Monday, April 16, 2012

D3 whirlwind breakpoints and weapon range.

In D2 the whirlwind mechanics were setup that the amount of hits that whirlwind achieved in a whirl was based upon reaching the 2nd increased attack speed breakpoint and the range of the weapon.

This really limited the effectiveness of certain weapons with whirlwind, such as the grandfather which was impossible to hit the 2nd IAS breakpoint with. And other weapons with a range shorter than 3, such as baranars star and lightsabre were limited as well.

Do you think D3 will share some of these same mechanics with D2? I hope that blizzard implements a new system personally.|||Quote:




Do you think D3 will share some of these same mechanics with D2?




I think it will be inevitable. But what blizzard can do is try to make each weapon stand out more, in that each will have a unique impact on whirlwind, and there will hopefully no longer be a single best weapon for whirlwinding with that trumps all the others in all aspects.

I guess it makes sense that a longer weapon will have a larger AoE with whirlwind, while a faster weapon would allow for more hits. Which should allow for different weapons to affect whirlwind differently, though I suppose that as with any system, there are bound to be some which get more benefits and a few which get the least.

Perhaps allow for more breakpoints, so that it is no longer all or nothing when it comes to trying to reach each breakpoint?|||There probably aren't going to be breakpoints. It's now rendered.



P.S. There is a simple solutions. And one that makes a lot of sense.

Make the big weapons with high range slow. Then you will have a trade off between range and speed. If done right, this will make many items interesting.|||Quote:








There probably aren't going to be breakpoints. It's now rendered.




(A bit of extra information to back the statement up).

The system used in diablo II was based on the frames it could draw, you would only go faster if you have emassed enough points to go to the next level, rendering would not have that problem and you should be able to increase something with a very high precision.|||Break points would be inevitable since there would have to be thresholds before it actually increases in speed.

AFAIK, blizz doesn't deal with a percent of a frame, so everything would have to round to a whole number, so eventually it'd get divided into bps.|||There will be no breakpoints in Diablo 3 for faster attacks. I'll bet everything I got on it.|||The D2 breakpoint/frame system was extremely clunky and unintuitive, so I'm glad it probably won't be returning. Having to look stuff up in some guide or whatever sucked. The WoW system was nice and the formula easy to use:

old AS / haste = new AS

...where haste would be e.g. 1.20 if you had 20% increased attack speed. Simple to use and each % AS actually gives you some benefit.|||Quote:








The D2 breakpoint/frame system was extremely clunky and unintuitive, so I'm glad it probably won't be returning. Having to look stuff up in some guide or whatever sucked. The WoW system was nice and the formula easy to use:

old AS / haste = new AS

...where haste would be e.g. 1.20 if you had 20% increased attack speed. Simple to use and each % AS actually gives you some benefit.




I agree the breakpoint system was terrible. I can see your idea would work great for standard melee swings, but how you you incorporate that into a skill like whirlwind?|||Quote:








I agree the breakpoint system was terrible. I can see your idea would work great for standard melee swings, but how you you incorporate that into a skill like whirlwind?




Number of hits per second rounded to the nearest whole number.

5 hps + 20% attack speed would be then be 6 hps.|||Quote:








I agree the breakpoint system was terrible. I can see your idea would work great for standard melee swings, but how you you incorporate that into a skill like whirlwind?




Yup, in WoW haste only applies to attacks that are tied to your auto-attack (standard melee swings) because other attacks are instant and have a cooldown or high resource cost that prevents the player from spamming them. You cannot make an instant attack any faster, obviously.

So how would you incorporate that into Whirlwind? Well, first we need to know how the skill will work. It's complicated, so bear with me.

  • Does the barbarian whirl around at a constant rate?

If yes, then increased attack speed has no impact on it, which isn't as bad as it sounds as it helps keep a presumably powerful skill balanced.

If no, for whatever reason, then what affects the rate at which he spins?
His base weapon attack speed?

+% attack/total speed skills?

+% attack/total speed affixes?
  • How and in what order are these applied?

Are they added? If yes, add the percentages together (e.g. 1 + 0.20 + 0.30 = 1.50 = 50% increase in # of swings per unit of time)

Are they multiplicated? If yes, multiply the percentages (1 x 1.20 x 1.30 = 1.56 = 56% increase in # of swings per unit of time)

Are they subtracted? If yes, subtract the percentages from the total (1 - 0.20 - 0.30 = 0.50 = 50% decrease in attack speed)
  • What does the formula look like?

  1. Old AS / haste = new AS. Ergo, a 100% AS increase halves your swing speed (e.g. if 2.5 sec is your old AS then your new AS is 2.5 / 2 = 1.25 seconds). Haste has a medium effect here.

  2. Old AS * subtracted haste value = new AS. Ergo, a 100% AS increase decreases your swing speed to 0 (e.g. 2.5 x 0 = 0 seconds). Haste has a large effect here.

  3. Base speed + (adjustable speed / haste) = new AS. Ergo, a 100% AS increase results in (e.g. 1 sec base + (1.50 / 2) = 1.75 seconds). Haste has a small effect here.

By now things have gotten too mathy, so it's probably a good idea to conclude that there are lot of factors to take into consideration, should the developers decide to let attack speed affect Whirlwind.

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