P.S. Devs, if you are so keen for people to use other LMB skills, give us more skill points. I’m sure I’d switch to Savagery on my Trickster build, if I had 20 or 30 more points to play with. 
Much stronger augments + more skill points while enemies maintain the same power level is something I would consider a fair amount of power creep. I’d argue that the game has been too easy in general since release and I definitely notice it becoming progressively easier and easier with every patch. Of course I’ve also been playing 1.0.0.4 for 2 weeks, so I have had a lot more time than most to adapt to the update. Once you do adapt though, the end result is your build is typically stronger than it was in 1.0.0.3, even if it involved nerfed skills.
When you are referring to lowering the monster resistance, you’re talking about the “core” resistance, not necessarily the “high” resist a particular monster may have, correct?
For example, you’re suggesting to lower a skeletons fire/cold/lightning/whatever resistance so the reduced resistance gear has a smaller impact but not lowering the bleed resistance.
Therefore if you decide you’re build is going to focus one only one damage source, you will need reduce resist gear for monster that should have high resists vs that damage type (ie skeletons vs bleed), but not gain as big of an advantage vs monsters that should not have high resist (ie humans to bleed).
That’s my suggestion; I don’t know if that’s medierra’s interpretation. Ultimate gives every enemy in the game about 43% resistance to every damage type, on top of whatever base resistances (10-20%) they may have had to individual types. Reducing that 43% bonus down a bit would go a long way toward making resist reduction less of necessity for endgame character building.
I don’t know whether you’re referring to resist reduction here since you brought up Beronath’s Fury (cough a much needed nerf cough), but with resist reduction anything you buff up that isn’t directly resist reduction ALSO empowers resist reduction. If you leave enemy resists where they are but give them more/less DA, RR becomes all the more powerful. More/less health? More powerful. There’s no avenue you can take that doesn’t empower resist reduction in some capacity.
Enemies on Ultimate have 25% to all damage types in Singleplayer in the live build…43% with 4 players.
._.
God, your files’ nomenclature takes a lot of getting used to.
Well that puts a lot of stuff into perspective I guess. The 10% change medierra suggested a ways back should actually be pretty on point in that case.
When you start buying brand new cars every time you get a flat tire instead of replacing the tire, I’ll consider boosting the entire game to balance a single OP skill. 
I’m glad to see the dev responses here. Not just cuz we love the attention, but I mean specifically what was said. Very heartening. Big step in the right direction with 1.0.0.4 and big step coming with the upcoming changes mentioned here.
I hope you guys know for all our complaints/suggestions/grievances, that the game’s balance has come a long way since you introduced levels above 50, and that you’ve done a very good job with that. Balance on something this complex can only be done incrementally, and it’s cost efficient at all at this point when you could just be doing expansion packs or DLC or something, so I have a great amount of respect for your choice to take the time to do something you feel will improve the quality of the game you envisioned. I think all the sane people here have more than a glimpse of how much passion you all put into this project.
Ceno and I have the luxury of modding what was already mostly built, as well as the choice to appeal to one small demographic (ourselves) when we work with the tools. Whenever you guys don’t implement the changes I hope for, I just try to analyze why you didn’t - whether it’s just too time consuming compared to other things you might be focused on, or you flat out disagreed with my point/perspective/bias, or any other reason, I learn a bit more about game design from seeing how you work, even from this distance. So thanks, it’s been a real blast playing and learning about your game and watching it grow.
Also while I’m here: Primordial constellations (i define this as constellations that require more Primordial than any other color affinity, so something that requires 6 order and 4 primordial doesn’t count) are under-utilized by players, and for good reason, and I could go into it but I suspect you’re all already aware and mostly okay with it. It wouldn’t exactly be the simplest thing to change either. But general blue constellations give defensive stats that are just worse than yellow constellations, or go to lightning and aether which is fine but kind of niche, where as some red/green constellations offer offensive stats that are good for any damage type (gotta get me some %OA). I’m considering doing a write-up on what I think about constellations after some of the insight I’ve gained from working on them and trying to promote tougher choices by raising their overall quality. It’s really not a big issue, almost a non-issue, but I do feel OA/speed/%hp could be put on blue constellations a little more generously to encourage them competing with the green/red ones. They’re also so… shield related.
I agree that the blue devotions in general could use some help. They are just too focused on defense, which starts to devalue after you stack X amount of it.
I personally think LoE could stand to be moved to red/green as it’s affinity, and a new blue/yellow offensive devotion replace it (it could be Aether based, to allow a double up with SofH for Aether casters, or maybe move Leviathan up there, because it makes a lot more sense for it to be paired with all the other cold constellations). Do that, and add a new Aether caster devotion to Green/Red (Or, change Blind Sage to also support Aether by adding in an Aether node to it, and making the spirit do some Aether damage as well). I personally just hate how Aether casters have almost no access to a true devotion endgame for them, as SofHs is more for someone who is willing to get hit in the first place, of which just about no Aether (Or lightning at that) caster is willing for that to happen, the only exception being a Callidor’s build.
I do think we should have 3 devotions of every combo type (blue/red, which we have, blue/yellow, which we have, although Obelisk feels really really bad for a T3 devotion), purple/yellow, which we only have 2, Purple/green, which we have, and Green/Red, which we only have 2).
Maybe it’s just me, but to offer a counterpoint, I’m feeling like build diversity is at an all-time low right now because of how hard the new content is getting. If the skills and builds forum is any indication, there are no functional builds that aren’t based on preacquired BiS items and a small handful of viable skills (aka autoattack replacers and dual wield skills). I get wanting a challenge, but I don’t want the game to just be an obstacle course for Blademasters and Saboteurs and to hell with everyone else.
I know my Spellbreaker build has 0 issues with that, and is neither WPS or Auto replacers. I full cleared ulti in what I found as I found it, and about the only part of the build that was even remotely close to BIS was a very lucky Shard of Asterkan I got from my first Log kill quest reward. The build focused on the abuse case of CDR stacking, and is quite fun and was in no way nerfed this patch either (if anything, it only got buffs with OFF now being a devotion proccer and a tank devotion line being now available in Hourglass focus), unlike a lot of other builds .
10% difference doesn’t make something OP or balanced. Whatever you intended to achieve with nerfs to BF and resistance reduction, you failed. Nobody will stop using either. You just spoiled fun for a lot of players.
The intent of nerfs is not to stop people from using them, Crate isn’t Blizzard after all. The intent of nerfs is to reign their power in, which based on your own words is exactly what it did. The funny thing about that type of “fun” where you just crush everything effortlessly is that it is extremely short-lived and soon becomes boring.
I’m not seeing this “all-time low”. Of my old characters that I played during testing including ones that had been nerfed were more than powerful enough in 1.0.0.4 and I even was able to create a few new builds from the changes. There is of course limited time during the testing phase, so I only managed to do the new content on ultimate with 7 different builds (only one of which was a WPS character) but I’m gonna have to call BS on build diversity being low right now.
They said it was OP, not me. And then they nerfed it just 10%. Either not enough or completely unnecessary.
This game is weird, both too easy and too hard. For example, my Trickster killed Loghorrean way too easily on Elite, just to be killed by first random Gastris-like hero encountered on Ultimate, in less than 1 second. Both was NOT fun at all.
P.S. I died a few times from Iron Maiden, but I really enjoyed fighting her. Nemesis bosses are all just fine.
Maybe I’m just unlucky but I have yet to make a build that can handle nemeses/avatar/the sentinel on Ultimate. My main character is a Primal Strike/Sky Shard melee character, I have a Sky Shard/Bladeburst crossbowman, a two-handed Blade Burst/Shadowstrike Blademaster, and a Warder built around auras and tankiness. Aside from a lucky victory against Valdaraan with the Warder none of them have fared well at all.
I’ll concede that I was exaggerating a bit though, and my sample size is small.
Avatar is not meant to be a standard thing everyone can kill. He is the definition of “Ok, I have a perfect BIS build, perfectly designed to kill this guy. Lets see if I can even come close to managing it.” And the Nemesis and such on Ultimate are meant to be some of the hardest fights in the game, so yes, not every build can handle every nemesis equally. And all those builds that have insane Fab kill times? Those are FABIUS FARM BUILDS. They are often stupidly weak when fighting non-human targets, who are able to resist it’s primary damage types, of which Fabius is one of the few boss enemies who doesn’t resist it heavily. There is a reason Bleed Trickster is called the Fabius farming simulator build, because while it makes Fabius/humans in general a joke, it is quite weak when it isn’t up against targets weak to bleeding (Of which undead and some ch’thonics are immune to it entirely).
Don’t compare your build’s weaknesses to other’s strengths, you will just always feel like you are weak and sub-optimal. My build has it nearly impossible to kill Fabius (its a long, drawn out fight, where I got to play very careful to not get wrecked), but I can kill ultimate log in about 30-40 seconds. Some builds can’t even fight Log (Sorry pet summoner builds), but don’t give a damn about Fabius. Others consider the undead an absolute joke, and can kill Moo in seconds, but Fabius will just melt their face off. Fabius builds may just quit vs Moo, because they just get perma-freeze locked and die while Moo pounds on them and they just barely scratch him.
Builds have strengths, AND weaknesses. No build is perfect, just some minimize the weaknesses or have weaknesses they almost never run into (usually because they just avoid the areas that those weaknesses happen. There is a reason very few people run the Conflagration for loot, despite it’s high hero count, and that is the abundance of Aetherial threats who prey on low aether resistance).
It’s partly also a balance thing. If you did your homework, for example, you’ll know that they unnerfed Manticore and skills like Solael’s Flame and Aether Tendril now have devotion support. There are other changes, I’m sure.
Among other things, it makes sense that a devotion power should have significantly better resist reduction than something you are more or less guaranteed to get even before reaching Ultimate and which you can just slap on to your weapon.
More skill points = 3 extra skill points (assuming you are playing ultimate)
Much stronger augments = buffed the crappy augments no one was using.
Combined with the across the board nerf of RR included in most builds, it is not a power creep in any way.
That said, balancing is on the right track and I get it that is it done in a more global way, just feel some more finetuning and options are needed for builds not so heavy on RR.
All i can say on the matter is that, being my main character an elemental dual wield spellbreaker making good use of shard of beronath, sacred strike, belgothian carnage for the cooldown reduction and various -res, the first thing i tested after installing 1.0.0.4 was my dummy killtime. Even with all the nerf, i killed it in 1 minute 8 second when previously i was at 1 min/ 1min 2 sec… Not a super big difference, even if in the grand scheme of things it amount more or less to a 10%. Maybe a bit more on enemies with high resistances.
Wasn’t super happy with the nerfs but they don’t make the game unplayable imho!