Essentially, we are changing all attacks that have a +W component as part of their attack to use a percentage increase in their damage, following this scale:
| W Scalar | Percentage Boost |
|---|
| +1W | +10% |
| +2W | +20% |
| +3W | +30% |
| +4W | +40% |
| +5W | +50% |
| ... | ... |
| +10W | +100% |
Pretty linear!
This means if you had, for example, an attack that had +3[W], that attack will now deal +30% damage instead.
The goal is to make active attacks more worthwhile across the entire level range. The big benefit of percentage boosts is that an active attack dealing 50% more damage at level 10 is the same level of efficacy as one dealing +50% at level 30, whereas +5[W] means a LOT more at level 10 then it does at level 30. This standardization will make attacks easier to balance as they'll be worth the same percentage bonus dps no matter what level you are, what dice your weapon has, what bonus damage you have, and what [W] score your weapon is.
This overhaul also allows us to rebalance a variety of active attacks to spruce them up a bit. Therefore:
- Attacks that increased their [W] scale or other bonuses in a nonlinear or otherwise unusual fashion have been adjusted to be linear. This includes attacks that started at 1[W] and never increased beyond that across their ranks.
- Example: Wracking Strike/Shot in the Mechanic tree now deals +10/20/30% damage instead of the +10/10/10% it would have been
- Attacks that used to have a lesser scale for their ranged versions have been adjusted to match their melee counterparts.
- Example: Caustic Shot in Battle Engineer now deals +10/20/30% damage, matching its melee version, instead of +5/10/15% had it matched its original [W] scalar
- Attacks that used to secretly scale with [W] but never told you they did so have been tracked down and their tooltips have been adjusted
- Example: Supreme Cleave was secretly dealing +0/1/2[W], and now deals +10/20/30% damage
- Attacks that used to deal in .5[W] scales have been rounded to deal with whole percentages. We're going to try to keep things on multiples of 10% if at all possible.
- Example: The Fists of Light feat used to deal +.5[W] damage, it now deals +10% damage (rounding up what would have been 5% to 10%)
Finally, here's a FAQ:
- Question: What about things like Vorpal on weapons?
- Answer: That will continue to boost the base weapon dice of your weapon. Effects that adjust [W] will remain as-is.
- Question: What about things like Combat Archery?
- Answer: That is another thing that boosts the base [W] of your weapons, and is therefore unchanged.
- Question: What about things that boost overall damage, like Relentless Fury?
- Answer: That will continue to boost overall damage as before. The only thing that is changing here is the part of an active attack that boosts the effective [W] score of your weapon for that attack. Everything else is not changing.
- Question: Does this boost sneak attack damage?
- Answer: No, this only affects the attack itself, and does not adjust additional on-hit effects or Sneak Attack (which were not boosted by W changes before)
- Question: Does the new boost multiply with melee or ranged power?
- Answer: Melee and Ranged Power will continue to work as they did before, multiplying your melee or ranged damage respectively.
