Build 30: Balancing Pass and Bug Fixing

[Amonthar]

You said the dual wield was in a good place in ultimate. By that logic, equalizing it means it is still “in a good place”. The difference is that dual blades doesn’t become overpowered and we get some build diversity. Seems to me like it accomplishes a lot.

In essence, this change does nothing at all for a Dual Blades Blademaster. Everything will just go down as fast as before.

Why even change anything in the first place then?

Your build diversity would be a Cadence Blademaster without Dual Blades or something else that does not require Dual Blades lime a Phantasmal Blades Spellbreaker.

[Nine]

In essence, this change does nothing at all for a Dual Blades Blademaster. Everything will just go down as fast as before.

Why even change anything in the first place then?

Already explained why but I guess I’ll spell it out.

duals wield in good place > ultimate gets nerfed > dual wield now overpowered > dual wield gets nerfed > dual wield now back to good place

[system]

So instead of making last boss a bit easyer its going to be harder as i read, that means alot cant do it. That can be a problem to unlock next difficulty.
Did ultimate in generel get a bit easyer or did i miss read.
I hope it did im kinda stuck on all my characters on ultimate, with all the resist at max i still get one shottet on all kinda classes/builds.
But beside that nice patch, just hoping that ultimate got turned a bit down so all classes can do it.
For build 31 ill suggest boost ocultist pets a bit since they do very low dmg on ultimate.

[DraonCC]

Am I the only one who is really happy about this update?

Don’t think so. My PRM got a minor buff on sheet DPS as well - but actually, PRM was nerfed horribly.

I have an idea of what to call this patch.
Let’s call it the “Everything Aether” patch.

[Zantai]

Meanwhile I can’t wait to mod base runspeed to 115%.

>_>

Can always count on mods to fix the game.

Don’t think so. My PRM got a minor buff on sheet DPS as well - but actually, PRM was nerfed horribly.

I have an idea of what to call this patch.
Let’s call it the “Everything Aether” patch.

What got nerfed about PRM besides players with extreme cast speed collected being affected by the cast speed cap?

The old Proliferation did very little damage.

[Shuranosuke]

Great patch guys.

Player default Attack and Cast speed slightly increased

I’ve made a fresh new character and it also feels like he’s moving faster than usual. Is it just me?

[Amonthar]

Already explained why but I guess I’ll spell it out.

duals wield in good place > ultimate gets nerfed > dual wield now overpowered > dual wield gets nerfed > dual wield now back to good place

This does nothing for a Dual Blades Blademaster. Let me spell it out for you:

20k dps
20k mob health

Mob dies in one second

18k dps
18k mob health

Mob dies in one second

Why even bother making a change if the end result is the same as it was before making the change? This is a waste of time.

[system]

This does nothing for a Dual Blades Blademaster. Let me spell it out for you:

20k dps
20k mob health

Mob dies in one second

18k dps
18k mob health

Mob dies in one second

Why even bother making a change if the end result is the same as it was before making the change? This is a waste of time.

because the 18k mob health affects classes other than blademaster?

[DarkFenix]

That is a difficult combination to balance for, ultimately decided to focus those items on the Aether side, but I can see creating some counters to that in the future and focusing more on the Chaos side.

Thanks for the reply and sorry to be whining about what was overall a fantastic update.

The changes to The Clairvoyant set do seem rather incongruous with the Warlock class it’s obviously been redesigned for. The clear damage synergy between Arcanist and Occultist is chaos, since both classes have the ability to increase it and one of the Arcanist’s primary attack skills has a transmuter to render it 100% Occultist compatible. It now seems very odd for the class set to then have the opposite function and move damage back towards the Arcanist side of the class, into a damage type that has zero synergy with the Occultist.

If I were to make a suggestion based on the set as it is now, I would recommend that if you’d like to make the Warlock more aether-friendly (an idea I’m very much on board with, taking classes in strange directions is great fun), you go the whole nine yards. Increase the chaos>aether conversion potential in any of a number of ways. Perhaps an item similar to the Blood Orb of Ch’thon that gives a conversion self-buff, perhaps greater aether conversion available on items, perhaps an inverse equivalent to Tainted Power, maybe changing Doom Bolt from chaos into aether.

But I think my main feedback would be to ensure that a class’ signature role is well catered for before moving into the esoteric and unconventional.

[DeMasked]

Don’t think so. My PRM got a minor buff on sheet DPS as well - but actually, PRM was nerfed horribly.

I have an idea of what to call this patch.
Let’s call it the “Everything Aether” patch.

Only 4 aether related things in the changelog btw.

[Tsarkon]

Great changes.

Won’t lie though. I’m a little bummed out that possession makes you an evil DBZ character instead of the original size effect. It’s still cool, but I was super excited about being huge all the time.

[jeffny01]

I don’t think I like how the devastation meteors fall down in boring straight lines. The way they fell originally was much better. More chaotic.

[ber]

If I had a dollar for all the “bad design” comments. It’s become like a new forum cliche that basically means: “I personally don’t like the change - so bad design”

The alternative is that we could soft-cap these things by more carefully limiting how much you can accumulate. The end result would be functionally the same, you’d be capped at whatever limit we set. Perceptually it might feel better because you weren’t hitting what might seem like a more arbitrary limit (although in reality, our decision is no more or less arbitrary whether we implement a soft or hard cap).

In the past, I’ve always favored more soft caps and 10 years ago probably would have said “hard cap = lazy design!!!” but I’ve concluded that I may have been wrong. The big benefit to a hard cap is that we can allow more sources of a given stat and more flexibility in terms of how you reach the cap. Alternately, you basically have to max out whichever items we restrict the stat to. Since speed is kind of the king of offensive stats, if the highest quantities are found specific items, then everyone is likely to go after speed on those items, to the exclusion of anything else.

There obviously has to be some limit to speed, hard or soft, for balancing purposes. So basically the choice is: hard cap with more gearing flexibility or soft cap with illusion of no limit. :undecided:

So why there is no block cap? It’s OP as hell.

[DeMasked]

I’ve made a fresh new character and it also feels like he’s moving faster than usual. Is it just me?

I believe the base movement speed was increased a bit.

[Nine]

This does nothing for a Dual Blades Blademaster. Let me spell it out for you:

20k dps
20k mob health

Mob dies in one second

18k dps
18k mob health

Mob dies in one second

Why even bother making a change if the end result is the same as it was before making the change? This is a waste of time.

Thanks for rephrasing exactly what I said. Since the end result makes no difference, why are you complaining about it in the first place?

[Malpheas]

If I had a dollar for all the “bad design” comments. It’s become like a new forum cliche that basically means: “I personally don’t like the change - so bad design”

I made a new character named ErgoBadDesign to help with your protest.

[Amonthar]

because the 18k mob health affects classes other than blademaster?

I am asking specifically about a Blademaster with Dual Blades. The Dual Blades line was nerfed. Why was it nerfed?

What I am getting at is that as a Dual Blades Blademaster, I have to kill as fast as possible as incoming damage is still large due to the amount of monsters coming at me on Ultimate. A single mob attacking does not kill me it is when 10+ mobs come at me that I have to run back a lot. Changing the monster health was fantastic but then nerfing Dual Blades does nothing at all for Dual Blades Blademasters. They are right back in the same spot.

[Ceno]

I am asking specifically about a Blademaster with Dual Blades. The Dual Blades line was nerfes. Why was it nerfed?

Because if it wasn’t nerfed it would have been overpowered given that content was nerfed to bring it in line with underpowered classes.

[Nine]

I am asking specifically about a Blademaster with Dual Blades. The Dual Blades line was nerfes. Why was it nerfed?

What I am getting at is that as a Dual Blades Blademaster, I have to kill as fast as possible as incoming damage is still large due to the amount of monsters coming at me on Ultimate. A single mob attacking does not kill me it is when 10+ mobs come at me that I have to run back a lot. Changing the monster health was fantastic but then nerfing Dual Blades does nothing at all for Dual Blades Blademasters. They are right back in the same spot.

You literally said they were in a good place, so how would taking them out of a good place make any sense?

[Tsarkon]

I am asking specifically about a Blademaster with Dual Blades. The Dual Blades line was nerfes. Why was it nerfed?

What I am getting at is that as a Dual Blades Blademaster, I have to kill as fast as possible as incoming damage is still large due to the amount of monsters coming at me on Ultimate. A single mob attacking does not kill me it is when 10+ mobs come at me that I have to run back a lot. Changing the monster health was fantastic but then nerfing Dual Blades does nothing at all for Dual Blades Blademasters. They are right back in the same spot.

This song ain’t about Blademasters. Forget Blademasters. They are the same.

This was to keep Blademasters just as efficient while bringing the overall effectiveness of the other classes up. Blademasters are still OP.