that pump Defl. Got it well past 100. Then I had him and BB Fighter with much lower Defl engage a bunch of beetles. Both went down PDQ, and PC did not even last much longer than BB Fighter.

 

The main problem is that the damn things bite so hard that even Grazes through heavy armor do a significant amount of hurt. The way the attack resolution works, there's no way to get your Defl so much higher than beetle Acc that they won't be scoring a lot of Grazes at least, which means you might as well have put the points into stats and talents that give more DPS.

 

This is obviously not the design intention and I'm quite sure they'll adjust the numbers so there's more utility from Defl. The stat system will look a good deal different after that as well.

[AndreaColombo]

The problem with Accuracy is the damage multiplier stacking, it puts *so* much importance on the resolution of attacks, because crits add a multiplier to total damage, and grazes cut total damage to 50%. If multipliers were additive, having a high might (eg. 20) and an average perception would actually be fine, because graze damage would become base (let's say 10) * 0.8 (1+0.3-0.5) = 8 damage, instead of base (10) * 1.3 * 0.5 = 6.5 damage.

 

Is the multiplier intentional? Or is it bug?

 

I sure hope it's a bug they acknowledge and will fix.

[GordonHalfman]

I think when overall damage is tuned the deflection stat will be more useful. I'm not sure it needed to be split over two stats though, I wonder if they did that because it was too good before or for the lack of anything else to put on perception. Although it's difficult to know how it all shakes out with possible to changes to class accuracy and deflection values.

[aeonsim]

In BB392 Deflection really isn't worth all that much.

 

I just tried making a fighter with maxed-out Deflection. Pumped INT, took all the feats that pump Defl. Got it well past 100. Then I had him and BB Fighter with much lower Defl engage a bunch of beetles. Both went down PDQ, and PC did not even last much longer than BB Fighter.

 

The main problem is that the damn things bite so hard that even Grazes through heavy armor do a significant amount of hurt. The way the attack resolution works, there's no way to get your Defl so much higher than beetle Acc that they won't be scoring a lot of Grazes at least, which means you might as well have put the points into stats and talents that give more DPS.

 

This is obviously not the design intention and I'm quite sure they'll adjust the numbers so there's more utility from Defl. The stat system will look a good deal different after that as well.

 

The beetles are rather unbalanced in 392 probably as a result of changing the armour system. On PoD mode the Adra beetle can one shot anyone and it's lightning attack can take down half the party if it hit's you when your clustered (Wizard, Cipher, Rogue).