Wdm/Caster insight.

[outer portal]

I wanted to add my insights on the Weapon dmg(Wdm) vs Caster problem, im currently at 200 hours played and i spend alot of that time theorycrafting and testing things 😮

I think we can all agree that its a multifaceted issue that makes Wdm chars so much weaker, Trinkets, Gear, Skill orbs and Stats in general are all heavy caster-favored.

Spells have skill orbs that Weapons attacks do not and all they get for compensation is Weapon Mastery that is kind of expensive and underwhelming.

Weapon attacks usually lack range, pierce, speed, projectile numbers, additional modifiers, homing and just raw power compared to most spells.

Another very minor advantage for casters is that there are 3 classes that give int when leveled up, but given time it will add up.

Intellect is a superior stat giving the trifecta of SP, crit and critdmg and all caster gear give much better bonuses aswell, 40% innate castspeed on chest and 20% mana cost reduction on boots.

Furthermore spellcasters also get 2 exponentially scaling stats, while wdm chars have none afaik, those being cooldown reduction and mana cost reduction.

F.e. 50% "actual" cooldown reduction (that you do need a bit of castspeed to reach i know) is a 100% damage increase and you can even reach >80% cdr which would be a 500% damage multiplier (at the same increased mana cost ofc.)

Attackspeed enchants are only a 10% increase which is underwhelming to say the least and you kind of lose the stats from your weaponslot since you basically must have Crushing/Vulnerable and most characters also use a 2hander.

Many weaponattacks have underwhelming scalings like Quickshot f.e. doing only 60% Wdm with 0 pierce, Dual Daggers is basically the only exception of an actual decent weapon.

The number of Trinkets is higher for casters and they have a very generalized dmg multiplier of 36x from trinkets, while for wdm builds that number is 11.5x.

All of the crowd control procs are from spells (excluding the 1 from dash), the healing trinkets work much better for caster and casters generally have better procs.

Obviously though WDM chars have some things going for them, Weapon Mastery as mentioned, can apply Vulnerable, Weapons scale with itemlevel, Bleeds and Procs that could do some work if they got some NG scaling, however all things mentioned
are very weak.

All in all its a large number of issues adding up and i think were gonna need some pretty big changes to close the gap.

[dusty thunder]

weapon attacks dont have direct skill orbs, but sometimes there are passives that improve them, I think it could be possible to add a few skill orbs upgrades that improve on weapon ability

why not have more skill orbs like rogues +poison damage on attack, or maybe something new like attacks have a chance to throw a random dagger

but that wouldn't fix the overall problems i suppose

weapon characters also have leather bracers which i believe give weapon attack speed (could be wrong)

[outer portal]

Attackspeed on gear is fairly pointless if it only comes in 10% increments, Caster can scale way more (at the cost of more mana tho, which is another issue that could be adressed)