Item Development - Information

"

DemiDemon wrote:

"

Fafhrd81 wrote:

"

NickK_GGG wrote:

ensuring players have the right amount of information

good. now what about adding "TO ATTACKS" to the "Adds x-y dmg" item mod? imho it is one of the most confusing and incomplete piece of info for new players out there. never figured out the reasoning for not making it clear.

I'll second that. I've introduced several players to this game and that's the biggest bugbear, checking their jewellery and telling them that those mods mean nothing to a caster.

I agree, that imprecise wording drives me bonkers. Precision is good.

ice storm is that merveil have, am i right ?

"

grafas7 wrote:

ice storm is that merveil have, am i right ?

yes or the ice rain in some of hakus dungeon or vagan cast sometimes. Also i think the trapper squid in one corupted zone cast it and order of the frozen sky bloodlines.

"

Archwizard wrote:

"

griffinzero wrote:

The only thing i still don´t understand at the staff is do i need links? That is something i also wanted to know for Jaws of agony (the shield that gives lvl 20 bear trap). Because every support gem is linked to the skill in the item, isn´t it?

You do not need links for Ice Storm. Every socket in an item inherently links to a skill/support in the item. This was confirmed by a dev somewhere in this thread (click the pretty GGG icon to see which one, I forget who).

"mad grin"

The staff will cost a few chaos, like searing bond (after a while of course), so then you need a few jewlers (around 150) to get a 7 l skill nice... I think i like it ... I WANT THAT STAFF...

I haven't read every post here, so someone may already have posted this.
But some people seemed confused about the amount of int required to reach the damage shown in the tooltip picture of Icestorm. So I will now try to shed some light on the issue:

Now I will calculate this as if the character have no modifieres increasing the damage other then those provided by the staff itself.

Warning: Math incomming..
351=(3*x/10)*((100+x/10)/100)
x=692

I have in my equation used the high end value of the damage as shown in the picture: 351.
According to the equation shown above, the required int to reach the damage of the tooltip you'll need a total of 692 int. however the staff itself increases your int by 16% meaning the actual int of the character before equipping the staff is a following:

692=x+x/100*16
x=597

All in all the character would need to have a int of just below 600 before equipping the staff to reach the damage shown in the picture.

Feel free to call me out on my math if it's off, wont promise i'll respond though :P

Well, I don't expect that much from the skill. People may get excited by the easy 7L, the synergy with es through int, but it will suffer from the same problem than firestorm which is highly inefficient.
Firestorm is viable in endgame, but very few people play it because of the aoe. If you increase the aoe you make rains of fireballs on the whole screen but it suck on bosses because there is no shotgun. Even without any aoe and with concentrated effect you lose a great part of the fireballs on a single target.
It also take some time for the fireballs to land, there are a lot of builds that can clear a whole screen in the time between the cast and the first fireball falling.
And firestorm is also harder to scale correctly, to use it efficiently you need increased duration and quality.
Really, the problem will not be the damage but the efficiency of the skill itself. I don't see it shine in the actual meta. But I guess for defences it's not that bad, the chilling with asenath's gentle touch or some curse on hit temporal chain together with the potential es thanks to intelligence could be great. I can also see it be good in a mom build, but not as much as pledge or an es shield.

I am predicting that (except the time the item is released) most people will be playing with it because of the easy 7L (but if it's because they don't have the money they won't benefit fully from it because they won't be able to scale the intelligence correctly, and the intelligence will have a better synergy in an es build, which is also not cheap), for levelling, for attracting attention (mainly streamers or creatures of this kind), people wanting to try it and a few that play it because they really like it.

For items that scale on a stat - in this case, your staff, a single piece of additional information is all that is really needed.

At the end of the line: Deals 1-3 damage per 10 int, add a parenthetical current damage outcome.

"Deals 1-3 cold damage per 10 Intelligence (50-150)" The parenthetical would only display a value when the item is equipped, otherwise it would be (1-3).

On another note:

Please return the old socket probability calculations. Having run the blood/torm league for the past few weeks I've seen an absolute miniscule amount of sockets and linked sockets on pretty much everything. Below level 50 really limits currency accumulation, and with 4-linked items being 10+ item-levels below my current there is zero sense upgrading them. Advancing through levels 50-60 is a boring, ugly grind because nothing useful is dropping as far as current level armor with 4 links, and the only five link I've seen in a month was from a vendor.
Fusings will not, at all, link 4 or more. The only way to achieve that is with a crafting bench.

And pretty much every single unique I've had drop has been 1 or at best 2 (not linked) sockets.

Either that, or decrease crafting costs by a factor of 10.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

treborfflow wrote:

I have mixed feelings about oskills like this. I love the idea of the item and the way it's done but it takes away a bit of diversity. Players who want to go Icestorm can only do by using this staff.

Without this item, they would have zero options for a weapon in an Icestorm build, and would not be able to make that build at all. With it, they have one option for a weapon (and can build their other gear differently based on their preference), and can make the build. This has literally only added build diversity.

Well there's two ways of looking at build diversity. One the global build diversity, how many builds for the classes are there. In that way this staff has opened up tens of possibilities that without it, could not exist. However, there is the micro of that, diversities within a build type (coc discharge vs self cast vs burning ae discharger vs frozen discharge vs mjolners discharge etc etc) and in that way, the diversity here will be very narrow as this item takes up two slots and will force every icestorm build to utilize the staff (as far as we know).

I don't envy the challenges in relaying data to the user... That said, I love the idea of items that level with you - I've seen that dynamic in other games and it spices things up.

Will build a defensive tank with loads of INT pronto.

Thank you for the insight into development. I agree I need just enough info to spark my interest in an item. Always enjoy these and now I have an idea for a build when Act 4 releases :). Thanks Nick!