At first, I’m testing everything on the as difficult levels as possible. Please do not say smth like “Oh, you made SR 90 or so, the set is super strong then”. Problems that I have are the same that the newbie might have.
As an example, lots of players can’t complete even SR 75 with my Shieldbreaker (I made SR 95 with it)
Build has decent damage, yes. But it’s a double rare Theodin Heart + 2 good mutators (+8% total damage and +20% crit damage). I utilize lots of conversions and multiple sources of flat, but the damage is still lower than most DW melees.
All the stun res comes from relic craft bonus
Potential melee set has medium armor + only 14% phys res (with the highest roll on the chest)
With the nerf of Seal of Corruption it’s much harder to kill resistant enemies, especially Alex and Valdaran
It would be great if the set gets any of following:
Stun res to Shoulders
Some flat damage as set bonus
Increased phys res (for example, 10% for 3 pieces + 2-4% roll on the shoulders)
Increased RR mods for Seal and Siphon (upto 12%, so it total +4% RR)
+1. Bonemonger is a rather strange set - for melee it terribly lacks armor and flat damage, for caster - has zero cdr, also no cc resists and presented resists are short.
So any buff of these would look nice.
The set enable melee aether build in combination with that Scion veil hammer for Oppressor, but the lack of armor and cc res make it squishy for melee build. I pretty much agree that Bonemonger need a buff especially on the defense part, either extra 6% physical res on 3 set bonus, 20% slow and stun resist, or increase armor by 10%.
More aether RR is a welcome, but I much leaned towards improving the Oathkeeper side, both Seal and Siphon got 20% and 10% RR in addition with ele RR while both class already have built in aether RR, meanwhile Oath didn’t have many aether support and only got 15% aether RR, so I think it’s fair to increase the guardian aether rr or standardize all the skill aether RR to 15-20%.
I’ve made at least a dozen aether melee builds with Necromancer past months, and every time i had to pass on Bonemonger.
Aether and aether melee in particular thrive on conversions and ele conversion is much more important than vitality one, that’s why my choice always was Soulare’s or Diviner’s helm and MI shoulders with ele conversion. Bonemonger needs smth outstanding to make aether melee work and it just doesn’t have any of that. Any other dmg type (except maybe chaos) would be happy with net value Bonemonger provides but for aether it’s not enough anymore. In a way, the aether part of the set is outdated.
Oh, and Oathkeeper part of the set is very weak. The mastery has zero innate aether support and it gets -15% aether RR (needs full mastery investment) and a useless WPS mode. I suggest to increase RR value to 20% because of high requirement and change the Smite mode to wider arc and more targets.
Have used bonemonger on multiple ranged builds. Wouldn’t complain about some flat aether as the only high/meta approved damage build was still using fire strike, but actually enjoy the Vit conversion as it opens up everyone’s new favorite survival tool with scales (or bat), gets work from soul harvest/harbinger/reaping strike while still allowing for elemental focused builds as well. Phys res I never especially missed because :ranged: but can see how it would be not so fun for melee. Smite is awesome for ranged as it has pass through so current bonuses turn it into your main damage burst + flat RR, but can also see how they wouldn’t be as useful for melee.
I will never understand the amount of seal of corruption complaining in isolation. It was 8% RR, unless you show me an array of mobs that have unbreakable immunity due to 8% less RR being available (hi gear wearing aether heroes!) it’s getting the world’s small violin. That said, still wouldn’t complain about 5% more aether RR on guardians as the tiny nudge it would provide.
Bonemonger got a lot of consecutive buffs on its aether part, is it not enough?
I’d say, aether damage itself is the problem, not bonemonger. There’s just not many variety with aether except going caster, and other set support aether caster better.
For melee/auto attack, krieg support it better as you can easily go 4pc + soulare helm for more RR in nightblade for example.
Just accept the fact that bonemonger is better as tri-elemental and adjust the set as such…
Bonemonger was going to get some Elemental -> Aether global conversion. It was removed because it was asked for as some Elemental builds made use of the set.
I more or less came to the same conclusion. Krieg and Monger fill the same niche of generic aether support set for melee or otherwise, except Krieg does that indirectly with skill bonuses and by being much more flexible - amulet slot is free and you can compromise on head too in some cases. Bonemonger on the other hand is a very rigid set.
After patch 1.1.6 I hoped Monger would finally have a niche as a set for Scion of Screaming Veil, but the more I think about it the more I suspect full krieg + bonemonger ammy would perform better.
Something that I think needs mentioning for Bonemonger is the full set proc:
The low cooldown is great but 30% chance on crit doesn’t look good on paper. The damage for it is also split into 3-4 different parts (Cold/Frostburn, Pierce and Aether) and they are all low.
I could definitely see it getting sizable buffs in some way, like the proc chance getting bumped to 100% for example.
From a thematic perspective, it does make sense just like how Bone Harvest features it. I imagine sharp bones would penetrate like a Rapier so I see the design intent for why it is in these places.
However from a gameplay perspective, I do agree that the pierce damage is hard to work around and in these cases should be removed or if it has to stay should be lessened in favour of the damage types that Decree/Bonemonger are built on.
Aether melees are more or less work with Krieg or as Hybryds.
But aether Bonemonger is overshadowed by Agrivix/Uro/Diviner as caster and by Krieg as melee.
Little things can make a big difference. Spellbinders don’t have problem with Corruption nerf while having significant damage boost from spirit, racial damage and good itemization. But classes like Apostate got a noticeable nerf to damage
