Balancing The Skill Point System

I've just finished going through the major changes of the upcoming item update, and in the item update, I think the overall aim was to create an identity, or a difference between elemental choices and combinations. Although creating the tri-elemental archetypes are a step in the right direction, I think some of the fundamentals in the skill point system would need to change in order to differ, and balance the elements even more.

I attempted to create differing identities for each element (especially thunder and fire), and make their power levels seem similar ignoring any identifications. In other words, if you were using all normal items, the task of picking which elements to go for should be non-trivial.

The purpose here is to isolate the skill point system and try to balance it, so I will be ignoring most of the current items along with their identifications. (Assume you have all normal items) Elemental defense also plays a role in this system, so I will also tackle that.

Spoiler: Issue with Earth/Thunder

Earth and Thunder lose much of their effectiveness as more points are put into them.

Currently, all skill points give bonus stats by the same formula: (roughly 1-0.99^x), this works well for water, fire and air because these three elements are all reducing things (mana usage, damage taken, hits taken respectively), and when you're reducing, your (mana usage, damage taken, hits taken) would be equilavent to 0.99^x: that is, in the case of water, you use 1% less mana (multiplicatively) each time you put a point into intelligence.

But earth and thunder are increasing (damage), not decreasing, and thus this gradually reducing formula doesn't make sense. Although each subsequent level in water, fire and air decrease by 1%, the increase for each level of earth and thunder, at later stages, is less than 0.5%. This, coupled with the additive calculation of damage, means that your total dps (or spell damage) usually increases by only about 0.2% or less. It is just not worth putting a lot of points into earth.

In fact, even in many current earth builds, you end up dealing more damage if you put your final (spare) skill points into thunder instead of earth.

Spoiler: The Issue with Thunder

Another issue with thunder is its lack of identity in the late game (without identifications). Currently, dealing a critical strike does not actually do double damage, instead, it additively gives +100% damage. This is not very noticable when you have high %melee, %spell or %thunder damage, and just seems similar to earth--more overall damage. The critical strike chance also becomes very high in thunder builds, making critical strikes even less noticable.

Spoiler: The Issue with Fire

The intended difference between fire and air is quite apparent. Although air gave you better damage prevention (in elemental damage) compared to fire, you have a lower health total (evident through current items) and are more likely to die from burst damage. Meanwhile, although you take more hits with fire, it is quite easy to heal up (with either HP regen, Life Steal ids or, potions) and your higher health total means that you're less likely to die from burst damage.

Spoiler: Elemental Defenses

I think the main issue with elemental defenses are that:
1. It's overly complicated and confusing, with both a flat and a % value
2. It is not available to crafted items (craftsmen have no way to get any)

Spoiler: Thunder Revamp

Thunder's current identity focuses more on damage compared to earth, with spell damage and attack speed tier standing out from earth (which is moreso focused on melee and generally have slower attack speeds).

To make critical strikes more noticable, they should do double damage. That is, if an attack would originally deal 300 damage, it would now deal 600. If a meteor would've done 10k normally, a crit would do 20k. That is, critical strikes should be multiplicative.

Spoiler: Old Formula

(Base Damage)*(1+[% Damage Bonus]+[1 if crit])+Raw Damage

Spoiler: New Formula

((Base Damage)*(1+[% Damage Bonus])+Raw Damage)*(1+[1 if crit])

This change should help the current high-damage dealing thunder identity to stand out even more.

To address the increased power in thunder resulting from this change, and to make critical strikes more noticable (rarer), the percentages arising from putting skill points into thunder should be reduced. Formula below:

Spoiler: Thunder Formula

0.29*(1-0.988^(T)) where T is the amount of skill points in Thunder |about 20.3% crit at 100 T

Spoiler: Changes to Earth and Elemental Damage

To make earth more viable in the late game, the damage bonus coming from earth should be linear.

Spoiler: New Formula

0.8*E where E is the amount of skill points in Earth| 80% damage increase at 100 E

The current elemental damages provided by its respective skill point is also +damage, and should also be changed to a linear formula:

Spoiler: Elemental Damage Formula

0.65*x where x is the amount of skill points in its respective element | 65% at 100 x (same as current)

Spoiler: Fire and Elemental Defense

The goals here are:
1. You shouldn't become insanely tanky from elemental defenses alone.
2. You shouldn't become insanely tanky from defense alone.
3. A combination of these two should make you insanely tanky to both neutral and elemental damage.
4. Having elemental defenses but not defense should still be viable (and so should having defense but not elemental defense).
5. Defense should still be more specialized to neutral damage than agility.
6. Simplify the elemental defense system so that crafters also has access to elemental defense.

First of all, since defense is supposedly more specialized to neutral damage, its damage reduction should be larger overall. Thus,

Spoiler: Defense Formula

1-0.986^D | 75.5% at 100 D

You might've noticed that I didn't put where D is the amount of skill points in Defense because we will be coming back to define D later.

For elemental defense, the % defense could be removed, leaving only the raw elemental defense. That could then become an identification. Then, the way it will work is:

Spoiler

The above defense formula, where D=x+F/2, where x is your elemental defense in that element, and F is the amount of skill points in Fire.

And in defending neutral damage, D=F.

Spoiler: What about negative elemental defense?

You can have negative elemental defense (x), but not defense (F). In the case where D is negative, the formula below applies:
1.4%*D increased damage taken (from that element)
This is quite similar to the earth and elemental damage formula (for increasing things).

UPDATE: Defense was updated to also affect elemental damage, and thus it is about as effective as Agility. But this also blurs out the differences between defense and agility as they're now both generic damage prevention, and the change still seems viable in differing fire and air.

 

Defense affects elemental damage as of the recent patch. Def and Agi are now the same on average.

 

Thanks, I didn't know. Made an update.

 

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