Shinzul

I have heard too people complain that diminishing returns is useless and breaks game mechanics, but I have yet to see one suggestion that is a potential solution to the problem. Because of this - here is my suggestion for a solution to the diminishing returns curve that everyone speaks out against so vehemently.

Currently, the diminishing returns curve is too easy to get to. People complain not because of the curve itself, but because the curve is WAY too easy to approach...

Let's take haste and DPS mod as an example. All you need is like 150 haste and DPS mod to approach the high end of the curve, and as we get higher in level, there is nothing that will lower the effectiveness of each point of haste or DPS mod. That leads classes like Assassins who have a self buff for DPS mod of upwards of 80 a prime example of how easy it is to cap.

One easy solution (keep in mind that this is really only a partial fix) would be to make it so that each higher level would require more points of any given "diminishing stat" in order to have the same effect. The same thing can apply to avoidance and critical strike chance.

Example:
At level 1, a character requires 1 point of DPS mod / haste / critical strike skill in order to gain a 1% boost to attack speed, weapon damage, or crit chance.
At level 2, a character requires 2 points...

etc, all the way up to level 80, where you require 50 points of each in order to get the same 1% effect that you got at level 1. This way, the level 70 gear that currently has X% Critical Strike chance becomes less useful because the skill level at level 80 only makes it a total of 1% Critical strike chance, and the level 80 gear has enough points to equate to the percentage you had from the level 70 item.

Hypothetically: a level 70 item with 30 dodge skill equates to 1% dodge at level 70, but at level 80, it's only 0.4% dodge. So when you see a level 80 item that has 50 dodge skill, you will want to upgrade because you will get back to the 1% total dodge you had before. This same idea can apply to all types of stats and gear effects, so as to not make one particular item an item that you'll never take off.

The 5% shield block chance from the Soulfire sword? At level 80, it would no longer be 5%... Power procs? At level 80, you no longer get as much power as you did at level 70...

Another example: At level 70, you needed 5 points of crushing / piercing / slashing / subjugation in order to gain 1% hit chance on an even-con mob. At level 80, those 5 points only give you 0.5% chance to hit an even-con mob.

Completely remove the hard cap on stats and limit it to what's available on gear.

This approach makes for more meaningful and scalable gear, encounters would be much easier to tune towards total stat points, and therefore easier to tune against characters wearing certain types of gear. Currently, the reinforced slippers of balance are always going to be useful, no matter what the encounter, and that makes balancing new raid mobs extremely difficult because you have types of gear that are impossible to balance against. The same thing can be said of the Soulfire Gladius... It's always going to be useful on bosses, because it's always going to give you a 5% shield block chance. People would actually have to gear up each expansion in order to defeat the final raids of the expansion.

Pinski

Why are you talking about Power Procs at all? They already scale due to the fact that higher level you go, the more power your abilities cost.

And considering the way that skills already are supposed to work, they don't need to change them at all. Having 424 Piercing would give you the same hit rate on a lv85 mob if you were lv80 as would having 371 Piercing on a lv75 mob if you were lv70. Notice, you already need 24 instead of 21 piercing skill to get the same hit-rate, thus it's already done there.

But dear lord, you say get rid of diminishing returns, yet you put in diminishing returns yourself! 30/50 = 0.6, yet you only want to give 0.4. Make up your mind.

Yes, there does need to be something done, but not everything needs to be done that way. +Crit needs to be turned into a stat that is on a flat line. +"Avoidance Skill Here" just needs to scale against level.

As for Haste/DPS, they're obviously trying to phase those out with the addition of Double Attack, and will probably start adding more of that, and maybe make over 100% of Double Attack do something as well.

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Shinzul

True - power already has what I described, since power procs don't proc a percentage. (Except for Adrenaline, but in the opposite way described.)

The difference was that there's a hard cap on skills, and there's no clear rhyme or reason as to how we can effectively hit a mob once you get into the super orange (86, 87) range. We can only hit mobs less, and there's nothing you can do about it.

For one thing, the numbers I threw out weren't intended as *the formula*. I just threw some numbers out. Also, I didn't suggest getting rid diminishing returns altogether... As I said, diminishing returns itself isn't the problem, it's that people are approaching the cap far too easily and when you get far into the curve, additional points become less and less meaningful. And that once you get past that tier's equipment, those same +XX Haste/DPS mod items are just as useful as they were a year ago.

But then you run into problems with uncontested vs. contested avoidance and items that are useful far past their intended usefulness... Unless the devs intended people to be using items that are below them by two or three tiers. It seems likely that people could use their Soulfire Gladius or Wrathbringer Barbute into tiers 9 and 10 *shrug*.

I don't see how they're phasing out Haste/DPS for players... For mobs, sure, but there seems to be just as much +attack speed and +DPS mod gear as there is +double attack chance.

Lizerd Keng

Don't think they're gonna revamp the whole thing again any time soon. And if they do, I think the easiest fix would just be to change the sharpness of the curve. In other words, make it beneficial for anyone to get more than 60% of the cap (even if that means slightly less returns on the current 50-60%). And some things simply need more imo, for example mitigation. aka someone with all best physical mit items and buffs reaches 67%, while someone with less than the best avoidance items and buffs reaches 81%.

Lorak

Changing a lot of percentage based stuff such as dps mod, crit, haste, etc, to a value that gives less results at higher levels would be a good thing as far as progression goes, but that would also take us another step closer to being WoW.

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Manolo_Vali

FIX MELEE RATES!

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