​Do gods play dice?
A divine view to complete randomization

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Well, I, Clavdivs, do, from time to time. And I’m sure about my cousins Tiberius, Augustus or Julius Caesar himself. I'm not sure about the others, though.

What I AM sure is that is that I don’t play them ALL THE TIME. And neither should you.

Where is this leading? To the rare/legendary items, of course! Main example being boots - only  small portion of them have “+run speed” affix! Effectively, making them useless...

And with EVERYTHING being random, people get frustrated for not finding good gear, but instead having to buy it from AH...

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Possible solutions:

- Boots should have higher “+run speed” chance, of course
- On SMALL percentage of items (probably MF% related), items could be semi-random - having better chance to roll top half of affix range, or to roll specific affixes useful for item type. Percentage should be small, but seeing something even remotely useful for my lesser heroes brighten my days.

- What about act bosses? What about first kill? It used to guarantee a degree of better items (of course, often nothing but rubbish, but not always nothing but rubbish. More often 'not rubbish' than elite mob)

Gems:

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Again, a fiasco! The God says it like this, because they were a fiasco in Diablo II, and one would expect them to get better, but they’re just more numerous in tiers. That being said, onto the solutions!
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Potential solutions (again, each is unrelated to others):​

Notice: each of those is trivial, very easy, or easy to implement and require almost no resources
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A helm line:
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"+experience" - PERCENTAGE - should this even be allowed? Shorten a gaming experience for up to XXX percents??? Starting from level 16, with NO PENALTIES??? On a high level Legendary, maybe... On the other hand, since something like NV gives +LXXV% this seems to be more normal. YET, THE GENERAL QUESTION OF HAVING +C% EXPERIENCE REMAINING!!!
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Magic and gold find are ok, i dislike life% as a chance for abuse, but this affix is too well rooted into game through other items already...

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Anyway, decent job

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A weapon line:

“+Critical damage" is... way too much. maybe half of current, or with exponential-increasing gain (Well, actually reversed - a commonly found gem shouldn't worth giant +45%, which is higher than max affix on many item-types. Small gems giving smaller bonus, greater ones bigger... 1,2,3,4,5,7,9,12,15,19,24,30,37,45,55?) But better nerfed...
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“+Life on hit” should be percentage (if the critical is), or stay fixed but buffed considerably (say 10+ million gem gives 600hp/hit - there is an affix giving M hp/hit).

“+Melee attackers take” - same as “+Life on hit” (besides, aren’t there +MMD as affix?). Furthermore, this is by far worst decision on gem usage - it should be something else, like “+Increases Attack Speed” - there is infinitely better uses for a gem than “thorns” simulation. And Multiplayer ruins it completely - it's ok to change build to accommodate MP, but weapons... In MP, this (paid dearly) gem loses LX% of its value... Unacceptable!

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“+Damage” - now, this is definitely a percentage value parameter. 10+ million for mighty LVIII damage? Either that, or “major reconstruction” (discussed below).
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​Major reconstruction:

All the other sockets give non-proportionally lower attribute gain, proportion being connected with the cost, of course. 10 million and there is mighty LVIII strength! This requires no further discussion but immediate action, so say I, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, The God.

- Gems are not increasing item required levels - dominantly thinking of ones giving %experience bonus and early damage (yes, The God said it’s worthless at gem grade 15, but not so at character level 16, if player happen to have one; also, critical damage increases can be important factor in midgame) - in divine opinion, this shouldn’t be so

Two-handers:

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While being buffed in 1.04, those are still not good enough to be actual alternative to dual-wielder one-handers (which is sad, actually, cause through course of history dual-wielding was least used style of fighting - nice for film industry, sure, but not good for a real battlefield - and i saw some in my time, unlike most people designing games or making films). Having said that, The God will go a step forward and say that all three combat variant should be balanced to be roughly equal, but with distinctive up and downsides that makes game different. Third one being, of course, shield fighting.
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One-hander vs two-handers

First one-hander = up to VI affixes, second the same. Some of those are (obviously) desired on both (like dps-improvers), but there is still some IV to VIII (depending on view) free to combine. On two handers, there are mentioned II to IV obligatory dps-related enchantments, which leaves only II to IV free. Out of those, practically ALL have to be useful and, furthermore, near perfectly rolled to be able to compete to, much larger and more flexible, dual-wielding niche.

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Sockets

As of now, almost each self-respecting weapon socket is filled with (largely imbalanced) emerald, more powerful the better. This leads to weapons with up to CC% critical damage, times two = up to CD% for dual wielders. There is no way a dual wielder to achieve this. Possibly, if second socket is added. But The God would rather advice the end of emerald rule by nerfing them.

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​Special bonuses
As of now, dual wielding has no good opposition and receives +XV% attack speed. This would indicate that dual-wielding is normally inferior to other fighting styles, and needs help to even things up, which is as true as that Caligula could act.

 

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​Potential solutions (again, each is unrelated to others):
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Notice: each of those is trivial, very easy, or easy to implement and require almost no resources

- pure dps is buffed. more than it is now (affects superiors/enchanted/rares)
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​I, Clavdivs, in divine wisdom, would've advised following:
- Two-hander bonus:
A) much stronger offence (with no defence bonus, as it is now), compensating ill-given and undeserved XV% attack speed and therefore dps dual-wielding bonus
B) somewhat stronger offence (yes, even more, compared to 1.04) with small defence bonus (EXCLUSIVELY against melee, naturally - historically, the longer ranged melee weapons indeed was used to keep opponent at distance and be able to inflict damage without receiving it)

[Interesting enough, melee weapon range was implemented in diablo II, and although not perfect, served some purpose - eg. attacking behind a summon or companion or even another player]

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- Affix-related fixes

A) another affix, perhaps even two can be rolled on two-handers (to a max of VII or VIII and with minimum of IV). Since this affects only rares, dps for superiors/enchanted has to be dealt in separate manner - after all, in Diablo II some enchantments couldn't spawn on rares, maybe additional and exclusive dps-modifiers can be reserved for those, as a compensation

- semi-random affix selection, discussed later in “Do Gods play dice?” chapter

Weapon+shield:

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Shield is an ultimate protection used by hand. In Diablo III, this manifests through large amount of armour (which is good and reasonable) and a “X to XXIX percent chance to remove n damage”. A quick glance shows to The God, if not others, that from 1.0 there was only one shield worth using, the one with highest damage removed. It was tried to be fixed (badly) in 1.04, well, it was tried with all 61-63 level items.



On a separate note, shield removing part of damage is just... dumb. Unrealistic and historically inaccurate. Someone gave this zero thought. No other words.



On yet another separate note, weapon + shield is historically mostly used fighting style, with good reason - it is superior to others.
 

​However, we desire diversity and balance in our dark-fantasy world, and nobody cares for lessons historian gives...



Shield is more effective as you get hit more, and as block percentage and damage blocked amount is greater. Concluded from this, every shield worth using has to have +block% parameter at high level (thus removing one affix slot), and, to put it plainly, to be “Sacred Shield”.

Patch 1.04 changed this a *bit*, but damage blocked stayed lower for ilvlLXI and LXII. Patch 1.05 will continue this unhealthy trend, most likely. Patch 1.05 intends to partially fix this, but again, not in a satisfying manner - there will be more than one usable shield, and [The God sighs] better way to search AH, but nothing more. Nothing fundamental. And there should be.


​Current situation:
Sadly, shield is reduced to a giant +defence bonus and +random affixes... Defence meaning having between XXXIII and L% of HP more (sadly, quite literately), and reduced damage from an attack [The God sighs]. So, successful block reduces damage done by, for example, a skeleton IF the dices are rolled favourably? VERY WISE! [a careful reader may notice that The God admires greatly whole shield mechanic]  

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Why is block percentage so wildly random, same for ALL shields type, from the tower shield to small leather ones, and block amount is FIXED (actually, this makes more sense than previous, but fixed every time? And the block rate fluctuate three times)? It's 'opposite from wise' and have puzzled mighty mind of Clavdivs from day one.
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Potential solutions (again, each is unrelated to others):​

​Notice: each of those is trivial, very easy, or easy to implement and require almost no resources
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- As mentioned above, change damage amount to (semi)random, and block chance to (semi)fixed, and individualize shields a bit - tower ones to a greater block rate, and middle block amount (this is something German barbarians never learned) and smaller one to lesser block rate, and greater block amount (relatively to what it is now - this is not very accurate, but The God is willing to swallow historical facts for a sake of balance)

- Remove +block and this huge X-XXIX percentage of blocking - it renders a shield to be one of items requiring most luck to get (and also with largest “reject” amount) - THIS IS A COMMAND, NOT A SUGGESTION! SHOW THE GOD THAT YOU USED MORE THAN ZERO THOUGHT IN SHIELD MECHANICS! REMEMBER, YOU ARE MORTAL
​- Add +V% dodge chance to a shield (A PURE DODGE. Admit it, SOMETIMES shield DOES block an attack, not just reducing its amount)  

- When shield type is rolled, all types have a small chance of giving lvl63 affixes - Sacred Shields are boring, imagine them in a year (NOTE: this is fixed [The God sighs] in a 1.05 to less satisfactory V out of XII... Does the graphic designers hate you for wasting so much of their excellent work?) 
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1.05 note: Shield build is going to be (unknowingly? unwillingly? or well thought?) buffed when Inferno damage is nerfed. 

​Unneeded items:
Well, there are plenty items which basically falls into this category, chiefly inferior / normal / superior.

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Why are inferior unneeded? Well... look at the cost, dps, sell value. It’s nothing but bad luck rolling one of those, yet they exist in several flavours, even could be sold/bought on auction house (???). Instead having them with large faults they all share (as is current situation), those could be a trade-off items - damaged item does less dps, but it also require lower character level to equip - just an example.
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Why are normal unneeded? Ok, root of all evil is in here. Firstly, they are unsellable, for a decent price, that is. Secondly, their stats are very low comparing to enchantments. Which enchantments? ANY. To be of any use, item HAS to be enchanted. Since no enchantment raise level needed for using an item, this effectively makes normal items completely useless, except in first few character levels (where AH drops in nicely to, effectively removing any use of normals)​


Why are superior unneeded? Well, they shouldn't be! Bonuses given by superior craftsmanship should make them good enough to compete with enchanted ones - in terms of raw damage only, of course - acquired through +enhanced damage/speed/critical chance. No attributes, no special effects (perhaps weak glow?).
 

Take a good old 1h sword as a golden standard. They are neatly divided in 24 types, distributed by damage only. Nothing else. Ok, lets look at enchantments:

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Damage Percent (Weapon) - six tiers, X% to L%
+ many, many variations, like MinDamage, MaxDamage
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Now, best 1h sword is lvl63 Rune Sword, sporting ~CCILV dps, add MAX damage percent and you’ll finish with ~CCCXC. Do it with same 1h Rare Sword and generally medium strength lvl63 fire damage bonus, and use medium values and still there is +CCCIL fire bonus, or +C%. Superior maximum is L%, enchanted medium is C%?​

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[The God could go on and on, in proving this point, the thing he used to do in his youth. as of now, this matter is considered proven, and without having superiors affixes possibly equal in dps to enchanted affixes, they will remain useless]​


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​Recapitulation:
- inferior equipment is currently useless and could be as well removed
- normal equipment is useless 99% of game time
- improved equipment is useless compared to enchanted, but NOT easier to get to (and therefore completely useless)
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Potential solutions

(each is unrelated to others, as godly intellect thinks of many matters simultaneously)

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[Notice: each of those is trivial, very easy, or easy to implement and require almost no resources]

- inferior weapons are removed, both as drops and as auction house option

- inferior weapons are buffed a bit and have level reducement, but are in general stronger than next-best or 3rd in a line
- normals are left as they are - we need to have a standard measure, even if useless by itself

- superiors are what their name tells - up to being EQUAL with enchanted/rares in terms of raw dps (via +damage, +attack speed, +criticals or combination). less important vendor sell price goes to somewhere between normal/enchanted (for compatibility sake)
- superiors can have different (greater) modifiers (all kinds), to compensate lack of enchantments - eg. more than +L% enchanted damage, +XX critical chance (this is case already) that it’s possible on enchanted/rares, to compensate loss of DAMAGE-based enchantments - eg. Rune Sword could roll C% (in fact, more, since C% is medium for +fire base damage).

- inferiors and superiors can be BASE for rolling enchanted crafted. if damage based enchantment is rolled, no other damage-altering can be affixes are given to item in question. this would result in greater diversity of rares, eg Superior Rune Sword with +20% criticals, +20% attack speed and +30 damage (all derived from ‘superior’ affix, taking 3 rare slots) and +100 dex, +2% freeze etc. same applies for inferiors