Dexterity, We Have a Problem.

All 3 stats increase your damage over time:
Strength - bonus to physical damage.
Dexterity - bonus to accuracy.
Intelligence - bonus to mana.

Obviously not every stat is good for every build, I have an elemental weapon damaging templar. Of the damage he deals with weapon hits, 6% of it is physical. That means I could increase my strength by 100 points and that would increase my overall DPS by ~1%. Meanwhile, his hit chance is in the mid 80s, a substantial increase to dexterity would significantly improve his dps. He has close to 300 intelligence so that he has a massive mana pool and enough passive mana regen to be able to spam skills.

Don't try and make dexterity a mirror to strength, it's a terrible idea.

One dex passives gives almost 1% hit chance (more when you have low accuracy, less if you have high accuracy), so it's about 1% dps increase (roughly).

One str passives gives 2% melee physical damage, which has diminishing return, so at the end, it is also about 1% dps increase. Besides, it's only for melee physical damage, while accuracy is for melee/ranged physical/elemental damage.

One dex passive gives 2% evasion, I think that if you have evasion gear, it is better than 5 hp for your survivability.

I know it's very approximate maths, but I don't understand your problem with dexterity.

I haven't experienced it yet myself, but as far as I understand the biggest problem with DEX is that in higher difficulties characters with evasion only are constantly being one hit killed. They can evade most, but if only one gets through, it enough.

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aurisacra wrote:

Accuracy should have an inherent +%critical as opposed to contriving some sort of "headshot" mechanic.

Agreed. Why add a second mechanic that's basically identical to one that already exists instead of just giving a bonus to the original one?

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golem09 wrote:

I haven't experienced it yet myself, but as far as I understand the biggest problem with DEX is that in higher difficulties characters with evasion only are constantly being one hit killed. They can evade most, but if only one gets through, it enough.

If that's the case it sounds like what dex needs is mostly a +HP section in the tree.

I think you are trying to separate Dex from Evasion and reconcile them that way, but I think that is a false approach. Dex is tied to Evasion, the way to make Dex more compelling is to make Evasion more compelling, in my opinion.

Evasion needs some serious help, and I'm honestly not sure what the answer to that problem is. As you've stated, many have suggested some sort of partial damage mechanic to simulate glancing blows and the like, but at that point what differentiates it from Armor?

Also, on accuracy, I take issue with feeling like it needs to be buffed. While I suppose I can agree that most people probably find this stat "boring", I think the distinction needs to be made between boring and effective. Accuracy is a most effective stat and is necessary in any non-caster build. Furthermore, the fact that high dex builds don't have to spend points on accuracy specifically like other builds might need to shouldn't be discounted as a bonus.

I will agree though that Strength is a very powerful attribute, and I think this has more to do with health then anything, due specifically to how chaos damage functions and the way some mobs (specifically, the constructs in later act 2) can apply it with no other method of dealing with it outside of chaos innoculation. This makes pure bonus health very significant in later difficulties, and high strength characters have a much easier time in that regard.

The problem there is that most people at first glance look at evasion and think they don't need to build a bunch of +health bonuses, but they actually are required to do so to deal with certain chaos damage mobs in the game. If you are building armor (and by extension strength) you build +health anyways because the two synergize directly with eachother. Evasion does nothing to synergize with bonus health, so it becomes less valuable, but still required nonetheless due to these types of mobs.

Add a companion keystone or notable:

Adrenaline: Player hit by an attack doubles their evasion rating for X seconds. X depends on % maximum life done by the hit.

This would then prevent strings of attacks that would inevitably happen, and would kill a dex character.

This would give a dex character the opportunity to pot or retreat, since they can only effectively take 1 hit at a time.

You absolutely cannot use damage mitigation with Dex evasion, as that is specifically the realm of armor... therefore the solution must be an augmentation to dodging, preventing strings of attacks that kill.

They already do this now to some degree, but I think it can be directly tied to your Dex stat, or available through passives.

A similar mechanism can be used to only check if a strike would kill you... then compare it to the last few hits you took and when they occurred... apply passives and make a roll to avoid death.

Or how about a passive on the dex side that greatly increases HP regen after hitting a certain % of health? Call it "second wind" or "Balboa", put a limit on how many times it can be triggered.. say once every three minutes or so.

Evasion really is no substitute for health and armor for my lvl 63 bow ranger at this point. Even with an additional 30%+ to HP, HP boosting equipment and Iron Reflexes giving me armor of over 5k, I find myself getting one hit KO'ed by normal chaos goat men jumping at me from off screen though.

While I don't know how difficult this would be to implement, making the s, z, x and c keys or the arrow keys into movement keys would make navigation through the game easier for all.

Alternatively, instead of movement keys, these can be designated as dodge/duck/roll keys with higher evasion ratings giving faster animation.

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MaxTheLimit wrote:

Maybe that is his point?
Maybe he likes it as is?

That is indeed my point. :)

Anyways, Dex and evasion aren't exactly the issue currently. The problem is what you have to fall back on. Theoretically, armor and evasion provide the same amount of damage reduction in the long run. But if you are using armor you most likely have more health. What we need is a solution to the getting hit case for evasion and probably not a direct fix for evasion itself.

Might I direct you all to this thread. Over my time here at these forums, there have been quite a few threads about Dexterity, but the thread I mentioned above is by far the most extensive/thoroughly discussed and has all of the relevant points.

Feel free to continue discussing solutions here, though, since the thread I linked is in the pre-0.9.9 forums and isn't likely to be viewed very often.

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TheRabbit303 wrote:

All 3 stats increase your damage over time:
Strength - bonus to physical damage.
Dexterity - bonus to accuracy.
Intelligence - bonus to mana.

Technically your assessment is true Rabbit, but the damage over time increase from Dexterity pales in comparison to the bonuses derived from Strength and Intelligence.

Intelligence provides more mana, which is necessary for all skills and is useful no matter what build you have.

Strength provides a direct bonus to melee physical damage, a bonus that scales up in effectiveness based on what gear you have. While limited initially to only melee physical damage, there are passives and support gems that open up this bonus to all damage types: spells and ranged damage. Thus, Strength too, can be beneficial to all builds using any skills.

Dexterity, however, gives a bonus that is extremely limited in nature and is outperformed by both of the other attributes: Accuracy. Intelligence based characters usually use Spells, which automatically hit, and thus can gain no benefit from accuracy. Strength based characters have easy access to the Resolute Technique Keystone, which makes all their attacks automatically hit, thus removing any benefit they might receive from accuracy. Most characters that can take Resolute Technique do because it saves having to look for mods on items that grant accuracy and it saves having to invest in dexterity or accuracy nodes on the passive tree. Dexterity based characters are stuck with the short end of the stick, because they're forced to deal with the fact that some of their attacks will miss, while their counterparts in Strength and Intelligence don't.