[Suggestion] Buff Upheaval skill or turn it into a WPS

[Zantai]

because i wanted that message to be absurb. It’s as absurd as the one from you about powercreep.

i’ve never said about devs killing build diversity. It’s just about not buffing things that needs help, 'cause if sucр lucklasters hadnt’t been, well, bad, then the build variety would be higher. In this case, building around Upheavel makes about zero sense, granted that gameplay doesn’t change at all and the results are worse. There’s nothing unique in this skill, apart of gimmick proc chances.

In a world where literally every single update we’ve ever released has had a vastly higher number of buffs than nerfs, suggesting we are not buffing things that need help is just…

thanks for subverting all the things that i’ve written it that thread.
But i’m still failing to understand, why making rotgheist DEE (for instance) not a piece of shit is considered a power creep? Because we should preserve this unique garbage for the sake of variety?

I mean, that literally goes back to my earlier point, if a few individuals in the community weren’t pushing for changes based on their own meter stick that nobody else is using, would the things that are “shit” even be an issue?

Or what? Following this logic, there shouldn’t had been any buffs at all, because every buff kills variety. Which is just plain stupid.

And the second part of my question: why nerfing overperforming stuff is justified then? because nerf and buffs are apparently the same thing when it comes to “variety”.

Talk about subverting what I said.

A rather black and white way to describe it, don’t you think? Buffs and nerfs are both tools to be used judiciously in the pursuit of better balance.

And here is where we’re gonna need clarification, you know, so everybody’s on the same page. So by pursuing balance, we are apparently interested in homogeneity. But at the same time, if there are things in that game that are underpowered and they are not immediately addressed, we are doing a shit job.

But wait! We also shouldn’t nerf things that are overperforming because they are unique. Meanwhile what I said about the elite players pushing for power creep is apparently absurd and subverting what you said.

Taking something “”“uniquely”"" good and turning it into mediocre. Isn’t it a decrease in variety and homogeneity? I’ve just followed what seems to be your logic.

But do tell, what have we taken that’s unique (which apparently is the equivalent of overpowered in your book), and made it mediocre. Mediocre again being by some metric by which the rest of the world doesn’t function and was never intended to.

Frankly, caving to that mentality was another mistake on our part as endgame geared builds now steamroll the campaign content so hard that it lost all value as a challenging place to farm loot and being a “Cronley farmer” is used as an insult.

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probably I missed the part when unique started also meaning good or reliable . Upheaval is unique, yes. Is it good or reliable? No. It’s just a skill with a weird activation and weak support like just some extra WD.
Stun Jacks are also unique, e.g. Are they good? In terms of damage - yes, in all other terms they’re absolute crap as they’re a spam skill w/o any leech mods.
And there are some more examples of such situations.

You’re right, we should pursue further uniqueness by just giving everything all the same strengths and no downsides.

cause negative mutators are just 2,5 times stronger than positive? Is this designed to be so? And after RR system rebalancing, a plenty of builds resulted in a weak spot after losing a massive amount of RR…

Massive amounts of RR…all 5 of it. In before Thermite Mines, which were frequently featured in overperforming builds and historically had higher RR because of how difficult they were to use. Emphasis on were.

And getting sth like +25% CC resists on mobs while playing with Olexra means your build turns into a complete pumpkin and loses its main strength.

Yes, I am keenly aware of that specific instance.

Unfortunately we can’t disable a mutator based on a build you are playing and changing Olexra’s functionality would require significant tech changes and rebalancing, which would also throw its identity right out the window, but that is an entirely separate discussion on how we’ve unfortunately allowed damage to get so out of control that killing trash mobs is an afterthought and anything that doesn’t reliably destroy bosses is automatically trash for cutting edge endgame.

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Kinda sweeps crucible aggro fix under the rug a bit here.

A fix that happened only a few months ago and resulted in maybe 30-60 seconds off of top clear times. A bit dramatic to suggest that it resulted in a 60% difference in Crucible times over 3 years considering it happened very recently.

At least as I perceive it, one of the issues that players have (and what I think is an undercurrent here) is a grievance with an apparent insistence on homogeneity of clear times (arguably independent of how glassy or player skill-intensive builds are). I realize there’s an apparent contradiction here, given that players generally ask for buffs to “underperforming” builds/skills often using the same clear time measuring stick, and maybe the crux of the issue is that some players would rather you tackle clear time balance by lifting up the lagging builds/skills rather than pushing down the frontrunners. (And of course such an approach necessarily leads to “power creep” in the sense that (a) average build performance obviously goes up, and (b) buffing via itemization in particular in a game where multiple builds share items is going to set you up for collateral buffs.)

Players will always find grievance with nerfs because it is easy to take such things personally. Some angry people in the community even went as far as suggesting that patches personally targeted their builds. Because that’s what we do, just sit in the builds section looking for things to snipe with changes, along with usernames to expedite the process!

A perfect balance would by definition be homogenous, because any variety means there is a range of results. That is, and never was, our goal.

There is a vast range of build factors that go under consideration and I feel like a broken record going over it when we have this same discussion on the forum every few months.

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I get what you’re saying here, but the way the skill works leads to unfavorable and counterintuitive results. It’s technically a WPS skill*, so you want to take it alongside other ones to really amp up your basic attacks…except you actually don’t, because it conflicts with your other WPS skills in ways that aren’t obvious at all and need 3rd party testing and reference materials to even be aware that it exists.

I also want to reiterate that my point was less about the power of the skill (although that is a concern) but more about internal consistency. The Avenger set that I mentioned is literally explicitly built around stacking WPS skills with Upheaval, it doesn’t make sense for anyone to have to choose between its given bonuses to optimize some bizarre technicalities.

*I’m granting this point for the sake of discussion. Upheaval works separately from and in conflict with every other WPS in the game; putting it in the same category is misleading at the very least.

I’m not sure what is misleading about it. The skill states that crits on basic attacks trigger Upheaval. It would then be ascertained that a WPS proc is not a basic attack as those trigger off of basic attacks.

Is this an advanced mechanic? Yes. Does it require building differently than stacking a 100% WPS pool? Yes. Is that a bad thing? For some, no doubt, otherwise there would not be a thread suggesting a redesign.

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Nobody’s denying that there are builds and items in the game that don’t perform as well as other options for cutting edge endgame. Although I would say there are some individuals that will happily cover their ears when something is on the other end of that spectrum.

In a perfect world, everything would be performing within a certain reasonable range based on player skill, gear support and stats. I’m not sure anybody’s ever gonna get there in a lifetime given the complex web that is balancing an ARPG.

But given how increasingly nitpicky complaints about balance have become, I would say we’re not far off from “good enough”.