Hand to Hand Skill Mods

[Dinadass]

H2H skill mod functionality was changed a while back (1.5 years ish?) to make bare fists more viable for monks and beastlords. However, existing H2H mods were never really balanced appropriately plus some nerfs since then have caused further issues. I was told by staff that H2H mods were under evaluation when these nerfs happened but it appears that nothing was ever done. So, here are some straightforward suggestions that will hopefully make fists more balanced.

For reference, my opinion of existing H2H mods and bare fist dps is that it is grossly overpowered from tier 0 through tier 6ish, relatively balanced in the mid/upper tiers, but then falls behind where it should be at the very high end. Monks and beastlords have to choose whether they can afford the loss of hp/resists/foci/procs that comes with not using any weapons in order to use their fists. As a result, fists should be higher DPS than weapons of a similar tier or there would be no reason to ever use them (or fists could offer enough utility to be worth using too, IE for AOE damage or healing/lifetap or providing unique debuffs, etc.)

Low Tier

Fresh 65s can obtain +25 H2H very easily via BOEs, which results in bare fists with 18/18 ratios (plus any ele damage and procs from gloves). This is so far beyond any other on-tier weaponry that it makes virtually every weapon pointless. Furthermore, the stat loss from using Charm of the Brute, Wandering Fungus Wrappings, Wraps of Brutal Strength, and/or High Paw's Hand are pretty minimal compared to typical low tier items. Smart monks of this tier will swap in a weapon with HP/AC/Resists for pulling and then use their fists 100% of the time in combat, same with beastlords. Properly played monks and beastlords using a few thousand PP of BOE gear (gloves plus aforementioned H2H items) can do two or three times the DPS of other classes at this end of the spectrum.

Mid/High Tier

Fists are still easily the best DPS option here, but now it's a more complicated situation. Using a Charm of the Brute at this level is a pretty huge downgrade from something like a Juggo, and the same is true for the BOE items. If you're lucky, this can be solved with raid-dropped H2H items, but they are few and far between. It's also common for gloves at this tier to have some H2H mod, and beastlords get 5-6 from their main quest aug. Weapons actually have appreciable stats at these tiers and raid fights are more involved and AOE-heavy, which makes the stat loss not worth it sometimes. Monks and beastlords no longer dominate the dps meters by using bare fists at this point, although they still are top notch if they're geared optimally and are able to use their fists.

Tier 12+

At the very high end of the game, there are essentially two weapons that are used- Horok and Entropy's Spine. All of the other options from tier 12+ content are essentially the same as what can be obtained at tiers 9 or 10 thanks to how poorly monk/beast physical dps scales, and until you get a Horok or Spine your dps is shit. Blazewind gloves parse nearly identically to these weapons, and you have to sacrifice 400-500 health and a boatload of other stats to use them, plus you lose the utility of the Horok proc and the AOE of the Spine proc. When the gloves had an AOE proc and higher H2H mod they were situationally useful, but now there is never a reason to use them. At this level there is one other source of H2H, the chest from Spires, and the content you are doing is extremely unforgiving so nerfing your stats to boost your H2H is not really an option.

So, here's what I propose: Remove all H2H mods from non-gloves. Scale H2H on gloves from BOE up through t13 from +0 to +25 with various elemental damage and procs (most of which can probably be left as-is). This will make it much easier to balance fist dps throughout the tiers, won't pigeonhole people into using substantially under-tiered items to game the system, and would still provide appropriate skill bonuses for someone using an actual h2h weapon, just like other classes and their weapon skills.

Something like this-
Tier 0 (BOE): o H2H
Tier 1-3: 5 H2H
Tier 4-6: 10 H2H
Tier 7-9: 15 H2H
Tier 10-12: 20 H2H
Tier 13: 25 H2H

Give beastlords conjuration or something on their aug and slap an offense or dual wield or whatever mod on other items where appropriate (Charm of the Brute, Thaz cloak, Talin wrist, spires chest).

Add hth/procs/ele damage to more gloves throughout the tiers to give more options and include some actual unique procs instead of low % nukes as far as the eye can see.


OR Alternatively, nerf charm of the brute, buff matrons grasp, call it a day.

 

[mechkl]

well put, i agree. sacrificing stats for damage should be a thing, and i like the idea on h2h on gloves only and sclaing through the tiers.

 

[Dinadass]

Existing H2H glove list by tier:

Tier 13- The Matrons Grasp
Tier 10- Ule's Conception
Tier 10- Claws of the Beast
Tier 10- Handwraps of Twisted Souls
Tier 9- Silence
Tier 7- Creeping Tentacles
Tier 6- Fistwraps of the Chosen
Tier 5- Wraps of Disipline
Tier 5- Pock-marked Fleshwraps
Tier 4- Fleshbonded Fighting Claws
Tier 3- Wrappings of the Master
Tier 1- Grandmaster's Handwraps of the Risen

I'd suggest that tiers 11-12 should have a couple options (spires warped slave gloves are an obvious possibility). The tier 7 and 9 options are both 6man so a few more options there would be good, Fingers of Frost and Handwraps of Pyromancy maybe. And then a few more in the 2-4 range would round it out nicely. In most of these cases there are existing gloves that don't have skill mods of any sort on them so it would be pretty painless to add H2H and some ele damage and/or a proc.

This would also give some leeway for more creative or powerful procs or other itemization. Give a pair of gloves 5 less H2H than their tier dictates and skimp on the ele damage but give them a powerful proc of some sort. Or have no proc at all but higher ele damage. Make it worthwhile for monks and beasts to carry a few pairs of gloves that are each situationally useful just like weapons are.

 

[Tevinter]

This is a very well written post, and I support pretty much what susvain said 100%. The big problem of bare fist at high tier is not only do you sacrifice crazy stats from weapons, but also stats from other items that you have to swap to cap h2h mod for a much smaller DPS gain : stat loss ratio compared to lower tiers.

 

[Kedrin]

I agree with most of this post. I just feel that putting all the skill mods on the gloves seems a bit lazy. I know other classes depend on skill mods very much, mainly rangers and rogues, and they have to deal with more than one item to keep these things capped. I would agree very much that there is a huge lack of hand to hand skill mods. I would just like to see it put on gear throughout the game not just on gloves.

 

[Dinadass]

I'm not opposed to that, or to adding H2H augs in refuge or something, but there are other complications if you go that route. It also doesn't address low/mid tier people doing a lot more dps than they should. I wanted to come up with a solution that would be easy to implement and balance above all else. Revamping the system as a whole would probably be the best way to go but would also be the hardest to achieve.

I can't really think of a way to scale fist damage appropriately without relying solely on gloves that can't be gamed like the current system.

And while it's true that other classes need several items to cap their weapon skills (so do monks for 1hb and 2hb) they do not have nearly the same impact as H2H does since it works on an entirely different system. Very few, if any, monks have capped 1hb either despite how popular Horok is, so it's not just H2H skill mods that are pretty sparse. Trying to find high tier item candidates that don't already have a skill mod is nearly impossible as well.

 

[sheer1]

adding H2H augs in refuge or something

id like something like this for a lot of mods. For the most part you just feel trapped into using whatever you can find with your desired mod since they are so spread out through the tiers, like susvain pointed out for h2h mods.

 

[Dinadass]

id like something like this for a lot of mods. For the most part you just feel trapped into using whatever you can find with your desired mod since they are so spread out through the tiers, like susvain pointed out for h2h mods.

It does feel like there needs to be some parity when it comes to refuge augs. Tradeskills provide defensive augs but no offensive ones (assuming your melee stats are capped) and some classes can aug for offense via elemental damage or backstab from refuge while other classes don't have an option.

 

[Dinadass]

I know augs can have regular damage (thurg bounty weapon augs for example), so what if the H2H skill mod was changed back to be like every other weapon skill mod, and new glove augs were added.

Monk/Bst only, glove slot only, 1-5 damage varying by difficulty of obtaining or whatever. A quest that becomes available at level 65 and is similar to the Sagacity line would probably be the best, but if it's possible it could also just be an NPC in a monk guild who has them available based on what tier of content you've done or other factors. I'm not sure exactly what the game client is capable of when it comes to this but it would certainly be an improvement over the current situation.

I assume there's a way to do it that works off the "You have slain a mighty foe!" exp bonus for raid mods. Have the NPC check to see the hardest thing you've killed and offer you the appropriate augs. So if you've killed something that's tier 8, you can buy augs of 1, 2, or 3 damage, etc.

 

[Daffie]

I know augs can have regular damage (thurg bounty weapon augs for example), so what if the H2H skill mod was changed back to be like every other weapon skill mod, and new glove augs were added.

Monk/Bst only, glove slot only, 1-5 damage varying by difficulty of obtaining or whatever. A quest that becomes available at level 65 and is similar to the Sagacity line would probably be the best, but if it's possible it could also just be an NPC in a monk guild who has them available based on what tier of content you've done or other factors. I'm not sure exactly what the game client is capable of when it comes to this but it would certainly be an improvement over the current situation.

I assume there's a way to do it that works off the "You have slain a mighty foe!" exp bonus for raid mods. Have the NPC check to see the hardest thing you've killed and offer you the appropriate augs. So if you've killed something that's tier 8, you can buy augs of 1, 2, or 3 damage, etc.

I think that if you change the system back to what it was, H2H is not going to be a viable option (again.) The idea of H2H is pretty cool as it lets you choose different gear setups based on what you are doing, but I agree that the implementation is lacking a smooth power curve from tier 1 to 13.

 

[Dinadass]

That's why I said glove augs with regular weapon damage should be implemented at the same time as the H2H skill mod reversion.

Currently, every 5 points of H2H improves the base damage of your fists by 1. With a 25 cap on +H2H, this means you can gain between 0 and 5 damage to your fists. There are numerous problems and imbalances with the current system though, which I mentioned in the first post.

Reverting the H2H skill mod to normal while simultaneously adding glove augs of 1-5 weapon damage results in the same fist ratios as currently, but it would be smoother or more balanced in a variety of ways. H2H mods would still be desirable just like archery, piercing, slashing, etc are for other classes, but it wouldn't be make-or-break like it is now, nor ridiculously imbalanced at the lower tiers.

 

[Daffie]

That's why I said glove augs with regular weapon damage should be implemented at the same time as the H2H skill mod reversion.

Currently, every 5 points of H2H improves the base damage of your fists by 1. With a 25 cap on +H2H, this means you can gain between 0 and 5 damage to your fists. There are numerous problems and imbalances with the current system though, which I mentioned in the first post.

Reverting the H2H skill mod to normal while simultaneously adding glove augs of 1-5 weapon damage results in the same fist ratios as currently, but it would be smoother or more balanced in a variety of ways. H2H mods would still be desirable just like archery, piercing, slashing, etc are for other classes, but it wouldn't be make-or-break like it is now, nor ridiculously imbalanced at the lower tiers.

A ton of glove options are going to need to go into the game or itemization is going to be sad faced worse than it is. Also, if you miss gloves in a certain tier, there is no way to make up for the dps loss by getting other gear with h2h mods...

Regardless, at least h2h isn't horribly broken the other way so that it largely gimps dps

 

[Dinadass]

I've thrown like four different ideas out in this thread; the issue you bring up about skipping a tier of gloves due to bad luck or whatever would be a problem with the first idea proposed. If we instead could obtain augs to put in any gloves that would not be an issue. I still think there should be more options with different procs for utility/variety but with the aug system you'd at least have a tier-appropriate ratio even if you're stuck with lower tier gloves at the moment.