Thursday 27 June 2013

Current Issues with Dexterity & the Dodge Mechanic


For those who don't know the specifics, "Each point of dexterity increases your chance to dodge by 0.1% up to 100 dexterity; each point of dexterity beyond 100 increases your chance to dodge by 0.025%." More detailed explanations can be found on the D3 wiki (diminishing returns as you increase Dex past 1000 and 2000).

Currently, Dodge gives you a chance to evade melee/ranged attacks. Dodge does not apply to AoE, DoT elemental damage like plagued, molten, desecration, fire chains, or arcane. I am not 100% certain about lightning or mortar. You can dodge frozen. You cannot dodge fear, jailer, vortex, or reflects damage (you used to be able to, but this was changed). You cannot dodge the knockback effect, but you can dodge the attacks that would cause knockback. I am not certain if things like fire chains, mortar, or lightning apply knockback, I would have to test this.

All in all, I feel like in its current state dodge amounts to a game mechanic that I, as a Plevel100 Monk, don't even notice. High end characters end up with around 2.8-3.2k of their main stat. The innate bonus provided from Dexterity, the dodge mechanic, cannot compete with the passive benefits of Strength and Intelligence. Each point of Intelligence grants +0.1 per point to All Resistances. Each point of Strength grants 1 armor (people traditionally have stated that 10armor = 1 point of all res; there are specific formulas you can find on the D3 Wiki to determine the exact value of armor as you scale upward).

To quote (with minor alterations) what I said in the abovementioned post:

"10% of Intelligence translated to AR is MASSIVE with how much INT characters have nowadays (3k+ INT = 300 free AR, WHILE also scaling up your damage hugely), and its a similar situation with the armor bonus gained from Strength. The "trade-off" between dps and survivability is no longer as significant for these classes really; you can get improve dps while gaining survivability at the same time.

This is NOT the case for the bullshit "dodge" mechanic. When was the last time I actually noticed I dodged something? Maybe when I was porting to town and something was trying to hit me? When was the last time any Monk or DH said, "AWWW YEAH, I GOT 20 MORE DEX, THAT MEANS MORE DODGE WOOHOO!" I am not WORRIED about basic melee attacks hitting me; I'm worried about all of the elemental shit E packs dump on the ground around me. Monks have no choice but to stand in the middle of the shit, they can't whirl away and lack a super-mode that grants CC immunity (what a joke that this hasn't been addressed yet), and they don't have any bullshit passive that allows them to keep up a damage mitigator permanently like Diamond Skin (I have a plevel100monk, and a p84 CM wiz so I'm not complaining, just being honest). Fuck, even when I TRY to run away from an e pack, if I stop attacking and leeching my life will ROCKET down, despite having 45khp, massive armor, and 800AR."

I refuse to hate on WD out of principle (poor, ignored stepchild of D3) but even Haunt and Bats with life steal grants them enough sustain to just stand in the middle of everything. And poor DH's, you need much attention and help, dodge is only a tiny fraction of your problems.

I am flippant and cavalier in this post, but the essence of what I am communicating is conveyed.

TL;DR - The dodge benefit granted from Dex deserves a rework, as it cannot compete with AR from INT and armor from STR. Dodge is there, but it feels insignificant in the current meta, when 99% of the things that kill you cannot be dodged.

So how do we solve this issue? Well that leads me to...

My Assuredly Terrible Ideas that People Will Poke Holes In And Shit All Over:
  • Flat damage reduction %. Something like 3000 Dex = 12% overall damage reduction, obviously scaling with the amount of Dex. Anything to improve the Monk's innate survivability, while rewarding the player for stacking Dex.
  • Changing so more E affixes are subjected to the chance to dodge before dealing damage.
  • Actually balance the game so e effects and bullshit like trees/exploding poisonous dog corpses/bees/skeleton mage spider fireballs don't do insane amounts of damage in a fraction of a second (a boy can dream).

Thanks for reading, input and feedback welcome. I hope a nice discussion could lead to some better idea generating than I was able to do independently.