80% resistance - 500% EHP and it work all the time instead of evasion that can fail you. =)
I was going to type a long post but saw Zâs reply. So not gonna do that
Point 1 is the one that impacts players like me so I am looking forward to the next patch.
I dont say you should not balance the absolute endgame. But that`s so true. PLS dont balance around players/builds with 1000hour playtime+ or cheaters who edit the best item in every slot or edit the stats from the char itself and the the same 5! guys who post videos from the op builds/chars.
Getting stuff like Protection or Readiness is pretty dang easy compared to Thunderstruck or Kings.
Thereâs also Runebound Topaz and Ugdenbog Leather that can be slapped on several items. The former on all jewelry with 52 flat DA on each and the latter with 30 flat DA on several armor parts.
But in this type of game it is generally assumed you are capping your resistances (hostile RR is another topic). Everyone does it if theyâre aiming to succeed. Iâm not tossing values around for how much health you gain from physique, everyone prioritizes it for crucible.
A 40% PTH cap vs. 66% PTH cap is a 2.72:1 survivability ratio. If you feel wishy washy on miss chance based defense we can lower that to 1.65:1. What is this analogous to in terms of resistances?
Roughly +8% all maxres
Weird things with physical resistance and armor. Against massive hits where armor doesnât matter much this amounts to at most 40% phys res for a build that has zero innate, 20% for a build with 50% innate. But since the reduction is coming in as the first thing (before armor) youâre also getting an effective Total Armor Modified by some X%.
a 5k hit becomes a 3k hit, 3k armor covers this. 20k -> 12k, -3k from armor= 9k.
Compare with 5k armor, 40% phys res vs. 20k hit. 20k - 5k -> 15k. 60% of 15k is 9k.
So in recap of this proposal. Stacking DA up to 40% PTH (compared to 66%) gives
+8% all maxres (assuming no sources of maxres)
Total Armor Modified by 65%
40% phys res (assuming no physical resistance to start)
Hm lots of emotions in this thread 
It seems like people are using the term âbuild diversityâ pretty liberally to describe a few different things.
From my point of view there are two types of definitions for âbuild diversityâ in play when discussing DA stacking.
-
Enabling class combinations without strong defensive mechanics (like overguard/shield, mirror, etc) to complete crucible (so stuff like pryo, trickster, infiltrator, etc)
-
The actual mechanic a build relies on to do crucible.
DA stacking is a good thing as far as 1. is concerned. Pre-AoM crucible was mainly centered around class combinations which abused some defensive mechanic. Post-AoM crucible has virtually every class combination able to do crucible (obviously with a huge variety of effectiveness and difficulty), mainly due to DA stacking.
As far as 2. is concerned, DA stacking is NOT a good thing. Out of all the builds shown to be capable of doing 150-170 gladiator, the vast majority of them rely on DA stacking.
Iâm going to quote some feedback I gave to crate privately, starting with a loose classification of crucible builds (obviously builds can mix and match from the seperate categories):
- DA stack builds â builds which go out of their way to stack 3.5k+ DA (frequently higher than 4k)
- CDR + Time dilation abuse â mostly arcanist(/necro) builds abusing td+cdr mechanics with mirror and other defensive skills (blast shield, mark of torment, overguard, etc)
- Yakety Sax builds â builds which can kite like a mothafucka. They dont need to be near enemies at all to do damage (rune builds in inquisitor, pblades builds, some bwc builds, totems, etc)
- Shield â basically soldier + shield builds. A few of these also use a bit of DA stacking, but really this setup deserves to be its own archtype since that DA stacking isnt strictly necessary
- Lifesteal or Tanky MoFo builds â mainly characterized by vitality casters, but there are many others now (orobooork DE, other DE, converted from vit builds, a few autoattack lifesteal builds, etc)
On DA stacking: Even though it isnt a particularly interesting mechanic from a build point of view, it is a universal mechanic available to all classes since DA stacking is mainly a function of devotions and gear (%DA devos and stalwart _ of readiness greens and other high DA legendaries/blues). This mechanic allows builds and class combinations which are naturally very squishy to complete crucible. Deleting the viability of this mechanic would therefore work to limit the scope of builds/class combinations which are viable for crucible.
Now onto Zantaiâs proposed changes:
- Reduce the effectiveness of the Stalwart, Readiness and Dranghoul affixes for stacking DA, along with a few other rare affixes.
While this change does impact non-Crucible players, these affixes are vastly prevalent at high end play. A nerf to them will be felt hardest at excessive values of DA stacking, not so much at the values required for the campaign.
- Apply a minimum cap on the PTH formula of 66%.
Against a Nemesis in the Crucible on Gladiator difficulty in wave 170, without Mutators or buffs/debuffs, this makes a DA value over ~3680 only relevant for counteracting monster debuffs. Going below 66% PTH is overkill for the campaign.
I think 2 is a very interesting change which I am happy about. The reason is 3680 is a fair number which still enables some DA stacking which is probably enough for squishy builds to still compete in crucible. The number also isnt really high enough where youâd see extremely warped builds (which do crazy things to get 4k+ da)
I think that 1, in combination with 2, is a bad change. 2 will have the effect of devaluing MIs/greens with those affixes enough without also a big nerf to them. 1 begs the question: exactly how much will these affixes get nerfed? If they get dumpstered that is going to be a very bad place for item diversity imo. My reasoning is best explained by an example:
Consider the ring slots. If stalwart living ring of readiness/dranghoul/etc gets dumpstered, that would have the effect of making the judicator signets the defacto âDA stackâ items for those slots. Players would go from a choice of âshould I use well rolled living rings, or judicator signetsâ to âeverything else sucks, judicator signets.â This will also happen with other items in other slots (assuming that there isnt going to be a big review of oa/da sources in items in general).
Reducing player choice is a bad thing. While very far from 4.5k+, 3680 DA is a nontrivial amount for certain builds to get. Capping DA in crucible and at the same time bringing a big nerf to sources for DA is âTOO MUCH MANâ. I also think that as few changes as possible should be made at one time (so their effects can be best studied). Capping DA in crucible is a HUGE change and should be the only change for a patch so that we can see what that ends up playing like.
- Review and selectively adjust spawn counts and debuff intensities of monsters in Waves 151-170.
As has been pointed out here several times, Crucible 100-150 farming is actually fairly accessible with a variety of well-built characters, it is only once you get to the difficulty jump in 151-170 Crucible that DA-stacking becomes more tempting.
However, we do not want monsters in the Crucible to be too different from those in the campaign. Barring a few exceptions such as % Max Health debuffs and dispel mechanics that are more punishing in an enclosed arena, we do not want to go crazy adjusting monsters, so this is not going to be extensive.
This change is a little vague and Iâm not really sure what this entails so I cant really comment much here. I can say that a reduction of waves 150-170 to be very similar to waves 130-150 is a bad thing because it defeates the purpose of having the extra waves to begin with.
I will point out that 151-170 Crucible was always meant to be a challenge and its rewards actually do not scale nearly as well as 100-150 does. This was intentional so as to make this extreme challenge not as alluring for those farming for loot and rather to be a proving ground for those that wish to reach the absolute peak potential. Youâre effectively getting ~10% more loot for ~30% more effort.
Something that has become a bit lost with the release of Ashes of Malmouth is the use of Defenses and Celestial Blessings. It is fairly common to simply go Empyrion for Health and Amatok for the damage and ignore the rest. So this brings us to the 4th point:
- Improve the value of Defenses and Celestial Blessings in the Crucible as a more valid counter to the power of enemies in the 151-170 range.
This change will impact things in two ways. First, it will make this feature of the Crucible a more relevant strategic choice to fill gaps and enable you to defeat the toughest challenge currently in the game. Second, it will give new players a more powerful stepping stone on their way to the toughest challenges by giving them better options to boost themselves when they are struggling.
Buffing defenses (in particular damage-source towers) is interesting. Since it seems like Crateâs design idea is to have 150-170 be more of a 1-off challenge rather than a great place to farm (for single player at least), having it be the case that certain builds need to dump 100 tributes into defenses and buffs in order to complete it is probably fine. This change would also make those defenses (in particular towers) more relevant whereas they have been mostly discarded by min/maxers for a long time now.
That sum up current 151+ crucible situation pretty well =) Equivalent of 90% all res and 60% phyz res on top of 3K armor is required to deal with high wave madness. Or invulnerability cheese, or absurd dmg-output leechtanking.
40% PTH wont be a problem if reaching such level would require some heavy-dedication, not current 3x stalwart of GDstash stuff. =)
DA stacking should NOT be nerfed. Break it and you will lose balance completely. You will be left with SnB tanks and a few odd combos as the only viable builds for crucible.
Getting your DA past 4k is not trivial and comes at a DPS expense almost always!
Not to mention that hunting for those super rare MIs extends the gameâs lifespan. Nerf that and many would simply look for another game to play. There should be a nice reward for countless hours of crafting and farming specific bosses.
To me, this game is properly balanced right now.
I sincerelly believe, that if you apply 2), then there is no need to apply 1) at all. DA becomes really strong only when players stack it at very high values (4k+), resulting in very low chance to be hit (below 33%). So, if PTH will be limited to somehing like 66%, it will solve all imbalanced caused by extreme DA stacking. Furthermore, you can even buff DA values a bit, and it still wont cause any problems. No, you SHOULD increase DA values on items (or reduce enemy OA), because otherwise, stacking DA will became far too weak mechanics, and no one will ever get bothered with it. DA stacking is OP now, but i dont want ârollercoasterâ shift in next patch, where stacking DA suddenly becames totally pointless and not worth any efforts at all (above becoming crit-immune, maybe).
Then, maybe, we should overlook S&B tanks and FDR spellbinders too? And then, adjust enemy power accordingly, after fis\xing those imbalanced defesive optionsâŚ
The balance of current DA is already nonexistant, this argument is void.
Big Z said that they are adjusting Crucible as well, although, how much these new Celestial blessings will offer we will see.
The original argument was that DA stacking happened because Crucible is too much to handle at 170+, thatâs why people started to abuse this mechanic to no end. With proper adjustment of Crucible and nerfing DA at gapstop on certain levels will allow for more build variety and more creative combos to shine instead of abusive gameplay.
Itâs not really. Stalwart and Readiness affixes drop all the time, so getting these is far easier than any of green rare affixes.
They are not rare. Proper balancing does not equal nerfing. You are exaggerating.
As many before me said, the first point really isnât needed with second. With 3700 DA as a threshold, people should be fine even with Stalwart\Draghoul affixes in their current state, since getting DA further will net limited returns already in terms of twisting your own build.
Given that the premier DA MIs are double magic affixâd things I cannot agree with you that these things are exceptionally rare. Living rings in particular are easier to farm than hunting good affixes on something like zantarinâs shoulderguards. You have a vendor selling them in an area that will drop a few while you romp through.
âAn intelligent person learns from their own mistakes, but a genius learns from the mistakes of others.â
Nerfs are NEVER a good thing, something blizzard learned the hard way. This mentality is what eventually killed D3 (not that it was any good to begin with). Instead of nerfing something, you should be buffing other things to keep people away from DA stacking.
The fact that some are whining about DA killing build diversity is amazing to me. How can something that added several viable builds, kill build diversity. Everything that works without DA still does and kills much faster. The rest that will never work without it, now it does and gives a chance for some people to enjoy their favorite builds and finish the hardest content with them.
Itâs very tempting from the devs point of view to address only the issue of DA stacking, but the easy way is never the right way. Nerf DA without giving back something just as strong and i can almost guarantee you will regret the decision later.
Oh boy, the nerfs are bad logical fallacy again. :eek:
Let me give you a very brief example since this has been explained ad-nauseum.
Letâs say we have 100 skills. 4 of them are Overpowered, 86 are average and 10 are underperforming. In addition, if you use some or all of the overpowered skills, monster balance feels off and the game is too easy.
You are the developer.
Do you buff 96 skills to match the OP ones and then adjust every monster in the game to make the difficulty feel right again?
Or do you do the sane thing and fix the 4 overpowered skills and 10 underperforming ones, leave the monsters alone, and move on to other pressing tasks also on your immediate to-do list?
Something can add build diversity but still be poor for gearing variety. Why have 100âs of items in the game when you can just stack the same 3 affixes for success?
Donât see how weâre taking the easy approach here anywayâŚIâve described our multi-step approach earlier in this thread. The easiest solution was to do nothing at all and I dare say that approach wouldnât impact the majority of our playerbase much, if at all, and probably realistically wouldnât impact future sales much either. Yet here we areâŚaddressing a problem for the high-end users and very likely making things better for everybody in general.
Instead of nerfing something, you should be buffing other things to keep people away from DA stacking.
Yeah, I know! Lets buff life. Like, hm, increase it from all sources by 500% (~37CTH 4600 DA level )
Ah, I like how people call it âwhiningâ when they donât like something.
DA is unimaginative, your core build concept is irrelevant as long as you stack DA. Therefore it kills build diversity.
Theyâre looking into monster difficulty of waves 150+. So thatâs something
Balancing isnât done in a single patch. The next patch is the first balancing pass and weâll see how it affects builds
The subsequent patches/hotfixes will be based on the feedback of the community. This is how it has always been.
Your posts always crack me up
P.S
@Danko
Some of the people calling for nerfs are the same people who used bombard pre-release patch notes in the old days at the sight of nerfs. A lot of these guys only look for what needs to buffed. But this is really hurting build diversity and therefore has been brought up
I loathe this mentality with a burning passion. This is not how balancing works in the first place.
Thereâs need to be a line of balance and everything in the game needs to get as close as possible without being broken. Of course perfect balance will never exist but itâs something that needs to be strived for, that meaning the game should be as balanced as possible.
Making underpowered things as broken as overpowered things is the opposite of balance. Itâs making things even worse.
About DA stacking, people will DA stack regardless if things are broken or not. Buffing things will not change a thing about that. DA stacking is pretty much the easiest way to mitigate damage in the Crucible right now.
Would it not be possible to tweak the getting hit formula so that nothing is changed up to say 3k DA but after that the gains start to level out. So you can still reach 5k DA if youâre so inclined and there will still be a benefit for getting such a high number, but (a lot) less than you currently get. Added benefit is that you wonât need to touch items at all, because I agree nerfing both the DA affixes and introducing a hard cap on DA benefits is too much.
TDLR severely diminishing returns on DA at high numbers
This is essentially happening from (2) in Zantaiâs post
- Apply a minimum cap on the PTH formula of 66%.
Against a Nemesis in the Crucible on Gladiator difficulty in wave 170, without Mutators or buffs/debuffs, this makes a DA value over ~3680 only relevant for counteracting monster debuffs. Going below 66% PTH is overkill for the campaign.
This change achieves that, except does it in a way which allows the devs to NOT alter the PTH formula (which is desirable from their point of view because that might be absolute cancer to change just for the crucible game mode, when this is a much simpler solution).
Whatever the actual number that is arrived at (if its 66% or 70% or 60%) is another discussion.
Itâs not. A hard cap makes more DA (aside from DA shred) entirely useless and in my opinion a bad idea. Diminishing returns is not quite as brutal, a soft cap if you will.
I made many builds that I consider really well made for campaing mode. They all can do Nemesis and most content (didnât try ravager, modrogen and only tried Lokarr on 2 builds). Most of my builds tend to focus on a source of damage absorption (%b or flat amount or both in rare cases), overstacking resistances as much as possible and having a way to reduce ennemy damage (war cry or oleronâs blood pretty much). I also try to get over 2.2-2.3k Armor for dualwield⌠some builds have more some less. Overall I tend to make similar builds to what you see on the forum but ââbetterââ for campaing since you donât need as much DA as the Crucible. My point being I know how to make a great build for Hardcore.
I mean my builds have generally speaking in-between 2.6 and 2.8k DA⌠more sometimes like my 2-handed commendo build but we all know 2-handed melee builds tends to rely on high DA, high life leach, high armor then the last layer of survivability depends on the mastery taken (fumble attacks, damage absorbtion⌠ect).
When I see people saying that 3.6k DA should be the new norm for Gladiator crucible for waves 151-170 I feel like it makes some gear(legendary) and devotion obsolete for the sake of having that high DA. The idea of making some gear and devotions (tier 3) obsolete is something I donât like. Itâs like baiting the player towards the cool stuff but in the end that cool stuff makes your char weaker for the sake of having ââlowââ DA for the crucible. Donât get me wrong, I do use MIs but some builds for the crucibles tends to use 1-2 more slot for greens just for the sake of having an high DA. Also having an high DA means either cheating to get the gear or playing non-stop for a long period of time. Itâs far away a possibility for any ââcasualââ player but still dedicated to the game. It also kills the diversity and the creativity (to a certain extent) for the sake of taken/use what has to used to get that high DA (gear wise and devotion wise). I used to play much more the game, now I play a bit less (still do cool melee builds 
) and although I donât find the Crucible that interesting because of the mechanic of the game mod I also donât play it because of the reasons discused above for gear/devotion. I still tried the crucible with a few builds when the last waves was 150.
Just my though.