GD:Cornucopia v0.3.2 - Epic Items, Components, and More!

[Thundernut]

Concerning Lantern, I don’t think it should be a must-have or super buffed— I specifically think that the final node is bad since 2 of the 3 stats often don’t do anything at all for caster builds, while typically the last node is the best one in a cluster.
And now that I look closer, I realized that another issue is that the first node gives Energy regeneration and nothing else. That potentially makes 2 nodes that “don’t do anything” (or not much) if your build has enough regeneration already.
[/i]

I think Ceno is including WD builds that use scepters or daggers (something I know he has mentioned before wanting to make more viable) in potential builds that utilize lantern.

I started a DW WD witch hunter in vanilla with the intention of trying to use scepters as my ultimate weapons, and I was very much considering lantern as one of my devotions. I actually think it’s a pretty versatile one. Now I never finished leveling the character and don’t know how viable the idea truly was, but I think lantern is definitely a potential devotion for that kind of build.

Edit: also want to point out I don’t know the values of Cornucopia lantern, so it may be even better than what it is in vanilla.

[riidii]

I haven’t played much end-game Cornucopia but in DAIL skills and effects that use WD really begin to pull away from any that use a flat amount. Celestial powers without WD or some utility can be laughably bad, just a small drop in the ocean of damage. Of course, there’s a mountain of power creep in DAIL to really highlight this issue - it may never crop up in a closer-to-vanilla experience.

On Sanctified Bone and, well, components in general. There are dozens of components in the game and most are simply terrible. SB actually does useful things so, of course, it sees a lot of use. In general I think character building would be more interesting with a larger selection of “end-game” components of comparable strength. But SB would probably see use with no tribal bonuses at all (like Silk Swatch).

[Emanresu]

Is it too far of a leap to slap fairly high WD% on certain spells and restrict them to caster weapons all via transmuters? I know that doesn’t really address the disparity between WD/non-WD skills, but may help close the gap.

[Ceno]

Is it too far of a leap

I mean it can be done if that’s what you’re asking.

Worth consideration.

[adoomgod]

Also it no longer says that you can use mats. on Jewerly (sp) but you can use them on those items just a small thing I noticed after the other days Hot Fix again Thank You for his Mod. :):)

Can you list all of the components where this is the case? Otherwise we’ll do it on our own at some point but it might take a bit longer as we’re both a bit busy atm.

[tweedledee]

Hi guys, i just read through the last two pages.

On SB:

I agree with riidii. At least i would still use it if it had no tribal boni at all. It would be a pretty big nerf to remove them, but it might be a justified one.

Elemental resistance might be as good or better than chaos/vitality resistance in a vacuum as Ceno says, but for elemental resistance there is:

• Runestone
• Wardstone
• Radiant gem
• not less than four different augments for rings
• a weapon/offhand augment

This doesn’t even take into account item affixes or devotions wich also favor elemental resistances.

For vitality and chaosresistance combined there is only one faction augment with 7% besides SB and that’s it. (For chaosres or vitalityres only there is more, but then you would have to take the singleres/dualres augments for elemental resistances into account as well.)

Put in another way: If you need multiple elemental resistances you have a wide variety of choices. If you need chaosres and vitalityres at the same time you have no choice at all.

Thus in practice the higher theoretical value of elemental resistances is meaningless, despite the higher penalty in Ultimate.

On the caster vs WD discrepancy:

My last three builds all were casters and they perform pretty well: BWC-Pyro with blood orb of chthon, eldritch fire, hungering void and a crapton of itemprocs /chaosresreduction (my own build); Calidor’s + Deva Sorcerer - pretty close to MrTek’s version, but Corn allowed me to incorporate a bit more damage in devotions without loosing survivability, Vitality Conjurer, focusing on Sigil and doombolt.

The conjurer btw gave me second thoughts on corn’s doombolt. It was just a good skill for my pyro, very good in fact, but not crazy, but with the vit-conjurer it’s sort of broken. The character is far from geared out (thus far i only found three of the items i want to use on this guy eventually), but a 16/12 doombolt crits for 100k easily (2600ish OA, 110ish vit res reduction), sometimes scratching 200k already, so i only wonder what will happen, when i got all my gear and a 22/12 doombolt. The reason for this imo is the massive amount of vitality decay on DB combined with the massive vitality resist reduction on the build. (I can give you the save file, if your interested).

Baseline: not all spellcaster builds are bad. Nine loves his PB-spellbreaker (though he admits that it’s very gear dependant) and i’ve also heard good things about lightning druids and well-geared DEE-characters. From my own experience i think Sigil and BWC are in a perfect spot atm: not up, not op, the itemization is there and the skills scale well, if you scale them the right way. Other spamable spells, wich i tried (DEE, PRM, PB), seemed weaker to me for various reasons, but i haven’t played these in C003 yet, thus my experience with them is a bit outdated. In the nuke-departement i think Devastation and Corn’s Doombolt are much stronger than all other options, so maybe some tweaking here might be adequate.

On a sidenote:

I tried to find some gear for a Bladespirits build, but i wasn’t lucky. I’ve farmed Ultimate in C003 for a bit more than 150h now on my vit conjurer, without finding anything usable for bladespirits. That’s np for me, i like it grindy :D, but since doom specifically asked, if someone could check out Bladespirits - well, imo it’s very hard to get the gear unless you create cheated items.

[Ceno]

Bladespirits - well, imo it’s very hard to get the gear unless you create cheated items.

4 pc Demonslayer can give you +5 to Blade Spirit. Otherwise, yes, you’re going to either need +X all skills [in Nightblade] or Nightblade’s/Asassin’s gear, which is unfortunate. I think there’s room for us to refocus a couple Legendary pieces to ease this. Having said that, I don’t have especially too much issue with +10 to a skill requiring an affix or two so as to give optimization some long-term requirements. In fact I think it’d be cool if that was universally the case for all skills in the game.

I think I may move the Vitality Decay off Doombolt and put it somewhere (at a lesser degree) on the DEE line.

Thanks for the feedback.

[tweedledee]

4 pc Demonslayer can give you +5 to Blade Spirit.

Oh, that’s nice, i wasn’t aware of that set in fact for some reason :).

I don’t have especially too much issue with +10 to a skill requiring an affix or two so as to give optimization some long-term requirements. In fact I think it’d be cool if that was universally the case for all skills in the game.

I can agree with that. The problem with bladespirits is, that you don’t have decent leveling options, because no epics or faction pieces give a bonus to it. (Or am i missng something here too?) You either have your endgamegear prepared or you are stuck at low ultimate ranks for a very long time.

I think I may move the Vitality Decay off Doombolt and put it somewhere (at a lesser degree) on the DEE line.

Sounds reasonable. I hope at least the flat vitalitydamage stays

Thanks for the feedback.

Thx for reading :).

[adoomgod]

Uh I think I can provide some answers from my thought processes that will make you content tweedle:

I’m pretty happy with Devastation’s level of power. It requires a tome and really finally feels like what caster spells should feel like honestly. If it truly does hit too hard then the only nerf I’d give it is perhaps raising it from 16/16 skill to 20/20 with the same scaling, requiring 4 more precious skill points to reach the same level of power. But I don’t see a need yet.

Again perhaps it isn’t that Devastation is too strong but other caster spells are too weak. But then again perhaps it is still too strong and could use a bit of toning down. And ofc there are many ways to do it, from reducing radius, or explosion radius, or increasing cooldown, or energy cost etc. etc. etc. I do want it hitting hard tho.

Doombolt: Recently Ceno reduced its cooldown another 2 seconds like in Vanilla which in combination with our huge damage buffs I think made it OP. Do you think it’s truly OP if we put the 2 more seconds back on? Consider how much gear etc. you need for it to be OP. Also consider we will probably be doubling to tripling the health of a good deal of heroes and bosses in the future (and make their skills more interesting so the fights feel more fun/epic for the longer duration). We could also just reduce its ultimate rank scaling.

Finally BladeSpirit: My idea of a cooldown Blade:Spirit Nukerino build is a fun idea and the thing about your complaint on gearing it is well: I know. Don’t worry I’m aware and I have plans for it in the future:

First of all, my idea of a bladespirit build as your main source of damage is for it NOT to exist before level 75. Before level 75 blade spirit should be what it is, additional damage. I want to add new items in the future that specifically are designed with blade spirit in mind. So to be clear: I never intended for anyone to ever try leveling with this skill as their first main investment. This is what I meant in my note of:don’t be masochistic. I appreciate the effort, and still do have plans to give Blade Spirit a little more mid-level support.

For example no tome gives piercing damage, I will fix that. My idea for a legendary tome is the very obvious “Book of Blades.”

But anyway I think that it’s fair that I make some skills possible to main with once you achieve +10/10 but also make it very difficult/specific to do so. My hope is that some builds are not gear dependent, some are, and some EXTREMELY are. Whether or not it pisses off players who don’t like farming, it will feel like an extremely satisfying reward to players who farm gear for future characters, and people can always cheat the items in if they so desire.

Current plan for SB: Leave it as is but make it a torso component.

[Weyu]

I don’t think making it a chest component is a good idea, that would just reduce the options people have which isn’t “fun.”
The original issue was that I made the notion that SB was better than the other head components, so the logical options are to either: make SB weaker, or make the others stronger.

If it was chest only, that means you’re forced to put it there to get those resists and you miss out on Oleron’s/Kilrian’s.
And the head slot becomes free which forces you to use one of the other components as well.
Neither thing sounds appealing to me, it would just limit your options.

I’d just lower the faction damage from 12% to 8% or so on both and be done with it. 8% is still a sizable bonus but not OP.
And as mentioned before, Silvercore Bolts and the 2 defensive aura items either shouldn’t work on jewelry or their values should be lowered, because they’re simply too strong if you get to stack them to that extent.

[AlienFromBeyond]

Blessed Whetstone also cannot be placed on jewelry, due to the % Armor Piercing stat

Why not? There are two sets that have it in their set bonus, and non-weapon legendaries with the stat in Legendary Cap Remover (affixes on legendaries mod) work just fine in my experience.

[tweedledee]

@adoomgod:

Nukes:

I’m completely fine with devastation as it is. I think that it should be the indicator for the powerlevel of nukeskills. It’s just stronger than e.g. Trozan’s, that’s why i said it’s stronger :D.

Doombolt is a different story though. The problem with doombolt is very specific for the vitality conjurer. To be clear: The 16/12 doombolt on my current vitconjurer is at least as good already as the 26/16 devastation on my fully BIS- geared Sorcerer. For the vitconjurer DB requires basically no gear at all to be good - you get 100% vitalityresistreduction from Devouring Swarm and Vulnerability, and you are good to go. Sigil needs this amount of resist reduction to be good, but the massive basedamage on doombolt hyperscales with it. And i’m not using the latest version of the mod, my DB still has a base cooldown before reduction of 8s.

The only really good item, that i have on the conjurer, is the Girdle of Stolen Dreams. Other than that i got a unique ring with a 15% vitresreduction proc and the rest is faction gear, a few decent rares and some epics. Hell, i even use a sanctuary relic still and a lvl 40 Skinflayer rayment, because i haven’t dropped the empowered version yet. (Again i’m offering my savefile :p. )

With my BWC-Pyro on the other hand DB felt good, but not op. The main difference between the two builds in this regard is, that the vitalitydecay-component on DB’s basedamage doesn’t scale with chaosresreduction (i had a stupid amount of chaosres reduction with the Pyro, from Eldritch Fire, Agonizing Flames, Hellfire Mine and an itemproc).

Hence my conclusion that the vitality decay part is the reason why DB overperforms for the vitality conjurer.

Maybe you could swap the vitality decay for something else, while keeping the absolute amount of damage intact?

Bladespirit:

I guess “leveling” was not the right word on my part :D. I still think of my vitconjurer as “unfinished” or “getting leveled”, because i miss so many pieces of gear, although he hit 85 two days after C003 was released. Admittedly my semantics are a bit off :D.

What i wanted to say: When you are level 75 or 85 you probably still will have to farm Ultimate for a very, very long time before you get the gear for Bladespirits, and there is no substitute for the BiS items. Either you have most of the BIS items or you can’t play the build. No complaints about that on my part, i only mentioned it because you had asked for opinions on Bladespirits in a previous post.

[Helskerm]

Hello,

I don’t know if it’s only me, but I made a new character and took Soldier as the 1st mastery, and when I reached mastery level 10, I wasn’t allowed to unlock blitz, as the screenshot show below. I verified the integrity of the game cache, and started another character, but I still can’t unlock it at this level.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/273978479661192961/C3E758C1E56CD8F04AB0DF4C79C29CD004B41B63/

[Ceno]

Why not? There are two sets that have it in their set bonus, and non-weapon legendaries with the stat in Legendary Cap Remover (affixes on legendaries mod) work just fine in my experience.

Because I didn’t want to trivialize the acquisition of the stat.

Blitz problem above has been identified and will be remedied in the next hotfix. Not entirely sure what threw it off, but it’ll be fixed.

[Helskerm]

Blitz problem above has been identified and will be remedied in the next hotfix. Not entirely sure what threw it off, but it’ll be fixed.

Okay thanks, I’ll continue this character then and I’ll try to provide feedback at higher level, I’m far from being a min/maxer though, so I’ll see if I can bring something useful.

[adoomgod]

Okay thanks, I’ll continue this character then and I’ll try to provide feedback at higher level, I’m far from being a min/maxer though, so I’ll see if I can bring something useful.

Of course you can! We value all perspective, not just that of optimizers. Fun is our number one goal. Even just saying “x feels bad” may help us spot something we overlooked.

@Tweedle, yeah I know. I just wanted you to have access to my inner thoughts, that your feedback on BS is exactly what I assumed it should be, and that I’m glad my predictions aligned. Some things I ask to be tested are just to see if I properly understand it’s current place in the meta. Thanks thanks.

[riidii]

I’d just lower the faction damage from 12% to 8% or so on both and be done with it. 8% is still a sizable bonus but not OP.
And as mentioned before, Silvercore Bolts and the 2 defensive aura items either shouldn’t work on jewelry or their values should be lowered, because they’re simply too strong if you get to stack them to that extent.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think Sanctified Bone is a problem as it is. Sure it is very strong (in comparison to other, lousy components) but it isn’t breaking the game. 8% wouldn’t feel like an “un-fun” nerf, however.

Banning the aura components from jewellery is a poor idea, IMO, because it doesn’t particularly accomplish much. A 2H Cadence build only gets to use one. A DW Cadence build gets to use both. Similarly for 2H Firestrike and DW Pistols, etc. It would make a difference if you wanted to use other weapon-only components but then you’re simply putting those builds at a disadvantage on their ability to get some resistances.

Since I thought of it: I did consider if the aura components were like Antivenom Salve and similar: any armor piece, no weapons/jewellery at all. It’s a terrible idea unless it’s easier, in general, to obtain the stats people typically get from armor components. Mind you, those other single resist components would look a lot prettier if they were aura-based with the +3% max :-p

[Ceno]

My current plan is to enable the aura components on weapons, amulets, and medals only. Hollowed Fang/Haunted Steel on weapons and rings. Silvercore Bolts will have a numbers tweak, shifting the racial damage away from a global bonus (while it will remain in at a lesser value) and instead making the granted skill even stronger against Chthonic.

I still want to move SB onto chests only. There’s no guarantee that that would happen, but if it does I’d be happy to reduce the racial damage to ~8% as suggested but also complement the component with another stat to compete with Chains/Hallowed/Heart/Bindings/Kilrian/AAP.

[adoomgod]

@Weyu and others, So I’ve mulled over the change for the past couple days and really stared at all the materia currently available, and I have to say I’ve switched sides from favoring your proposed nerf, to Ceno’s put it in the chest slot.

I thought it’d be useful to share my reasoning and what led to my shift in perspective, and while I don’t expect it to convince you or anyone else, it is my hope that it makes the change feel less bitter.

First of all there is no great choice here IMO. SB is not fitting well into game balance and a tough decision had to be made. If we nerf the faction damage, pretty much nobody is going to use it in the chest slot anymore, if we make it a head slot only item then torsos lose one of their very few viable choices, if we make it a chest only item, head slots lose an easy way to get vitality and chaos resist.

It is too potent for the head slot, but chest slots are supposed to be potent in their materia choices… so it’s a good fit and if it’s still under-par we can just buff it a bit or add another stat.

I like that SB is potent, but I didn’t like that it was so potent for a head slot materia. I didn’t like the idea of nerfing the potency, because then it becomes a dead item for its chest slot portion… I also realized that there’s an unhealthiness in letting you double stack the %dmg bonus to both factions by using it in both slots. Even if we nerf the faction dmg, being able to double up on it with 2 slots is actually quite nutso and just… HARD TO BALANCE.

So finally this is what swayed me: In the finality of my conversations with Ceno I said something along the lines of, “okay I’m leaning more to chest slots now, but if we do so then something else must happen: We must give the head slot a new option (or options).” This is to say that I hope you can all trust us on this change, because we do plan on adding new items which does include components. In the short term the loss of SB in the head slot my upset some of you, but I have become confidant that in time most of you will come to agree with our decision when you see what else we implement to support said decision (new items, balance tweaks etc).

To be clear I plan on adding another chaos resist component to the head slot.

Sometimes in development we have to make choices that feel bitter now but open the space up for better things in the future. I have come to believe this is such a change.

And of course, we can be wrong, and if after enacting it and adding new items it’s still bad for whatever reason, we’ll reverse it and try again.

But let’s be real - The ONLY other item that gives you anywhere close to a fucking 1.12x damage multiplier in the head slot is the prismatic diamond, which is much harder to make, over twice the item level, a higher rarity tier, and requires you be under 40% hp… and has less defensive stats that SB (and this is after we buffed it)… One can argue that that’s what makes SB unique in the head slot, I’d argue that’s what makes it broken there.

[tweedledee]

To be clear I plan on adding another chaos resist component to the head slot.

Sounds good to me. If we get a component in the headslot for Chaos- and/or Vitalityresist i don’t see a problem. I only use SB as much as i do, because it’s the best option for resists and a good choice for dps too. As long as SB doesn’t become “mandatory” in the chestslot because of the resists, i’m all down for a change.