Yeah, the judicators. And fluff’s revised terminator.
Don’t assume they would do such a change without balancing (they lowered enemy OA in crucible last patch to compensate for topaz/rylok medal nerf). If we would all fear like this we wouldn’t even post any more builds and the game would no longer change organically. Sometimes nerfs go a bit carzy in some directions. I know, I’ve seen them before and complained about it plenty of times.
But i’d still rather things changed than stay the same. Twisted builds with 4.5-5K D, using an enormously flawed crutch just to justifiy their existence in Crucible 150+…SJ builds (or others) with Untouchable shield all over the place…i’d be more curious to see what crate comes up with than to see the next stalwart driven build
You guys seems to have too much free time to complain about
that people build defensively for the biggest defence, optional* challenge in the game - the Crucible waves 150+?
Not to mention that the game went from having 3 viable builds to clear W170 to having dozens of such builds - yes they all stack DA but let me flash you - that is the point of the Crucible if you havent noticed. Nerf monsters in there and you lose the challenge and point of that mode.
Majority of all builds nowadays can clear without much issues Gladiator Wave 150.
If you want the extra challenge - stack all defences and try going past W150. If not - you dont lose anything, like extra loot - since we know the rewards at 150 and 170 are the same.
If Crate decides to listen to the handful of crybabies and, yet again at this maturity stage of the game, overhauls the core formulas and components - it will be game over since there are so many of them it will inevitably lead to massive fuck up. Quite convinced Crate has actual priorities - like FG xp2 and the new systems coming up with it - instead of catering to the 0,000000001% of the players like Zantai has stated so many times.
So, for your own bloodpressure sake - give it a rest.
Tons of viable builds - people are having actually FUN you know, something you seems to be ignoring of having lately…
I’ll ignore the most of your tone in your message and since and actually reply since I have too much time.
The fact that you think high DA is fun and enables “builds” if you can call them that means you don’t really know enough about the game.
The DA meta came to this forum after the chinese community posted such builds. Asks any self respecting chinese build poster and he will tell you that the whole DA thing in crucible hinders the imagination and build versatility. It’s a major crutch that any so called"imaginative" build relies on. The point of crucible is NOT to stack all the DA in the world but to be smart about your build. It’s so weird that people think this DA thing enables build variety when it has the exact opposite effect.
If you can’t see that, or don’t care enough to inform yourself so as to come to a balanced conclusion i’d refrain from calling people crybabies
Nonsense.
DA meta is clearly unbalanced as fuck, doesn’t promote build variety and is twisted to the point when many builds become the same. You fear that Crate will nerf it to the ground without justifying and backing up your bold claim.
What Crate should (and I hope most likely will) do is nerf it mildly along with several adjustments mentioned in MK’s post. That will bring up classes, that didn’t have any hope to compete in Crucible and change the meta to Smart Gearing.
MUH FUN is a subjective criteria, which doesn’t contribute anything worthwhile and doesn’t solve the core of the problem. Besides, I completely fail to see FUN in builds, utilizing the same mechanic over and over again.
Yeah, it’s not like Grim Dawn is one of my favourite ARPGs ever, it’s not like I want it to improve, right?
What a weak starting counter, you could have done a lot better.
MUH OPTIONAL is a weak argument as well. If you look at the build section, the biggest majority of build are centered all around Crucible. You beat 170 Crucible - you beat the campaign, there is no point to show MQ ot whatever - just beat the fucking Crucible.
Which completely fucked up the whole DA balance into oblivion, enabling people to literally ABUSE DA to dust.
No, this isn’t a fucking point, the point of Crucible is challenge first and foremost. Stacking DA, twisting your build, making the challenge null because of unbalanced mechanic - you call that viable? Laughable.
Nope.
Ah, but that’s bullshit. See, right now we have only one good way to beat 170+, while often fucking up the whole build, plus smart gearing, careful skill and devotion planning go straight into the trash.
Thanks for mentioning it, there is literally no point to beat 170 Crucible then. Unbalanced gameplay, no rewards…
You call people with actual game experience, veterans with years of playing and coherent formed opinions crybabies? Who the hell enabled you to judge us so?
Not if Crate is smart and reacts accordingly, balancing DA and promoting actual build variety.
I think you are legitimately confused. The low percent of people you are talking about are those who, actually, don’t beat optional challenges. Thus, they don’t voice their opinions on this matter.
No.
The builds are the same. The use the same affixes, almost the same gear (Cidatel being the popular relic choice, for example) and same devotions (stacking up OA and DA to hell). Very few builds offer different gear and devotions, while not busting their damage or other important build parts.
>MUH FUN
S T O P
T
O
P
Well if you took even quarter of the time read whatever we said you’d notice we want to nerf 150+ as well so that stacking DA isn’t the only way to tackle it
Secondly as Fluff and Ptiro pointed out the gains for DA are retardedly good after a certain point so it does warrant some looking into. Build posters used to take creative approaches to come up with various builds and now things have boiled down to “more DA”. This is more harmful to build diversity than the TD mirror abuse which is only specific to certain class combinations
I like challenge as much as the next guy and when 170 was new I enjoyed the waves since majority of my main builds are DoT farmers. But the recent builds being posted around here to the classes, skills and builds section are a reflection of just how bad things have gotten. Besides the unimaginative way to make builds there’s also the fact that people are killing Superbosses with relative easy thanks to the DA meta.
Take it from someone who constantly advocates against nerfs on the forums the DA meta is bad for the game.
Btw it might come as a shocker to you but balancing despite being time consuming is something they need to constantly keep doing to keep the game alive and interesting
Right the latter one especially imo since it was a genuine surprise he managed to kill anything with the lag he plays 
Majority of all builds nowadays can clear without much issues Gladiator Wave 150.
If you want the extra challenge - stack all defences and try going past W150
Problem is - you don’t stack ALL defenses, you stack DA at the cost of 3 items slots and 10 devotion points or 4 items slots for masteries that lack DA .
And that DA stacking is not innovative as ppl say : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQftvYwIAEw
I’m not so familiar with the way polls work here so I’ll just have the DA one as the poll.
There’s been some good amount of discussion somewhere else about waves 150+, specifically about the DA stacking builds. I think a discussion here in the Ideas and Feedback section would be good, where we can voice our feedback and suggest some things for Crate to look at.
I’ll start by having some questions:
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Do you think DA stacking to very high levels is imbalanced and unhealthy to the game? How high is ‘very high’ DA for you?
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What about the other types of defenses widely used in crucible? TD Mark/mirror spam, superdefensive devotion + shield, etc. Which of these are unhealthy and which are not?
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Do you think something should be nerfed/changed in crucible or in the builds that clear them? If so, then what do you think should be changed.
Will be posting my thoughts in a while.
Looks like discussion is heating up in this side and the issue on DA and 170 is getting bigger by the day. I posted a thread in the Ideas and Feedback section so we can voice our opinions and suggest things in the proper forum.
Umm dude you need a fourth option saying, “yes but Crucible should be looked into as well”
When the DA meta was new I defended it, saying it doesn’t need a nerf but things have gotten out of hand since then. Literally every build is a carbon copy of the other, the core concept doesn’t matter as long as you stack DA. As Fluff and Ptiro pointed out, people aren’t trying to max their other defenses they’re more focused on stacking DA. That’s a problem. It’s affects the MC too, you can see DA stacked builds steamrolling Superbosses
That being said dealing with this won’t be easy imo, DA has great returns after a certain point. So they need to look into the OA/DA forumla and not simply swing the hammer on the various sources of DA. If that’s too complicated to do at this point then I say they leave things as it is.
Lastly, if they do look into the issue they should also consider taking a second look at the new waves.
Actually, both DA and Crucible are the problem.
- Yes, definitely is. People stack high DA to the point of cheesing Superbosses.
As Prirodaktill, Chthon and Fluff mentioned, it gives too much of a return for the ridiculously amazing defensive mechanic. You have 4k+ DA, you destroy Crucible. You have even more, you obliterate Superbosses, which can’t even hit you.
Meanwhile a lot of aspects of your build suffer because of this. It’s absolutely unbalanced and should be reworked.
My own definition of good DA is between 3200 to 3600. Maybe a bit higher for Superbosses.
- None of them are unhealthy, because, primarily, this is is the only way for more fragile casters to compete with high DA builds.
As for shields, they ARE a defensive mechanic, BESIDES the ludicrous DA, that MUST be utilized way more. Like high Armor, good resists, etc. Instead, we have high DA - you don’t need anything else.
If Crate considers this unhealthy, then the whole mechanic of how Crucible works should be redone as well.
- Crucible should be reworked. The problem lies within it, since the whole reason why high DA builds appeared is the insane challenge Crucible 170+ offers. So, to cope with this challenge, people started to abuse high DA.
If Crate cuts high DA without balancing out Crucible aspects or other build important parts, like MK mentioned in his post earlier in Zhuugus’ thread, then the whole balance will be completely thrown out of the window, greatly limiting build variety and smart choices for Crucible.
Edit: Voted No, crucible is the problem. But it should be a bit rephrased.
i don’t have any problems with any builds.
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When ABCbarbecue posted the builds from the chinese community, I honestly thought that it is a very creative way of building a character. I’ve never seen anything like it before so I was fascinated by the concept. The current situation though, it’s something that I don’t really like. It took some time to convince myself but now I am convinced that high DA builds are unhealthy for the game. By high I mean those that exceed 4k. The reason I’m saying this is because while I still find the concept creative and it solves the problem of many builds that can’t do crucible without it, it seems like the plague has spread to builds that don’t really need it. I’m not saying that the creators of the builds involved are bad at the game or not creative, after all, the easiest way is the optimal way. You can clear 170 with a bwc build with only around 3k DA, same with a rune build, or a TSS build. It’s fine if this concept can only be applied to a select few builds but as things are right now, you can just pick a campaign build, stuff it with stalwart of readiness rings/medals and bam, crucible build.
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Some fans of the high DA meta might say that the two other main ways of tackling crucible, TD+mirror/mark spamming and superdefensive blue devotion setups, are just as unhealthy as the previous one but I disagree here. Both are endemic only to their classes (Arcanist, Necro, Soldier) unlike DA which can be used by almost everyone. Spellbinder is probably the exception, that’s more ridiculous than the DA builds. At the very least, these builds can still die if you do something stupid like forgetting to pop mirror/overguard or marking reaper’s minions, and that applies even to Spellbinder. DA builds can still die but it’s like only against reaper but facetanks everything else. For me, these two things are the examples of healthy game exploits.
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I think nerfs should arrive next patch. Many might disagree with me on this but for me, only dw and 2h should be able to use high DA. Those are the builds gimped by it the most and there’s a clear sacrifice you make in order to make them viable. To achieve this, NERF UNTOUCHABLE, both versions. This is the main shield used in almost all DA builds and there will be a very big loss in the DA builds if the shield is nerfed. Now maybe the new shield would just be a green DA shield but that’s for later. Also, nerf all the fumbles in crucible to make autoattackers more viable.
In addition, nerf spellbinder by reducing the aether damage of devastation and the damage absorb of Mark. Targeting mark here cause all the other arcanists using mirror are fine. Don’t touch the defensive devotions.
The reason I’m suggesting these nerfs instead of a general OA nerf in crucible like the last time is because even if you nerf everything in crucible, the builds popular now will still be popular later, maybe the DA threshold will lower a bit but it will stil be the same. Better not let some builds attain that DA.
Forgot about the OA/DA formula, that should be reworked as well. maybe with a rework of the formula, most of the problems will be resolved, so maybe this should be first before other nerfs.
And about the poll, a lot of things could be put there, really but I didn’t think I could come up with really objective choices hence, the questions.
That’s the main issue. You can’t target torment like that because for some builds it’s all they got. It’s hard to tone down Binders without messing up other class combos, some builds don’t even need devastation
On the topic of spellbinder. Maybe we could lock out Time Dilation to certain class combos :rolleyes::rolleyes:
On a serious note, Mark’s absorb value is fine imo. I’d rather increase the recharge time. Or screw the scaling past soft cap. Mark is crucial to a lot of other builds.
As for Devastation, I don’t think they should touch that till they fix AAR and CT. Considering they finally fixed PRM I have faith that they can fix CT as well
Personally, I’d say we ignore TD-Mirror-Mark for now. It’s kind of like DoTs. It’s OP, it’s convenient and only few builds use it. It’s an issue but not something that needs to be addressed immediately. Screwing with any one skill would screw over a lot of builds
But wouldn’t reworking crucible without also reworking DA just result in the same situation as now? If DA worked when crucible was insane, then it would work better if crucible is easier, unless you make it like campaign where there’s lots of walking.
You guys got a point. I just thought that if we bring down DA builds, then it would be good if Binder falls as well.
Nerfing DA on some items wont fix the root of the problem - that whole OA/DA PTH formula iteself is IMBALANCED. When your DA exceeds enemy OA too much (by ~3k or so), you have 0% chance to be hit. That should NEVER happen, and the fact it does happen, just mens that formula is broken. Correct formula will never reduce PTH to 0 at any fixed DA-OA value.
As for Spellbinder (permanent defensive CD spam with some CDR) - it’s the result of another broken feature - that CDR affect defensive skills like Mirror. In my opinion, CDR should affect only offensive skill, while defensive ones should never be affected by it. CDR values can be buffed even, with that change, but imbalance will vanish, cause you wont be able to spam super-strong defensive CD’s indefinetely.
Untouchable isn’t broken by a long shot
The OA/DA bonuses are tame when compared to Sacred Texts of Menhir. The proc gives you 20% DA and since it’s an off hand you get free CDR
Forgot about the OA/DA formula when I posted but I agree. The untouchable nerf was just the best I could think of at the time of posting.
As for Spellbinder (permanent defensive CD spam with some CDR) - it’s the result of another broken feature - that CDR affect defensive skills like Mirror. In my opinion, CDR should affect only offensive skill, while defensive ones should never be affected by it. CDR values can be buffed even, with that change, but imbalance will vanish, cause you wont be able to spam super-strong defensive CD’s indefinetely.
I’m not sure if I would agree with this. Maybe apply this to everything except TD, Eternity and smilar skills. Many arcanists won’t make it through 170 with only a single mirror, and as far as I know, Mark of Torment is an “offensive skill” by virtue of its targeting nature, so this won’t hurt spellbinder as much as you’d like.