06-22-2003, 04:35 PM
I don´t belive perfect balancing is possible, but I do belive it is possible to do better with the existing skills.
In theory that could be done by requiring that all skills make about the same damage over the same period of time. In such a way however that lev 30 skills end up doing more than low-level ones (otherwise you just dump all into a lev 1 skill and blaze through normal/NM).
In practice this turns out to be tremendously difficult. One reason is the existance of some weapons that deal damage at particularly high rates, making it very hard for spellcasters to keep up. Couple that to effects like amplify damage, crushing blow and the like, which casters don't have, and you'll see that with this state of affairs, stuff can happen like uber spellcaster with skills that have enough damage to compete with cruel ethereal elite weapons (like firewall), or physical damage chars with can't kill squat because they weren't lucky enough to get their uber weapon and nice jewels to boot, etc.
All in all, I think a great deal of the problem comes because the weapons have a too-wide range of damage. A weapon is either uber (and your char gets uber too) or lame (and your char is hopeless).
In theory that could be done by requiring that all skills make about the same damage over the same period of time. In such a way however that lev 30 skills end up doing more than low-level ones (otherwise you just dump all into a lev 1 skill and blaze through normal/NM).
In practice this turns out to be tremendously difficult. One reason is the existance of some weapons that deal damage at particularly high rates, making it very hard for spellcasters to keep up. Couple that to effects like amplify damage, crushing blow and the like, which casters don't have, and you'll see that with this state of affairs, stuff can happen like uber spellcaster with skills that have enough damage to compete with cruel ethereal elite weapons (like firewall), or physical damage chars with can't kill squat because they weren't lucky enough to get their uber weapon and nice jewels to boot, etc.
All in all, I think a great deal of the problem comes because the weapons have a too-wide range of damage. A weapon is either uber (and your char gets uber too) or lame (and your char is hopeless).