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How do you balance a mage versus a fighter? How do you balance a melee fighter vs. a ranged fighter? How do you balance a fast hit vs. a slow hit?
Well, as far as on weapon speeds, my idea would work well. The rate of wear would have to be inversely proportional to the weapon's speed as I explain here:
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Faster weapons should decay slower than slower weapons but slower weapons should have a higher durability. Why? Well, just as you said, they'd have to be repaired a lot more often. Also, you could say that they are faster because they are lighter(which is why they have lower durability) but aren't hitting with as much force(which is why they wear slower).
Larger slower weapons would have the opposite true. They are bigger and slower(so have a higher durability) and they hit a lot harder and for more damage(so they wear faster).
All things averaged out, the items should need to be repaired at about the same times(instead of one kind of item needing to be repaired more often).
Ranged items would wear in a similar fashion.
As far as Casters versus melee, weapon wear would work about the same. On the armor end though, the lower the level of protection the armor gives, the lower the durability. Mages would need to repair their armors more often, but this is not AS large of a problem as it would seem as the lighter armored classes should be getting hit less(**see notes below**). In this case durability needs to be in direct proportion to to the amount of damage that will be taken.
Note: I say the classes with lighter armors should be getting hit less because if you think about it, it's true.
Tanks take the brunt of the damage so need the heaviest armors.
Leather wearers(including Hunters even though they later wear chain) have ways of dealing damage while getting hit less(often this takes the form of high DPS(Damage per second) so that a creature that dies faster deals less damage, or a pet that does the tanking).
Cloth wearers do what they can to stay at range or to stun the creature so it can't be as effective in combat.
Grouped, it's the member's jobs to let the tank hold aggro. If you are drawing aggro from the creature, you need to better learn to pace your attacks so as to not gain aggro.