Brilliant logic, granted that 90% of points for aether comes from spellbinder.
yikes.
and why do you even try to summ their points to begin with?
extreme low survivability in your hands though.
Far off? i did one run with shattered+armored, what are you even talking about?
and again, build w/o main damage source dont just perform 15 secs slower. They dont work.
That’s exactly the damage type problem, you’ve just said it.
Acid has WH, Dervish and Sent. Just as Pierce does.
Chaos has Pyro, Deceiver, Warlock, 1 WH and 2 Withcblades. (not counting pets)
yes, and then pierce has a bit lower damage but 3 times lower resistances, yikes.
Aether Spellbinder grants some 69 points, including AAR, CT spam, rotation, melee builds
Pierce Infiltrator grants 42.8 points with Blade Spirit + filler builds with some trap and SS flavor plus Belgo.
You can call it that. I call it cunning stacking problem. Only cunning stacking can make for a free bleeding support without any special investments.
This is just false. Not much else to say. You are even missing builds from your own sheet.
yet agaim i fail to see the point of summing up the points when one can just compare the list of CR timings. And yes, i do admit (as was said) that pierce has poor variety. The question is - is this enough of excuse to be better than the rest?
What did i miss? Albeit that one acid warlord and like 2 other chaos builds, all of which has below average performance?
I’m a noob at Pierce so it might be BS (not the Blade Spirit BS) but what if you nerf Pierce
by forcing it to go more into defense instead and not allow “perfect” builds?
For example maybe do something so that 2500 DA / 660 Physique is not enough for these builds (see the op)
Needing to invest a bit more into DA / Physique to compensate for lack of defense would solve all the problems
not only because %Damage would drop but also OA and one would need to search for it somewhere.
Living Shadows. Isn’t it too convenient and keeping all those Pierce builds together ?
Having to go for Bat would nerf Pierce quite a lot I know Bat is overused but it’s just an examlpe.
Just gimping damage as it is proposed in this thread is not touching the root of the problem imo which is being able to have all these synergies at once. And such nerf could possibly affect more cookie-cutter specs rather than those that casual players use. Btw I know this way of thinking is not welcomed because let’s be honest - none of us likes making compromises when building a character.
Pierce builds are already squishy, totally depends on their damage/lifesteal to survive. I know most builders think good lifesteal=tanky but it’s not. Tanky means you receive less damage, no matter how you sustain. That’s why most casual players sacrifice their damage to get some more tankiness(health, armor, DA etc) so nerfing devotions won’t bring any balance. The problem is not 6 double-rare MI builds which are obviously not possible to get without GDstash. The problem is using bladespirits in a totally melee(not hybrid) build and getting extra damage source, only sacrifice is skill points. So nerf should focus on blade spirits and to compensate that nerf, buffing BS specified gears like chillwhisper etc.
On the other hand, maybe nerfing cutthroat (which I guess will be done by removing AS) and sinister etc afixes without touching attribute bonusses won’t hurt much ordinary builds.
My current build is on hardcore https://www.grimtools.com/calc/gZwolDqZ . I’m not a top builder, but I think that the strength of these assemblies is in a large amount of percentage damage from dexterity and perhaps you just need to limit the dexterity limit, as is done, for example, with the attack speed.
WoP Infiltrator casters have similar timers to melee builds. The second build listed has the same speed as the DW one. And it has zero benefit from AS.
Cunning doesn’t have to be removed across the board. But two pierce affixes i mentioned are just too strong compared to the others (and to other affixes in general) due to extra cunning.
After looking at all the listed builds, I believe that you do not need to nerf the spirits, but you only need to limit the value of the characteristics to a limit of 2k. Experienced players remember when a high defense skill was imbalanced and here, in my opinion, a similar situation. Most player builds do not gain 2k Agility, Physique or Spirit, so I think that would be a reasonable limit. And the third spirit at 24/16 should not be removed, maybe it is better to calculate the damage scaling for the case when there are 3 spirits?
I don’t really agree with the changes being proposed. There’s consistency between summoning skills adding “+1 to summon limit” at 24/16, and now the plan is to remove it from Blade Spirits because pierce BS are used on the best/fastest Crucible builds. Is that healthy game balancing? We all know pierce damage is busted, for many reasons already explained in this thread. Why does Reaping Arc work best on Pierce builds instead of Aether builds? Shouldn’t the nerf/rework on Treacherous Means belt be good enough? Why not wait to see what happens after that?
It reminds me of when thermite mines were nerfed because some elemental demo builds were doing too good. Commando, a weak class, got nerfed when that happened. Same thing will happen with Cold BS. Is the idea to buff Chillwhisper to compensate and screw anything that doesn’t use it?
Developers need to take a step back and think whether it’s a good idea to nerf things based solely on Crucible times. BS do great there because they have excellent AOE, despite having much lower single target damage than mortars or guardians. Seems balanced to me? But it’s crucible, therefore AOE is king, clear speed is the only thing that matters, AAR is god-tier despite countless nerfs, FoI is trash, glass cannons are viable, yadda yadda etc.
PS. if you’re going to nerf Blade Spirits overall please remember to nerf Fabius’s Blade Spirits as well. He’s fucking busted because of them.
Of all the ideas I’ve seen so far, a stat cap seems pretty interesting. If it was clear that a stat can only reach a certain threshold illegitimately, I see no problem with capping it there. I see no issues except issues with modding, but I’m no professional there.
I’m saying this as a player that’s not biased against the use of GDStash or cheated builds, I do it all the time
There are already diminishing returns in place naturally, the problem seems to be that cunning provides the ability to “triple dip” on offensive stats, as previously mentioned.
“Stat cap lol” isn’t really a valid counter argument. I’m actually interested to hear a counterpoint from someone that is legitimately knowledgeable though
There isn’t a cap in the game that I’m not opposed to, save for the resistance cap. AS, CS, MS, DA (err…PTH), etc. are all caps I’ve expressed my disdain for in the past - and, if I’m not mistaken, I’ve pulled the “lazy devs” argument out for them as well. Hitting caps is a real “feels bad” moment for ARPGs, as one reaches an arbitrarily-imposed limit of the game from some “developer wisdom” or from the necessity of the engine. It doesn’t feel good, for a player, to suddenly be denied the opportunity of choice. Should I stack more Cunning at this point, or should I look at somewhere else in my build for damage? A cap annihilates that question entirely.
And furthermore, introducing caps may have a yet-further adverse effect, as we’ve observed. Caps breed necessity. How “popular” are builds below the 200% AS/CS caps? How often have there been complaints about the inability to reach the MS cap, which resulted in the multi-patch sprinkling of MS throughout items/devotion just so every character in the universe can easily reach 135%? Do you really want to introduce a world where hitting 2k Cunning (example as given above) is the necessity for every build?
I don’t.
It probably wouldn’t be an issue with modding. Often when these sorts of things are introduced, they’re done via another field that can be adjusted by modders to be anything at all. (Though if this is not the case, it’s not out of the question that some masteries (D3…) may need to be revised.) The caps described above, for instance, can all be adjusted (including the PTH cap) by modders.
And for the record, because I’ve already received one private question of “Do you really think Physique is that busted these days?”
No, I don’t. I just think it’s funny that for 6-7 years Physique was overwhelmingly the optimal stat and only recently there’s at last some competition among them. Granted, Cunning is most definitely the dominant choice now, but I still think its laughable to suggest capping a stat that was intentionally improved over the course of half a decade.
Wow I thought of that too. I would see it making people talk how one build cannot reach the cap so it must be buffed etc. Hah similar to the move speed conversations there were on the forum.
I know Bat is overused but it’s just an examlpe.
