Current state of attributes

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I did some analysis of the Attributes in LE :

For each attribute, I counted for each mastery the number of skills using it for scaling, the number of nodes increasing it and the number of nodes using it.
I know that table is really basic and doesn’t tell that much info. I did some more precise tables with the decomposition per advanced mastery (I can share them if needed). They are better but still not precise enough as it would require for each unlock(able) skill and node to analyse the value against the cost for a build in a mastery.
Yet, we can already see some things.

For memory, the theorical main function of the attributes is to give a defensive boost:

  • Strength = +5% armour
  • Dexterity = +5 dodge rating
  • Intelligence = +4% ward retention
  • Attunement = +5 elemental protection
  • Vitality = +15 void, necrotic & poison protection (bigger boost as no skill scales on it)

But truly, nobody really cares about that defensive buff and only cares about the buff on the skills. That defense boost is a little extra that nobody would care about if it wasn’t there.
Excepted for Ward Retention.

I will talk first of the Vitality as I believe it is the biggest issue.
In itself, it is some protection with an extra step. Which makes it harder to understand what it does. And also mean that nobody will increase it using Affixes but will directly increase the associated protections.
Through the nodes, it’s not that easy to increase. Shaman has no node for it. Beastmaster, Druid and Spellblade can access to only one node. Only Void Knight and Necromancer can access to 3 nodes (with 1 on the tree of another advanced mastery).
The two nodes using Vitality are on the Spellblade (second part) and Lich (first part) trees. But as you don’t increase Vitality, the effect is not worth the investment (even with points in Vitality, the effect wouldn’t be worth it). Points are better used elsewhere.
Vitality could easily be removed.

Another easy issue is Dexterity.
I know Rogue is not there yet and should use more that attribute.
Even though, there are still issues.
Biggest is with Primalist: only one skill using that attribute, no node to increase it nor use it. Serpent Strike needs to be reworked to remove the use of the Dexterity.
Other class are a bit better but still not great with the attribute.
Only one node to increase Dexterity for the Sentinel, and on the first part for the Forge Guard tree. For three skills using that attribute.
The Acolyte still miss the Warlock. But there are Harvest and Reaper Form that use Dexterity. And no node associated to the attribute.
Last is the Mage, with three skills using Dexterity for scalling, one node to increase it and one node using it for some extra wards.
I don’t believe Dexterity is worth the investment on any mastery as it is now. All skills scaling on Dexterity also scales on Intelligence or Strength, which are the main attribute of Acolyte/Mage or Sentinel.
Dexterity could be great for Rogue. But it wouldn’t change anything for the other classes if it disappeared.

Then we see that Acolyte and Mage have no point increasing any other attribute than Intelligence.
Acolyte has 2 skills using Dexterity, but both also use Intelligence. None use another attribute.
Mage has 3 skills using Dexterity, but both also use Intelligence. None use another attribute.

And we see that Primalist and Sentinel have two ways: full Strenght or full Attunement.
Primalist has 1 skill using Strenght and Dexterity, which needs to disappear. And 4 skills that use Strength and Attunement. Not enough to justify to go hybrid when focusing on only one attribute he could fill the 5 specialization slots.
Sentinel has 3 skills using Dexterity, all also using Strenght. With only one node to increase Dexterity, it’s more effective to go all Str than going Str/Dex.
Sentinel has also 7 skills using Attunement and Strenght. Finally an occasion to use two attributes? Not so fast!

Void Knight and Paladin has each two skills Str/Att (from sentinel and own tree), and the possibility to get three others from the Forge Guard tree. While the Forge Guard has five skills using Str/Att. So we could imagine Forge Guard is the best option to go Str/Att.
But Void Knight have 2 (“natural”) + 2 (from other trees) nodes to increase Str and 2+2 nodes to increase Att. Paladin have 2+1 nodes to increase Str and 2+0 to increase Att. While Forge Guard have 3+1 nodes to increase Str and 1+1 nodes to increase Att.
So while FG is the better equiped with skills to go the Str/Att way, its nodes are better suited for a Str only build. And it is the VK and the P that have less skills adapted for it that have access at nodes better suited for an hybrid build.

Anyway, the VK, FG and P respectively have 10+3, 13 and 10+3 skills using Str and 5+5, 5+4 and 4+5 skills using Att. So, naturaly, they are more equiped to go on a full Str build.

But, as I said at the beggining, the analysis is not precise enough. Further analysis is required to see the cost of unlocking a skill on another tree, the cost of improving a node on another tree, the benifit on a skill from an attribute and the benefit on an attribute of a node.

The only things I wanted to show were that:

  • even though each mastery is concerned by 3-4 attributes out of 5, in most cases only 1 matters, and maybe 2 in rare cases;
  • the main effect of an attribute is to improve a skill and we would mostly have the same effect with a unique attribute (and some rebalance for the skills that use two attributes);
  • with the exception of the ward retention, the defensive bonus is just a nice extra, not something we can build around (resulting in us not caring about it being present).

I believe the attribute system is too complexe for what is does. It needs to be simplified or the attributes needs to be made more important.
And if they are made more important, we need to have more control on the attributes we want to improve. Not having the game say through the trees “you play that mastery? this is your only attribute”.
There is an attribute to improve elemental resistance, but it is not used to improve elemental resistance when playing a Mage.

It’s long. And it’s not my native language. Feel free to ask me to clarify something as I’m sure I didn’t managed to say everything I wanted to say or how I should have said it. It’s not easy to organize everything correclty. :cry:

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2

Correct me if I’m wrong but vitality offers 45 flat protections and I can’t recall a passive node in that offers 45 flat resis in the class trees. I don’t think 45 flat resis are that bad. This translates into a T5 Vitality = ~3xT2 resi stats on gear that’s not bad at all from my point of view.

Uhm Spellblades say no to this for sure :).

STR+ATT is pretty important for Druid as well just for an example. Nice post thou and yes some attributes feel lackluster but there are some breakepoints you want to reach and then you can freely choose other points. For example 20 ATT for Druids is “enough” from a mana cost point of view so you can go for other attributes if you want to. Is it worth it to get other stats then 4% dmg multi per point? Most likely. Is anyone doing it? I don’t think so :D.

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3

With T5 Vitality affix you get 9 Vitality = 135 Necrotic, Void & Poison Protections.

That’s more protection per affix than you would get with protection specific suffixes.

I don’t usually add vitality to gear, but I find it acceptable affix when looking for good base items for crafting.

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4

At first I was a little bit confused about vitality. I was expecting it to increase my health pool. Instead it gives resistances but not against all damage types just against 3 out of 7.

So while it is a no brainer to skill or stack vitality in other games to increase survivability, you have to pay attention that you don’t get out of balance in LE.

To make attributes more important it would be nice to have additional flat bonuses:

Strength: +x physical damage
Dexterity: +x critical strike chance
Intelligence: +x spell damage
Attunement: +x critical strike multiplier
Vitality: +x Healthpoints

Maybe the game would get out of balance with this. But in theory it sounds nice, I think :smirk:

5

I though about something like this as well but it’s pretty hard to get it right. In your example STR gives extra phys dmg but it’s already a dmg multi for all related skills so you would doubble dip same goes for INT and DEX. Some Attributes seem far more important then others but at the end of the day they are pretty even besides DEX feeling a bit more on the useless side of things and even more if you don’t play dodge builds and have to use a lot of DEX.

6

You are right. In my example it would be viable to stack dexterity for crit chance bonus on a melee build. But for what purpose? You already can collect affixes on your items with crit chance and so on.

The longer I think about it the more I am convinced that LE’s system is ok. The Attributes are mainly for improving skills. So you pick your skills and build your gear around them. On top every attribute gives a defensive bonus related to the class.

The only way to answer if the systems works is to try some builds. Make a Dexterity Spellblade or an Attunemend Void Knight. I’ll definitely give it a try.

7

It’s not really 45 flat protection. It’s 15 for 3 out of 7 protections. You can’t add them together as they work separately.
Moreover, with how protection works, adding 15hp is exactly the same as adding 15 armor + 15 fire protection + 15 ice protection + 15 lightning protection + 15 void protection + 15 necrotic protection + 15 poison protection.
So, against the right enemies, 1 Vitality point is equivalent for survivability as 15 HP. And, in average, it’s equivalent to 6.4 HP.

Anyway, I never said the protection was not useful. I said Vitality is an extra step that is not useful.
There is no node to add 15 N/V/P protection but there are nodes to add 1 Vitality. If Vitality were removed, the nodes could just directly provide the protection.
No effective change. But a simplification by removing something that is not as useful as it should be.

Yep. That’s what I was saying. We could replace all attributes by one stat to improve skills and there wouldn’t be much differences.
It would at most require some rebalance. The other effects of the is covered by other mechanics.
Which still doesn’t mean attributes should necessarily be removed. They can be removed. But they can also be improved/reworked to be more interesting/useful.

8

I read everything else and I get your point but I had a toon with problems in the N/V/P resis and simply put 3 times vit on my items instead of said resistences just to relise it’s more potent. VIT is a strange attribute yes and I think there might will be some changes to it but simply removing it would be a bad thing because I’m almost sure they won’t replace EVERY node VIT is included by adding N/V/P resis just like that.

We could remove all attributes and noone would care if the loss in potential dmg was calculated on the skills and the mana costs reduced. Since we had a lot of attribute topics or deiscussions when attributes where a thing noone came up with a better or even remotely good idea how things SHOULD be done. I’m far more intrested in ideas how to make everything better rather then having the same old topic again… no offence if this might sound rude or is a totaly new thing to some people but solutions would be nice ^^.

9

Now I am a little bit confused.

According to the homepage (https://lastepochgame.com/faq/#resistance) the formular for damage mitigation is the following:
Mitigation = protection / (maximum health + protection)
So there is a small difference in adding 15 protection or 15 hp.

Here are 2 heroes, both with new equip:

  1. 100 hp adding 15 protection: Mitigation = 15 / (100+15) = 13%
  2. 100 hp adding 15 hp: Mitigation = 0 / (115+0) = 0%

Now lets say an enemie hits both of them with 100 damage. Lets see how much hp is left after one hit:

  1. 100 hp - 100 damage - 13% = 13 hp
  2. 115 hp - 100 damage - 0% = 15 hp

When following this formular +hp is more effective than +resistance as long as you add the same value. It is even better because #2 has 15 hp left no matter what damage type hit him. #1 has a problem when his +15 resistance came from +1 vitality because he would have died if he got hit by 100 lightning damage.

What I don’t understand is the following:
The homepage says “10 protection increases your effective health by 10 against the relevant damage type.” But this doesn’t match the formular. If you have 100 hp and add 10 resistance you gain 9% Mitigation. If you get hit by 100 damage you mitigate 9.09 damage. If you have 100 hp and 100 resistance and add 10 resistance your mitigaiton increases from 50% to 52%. After a hit with 100 damage you would have left 52.38 hp which is 2.38 more because of +10 protection.

Perhaps I am doing something wrong.

The main problem for me with all the stats is the difference in % and flat values. Recently I switched an item on my mage. I took off an item with no resistances an got an increase of +2% on all of my resistances. It took me a few minutes to recognize this was because I had +hp on the item I removed. So my max hp decreased what increased my resistances. And increased resistances sound nice at first. But if you take the example above and reduce hp you have less hp left after a hit with 100 damage nevertheless you got an increased mitigation ratio.
It is really hard to judge if the item you equip gives you an advantage over the previous item. You can’t trust the stats screen.

Maybe the damage an enemie dishes out is also dependent on your stats. In this case #1 and #2 would not have been hit with the same damage value. This is beyond my knowledge.

10

Resistences in this game works different to other games. To make things short: Every point you put in resistences is 1eHP more against said dmg type. You can completely ignore the % valus under resistences because those don’t server anything and could be simply not there to begin with because there are no ingame effects calculated against these % values.

11

so this mechanics is very confusing! it has to be simpler yet sophisticated.

12

You basically figured out one of the main issues with this game, putting defensive attributes on base stats. There is so much going on with this game, I can only image the DPS meter they give us is going to be wrong as it is now. And that’s not to say we generally need one. But when you have a game that has so many attributes that it’s nauseating, you get what we have now. I have been saying this from day one, simplify. This game will never attract enough population when even the hardcore people are left scratching heads.

And not to go to far off-topic. But things like throwing attack and throwing damage should just be moved to spell damage. It’s a spell, yet spell damage does nothing for it? Then you tie this stat to just one class, and it’s a mastery class at that. Weird. I feel like you guys are doing way to much to make this a math game and not something that’s fun. Any chance of getting back to that?

13

Hi,

So if i understand it well, in the current state of the game it’s always better to raise HP instead of any kind of protection, as HP “protect” against 7/7 damage types, anything else protect only against some damage types.

That’s correct ?

14

For my understanding - yes. But the hint in the FAQ on the homepage states both:

  1. mitigation = protection / (protection + max. hp)
  2. every point in protection is equal to effective hp against the damage type.

For my understanding it is not possible that both statements are true at the same time. According to @Irrelevant the mitigation is not being used to calculate incoming damage.

If “1 protection = 1 ehp” than you gain the same bonus from both, hp or protection.

So you don’t mitigate a % of incoming damage, instead you mitigate a fix value. If you have 50 protection and get 100 damage you lose 50 hp. If you get 50 damage you won’t lose any hp.

So when you have to choose whether you take +15 hp or +1 vitality on an item I’d choose hp because it gives ehp against all sources of damage while vitality only protects against void, necrotic and poison.

The question is if the values you can craft on an item are equal. What is the max value of a tier 1 +hp affix? Is it 15 hp or more/less? I can’t remember and can’t log in atm.

So it is not only the case that the system is very complex. There are some misleading informations in game an in the FAQ.

2 Likes
15

My brain hurts!

16

Damage mitigation in LE is simple but complexe to understand.
I like the notion of survivability. It’s easier with it to understand how it works.

Imagine you have A and B that each have 100HP and no protection.
Both take 1 hit for 100 fire damage.
They each went from 100HP (100% HP) to 0HP (0% HP).

Now, A slots an item to get 100HP while B slots an item to get 100 Fire protection.
Both take 1 hit for 100 fire damage.
A goes from 200HP (100% HP) to 100 HP (50% HP) as there is still no mitigation.
B goes from 100HP (100% HP) to 50 HP (50% HP) because of mitigation (100/(100+100)=50% mitigation against fire).
Both loose half there life. Both lose completely there life with 2 hits. Both have the same survivability.

Another way to see mitigation, is there is HP that is real HP and Protection that is virtual HP.
Damage is divided between real and virtual HP proportionaly.
If there is 70% real and 30% virtual HP (for exemple 700HP and 300 Fire protection), 70% of damage is dealt to real HP and 30% of damage is dealt to virtual HP (and so does nothing, is mitigated).

If we increase that a lot, now A has 1000HP and B has 100HP and 900 Fire Protection.
With 1 hit for 100 fire damage, A has 900HP remaining (90%) and B has 90HP remaining (90%).
And both needs 10 hits to die.

If we had C that has 500HP and 500 Fire protection, 1 hit for 100 fire damage leaves him at 450HP (90%) and 10 hits kills him.
They all have the same survivability against fire.

But if they are hit with ice damage, B dies in 1 hit, C dies in 5 hits and A dies in 10 hits.
HP and armour/protection have the same effect but HP is stronger as it is universal. Even more as affixes slots are limited in numbers.

The only way to balance that is by having sources of armour/protection 7 times stronger than HP.
But HP, contrary to armour/protection, has additive AND multiplicative sources.
It’s not easy to compare correctly.

EDIT: I also forgot that we also need to take into account ways to regenerate health that are more effective with lower life, making mitigation stronger.

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17

Thank you for this nice explanation. Seems I got confused by the term “effective hp”.

I also compared the absolute amount of hp left after 1 hit. But according to your example the absolute value doesn’t matter because the number of hits till death are the same.

So I take this information with me:

  • As long as the sum of protection + hp has the same value the survivability (number of hits needed to die) is exactly the same
  • Every increase of the sum of protection + hp is an improvement of survivability - no matter what the mitigation % on the stats screen is telling me.

That stats screen of LE is nice to have but it needs a manual to understand what those numbers mean that are displayed. :confounded:

It confuses me that sometimes +% is added directly (glancing blow chance) and sometimes is is multiplied with a basic value (dodge rating). As long as there is a rating shown I can comprehend. But I don’t understand where the crit chance is coming from. I am increasing my crit chance by 10% on my passive tree and the stats screen goes +1% from 6% to 7%. So I am not increasing my crit chance by 10%. I am increasing my crit chance by 10% of my actual crit chance of 6%. So there must be a crit rating somewhere that is not shown. :exploding_head:

Sorry for the occupation of this thread. This was not 100% on topic. But I feel a lot wiser now. :roll_eyes::yum:

18

Simple for crit :wink:

Added crit is additive, increased crit is a multiplyer. You see it nicely if you have shards for crafting and look at the tooltips like your life is depending on it ^^.

Predur sums it up nicely for the resistences.

19

:face_with_hand_over_mouth: Game changer. Might as well just stack HP and forget about prots

20

That’s the base crit chance. For melee it’s 5% unless you’re adding in some base crit somewhere (such as some weapons add base crit, many skills add base crit). So your 10% increased crit is adding <1% crit (rounding, probably 0.5%) increasing it from (rounded down to) 6% to (rounded up to) 7%.

If you see a big crit modifier (eg, +10% or 50%), it’s probably increased rather than adding to your base crit. If it’s a small number (eg, +1%) it’s probably adding in to the base crit chance.