I see a lot of people differing over how to treat Maiven’s Sphere, so I propose a novel solution for Maiven’s to make it usable at all levels. This might take some willpower for people to wrap their heads around so bear with me here: increase the penalty to offense alongside the buff to defenses. Let’s say we start with 3% damage absorb, 2% projectile deflect with no penalties (at the cost of 1 skillpoint), then scale it back up to 25% damage absorb, 15% deflect, -10% cast speed, and -30% total damage at 12/12.
The theory here is that once a player is able to invest 12/12 in Maiven’s, they will have corresponding gear to offset the subtractive values in stats that can be stacked quite high, while 25% absorb and 15% deflect contributes towards a theoretical 100% defense values (unreachable due to caps, of course), which lends to much higher survivability.
Alternatively, make the solely scaling penalty a damage reduction like that found on some transmuters and cap it at, for the sake of an example, 0.7 (and start with 1.0 at 1/12). This way people will have to make the tradeoff decision between being highly survivable at 12/12 and only being 70% effective in overall damage output. Of course, in either of these cases, you can spend points and adjust the benefit and penalty at your discretion. If you want to give it a point just for a bit of extra defense and no skin off your back, then so be it. I imagine that a finalized build can land anywhere between 1-12 points in this skill.
Also, I propose giving Conversion the same treatment that Menhir’s Will and Fighting Spirit got. Nerf the benefit from dropping just 1 point into it (which is currently massive) and make it scale better.
Excuse me while I go chug a flamedrinker ointment.
What? I’m supposed to rub this on me, not drink it? Uh oh…
Edit: corporateslave beat me to the punch in proposing the simultaneous scaling of benefit and penalty, I’ll have to read the thread more carefully next time
Pardon me if I’m being obtuse, I just woke up from a nap. Isn’t this precisely the thing I proposed earlier in the thread (post 29)? Or is there a twist here that I’m not seeing? If it’s the same suggestion, then I can only say I agree.
Why the hell was detonation removed from thermite mines… that’s pretty messed up. If you devs felt it was too powerful then should have just lowered the damage values a little bit. you turned a fun skill you modified onto less fun once again.
i’m only level 15 so far, but i have done a decent amount of vendor farming and crafted half a dozen or so weapons and i haven’t noticed this IN THE SLIGHTEST.
edit: well, the first part. i’ve definitely noticed the second part.
Agree 100%. Whilst the ‘abuse’ of the detonation skill might have been unintentional, it was a fun mechanic, and provided a very different way to use the same skill, not unlike a transmuter. All in all I’d much prefer to keep this mechanic available, just tuning the damage & energy costs to whatever feels correctly balanced. In all honesty, whilst the damage might have been a bit high, I’m not sure it would need to be toned down THAT much.
once upon a time thermite mine was fun to play. I know the mines have to be nerfed, but no explosion anymore. Zars makes a guide. You give the guide a try and make a new char and there comes a new hotfix.
I mean the previous 1 second duration of stun was kind of overpowered, maybe even the peak of the damage, but our beloved explosions?
Maivens… for some kind of chars Maivens is now even more attractive, for some kind of chars it’s a more situational toggle skill.
It would be interesting to see a Maivens with no energy consumption, but instead you lose a portion of your energy when you recieve damage. It’s a energy shield. Damage to energie loss and damage absorption should scale with all levels.
How do you like the idea?
That casting speed penalty is pretty large and will hurt a lot at lower levels, especially when combined with the % Total Damage penalty. I think this will just encourage players to hoard skill points until they have enough to max out the Maiven’s in a single go.
Casting speed is much better than any other penalty. Reason? Because you do not waste your energy when your damage reduced by casting speed. This is very huge problem especially at low level when you reduce your damage by MS what results in more energy loss. But you have huge troubles with energy at low levels. And I do not want to worse them. So casting speed is nice solution but only if it’s ok that casters have higher penalty than melee.
About other things. Well. 25% absorption with damage penalty is not appealing. I will wait until MS will have more reasonable stats before making new arcanist. Right now it looks like that it’s suicide to try to play by arcanist on hardcore.
Maivens… for some kind of chars Maivens is now even more attractive, for some kind of chars it’s a more situational toggle skill.
It would be interesting to see a Maivens with no energy consumption, but instead you lose a portion of your energy when you recieve damage. It’s a energy shield. Damage to energie loss and damage absorption should scale with all levels.
How do you like the idea?
I suggested to make MS like medusa mana shield from Dota 2 (well, with less attractive stats because Medusa is tankiest hero in the game). But right now I think that this is bad idea. Because you cannot restore your energy pool so quickly as health pool. This will result that if your energy pool depleted then you cannot fight.
So flat energy cost is the only real solution.
For what it’s worth, trying to craft a rare implement with decent prefix/suffix combos is still a nightmare. I just blew through 1,200 scrap on my DEE warlock and the results didn’t appear any better than they were in the last build. Still had lots of rares with inappropriate affixes (about 4/5), and I was not able to successfully craft a rare with the prefix/suffix combos that interested me. I could have kept going, but I figured that 600 wands was a pretty good sample size.
