This is my first post here, so dont shoot me please ;)


I have seen this proposed many times before. Many thinks the current system with spell enhancement is flawed.

One major thing a new % based system could do is introduce a joint stat for dmg & healing.

As suggested on the eu priest forum, one could call this "Spell power rating".

It would be percentage based, so as healing spells have a higher base value than damage spells, they would recieve a larger + healed for the same value, just as it is with +heal costing less of an items budget than +damage now.

Do also take into account that even though healers then would recieve the same bonus to their spells through gear as damage specs, their talents do not support these spells enough to make them as efficient as damage dealers, thus not having an extreme impact on game balance.

One would have to fine tune the basic damage/heal value of all spells with an implementation of such a system.




Example of how this would work

Spell A deals 400 damage, spell B deals 500 damage.

A / B = dmg ratio = 400 / 500 = 0.8.



Adding spell power rating values.

lets say each 10 spell power rating is 1% increased spell damage at lvl 60, and the spells are used with a level 60 character.


+600 spell power rating.

600 / 10 = 60

So, its 60% increased spell power by +600 spell power rating. Wich means to find the damage dealt with spell A & B one has to find 160% of their base damage by multiplying their base damage by 1.6.

Now checking numbers on spell A and spell B.



A
400 * 1.6 = 640

B
500 * 1.6 = 800

We got some numbers here yeah, but look at this.

640 / 800 = 0.8


All spells would maintain the same damage ratio when compared no matter how much spell damage rating one would get before talents. Talents however, like imp frostbolt, dmg % and such would still ofcourse make some spells better than others, but the system would still work better when it comes to spells scaling ratio.


With this system, one could to rework the basic values of ranks so that if the devs want for example a shadowpriest with its talent tree, spells & abilitys to always have 85% of the damage capabilities of a Fire Mage they could easily do so.

It would ensure that the balance they intend to have will always be there.

Scaling penalties

New scaling penalty values has to be set for AE spells (mainly reducing the penalty i guess according to the low base damage).

Much would pretty much stay the same as far as scaling penalties go, no problems i can see there really. Life Drain could still only recieve 50% effect on damage with this system.


Solution to salvage downranking

I wrote 10 rating at level 60 for each dmg % as a number. But, there is one way to make this system work with downranking.

It is simply to make the amount of spell power rating needed for each % be dependant on the level of the rank. Not the level of the player. This would create a much higher percentage gained to benefit a lvl 40 spell than a level 70 spell. The overall extra heal/damage added to the spell could be worked to be the same by choosing the correct value change for each level, or one could make it intentionally deteriorate as your ranks goes lower if one wants, whatever blizzard finds suitable :-)


This system would benefit the develpers in make their job easier (after the major rework of items & spells basic values that is), it would benefit the players in an easier and less flawed system. And yeah... healers would rejoice.


What do you think? Would a change of system make things worse? Is there any big flaws to this proposed system? Any ideas of exploitation of this system?

Discuss!

EDIT: changed the Subject, didn't find it completely fitting with the content.

Realized i didn't mention clearly that a rework of spells basic damage values would have to be done. I will write it more clearly :)

Also in terms of DPS, the spells we currently used would still be superior because our talent trees enhances them greatly.

Time reduction effects does not conflict with this system. Imp frost bolt would still make frost bolt deal 20% more dps.

Realize that, exactly like what we have right now, an increase in the "damage" stat linearly improves the damage of a spell.

In your system, the scaling coefficient for a spell is constrained to be directly proportional to the spell's base damage.

In the current system, the designers started with a scheme in which the coefficient for a spell was direct proportional to casting time, and then adjusted by hand as necessary.

Since, in theory, the optimal system is one in which designers take the time to tune the scaling of every spell as they see fit, a "mechanic" which only serves to constrain what they can already do is not worth very much.

Good point. The system wouldn't be very flexible for additions and changes.

I don't know.

Some would say that the actually workings of the current system are rather poor. While I'm sure some of the features are quite deliberate, I would argue that in the vast majority of cases things have been changed haphazardly or balance only loosely preserved.

Tell me why in the present game, the best spell that get's the biggest dps/per of spell damage is lightning bolt? Why don't shadow priests scale very well with +damage gear. Why do +healing percentage talents only apply to base healing where most +damage ones apply to the whole spell. The whole system is a minefield of special cases and implementation issues, and I haven't even touched on why can't caster hybrids get any decent itemisation.

While the +damage/healing mechanic isn't too bad, the system is a mess. I think relabelling it as spell power and listing it's effects on the tooltip (much like what happens for melee ability) would be a great aid in allowing developers to actually balance spells and players to work out what they actually do.

If we want to go into stats then yeah I'd go more or less what the last poster was suggesting, but I see that as unlikely to happen, +damage and mana/5 seem to be far more prevalent on caster gear these days, than the so called primary stats.

Renaming "damage and healing" to "spell power" doesn't really affect anything.

The current system allows for an extremely high amount of precision on the part of the developers. They can let certain spells scale better based on the needs of the individual spell.

While the system isn't perfect, tweaks should be made to individual spells, not to the entire system.

Attack power isn't really a better mechanic so I'm not sure why it's often praised as such. It's caused just as many problems due to the mechanics on special abilities that they've had to make many adjustments to it.

Many people think the current system is flawed because they don't UNDERSTAND the current system.

+3.5 spell damage = 1 DPS no matter what spell it is you're casting. This relates to the system that attack power is based on.

The simple way of thinking about it is every 3.5 seconds you will get your full +damage gear in bonus damage on your bolt spam because its all normalised around a 3.5s cast time.

Talents such as Bane, Imp Fireball, Imp Frostbolt etc. give you a fair bonus to each of the spells they effect, because you get the same +damage bonus, but in a shorter duration. As a result Bane gives your Shadow Bolt spam a 17% DPS regardless of +damage.

A % based system will make instant attacks scale WELL beyond timed-cast spells and make them completely obsolete.

One has to remember that the implementation of such a system would call for tweaking on base damage of spells. So the current values on spells being overpowered with the new system isn't relevant ;)

So powerfull instant AE or coned spells would most likely be reduced in basic damage.


What would be taken into consideration highly when it comes to instants is Cooldown and mana cost, and also what other instants the spec has.


As for changing it to "spell power rating" would mean non-class specific caster drops especially cloth) could be made in a bigger variation to replace the non-class specific healer drops. For example pieces with spirit, +spellpower and perhaps mp5 on them in addition to the normal +hit and +dmg, +crit and +dmg and the mp5 & +dmg.

The healers would still wear some of their tier gear for healing due to set bonuses ofcourse, and those would have spell power rating aswell.

The benefit would surely be that healers wouldn't feel so severely gimped and had to grab 2 different sets of items to play all aspects of the game. And it wouldn't oveprowered them either, as their talent spec wouldn't enhance their damage talents so much that it mattered.

It works well for single-target spells with cast times. It kind of falls down for AoE (no AoE really scales well and my Arcane Explosions and Cones of Cold are doing roughly 75 more damage per burst now than they were at 60) and it really, really falls down for channeled spells (which don't get any real special boosts from spells or talents.) and DoTs (because there is no normalized time for DoTs, a 15 second DoT will get as much benefit from +dmg as a 24 second DoT... and Siphon Life... phew, +dmg damage really sucks for Siphon Life.

Of course, you could sorta hack away at the problem by introducing various "Empowered x" talents for AoEs and channels, but so far, they haven't been impressive. For example one can consider Empowered Arcane Missiles...

Spells like Hellfire gain 0.07dps from +3.5 spell damage, not 1.

That is only related to spells that just do damage. Leech (50%), channelled (duration), AoE (33%), and nukes with a debuffing (% varies) or DoT portion (% varies) work differently. And if you were to plot their scaling with spell damage compared to ‘normal’ spells you will see they do not stay relative but veer off at different rates. However, if you plot blizzards scaling up until level 60 without gear you do not get this disparity (disclaimer: within reason and generally speaking)

Actually it isn't really attack power that's the problem, it's weapon speeds. In the context of providing a damage boost to base melee attacks it works rather well. With cast spells you don't have the same variety in cast times that you do in weapon speeds, so that part of the issue isn't such a problem.

Melee special abilities have a cooldown or work off energy (which basically implies a cooldown), so those that just work off straight AP like bloodthirst are pretty simple to balance. It's when you start to have extra attacks that do base weapon damage and an AP contribution that you have to start looking at ways of balancing fast vs slow weapons and AP causes issues. It's pretty easy to calculate the damage boost you get from spamming kitty abilities for instance, because you have a single attack speed to consider.

Of course, there are a whole lot of prics and other buffs or debuffs that don't really consider the casting/swing time into them.