Reading 1.0.0.9 notes:
“Most Projectile Ring and Projectile Burst skills used by monsters now deal reduced damage at point-blank range, most now also deal additional damage at long range”
I assume “projectile ring” are the shotgun like spells that can hit you many times if in melee range. Is this balance change noticeable?
In particular Zantarin the Immortal, 3 different 1 shots on some very tanky characters made me walk away from the game.
Skimming over the files, looks like when you’re within 2m of Zantarin his nova hits for 50% less, his burst hits for 30% less. The farther you are from him the more damage they deal per projectile.
Why would you quit a game, not being able to kill a single enemy? Doesn’t sound too reasonable to me.
Also, his shotgun attack is easy to avoid. He has a certain pattern and he won’t shotgun you within melee range.
Btw, three deaths is nothing. Unless all of those have been HC Chars.
One shots can run people off very fast, especially those with bad experiences from other games.
Thanks for the information Asylum, sounds legit.
Of course they were hardcore characters, frustrating when you spend time and effort and feel immortal except for that 1 untelegraphed attack that does ~200k dmg before mitigation at level 75, when no other attack that I’ve seen in the game does 10% of that damage. It felt like a poor mechanic/ability that would eventually be changed.
So I guess you could say more of a planned absence, waiting for a few fixes, always knowing I would come back to the game because it is very well designed and fun.
Losing three HC Chars to the same attack is frustrating, for sure. He is toned down, but can still one shot with bad resistances and no lifesaver like MoD.
Yep, that’s true. Especially HC players. But I won’t consider Zantarin’s shotgun attack a cheap death, which some other games “provide”. It’s rather a mechanic you need to understand.
Generally I agree… IF the mechanic doesn’t one shot you when you first meet it. If it does, then, for HC players, that’s a lost character for one chance at understanding what happened. It’s only a chance to understand, as well, because you can’t always see what’s going on, depending on your build and the enemies around you, IE PRM makes it hard to see anything but PRMs. If it’s a one shot, and it costs you a HC character to learn the mechanic, I don’t think it’s K.
If it NEARLY kills you, that’s a different matter, of course. And that’s hard to achieve in a game like this, making a skill that is NEARLY fatal to basically every build, but doesn’t kill them. That’s a wide variety, really.
Having no knowledge of certain bosses, heroes, enemies, Nemesis’ and so on plus not knowing what kind of defensive stats you would need in order to survive each encounter can indeed result in some frustrating deaths.
One shot capable skills to me should be pronounced abilities which you can visually see allowing some time to react.
I remember playtesting later Act 2 and testing multiplayer while encountering I believe a overly buffed Voldrak the Destroyer who seemingly, with his slow wind up attack, one shot a few characters during the fight. That felt right because you see that force of power coming and if you do indeed ignore it - high damage even fatal damage should be expected imo.
Problem is that Zantarin doesn’t have any tell-tale sign. He just up and explodes on your face and unlike what other’s have mentioned he does use this attack in melee range but due to the recent patch you’ll take substantially less damage than previous incarnations.
Not being familiar with what an enemy can do is certainly going to one-shot many peeps. But look at the Watcher’s in Port Valbury their attacks are telegraphed. They raise their arms up and call down a Meteor Shower. Unless you actually know that the next incoming attack is going to hurt a lot you probably would think it’s safe to continue attacking in the same spot.
Anasteria’s resistance shredder can be avoided but like Zantarin this seems to be cooldown based and she will use it every 20-25seconds or so.
Just did a testrun on my DW WH in Vanilla. Didn’t do that in ages, even though the Reputation was a bitch to farm. He definately uses the Nova Shotgun in melee, sorry for that.
Anyhow, he went down pretty easy in about 25 sec. My Vitality Resistance sits at 80% with +4% over max.