DoT and Pet Scaling

[Grayson Carlyle]

That's weird. What if you keep hitting Hammer? Does it start alternating again? Or is it B's all the way down?

B all the way down T_T

This was something that was brought up in the beta feedback though, so I'm hoping someone who is actually in beta will test it out in beta 6 to see if they've modified it at all.

[Piousflea]

This is very interesting. The skill text would definitely make more sense if it said something like "Deals damage equal to 30% of your weapon DPS."

I remember seeing some Blue post commenting about how they might make the resource cost of channeled spells (ie Disintegrate, Ray of Frost) scale with weapon speed. This makes a lot more sense if it effectively "hits more often" with a faster weapon.

As far as the dual wielding goes - using the damage and speed of just one weapon makes sense for stuff like Hammer of the Ancients, but it makes absolutely no sense for summoning spells. I am interested in seeing the difference in spells like Sentry. Hopefully Blizz has put enough forethought into it to average out the weapon DPS.

[cacophony]

Any updates for Beta 6 yet?

[Neinball]

So far no, the monk video we saw on the mainpage confirmed the formula is still working as we thought it did. The only thing I don't know is if there were any changes to the 'last hit' effect for DW.

[Valkemen]

Bashiok said:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/top...0796?page=1#10

The tick rate of channeled skills is currently scaled by your weapon speed. This has the side effect of making the resource cost go up, which we’re okay with. It’s consistent with the philosophy that faster speed weapons consume more resource but may do more damage. Channeled skills might still be better with slower weapons though because on a channeled skill, you have as much mobility as you want, so the “mobility” and “overkill” advantages of faster weapons are eroded with channeled abilities, so all you’re left with is increased mana cost for increased damage.

We've been thinking of changing the tooltips and going with “ continuously does X% weapon damage”. The reservations we currently have are:
Even though we say continuously, there’s a pulse rate under the hood, so do players want to know this pulse rate?If we did show a pulse rate, we’re adding more complexity to an already complicated tooltip.

However, the benefit of being able to directly compare 135% weapon damage on Disintegrate to X% weapon damage on another skill is super high, so we love that.

Stepping back and going big picture, we’re currently working on greatly simplifying tooltips. It’s too early to give details at this point, but our general feeling is that we provide way too much information in the skill tooltips in general.

[Valkemen]

Witch Doctor's and Wizard's skills costs resources, fine. But Monk's Exploding Palm generates resources - yup! Now we know about Blizzard's philosophy, but where is the logic?

Can someone explain this?

[konfeta]

Stepping back and going big picture, we’re currently working on greatly simplifying tooltips. It’s too early to give details at this point, but our general feeling is that we provide way too much information in the skill tooltips in general.

Of all the modern game design maxims, hiding information from players is the most infuriating one.

Diablo 3, at least, has the benefit of diligent dataminers to pull this information and put it up on some wiki.

Can someone explain this?

You just described an upside of faster attacks.

[cacophony]

Of all the modern game design maxims, hiding information from players is the most infuriating one.

Diablo 3, at least, has the benefit of diligent dataminers to pull this information and put it up on some wiki.

One the suggestions on the regular B.net is surprisingly good. Have a toggle in the options, "Simplified Tooltips." Power gamers would use the advanced, wordy tooltips, and noobs would use the simplified tooltips. After awhile, the pros would probably switch to simplified just to reduce screen clutter.

[Valkemen]

You just described an upside of faster attacks.

For me the problem was not in a balance between fast and slow weapons. That's ok. Uniqueness of Monk's Exploding Palm is that it can generate resources and dmg at the same time. But I forgot about passive skill that compensates that advantage of faster weapons by increasing generation of resources with slower two-handed weapons.

"The Guardian's Path - [...] While using a two-handed weapon, all Spirit generation is increased by 20%."

[Neinball]

Staves will also be able to roll modifiers with +Spirit/sec. In the beta atm it's no contest between DW and staves but we'll see how that changes at higher levels when more options open up.

One the suggestions on the regular B.net is surprisingly good. Have a toggle in the options, "Simplified Tooltips." Power gamers would use the advanced, wordy tooltips, and noobs would use the simplified tooltips. After awhile, the pros would probably switch to simplified just to reduce screen clutter.

That one almost seems like a no brainer as they already have that in place for WoW.