2 of them have feral at 100% chance
but at 3+ aps it’s still 70% chance to apply75% lifesteal multiple times a second, and in Aoe application too
mi already said it a few posts above. S&B feral hits twice, once with weapon and once with shield. This is the same behavior as smite. So even before the SS “bugfix”, it was already better than SS both in single target and even more so in AoE.
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With all my respect is clear that you are unaware for a lot of mechanics and endagme In general but yet making suggestions, we are not here for the sake to say something , we are here to feedback for better balance
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The suggestion, which was essentially a general observation and in agreement with what is currently done, was to keep the bug-free approach and balance.
The 2nd point was an inquiry for the OP to provide some of the said builds compared to SS.
And the 3rd question about feral (taking into account the mechanics) was whether there was another bug or just maths behind it, because the damage in the low-res video seemed kinda high. With respect (I have read and like your build creation approach and guides), i don’t think the above is unrelated to the discussion
Calling SS utility skill and should be balanced around that prove my point . You can’t call utility something so conditional, 90% of the Oathkeepers can’t even pick this and few that can will suffer because everyone with 100 h into the game think this is utility skill
Then it would probably behoove the community to stop posting builds for balance considerations where they’ve skipped 90% of the effort required to put the build together. If people refrained from posting 100% GDstashed toons, the devs would have a considerably easier time gauging what is and isn’t the realistic performance of a build out in the wild and wouldn’t end up blanket-nerfing skills that are overperforming in specific scenarios to the detriment of every mid build out there that also happens to be using that skill.
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You are aware that endgame testing and testing in general is impossible without third party tool . Because I still play the game , I need 14 hours to beat the campaign SFF another 26 hours to reach Ascendand ( keep in mind I am top 5 fastest in the community ) , after that the fully ascent the gear I need 6 h and after that rerolling can be between 50 and 100 h , now multiply this by the 100 builds Banana tests this patch . We gonna finish testing around 2050. Most of us here can pull 10k hours + , I don’t think there is anything left to prove by playing the campaign , we pass this long time ago
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GDstash doesn’t give you builds you can’t obtain, it at most cuts down the avg time; some people can still assemble such builds quick (see RSnoomak comment earlier).
And the whole point of balancing is to address outlier, which GDstash is then great at quickly highlighting instead of 5months down the road. (and the quicker something is evened out the fewer is affected/cries foul from changelog ripple effects)
^we’re not complaining when GDstash results in buff request feedback to underperforming builds from quick testing 25 memes are we?
The problem here isn’t outliers, but base interaction that gets universally squashed, ie Avalanche busted on non GDstash build because unintended full 4 hit combo, resulting in non busted Smash 2hit interaction equally fix(same template).
People really need to stop with GDstash blinders and pay attention to what’s actually happening…
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Technically it does. We just don’t do it here 
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If you intend to test basically every spec possible in the game within a couple of months, yes, endgame testing at that scale and pace is impossible. Nobody’s forcing anybody to do that though.
If that outlier demands tremendous effort/time investment to create, why shouldn’t it stay powerful? Ofc when the time investment to create gets squished to a couple of hours in GT planning it and in GDstash assembling it, yeah, you’re gonna squirt out a lot more outliers into the wild. Which the vast majority of the audience that would be interested in a build like that won’t be able to recreate without cheating themselves, not unless they’re willing to dedicate two months farming up the resources just for that one toon. Becomes a lot less of a problem when that outlier actually pops up like once every blue moon instead of 4 times a week.
The underlying interaction is getting squashed in the first place because these outliers are bringing it to the forefront at a rate that doesn’t match the real rate of build assembly. I have an Avalanche-centric build. It’s good. Nowhere near good enough to need a nerf. Now it’s catching strays losing 15% WPS proc chance and eating a nerf to Avalanche itself, because of a slew of characters that were assembled out of a 3rd party tool. This character will now require, at the very least, 3 ascended affixes for WPS (when removing the dependence on WPS ascended affixes was supposed to be the goal, now it’s reinforced instead) and it will probable take me like a week to accumulate enough resources to reorganise the build’s affixes correctly. And once I do that, I’m still going to end up weaker because of Avalanche nerfs. All because of builds that have been assembled in a way that has to deal with none of these resource restrictions.
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true, but since even “toxic” gang don’t post illegal builds for feedback posts i figured it’s applicable 
“because that’s never been how GD was balanced or how Crate viewed appropriate interactions ever”…
an exploit being hard to obtain or taking time to obtain doesn’t mean it’s validated from being time intensive…
You know this, you’ve been here long enough and partaken enough to see Z reiterate this sentiment multiple times and they dont’ want a catch all effect/build type, but overperformers toned down and underdogs up…
FoA just means new overperformers to discover
*we’ve had multiple fundamental mechanic changes because of it through the years, item swap cancellation, pet/buff modifier stacking nixed, armour bypass fixed after 6+ years, affix changes/scaling tweaks, proc fixes, devo changes etc etc…
build time was never ever a consideration, for big or even small changes, only tolerable performance potential was… (and killing a celestial in 5secs was never accepted regardless if it was gdstashed or not )
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We don’t understand the conception of testing arent we ? We should let aether crystal farmers to feedback for balance , probably
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If you think condescension is adding to your argument, think again.
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This is a bit of a wild statement, Marcus. First of all, you are assuming devs won’t be able to tell fantasy GDstashed builds meant only to set record in Crucible (no matter thru how many failed runs) or kill Celestial as quickly as possible from GDstashed builds that actually mimic endgame builds that people can realistically achieve. Then how are you even blaming “people… posting GDstashed toons” in all of this? Isn’t that condescension towards builders whose way of playing GD is to create builds and define meta? So what, we just stop creating builds or just do them in secret because it’s our fault and not Crate’s fault for being too crude when it comes to nerfs and buffs?
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Utility should absolutely be taken into account, even if it’s very conditional, like phys flat rr on SS. Every WPS with good aoe helps the clear, and that should factor in how much raw dmg it has. It’s just that you can’t make even good utility WPS deal that much lower dmg.
In fact, IMO extra utility should be the main benefit from mods weapons have: more %chance to be used, maybe some CC, like 0.8 freeze on Smite hit or smth, maybe global flat RR, maybe extra arc. There’s a lot of stuff you can do with WPS via mods that’s not just inflating WPS’s dmg.
In case of SS one part of compensation for the double dmg loss could be making its flat RR global. I think it opens up some interesting build options.
Yeah, as was pointed out, Feral Hunger is by far the strongest shield WPS. The new shield that enables it has global conversion to Brute Force. Which means not only it unlocks Brute Force for your double dipping WPS hit, its conversion can be overwritten by an AA modifier, so you can play shield Feral with various dmg types and in a lot of cases fully benefit from Brute Force flat.
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Alright, I did go a bit far with that one, let me reformulate.
At every turn during the evaluation of build performance, time is being taken as a major factor. How fast is this build clearing SR, how quickly is it killing a superboss, how many CR runs can it get in within the blessing timer (unless you’re a nudist). In all these aspects, time is considered a raw measure of a build’s viability. With the sole exception of the time required to achieve such a build.
Now, understandably that time will vary purely based on RNG. I’m currently bankrupt on Soul Fragments for trying to build around a magic weapon. Saw 13 out of 16 possible class-specific ascends, didn’t get the one I want. Time for a week of farming. I could have also lucked into the right roll on the second try like on some previous characters and the story would be different. It will be very subjective and difficult to factor in. But it should be factored in.
But this part is almost never highlighted in these builds. The mention of “btw this is using fantasy items” only crops up when somebody dares to pipe up that “hey, doing ravager in 43 s instead of 37 is still crazy”. The cost is a major factor, but because GDstashing eliminates this, this factor gets silenced. And so the build creators that churn out these builds only end up looking at the final product, and the process gets overlooked. And it is left up to Zantai to then comb through these builds inch by inch to gauge just how realistic the build actually is. But Z is just one man who seems to be bearing the brunt of the responsibility for all this balancing work. It’s a lot more glaring of a statement when a build leads with 7 s Ravager, that will prompt action. The quiet reality in the background of “you’ll make this build after maybe 3 months” is easy to get lost in that shuffle.
So yes, I am wrong in putting the full responsibility for some dev overreactions on the builder community, and certainly, people who enjoy just tinkering with builds and plopping them into the game to see how they do shouldn’t be silenced. But it would certainly make a lot of the discussion a lot more transparent if the achievability of some of these builds where highlighted at a similar level as their performance is. Because “7 s ravager” and “7 s ravager if your RNG is godlike” leave a very different impression.
That is not to say that stuff like Boltthrower shouldn’t have been nerfed just because it’s difficult to put together. But feels like a lot of these other nerfs are basically inflating the cost of making a build in the first place. A thing that GDstashers don’t have to worry about, but people putting things together themselves do. My Gloom Knight is losing 15 % WPS chance. It wasn’t broken. It’s even less so when Avalanche gets nerfed. It’s just more expensive. Some people don’t care. I very much do and I’d wager a large portion of the general GD community does too. GDstashing is the minority of the playerbase, but representing a disproportionate percentage of the builds out there. So I feel like the voice of these resource-conscious build-makers needs to be heard too.
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If it isn’t GDStash, then it’s “Ultra-leet ARPG Killer Corporation, Like & Subscribe, join my Discord” channels on Youtube that will be posting these 7 sec Ravager Uber builds. Hundreds of “regular” people are farming these fantasy items and trading them to whoever the best pilot is in order to showcase these builds. All that GDStash accomplishes is that it evens out the playing field so that “regular” players can have access to these sorts of builds without needing to join a Discord and meet whatever guild requirements they happen to set for initiation.
Besides, it’s much better to iron out the bugs and fix them now, as opposed to waiting months - if not years - for players to find these broken interactions (and have months and months of “only 5 viable builds, fix your stupid game, Crate” chants) and then have the rug pulled out under them when the inevitable bug-fixing happens.
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Utility should absolutely be taken into account, even if it’s very conditional, like phys flat rr on SS. Every WPS with good aoe helps the clear, and that should factor in how much raw dmg it has. It’s just that you can’t make even good utility WPS deal that much lower dmg.
This is a good suggestion.
Tbh, honestly, I don’t usually play AAers, but I tried for a couple of hours and a spare oppressor, with my “low skill, crystal farming 90hours skill” to build a physical shattering smash build, and came up with this.
Build is far far from optimized, just a slap-and-try effort. No ascensions, no potions, no max RF. Even assassin mark was 22/25.
SR was respectable; SS was criting for up to 500k. SR30 boss damage was mostly >1m according to DPyes
And then there is the following amulet that may bypass smite
Are we sure that the original warlord is the best current physical SS build?
EDIT: I also forgot the vitality occulant oppressor that Mad_lee posted a few months ago prior to FoA
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At the same time, in the context of playtesting for the express purpose of providing feedback to the developers, some comparisons can only be done if you have a very broad sample of what is possible in the game, which in turn, can only (reasonably) be done by using the tool at our disposal.
It’s specifically for the resource-conscious players out there that things are getting tested. Their voice is being heard… it’s just that they have less to say in general because they playtest fewer things in the same amount of time.
What you’re arguing for makes sense, but it’s for the people bringing forth those comparisons to make sure that what they did in 5 minutes using GD stash can ALSO be done be someone playing the game the normal way.
Yes, it seems ridiculous for someone to say “this build went from killing ravager in 28 seconds to 43 seconds” because for most players, beating Ravager in the first place would be an achievement. But if the player reporting that is comparing apples to apples, even if his experience is far from the average player’s, it’s still a valid point of data that can help to accurately measure how much the performance of a given build has changed. I’d even argue that it’s a better one in fact to “before I could kill ravager with it and now I can’t” or “I died quicker this time than before” because of the consistency you get by having an experienced builer and pilote doing the comparison, so you remove the human element as much as possible from the equation. I don’t think anyone would reply “LOL, git gud!” if Banana or Mad Lee says something is too weak.
In short: you can’t dismiss someone’s contribution as unrepresentative because their skill level and tool use are unrepresentative of the average player if they are comparing things from their point of view. Data is data, and the Devs know what to look for and what to dismiss from feedback.
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I honestly dont think this will help all to much. Acid and Elemental damage builds have super easy flat rr access. Aether damage would have bonemonger smite rr. Chaos damage has easy rr due to a ring. Bleed/Pierce are garbage anyways. Vit would maybe like it? Se we are basically cutting the damage in half for some more QoL I guess.