First of all, I wanna thank Crate for putting in continous effort in polishing some of the endgame balancing issues that, as we all know, are relevant only to a very small % of the player base. New changes to augments were just so awesome, most of them make so much sense when you are putting together a build and everything fits even on weaker classes without resists from masteries.
Now, some augments are still almost never used and I have some minor suggestions that might improve them:
Bleeding resist became a bit irrelevant nowadays since you almost always have it in abundance on any kind of build due to Ugdenbog Leather and Bloodied Crystal. I recommend changing it to Pierce resistance - something that most cold builds lack, and upping hp value to 350. It also competes with Malmouth’s Redemption, Malmouth’s Soul and Coven’s Guile for Cold which makes it even less attractive.
Witch’s Black Flame
Also kind of useless. Petrify is the least important cc-res (except Sleep) and auto-attackers would want some flat damage while casters would definitely need some kind of OA/DA that competing augments provide.
I recommend adding 3% health and changing Petrify into Stun res.
Malmouth’s Heart
Again, same problem with useless Bleeding resist. Also, Lightning auto-attackers that might really benefit from that flat are a rare breed. I suggest changing Bleeding res into anything else - aether res, chaos res, poison res, %hp, anything will do!
Least promissing of all augments. Really bad one. First of all, no Electrocute damage, so as a defensive augment it basically competes with amazing elemental/all damage augments like Forgefire (flat + much more DA) and Arcanum Dust (probably best pound for pound augment in the game) and even Typhoon Powder (same augment but better everything). And offensively it competes with two heavyweights: Skyshard Powder and Osyr’s Wisdom. Suggestion: add Electrocute (with duration would be super nice, since Electrocute duration stat is still scarce), add 3% hp and change Petrify into %trap res.
Now if anyone has feedback for other augments that you think are lagging behind, please do it in a similiar format (except for Vanilla augments, those are supposed to be weaker).
Translated using Google translator
Great comments! Resistance to bleeding is absolutely not necessary on such things, as mentioned above, they really need to be replaced with what was offered or to consider some other possible options.
In current state of crystals in jewels,added bleeding resistance on lot of items and augments is wasted.
Furthermore bleed is in Ugdenbog leather,which is pretty common component.I end up often with over 100% overcap on bleeding.
And bleed it’s not super popular damage type and in Crucible with banners you can live without even caping it.
Pierce resistance is often tricky to find in some combos or sets. It could be added to some of these, in decent amounts (20%?-ish). (If you don’t want to use seal of blades/might, etc - which is a bit too typical.).
I like your feedback for Ateph and Witch’s Black Flame a lot.
About the bleeding resist I just think bloodied crystal is fuckin’ OP and needs a nerf, and that ring augments could use a bit more competition in general. At the least I think bloodied crystals could grant less bleed resist.
I use that augment a lot since it is basically the only augment that has flat lightning for weapons.
I have never needed the bleed resists though so definitely something else than that could be more useful.
These days when Bloodied Crystal is the new meta ring component, together with a healthy usage of Ugdenbog leather - I have never lacked any bleeding resistance what so ever.
Perhaps that could be a general thing, to look over all weapon augments that provides bleeding resists?
The question to ask here is: for what range of masteries and builds? I’ve no strong opinion on Bloodied Crystal – a shave to the resistance and/or armor values seems reasonable – but it’s easy to get tunnel vision on these matters. (E.g. I was surprised to see aether resistance added to IEE since I seldom have trouble with it, but that might easily be an artifact of what I’ve been playing.)
Most of my recent setups use 2x crystals to free up a component slot for Scaled Hide or Restless Remains while retaining some bleed overcap, but it doesn’t feel like an afterthought. It probably doesn’t help that armor augments only feature bleed or bleed + vitality.
I think Bloodied Crystal’s dominance is more about the %armor + Da, than the bleed 2 x BC = 12% armor.
I suspect that reducing the armor % would promote more variation. (to 1/2?)
For example, Runebound Topaz is basically obsolete because if going block, you probably want a bit more armor too…well…in every case. DA is more or less equivalent and health is overall less effective than the armor absorb.
Basically energy component are the only competitors near end game-and only for starved builds.
Even if bleed were reduced, bleed is not a dominant mob damage type and this resist is rarely overcapped and can often be left somewhat undercapped without too much risk (imho)
(except for Vanilla augments, those are supposed to be weaker).