Diablo® III

Currently only one gem is a percent based when put in a weapon.
Emerald : critical damage %
Ruby : +min +max damage
Topaz : physical damage to melee attackers
Amethyst : life on hit

Put another way - only emeralds scale properly for end-game. The rest scale backwards (they start out being extremely useful at low levels, and become less and less useful as your gear improves).

The solution is extremely simple:
Emerald : (no change)
Ruby : increases damage by %
Topaz : increases physical damage to attacker by % of your current stat (is this really the best stat for topaz we can think of? Why not +armor or another defensive stat?)
Amethyst : changed to life steal scaling upward by 0.1 each gem level (max 3%)

The result? All gems other than emerald become more useful at end-game. They also become less useful for low levels, but would still scale properly as your character grows.

Is there a _good_ reason not to make this change?

Life on hit was designed for low level, that cannot be removed.
I don't think any change made to Topaz will help in the future. so Ruby is the best option.

Ruby (current)
at +1/level and starts increase average damage 8-20. This work in normal and that is it...
Lets change the number to
+4/level, average damage 8-60, still too low
+6/level, average damage 8-86, still too low
+8/level, average damage 8-112, a bit low
+10/level, average damage 8-138, about right
+12/level, average damage 8-164, a bit high??
+14/level, average damage 8-190, too high?

Now with +% Damage for a dps 1000 weapon, average damage about 680-700 (690)
10%, +69
20%, +138
30%, +207
40%, +276
50%, +345
If you see the numbers here you will know adding +% DMG to a weapon will be OP if it exceed 25%.
So the scale will be like this 12-25%

I agree with beginning to move away from static values on most affixes/bonuses/game mechanics, and this is definitely a notable problem that might be overlooked by some people.

The fact that Radiant Star Emeralds are the only viable gems to use in weapon sockets after a relatively low DPS mark is simply an overlooked design flaw–which is becoming more and more evident as DPS increases–and creates the need to make the other gem bonuses scale more so with the game than the gems themselves.

Rubies can reasonably contribute a +XX% Dmg modifier, which will add into any existing %Dmg affix rolled on the weapon. I think the bonuses from each tier have to be significant if Rubies want to compete with added Critical Hit Damage. Even linearity could work well, i.e.

Chipped Ruby: +1% Dmg
Flawed Ruby: +2% Dmg
...
Flawless Square Ruby: +8% Dmg
...
Radiant Star Ruby: +14% Dmg

Of course with this approach, lower-level weapons will hardly benefit from a % modifier, considering 40 may be a relatively high dps rating on a sword or a mace. With this in mind, it might prove that the best approach to this is to keep the +Min/Max damage bonus applied by Rubies until the Flawless Square tier. Then it could transition to a base +XX% bonus, and could add +1% per tier.

Ultimately, this would need testing on weapons that have rolled extremely high +Min/Max damage affixes to ensure balance.

01/01/2013 03:46 PMPosted by Akiwoodoh

Topaz : increases physical damage to attacker by % of your current stat (is this really the best stat for topaz we can think of? Why not +armor or another defensive stat?)

To be honest, thus far Amethysts have been the only gem type to offer a defensive stat when socketed on weapons, and I like that approach since they're the most versatile gem. Topaz could still provide an offensive bonus, just reworked for how it deals damage :)

I'd personally love Topaz's bonus to be percentage-based damage reflection. In turn, I think the thorns stat should altogether be transitioned to percentages. This could also work very well as a linear bonus, where each subsequent gem tier bonus adds +1% to damage reflected as physical to the attacker, with a base % that's decided through testing. If possible, I'd also like this effect to be extended to ranged attackers, because otherwise stacking the stat will just never be attractive enough.

Thanks for the thread OP