The forum is a little toxic atm, lets just calm down and write it up. =)
1)Spells in crucible.
AoE dmg output reign supreme in Crucible whent you have to kill as much as possible creeps as fast as possible. Stuff like CT or Devastation or even Panetti that never showed record Dummy-kill times now breack world records in Crucible.
The reason is obvious - when you hit 5 targets at once, your effective dmg is multiplied by 5. Thats mean a CT/Devastation build with 50 seconds dummy kill, when put in crucible environement turn intro a equivalent of 10 seconds dummy kill. Thats one of reason why CT is regarded weak by players that run only vanilla and absurdly oupie when you play crucible. Devastation is regarded as good spell in vanila and its strain out bonkers broken in Crucible.
This is a essential balance difference and cannot be changed.
2)Mirror of erorectus.
I hate this skill. I hate flawless invulnerability in ARPG cause its abusive and gamebreacking.
There is a numerous solution to make it less appealing:
a)Add total dmg penalty multiplier as rank raise and CD gets shorter.
Well , simple solution - you want invulnerability? Pay for it. You want more invulnerability? Pay for it more. Start at 0% penalty , 40 second CD on rank 1, Build-up it to 50% at 22/12 and reduce CD to old value.
Not my favorite solution, but it will work somehow.
b)Make it a stong defence instead of invulnerability.
Let it scale like pre-nerfed MoT, up to 60% at 22/12. Reduce CD at 22/12 to pre-nerf value.
Still a good defense, still strong, still something that worth put points in.
3)MoT
I belive that this skill scale way too high and way too fast. Extra duration past rank 10 is unnececery.
Reduce effectiveness at low ranks, to 10% at 1/10 to 30% at 10/10, up to 50% at 20/10, reduce uptime to 4 seconds, return CD to old value.
4)Binders and %CDR
I hope everyone can do the math ? Well, someone clearly cant cause with Aeon and Ethernity we can still chaing with Reckless powa and, IRC, it was the reason to nerf Star pact. Heck, it was the reason to nerf aeon, mirror, mot CD for number of patches? Common, this is just not funny at all. Plz test changes before applying. Someone wanted a CDR mod on reckless power, plz dont use drugs.
5)CT and transmuter .
As you can guess transmuted CT was absurdly oupie. yeah, and the reason is simple - when you transmute CT you double-dip in %Weapon dmg. So instead of mediocre spell nuke with 95%WD you get a Primal strike level of Nuke filled with 275% Weapon dmg that hit 3/4 of screen. Add to this couldown reduction from Clairvoyant and well, its gets slightly ridiculous.
I suggest to remove %WD on transmuter and shorter the couldown to compensate by 2 seconds.
Inferno builds are happy. Wrath of Agrivix builds are happy. Filty %WD stackers binders are not so happy, but, well, they can liive with that.
6)Aether to cold conversion on Star pact.
I still think its some sort of bad joke or backlash?
Good write-up. I believe that adding conversion to Star Pact wasn’t that bad and I am 99% sure it’s paving the path for FG builds and gear.
I’d say that if developers are not happy with Mirror of Erectus, they should swap invulnerability for damage absorption. For example, 50% damage absorption at 12/12 that scales up to 80% at rank 22/12. But at the same time, some additional mechanic should be added, like hp regen or maybe adtch or maybe just make it a heal, like 20% hp restored + 50% damage absorption at rank 12/12 and 30% hp restored and 80% damage absorption at rank 22/12. Numbers can be tweaked.
I think MoT is fine as it is right now. I always leave it at 6/10 and it’s a decent crutch as long as your whole character isn’t glass. If it’s glassy, then it’s not really working that well, so still balanced. I never thought it was oupie, especially in Crucible environment on piano builds where you can easily miss your Mark (lol) and cast it on some white skeleton while surronded by two Reapers and Fabius.
Don’t know about transmuted CT, never used except for Time Dilation button, so I trust Ptiro knows what he is talking about.
And yeah, forum became really toxic after that patch, which kinda shows that those changes were not that well thought out. I feel especially bad for forgotten classes of Grim Dawn that were basically murdered by this change. Killing Iskandra’s set just made it trash like it used to be back in the days when nobody was really using it, this set now is very similiar to Markovian set pre 1.0.7.1 or to Vileblade pre 1.0.7.1, it’s a useless monoclass junk used as a place holder at best before players can get their hands on Warborn/Agrivix.
The problem with this is that caster armor feels just like paper currently. Even if you reduce the incoming damage by half or even by 2/3, physical damage still hits casters like a truck. For the casters that use skills without large amounts of % WD or life steal on the skill itself this becomes even more problematic.
Considering how the game is balanced every class needs able to tank at some point. With the CC immunity of bosses, charging enemies(that are typically also immune to CC) and huge amounts slow and AoE effects you have little choice but to builds for the worst.
I have a suggestion to partially fix this:
Remove the medium armor class from the game. Buff all caster armor by giving the the same armor value as medium armor currently has and upgrade some medium armor sets to heavy, while giving the one that are not the same bonuses that caster armor receives.
Essentially:
-Caster armor get buffed to the armor values of the current medium armor
-Medium armor get buffed to the heavy armor values and some medium armor stays the same while receiving the same stat benefits as caster armor
-Heavy armor stays the same.
or
Heavily nerf all sources of physical damage from enemies while toning down the available armor bonuses on skills, devotions and gear.
Edit: Also if the amount of CDR you can get is reduced even further a number skills such as TSS and DB needs to have their base cooldown reduced as otherwise such builds will lose too much DPS.
I don’t agree with the “not well thought out part”, except maybe for the CT buff (which wasn’t really reverted cause the fire part got buffed and 100% conversion is ez). Clairvoyant needed to be nerfed, they did it. Binder needed to be nerfed. There were two main complaints regarding binder nerfs, the “nerf Mark/Mirror chaining group” and the “nerf damage group”. They just happened to listen to the first ones, the same way Crate listened to the “pro seal/censure nerf group”. It also didn’t help that most of the binder complaints revolved around mirror chaining and when someone chimes in and says “Binder doesn’t even need to chain mirrors” then another one goes “not everyone is as good as you” then everyone and their mothers get mirror/mark/TD.
BTW, Iskandra isn’t trash. It’s just not a CDR set anymore. It got buffed with RR, so having it and CDR would be too much. It just happened that Agrivix is already there along with natural support for CT. It is indeed in the same situation as Markovian (with respect to Warborn/Octavius) but in Iskandra’s case, it’s just top-tier when Agrivix is tier 0.
Then Medium armor becomes OP and overloaded with stats. As I said in another thread, the reason for all of this is because the game is too easy at this point (relative to 1.0.4.0) that everyone thinks they all need to facetank. I think the current state of the game should stay until FG before we all start talking about balance.
Clairvoyant set wasn’t nerfed, it was killed, why would even take it as a binder now. Maybe I am wrong about Iskandra though, but I can’t see it as a top tier set anymore.
I was talking about 1.0.7.0 clairvoyant which was still strong. The star pact nerf is what killed it, but that one also has it’s own merits and will probably be useful in the future.
On Iskandra, say Agrivix CT spam clears in 5:30, and Iskandra CT spam clears in 7 min (I just made these timings but these timers are very likely), Iskandra is still top tier (I mean how many non-inq builds can do that?) but is still very far behind Agrivix.
There is 0 reason to use Iskandra unless you physically don’t have Agrivix. Maybe there are are some weird aetherial Mage Hunters that could use Iskandra + Magelords + Decree for some weird conversion builds, but I doubt they would be anything by gimmicky.
Clairvoyant selling point - CDR reduction was killed. It was never a good set for spam and generally useless outside of Devastation bonuses and chaos conversion together with albrthsmth duality ring. Ring was killed too.
I mean, tha absurd OA, %crit dmg and %dmg gain from clairvoyant? Yeah, it deserved a nerf. What was nerfed? Playstile-enabling function. How did that helped build diversity? How that helped the game?
LIke what the last time anyone seen a warlock in the build compendum ? And aether sorc? And with new changes you wont see them any time soon.
The problemm is ppl dont even want something outside of heavy armor and one-button gameplay. >_> And Crete listen to these ppl and make changes that turn the game closer and closer to PoE level of retardness.
We are drowing in dmg. No one is bothering posting build for vanilla cause every single build obliterate it and shread to pieces.
And they want more 0_0. I heard in praetorian patch discussion that they want further buffs on TSS? Fuck ! TSS Trosan-Invoker druid destroy chuppakabra in 7 seconds right now and he is the tankiest of nemesis. I timed moosoluke run and every fase took less that 4 seconds. LOL. 18 seconds dummy kill on a caster is not enough? Are they crazy? The absurdly oupie binder need more that 30 seconds.
There is two type of builds that use transmuted CT:
1)DoT for inferno amplification. They will win out of this chage, cause less clunky inferno.
2)Transmuted CT nukers on star-pact steroids.
Non-%WD stacking builds will recieva a buff. %WD stacking buff will recieve a nefr. Keep in mind that flat CD affect CDR based builds at half strength. So, your Sorc/Warlock get a little something and your binder get a well-desrved nerf.
I dunno, it seems that in current state of the game speed we need to revisit some CD across the board.
Doom Bolt change was wellcome, mb other stuff will get what it shouldCanister bomb , cause movement skills increase game speed .
Dunno if it’s doable, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a Mirror nerf that caps damage to a certain percentage of your max HP or something whenever damage exceeds a certain threshold. That way you’d get protection against big hits, but small hits and DoTs would still get through.
Yeah they crushed my aether sigil/devastation warlock with the star pact change. And I don’t recall anyone complaining it was op. Going from 4 sigils to barely getting 3 is a 25% damage and survivability nerfed. Plus it was already gimped because of low -rr because gear needed for conversion and lack of -rr in class trees.
Mirror is just so flippin broken and has been for so long. I can’t remember the last time I used it because it feels like cheating. I mean the skill from nightblade that gives immunity was made right. As you got rooted and couldn’t attack anymore. There’s no downside at all to mirror and can be abused by cdr.
You could reduce it to 1.5 seconds and everyone would still pick it. Heck, even at 1.2second id still pick it. If you look closer at nemesis skills you will see the same pattern among them - some charge with burst dmg folloved by cripling debuffs and joke-like autoatacks. Mirror negated initial burst. Nullification negated debuffs, then overcharged Binder dmg with ADCTH over reasonable health pool took the rest of the challenge. So-called chaining was fun, but , frankly, unnececery . Just look at my initial binder passive defenses - 15k health. 22% dmg absorbtion from sphere, 28% dmg reduction from decay, 84% all resistanses.(30% less dmg from anything non-phyz), 13% phyz resist, 38% Dodge and Deflect with 50% uptime. Add to it 3200 Effective DA due to a bunch of permanent OA debuffs and nullification and 2 cirquit breackers. All effective stuff in one package with a little extra invulnerability. And the dmg type with easy to apply conversion with BiS items granting it for free. This beast with all above took a 20k DMG hit in crucible once 150+ was added. :D If you look at dmg numbers you will see 18k Weapon dmg, 3000% aether dmg, 100%+ aether resistance reduction, 90% effective elemental to aether conversion. A bunch of procs with nearly 2.5k Flat aether dmg per secon on point-blank, overcharged with Weapon dmg CT, overcharged with weapon dmg Bone harvest and Devastation. All with Reduced by 50% Cooldwons, all with a chanse to double-cast, all with Aeon double-cast every 10 seconds. But thats not all. Racial bonuses push it even further out of control. Oh, whait, i had like 3900 OA and over 100% crit dmg. Seems about right, nothing to worry about. Oh, almost forgot about Mirror bonus on Iscanra`s amulet. 15% More dmg multiplier with 30% uptime.
I just want to make it clear - Arcanist do not need DA in mastery. Same for Necro. None of them need extra meat or buffs to scales. The dmg numbers need to be toned down. Most notable - on necro side, when you apply %RR in passive mode, w/o even disturbing your casting.
And yeah, its not about toning down “aether” dmg or %CDR or binders. The same build assembled as Mage Hunter and trasformed intro Elemental dmg dealer still perform the same.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/eZPl5aXZ
Heck, crucible clearing right now is bottlenecking on Lags and Creep retardnes rather that player Defenses or DPS output.
How could Iskandra be reworked to give it its own distinct identity further away from a worse CT set?
Same for Clairvoyant, CDR is dangerous. I personally kind of wanted Clairvoyant to be more geared toward warlocks.
I agree after their nerfs they could use some more specialized/restricted buffs.
I dunno about Necro. I see your point and Necro is definitely toward the top of class trees being strong in of themselves, but I’d like you to be really specific where they should be toned down. Necro and Arcanist sort of have super synergy together. That’s just how it is. I don’t want Necro tuned in a way that hurts it comboing with other classes.
I agree the Mirror and MoT complaints were overblown, same with star pact frankly. Glad forum voices are starting to turn more reasonable. I could skip mark with binders frankly and with a bit more trouble just get through crucible with mirror.
I don’t think mirror will ever turn into less than 100% invuln because 1. its existed for so long that it gives inertia-like reasons not to rework it and 2. it’d go against the theme of the skill. It’s hard to tell where things need fixing. Especially because everyone has a different belief of what “balanced” should look like. Personally if I had it my way there’d be no build that clears faster than 8 minutes unbannered. >:D
But as things are now I’m willing to settle for 7.