current effects:
75% Damage Absorption
100% Skill Disruption Protection
my proposed changes:
+80% to all damage resistances except phys
+30% movement speed
Fully restore constitution
this is just as good or better for newer players struggling early on, but should make aether clusters useless in endgame.
why?
because aether clusters are stupid.
this is a build-making, numbers-crunching ARPG (now with dodge rolls!). there should not be a farmable consumable item with zero opportunity cost that just makes you invincible.
why not? don’t use aether clusters if you don’t like them.
I got to 100 on hc without. That’s not even a real flex, because I did it on warder and I didn’t kill any (real) celestials. Still, I did it with my own build and my own skills, and I had plenty of close calls that aether clusters could’ve completely trivialized. They ruin the tension and cheapen victory.
so what? aether clusters have been in the game literally forever.
the game changed. there used to be nothing worth cheesing with it; it was just a panic button for content you weren’t confident in. it didn’t make anything possible that was supposed to be impossible for you or your build. now you can use it to facetank celestial enrages and aoe down SR boss rooms that you should have no business surviving.
why complain now?
Asterkarn and ascendant mode are just around the corner (I hope) with the greatest challenges we’ve ever seen (I hope). More problems for your skills and your build to solve means less reasons for consumables to exist. We’ve been trending in this direction already - you can’t drink every stat buff flask in the game at once anymore, and tinctures got shared cooldowns. I like to imagine those changes happened for the same reason.
what’s the worst that could happen?
if you need a more concrete concern, it has to do with the craftable healing potions that we’re getting. I like them conceptually, because they’ll be customizable and part of your build. But I think they could result in a critical mass of cooldowns, and we’ll see glasscannon builds survive entirely too long by cycling circuit breaks/tanky potions/tinctures, then popping the aether cluster and starting over.
for my taste, the game already tends to revolve around “uptime” a little much in terms of defense. there’s something risky and satisfying about it too, but survivability shouldn’t be even more volatile and “cheap”, in terms of opportunity cost/investment.
Sorry but strongly disagree. It’s not because you don’t need it, others don’t. I’m happy to have one lifesaver that has a reasonable recharge time to prevent abuse. Let us please, forgive one moment of inattention if you already manage to push the button in time.
resists doesn’t protect against floor dmg, which is funnily enough a thing/comment often posted as cluster use beginners like for them dreaded PV/immolation trap paths
and on the flip side you have people once in a while requesting clusters to be craftable
idono, if we’re railing on cluster as safety that means we need to nuke Mirror? seems kinda gamebreaking with its shorter CD and more dmg reduct for single skill point
*sidenote, disrupt res is capped at 80, so 100% might make it sound stronger than it is and doesn’t really change much for most builds, -it’s the absorb we like
(not quite sure why several effects give 100 disrupt res when cc res cap can’t be increased above 80 )
what kind of comparison is that? mirror is a class ability. there’s no bigger commitment/investment in the game than selecting your classes. and it lasts three seconds.
if this is how you want to think about it, isn’t it weird that nightblade and arcanist only get a shitty version of a consumable as a supposedly exclusive, class-defining spell? some people don’t even put a single point in. after all, aether clusters do it better, for free.
You can still have effects that reduce it, though not sure if any enemies have those.
Edit:
I dislike potions and stuff in games in general. I’ve never used clusters and very rarely these other salves or whatever they are. I don’t care what you do with this
what would you consider abuse? 90 seconds isn’t that long. people do use them to push deeper SR, and if you’re patient enough you could cheese any boss that isn’t cluster-proofed by regen or time limits.
people used to put “no pharmacy” or something in their build guilde titles so they could use the relevant power benchmarks (x celestial in x time, x SR) that the BUILD can reach without drinking 500 consumables. don’t think I’ve ever seen “no cluster”, even though they have even more potential.
to be clear, I don’t blame or look down on anyone for using aether clusters. I’ve used them. They’re part of the game, I just wish they weren’t.
If I remember correctly, the cluster already got nerfed once or reworked. It had 100% absorb at one point, now it has like 75%.
I used to ignore them, but nova days they have their practical use of those “woah” moments for me. Never really used the tonics or resistance potions or salves but do I think they should go just because I don’t like them? I think the same would apply here, sure your OP idea is not bad but why fix if it isn’t broken.
mirror is infinitely better even if it’s shorter duration
it’s by far the strongest skill in the game, and for the lowest investment possible out of any to boot.
90 sec cd is huge on cluster, even if the duration is longer, not to mention you literally cannot die vs being able to die with cluster.
You’re talking about removing a less free safety from 9 classes while being perfectly fine with the freebie safety that makes arcanist one of the most tanky/high survival builds.
And doing so invoking the beginner help, while not seeing how it doesn’t do that and does the opposite.
i mean, then we can also say you can have effects that can increase max CC cap, those just also doens’t currently exist in the game too? so idono what’s the point bringing a theoretical up there?
Because I don’t know if there are any. If there are, that might be why it’s 100%. If not, then I don’t know. There’s more weird stuff in the game
afaik no there are currently no debuffs reducing CC res, flat resist shred doesnt’ affect CC res similar like how max all res increase doesn’t affect cc res either i guess.
personally don’t think it would be horrible if it was changed to like 5sec duration and 120sec cd type nerf (still fairly drastic tho ofc )
but changing it to resist just removes the utility for everyone, newcomers, midgame, and late game (not to mention you can’t even farm them thing until after lvl 35 - where resists is getting more natively fixed)
my main concern would be the FoA buffing/pot rotation potential itself, but that depends on how the system even turns out (wouldn’t want it just a poe style spam/temp buff button); tho that would just be be its own type of request instead of nerfing something tertiary/unrelated
You’ll get some approval from me on this one. I’ve never liked consumable temporary-buffs in ARPGs. Same goes for Pharma in general, though that’s a larger argument. I was delighted to see the rework to pharma recently that more severely limited how much you could have active at once.
Aether Clusters don’t feel like they have any use that is “good” for the game’s health. If you’re going to die to an encounter without an Aether Cluster, you’re probably still going to die to it when it runs out - and, arguably, you shouldn’t be able to clear that encounter in the first place if you’re struggling to such an extent. The only thing Clusters can provide to the game is cheese, and that’s never indicative of sound design.
People hate change though, especially when change makes the game harder. But I’m firmly in camp “Remove all consumables from the game.”
why?
longer duration/cooldown is a better fit for the purpose. 3 seconds isn’t even long enough for some sunders to time out, and you won’t do ideal damage. 8 seconds lets you get mileage out of damage ramps from debuffs and limited uptime procs.
even if you had some personal preference for shorter duration/cooldown, the uptime on mirror is worse. even with a few +arcanist points and some cdr, it doesn’t let you deal more damage than aether cluster, ever. and it doesn’t prevent more damage either, because there’s no difference between 75% and 100% as long as you have any amount of sustain and/or flat damage reduction.
that’s how I remember it, too. it even had a longer duration, if I’m not mistaken. I wonder what the intent behind those changes was? Nerfing new players? :^)
it’s hard to balance “become invincible”. there’s a reason mirror is too short to get anything done, and blade barrier stuns you. I respect how conservative GD is in those areas. we have circuit breaks instead of the more common cheat-death nonsense. even harbinger doesn’t make you completely invincible. I’d never bother criticizing this in a game that’s cheesy all over, I’m only bringing it up because it stands out.
because it means more frequent use, which results in combined higher uptime, you also don’t have to worry about sunder duration as you might think as that’s not the biggest threat most of the time.
Nor does it matter much if you use cluster for a basic attack being nervous about it, when you can’t use it 15secs later when that attack comes again, Mirror might let you do that tho.
Mirror being a player skill also means it’s “infinitely” scaleable, benefitting from all CDR effects, while cluster doesn’t, again contributing to frequency of use which will matter more than duration. (it can now save you multiple times during a fight, or you can have multiple encounters without worrying about breaks)
And i’m unsure how you can remotely argue the there is no difference between 75% vs 100%, when i already told you the very significant difference, you can’t die with mirror, you can die with cluster, literal immortality vs not, doesn’t matter cluster lasts 5 secs more when it’s still potential for death where mirror 100% safeguards you.
)
There’s more weird stuff in the game 