Weapon Idea: Stat Conversion

[Ikusi_Prime]

I think an interesting concept for future (or current) weapons would be to add passive stat conversion. Basically, if you modded a stat onto a weapon, that extra stat would instead be converted into a different stat. 

For example, if a weapon has an incredibly high base status chance, you're going to get a lot of value out of putting status chance mods on it. If the devs don't see that weapon as the 100% status proccing beast, they could simply add a passive that turned status chance into damage, or fire rate, or punch through. It would allow them to make a weapon with a high base status chance, but without making its most viable build a status chance build. These kinds of weapons would open up new design space and make for interesting combinations. 

For example, if the devs wanted to make a hammer that was all about big, heavy swings with a windup time, players would understandably try to put faster swing speed on it, because that gets more value than just upping the damage. However, this takes away from the "feel" of a big, slow hammer, so it could have a passive that converted any swing speed mods into bonus damage and extra oomph on a knockback effect. You could absolutely put swing speed mods on the weapon, but they wouldn't take away from the weapon's identity. 

[Dreddeth]

Weapon identity isn't really a problem that this approach would solve. Mods add a percentage of a weapon's existing base stats, which is why you just can't justify modding for crit or status if either are less than 15%, for example. For a specific example, even Primed Reach will do almost nothing for Fist or Claw weapons, because it's adding 155% of a base reach which is practically non-existent. Said base stats thus completely dictate viable build paths, and thus a weapon's identity.

Your proposal of a passive that converts bonus Status Chance into more damage doesn't allow you to effectively leverage its Status Chance at all unless its base stat is at least 25%, because building for Status Chance would instead only give you more flat damage, which Spoiled Strike already does better. It would firmly shunt a weapon into being built for either crit damage or flat damage, whichever is more viable. You'd basically be taking away a build option, and also misleading anyone who didn't read the fine print. It's the same situation for Attack Speed, and probably even more dire, because melee Attack Speed mods are considered "mandatory" with good reason: The majority of melee weapons just aren't fast enough at base speed, and denying them the boost from Primed Fury or Berserker would render them almost unusable.

Instead of converting one stat into another, consider a passive that grants bonuses to one stat based off of another stat. For example, Hecarim from League of Legends gets bonus attack damage based off of his movement speed, which lets you keep any movement speed you build for, but incentivizes building for even more. So say you have a weapon that gets bonus Status Chance or Crit Chance based on Attack Speed. As stupidly OP as that might be depending on the exact percentages involved, that obviously still allows you to mod for Crit or Status while establishing the weapon's identity as being focused on Attack Speed.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Dreddeth

[(PSN)LV9999Majin]

Sort of necroing, but I've been thinking of something like this a lot lately. What I was thinking of was a flat even conversion of base physical damage into an element. Say you really like a certain weapon but hate a certain status. Turn that base impact into toxin, or pierce into electric. It'd add way more options to build, mods to farm, and I don't see any way that could be game breaking. The farming part seems the best to me, they could do 12 of each physical damage to elemental, 12 dual physicals into elemental, and 4 all physical conversion. Obviously as common, uncommon, and rare (but like ultra rare lol). :O Best part, I just realized they could add a quad boss fight with four elemental creatures. Lock it at lvl 150 and you've got some great end game farming.

Edited October 19, 2018 by (PS4)BloodPuddles420
I forgot to give a reason last time, (there was a typo).

[voltocitygel]

The mention of 100% status just reminds me we still need the ability to go over 100% status chance. It's simple, just allow 2 status effects after 100%. Some statuses don't stack, so it'd be diminishing returns, but better than wasted status chance regardless.