It's been a while since I've done one of my patented "Wall O' Text" posts and things are slow at the moment, so here we go!
I just wanted to create this topic to share some of the random ideas that have been bouncing around my head for the last couple of weeks. Instead of rehashing ideas that I've already posted into other topics, I'll use this only for ideas that I haven't seen anywhere before. If someone has had similar (or exactly the same) ideas, feel free to chime in and share credit if they're good.
If my ideas are terrible, I'm willing to take the blame by myself. :))
Thought 1: I don't like that Offensive, Defensive and Utility stats share itemization space.
I've seen people who can get 80% mitigation on certain Heroes by sacrificing massive amounts of DPS. We already know the large amounts of Damage that can be done by gearing purely for Offense and ignoring Defensive stats. This is only possible because each piece of gear has approximately the same amount of "itemization points" that are shared between Offensive, Defensive and Utility stats. You can find pieces of gear that will have all (or almost all) Offensive stats and others that will have all (or almost all) Defensive stats that have a bigger impact on TTK or TTL than any gear that splits its points between the two.
It gets even worse, because in a lot of cases, Utility stats are completely ignored (unless they're really spectacular), but they still take up valuable points.
I was thinking that if gear had set pools of Offensive, Defensive and Utility stats that were completely separate from each other, it would be easier for Gaz to make gear that was suited to particular Heroes and/or builds. Instead of asking "Do I want Attack Speed, Crit Damage and Brut Damage, or Defense, Dodge and Health on my Slot 4?", it could be a question of "Does my build benefit more from Attack Speed and Dodge or Crit Damage and Deflect?".
Thought 2: Itemization and Omegas for Hybrids needs to be rethought.
The Power Cosmic was an amazing addition to the game. Finally, Hybrids had a Legendary that was perfectly suited to them. It was even strong enough that it was BiS for anyone who had 2 or 3 Damage Types. Unfortunately, the introduction of the lvl 80 Legendaries shows the flaw. Every Legendary has 5 slots for stats and it takes 3 slots just for Power Cosmic to grant Damage Rating for a 3 Damage-Type Hybrid. While the stacking +1 All Attributes is a great idea, it's still a symptom of the same line of thought that plagues Hybrids:
Separate Damage-Types very rarely stack, but itemization for them always treats them as if they do.
1500 Mental DR + 1500 Phsyical DR + 1500 Energy DR on a 2 or 3 Damage-Type Hybrid is exactly equal to 1500 generic DR, unless there are attacks that use more than one Damage-Type simultaneously. A 2 Damage-Type Hybrid is wasting the DR they can't use, but Power Cosmic has it taking up a slot, anyway.
1500 generic DR on a Hybrid is equal to 1500 Physical DR on a purely Physical Hero. If 40 DR is equal to a 1% increase in Damage, then both examples will give 37.5% more Damage on their respective Heroes.
1500 Physical DR on a 2 or 3 Damage-Type Hybrid is NOT equal to 1500 Physical DR on a purely Physical Hero. The Physical Hero will ALWAYS get 37.5% extra Damage on ALL of his/her attacks, while the Hybrid will only benefit from those attacks that do Physical Damage. Any Mental or Energy attacks won't get any bonuses from Physical DR, making it much less desirable for Hybrids.
It's the same thing with Omegas. A node that has +1 Strength and +1 Energy shouldn't cost twice as much as a node that has either/or because Strength and Energy are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. Hybrid Heroes can take advantage of both stats, but they don't actually STACK (with a few exceptions).
The Hybrid has to choose between 8% Damage and 2% Spirit Cost Reduction to some of their attacks, or 4% Damage and 1% Spirit Cost Reduction to all of their attacks for the same price that a Single Damage-Type can get 8%/2% to all of their attacks. Of course, this doesn't apply to Energy/Mental Hybrids, but they wouldn't take a node with +1 Strength, anyway. :P
I'd like to see either more attacks with multiple Damage-Types so this "Hybrid Tax" makes sense, or remove the few truly Hybrid attacks and re-think the costs so that we can play Hybrids the same way we'd play our Single Damage-Type Heroes.
