We are not “over reacting”, we are just merely reacting. My and other “overreacting” players’ point is that we are not against difficulty we are against unfair and random mechanics that sometimes make shards unplayable. Those things can’t be countered with building or piloting skill which makes the game frustrating.
I wonder, which builds exactly can run Gladiator Crucible ~150 or SR ~60, being naked?
cough EOR, Binder AAR, Any pets, Infiltrator, Pyran.
Pyran can do Crucible 150-170 naked? X - doubt. Even if it can, success rate of such runs is ~20-30%, doesn’t really tell anything about the current balance.
75-76 is the challenge boundary because you are getting very little loot upgrade from say 65-66. The amount of legendaries you get from 65-66 is already absurd, it is like 3x the crucible amount.
Zantai said multiple times crucible is like SR60ish which he is quite right, because with crucible you get buffs you get stun res, so squisher but dps orientated builds can survive and perform well, but SR 75 test nearlly all aspects of your build on top of overcaping basically all your resistances.
The profitability and intended farming spot is basically the point where most builds can do it fine and still get 6 chests, 4 or more being celestial, because you are getting absurd returns at that point anyway. Back before AOM came out we were farming skeleton dungeons with aether cluster in hand, but game has powercreeped much since then, so these mechanics are a way to deal with that.
Right now stuff like Ancient Grove and even 150 crucible is a joke for most builds. So i disagree with the notion that builds are overnerfed or mutators are too unfair.
But why stop at 75-76 as the boundary?
Or why not cap Loot at 66 if 75-76 is only supposed to be for a challenge?
Well i did suggest single boss mechanic but the games reach to a point it is hard to do without another expansion or major patch.
The problem has always being boss combos rather than the mutators. Grava madqueen Aethersnek is pure cancer to deal with no matter what mutators you get.
In my opinion, Shattered Realm is less about testing your builds or/and piloting skills but more about few niche builds heaviliy balanced towards defense and a lot of cheese (and also praying for lucky boss combination). And I don’t mind having this content in the game, if someone likes to play very few chosen builds and heavily balance their builds towards defense, it’s their choice. As I said, it’s randomness and unfair mechanics that repell me from playing SR.
By this logic you could also argue that why not bench mark for SR 80 right? Because thats where you get all chests celestial, but the difficulty vs loot reward is a belt curve rather than linear, at some point it becomes too troublesome to deal with that much hp and damage for any player to obtain that extra bit of reward.
However it provides an incentive for people who would like to push abit without feeling not rewarded.
But to be fair, theres virtually 0 difference between 65-66 and 75-76 farming, consider you might do 65-66 even abit faster.
SR is infinite scaling, defense is bound to be a priority at some point, thats just the nature of infinite scaling mechanic, after all a dead player deal no damage.
i think we need to set back abit and be realistic about the expectations of builds. Afterall, we now have builds that casually do 6-7min crucible no problem and solo superbosses, while back in DA meta it was unheard of for people to actually do any of these super contents.
In fact when AOM came out we used to have to party just to deal with 170.
80? I am arguing for 86/87 which is when the loot scaling stops 
Well, ok not really since Waystones don’t take you farther than 75.
But regardless, why is there a need for loot based incentive if higher shards are supposed to be for challenge?
Or, if people would be let down because they aren’t getting extra loot, then are they really playing for the challenge?
So? Back in the day it was unbalanced, DA meta was cancer and days when Crucible was unbeatable were cancer as well. I think you have a bit of a misunderstanding about “builds that casually do 6-7 min.”. Those are chosen min-maxed synergetic builds, that you see posted in builds section. Most of the builds struggle in current Crucible.
I am a bit lost on what we were arguing about in the first place, to be honest.
My point was the difficulty in mutators hasn’t changed, but people’s expectation of what an endgame build should do changed.
Now this i can get behind. At least you wont be so fucked over by a random mutator set that directly countering your build. This plz!
That I have no problems with, I mostly test my builds in SR 65-66 nowadays anyway (besides Crucible). My point was that Shattered Realm is not good for measuring build’s strengths and weaknesses because of its random nature and unfair mechanics.
Also point that me and some other posters were making here is that SR is really no fun because of how random and unfair it is.
I also thought John_Smith’s idea was good. But then I realized it takes away even the option of restarting till passable mutators are guaranteed for the whole run. So I think it should change not every level but every 5 levels so you can still reroll and continue the run from the same level. And then every shard after 76.
Anyway, since mutators wont be fixed I got some ideas for new ones! 
- STRIPPED: a random number of equipped items disappear
- UNDEVOTED: a random number of selected devotions disappear
- BLINDED: screen turns black at random
- CONSCIENSIOUSLY OBJECTED: weapons turn unequippable (at random)
- DRUNK: a random % chance to knockdown self for a random number of seconds on attack
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I find that “leeching” makes SR 65 trivial for my pet conjurer. Monsters really can’t leech anything if they die so fast due to having 60 % less health. Is it the same for other builds?
On your suggestion: If you tone down mutators so much you might as well remove them from the game. Sorry but this feels like another “I wanna farm SR XX / Crucible 170 consistently an X is preventing me, so plz change it”-thread. 
If there is a case to be made for something in the game to be unbalanced it’s probably mutators (not saying they are).
I made a similar assumption about TOUGHENED (+50%) and LEECHING (-60%) mutators but was corrected by Norzan and removed them from the list. Monster health is already +580% on Ultimate, and LEECHING makes it +520%.
Worry you not. I don’t wanna farm anything. I’ve been using GDStash since last year. What I want is for more people to have fun. So I’m presenting my opinion: more consistency, more diversity, less randomness. In my understanding, people have fun when they are being rewarded for their efforts, not punished despite them.
In my opinion there should be an option of removing mutators completely from Crucible in exchange for limited or no loot - but I know it’s a minority opinion catering to minority audience of build minmaxers and testers and I won’t even mention it again. As for SR, I never said such a thing. I think some mutators should be balanced because they are too strong. They force you to restart the game until your already struggling build becomes viable. Or not play such builds at all and only play oupies. Or go back to Cronley speedkills on Elite…
But I also said that some mutators are op. Strolling with a binder on EXPOSED is ridiculous (meaning great! everything just clicks with just enough downtime on active defense to make it interesting). Like before the Star Pact nerf. A single rng mutator turns a build upside down.
But mostly it’s about the weaker, struggling builds that are turned upside down in a bad way by the penalties.
And here we are again (and No, it´s not rhetorical):
Why are these builds considered “weak” or “struggling”?
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What´s the definition of these terms? “Weak/Struggling” as in “Can´t end campaign” (if reaching SR 60 is intended campaign end with getting last piece of set) or in “Constantly dying in Crucible”?
Or does it mean “Can´t reach time X in Crucible”? -
Are the mutators the real problem or the builds themselves? Are they considered “weak/struggling” and there is room for improvement especially on the defensive side? And if not shouldn´t be items/devotions/etc. be improved to solve these problems and not mutators?
I’m talking about builds like 2h chaos Cadence (undone by AETHERMARKED, TAINTED and CORRUPTED), vitality EoR or Primal Strike or any kind of vitality melee (again AETHERMARKED+TAINTED), lesser infiltrators like Silver Sentinel melee hybrid (gone with WEAKENED and EXPOSED), lesser S&B battlemages that can’t outdamage Kuba (with AETHERMARKED on Cadence, SHATTERED, ARMORED, WEAKENED), etc. And all kinds of beginner builds that struggle before they can complete the sets. But also about the very top tier builds that have huge performance shifts due to some mutator combinations that together with stacking of buffs and debuffs can lead to sudden one-shots on tanks, immortal Valaxteria or invincible healer mobs (the mutator that gives monsters 25% cdr, what was it?).
Sure, mutators make gameplay more diverse, unpredictable and “full of adventure,” and should by all means stay. But like all things in the game they should be balanced.
I sense a little tension here. Also, reminds be of the usual Forum Drama:
ML: But Crucible times are very slow…
Z: Can it kill Warden & Cronley?
ML: Well… yeah… but…
Z: …then WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?
(sorry to go ahead use the initials of a certain prominent builder who often provides a lot of endgame feedback)
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