Wednesday, April 18, 2012

"% chance to be useable" skills, aren't they kind of pointless?

Hey.

Reading through the full barb skill list, it's looking pretty decent (even if there are a lot of seemingly useless defence skills). However, there are some skills that just seem odd. Namely, Berserker State, Onslaught and Revenge.

All these attacks use a % chance for you to be able to use them. Entirely passive, but act like a toggle without you being able to toggle it. I think this would lead to either confusion on the players part as to whether or not they can even use these skills, but it also means that a player using a certain build may either not ever gain the benefits of these skills, but may even just not notice them. Plus, the random chance has the possibility of negating player interaction as a trigger and just lead to players hoping they'll be able to use the skills they want to.

The skills in question:


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Berserker State

Passive

Rank: 1/5

Description: Hitting enemies has a 6% chance to cause a Berserker state for 4 seconds. while in this state, attack speed is increased by 5% and movement speed is increased by 3%.

Prerequisite of: Onslaught




This sounds like something that'll lead to players hoping it'll trigger, and be not very noticeable when it just randomly happens during a big fight with a bunch of critters. I think the only hope for this one would be to simply replace the random chance with some other player-dependant requirement. More on that later.


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Onslaught

Active

Rank: 1/5

Requires: 1 point(s) in Berserker State.

Description: Increases Crit Chance by 15% and dodge chance by 15% for 10 seconds. Requires the Barbarian to be in a Berserker State to activate.

Cost: 1 Fury Orb




A skill that would require very keen attention on whether or not the barb has even entered berserker state. It sounds useful, but due to the rarity of the berserker state occurring, this skill may be unintentionally underused. It's kind of annoying - the usefulness of this skill relies entirely on how high the chance of getting berserker state is. Perhaps it should also lengthen berserker state rather than just giving a separate bonus? That'd create a much better synergy between the two.


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Revenge

Active

Rank: 1/5

Description: Revenge has 10% chance to be usable when hit by an enemy.

Smash the ground dealing 110% weapon damage to all nearby monsters. You gain 2% of your maximum health for each enemy hit.




As pointed out in the article, this wouldn't really benefit dodge heavy builds. It also seems entirely built around the idea that you'll be using it when surrounded by a group. Couldn't it use a more viable requisite? The chance on hit means it's useable in any situation, but only 10% of the time. It makes it more useable, but then relies too heavily on random chance :/



So I'm gonna make a few quick suggestions for alternates requisites. Because I'm sure these skills aren't set in stone, and that there may be a way of getting rid of random chance when it comes to being able to even use a skill.

Berserker State: How about, instead of tying it to hits, tie it to fury gain? Say, "Triggers after gaining X% of Fury in X seconds". It's more complicated, but it'd mean that any build would get equal use out of berserker. It also ties the trigger of berserker to more combat inclined attacks. Say I just cleaved a whole bunch of enemies and got about half my fury back, that'd mean I'd enter berserker and would be able to take advantage of cleaving more enemies even more. Much more likely to seem useable than a simple percentage chance.

Onslaught: It's tied a little too heavily to berserker, but perhaps it should even lengthen the berserker states lifetime. If you use onslaught once in berserker, you'll be able to carry on taking advantage of berserker and onslaught. This not only means a player who keeps good control over his skills would be able to hulk out for longer, but also means onslaughts usability wouldn't rely entirely on how high a rank berserker is at.

Revenge: This one's a bit harder, as hits can mean either randomly getting the chance to use this on a big boss, or getting a good chance of using it while surrounded by a group. But how about it relies on even losing health first? Considering you'll only want to be using it when low on health due to the leech, maybe it should trigger whenever you lose a certain percentage of health. Say at rank 1 it triggers whenever you lose 10% of your health within X seconds. This'd mean it's useable and fitting for the low level play you'd be at by that point. But at rank 5, it's useable whenever you lose 5% health within a longer period of time.



tl;dr: random chance to use skills is kinda lame, relying on actions within time periods is probably better.|||I was just about to make a thread like this, but you beat me to it. Yes, so the active skills that have some sort of condition before becoming usable are a bit worrying. It seems it would lessen the number of builds. For example, an onslaught build won't exist because you can't rely on it. But if they let us use it all the time, we sould have, well, an onslaught build. Why lower the number of builds? In fact, shouldn't onslaught be a passive? From the description, it sounds like a boring normal attack that gives you some passive bonuses...some of the time.

It lasts 10 seconds AND you must be in a berserker state to use it? Jeeze, if it's going to be that much of a hassle then I won't bother with it. I would want reliable skills that you can use all the time as long as you have the fury.

Also note: if there are going to be "states" then there would have to be numerous skills that depend on these states, not just 1 skill. So now here is what all is holding us back from using some skills:

-fury cost

-timers

-state required like berserker state or getting hit, etc.

The barb will have to be a nerd barb.|||Seems like I will be playing a barb and assuming that none of those passives will ever factor in. If/when they trigger, I will treat it as a welcome, albeit unexpected christmas present...

really wacky way to play, IMO.|||1. They are just boring, not pointless.

2. You are underestimating how much 5% on hit or getting hit is in this kind of game. That's basically occuring every major fight with a pack of monsters.

3. Blizzard has a history of systematically ensuring that "random" events on skills are designed to occur every x hits or x times per minute.

For example, in WC3, the skill critical strike may say 15% chance to do a critical strike, but it in reality, it's something closer to 7% at first hit, 14% at second hit, 21% at third hit, and so on until you actually crit. Then the timer resets. You are basically guaranteed a crit every x hits, with a chance to actually score it earlier.

I wouldn't be surprised if these chance to activate skills work similarly. But then again, given the number of attacks you will be landing and the amount of times you will get hit, this system might not even be needed.|||Quote:








For example, in WC3, the skill critical strike may say 15% chance to do a critical strike, but it in reality, it's something closer to 7% at first hit, 14% at second hit, 21% at third hit, and so on until you actually crit. Then the timer resets. You are basically guaranteed a crit every x hits, with a chance to actually score it earlier.

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Sorry but your reasoning is wrong here. The skills work exactly like they say they will with a 15% chance to critical strike. It works of a simple binomial distribution probability, you do have 15% chance to crit with the first strike, but all calculations are independent of each other so this timer your talking about doesn't occur

It is perceived that way, but that is simply because getting a crit out of 2 hits with a chance to crit of 15% is higher than 15%, it is actually 27.75%, i could give you a full rundown of the maths if you want, but simply the game is right in saying 15% chance to crit, so out of 100 hits 15 will crit, but with some variance.|||Quote:




2. You are underestimating how much 5% on hit or getting hit is in this kind of game. That's basically occuring every major fight with a pack of monsters.




One issue is that there is no way to control when exactly it occurs.

It would be much more useful if it triggers off your 1st hit at the start of the fight, rather than towards the end of the battle, when the foes are almost all dead, and you end up with a few excess seconds of haste with no one left to fight.

Might end up making a fight even more unpredictable.|||Quote:








It would be much more useful if it triggers off your 1st hit at the start of the fight, rather than towards the end of the battle, when the foes are almost all dead, and you end up with a few excess seconds of haste with no one left to fight.




What is more important is the way that it will be triggered, do you have to be hit (as in lose health) or do blocks and armor deflection count as well? THAT would make a massive difference to its occurrence.

Did some rough math, this is for what u want a "hit" to be, i.e sheild blocks included. At 15% the chance to go into fury is as follow

1 hit, 15% 2 hit, 27.7% 3 hit, 38.5% 4 hit, 47.6% 5 hit, 55.6%

6 hit, 62.3% 7 hit, 67.9% 8 hit, 72.75% 9 hit, 76.8% 10 hit, 80.3%

If you want explanation of this math i would be happy to give it, but the idea im trying to show is that with fury at 15% it would happen at 4.7 (roughly) hits, with some variance, but on AVERAGE at 4.7 hits.

The more important part isn't the chance of it to happen, but what the what events can trigger it.|||Quote:








Sorry but your reasoning is wrong here. The skills work exactly like they say they will with a 15% chance to critical strike. It works of a simple binomial distribution probability, you do have 15% chance to crit with the first strike, but all calculations are independent of each other so this timer your talking about doesn't occur

It is perceived that way, but that is simply because getting a crit out of 2 hits with a chance to crit of 15% is higher than 15%, it is actually 27.75%, i could give you a full rundown of the maths if you want, but simply the game is right in saying 15% chance to crit, so out of 100 hits 15 will crit, but with some variance.




Forgive me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, they actually do exist. While diablo 2 engines does exactly what it says (15% chance means 15% chance, calculated independently), the wc3 engine actually has a different coding that increases a critical strike's chance with every hit that doesn't crit, and the percentage increases is calculated so that on average, it does a crit on 15% of attacks. I was surprised when I first found out about this, as I also think that they are independently calculated, but it appears that wc3 has a different method of proccing crits.|||The % chances to activate probably go up with rank

if it even hits 15%, that's ALOT. I found the barbarian typically averaging 4 hit enemies per SWING (granted, cleaving attack was very prominent at Blizzcon as the default "goto" skill). A barbarian could easily find himself in an almost perpetual state of "berserker mode"

if anything, it looks exciting to me, it'll keep me on the edge of my seat while playing, though I can understand why some would want more passive skills|||Quote:








Forgive me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, they actually do exist. While diablo 2 engines does exactly what it says (15% chance means 15% chance, calculated independently), the wc3 engine actually has a different coding that increases a critical strike's chance with every hit that doesn't crit, and the percentage increases is calculated so that on average, it does a crit on 15% of attacks.




Sorry, i haven't played WC3 and don't know the details of its system and i was assuming it followed the D2 engines binomial distribution for critical hits.

With that in mind, the WC3 system if it isn't binomial, would replicate a binomial distribution nonetheless so my comment is somewhat relevant. I would like to find out more on WC3 system if someone has a link so i could analyze it in comparison to D2.

But as i explained the D2 system does achieve an average of 15% with increasing chance of critical hits in cumulative distribution following an unsuccessful hit.

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