Hello, I am flond.
I have for a while now been doing my own testing with things like:
"Damage Reduction", "Damage Mitigation" and "Fortify"
or
"XX% damage bonus", "more Damage", "+XX% Damage" and "Empower"
Through this testing I have come to a problem that is greater than things not working as described in the game text.
That is there is no standardized language being used in how things in the game are described, and there is not consistency in how they function when described the same way.
Some things regarded as empowers do not function as such and increase damage beyond the top end limit on empowers, (referred to from now on as the empower cap, which is 50%).
On the other hand, some things that are not described as empowers, but instead as various different types of damage increases, are limited by the empower cap.
These inconsistencies exist also with fortify and damage reduction and the interactions with the top end limit to fortify (fortify cap).
Not to mention references in text to “basic attacks” “heavy and light attacks” or “standard attacks” all being in use, while only the second of these is unambiguous.
Or how invigorated punishment is still even after a rewrite unclear about which buffs it affects.
There is also no in-game mention of a limit of empower and fortify and this had to be discovered by players early on.
These problems permeate so thoroughly within the in-game text, and are not even alleviated by the use of third party websites or damage calculators because not only are things not consistently described, they do not always function the same way when described the same way.
This problem exists within buffs, passives in weapon trees and active abilities as well as differences in description between passives or abilities and the buffs they grant.
Not to mention the poorly functioning buff bar in game which displays an inconsistent number of buffs inconsistently, reproducible at all times by simply having some buffs on your bar and doing anything and watching them disappear and reappear with regularity despite nothing changing if they should be active.
I wanted to bring up the main reasons why this is a problem.
First off, it makes it difficult for players to understand how they should itemize and personalize their builds, and this is especially punishing in a game as gear oriented as this, where top quality gear is a considerable and game-changing investment.
This is further worsened because players have no reliable way to understand if something is working as intended or bugged, because there is no way of discerning whether the in game text is incorrectly written or if the ability is not working properly, and therefore don’t know if the way they decide to itemize and personalize their build has any longevity or if it will be patched out in a bugfix. This as a result adds a layer of frustration to a gear acquisition system already heavily influenced by RNG.
This I imagine also makes it very hard on the developer team to keep track of how things are supposed to work over time, and if something reported as a bug is working as intended or not, because these inconsistencies exist even within datamined descriptions and tags found on third party websites.
Thank you for reading, I tried to break up the text so it was easier to read rather than just being a big wall of text. I can and likely will come back to list the specific things I tested and found to be inconsistent within descriptions and the specific inconsistencies in describing things, but they are literally everywhere you look and I wanted to address this issue first so it could be seen and hopefully adressed.
This is a re-post because I forgot to bump before my last thread closed. Especially as even more types of buffs are being added in the coming patch I believe this is even more important.