Today let’s talk about the worst designed mechanic in Diablo 4 and how to fix it. This mechanism is Overpower. This is a mechanic unique to Diablo 4. Let me first explain to you how it works and why it works so badly.
First, the skills you cast have a 3% chance to deal with Overpower damage. However, according to the description in the game, we know that Overpower does not apply to continuous damage effects, passive skills, and channeling skills.
Also, this 3% check is only done once. For example, an Ice Shard fires 5 shards, but you don’t check the strength every time. Either all shards Overpower, or none hit. But more hits are not equal to more chances.
Another example is Bladedancer’s Aspect. This is a powerful aspect that supports Rogues’ Twisting Blades. However, some skills have certain conditions that guarantee Overpower when the conditions are met. For example, on Druids, if you stay healthy for 12 seconds, your next Pulverize will definitely deal an Overpower blow.
Next, Overpower damage is based on two things. The first is your current Health + Fortify, which we can see from Overpower damage tooltip. So, we need to talk about Fortify.
Fortify
Fortify is a mechanic that reduces the damage you take by 10% as long as you have more Fortify stacks than your current Health. But your Fortify cannot exceed your maximum life.
You can actually scroll through your HP pool in-game to see how much defense you have, indicated by an extra layer of red. Once you actually get Fortify, you’ll see iron rings around your Health Orbs.
Additionally, Fortify is a mechanism owned by Barbarians, Druids, and Necromancers. Rogues and Sorcerers don’t have Fortify at all.
How Does Overpower Work?
The next part of Overpower damage is based on Overpower damage bonus, with a base value of 50%. It’s worth noting that, from how the overall Overpower damage works, it seems that Overpower damage has a fixed additive part and a multiplicative part.
The exact formula is currently unknown, but I’m sure you’ve experienced how much damage Overpower can give you throughout the game. You can also make the damage effect even better by leveling up yourself. If you don’t have time, perhaps you can seek out Diablo 4 Power Level Boosting service, which can help you level up quickly.
The part about the bonus damage being capped at 150% in PVP is actually from the old Overpower tooltip. They may have removed this, it just made PvP worse.
Finally, even if you can’t get Overpower chance, you can still get Overpower damage from your gear and Paragon Board. Additionally, Willpower also increases Overpower damage for all classes by 0.25% per point.
Why Is Overpower Poorly Designed?
One of the biggest reasons why Overpower mechanics are so bad is because there are so few resources that guarantee Overpower. Diablo 4 clearly wanted Overpower to be a very powerful effect. But it depends on conditions not chance.
However, by increasing the chance by 3%, they go against their original design, especially with so few sources of Overpower. This ends up making Overpower an obscure mechanic that just randomly increases damage by 3% for the vast majority of players.
Besides that, it can be overpowering in a hit with the same damage as a crit. Now, some no-brainer will conclude that if you hate big numbers, you should turn off numbers. The question isn’t whether the numbers are big, but how you get them, and how big we compare those numbers to your normal damage.
For PVE, not only Overpowers cause chaos, but they do not reward players with more Diablo 4 Gold for playing well. This violates the rationale that Overpower mechanism must be satisfied.
For PVP, it’s easy to hit a player with your 3% RNG roll for Overpower. But this can make PVP gameplay much more confusing and problematic.
How To Fix Overpower?
To fix Overpower, the first thing we’ll do is remove the 3% random Overpower chance. Letting it guarantee Overpower only in more common situations than in our current state, there is no more to choose from.
Second, I personally don’t think Overpower should be used in conjunction with critical strikes. This not only prevents the max damage from being too high, but also allows game designers to create a unique playstyle that can be balanced individually.
Also Read: 5 Tips You Need To Master When Diablo 4 Release Hits
In addition, developers can also make up for the lack of ultimate moves by reducing the difficulty of Overpower’s casting conditions. This allows them to effectively focus more on defensive stats like health and Overpower damage rather than crit chance and critical damage.
This would really create a differentiated build where Overpower builds are rewarded for meeting conditions, rather than most classes just benefiting from a random 3% chance.
All in all, hopefully we can improve Diablo 4 by changing Overpower to better create more PVE variety and reduce PVP balance issues.
