List of PoE1 Inconsistent Stuff

[Gromnir]

poe and poe 2 is crpgs.  as crpgs, a computer is handling all the math. complexity o' mechanics is not presenting the same kinda problem in a crpg as it does in pnp.  in point o' fact, we like complexity.  we like complexity save for the axiom that increased complexity results in more ways for a system to break or be broken. even so, such issues is more o' a headache for the developers than the player.  has a thousand different status effects and an equal number o' damage types don't bother us in the least, as long as is rational AND transparent.  therein lies the problem, eh?

 

poe, with few exceptions, a number o' which is identified by the genesis poster, is rational and internal coherent.  unfortunately, too much o' what happens in the rules is not readily apparent to the player.  our new favorite example:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/90670-3045-please-please-fix-traps-have-been-getting-2x-their-penalties-for-god-knows-how-long/?p=1867622

 

traps became broken soon after release when obsidian attempted to fix 'em.  rogues solo killing adra dragons largely 'cause o' overpowered traps were not the intention o' the developers, so traps were nerfed.  unfortunately, without somebody actual doing spreadsheet analysis, we didn't realize what exact happened with the trap nerf.  we couldn't see what were happening, and so a broken mechanic remained unaltered for years and in spite o' a considerable number o' patches. 

 

is not complexity which is daunting or bad.  the computer can handle the maths regardless o' complexity.  nope, what is the problem is transparency, or lack thereof.  there will be bug and mechanic related inconsistencies in even relative simple crpgs. such inconsistencies and bugs can be fixed, but only when somebody recognizes a problem exists.  lack o' transparency o' poe led to a considerable number o' problems going undiagnosed for a long time.   as with the above linked trap issue, Gromnir frequent knew there were a  problem, but we could not identify the flaw in the mechanics with any specificity.  such obscure but lingering inconsistencies and bugs were a source o' consternation when playing poe.

 

like it or not, poe2 is gonna be more complex than poe.  multiclassing alone is gonna create a whole new level o' complexity. fine.  as a player we can handle the complexity, but we need to  have the mechanics be more transparent.  increased complexity will result in increased inconsistencies.  is inevitable.  as long as the mechanics is more transparent, the inconsistencies will be identified and fixed. 'course the more basic problem is how obscurity hinders the rpg experience. what damage modifiers is additive or multiplied? can't always tell simple by looking at a handful o' damage totals in your combat log.  something so seeming fundamental as how critical damages is generated were a matter o' considerable debate and conjecture w/i the community. even the developers didn't seem to know how critical damage totals were generated. so if the player don't actual know what abilities, attributes and talents actual do in the game w/o a detailed spreadsheet analysis, how can the player choose abilities, attributes and talents with any kinda confidence?

 

complexity ain't the problem.  not need poe 2 to be simplified.  is greater transparency which is required.  game will be more fun if mechanical inconsistencies is identified so counter-intuitive results is either fixed or explained w/i the game. furthermore, if game mechanics is more transparent, the gamer will be less daunted or frustrated by often meaningless tooltip descriptors. have player rational decide 'tween a +.2 weapon speed modifier or  +1 might increase should not be requiring a 3rd party spreadsheet analysis.  is more fun for player when they can actual see what benefits and shortcomings is resulting from character generation/development choices.  

 

HA! Good Fun!                                 

Edited March 5, 2017 by Gromnir

[CottonWolf]

I don't have much to say here beyond, "This is a good thread and the devs should read it."

[Madscientist]

@gromnir: You are correct about several things

- PoE2 will be more complex than PoE1 (multi classing and sub classes alone do this, plus tons of other things)

- The PoE system is good. What we discuss here is solving some problems of a good system. We do not try to invent something completely new.

- It should be more transparent what everything does.

 

I have studied physics engineering. In engineering there is one rule: as simple as possible, as complex as necessary

If you do it too simple it becomes primitive. Regarding CRPGs this means you are limited in your choice. This is bad.

If you do it too complex it will become buggy as hell. Each thing you add can a) have a problem in itself and b) interact with all other things in ways that nobody would have guessed which can lead to really strange results. And if you find a bug in a complex system, it can be very hard to find the reason for this behaviour.

 

I would call NWN2 an example for a game that was buggy because of too much complexity. some examples:

- Under some conditions you could have more than 2 cleric domains

- under some conditions some prestige classes allowed you to advance in arcane and divine casting at the same time

- one level of one class allowed you to become invisible whenever you want

- tons of other things

When I started NWN2 I created a fighter/berserker with lots of strengh and a huge sword. I finished the game with him, but the result was underwhelming.

Later I did some reading (The character creation guide is harder to understand than some PhD thesis.). I played the game again with this "fighter" http://nwn2db.com/build/?180624

This is not really optimized, but this "priest" is a much better "fighter". So clerics and bards can fight much better with a weapon than most fighter ever could.

[MaxQuest]

- about attack speed: What does "Attack Variation" mean in the table?

This is an internal variable related to animation.

Attacks made with weapons of the same variation are animated the same; and hit/release the projectile at the same frame from the start of attack.

 

- about dots: As written in the other thread, it should be describes as "Dot of Doom causes 10 points of fire damage every 3 seconds over 10.5 seconds (=45 damage total)" instead of "Dot of Doom causes 45 fire damage over 10.5 seconds." Since each tick is reduced by 25% of the DR, it would be nice to know how big each tick is and when they are applied.

Yeap I agree that knowing the per-tick damage is important, especially because of DR.

I guess devs didn't make tooltips display the tick damage, because it quite varies depending on graze/hit/crit/int. While for total damage is enough to just multiply by 0.5/1.0/1.5/int_coef. Also similar approach is used in WoW which spent quite a lot of time to simplify stuff. (e.g: Corruption: corrupts the target, causing x Shadow damage over 14 sec.)

 

I like the proposed variant. Alternative could be:

v1. (combat log) Dot of Doom causes 45 fire damage over 10.5 seconds. (4.5 ticks for 10 damage)

v2. (tooltip) Dot of Doom:

- causes 45 fire damage over 10.5 seconds.

- tick rate: 3s

- 4 ticks for 10 damage, plus 1 tick for 5 damage.

 

- about immuneties: What do you mean with the last sentence?

"- (Optional) If the target is immune anyway, maybe it would make sense to make it impossible to try to apply related effect, which results in a waste of charge/spellusage/casttime."

Let's take for example Envenomed Strike which is a poison.

Currently we can 'use' it on a poison-immune target. Ofc poison won't be 'applied', and we would just lose one per-rest charge.

Maybe the game should make it impossible to even 'use' poison on poison-immune targets? Like you can't even attack a party-member in Tyranny. But since I am not sure if that is a good thing or not, I marked it as just optional.

 

- about attack speed: I think tyranny showed the total recovery time for your current equipment (base+weapon+armor). Unfortuanatly it did not tell you how long the attack animation is. So you still do not know the time for a full attack cycle (attack+recovery)

Yeap, Tyranny did show you your recovery duration.

It didn't show attack duration. But it was displaying weapon average damage, and it's current dps.

In theory that should be enough to calculate attack duration...

E.g: att_duration = avg_dmg / dps - recovery_duration

But the data didn't compute:

avg_dmg = 49.5

12 dps @ 3.2s recovery

32 dps @ 1.2s recovery

39 dps @ 1.0s recovery

 

---

I'll disagree to the extent that I think the current system is too confusing. Typical players don't even know what "recovery" even is (which is why they just called it "attack speed" -- it sounds simpler intuitively.) Just speaking as someone who writes a lot of guides -- the current system is too complicated to explain to most players.

 

I'd also add that the addition of a separate "reload speed" category adds a further layer of confusion and complication AND causes balance issues in the endgame for bows vs crossbows/guns (as "recovery" and "reload" are distinct, and it's much harder to reduce "reload.")

 

The whole system needs to be simplified. Combine reload with "recovery" and rethink the terminology throughout. Importantly, have an IN GAME DISPLAY ON THE CHARACTER SHEET of your attack speed / time between attacks with each weapon, so the player can see without having to scribble a bunch of math.

I agree, it is confusing. And tooltips using more intuitive but kinda wrong descriptions don't really help at that.

 

I've called the system great; I like it, it doesn't have big balance-flaws like the one from Tyranny, and I don't think it should be simplified. But it definitely should be more transparent. And displaying attack/recovery durations for weapons on the character sheet is a great suggestion.

 

Correct me if i'm wrong here, but from what I remember, Might does not effect weapon lash damage, which leads to a lot of potential confusion (especially involving things like Soul Whip, which is technically a lash). Just another way the game doesn't follow player expectations.

- Non-DoT lashes (like all current elemental lashes) benefit from might indirectly. Might increases the damageRoll of weapon attack. And lash uses 25% of that vs 25% of related elemental DR.

- DoT lashes (like wounding enchant-property) benefit from might both indirectly AND directly. The direct part is related to the fact that wounding is a damage over time effect and it's damage is increased by might. So for example you deal 60 damage to a zero-DR enemy. If you have 10 might, wounding would deal 15 damage. If you have 20 might, wounding would deal 19.5 damage.

This post might be useful on how is lash damage calculated.

 

I would suggest standardizing this by having Int give extra damage ticks, while Might gave more damage per tick, across the board, for ALL DoT effects. It's intuitive, balanced, straightforward, and simple.

Yeah. Something like:

- Regular (scalable with Int DoTs):

.- Might increases totalDamage via increase in dps (i.e. damage of ticks)

.- Intellect increases totalDamage via increase in duration (i.e. adding extra ticks)

- Fixed (DoTs that deal fixed amount of damage like wounding):

.- Might increases totalDamage via increase in dps

.- Intellect does not affect them at all (note: at the moment unfortunately int reduces dps of such dots)

 

---

Great thing MaxQuest. Like Dr. Hieronymous Alloy said, you could add the problem that Firebrand, Cadebald's Blackbow, Bittercut and Stormcaller work with elemental boosters, but Durance's Staff doesn't - just because of the order of damage types. How could anybody who doesn't roam these forums day by day know this stuff?

A yes, I remember that. Adding)

 

Plus weapon status effects, and powder-burns lacking FoE area.

 

---

Two things I am also not very sure/ maybe it could be explained better in the game:

- Is every percentage bonus in any stat applied to the base value of that stat?

- Most of status effects are applied to an attribute and something that is probably affected by that same attribute. Let's say "Dazed" causes a penalty to the Resolve and the Will defense (I'm not sure). The penalty to resolve will also generate a penalty to Will. Is that on top of the penalty directly to Will or is it already included in it?

1. Depends what do we call a stat. If attributes like might, dex, int the answer is yes. If reloading duration is also a stat, the answer is no. Would be nice if you will provide an example.

2. On top of that. Example: weakened target gets -28 fortitude (-20 as mentioned in tooltip; and -8 from -2 mig and -2 con).

 

---

complexity ain't the problem.  not need poe 2 to be simplified.  is greater transparency which is required.  game will be more fun if mechanical inconsistencies is identified so counter-intuitive results is either fixed or explained w/i the game. furthermore, if game mechanics is more transparent, the gamer will be less daunted or frustrated by often meaningless tooltip descriptors.

Well said) Edited March 6, 2017 by MaxQuest

[Madscientist]

Thanks MaxQuest

 

- You said:

"Yeap, Tyranny did show you your recovery duration.
It didn't show attack duration. But it was displaying weapon average damage, and it's current dps.
In theory that should be enough to calculate attack duration...
E.g: att_duration = avg_dmg / dps - recovery_duration
But the data didn't compute:
avg_dmg = 49.5
12 dps @ 3.2s recovery
32 dps @ 1.2s recovery
39 dps @ 1.0s recovery"

 

It is nice that you can calculate attack duration, but if they show recovery duration it would be better if they show attack duration as well. I would like to know how long the attack with a huge axe is compared to the attack with a dagger. In PoE they solved this by having only the speed categories slow, medium, fast for melee weapons (which is wrong as one can se in your first post). I liked that the weapons of tyranny felt more unique (e.g. different 2h weapons have different speed and damage), but they should have communicated it better.

 

- you also said:

" - Elemental lashes benefit from might indirectly. Might increases the damageRoll of weapon attack. And lash uses 25% of that vs 25% of related elemental DR.
- Raw lashes (i.e. wounding enchant-property) benefits from might both indirectly AND directly. The direct part is related to the fact that wounding is a damage over time effect and it's damage is increased by might. So for example you deal 60 damage to a zero-DR enemy. If you have 10 might, wounding would deal 15 damage. If you have 20 might, wounding would deal 19.5 damage.
This post might be useful on how is lash damage calculated."

 

The first point makes sense to me. I thought it is like this for all lashes.

The second point is confusing. The tooltip says that wounding does 25% damage over 5 seconds. I wish they would change the effect in a way that the tooltip is correct, so the lash itself is not affected by might and the duration is fixed (to prevent DPD loss with higher int).

 

- I have a more general question to everybody: Do you think it was a good idea to have all stats and talents are a modifier to base damage?

This feels like it strongly favours weapons with a high base damage. Tyranny shows this in the most extreme way. so:

+ In PoE1, is dual wielding sabres always better than any other 1h or dual wielding option unless the other weapon has a special unique effect?

+ In PoE1, is a 2h weapon always the best choice when fighting an enemy with high DR?

I do not think the basic damage formula will be changed, I just like to know what you think about it.

[Madscientist]

MaxQuest, one more thing to add to your list.

 

Some spells profit from using a single weapon.

When you have a weapon in one hand and nothing in the other hand you get +12 accurancy.

Boeroer said that this bonus is applied to some spells, I remember talking about the dragon trashed chant.

While I can understand when the shield penalty is applied (you are encumbered, you see your target less good when covering behind your shield, whatever) it makes no sense that weapon specific bonus is applied to anything else than weapon attacks. I talk about normal spells, not spell strike caused by a weapon effect.

 

Could somebody test if this is working for all spells or just some of them? If I understand the trap link from Gromnir correctly, it might also be applied to traps.

 

expected behaviour: Your equipped weapon should not affect spell accurancy unless the description says it does. By spell I mean every action that produces an attack roll and that canot be regarded as special attack with your weapon. Of course, special attacks with your weapon should use your weapon accurancy as base.

 

suggestion:

- every attack whose damage is influenced by your equipped weapon should use your weapon accurancy as base (flames of devotion, wounding shot, . . . )

- every attack whose damage is not influenced by your equipped weapon should use your spell accurancy as base and your equipped weapon should not affect such a spell in any case (most wizard, priest, druid, cypher spells, most chanter chants and invocations, traps, . . . I write most, because I do not know all spells and what they do.)

- there are some cases where I am not sure if it is a spell or a special attack, e.g. knockdown

[MaxQuest]

It is nice that you can calculate attack duration, but if they show recovery duration it would be better if they show attack duration as well.

Humpf, wanted to write that it doesn't compute, but... just now have realized that attack duration of a weapon (which is hidden) also is decreased by haste and spell surge effects (in Tyranny).

Anyway, sure it would be better if the game would communicate/show us that data

 

The first point makes sense to me. I thought it is like this for all lashes.

The second point is confusing. The tooltip says that wounding does 25% damage over 5 seconds. I wish they would change the effect in a way that the tooltip is correct, so the lash itself is not affected by might and the duration is fixed (to prevent DPD loss with higher int).

On second thought it would be better if I'd name them non-dot lashes and dot-lashes. It's the fact that wounding is a dot, that allows it to benefit from might.

I actually like this might thing. But I do agree, that high int should not reduce it's dps.

 

+ In PoE1, is dual wielding sabres always better than any other 1h or dual wielding option unless the other weapon has a special unique effect?

- In terms of pure auto-attack dps, for characters in plate: yes.

- In terms of pure auto-attack dps, for characters in light armor: not necessary. You can still reach zero-recovery even with Vulnerable Attack, so having [1h+shield] will catch up in dps, while also providing extra defences.

- it is worth noting that it's not the sabres themselves being stronger options than other alternatives, but specific two uniques: Bittercut and Purgatory. For example take a look at Purgatory vs Edge of Reason.

+ In PoE1, is a 2h weapon always the best choice when fighting an enemy with high DR?

Hmm no. Not always. It's complicated even without taking wounding in consideration.

In any case, it's important not only how hard you hit, but how often, and which weapon procs there are. Plus the amount of full attack abilities available to your class (as these do benefit from dual-wielding more than from melee 2H).

[Madscientist]

Regarding the dot lashes:

Either the ability causes x% of the initial hit as dot, than it must not be affected by might or it is affected by might, than it does not cause x% of the initial hit unless might is 10.

It is possible to create an ability that is influenced by the initial hit and might (we have it now), but it may be hard to explain this to most players.

Until now I did not know that wounding is affected by might directly, because the description says 25% of base damage.

[Lord_Mord]

 

- causes 45 fire damage over 10.5 seconds.

- tick rate: 3s

- 4 ticks for 10 damage, plus 1 tick for 5 damage.

 

I'll play the noob here. Which isn't a problem, because I am. I don't understand that. OK, I understand it, but I have to think about it. It's not tooltip-simple.

[Madscientist]

Sorry, I am not a native english speaker.

Is the term "tick" understandable? ( I do not mean the blood sucking animal.)

 

When damage over time (dot) is applied, it is not applied continuously, but in intervalls. In PoE the default intervall is 3 seconds.

So in the example (45 damage over 10.5 seconds), you do 10 damage when the ability hits ( at zero seconds), 10 damage after 3 seconds, 10 damage after 6 seconds, 10 damage after 9 seconds and 5 damage after 10.5 seconds (half the damage of the other times because half of the 3 seconds since the last damage has passed.)

A "tick" means that a part of damage of the dot (damage over time) is applied.

In this example we have 5 ticks: at 0 seconds, 3 seconds, 6 seconds, 9 seconds and 10.5 seconds.

The first 4 ticks cause 10 damage each while the last tick causes 5 damage.

This is important because the damage of each tick is reduced by 25% of DR without a minimum damage.

 

example: You have a spell that causes 40 damage and the enemy has 20DR

- If the damage is done over 3 seconds, you have 2 ticks of 15 damage = 30 damage total (enemy DR = 25% of 20 = 5, after 0 seconds you do (20 - 5) damage and after 3 seconds the same again

- If the damage is applied over 21 seconds, you have 8 ticks every 3 seconds and no damage at all (40/8 = 5, so each tick would deal 5 damage, but this is prevented by the enemy DR.

This is the reason why it is so importent to know the damage of each tick.

Edited March 6, 2017 by Madscientist

[MaxQuest]

Until now I did not know that wounding is affected by might directly, because the description says 25% of base damage.

Surprise)

That's why I was advocating for maxing might on Drawn-in-Spring/Tidefall/Perseverance Persistence users.

* At least it doesn't directly benefit from deathblows.

 

When I started NWN2 I created a fighter/berserker with lots of strengh and a huge sword. I finished the game with him, but the result was underwhelming.

Later I did some reading (The character creation guide is harder to understand than some PhD thesis.). I played the game again with this "fighter" http://nwn2db.com/build/?180624

This is not really optimized, but this "priest" is a much better "fighter". So clerics and bards can fight much better with a weapon than most fighter ever could.

This has reminded of Average Joe build. Many considered pure fighter to be a quite weak. Surprisingly it beat many of martial non-kaedrin power-builds.

 

I'll play the noob here. Which isn't a problem, because I am. I don't understand that. OK, I understand it, but I have to think about it. It's not tooltip-simple.

Point taken

Edited March 6, 2017 by MaxQuest

[Boeroer]

Lets say "Persistence".

Edited March 6, 2017 by Boeroer

[JerekKruger]

 

 

- causes 45 fire damage over 10.5 seconds.

- tick rate: 3s

- 4 ticks for 10 damage, plus 1 tick for 5 damage.

 

I'll play the noob here. Which isn't a problem, because I am. I don't understand that. OK, I understand it, but I have to think about it. It's not tooltip-simple.

 

I just reread it and yeah, it's confusing on several fronts. It's not clear to me how you can make a clear tooltip for dots given the way they scale with intellect at the moment.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 

 

I would suggest standardizing this by having Int give extra damage ticks, while Might gave more damage per tick, across the board, for ALL DoT effects. It's intuitive, balanced, straightforward, and simple.

Yeah. Something like:

- Regular (scalable with Int DoTs):

.- Might increases totalDamage via increase in dps (i.e. damage of ticks)

.- Intellect increases totalDamage via increase in duration (i.e. adding extra ticks)

- Fixed (DoTs that deal fixed amount of damage like wounding):

.- Might increases totalDamage via increase in dps

.- Intellect does not affect them at all (note: at the moment unfortunately int reduces dps of such dots)

 

 

 

How about this:

 

Divide into weapon-based and non-weapon-based DoTs

 

ALL dots get extra "ticks" from high int (explain in tooltips as "will hit more times")

Non-weapon DoTs get increased damage per tick from Might 

Weapon-based DoTs don't get additional increased damage from Might (but still are boosted indirectly as Might boosts the weapon base damage). 

 

No other types of DoTs.

 

It's still a little complicated but it's intuitive with no unexpected results. And it would mean that a high-Int fighter would benefit from using weapons with DoT effects. Currently they don't really, which is counterintuitive and could ruin some player's character concepts. Consider (for example) a high-Int Barbarian using Tidefall.

 

 

There's also the issue of DoT stacking which I've never been clear on. It seems like weapon based DoTs (wounding, etc.) should stack with themselves, while spell based ones shouldn't, but I've never been clear on exactly how that works.

Edited March 6, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy

[Lord_Mord]

 

I just reread it and yeah, it's confusing on several fronts. It's not clear to me how you can make a clear tooltip for dots given the way they scale with intellect at the moment.

 

I would propose to do it in a more abstract fashion: "During a period of X seconds Holy Handgranade will blow up Y times for a total of Z damage."

 

That is what a noob wants to hear.

 

Edit: Please correct me, if I understood wrong how this thing works.

 

Edit 2: I finally understood the problem as Mad Scientist explained it. That's stupid. It would be much easier to explain if the damage would be divided equally. Noobs do not want to read anything about ticks, if it's not totally necessary.

Edited March 6, 2017 by Lord_Mord

[JerekKruger]

I would propose to do it in a more abstract fashion: "During a period of X seconds Holy Handgranade will blow up Y times for a total of Z damage."

 

That is what a noob wants to hear.

 

That's not all that far off what it currently tells you, it just doesn't tell you the number of ticks. I agree that that's probably all most people want to know. It's only for those that want to know the precise details that this isn't really enough in that it doesn't make it clear that (under the current system) ticks are always at 3s intervals with the exception of the last tick, which will happen at the end of the duration regardless and do proportionally less damage.

[Lord_Mord]

"During a period of 10.5 seconds Holy Handgranade will blow up 4.5 times, doing 10 damage every time for a total of 45 damage."

 

Sounds stupid as ****. Handgranades do not explode half a time. Nothing does anything half a time. The problem is not that the current system is too complicated. It is too unnatural, therefore hard to explain in natural language. One would expect the damage to be equally divided with no "half ticks".

Edited March 6, 2017 by Lord_Mord

[Madscientist]

The main problem with dots is, that higher int may cause lower damage because the damage done is distributed over more but smaller ticks.

"noobs" may think that a dot with a long duration is better than the same dot with a short duration, but in fact they deal less damage because of DR.

The text "ability a does b damage over c seconds" tells us the numbers without DR, it is not the actual damage done.

The number in the combat log could still be wrong even if it would include DR (it does not), because DR can change during the duration of the dot and this message is only displayed when you apply the dot, not at every tick.

 

suggestion:

- normal lashes do x% damage of the initial hit and they are not influenced by any stat (stats only influence the initial hit of which the x% are calculated)

- dot lashes (like wounding) do x% damage of the initial hit over 5 seconds and they are also not influenced by anything ( In that case normal lashes would always be better than dot lashes because of DR, but some weapon can have both)

 

- For all other dots, might affects only the damage of each tick and int affects only the number of ticks. I think this may be the only way that higher int or mig lead always to higher damage. This may cause some work on the scaling of these stats so that high mig and int dotters are not OP.

[Madscientist]

I think we have reached a point where it would be nice to hear a comment from the devs who work on such things.

 

Beyond the stuff I already said, I can only make guesses about the intended results of such mechanics.

[Boeroer]

I will write a PM to Aarik D...

 

Edit: ...did it. 

Edited March 6, 2017 by Boeroer

[Lord_Mord]

 

"noobs" may think that a dot with a long duration is better than the same dot with a short duration, but in fact they deal less damage because of DR.

 

If I had thought about it, I would have realized. But during gameplay I tend to think a bit more abstract. Like: "I will torture this mother****er over a period of time by setting him on fire. That will teach him better than a simple explosion."

[Yougottawanna]

I have 300+ hours in this game and I never knew ironskin potions worked like that... I never used them because the tooltip made them sound worthless

[Silent Winter]

I'd far prefer a DOT system that intellect helped by adding duration and not affecting damage per tick.

Does X damage a second (or every 3s if you prefer), base length 10s, actual length 13s with 12 INT (or whatever numbers are balanced).

 

Why doesn't it work like that?

The current system makes it sound like a low-INT attacker would do better, because the same Damage is applied much faster. (other effects like prone/hobbled would be nerfed though - is that the balance thinking?)  So you should have low-INT poisoners and high-INT disablers?)

[JerekKruger]

Why doesn't it work like that?

 

I think because if it did, Intellect would increase the (overall) damage done, which is supposed to be Might's job. I think the end result was poor though, it would have been better to have Intellect not affect DOTs at all than have the current system.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

 

Why doesn't it work like that?

 

I think because if it did, Intellect would increase the (overall) damage done, which is supposed to be Might's job. I think the end result was poor though, it would have been better to have Intellect not affect DOTs at all than have the current system.

 

 

 

Yeah, I think that was the intent but in practice it was a bad call because letting Int increase DoT damage by adding duration would have added build depth and versatility. I think it never really got discussed or changed because it's such a subtle issue and easy to miss unless you're a real number cruncher.

Edited March 8, 2017 by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy