Stats

[Lissa]

It has nothing to do with diminishing returns. DEX is universally bad, even when it's at the start of it's curve, it's worse (for defense) than any other stat, and just gets worse from there.

Dex is not something that really a Barbarian nor a WD or Wizard are going to be looking to get because it doesn't affect them.

It does affect those classes though. They gain dodge from it.

People (especially people who play in hardcore) are looking at how they can most effectively reduce damage. It's important to understand what *all* the stats bring to the table, not just their primary stat.

Depending on how the armor and resistance reductions interact, it's very possible that a barbarian will get significantly more defense from +INT than from the same amount of STR or Armor. Why wouldn't someone also look at DEX as a potential alternative?

I mean once you do the math it looks like it's a really, really bad option, but you can't know that until you do the math. This is how we figure out what the best options are.

You're missing the point though. Having a high health is going to trump most situations in this game, thus Vit should be more important that the other stats for survival. 3 of the classes do not want to be in hand to hand, they're not designed that way while the 2 others are designed to be in hand to hand. So, with only 2 of 5 classes being in melee, Blizzard (rightfully IMO) decided to make dodge less important while making other aspect more important to assist those two classes and play to the other 3 ranged classes. This is why Vit becomes more useful than Dex (Dodge).

Barbarian, WD, and Wizard are only going to be interested in minor amounts of Dex, just enough to get that first or second tier, even in hardcore. Dex to them is going to be a waste of stat points when their primary stats and vit are going to be more useful for their survival, especially given that the only two classes that really want to be in melee range is the Barbarian (Str) and Monk (Dex) and we've already seen that Monk has skills to improve their Dodge to 3 effective tiers.

This is why, to me, it makes sense to have Dex not be as useful for classes that don't use it as a primary stat (and why the two classes that do use it don't need to look at Str because one will be at range and the other will have a passive that boost their armor based on their Dex).

Getting off topic for just a second, last time I checked, Many/Most does not equal All. There are a large number of games out there that follow this same kind of mantra that Diablo 3 is running where overall Health is more likely to save you than any other defensive skills.

I guess I just don't understand why other games are even brought into the discussion. Very few people know the Diablo III mechanics. We're in a discovery mode. Nobody has any kind of intrinsic knowledge of the mechanics. It seemed kind of out of left field and having no real point. Especially the part about a tanking class? All classes are going to get hit, everyone needs to be at least somewhat concerned about their defenses.

Let me ask you this, how much of Diablo and Diablo 2, especially hard core, did you play? In both games, Vit was the major survival stat. Blizzard likely continued down that same path with Diablo 3 where Vit was the major surviability stat. Blizzard, likely, wasn't looking to reinvent the wheel when it came to Diablo 3 with respect to how the stats function.