[Balance]Bonus to Intelligence, competition for Dexterityder=0>

[larcatnecro]

We have discussed this in other threads, and on a fundamental level I agree with you: I think that the optimal gear for ALL classes is Primary/Dex/+armor/Res All/Regen in no particular order.

That said, we still need to account for how much of a Vit buffer we need to prevent alpha.

TBQFH, most of the math here is almost identical to EvE online active tank math, and the fact that people don't understand why the above type of items are the best in the game haven't really thought about it.

The most important thing to figure out, and this is more tedious than I care to do, is how much vit we need before we can forget about it entirely.

Right back at you.

Fixing Uniques isn't so much a game balance issue as a "this doesn't feel like Diablo and the fans are getting upset" issue. I'm not trying to say things like that aren't important, and in the case of some uniques there really isn't ANYTHING keeping them from being a good, randomly spawned rare. On the other hand, uniques like Stormshield and String of Ears are pretty good examples of what I think D3 uniques should be.

Also, they are Legendaries, not Uniques. I can deduce that you are a former D2 player who is a little upset by the changes in the skill system.
I'd like to say "this is what people are doing right now." However, technically they aren't, because 80 isn't available on everything and very few items get that perfect +80 roll. However, stacking up 65+ res all items? Yes. This is exactly what Inferno characters do. Off the top of my head, the only more important stat is life per hit; even that is arguable (there is also an argument for vit, although I don't subscribe to it). Res all easily trumps Str on barbarians, Dex on monk/DH, and Int on Wiz/WD. You are underestimating the defensive value of this mod. Very low. Assuming the affixes you list are possible, it's probably about as likely as finding a Jah rune, then an Ith rune, then a Ber rune, then a 3-socket archon plate in Diablo 2. In other words, despite the extremely low probabilities involved, still relevant.

You also slipped that you play either Wiz or WD. Just sayin'.
a) You are not responding to my original point at all. To clarify, it is not this: "Wiz and WD are discouraged from getting +Int items." Obviously they are; it amplifies their damage. My point was/is: "Because +Int items compare so poorly to +res all items, players are statistically dis-incentivized from playing Wiz or WD in the first place."

b) You are not responding to my original point at all. To clarify, it is not this: "Incentivizing everyone to get dexterity bonuses, instead of other available affixes, is balanced." Obviously it's not. My point was/is: "Due to eventual diminishing returns in armor and resistances, combined with no other method of improving your dodge rate, at a certain point everyone is statistically incentivized to get dexterity bonuses over other available affixes." I have a lot of data math supporting this point in my other thread.

c) You are putting words in my mouth. To clarify, I did not say: "We need to increase the damage of Inferno difficulty's monsters." What I meant to say was that improving the Int-to-resist ratio may make it possible to pump Int as too strong of a damage mitigation method at lower difficulties, particularly Nightmare, and that adjustments might need to be made.
My highest-level character is still my witch doctor. Hell was brutally difficult, and Act 1 Inferno was so hard for me that, met with countless deaths, I decided to bunker down and theorycraft to determine what gear mistakes I was making. Analyzing the data led me to the conclusion that Int-based is underpowered and Dex-based is overpowered. I also made a hardcore barbarian, who is now dead. I am currently leveling a monk.

For the guy keeping track of rudeness: I actually consider this part ruder than the intro.

Although I think it was more luck than skill, anc makes his only valid, nonobvious point here. I have not playtested most of the theorycrafting here. As stated above, I played WD to Inferno, cried at extreme difficulty, bunkered down with some number-crunching, reached conclusions, and then started to rebuild. Instead of waiting for results, I immediately posted my findings, as they were pretty much pure math-based, with formulas derived from trusted sources. I'm not rushing my monk and I've had less time for Diablo 3 last few days, so he's not anywhere near Inferno yet. In good faith, if I find any evidence through playing that disproves my theorycrafting, I'll post it.

Ancalagon, if you wish to reply to this post, do not expect any reply from me. You may quote me if you like, so that you could discuss these points with the other forum members; however, I will not respond to any further posts you make, until and unless you do something to convince me you are not the troll you appear to be.

[HamletEJ]

The reason the HP-first mentality doesn't translate perfectly from MMO's is because:
1) Armor in D2 is flat mitigation against all damage (and resist effectively is as well, since resist all is the most efficient form). So it works on the same axis as HP and can improve your spike survival against all enemies in addition to your healing efficiency.
2) MMO tanking is largely about instantaneous spike survival. Mitigation is important, but your HP goes from 100 to 0 in seconds, or less. Diablo, aside from the most extreme situations with Demon Hunters trying to dodge every projectile to avoid being one-shot, involves longer scenarios where you have to sustain your HP.

The idea of getting enough HP until you have "enough" isn't as applicable here, because you're rarely tanking a single large enemy with a very well-defined one-shot spike combo. You're taking various hits of various sizes and intervals and have to stick around through it all.

[larcatnecro]

Do you know what the base naked HP totals are for the 5 classes? That would help give me some context as to the neccesity of a buffer.

Basically, raw HP changes in importance according to total mitigation and total regen/second.

The more mitigation and more regen, the less important raw HP is.

In a perfect situation, you would be able to roll with base VIT, max armor/res/dodge/regen and call it a day.

I haven't tried to crunch the numbers and see if it is possible or not though.

If it is possible to completely dismiss Vit with extreme cases though, it makes collecting the items potentially much easier.

I'm also not entirely sure if it is easier with a Monk or a Barb. My gut is telling me that it will be easier with a Monk because of OtE and the potential native regen.

The reason the HP-first mentality doesn't translate perfectly from MMO's is because:
1) Armor in D2 is flat mitigation against all damage (and resist effectively is as well, since resist all is the most efficient form). So it works on the same axis as HP and can improve your spike survival against all enemies in addition to your healing efficiency.
2) MMO tanking is largely about instantaneous spike survival. Mitigation is important, but your HP goes from 100 to 0 in seconds, or less. Diablo, aside from the most extreme situations with Demon Hunters trying to dodge every projectile to avoid being one-shot, involves longer scenarios where you have to sustain your HP.

The idea of getting enough HP until you have "enough" isn't as applicable here, because you're rarely tanking a single large enemy with a very well-defined one-shot spike combo. You're taking various hits of various sizes and intervals and have to stick around through it all.

[HamletEJ]

You can't completely dismiss Vit; you have very little HP without it.


HP at level 60 is 276+35V. Naked Vit is 127 (I think, have to check when I get home), so less than 5k HP naked.


The point is that you don't think of gear by getting your HP to a certain threshold. HP and mitigation basically both extend your EHP uniformly against all hits, with mitigation having the added benefit to healing, which tends to grow in importance as you progress. In theory you're always happy to trade Vit for an (equal-EHP) amount of resist until your HP is very low and the multiplicative relationship causes you to stop doing that. In practice it's slightly different since an item can have both Vit and resist, but not twice as much of one and none of the other, so some degree of split is enforced by the system.

[DaemonX]

While an interesting discussion, I feel the OP and many others have carried over MMO paradigm thinking to Diablo and made some pretty serious oversights.

In the cases of most classes, defensive stats only need to be 'so good'. If you are defensive enough to survive, from that point you only want to stack damage or 'luxury' mods. This is because there are no 'main tanks' in Diablo, whose mitigation is the entire purpose of their gearing.

For a MT, you want the most mitigation you can possibly attain, period. But in a Diablo game you don't care if you are defended past the point where you can survive, barely. In D3 specifically, there are cooldowns but they are very short, you can even afford to rely on them. Then you stack damage, MF, GF, pickup radius, +health globe, resource generation and CC reduction, etc!

So who actually cares if there is a period of gearing where some classes get slightly more from their primary stat? It all balances out in endgame once everyone gets 'enough' mitigation. If DHs get to stack more of their primary than barbs, you can fix this imbalance with tweaking skills rather than trying to rework the entire itemisation and stat system, which basically works well.

[Death_StrikeR]

aside from the most extreme situations with Demon Hunters trying to dodge every projectile to avoid being one-shot, involves longer scenarios where you have to sustain your HP.

This is funny. I remembered the DH guy i played with yesterday in Inferno. He got 1-shotted by a Log!
What make it funnier is, he got killed again by the next log in a few seconds after being resu'ed XD

[Hidden]

Pretty stupid point the OP is making to be honest. Dodge doesn't provide mitigation but avoidance, thus it's a) not required and b) not a stat you particularly want if you want to survive big hits (-> Inferno). At the same time the armor affix is simply weaker than other affixes in most cases. Intelligence and Strength are actually well balanced in terms of defensive they provide since most balanced gear setups have +10 armor roughly equal +1 all resists.
In general, however, affixes - minus the main attributes - are simply not balanced. +all resistances is supposed to be stronger than +one resistance, its strength is that it can be on an item in addition to +all resistances. That's the same principle as for sockets - those also provide less stats than the higher affixes but they allow stat stacking.

And from a class balance point of view:
Monks (compared to Barbarians) and Demon Hunters (compared to Witch Doctors and Wizards) may have higher EHP if you include dodge, but they lack proper EHP in similar gear. This is true exluding abilities but it's even moreso true including abilities. You'll notice that once you get hit by abilities you cannot dodge (e.g. Diablo's fire zone, void zones, lasers, etc.) - those are so much harder to survive if you're playing a Dodge class compared to a non-dodge class. Sure you're not supposed to stand in them but it's an insane difference whether you can e.g. endure getting jailed in a void zone or not.