Why is something as precious as a Resistance Reduction skill modifier being wasted on skills like Olexra’s Flash Freeze?
Skill mods are the perfect answer to the lack of RR on arcanist and yet we get RR mods for OFF. Why?
Olexra’s Skill mods (that are wasted on the skill, I didn’t include the one on Olexra’s Chill and Spectral Bludgeon as those contribute to the skill’s behavior as a CC skill)
Of all the skill mods this is the worst one. It’s suppose to be a CC skill and yet you waste a “conduit slot” by giving Blade Trap a conversion skill mod
If anything that skill mod slot on the Conduit would be better used somewhere else - maybe add more Bleed Damage to support Bleed PB builds (this will work well Mark of Consumption)[/spoiler]
My Thoughts-
These skills receiving skill mods is fine by me. I don’t feel the need for everything in the game to one shot the boss. But I don’t agree with wasting Conduit of ___ Whisper slots to add skill mods to these useless skill or even worse, giving masteries RR through these skills which are nothing short of useless on bosses
Either alter those RR bonuses to affect some other skill or change those RR bonuses into something else that makes more sense for these skills. And remove their skill mods from Conduits. Conduit skill mods are meant to add more build diversity, wasting them on these skills isn’t doing anyone any good imo
Where would you even put a skill mod like this? Especially aether rr.
I thought about it after Krieg thread. Cold RR is kind of easy, since it’s most likely Nightblade who has plenty of abilities with >100% WD, you can attach RR to Star Pact (still leaves a possibility of something like a WK Might build).
If you put it on an active skill, person either needs to be using that skill already or add it to ones he already has. Aether is possibly Callidor, PRM, AAR or Aether Melee (with devastation possibly everywhere). PRM and AAR may not want to close distance with the enemy and they have no weapon damage, so adding RR to weapon or Callidor is bad for them. On the other hand, Callidor and Melee won’t like to interrupt themselves and refresh debuff, if it’s on PRM or AAR. Callidor also has less then 100% WD, so adding RR to weapon is not as good for them as melee.
That type of stackable resist reduction can only be used with debuff skills. OFF is the only skill in the Arcanist tree that can actually make use of that particular stat.
It would be better if Blade Trap and OFF were reworked entirely so that people actually used them.
Partially FALSE. Inferno also applies a debuff that does “x reduced physical resistance”. It is not a “-%” debuff (B type), but it does apply a debuff. Furthermore, there are situations where the base skill applies no debuff whatsoever, but they are given B type debuffs through gear. EXAMPLE: Runebinder on Inquisitor Seal. Coming back to Inferno, it was changed a long time ago when all instances of armour shredding were either eliminated or replaced with A type RR. They can change it to a stackable form and it will work for the better.
In fact, to increase the strength of the Battlemage, Crate could:
Replace the A type RR on Inferno with “-x%” physical resistance reduction (max at -12%);
Make Bernoath Reforged convert not only elemental and chaos to physical, but also aether.
Eliminate all forms of flat aether from spectral binding and leave it all to Reckless Power.
This would…
make BM better as physical casters, melee builds, as well as CT/Forcewave Internal Trauma DoT builds.
make physical warlocks possible (CT + PRM + Devastation).
address the controversial issue of Krieg DK by not completely butchering the set.
In fact, I bet Zantai (correct name - SENPAI) will probably do something like that rather than revert Krieg to pre 1.0.0.3. level or completely change the way OFF works as well as 1/3 of the Conduit affixes.
This is a terrible idea. Flat Aether damage on spectral binding should be reduced to respectable levels it shouldn’t be removed as you suggest. It’d hurt build diversity a lot as Aether Melee (non-DK, non-Cadence) will be severely affected by this change.
Reducing values on Krieg set makes much more sense than removing flat aether value from an entire skill
Why would you even suggest something like this?
And to the rest of the posts, as AoD here said we have CT which can be used for debuffing. CT is already used on rare occasions to proc devotions so some RR skill mods on it make sense
If that’s an issue then they should transform OFF into an actual debuff skill otherwise those skill mods are all wasted opportunities
Lastly for Aether to Physical topic, 50% more conversion is all we need as the rest would come from components. This way balancing won’t be a big headache
A significant reduction, however, is 100% entitled. At 12/12 it gives 44 aether, a significant amount of HP and OA. You know what other skill gives similar numbers of flat damage ? Possession…and Possession is an exclusive 50 skill that buffs a similarly problematic damage type (i.e. chaos).
Problem of reducing the number is we don’t exactly know what “reasonable” might mean here. Even at half the numbers, the skill is too good for how early it is available in the mastery bar. At most, the flat numbers could be put elsewhere, but I have no idea where…
If they have to touch anything on that skill then it should only be that flat damage. That HP and OA benefit other Necro builds
As for flat aether damage, reducing it to flame touched levels sounds reasonable imo.
Ptirodatkill suggested moving the flat damage to some other place as well but I don’t think besides Call of the Grave we have any place to move all the flat damage (please don’t suggest Soul Harvest :p)
Past elite OFF usualy dont worth even onepointer cause most Arcanist have enough AoE dmg to clear trash w/o need of CC. ITs a weird spell that clear screens out of trash, but does nothing in moment when you need it the most. Unless Crete make it usable i doubt any modifiers would be relevant.
In fact, to increase the strength of the Battlemage, Crate could:
Replace the A type RR on Inferno with “-x%” physical resistance reduction (max at -12%);
Make Bernoath Reforged convert not only elemental and chaos to physical, but also aether.
Eliminate all forms of flat aether from spectral binding and leave it all to Reckless Power.
This would…
make BM better as physical casters, melee builds, as well as CT/Forcewave Internal Trauma DoT builds.
make physical warlocks possible (CT + PRM + Devastation).
address the controversial issue of Krieg DK by not completely butchering the set.
Frankly, 12% RR is hardly noticable, beronath is alredy borderline broken and spectral binding has nothing to do with batlemages
Oh yeah Beronath’s conversion is already pretty good and anymore buff would see a lot of stuff we like get nerfed unnecessarily. Better to not touch it at all
And yes, in the other OFF thread I suggested to either remove Fire/Physical RR from OFF and turn it into a trash clear skill or transform it into a debuff skill by making it so that freezing isn’t a prerequisite for debuff/damage. This would make those skill mods worthwhile
The B type debuff values pointed are completely conservative. Playtesters will determine what those values should ultimately be…perhaps -25%. The main idea is to change it from an A to a B type debuff.
Spectral binding has indeed nothing to do with Battlemages. However, some people want to play aether battlemages even though it has been repeatedly pointed out that melee aether performs much better with DKs, just like CT is better with Sorcerers. This leaves BMs in a bad spot, because they usually under-perform from a dps perspective and the gear designed specifically for them (i.e. Krieg pre 1.0.0.3.) is better for other classes.
What I said was accurate - OFF is currently the only “buff” that affects enemies in the Arcanist tree. The -%resist reduction stat can only be used with buff-type skills. The other types of resist reduction can be used with a wider variety of skill templates, but are less useful as they don’t stack.
In order for Inferno to apply -x% physical resistance reduction, the devs would have to change the skill from a modifier to a buff.
Even if you add phyz%rr to CT our battlemage would still be a poor-man-WB when going melee phyz dmg route. As for aether, Necro is just better that Arcanist and no itemisation would change it. :roll: MB its better to leave battlemages in tanky-casters niche with phyz devastation/CT or something?
Yes, you are right about that, which actually aggravates the problem Ch’thon pointed out because I don’t believe those changes will be implemented soon with a new dungeon in works + the crucible update.
OFF debuffing enemies without applying freeze will also not be implemented - at least, not at the current values of -% fire RR it has. This creates a very delicate problem for arcanist class combinations because they have 0 capacity to debuff bosses. In 90% of the cases nobody will notice it, but it is noticeable on Battlemages.
As for the tanky caster niche - yes, that seems to be the only thing that makes them stand out. Perhaps people should leave it at that and realize that some class combinations (e.g. Battlemage, Defiler, Trickster) will never be able to produce tier 1 builds. Ch’thon, however, is right in that the modifiers on those Conduit amulets are useless and should at least be replaced with something more in line with what the classes can do…
If you want to add -% resistance reduction to a skill that can be universally use by any build, just add it to Nullification… is it even technically possible?
I’ve tested different versions of OFF in my own mod. By changing the skill template to a standard buff radius skill, the resist reduction is no longer tied to the freeze effect. However, the freeze then applies for every tick of damage. This means that even bosses with high freeze reduction are rendered harmless, as their attacks are continually interrupted. Game-breaking.
Essentially, there’s a choice between having the freeze effect or having the resist reduction affect bosses. My preferred solution would be to replace the freeze with something like -%total speed, and adjust the resist reduction to reasonable levels. The skill modifiers would actually be worthwhile in that case.
That’s not possible with that skill template, unfortunately.
The enemies that were heavily freeze-resistant would be frozen for a brief moment with every tick of damage, which would cancel their attack entirely. I never tested it that extensively - if there are enemies that can’t be frozen for even a millisecond then presumably their attacks wouldn’t be interrupted. That would still leave the vast majority of enemies unable to attack.
OFF, as far as I’m aware, is the only skill in the game to use the skillbuff_debuffreeze template. I would guess the devs had to make a special template to avoid the problems mentioned above.
In that case they should copy paste Siphon Souls template
It essentially has the same feel (circular radius) of OFF, increase the target area a little and add some debuff like reduced total speed as you suggested
The total speed debuff would help people who want it for CC. The skill not requiring freeze anymore would make skill mods worthwhile
I personally don’t think it should have Fire RR on it should any such change be implemented, they should either remove it or reduce it substantially to make sure Sorc’s don’t become too broken (as again it’d lead to a series of unnecessary nerfs).
The physical RR is good for Battlemages, Lightning RR would be nice. I’d suggest Cold RR but it’d make Spellbreakers even more OP
I realize OFF is used by more people than we realize and thus changing it might cause some backlash. Also it’d be extra work to revamp an entire skill. They could however add something similar to Ill Omen/Flashbang which works as less as a debuff skill and more so as a skill for devotion binding and skill mods
I can understand if they don’t want to add RR skill to Arcanist but a “Not-So-Useful” debuff skill like Ill Omen in the mastery might be a useful addition as it’d allow Arcanists to finally be able to make use of RR skill mods and also enable them to have more options for devotion binding.
there is another completely wasted skill mod. The one for Menhir’s Will in Markovian’s Stratagem. While the 30% damage blocked is nice, the 8% is an absolute waste.
Any build centered around shields will try max out the shield training. Moreover, any build that makes a consistent use of menhir’s will and use shields, is heavily reliant on the soldier side, so is quite common to reach the 80-90% block chance. While the extra 8% might be usefull, the improvment is marginal. It would be far more usefull to get a shield recovery bonus.
Given how block works, that 8% worth nothing if the hit next to the one you blocked will hit for sure, and since block recovery is so scarce, having it in the “crysis” moments would make the mod (and the medal overall) much more synergistic.
