Different Types of Melee and Magical Damage

What do you guys think of the idea of magic damage being in many forms, like fire, frost, nature, dark, light, and then melee can have many forms of damage as well, like cutting, smashing, piercing.

This comes to mind because I think of damage type and how to mitigate them. I would like a system like Vanilla WoW where you had different resistance stats for different types of magic damage, like fire, ice, and arcane. Complimentary to this you would have stat increases on gear like "+fire damage".

I do understand the appeal of having simpler stats like "magic resistance" or "physical resistance". This kind of system would make building your character a lot easier, and would be a lot easier to balance from a game design perspective, but leaves out a bit of the nuance that makes character builds truly unique (IMO).

Would you guys prefer the more complex version or the more simple version of stats? Do we know what Intrepid is planning yet, or is this still open for debate?

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Comments

McMackMuck

I understand the point of view that having to swap gear to tailor elemental resistances to specific situations could be a frustrating inconvenience, but (there's always a 'but'!) it depends on the level of simplification that you want.

At a fundamental level the three armor types are geared towards damage mitigation from (Heavy) physical bias, (Medium) physical-magic balanced and (Light) magic biased, as I understand it.

I don't have an issue with breaking these down further, in principle:
Melee: Bash, Slash and Pierce
Magic: Elemental types

If permitted, enchantments that give "resist all +%" (or "resist several types +%") would become the dominant META and could make the additional breakdown (i.e. into elemental types) pointless if not handled correctly. Diablo2's issue of Diamonds (resist all +19%) vs. Rubies (resist fire +40%) springs to mind.

IMHO Ashes should avoid "resist all" enchantments but allow resistance enchantments of different types to co-exist without using up item enchantment capacity. That way you would be able to collect all flavors of resistance enchantment over time in your gear. That fact that initially you can only collect, say, fire resistance and have lots of questing (teamwork, profitable endeavors!) to gather the mats to add more shouldn't be an issue for most players.

I would consider placing poison resistance in the Melee group, because 1) poison is resisted by constitution and 2) heavier armor, with less points of entry, makes it more difficult for it to be applied.

Rolemaster tabletop RPG: They have something like 26 elemental types. Please do not go that far.
4-8 is okay with me (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Light, Dark with a couple more for this setting Planar? Aether?).

So, if the Devs do all of the above, the only pre-combat question you have is do you want to wear your best heavy armor, your best medium armor or your best light armor? That seems acceptable to me.

I don't think attack enhancements for the different damage types should be allowed to co-exist in the same way, I can't see any clear solutions for that issue!

Dygz

George Black wrote: »

What does that have to do with invisible stats and back end math theorycrafting, versus meaningful damage type allocation on weapons and active abilities?

There is really no versus. It's all a matter of perspective.

McShave

George Black wrote: »

Ill explain what I mean.

There is a suggeation here for physical damage to be divided into pierce, blunt, slash.

In eso stamina (physical dmg), came from max stamina stat, penetration stat, weapon dmg stat.

You could spec all you wanted, swap gear, swap blessing boons, invest in passive stats (champion points), and there, your build was gear towards penetration.

You still had the same active class skills slotted, the same weapons skills slotted, the same bow slotted.

What changed in ACTIVE GAMEPLAY? Nothing. You just changed your option of stats behind it.

Visually, nothing changed.

So again I am asking, how would this suggestion that divides physical dmg into pierce, blunt and slash translate into active gameplay?

Would hammers have blunt dmg and bonus against plate?
Would swords have both slashing and piercing, leading to less against plate?
Would piercing be any different than slashing really?
Would daggers have blunt dmg??
Would axes have both slash and blunt dmg?

Or

Would blunt damage be found only on crashing (stun-like) active abilities?
Would pierce damage only be found on thrust abilities?
Would swords have access to weapon stun or would it say "incorrect weapon/damage type. Action cancelled"?

In my imagination, you wouldn't gather a stat called "penetration", "slashing", or "blunt", but you would gather points in "strength", "agility", or "endurance". Ideally you would need a combination of all 3 to be an effective physical combatant with any weapon, but some weapons would benefit more from different stats. Then, each damage type would deal more damage to different creature or armor types, and can increase effectiveness of abilities like stun and bleed.

For example, lets say you have a 1h sword. The base damage is not that high compared to a 1h club, but it has the potential for faster attacking. So if you get more agility, then you will be attacking faster with maybe more potential to crit, but you also still need strength to increase the actual damage of each attack. Also, a 1h club would benefit more from strength so that each hit hurts more, but you would need some agility so that can have more swings during an encounter. Piercing weapons would require a balance of both agility and strength because you need to be strong and nimble with those kinds of weapons.

In this theoretical combat, I would have endurance be a stat to determine how many swings in a row you can do before the time before swings increases (or damage decreases), but this is historically not a thing that MMOs do. It would be a stat for 2H weapons and shields so that you can swing/ block more over the duration of an encounter. This would probably require some sort of stamina meter, and this is probably more a thing for pure action type games.

Atama

George Black wrote: »

Would blunt damage be found only on crashing (stun-like) active abilities?
Would pierce damage only be found on thrust abilities?
Would swords have access to weapon stun or would it say "incorrect weapon/damage type. Action cancelled"?

Possibly. If you used the Weapon Skills trees then it definitely could work that way. And maybe it's not even tied to a particular weapon. A long sword, for example, can slash if you swing it, can stab if you thrust it, or can bash if you make a strike with the pommel or flat of the blade. So you could potentially create separate skill trees for different damage types, and while the weapon doesn't change, the way you use the weapon based on active skills that you learn would change.

It would be consistent with the way the active class skills work too. For example, when I played a Mage, you put one point into the Fireball spell and it shoots out a ranged fire attack. If you increase the rank to 3, it now does damage over time as it sets an enemy on fire. For me that changed the way I used the spell; to maximize the DoT I would make sure to use the spell first so that the damage ticks off my enemy as I cast other spells.

Maybe a slashing attack with a sword can gain a bleeding DoT with enough ranks like the Fireball spell.

I could also see other weapons diversifying too. A bow user might have different arrow types represented by skills. A blunt arrowhead might stun an enemy, while you could use a cutting arrowhead to slash.

Maybe a staff only gives blunt damage options, but instead you can diversify by using it for defense, or use it in a pole-vault fashion for a movement skill. I'm just speculating. And yes, these would be active skills, not just passive damage changes.

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