OPEN DISCUSSION-is Spirit useful?

OPEN DISCUSSION-is Spirit useful other than meeting demands for jewelry and offhands? Is there any necessity for a caster to invest in it?

Edit 1: do you think the design of spirit is faulted?
Edit 2: personal I think if spirit can also add all speed/running speed is some reliable solution to caster’s survivability.(But damage also needs some work too)
Edit 3: Traditional view on caster builds is they are relatively fragile but awfully destructive. Sad thing is majority caster builds in this game are almost neither comparing to other physical and DOT type of builds.

The main problem as I see it is that Physique is too good. As far kill speed (not to mention HC) not dying has a great impact and the easiest way is to pump HP up.

The only caster build I’ve seen that really benefits from spirit is the AAR build - which tends to be energy starved in general and has other problems to boot. And even then physique is generally better. I don’t think it is so much that physique is ‘too good’ though - it is more that non-physical damage items tend to be skewed to almost purely offensive items, health in particular is rare for some damage types. And when finding lots of %damage gear is easy but fitting in good health gear is hard then getting health from your excess stats starts to be a real good idea.

I would say no.

It’s best just to get enough to wear your gear but I can’t really see a point in spending more than that. Yeah it would give some builds more damage but casters usually struggle with survivability so physique would be better most of the time.

You can also get enough energy regen for most things without spirit.

I think it would be better if it also gave OA, like cunning does, I think it’s unfair to casters that cunning gives OA but spirit doesn’t. Either wya though I think people would still go physique. The hp and DA are too important, and they can be quite hard to get.

as someone who’s played probably a dozen characters to level cap, most of magical-based, i honestly cannot imagine a situation where spirit is ever worth putting points into

it’s just an awful stat on every conceivable level

The % damage given by spirit needs a revamp, one idea is something like overall damage done by char multiplied by % damage given by spirit while using caster offhand ( Like the way damage to humans , aetherials etc works)

The additive nature of %damage leads to poor scaling which is why both spr and cun are poor investments except for niche OA build. This leads to glass cannon builds without the cannon

Cunning and Spirit used to be separate multipliers way back actually, and it was dumb. By far the best way to go was maxing the one relevant to your build, you got so much damage that you weren’t a glass cannon, you were a glass nuke. I doubt we’ll go back to that, people can already achieve some incredible DPS as it is. I’m not sure how else you can incentivize heavy investment in those stats without it spiraling out of control though.

I think this is part of it. There is no glass cannon option because even tanky characters can get really good DPS, so what’s the point?

Maybe if the content wasn’t generally so easy to get through it would be neat to see a nice flat bonus added to spirit, with a logarithmic increase so more spirit gives you even more returns. That would be a decent incentive to push past 1k+ spirit.

The whole point of a glass cannon is to have enough damage you kill before it gets to you. OT: We need knockback.

I dont know how it was way back but builds today are based on procs anything else generally is inefficient for the same amount or more of effort gear and risk

A restriction like caster offhand or something similar where it only benefits the non scaling spells like AAR would make spirit worthwhile. Like how AP affects magic spells in League of Legends

I remember there was a short time period right after game release when Cunning/Spirit damage multipliers were higher.

Was it really that broken to warrant the near instant nerf that got?

Cunning was.

I think the real issue isn’t the scaling of stats rather it’s simply waaaay too easy to get 1000%+ damage type multiplier
TQ is way more balanced in that regard

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To me, there can be two quick solutions to the spirit dilemma:

  1. Make so that all three stats(physique, cunning and spirit) give at least some hp and some OA on top of what they already give. Physique should still give the most hp, followed by spirit and cunning, and cunning should give the most OA, but this way at least it would be more lucrative for casters and dps machines to invest in other stats than only physique. May be increase global monster damage and DA slightly to compensate for this.

  2. Another solution which I think is a little too out of the box and may be difficult to implement is to make energy act like a secondary buffer hp pool for the toons. This way casters will get slightly more on par with melee builds for survivability and will not feel almost forced to pump their hp all the time at the cost of dps.

That could be nice if a new modifier was added: Mana shield. So caster gear can spawn with %damage taken from mana. I would make it like dodge etc in that even if you go looking for it you can get ~40%.

Just make cunning and spirit damage modifiers be MULTIPLICATIVE with other damage modifiers, just like vs. monster type modifiers. Obviously this would entail lowering the actual bonus amount.

EDIT: I didn’t read the first page enough, sorry.

I don’t think every stat needs to increase survivability to be good. I do think that every stat needs to provide utility though, and of the 3 stats, spirit provides the least utility. It provides mana regen and damage, but the amount it provides is negligible compared to the amount which can be attained from just a single piece of equipment. I think that the damage component of spirit could be buffed, but it would be more interesting to see its mana regeneration abilities be buffed considerably. Perhaps spirit could also provide the player with soft-capped cooldown reduction as well.

Of course, amulet and ring spirit requirements could just be increased, but that would just feel punishing when players could be rewarded for investing in spirit instead of feeling forced to do so.

Expert opinion here :stuck_out_tongue:

Somewhat answering to ideas already posted. Sorry, no quotes.

  1. Physique is not too good, it’s just okay. Spirit is really somewhat underpowered, as well as cunning. 1000 spirit is what, around +400% magic damage?

  2. Also physique is just in more demand. End game armor pieces may require around 1000 phy, you can’t get that much without putting almost everything into Physique. Only casters may need around 700 spirit for their offhands.

  3. It’s the same problem with all %bonuses, e.g. I don’t bother maxing stuff like Fabric of Reality, Merciless Repertoire etc. At some point you just have enough damage so it becomes more worthy to invest into something else.

  4. Buffing Spirit is a problem, because monsters also use spirit. There was a time when spirit had been buffed, like, from +1% for 3 points to +1% for 2.5 points, and players started dying from poison on ultimate.

  5. Another problem is a vast discrepancy between casters and sort-of casters. Pretty much till now every caster-related change benefitted sort-of casters more, e.g. recent Time Dilation benefitted Shadow Strike the most.

  6. Personally I don’t want a mana shield I can’t turn off. Also, mana shield would benefit the most characters like fire strike sabo, because he doesn’t really need mana, but uses “magic” damage.

  7. Tuning up jewelry requirements is dumb. This would lead to situation where there’s a default stat distribution for every character, simply becase he would need to meet all of the requirements.
    Actually armor phy requirements should be lowered to even allow bigger investments into cunning/spirit. It’s counter-intuitive at first glance, but when you invest more into damage stat you need more defenses elsewhere. Also caster armor is just head/chest, everything else still requires ~600 phy. Without that stat distribution for casters will look just exactly like it is now - around 700 phy, around 700 spirit, just because they have to meet all the reqs.

  8. Making Spirit bonus multiplicative will require a full scale rebalance of the game.

  9. Making Spirit non-linear may somewhat solve it, but I don’t like it. This solution just push the players to either put everything into Spirit or just the bare minimum for gear reqs. Also it’s not obvious for players - they may never know that Spirit is non-linear and should be pushed higher.

  10. Actually, effect of Spirit on mana regen is okay and even crucial for some energy hungry casters even now. The reason why “just equipping the caster armor with energy regen” works is because you’ve already accumulated pretty big spirit to equip it and it doubles the regen from your caster armor.

  11. I don’t know of any simple solution to the problem. It’s certainly possible to make spirit look better, but it will require fine tuning of many things at once.

IMHO there is no simple and easy solution. It has been a broken, running toilet that has been running for years. It will require big changes that may only arrive in an expansion or maybe a BIG patch if the devs are generous enough.

Not a blanket multiplication of spirit bonus, use it on specific skills which are lacking like AP works in League of Legends. Grenado, AAR etc can scale

Also remove TimeDilation this skill does not fit with the overall gameplay design

I don’t think it’s dumb now. The opportunity cost for pumping cunning/spirit is less survivability which obviously is a big issue in Ultimate.

Plus there is the issue of diminishing returns. Assume for a moment that cunning/spirit has become multiplicative. Going from +0% to +10% bonus is a 10% improvement. Going from +100% to +110% bonus is a 5% improvement. So it becomes less rewarding to pump cunning/spirit as it increases.

Obviously this will require some significant rebalancing. But the devs recently made a blanket change to monster HP to accompany lower monster resists without too much hoo-ha. That is an encouraging thought.