09-09-2004, 05:44 PM
Roo,Sep 9 2004, 05:50 AM Wrote:Seems to me that percentage based solutions give rise to exactly the exploits that plague Diablo II and LoD. The Breath of the Dying runeword comes to mind on that thought. Not terribly unbalanced in a Phase Blade but laughably so in an ethereal Colossus Blade.Agreed. Warning bells were going off in my head even as I wrote that the damage and healing modifiers should be changed to percentage based. However, I think that it wouldn't be too difficult to keep percentage based modifiers from becoming too powerful. One can assume that a character has gathered the best damage/healing item available in every slot and consider what it does to the most powerful spell in that character's arsenal at level 60 and then see if that's too powerful or not, considering that the person would have to sacrifice a lot of int and spirit when wearing those items. I also think that in general these kind of modifiers should be kept generally weak. For example, one could have gloves that give +1% to fire spell damage and a small bonus to int and/or spirit. Things only get crazy when there are items for different slots that all give large bonuses.
Incidentally, I also prefer to have these bonuses be small for PvP reasons. One thing I like about PvP in Wow over Diablo II is that the equipment and build setup for PvP isn't too different than that for adventuring. That is, a person in their adventuring gear still has a reasonable chance to beat someone who's geared up for PvP. If the +damage bonuses on items were large, then PvP gankers would sacrifice int and spirit to wear massive +damage outfits, making it so that a general adventurer basically has no chance in a fight.