Opinion on Damage Types - They Lack Identity

[CowPimp]

Let me start off by saying I really enjoy this game, and think it has a lot of great design decisions propping it up. I just wanted to offer feedback on a couple of things related to damage type identity.

Most of my ARPG hours are in Path of Exile, with a healthy few hundred in Diablo 3 (early release) and Grim Dawn. One thing I have always liked about PoE is that damage types have an identity, and to be more specific, a mechanical identity. Lightning damage causes shock, fire causes ignite, cold causes chill/freeze, physical causes bleed (and better at stunning) , and chaos causes poison. I had this same gripe with Grim Dawn, though there are some minor mechanical identity components to some of the damage types; but overall they lacked mechanical identity. If I hit something with fire or physical damage, it made no difference. The skill might be colored orange and red for a fire skill, but without that there is no real difference between them, aside from the fantasy aspect.

In this game, the associations between ailments and damage types hardly exist, except in the sense that it is typically skills of certain damage types where you find skill tree support. However, there is nothing stopping me from igniting with lightning damage if I stack enough passive ignite chance, for example.

When you cast a spell that deals fire damage and it has a big glowy orange visual, that can be enough to give it some identity, even if it lacks a mechanical one. At some level, I dont have a major issue with this, though I prefer there to be a mechanical identity. However, it does create some situations where the fantasy is disrupted.

This ties into a second issue I see, where melee skills (I assume other attacks as well) are given a damage tag related to the base damage they deal, which is an hilariously low number. In reality, your weapon does orders of magnitude more damage than the base. So, even a fire or cold melee skill is probably dealing more physical damage than anything else.

I am playing a character using Forge Strike as their bread and butter skill. I like 2H weapons, but that basically means I will be dealing primarily physical damage. Even if I take 50 flat fire damage, run the sigil skill, and get flat fire on my weapon, I still probably deal mostly physical damage (or close to an even split). Furthermore, because conversion seems poorly supported, it makes scaling the skill a bit more difficult. Getting penetration on gear is silly because my damage is split, and increases to a particular damage type are a poor choice for the same reason. The ring and amulet slot doesnt have the increased melee option, for example.

All that leads to a situation where the fire fantasy isnt quite realized because there is no real visual indication that fire damage is being dealt, there is poor support for conversion, and it hardly makes a difference whether I hit with physical damage, fire damage, or a mix. It makes me feel more ambivalent about where the damage comes from, and kind of encourages stacking a bunch of flat damage from any ol’ source.

What is my suggestion then? Offer better skill tree (or any at all) support for damage conversion. For example, instead of the nodes leading to Detonating Ground giving 10 flat fire each, give them 5 flat fire and 20% conversion of physical to fire. Alternatively, or additionally, give me more of a reason to choose a particular type of damage when the visual does not support it, but there is clearly some tree support. As well, a skill could have inherent conversion, or a more signficant base damage of the given type in exchange for low added damage effectiveness.

Once again, great job so far, and keep up the great work. I hope my suggestion/feedback gives a perspective that is helpful!

[Heavy]

@CowPimp

In this game, the associations between ailments and damage types hardly exist, except in the sense that it is typically skills of certain damage types where you find skill tree support. However, there is nothing stopping me from igniting with lightning damage if I stack enough passive ignite chance, for example.

And this is what makes LE stand out a little bit from many other games.
Is it realistic? Does it makes sense?
No, but it allows alot of build variety, especially with how the ailment system in LE works.

I can understand that this can break immersion, but that does not outweight the cool things, that this allows IMO.

@CowPimp

I am playing a character using Forge Strike as their bread and butter skill. I like 2H weapons, but that basically means I will be dealing primarily physical damage. Even if I take 50 flat fire damage, run the sigil skill, and get flat fire on my weapon, I still probably deal mostly physical damage (or close to an even split). Furthermore, because conversion seems poorly supported, it makes scaling the skill a bit more difficult. Getting penetration on gear is silly because my damage is split, and increases to a particular damage type are a poor choice for the same reason.

Spellblades skills all have some elemental base dmg, with even more support in their skill tree.

Sentinel does not have that, because after all, you are still a Melee Weapon Swinging Knight, that has some elemental/void infused attacks. I really like that Sentinel and Spellblade are different.

The game is very much balanced around the fact that you always have some physical damage on your weapon.

Getting penetration, just because you have some minimal physical damage, if you other wise go full fire is not silly.

@CowPimp

The ring and amulet slot doesnt have the increased melee option, for example.

Yes and that’s good, it would be boring if every gear pieces would have every affix/damage option.

It makes gearing way more interesting.

@CowPimp

What is my suggestion then? Offer better skill tree (or any at all) support for damage conversion. For example, instead of the nodes leading to Detonating Ground giving 10 flat fire each, give them 5 flat fire and 20% conversion of physical to fire. Alternatively, or additionally, give me more of a reason to choose a particular type of damage when the visual does not support it, but there is clearly some tree support. As well, a skill could have inherent conversion, or a more signficant base damage of the given type in exchange for low added damage effectiveness.

Now you are speaking totally “balance” and you want to buff/improve something that IMO does not need any buffs.

Forged Strike and Smelters Wrath are some of the strongest melee skills in the game.
They can dish out ridiculously high numbers.

[Llama8]

I see where you are coming from but like Heavy, I like that LE does things a bit differently. Unlike Heavy, I would like to see some additional support for damage conversion in the skill trees, especially if it’s partial conversion like you say.

[deteego]

This is one of the things that PoE did well and I really agree with the sentiment here, there is value in making the damage types have more unique identity rather than graphically looking different.

Otherwise you get into the problem where every mage “feels the same” even though one might be casting fire and another ice, in the end you are just nuking things from halfway across the screen and its kinda irrelevant how its done.

Ironically even though from a design perspective PoE did things really well in this area, for other reasons the game still has problems with build variability.

[CowPimp]

And this is what makes LE stand out a little bit from many other games.
Is it realistic? Does it makes sense?
No, but it allows alot of build variety, especially with how the ailment system in LE works.

I can understand that this can break immersion, but that does not outweight the cool things, that this allows IMO.

I’m not sure I see the distinct advantages of this system. I think there are some cool features of their ailment application system, such as ignite chance rolling over into a chance to apply additional stacks, that could be kept, while discarding the damage type agnosticism. We will probably just have to agree to disagree here though.

Spellblades skills all have some elemental base dmg, with even more support in their skill tree.

Sentinel does not have that, because after all, you are still a Melee Weapon Swinging Knight, that has some elemental/void infused attacks. I really like that Sentinel and Spellblade are different.

The game is very much balanced around the fact that you always have some physical damage on your weapon.

Getting penetration, just because you have some minimal physical damage, if you other wise go full fire is not silly.

The base damage provided on their tree is also really low compared to the damage provided by the weapon. I’m okay with there being “some” physical damage from your weapon, but right now it is the vast majority of your damage. Even if I stack a lot of sources of flat added fire damage, it still only gets the damage output to about 50/50 physical fire. In such a case, maybe penetration isn’t “silly,” but it’s only 50% effective. I might as well get crit chance and multiplier instead. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, except that it’s another damage type agnostic stat. Why would I care if I stacked a bunch of void and cold damage instead? There will be no difference visually or mechanically if I stack a bunch of random added damage instead, except that penetration or type specific increases will be even more inefficient stats to scale.

Yes and that’s good, it would be boring if every gear pieces would have every affix/damage option.

It makes gearing way more interesting.

I’m not suggesting every piece needs the same stats. Rather, I wish there were options outside of crit chance/multi that supported this kind of hybrid physical/elemental damage output better. Actually, the mana efficiency stat is a pretty good one in the case of Forge Strike specifically because it is an expensive skill.

Now you are speaking totally “balance” and you want to buff/improve something that IMO does not need any buffs.

Forged Strike and Smelters Wrath are some of the strongest melee skills in the game.
They can dish out ridiculously high numbers.

It’s not really a question of balance at all. Right now, I could just go pure physical and make the physical penetration and increased physical stats far more efficient. That’s the whole point: why wouldn’t I do that? If I add a bunch of fire damage, the skill doesn’t change visually or mechanically, so it’s essentially up to my imagination to convince me that I’m adding a bunch of fire damage, and I do so at the expense of being able to scale as efficiently.

[CowPimp]

@Llama8

I see where you are coming from but like Heavy, I like that LE does things a bit differently. Unlike Heavy, I would like to see some additional support for damage conversion in the skill trees, especially if it’s partial conversion like you say.

That’s fair. I would feel better about the ailments being damage type agnostic if there was a better connection made between damage type and mechanics somewhere else. It’s not game breaking for me or anything, but just a piece of feedback I figured the developers might like to hear.

There are some cool things about the ailment system in this game I quite like. For example, %chance to apply an ailment not being wasted over 100%. In general, I like the idea of stats not being wasted after a cap. In fact, I kind of liked their original idea of protections instead of resistances for that reason, but understand why it was changed. As an aside, I wonder if they could have a hybrid system whereby overcapped resistances kind of “roll over” into protections which boost your EHP against that damage type a bit. Just a random thought that came up while writing this post, lol.

[CowPimp]

@deteego

This is one of the things that PoE did well and I really agree with the sentiment here, there is value in making the damage types have more unique identity rather than graphically looking different.

Otherwise you get into the problem where every mage “feels the same” even though one might be casting fire and another ice, in the end you are just nuking things from halfway across the screen and its kinda irrelevant how its done.

Ironically even though from a design perspective PoE did things really well in this area, for other reasons the game still has problems with build variability.

You think PoE has issues with build variability? I would argue that’s one area where the game shines. There are an insane number of different builds out there that are viable.

I do think this game does a better job with creating a cohesive character identity overall, which I like. To be fair, you can do that in PoE, but need to go out of your way to do so a bit more, and often times must sacrifice quite a bit of power. Because of the nature of the skill trees in this game, it’s easier to keep character identity in tact.

[deteego]

@CowPimp

You think PoE has issues with build variability? I would argue that’s one area where the game shines. There are an insane number of different builds out there that are viable.

Well if you look at it as a proportional of the potential builds and also grouping variations of the same build into one I strongly disagree, PoE is actually one of the worst cases of build viability (my definition of build viability is getting into end game mapping, lvl 90+ and not just clearing the campaign).

So far the aRPG game that has the best build variability (while at the same time not making everything viable) is probably GD (Grim Dawn). You could also put D3 in there, but I think that is somewhat deceiving because the game also puts a lot of restrictions in how you design builds which means that it forces you to have viable builds by design.

In other words on the spectrum of ultimate freedom of builds (which is where PoE stands) and highly restrictive builds which are always viable (D3), GD sits in a good middle ground. I think that LE is also in a similar spot however its too early to tell since the game isn’t really completed yet.

[CowPimp]

@deteego

Well if you look at it as a proportional of the potential builds and also grouping variations of the same build into one I strongly disagree, PoE is actually one of the worst cases of build viability (my definition of build viability is getting into end game mapping, lvl 90+ and not just clearing the campaign).

So far the aRPG game that has the best build variability (while at the same time not making everything viable) is probably GD (Grim Dawn). You could also put D3 in there, but I think that is somewhat deceiving because the game also puts a lot of restrictions in how you design builds which means that it forces you to have viable builds by design.

In other words on the spectrum of ultimate freedom of builds (which is where PoE stands) and highly restrictive builds which are always viable (D3), GD sits in a good middle ground. I think that LE is also in a similar spot however its too early to tell since the game isn’t really completed yet.

I think those numbers are misleading for a few reasons. First of all, the game is hard to approach and incredibly complicated. I have made some PoE content, and there are a lot of players with thousands of hours scared to make their own builds. Second, the game has seasons, and is primarily played in trade leagues. The result is that people don’t want to experiment as often, ironically. Yes, some players do, but it’s a risk that you won’t be competitive. This isn’t because the build won’t be able to tackle end game content, but if it’s 10-20% slower/weaker than something tried and true, then it’s hard to catch up.

I have literally never followed a build guide, and played tons of stuff when people said it was bad. I only recall once have stopped playing a skill because it felt so bad during leveling and wasn’t willing to try and solve the issue. When I looked back on it, I made a mistake. I tried to make an important transition before the build was ready and neutered my DPS horribly. I would argue virtually everything is end game viable (minus some real memes like conversion trap), but people are too scared to try things. I think Mathil actually exemplifies this pretty well. He plays stuff that’s “bad” all the time, and typically makes it to end game reasonably comfortably with everything.

I would point to this as another feather in the cap of this game though. Making builds is a lot more approachable and difficult to brick, even if there is a bit less freedom. It strikes a nice balance between character freedom/customization and approachability of the build process.

[deteego]

@CowPimp

I think those numbers are misleading for a few reasons. First of all, the game is hard to approach and incredibly complicated. I have made some PoE content, and there are a lot of players with thousands of hours scared to make their own builds. Second, the game has seasons, and is primarily played in trade leagues. The result is that people don’t want to experiment as often, ironically. Yes, some players do, but it’s a risk that you won’t be competitive. This isn’t because the build won’t be able to tackle end game content, but if it’s 10-20% slower/weaker than something tried and true, then it’s hard to catch up.

I would point you to a post I made in another thread so I don’t repeat myself but in summary I don’t think my numbers is misleading (even if you take into account seasons) What not to do: Lessons from PoE from a 1400 hours PoE ex-player (part 1) - #242 by deteego