Because I have not had the chance to see the new gear in action I want to refrain from all comments about it until I do. But while perusing the new gt I noticed some interesting changes to the existing gear. I want to share my thoughts. I wanna apologize if I’m getting something wrong but I have no access to old stats at the moment.
LD set. Loving it. I’m not sure that is enough to say that Stun Jacks are back but… I DO WANT THEM BACK!!!
15% aether rr on Clairvoyant is kinda sad. Just don’t feel… enough to make Warlocks even remotely competitive with Binders.
Why was Iskandra not even touched?
N&O, ok… But where are the invincible Mines already? Where’s the cold rr mod?
Isn’t the Korvaak relic proc even weaker than the old Blazing Charge dmg-wise? Without the obvious utility perk of being a second Blitz, shouldn’t it be stronger? Or at least proccable (a’la Nidalla)?
I was quietly hoping for a buff to Olexra’s Chill for some Venomblade-tier cold ABB+OFF action. Well… :eek:
I’m not happy about Agrivix. If you wanna dethrone him why not make something else strong instead of just trimming stats whenever something beats a record. When people look forward to expansions they think about all the new things, new possibilities, new levels and records to beat. They don’t think “Hey I can’t wait to see how much weaker all my builds will be YAY!”
What has changed here? Grim Tool says “new skill bonuses” and it seems that the radius of CT and aether rr from siphon is moved to the skill bonus instead of being on the off-hand. That is everything I have spotted.
Blazing Charge was pretty limited being 3 targets in 150 degree arc, if I remember correctly? This skill hits unlimited targets in the area, which would be more powerful. I do agree though, that it should be like Nidalla’s where it is proc’d on crit or hit since Demo characters usually have lots of skills to click on already.
Agrivix wasn’t nerfed in any major way. Only major thing that happened was moving its mods from the offhand to the final set bonus. And everybody already equipped the full set anyway.
It might have sounded like I’m making demands or something… Sorry for that. These are just my thoughts. Anyways thanks for listening.
I was hoping (and afaik so were many other players) for ‘invincible’ status to be implemented on the Mines as it is on most other player scaling pets. I believe that this would greatly improve the reception of demolitionist among endgame oriented players. It doesn’t have a direct connection to N&O except that it would make saboteur more attractive in general (since N&O is mostly a saboteur set now). A cold rr mod to mines somewhere (not necessarily on N&O, maybe on Rimetongue if it wasn’t already loaded with mods) would achieve a similar goal.
I don’t think it would make demolitionist too powerful. The mines would still have their long wind-up and they would still dictate that characteristic “stick to my turf” playstyle. Making them immortal would still not make them as effective as - or too similar to - Censure.
Here’s a link to my thread where different problems and solutions to Iskandra - some of them ridiculous, I admit - are discussed. To sum it up, Iskandra as a flagship single mastery 5pc set supports no main dmg skills (unlike all other single mastery focused sets). Because Iskandra’s most meaningful set bonuses are at full completion it blocks too many slots where that support to main skills might be acquired. Iskandra’s bonuses to IEE as well as the flat rr and flat dmg are great but as a set including a caster offhand its usefulness for melee and concepts utilizing >100% weapon damage is limited. The most sensible solution, I think, would be moving flat rr from 5pc to 4pc (and maybe increasing it by 2-4 points) so that one can afford dropping the offhand and use Iskandra for all kinds of arcanist melee/ranged concepts.
Unfortunately I have no realistic ideas for what to do with full Iskandra. It seems that currently there’s nothing full Iskandra does better than something else would in its place.
As a player who knows something about end-game builds and how end-game combination of skills/items/devotions work: it seems like some of those nerfs and buffs were made without listening to what testers had to say, because I know for a fact that some of the testers are savvy high-end builders themselves.
Some of the buffs and changes are great (like pierce base on Bloodsong for example) but some are just poorly thought out. Like new Krieg’s set feature that is supposed to buff Krieg’s Battle Mages - you are adding flat RR to Reckless Power but it doesn’t stack with flat RR Krieg’s set proc already has.
Dreeg’s set proc with Skill Distruption protection is still unchanged. I will make few threads here once I test this stuff in FG, but it seems that most of the suggestions were just ignored.
I do love some of new stuff and new changes and new items - some of it is just bonkers and I can’t wait to lay my hands on it.
The design of Iskandra seems to suggest weapon damage use given the large flat damage and conversion on the items. Currently very few builds (that are decent) can actually make decent use of that flat damage. When the flat damage can be used it is usually weapon damage % that is below 100 like chillspikes so the flat RR can’t be taken advantage of.
My suggestion is removing the flat RR (it only really used for aether damage since crown is needed for elemental) and adding a chance on attack skill that applies -22% aether and ~-10-15% elemental resistance. Then add a chance on attack proc to the caster off hand that only has %WD damage. Yes, people may still use 4 pc Iskandra and do well but at least 5 piece Iskandra will be viable as a WD caster (as it supposed was designed to be?
I feel the basic design of this set is a bit weird. IEE and conversion boosts, fine, but then it adds an off-hand and things start to make little sense to me. There’s no skill (transmuted CT aside perhaps) in the arcanist tree that can make use of all this flat damage in an efficient way. Same thing for the flat resist reduction, there’s not really a good way to put it to use aside from hitting something in the face with your dagger. And of course at that point you’re in melee range in caster armor and an off-hand, so pretty fragile.
What does the off-hand offer this set? You get access to two skills, devastation and aether ray. The latter is obviously not compatible, devastation can be. But the disadvantage of not using either a shield or a second weapon in the left hand is too big. Devastation does in no way make up for it in all my theorycrafting attempts. I want to make a melee arcanist with this set, but it sadly doesn’t work. I end up making a krieg build most of the time, or I end up throwing away the whole build and starting over.
In short, intriguing concept, disappointing execution.
Edit: realized that I didn’t offer a suggestion, so here’s mine: ditch the off-hand, replace it with a weapon. Concept remains the same but now it works much better in melee. Still has low armor but at least dual wield and shield is now a valid option. It never was a caster set was it?
About Iskandra’s, here’s something else I realized; it has only two item modifiers or granted skills on it. All other one class sets have three or four.
So Iskandra is the only set with only two of these, while both markovian and runebinder get four, the rest three. No wonder the Iskandra off-hand is an often ignored item, it should probably get a modifier or skill on it to even things up.
