[u]TL:DR;[/u]
By separating weapon abilities from main stats in the damage formula, would improve the intuitiveness of the game as well as giving more build choices. This all could at best only require changing a few lines of code.

[u]Preface[/u]
Reading the preliminary patch notes given out to Kickstarter backers, got me slightly disappointed to the balance changes. I was aware that no big overhauls would be done, but I did expect the balance changes outlined in Kickstarter Update #47 to be more of a teaser or a glimpse to the changes, not effectively an exhaustive list of changes.

Now, I am aware that it is too late to change anything for the 31st launch, but I am hopeful that as the content is released to the larger audiences and bugs are found, some patching will happen. For one of these patches I have a suggestion, that is a very low effort fix from Larians side, but which will improve the game for both new players and minx-maxes alike. I am sure this has been suggested before, but I wanted to highlight it once more for its simplicity and high impact.

[u]Weapon Abilities[/u]
They are not something that will have a massive effect on gameplay (such as suggested revamps of the dual armor system), but they are there to bring meaningful differences between builds. As of right now, though, the way the damage formula is set up, makes them close to obsolete, except for a few builds and even for them only late game.
And if only they were clearly obsolete abilities, the negative impact would be significantly lessened, but at their current state they SEEM like the best abilities, while only extensive testing or data mining the damage formula shows that they are Trojan horses. Of course, you want the 5% damage and 1% dodge from Dual Wielding over the mere 5% physical damage from Warfare. It is effectively counter intuitive and confusing for new players.

Lastly, I think they are homogenizing the builds very significantly, if the answer for half of all the builds (physical builds) is to go full Warfare. It would be so much more interesting if sword and boards would get to hit their CC more often than say two-handers, who would crit rarely but hard, and then again bow users, can expect a lot of crits but for smaller amounts. Right now, these differences only surface very late game if at all.

To summarize, current damage forumula:
-Weapon abilities are rarely used
-Is counter intuitive and essentially misguides new players to make significantly sub-optimal choices
-Homogenizes builds and prevents interesting differences between builds

[u]The Fix - Emphasize Weapon Skills[/u]
To be explicit, in my opinion, the ideal situation is where weapon based builds focus on a weapon ability to increase their damage and you dip in to skill school abilities to, well, get the skills. Later on as your primary damage source, the weapon skills, are capped you then might opt for Warfare to get more damage. This way you clearly have a damage abilities and abilities which grant access to skills, which both makes it more intuitive, but also actually opens up more choice.

And the solution is actually super simple. Separate the Stat+Weapon modifier pool in to two separate modifiers.

damage = base x [u](1 + Attribute % + Weapon Skill %)[/u] x (1 + Elemental %) + (1 + High Ground % + Crit Damage %)
to
damage = base x [u](1 + Attribute % ) x (1 + Weapon Skill %)[/u] x (1 + Elemental %) + (1 + High Ground % + Crit Damage %)
(Source: /u/zyocuh on Reddit, slightly simplified and reformatted for clarity)

I don’t know how the game was coded, but I would assume that the formula has not been hard-coded in to various part of the game, but would only require changing the formula at a few places only. If it actually is hard-coded in various places, I at least would like to know that it is the reason. For me that is a much smaller mistake than letting bad game design exist which could be very easily fixed.

[u]Counterbalance[/u]
Now, I am aware that this increases the power level of weapon based builds, which is mainly physical builds, which at least before DE have been more dominant already. As with the previous part, not knowing how the game is coded it’s hard to say what is the best way to compensate for the power increase. I think the ideal way to fix this would be change the base damage of weapons. This would allow you to change each weapon based on the impact that it’s respective weapon skill would have. For example for daggers, you probably do not want to drop it significantly, since the skill gives a survival stat instead of a damage stat. For ranged and 2h you probably want to do bigger adjustments. If the weapon stats are generated based on a formula, this should be a very quick fix. If their stats are more hard-coded, then I don’t think this is something Larian would want to do. The whole idea of this suggested fix is that it is a very low effort improvement – a low-hanging fruit.

If the previous compensation is technically not viable, Larian has already showed a way to adjust the power of physical builds. Adjust the P.Armor of enemies. Now I don’t think this is as sophisticated fix, since the changes would affect different weapon schools differently and it would make weapons overall relatively stronger than magic against health. Sure, dagger skills could be then compensated, but again we are hitting a point of cascade of changes, which is away from the low-hanging fruit approach.

[u]Conclusion[/u]
With a very low effort fix, Larian could make the game more intuitive for new players as well as create balanced differentiation between various builds. The aim is not to fix what you might consider some of the bigger issues in game balance, but to grab something with a good effort to results ratio!

What do you think? Do you agree with me? Am I underestimating the effort required to pull this off? Do you think it would have some adverse effects I do not see? Should Larian admit if the reason they can't do this is because of hard-coding basics such as the damage formula?