In order to correctly address the changes to crucible a distinction must be made between:
crucible survivors - builds that just wanna clear it, no matter how, just get the achievement
crucible farmers - builds that wanna clear it in reasonable time to save some tributes but most importantly don’t wanna die (and lose tributes) so they happily kite and don’t really care about 7:30 or 8:00
crucible speedrunners - builds that sell their souls for that extra 5 seconds, kiting is heresy
For the longest time I’ve been treating all builds as number 3. Aggressive play was the only play for me. If a build couldn’t hack it it meant I was either doing it wrong or it wasn’t worth my time. This led to much dissatisfaction every patch because, well, strong things get nerfed, this’ the way the world goes round.
Thing is Zantai’s vision is not really consistent with this philosophy (I surmise). There is a whole spectrum of ways to receive this game besides crucible speedrunning.
Now, yeah, things got harder. Zantai’s explanation above that it was meant to balance main game - I don’t know but I don’t buy it. Some vanilla nemesis might be considered way overtuned (Fabius’ VoS and Execution OMG). All achievements from the past were rendered irrelevant (this is what pisses me off most every patch). Meta was turned upside down again. But in fact the only thing that happened is that a large number of builds can no longer be treated as number 3.
Actually, if you look at it from another perspective, it’s good that at least Zantai left some that can. He could’ve easily beaten Stormreaver, Deathmarked, Venomblade, Bloodrager, Demonslayer to a pulp instead of giving them an older brother’s tap in the back of their heads. It’s not easy to satisfy everyone especially when the most pressure comes from the elitist few.
I don’t like a few things (healthbars, target nerfs, a few particularities…) but I can’t really say that I’m dissatisfied with the changes overall. All is good in the land of Cairn.
BTW I started hardcore from scratch on veteran. This shit is harder than endgame crucible. Opens eyes. Namaste.
Notting wrong with using GdStash to try en test builds I don’t have that much game-time to level and farm each character. Besides the character should be legit with everything that could be obtained normally ingame.
It’s only tangential to this thread, but I wonder: what would happen if the Vanguard banner was turned from a free damage/OA buff that shaves time across the board to something that grants a mini-Ghoul or Prismatic Diamond-like skill with damage absorption, total speed, and lifesteal (if technically possible at all), one that triggers reasonably early?
Cool, so after you tested that build you leveled a warlord and geared him naturally without using cheats right? Oh you didnt? Ok. Because a lot of these changes that were put in place not only affected end game farming, but it also affected leveling new characters and the difficulty of the story mode. Which now requires even MORE time to accomplish the same things. So given the fact that prior to these changes you thought that game was too hard/too time consuming, its really strange to see your feedback saying you think the changes are ok. We are playing 2 totally different games.
Of course these changes didnt effect you because you use a program to level and gear your characters
Just to know. This is my build from the compendium that achieved SR90 and one of the fastest Ravager’s kill
3k+ armor, 3100 DA, 26% phys res, Ascension, Ghoul, Prismatic Diamond, 32% dodge, million of fumble and 50% chaos overcup.
Is it supposed to be fun and challenging?
I highly agree with mad_lee propositions.
It’s fine that warlords can complete cruci just face-rolling on a keyboard but we have a plenty of class combos much weaker - reaper, trickster, elementalist, defiler, witchblade, saboteur etc that also suffer when op-builds are nerfed.
Cruci shouldn’t be buffed anymore.
It shouldn’t have been buffed/nerfed ever because of vids made by god-like pilots on perfectly polished builds. Ordinary players can hardly get close to their results.
It would be fine if it is remembered while talking about changing sth.
And when even dervishes with profile equip and devotions and belgo builds began to break, it’s a rather bad sign of that something has gone out of control.
All right, just made couple of runs again with Belgothian Blademaster. Here is a spec that I used, in-game DA is 2910. Build is a good blend of damage and defenses, it utilizes War Cry that a lot of Belgothian builds don’t use, Serenity relic, Prismatic Diamond, Ghoul and has respectable overcaps (as much as it was possible to get) and cc-res.
, however i apologize if people were offended.