[1.0.0.7]Large increase of monster OA?

[medierra]

It was only a 10% increase to OA in Ultimate, which is significant but certainly nowhere near a 2.5x increase. It was actually a bit less than 10% since they lost 3% to all attributes.

I inadvertently raised it more than it seems I should have while doing some rebalance to address issues with Elite.

In Normal difficulty mobs had -15% OA and received +10% OA in Veteran, with the result that they’d be at -5% OA. Elite and Ultimate were previously at -12% and -10% respectively.

So monsters actually lost OA going from Veteran to Elite… sort of an oversight on my part and part of the reason Elite didn’t feel like much of a difficulty increase.

To correct this, I set Elite to mirror Veteran, giving it -5% OA and then thought Ultimate should be a bit of a bump over Elite, so I set it to +0% OA.

In the process of editing the file, I’d forgotten that I actually started with -10% OA in Ultimate.

Based on feedback, it seems like innate OA scaling in enemies is really good enough by itself, such that there doesn’t need to be any bonus to enemy OA on higher difficulties. For the next hotfix, I’ve set all OA to -5% for Veteran, Elite and Ultimate, so that the only increase will be innate scaling, which seems good enough.

This will still be a 5% net gain for Ultimate over what it was originally but I feel that is probably reasonable. Builds with sufficient defensive investment that I tested did fine and I feel that if builds still struggle with that increase, they are maybe too skewed towards maxing DPS.

Btw, if anyone is wondering why normal starts out at -15%… it’s just how things ended up when it came to end of development balance turning. When it became apparently global things like OA, Dmg, etc, where over or under tuned across all enemies, the easiest thing to do was just adjust the global bonuses up or down, instead of individually editing dozens of enemies.

[Steelflame]

It was only a 10% increase to OA in Ultimate, which is significant but certainly nowhere near a 2.5x increase. It was actually a bit less than 10% since they lost 3% to all attributes.

I inadvertently raised it more than it seems I should have while doing some rebalance to address issues with Elite.

In Normal difficulty mobs had -15% OA and received +10% OA in Veteran, with the result that they’d be at -5% OA. Elite and Ultimate were previously at -12% and -10% respectively.

So monsters actually lost OA going from Veteran to Elite… sort of an oversight on my part and part of the reason Elite didn’t feel like much of a difficulty increase.

To correct this, I set Elite to mirror Veteran, giving it -5% OA and then thought Ultimate should be a bit of a bump over Elite, so I set it to +0% OA.

In the process of editing the file, I’d forgotten that I actually started with -10% OA in Ultimate.

Based on feedback, it seems like innate OA scaling in enemies is really good enough by itself, such that there doesn’t need to be any bonus to enemy OA on higher difficulties. For the next hotfix, I’ve set all OA to -5% for Veteran, Elite and Ultimate, so that the only increase will be innate scaling, which seems good enough.

This will still be a 5% net gain for Ultimate over what it was originally but I feel that is probably reasonable. Builds with sufficient defensive investment that I tested did fine and I feel that if builds still struggle with that increase, they are maybe too skewed towards maxing DPS.

Btw, if anyone is wondering why normal starts out at -15%… it’s just how things ended up when it came to end of development balance turning. When it became apparently global things like OA, Dmg, etc, where over or under tuned across all enemies, the easiest thing to do was just adjust the global bonuses up or down, instead of individually editing dozens of enemies.

I realized a bit after that I think I put in the wrong PTH for the DA value I had, because my DA changed massively over a short period of time while I was messing around trying to bring it up enough to help with the stupid levels of enemy OA and I think I pulled the old PTA and the new DA.

But on a note of balance, I think the increase in need for DA was needed, but you don’t seem to have taken into account how bad caster access to DA is. A lot of my casters are struggling to have over 1800 DA even with massive investment, including 100% physique stat point investment. In the past, that was fine, because that would still put me at a fairly low chance to be crit, like 2% or so. Now? Welp. I saw a nemesis had 20% crit chance on me almost at one point this patch. Perhaps being forced to max both mastery bars might fix that for some builds, but I don’t know if that will be enough for some other caster builds, and that is still on average like 18 skill points that need to be dragged out of my skills to put into mastery, which will chunk my damage massively most likely.

[jabs]

I realized a bit after that I think I put in the wrong PTH for the DA value I had, because my DA changed massively over a short period of time while I was messing around trying to bring it up enough to help with the stupid levels of enemy OA and I think I pulled the old PTA and the new DA.

But on a note of balance, I think the increase in need for DA was needed, but you don’t seem to have taken into account how bad caster access to DA is. A lot of my casters are struggling to have over 1800 DA even with massive investment, including 100% physique stat point investment. In the past, that was fine, because that would still put me at a fairly low chance to be crit, like 2% or so. Now? Welp. I saw a nemesis had 20% crit chance on me almost at one point this patch. Perhaps being forced to max both mastery bars might fix that for some builds, but I don’t know if that will be enough for some other caster builds, and that is still on average like 18 skill points that need to be dragged out of my skills to put into mastery, which will chunk my damage massively most likely.

Not just yours.

Pretty everyone with an optimal build will lose a huge chunk of damage and/or survivability… or even the build of itself.

As most classes have exclusive Mastery End-Point Skills that preclude using others, such a need for squandering those 18 points would absolutely decimate build diversity.

At that point, Crate might as well do away with Mastery Point allocation altogether, and leave us with homogeneous D3 characters.

[Glimpse]

It was only a 10% increase to OA in Ultimate, which is significant but certainly nowhere near a 2.5x increase. It was actually a bit less than 10% since they lost 3% to all attributes.

I inadvertently raised it more than it seems I should have while doing some rebalance to address issues with Elite.

In Normal difficulty mobs had -15% OA and received +10% OA in Veteran, with the result that they’d be at -5% OA. Elite and Ultimate were previously at -12% and -10% respectively.

So monsters actually lost OA going from Veteran to Elite… sort of an oversight on my part and part of the reason Elite didn’t feel like much of a difficulty increase.

To correct this, I set Elite to mirror Veteran, giving it -5% OA and then thought Ultimate should be a bit of a bump over Elite, so I set it to +0% OA.

In the process of editing the file, I’d forgotten that I actually started with -10% OA in Ultimate.

Based on feedback, it seems like innate OA scaling in enemies is really good enough by itself, such that there doesn’t need to be any bonus to enemy OA on higher difficulties. For the next hotfix, I’ve set all OA to -5% for Veteran, Elite and Ultimate, so that the only increase will be innate scaling, which seems good enough.

This will still be a 5% net gain for Ultimate over what it was originally but I feel that is probably reasonable. Builds with sufficient defensive investment that I tested did fine and I feel that if builds still struggle with that increase, they are maybe too skewed towards maxing DPS.

Btw, if anyone is wondering why normal starts out at -15%… it’s just how things ended up when it came to end of development balance turning. When it became apparently global things like OA, Dmg, etc, where over or under tuned across all enemies, the easiest thing to do was just adjust the global bonuses up or down, instead of individually editing dozens of enemies.

Cant we just leave the Ultimate setting as it was in 1.0.0.6 - it was perfectly balanced? This 5% OA increase will break a lot of builds…the game has been out of early access almost a year and its like a groin punch at this point.

[Ving]

But on a note of balance, I think the increase in need for DA was needed, but you don’t seem to have taken into account how bad caster access to DA is. A lot of my casters are struggling to have over 1800 DA even with massive investment, including 100% physique stat point investment.

I agree with this. It’s not easy on Sorcerer, for instance, to get good HP and DA up to 2k without putting all attributes in Physique and even then taking a large chunk of defensive devotions.

On my most recent build I ended up taking only one devotion for extra dmg, two for some OA / Cunning requirement, and the rest for defence / HP / DA. Survivability is now OK, compared to a similar Commando (i.e. ranged dual wield), in that they can both kill Fabius (in 1.0.0.6!), but the Sorcerer takes more than twice as long. The Commando has probably the opposite in terms of devotions, with only two devotions for defence and the rest for offense.

I get that Soldier is a very strong defensive mastery in the first place, but having DA so closely tied to Physique is maybe a different issue. Or maybe my expectations of balance are unrealistic, i.e. that all classes should be able to play all parts of the game fairly equally.

On this particular Sorc I also went 50-25 Mastery in order to have enough points to max BWC / AF for the OA / resists reduction, and for a bit of variety (from 50-50 and starved skill points). I agree this might push caster chars towards double max mastery as a near necessity, which wouldn’t be a good thing for diversity.

I guess we’ll see in the hotfix :undecided:

[Chthon]

Cant we just leave the Ultimate setting as it was in 1.0.0.6 - it was perfectly balanced? This 5% OA increase will break a lot of builds…the game has been out of early access almost a year and its like a groin punch at this point.

Yeah the increase seems kinda unwarranted. Yeah Elite feels a little dull at times, but Ultimate is fine the way it is. Even if someone can casually wander around in Elite, he/she would tune their build when they hit Ultimate. As for the increase in need for DA. There are plenty of builds who go for DA (caster or otherwise) because they know they don’t want Fabius Notch Critting them. The game’s difficulty seems fine.

[blawsonhull]

DA is hard to come by when you’re not melee.

please roll back the change. mobs did NOT need an OA buff. i don’t want to have to go back and budget DA on characters who have a lot of trouble gearing for it. stacking survivability on a squishy caster is an exercise in futility- you really try not to get hit at all, but with a huge crit bonus on high end mobs it becomes too punishing

[Wisteria]

Ultimate is like a tiny slap on the butt now. A tiny slap with a shovel.

[jabs]

Ultimate is like a tiny slap on the butt now. A tiny slap with a shovel.

A shovel with 10 extra point over cap in both Fire-strike and Explosive-strike.

[jabs]

DA is hard to come by when you’re not melee.

please roll back the change. mobs did NOT need an OA buff. i don’t want to have to go back and budget DA on characters who have a lot of trouble gearing for it. stacking survivability on a squishy caster is an exercise in futility- you really try not to get hit at all, but with a huge crit bonus on high end mobs it becomes too punishing

Yup.

/10 chars.

[Corvinus]

DA is hard to come by when you’re not melee.

please roll back the change. mobs did NOT need an OA buff. i don’t want to have to go back and budget DA on characters who have a lot of trouble gearing for it. stacking survivability on a squishy caster is an exercise in futility- you really try not to get hit at all, but with a huge crit bonus on high end mobs it becomes too punishing

I completely agree. For most builds DA is really hard to get and right now mobs in ultimate hit really too hard on caster/ranged and other not-tanky builds…

[Chthon]

I completely agree. For most builds DA is really hard to get and right now mobs in ultimate hit really too hard on caster/ranged and other not-tanky builds…

Agreed with this. This entire OA, DA change for Ultimate wasn’t needed. They should simply roll-back to the way the values were in patch 1.0.0.6. Not everyone is playing an invincible tank that can stand next to the Mad Queen with her shotgun aura up. My favorite build is my DEE caster and i can feel the hits on him.

[blawsonhull]

Agreed with this. This entire OA, DA change for Ultimate wasn’t needed. They should simply roll-back to the way the values were in patch 1.0.0.6. Not everyone is playing an invincible tank that can stand next to the Mad Queen with her shotgun aura up. My favorite build is my DEE caster and i can feel the hits on him.

Hey was DEE nerfed or is it just me? I know I was getting a lot of initial splash hits of 40-50k+ now the initial splash is more like 14k. That’s too big a difference to be CoF nerf by itself. This is with 1000+ spirit and 1300% acid damage

[blawsonhull]

I completely agree. For most builds DA is really hard to get and right now mobs in ultimate hit really too hard on caster/ranged and other not-tanky builds…

Yeah if you’re getting hit AT ALL on your caster you’re probably about to die lol. That already was true before the OA buff

[Chthon]

Hey was DEE nerfed or is it just me? I know I was getting a lot of initial splash hits of 40-50k+ now the initial splash is more like 14k. That’s too big a difference to be CoF nerf by itself. This is with 1000+ spirit and 1300% acid damage

Not that i noticed. I just did quick run of the new patch. I am now sitting on a terminal w/o Grim Dawn and will get back to the game after Christmas. Also CoF+VoS nerf is bad but not game breaking and one could see it coming seeing how RR was singly the most powerful thing in the game

[Sobertooth]

I’m more than ok with the current OA boost to mobs in Ultimate, but maybe keep it closer to the original 1.006 value on nemeses and hard hitters such as Lox?

Campaign was way too easy before 1.007, with the fix to ADCTH I would find it perfect as it is.

That said, maybe a bit more DA on some items and devotions could be added, preferably on the Red and Green constellations, and maybe Purple that aren’t Wolverine?

It’s clearly not that bad when going Blue, my TSS Druid has 2k DA without a single item or skill devoted to it + Chariot proc + Widow OA nuke, all that while grabbing SotH nodes.

[Norzan]

I don’t mind the OA boost for regular enemies, but screw that for Nemeses and Mad Queen. Keep their OA values as they were in 1.0.0.6.

[Glimpse]

There is a saying - If something aint broken - Dont fix it…

Players didnt receive an extra layer of components which can warrant that 5% OA increase - its just totally unneeded and uncalled for unless everyone needs to play a tank - focusing on Phy. will become instead of 80% > 99,9% of builds.

Please, reconsider Crate.

[Chthon]

I’m more than ok with the current OA boost to mobs in Ultimate, but maybe keep it closer to the original 1.006 value on nemeses and hard hitters such as Lox?

Campaign was way too easy before 1.007, with the fix to ADCTH I would find it perfect as it is.

That said, maybe a bit more DA on some items and devotions could be added, preferably on the Red and Green constellations, and maybe Purple that aren’t Wolverine?

It’s clearly not that bad when going Blue, my TSS Druid has 2k DA without a single item or skill devoted to it + Chariot proc + Widow OA nuke, all that while grabbing SotH nodes.

I don’t mind the OA boost for regular enemies, but screw that for Nemeses and Mad Queen. Keep their OA values as they were in 1.0.0.6.

As someone who has made both squishy and tanky builds i disagree with you both saying trash mobs OA buff is fine and only end-game bosses need the nerf. The previous state of the game supported glass-canon builds, this change would force most if not all to focus on defensive devotions.

It’s as the post before me said, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”

[Norzan]

Nemeses now have an extra 5% chance to crit my Elementalist, she has 2144 DA. Ben’Jharr used to have a 0,4% to crit and now he has 5,4% chance to crit. Don’t know how much of an increase of OA that is but it seems to be a little too much.