The State of Balance: Weapon Gems

by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Game Balancing is a subtle art, small oversights often lead to some skill, character or item being absurdly overpowered and chosen by most players in spite of the rest of the content the devs worked so hard to produce. In this series we will look at Balance in Diablo 3 and see how fair things are right now.

Oh gems, we couldn’t live without you.

I still remember my noob D2 days when I was happy to get some gems into my trusty Horadric Cube and transmute them into better quality ones. As I progressed in the game and content patches kept on rolling, I discovered that gems had a lot of awesome uses and quickly became a favorite of mine along with runes.

While we dearly miss the runes, Gems made a triumphant return to Diablo 3.  The way in which Gems give different bonuses depending on the slot might be imported from Diablo 2 but the effects that the gems give us how have clearly been refined from the old days.

The crafting system in D3 is actually pretty solid and easily replaced the functionality of the Horadric Cube. That’s a point for D3.

So long story short, I like the Diablo 3 Gem System. But of course, I have a very big problem with it.

Blizzard knows it, and they say they plan to fix it with Tiered Rifts. To be honest, I don’t think Legendary Gems will be the answer to this. Especially when a few buffs are all you need to even them up. Lets go to the numbers!

Weapon Gem Bonuses:

Weapon (and to a lesser extent Helm) gems seem absurdly unbalanced. Anyone who has played the game to the level cap and beyond has likely realized that green gems are the way to go. Either by trial and error or just by reading information online, the Green Supremacy for weapons has become a sort of conventional wisdom.

You’ll come to realize with time that I am a math and theorycraft guy, so lets take a hard look at the gems weapon bonuses so we can figure out how good and or bad each gem is.

In order to achieve our goal, we will look at the bonuses given by the best quality gem of each color so we can then analyze them from two different points of view.

Topaz:  Ranged and melee attackers take 4975 damage per hit

Amethyst: 1100 Life per hit.

Diamond: Increases damage against elites by 20%

Ruby: +270 Damage

Emerald: Critical Hit Damage Increased by 130.0%

Itemization Point of View:

For our first analysis we will look at where else we can get a comparable stat, to see how valuable is to get the stat on the socket compared to getting it on another piece of gear. We we also consider how much is the gem contributing to the total stat you can get with gear.

Topaz:

Unlike all the others, Thorns is a secondary stat which means that it is inherently less valuable. Thorns can also be gotten in almost all item slots which makes the gem look pretty lackluster.

Top end items can have up to either 2000 or 3500 depending on the slot

The 4975 from the gem adds up to 142% of the value of a good item slot for thorns, 142% might look good but remember that it’s 142% of a secondary stat.

Since most items can get Thorns and thus the max Thorns you can get on gear is around 33500, the gem only makes up for about 15% of the total. And that’s not even considering set bonuses.

You might be better off with a different selection.

Amethyst:

Life per hit has a max of 2000 for all slots except amulet and weapon which go to 3000.

The 1100 from the gem adds up to just a puny 36.6% of the max roll, it looks like we are definitely better off getting our Life per Hit somewhere else.

The number looks even worse when you look at your possible total, 21800 Life per Hit can be gotten out of items. The gem only accounts for a laughable 5% of the total. If you consider you can get an extra 4125 out of Paragon Points then it is even sadder.

Amethysts are so bad they don’t even deserve to be a part of this article anymore.

Diamond:

Damage Against elites is quite a rare affix, only weapons and shields seem to pack this stat naturally and there are only a few legendaries and set bonuses that boast it. Stone of Jordan and Sun Keeper can give you 30%, while Unity and Halcyon’s Ascent each grant up to 15% and both Wailing Host and Hellcat Waistguard give 8%.

With Elite damage being so rare it is hard to judge a specific %, but I’d say that 100% value of a slot is a good estimation to the average.

Since the stat itself is so rare, if you have a Diamond it will probably account for around 50% of the total Damage to Elites you get.

The Value of the Diamond will be better reflected on our next analysis.

Ruby:

Speaking about rare Affixes, Rubies grant 250 to both min and max damage. There’s nothing exactly like it in the game except of course the base damage on weapons and those min and max damage on jewelry. The  max range for Legendary Jewelry is 80-160 or an average of 120.

If we consider that, then the Ruby is 208% of the max roll. Looks good on paper.

Having damage on all 3 pieces of jewelry puts you at 360, of which the Ruby would be 69.5%

We will have to take a deeper look at Rubies.

Emerald:

And last but definitely not least, and in this case the polar opposite. The king of gems.

You can have 100% Crit Damage on amulet and 50% on rings/hands.

The Emerald is 130% of the Max Roll, which is also pretty good.

If you are going for max Crit Damage, which most classes do then you likely have around 300% crit damage before the Emerald. The socket bonus would be 43% of it.

Actual Effect Analysis:

Our second analysis tells us of how the stat given by the Weapon Gem affects our Damage Output. We will try to determine which one is the strongest.

Topaz:

Lets compare Topaz to Ruby, Thorns only benefits from 25% of your main stat so we have to divide our number by 4. That’s 1243 damage each time you are hit, that’s increased by your main stat multiplier and if you are lucky some passive or active skills.

Ruby on the other hand is only 250 damage, considerably less than the 1243…

Except that damage from the Ruby is modified by your Critical, your Attack Speed, the % weapon damage on your skills, % extra damage to skill, % extra elemental damage, etc.

After it is all said and done those 250 damage go way beyond 1243. Even for a critless thorns build, I’d be likely better to have a Ruby on the weapon which is unacceptable.

Topaz clearly needs a considerable buff.

Diamond:

Diamonds give a plain 20% damage to elites, there’s not much to calculate there, we will go back to see how everything else compares to a 20% increase.

Ruby:

Rubies are a bit tricky to break down, since they give plain damage the actual effect you get from them is based on your weapon’s damage.

That means a Ruby will be more effective on a fast weapon like a hand crossbow and less effective on a slow two hander.

A top Hand Crossbow has an average damage of 1595 (not counting a 10% damage affix which would affect the Ruby aswell so it’s not a factor), adding a Ruby would be about a 15% increase in damage.

A Top (Two Hand) Crossbow has an average damage of 2206, adding a Ruby would be about an 11% damage increase.

Remember that those % values would go down if you had extra base damage on jewelry.

11-15% to all damage seems a bit better than 20% damage to elites to me, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Emerald:

And we close up this hopefully not too lengthy post with the king of kings. Crit oriented builds will often have 50%+ chance and 350% damage without the Emerald. (paragon points)

That’s like having +175% extra damage, and your damage is 275% of what it used to be.

If you add the Emerald to the calcs you are up to 480% crit damage.

That’s like having +240% extra damage, your damage is now 340% of what it used to be.

That’s (340/275) a considerable huge 23% bonus, still better than all the other options. Of course the actual number will depend on your crit chance and damage but you are likely attempting to have numbers like the ones described above.

Even the fastest Weapon in the game can’t use a Ruby to compete.

Conclusions:

We prove that Emeralds are king for a reason, they are heads and shoulders above the rest. With Rubies finding a niche for followers and maybe in some sort of gimmick critless thorns build.

Amethysts and Topaz both are in need of a serious buff, if Topaz was 4 times as strong then we could start considering it. 6 times as strong is what Amethysts would need to get “in the mix”. Diamond and Rubies on the other hand are in a much better places, still they need to be buffed between 60 and 80% so they could start competing with emeralds.

Those are of course preliminary values and further calculations would go a long way towards achieving balance.

Lets hope the devs don’t think that Legendary Gems will be enough to solve the problem and they take an in-depth look to Weapon Gem Balance.
Meanwhile, keep going green my friends.