Durability is pretty much completely trivial, and these affixes are pretty much completely free. I see these on vast majority screenshots of plagued gear, almost everyone prioritizes them.
For one, plagued(purple) gear and weapons seem to try to be about specific or situational bonuses, encouraging good combinations/synergies with your other gear. But then everyone wants to settle for the generic “Damage reduced based on durability” / “Attack Speed based on durability” “Damage Increased based on Durability”, etc, some of which are actually quite OP
On the other hand, it pretty much steps on the toes of Blue items, which are supposed to be the more generalistic/safe options. In most slots, these are already pretty less popular, both compared to masterworks and purples, and the durability affixes on purples really dont help at all
Id really like to see blue items getting some love, but above all, id like to see Purples to be more interesting, without the more generic/safest/free affixes being so dominant, and the conditional stuff being more encouraged. Not having basically everybody running “damage taken reduced by x% based on durability” would be a step in the right direction, for example
People don’t just use the durability affixes because they’re strongest, they use them because the alternatives are garbage, like “gain x on backstab/fatality/parry”, or “gain y on kill”, which works perfectly fine while clearing the map, but is a dead affix on bosses.
not all of the alternatives are poor and there are interesting options
but yes, the bad cases like “a tiny bit of health or 10 focus on backstab” shouldnt really be a thing. I think X on kill/fatality can be bonkers on occasion and its good for the game to encourage you to get different gear, but stuff for bosses could use being more fleshed out.
I do actually like the full focus on backstab that midnight blade has though
My issue is that some weapons like the staff can’t even backstab, some other weapons are lacking charged attacks and don’t have more than one attack sequence.
So a lot of the affixes are very niche and often aren’t even applicable.
I too don’t like the durability ones, mostly because I don’t think % damage increases affixes should exist at all, they’re a balancing nightmare and break the game because people just stack % damage increases wherever they can and it always leads to balancing problems where the abilities are doing way more damage than outside the scope of what developers intended.
Most affixes should have static values and effects, not be % scaling affixes.
I’m pretty sure their game telemetry is telling them what people are building, and they are not happy with the system either, so I’d expect a gear revamp sooner or later.
I feel like affixes should affect gameplay flavor rather than sheer gameplay performance. Otherwise it’s always too easy for people to always math out one significantly ahead option because in any game with HP pools the optimal strategy is always the one that depletes the HP the fastest.
Most of the enchants need to be balanced and I was thinking of taking the exel that the developers provided us and add a new column with the changes I would make
the staff can definitely backstab, are you sure you werent trying it pre-patch where it was borked?
the charge attack part is bad yeah
I feel like affixes should affect gameplay flavor rather than sheer gameplay performance. Otherwise it’s always too easy for people to always math out one significantly ahead option because in any game with HP pools the optimal strategy is always the one that depletes the HP the fastest.
yes, thats big part of what i meant by ‘, id like to see Purples to be more interesting, without the more generic/safest/free affixes being so dominant, and the conditional stuff being more encouraged.’
I’m actually using magic pants, because they provide unconditional movement speed bonus, stamina regen and focus on damage dodge. Saying that, cursed pants also have its own advantages. I’d like to see more magic exclusive mods that would incentivize players to use magic items despite cursed items providing higher base stat values.
In any case, I don’t think “based on durability” mods are the issue here. Those are pretty much just passive mods with inconvenience that punishes players when they die.
Perhaps the solution is to make those weapons more interesting?
I think the ring bonuses and buffs are huge contributor to damage getting out of hand. I actually like that there is a single mod slot on a weapon that allows you to modify damage in various ways.
Do I want to attack faster or do I want to hit harder or even harder but only with the special attack? I kind of like that choice.
That would also be quite tricky to balance because weapons often have different attack speed even within the same weapon class.
The fact theyre passive mods with a basically irrelevant inconvenience is precisely what is bland, and further helps desincourage magic items which are supposed to have less potential
their purpose is not having as much potential but having less unconditional bonuses after all, if the purples are filled with way more powerful unconditional bonuses for majority of their slots then thats not good at all
with that said yeah i did say magic items should get some more love, someone in the discord suggested leaving them with 2 gem slots, i wonder if that would be interesting
In some cases, purple items offer unique mods that infused or magic items do not, e. g. elemental mods on body armor, poise on charging etc. Magic items on the other hand offer mods that cursed item do not, e. g. general poise increase.
Having said that, I definitelly agree on lack of mod variety or lack of more interesting mods. I also agree on magic items being worse most of the time and would prefer them to be more useful.
Another issue with a cursed items is that the downside mods are either too punishing or completely negligible. I’m running build with 4 health drain mods and it barely makes any difference. That’s one of the reasons why magic items don’t stand a chance - extra mod and higher values basically for free.
But that doesn’t make generic passive mods bad. Action specific mods usually are (and should be) stronger, but the existence of a weaker more generic mod is also important in case you don’t want to restrict yourself into specific playstyle. While you might want to use cursed item to get exclusive playstyle defining mod, you might still want to supplement it with more generic mod, e.g. stamina regen.
From what I had seen I would assume they are defunct anyway. So both sides are good, on the one hand they can be used as-is, as +durability won’t push them, as they are pretty valid like that anyhow. On the other hand things are defunct right now and will be reworked anyways.
I dont’ like The “Based on Durability” effect, it doesn’t change the way you play (and that’s a good thing because if it changed the way you play it would be horribly annoying), it’s easy to forget about the condition (also because it’s not explained well) and from my point of view it’s useless to add a long sentence for such a superficial gameplay detail, also the condition always makes the enchantment Feel weaker, less valuable, even if in practice it’s the same thing.
I think it would makes more sense if all gear, once below 50 durability, became 20% less effective and once below 25 durability, became 50% less effective, just like a general rule for the game (explained properly in a tutorial obviously not like in Darksolus 1).
This way the player is incentivized to repair items, and the idea of losing durability on death makes more sense, instead of being just an under cover “you lose money when you die”.
Seeing that “based on durability” is very likely defunct, also in a way that Moon most likely noticed long ago anyways, it will quite likely be aged out when the combat system is reworked. There are so many good suggestions made in this forum, including yours, and Moon obviously also has put much thought into coming iterations, I can’t wait to see what we’re getting next. Knocking on wood and sippin tea in the meantime…
and that people cant handle a basic “just go to the smith to repair when you have to go there for trade or upgrade or enchant or bounty or build or quest anyways” is ridiculous to me.
Who in gods name cant handle it? pretty much everyone defaults to these enchants and practically nobody cares about current durability
The alternatives might be trashy now, but might have their niches carved when we actually get proper amount of content. It’s easy to see how “gain y on kill” could be a gamechanger on a boss that has a lot of adds. Backstabbing… ehh, yeah, that one could go as far as I’m concerned.