Diablo 3 has just received its fourth major update since the
launch of the Reaper of Souls expansion earlier this year and each of these
patches has made significant efforts to balance the game. That’s to say that
work as been done to ensure that all classes are as effective as each
other and various builds for each class are equally competitive. It’s a tough
job and no one expects perfect balance from an incongruous system where each class
uses dramatically different play styles, but I have been puzzled by the
developers routinely overlooking one obvious area for improvement in their balance passes – two-handed
weapons. Why?
The gaming trope for two-handed weapons is that they are
slow but powerful. Rounding out the other possibilities, a one-handed weapon
and shield provides solid defence but is less powerful while dual-wielding is fast and brings death by a thousand pin-pricks. Not every game follows these rules, but
it’s pretty much the default thinking gamers use when first approaching a new
game that offers the choice. With this in mind, balance is usually achieved by
calculating the damage per second (DPS) a setup can provide. As an example, a
two-handed weapon hitting for 10 damage but taking a full second to swing is
roughly equivalent to a dual-wield setup hitting for 5 damage but attacking
twice per second. Obviously, most modern games are a lot more complicated than
this simple example but the idea of balance is the same; regardless of setup,
the player is able to output an equal amount of damage rendering all options
viable.
At first glance, Diablo 3 doesn’t really have a balance problem
– two-handed weapons swing slower but hit harder than their dual wielding
counterpart. If anything, two-handed weapons should be considered better
because they typically have significantly higher DPS ratings than one-handed
weapons. However, if this were the case,
everyone would be clambering to get a giant hammer instead of a short sword – a
quick look at the gear of the top accounts in the world shows this is
definitely not what players are doing. Pretty much everyone, excepting
crusaders (I’ll get back to them), is using a dual-wield or sword and shield
setup. So what’s the deal? As you might expect, weapons in Diablo are more nuanced than their raw damage stats.
Beyond straight damage, Diablo’s weapons can roll a variety
of affixes that confer bonuses to their wearer. In the current meta-game, beyond
raw power, players are seeking a weapon that includes a high main statistic
appropriate to their class (strength, intelligence, or dexterity), a bonus
damage multiplier (such as adding extra damage or attack speed), and a socket
(a customisable bonus chosen by the player through inserting magic gems). For
most stats, two-handed weapons can roll values that are about twice that of a
one-handed weapon with the notable exception of the socket. What this means is
that a player wielding two-one handed weapons effectively has two-sockets to
use. Given that the bonuses conferred by gems in sockets are considered to be
of a much higher value than the other stats, players are incentivized to
dual-wield. As an aside, shields are able to roll certain statistics (namely critical hit chance) that
cannot be found on weapons and can create situations where, coupled with the
extra defence, it’s logical to use one.
Unfortunately, the solution isn’t just a matter of allowing
for two-sockets on two-handed weapons (although this would go a long way to
making them attractive), players also consider the relative usefulness of
attacking more frequently. One of the easiest examples to demonstrate this is
the notion of overkill. If a two-hander deals 10 damage in one second but an enemy
would die with 5 damage, that extra damage dealt is useless. This becomes a
problem for balance if a one-handed weapon deals 5 damage in half a second as
the player now has a speed advantage to move on to the next monster. Further,
in Diablo, many ‘on-attack’ bonuses are conferred ranging from restoring life
per hit or reducing the cast time (cooldown) of big spells. While this is
mitigated somewhat by altering proc coefficients – basically forcing it so that slower attacks
cause an effect more frequently than faster attacks – it can be maddening to
find the right balance across all the different ways the game allows an attack
to be done and how a player might use them in combination.
It’s not all bad for two-handers though. The aforementioned
big spells hit bigger with a big weapon and essentially provide more (big) bang
for your buck. Also, two-handed weapons are less-resource intensive; swinging
more slowly means you aren’t spending your mana (attack fuel) as quickly and
may prevent situations where your character runs out of gas. Even further, in a
game that’s all about finding the best loot, finding two great one-handers is
twice as difficult as finding one great two-hander. Finally, some classes
(specifically the Crusader) have the ability to use a two-handed weapon as if
it were a one-hander which makes equipping a dagger on them seem pretty foolish.
Clearly, the sheer number of variables that power the player
judgment of which weapon is best prevent easy balance. That said, with so few
players using two-handers why hasn’t the development team tried something. Previously, I offhandedly suggested
that adding a second socket to two-handers might be a good idea but let’s play
that suggestion out. Overnight, the potential damage output of two-handers has
gone through the roof and so has the viability of builds that benefit from
them. The inherent raw damage advantage of two-handers is now magnified even
further and players would almost certainly flock to them to exploit this using
abilities that have been balanced over the last several patches for a different
meta-game. This change will invariably cause a re-evaluation of some abilities
and will create a knock on effect of further balance tweaks. Sure, two-handers
are now being used more but suddenly a bunch of abilities are out of whack. The
point that I’m illustrating here is that even a seemingly straightforward change can
create significant waves down the line in ways that may not be easily
foreseen. This is why developers prefer
to make smaller changes cumulating over time instead of dramatic changes all at
once (adding a second socket would be a huge change).
The reality is that two-handers are in a tough place where
it’s not exactly clear what the best way to make them competitive is without
creating instability elsewhere. Sure they need a buff but too little
doesn’t solve the problem and too much will create a ton of headaches. Accurately predicting the Goldilocks zone is next to impossible as it would entail predicting the ingenuity of the player base to exploit cracks in the system. I think that something more than minor changes are needed and
at this point and (this is pure speculation) I believe that the development
team is waiting for the first major content patch (ie. the biannual super patch) to start changing things. Players naturally expect a series
of balance adjustments following the biggest updates and if the development
team pokes the wrong slider for two-handers they will have a grace period to
put it back before experiencing community backlash. Personally I would prefer it this way instead of daily build-altering
balance tweaks - Diablo will never be perfectly balanced and a consistency to the imbalance is better than seeming randomness.
There is no doubt that two-handed weapons in Diablo 3 are in
need of some love from the development team, but exactly how to make them
attractive isn’t as obvious as it first seems. If it were simply a matter of
making DPS equal amongst all weapon types this would have been done ages
ago. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately from a different view) Diablo’s
mechanics are complex and predicting the consequences of adjusting any one
slider is an inexact science. At this point, the inaction from the development
team tells me that they feel that more than just a few small tweaks to two-handers are
needed and they're consequently waiting for a major content update to start fixing them.