Mythical Pack of Treacherous Means changes

Hi, this is my first feedback sadness. Changes to this belt cause a massive hit to my piercing paladin and I’m told other ranged builds that were using this:

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/nZo4v1zN

+4 to maxed ranged expertise turns to Horn, a pretty universally used as proc only skill. Passive bonuses are gutted for just a straight armor bump, losing a bunch of flat damage and conversion. Only plus side would be easier 9th charge on RF.

Can some melee people weigh in if this would cause you to use the belt now?

edit: whoops, fixed GT link, had experiment linked instead

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Why was the armor piercing increase removed? How will we get pistols to any decent pierce ratio now?

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Have to agree as well. Losing the armour piercing, Acid->Pierce conversion and skill bonus changes hurt as well.

I can see that the belt was changed to help Acid-based DEE and I do agree that it has felt weak and needs more of a push but this belt was not the right place to do it.

Edit: Adding to eardianm, this was my build that greatly enjoyed the belt’s benefits: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/mN4abnl2. (Shoulders are bad I know :stuck_out_tongue:).

The changes mean it drops from 92.5% armour piercing on the guns to 67.5% and loses a significant amount of damage from the granted skill’s Acid/Pierce damage and from not converting Lethal Assault’s Acid damage.

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Ranged pierce builds are DEAD now

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Imgur

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TBF mine is a niche case since I was ignoring the piercing conversion bonus which definitely does hurt the others, but we all want to protect our (not OP) babies

Piercing builds that use dual pistols were never anywhere near overpowered, in fact some qualify for meme status. This belt was an integral part of all of them, and now it’s gone.

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Only gun i know that is even haflway decent for ranged pierce is Oathbearer and that one already has 100% armor piercing and elemental to pierce.

its funny how the devs talk about ‘not upsetting the balance and finely tuned builds’ then they come in and do these sweeping changes that radically change alot of gear. Where did they get these ideas from?

They almost remind me of an MMO company which makes radical patches and nerfs certain specs into the ground and buffs others massively just to keep people playing the game, hoping their class will get buffed next patch.

So, after having a day and a night to sleep on this. I’d like to make some suggestions. Everything below is with these objectives in mind:

  1. The Acid Dreeg Evil Eye support/skill bonuses should move to other items.
Summary

Some places I’ve thought about moving the conversion are M. Wretched Tome of Nar’Adin (if you want it to be available to builds of all kinds) or Dreeg’s set as part of it’s (5) set bonus to complete the conversion from the Shoulders and Chest.

If you want a belt to support Dreeg’s Evil Eye, I’d suggest the current Girdle of Stolen Dreams. I would add % damage values for Acid/Poison to it and replace the +1 to Vulnerability with the Blood Burst bonus.


  1. The Horn of Gandarr support/skill bonuses should move to other items.
Summary

Honestly, I’m not sure if Horn of Gandarr actually needs more item support. Pierce definitely doesn’t I’d say as Rimetongue covers it nicely as well as other bits and pieces like M. Azrakaa’s Sands.

As for Acid variants though, I would suggest adding a skill bonus for Horn of gandarr to Gulgazor’s Heart. It’s always struck me as odd than neither Infrequent Heart amulet has skill bonuses by default.


  1. The Vitality damage converted to Acid should return to Acid damage converted to Pierce damage.
Summary

The previous conversion was build defining. The only other source of it was the Murderer’s Breastplate which provided 30%, on it’s own it is nowhere near as useful now. It went perfectly with the Elemental to Pierce conversion as Cold and Acid are frequently seen together or alongside Pierce in Nightblade-related items.


  1. The 50% increased armour piercing should return to the belt.
Summary

Now, I initially was hesitant to suggest returning the stat to the belt directly as you’ve opened it up to builds of all kinds that want another way to dual wield their weapons including potential Physical builds. These get hampered by natural armour piercing which would only be made worse by the armour piercing stat.

However, how often do Physical builds have or use weapons with natural armour piercing these days? Several updates ago, many of them were neutered so I don’t think this would be a major issue now.


I’d welcome any thoughts on the above if I’ve got something wrong or a change I’ve proposed seems outlandish/damages someone else’s character.

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Could someone post a screen of the item’s new stats please ? cause GT isn’t updated yet. at least if you could confirm that elemental to pierce conversion is still here (that’s the most crucial part for my current build although the +4 to ranged expertise would still be a big loss).

yeah but only 45%. if you don’t dual wield PoTM synergizes perfectly to turn inqui’s procs into pure pierce (except BR).

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Elemental to pierce is still in place so dual wield Oathbearer is not required. Acid to pierce has changed to vitality to acid conversion. Everything except the armor bonus has been stripped off the passive while the flat acid on the belt appears to have been increased, so Oathbearer with this belt can still convert 100% but lost ~30 flat damage before calculating skill bonus changes.

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I guess I’ve underestimated what manner of builds the previous iteration of this belt enabled, so we’ll be splitting off the current direction and the old into separate items.

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:grava_yes::zantai::grava_yes:

Dead builds vs. Developers : 1 - 84

Thank you for the screens guys :+1:

I’ve decided that there’s enough database corrections we want to include in a hotfix that we’ll just do a full database update, which means some stuff slated for v1.1.4.0 later this year will instead go in the hotfix.

For reference, this is what the belt changes will look like:

Say hello to the Pack of Treacherous Memes Pack of Deadly Means

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Deadly Means belt is getting nerfed to the ground. :scorv:

And it just lost the % armor from the DW passive. The thing is getting nerfed before our very eyes.