Splash Damage in Reaper of Souls: Boom or Bust?

B

BigFish

Guest
I dont see why all the separate effects* mentioned in this thread (so far at least), cant be exactly that - separate effects.

If you have separate stats for say:
-crit chance on target
-crit chance on splash
-crit damage on target
-crit damage on splash
-chance of splash
-range of splash
-chance of secondary affix (frozen, bleed, stun, etc) on target
-chance of secondary affix on splash
then you can start building a character around your playstyle or preferences. You could build a sniper demon hunter the deals massive single-target damage at the cost of little or no collateral. Or a AoE frenzy barb that melts mobs but starts to struggle against single targets. Each item can only carry a certain amount of buffs, so balancing these (along with all the other stats that you need for a decent character) becomes part of the experience. On-the-fly tweaking of the weapons effects as well as looking for the theoretical \'perfect\' items for your build of choice is a big part of the Diablo experience. Well, in my eyes at least.

*or is it affects? Grammar nazi bait!
 
B

BigFish

Guest
I dont see why all the separate effects* mentioned in this thread (so far at least), cant be exactly that - separate effects.

If you have separate stats for say:
-crit chance on target
-crit chance on splash
-crit damage on target
-crit damage on splash
-chance of splash
-range of splash
-chance of secondary affix (frozen, bleed, stun, etc) on target
-chance of secondary affix on splash
then you can start building a character around your playstyle or preferences. You could build a sniper demon hunter the deals massive single-target damage at the cost of little or no collateral. Or a AoE frenzy barb that melts mobs but starts to struggle against single targets. Each item can only carry a certain amount of buffs, so balancing these (along with all the other stats that you need for a decent character) becomes part of the experience. On-the-fly tweaking of the weapons effects as well as looking for the theoretical \'perfect\' items for your build of choice is a big part of the Diablo experience. Well, in my eyes at least.

*or is it affects? Grammar nazi bait!
 
S

ShadoutMapes

Diabloii.Net Member
BigFish said:
I dont see why all the separate effects* mentioned in this thread (so far at least), cant be exactly that - separate effects.

If you have separate stats for say:
-crit chance on target
-crit chance on splash
-crit damage on target
-crit damage on splash
-chance of splash
-range of splash
-chance of secondary affix (frozen, bleed, stun, etc) on target
-chance of secondary affix on splash
then you can start building a character around your playstyle or preferences. You could build a sniper demon hunter the deals massive single-target damage at the cost of little or no collateral. Or a AoE frenzy barb that melts mobs but starts to struggle against single targets. Each item can only carry a certain amount of buffs, so balancing these (along with all the other stats that you need for a decent character) becomes part of the experience. On-the-fly tweaking of the weapons effects as well as looking for the theoretical \'perfect\' items for your build of choice is a big part of the Diablo experience. Well, in my eyes at least.

*or is it affects? Grammar nazi bait!
Click to expand...
You are not wrong, that could really help. But only to a certain degree.
If you split all stats up along the same line (Splash vs target) then you do not really improve much from what we have already.
To create good itemization that mixes everything up, add complexity and choice, the stats have to link with skills, and each other in a huge amount of different ways.

I surely think there should be more split between single target and AoE, to help single target grow and become more meaningful, but ALL stats and ALL skills could use things they synergize with. Things that are more complex than just single target or splash.
 
B

BigFish

Guest
Yes! Also, no. But mostly yes

I think at the moment, some stats have a much higher value than others (AS, CC and CD at the moment) as, like you say, there is no link to the skills you are using. D3 is purely focussed around the items, and at the moment the items with the trifecta trump all other items regardless of what skill you are using. In my opinion unless you give a selection of alternatives, and therefore a compromise, the game will stagnate really quickly. Simplest way is to pile these on the items.

However, if all skills were divided into AoE and single-target catagories and linked the damage type to this (so splash damage was increased by say 20% if you used an AoE skill, and reduced by 20% if you were using a single-target skill) then you\'d end up with more complexity. Also, this would lead the way to some legs (or perhaps very rare rares) with stat such as \'skill X now uses % splash damage stats\", \"skill X now uses splash damage, not single-target damage\", \"skill X has a 5% buff to splash damage effects\" or \"skill X uses both splash and single-target damage effects\".

This way, you have another \'primary\' skill to stack. ATM you need is primary stat, vit, CC, CD and AS and off you go. Give items a a chance to roll say 5 out of 7 or 9 or 15 primary stats (and perhaps if you are really, really lucky 6 or 7 primary stats out of the pool) and suddenly you have ecions, compromises and improvements to be made.
 
B

BigFish

Guest
Yes! Also, no. But mostly yes

I think at the moment, some stats have a much higher value than others (AS, CC and CD at the moment) as, like you say, there is no link to the skills you are using. D3 is purely focussed around the items, and at the moment the items with the trifecta trump all other items regardless of what skill you are using. In my opinion unless you give a selection of alternatives, and therefore a compromise, the game will stagnate really quickly. Simplest way is to pile these on the items.

However, if all skills were divided into AoE and single-target catagories and linked the damage type to this (so splash damage was increased by say 20% if you used an AoE skill, and reduced by 20% if you were using a single-target skill) then you\'d end up with more complexity. Also, this would lead the way to some legs (or perhaps very rare rares) with stat such as \'skill X now uses % splash damage stats\\, \\skill X now uses splash damage, not single-target damage\\, \\skill X has a 5% buff to splash damage effects\\ or \\skill X uses both splash and single-target damage effects\\.

This way, you have another \'primary\' skill to stack. ATM you need is primary stat, vit, CC, CD and AS and off you go. Give items a a chance to roll say 5 out of 7 or 9 or 15 primary stats (and perhaps if you are really, really lucky 6 or 7 primary stats out of the pool) and suddenly you have ecions, compromises and improvements to be made.
 
B

BigFish

Guest
Good god-damn! A lot of the punctuation has gone walkabout there. Sorry!
 
Flux

Flux

Administrator
I could be wrong, since the damage numbers are flashing crazy fast when using Frenzy, but I never noticed any yellow numbers except on the main target, and I never saw any of the surrounding monsters die before the one I was hitting directly.

Ms my Barb has something like 400k dps and 450% CD, so I was generally facing monsters that took 3-4 hits to kill without a crit and one-shot if there was one. When I got yellow on my main target, it died instantly. If 60% of that damage splashed, I\'d have seen whole mobs drop at once, at least some of the time. I never did.
 
Flux

Flux

Administrator
That\'s kind of how I hoped splash would work, as something powerful enough to be worth specializing in, and a source of trade offs. It\'s not doing that now, since splash is a primary stat and thus in direct competition with much more powerful trifecta and +mainstat mods on weapons and jewelry and gloves. In no situation now do you want splash more than one of those others.

You can also get splash from shoulders, where it\'s a choice between non-offensive primaries (like regen and res all and vit) and it\'s more viable there. And from Paragon points.

As a result it\'s not a bad thing to have and I have some on all my chars, if only from Paragon... but it doesn\'t seem effective enough to make a main point of a build. That could change if crits went into it, or there were ways to increase the radius. Or perhaps players will find single target or very limited range attacks (HotA?) that are so good when paired with splash that it will surprise our current expectations?
 
RazeBarb

RazeBarb

Diabloii.Net Member
Does splash damage crit?
I turned off damage numbers long ago because the numbers were just too much.
I\'m only displaying the crit numbers.
 
V

vileguy

Guest
I think even if it does benefit from crit chance/damage, it\'s not a desirable stat. Most of the time you\'re doing AOE damage, so splashing on one hit just equates to a small boost, but one that doesn\'t work when monsters are alone or not positioned correctly. It theoretically allows for some cool single target builds, but the 20% chance is WAY too low. It would be cool to come up with a frenzy build that had 100% chance to splash for ~20% damage, but a 20% chance to splash 100% damage is far less appealing. Way too often you\'ll only start proccing aoe hits after killing off a few enemies, which diminishes the effect. Very disappointing lost potential here imo.
 
HardRock

HardRock

Diabloii.Net Member
\"I could be wrong, since the damage numbers are flashing crazy fast when using Frenzy, but I never noticed any yellow numbers except on the main target\"

You are not wrong, it\'s just that splash damage is never displayed in yellow numbers, but I assure you that it\'s correctly calculated from crits. I tested this just now with Magic Missile in the Cemetery of the Forsaken. It\'s an ideal combination because MM\'s damage is easily controlled and the cemetery has easily kiteable skeletons.

\"I never saw any of the surrounding monsters die before the one I was hitting directly.\"

I could be misunderstanding you on this, but that should never happen. The most ideal scenario is that they die together.

\"Ms my Barb has something like 400k dps and 450% CD, so I was generally facing monsters that took 3-4 hits to kill without a crit and one-shot if there was one. When I got yellow on my main target, it died instantly. If 60% of that damage splashed, I’d have seen whole mobs drop at once, at least some of the time. I never did.\"

It could be that 60% of your crit damage wasn\'t enough to kill the surrounding enemies. In my testing I could very easily tell that splash is correctly scaled with crits, because I have gear stashed away that has 92%. If you have a 100% surrounding enemies should almost certainly die with the main target when you get a splash. Not always though, because enemy HP is slightly randomized.
 
HardRock

HardRock

Diabloii.Net Member
It does benefit from crits as you would expect. The whole point of the stat is that it turns single target skills into semi-AoE attacks. These skills tend to have noticeably higher damage than AoE and this is counteracted by the 20% proc chance.

It\'s also worth mentioning that the reduced enemy density already made single target skills much more viable alternatives, so splash damage doesn\'t necessarily need a buff. Especially because even at level 60 you can fairly easily get 125% with enough Paragon points. At the moment I have 92% at Paragon 77 and my splash gear isn\'t perfect.
 
HardRock

HardRock

Diabloii.Net Member
Technically splash doesn\'t crit, so it will never show up in yellow number. It\'s damage however does scale up correctly when your original attack resulted in a crit.
 
W

whats the point

Guest
Play TL a bit and you will see that even spells are similar. Example: in TL there are ghost bosses and elites casting spell which WD uses - you\'ll find example of this spell from 1978 from a book of some sort? Besides, its pointless to talk to fan-boy. He\'ll bring you to his level and beat you in exp. The fact is that TL was developed first and core ideas were taken to d3.
 
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