[The Crucible] Perceived shift in difficulty - especially Crowd Control against players

Sorry, it is to me.

When you haven’t even played SR enough to know if he is a threat there or not?

That would be like me saying praets are hilariously bad at what they do without having any idea on how hard you guys work to fix broken stuff before they make their way into live and cause headaches for everyone.

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If we’re talking about the very inception of the thing, it’s hard to argue it didn’t get harder because of the simple fact it got 20 more waves.

If we’re talking about different time reference, it’s a bit more complicated, especially if you add the issue of clear times. Clear times got shorter mainly because of what I call diversity overload. There’s new gear being added all the time. You can now convert pretty much anything to anything. There more ways of stacking and multiplying damage. The very fact that in 1.0.5.0, 2k% dmg was huge while top builds now approach and exceed 3k%. Also, mobility runes, new classes, new devos, etc. Finally, the people who attempt those clear times got more experienced and found better ways to handle all this content (like beacons over banner, spirit dump, etc.).

Finally, the top clear times that are being posted are done on GDS-max-rolled gear with top mutators. I do happen to play legit hardcore as well. With the same builds but legit gear and conservative/safe playstyle, those clear times are even 2-3 min slower. I dare say that in very olden days, clear times were “twice as long” also because no-one seriously attempted to make them as fast as today. If you look at the very old builds posted here even by the legends of GD theorycrafting, well… they are kinda… I don’t wanna say bad but certainly not optimized to today’s standards (even taking into account different balance state at that time).

But elite clear times and difficulty is not the same thing. Crucible itself got harder especially in the last few patches. Blessings and banners got nerfed. Enemies were revamped and have more debuffs and cc effects in their arsenal.

That’s not necessarily true. The spikes mainly coincided with introduction of broken gear. Plus the buffer of the community figuring out how to get max synergy on that gear (like Morgo and Cyclone records were not beaten right off the bat, it took time and effort of a few builders/runners to make it happen).

On the margin, a question: if those spikes were “predictable” why weren’t they prevented but instead dealt with by follow-up nerfs?

I just opened GT Monster Database on Eldrtich heroes. I didn’t even have to get to letter B. Akanax, Arcanis, Arclossus, Arkinux, Askazor, Astranzor - they all got either freeze or stun. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Literally this. Hell Crucible on inception had the Soldier Shield meta, back then very few builds could actually complete Crucible to the end, I pretty much just remember tanky DoT based kiters like Octavius getting thrown around. Anyone remember Drizzto’s famous DEE Witchblade? S&B Bleed Warder was another, as was transmuted BWC Commando. Builds like DEE Witchblade nowadays would get laughed at by top builders because going Soldier + Shield on a caster of all things purely for the defense is no longer mandatory.

Crucible got easier because the community asked for it to be easier so more builds could complete it, and while it did (and the number of Crucible builds flourished), it has also coincided with a lot of powercreep over time - resistances and defenses on gear and devotion have increased drastically, and more options for exotic defenses that used to be extremely rare like flat damage absorption from the new masteries have made it much easier to build characters over the years. Back in early-to mid vanilla around the time Crucible was first introduced, builds got posted that didn’t even have capped resistances, nevermind overcap.

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Yews.

I think Crucible is a bit too easy atm and has spoiled us lightly. It’s no more than a race track where anything that interferes with tip top timers is considered a massive nuisance instead of something to deal with: Mutators, CC, Mob spawn type etc …(i’m excluding AI that needs fixing, that’s another story)

It wasn’t the case before with builders to complain about this stuff and I hope Crucible doesn’t continue towards keeping such “meta” in it’s comfort zone.

i’d love it if things were shaken up a bit but it’s might be a bit late for that. i’m content with not making it too easy

You have 80% freeze res, that isn’t immunity so you will be getting frozen. What do you expect exactly?

The build you used in that video is incredibly glassy, low phys res, mediocre armor, no wendigo totem (not that this will really do much given how glassy this char is). Ill omen will not spread to all monsters again on the second cast due to some hidden mechanic (there is a CD on the spreading feature by bug or design?), so your defences are low for crucible. Gutsy build sees a death, I don’t see how this result is unreasonable. Maybe you can explain?

As I said, the CC-effects have become more severe. Of course I don’t expect to be immune. But for some reason stuns/freezes/traps from mobs have became more brutal despite capped cc-res.

Yeah, it’s a meme build, something I’ve been messing with, I don’t think it’s worth discussing even. Point of the video was to show how I got chain frozen despite capped freeze res. And I died because I looked at third tab and stopped fighting. (but char is indeed pure glass despite actually having decent physical resist (16% + 15% from Grey Magi proc + 7% from ulo) and almost 2500 armor with full armor absorption (rare for a caster). And damage reduction is covered by Morgo proc when Ill Omen is on CD.

It’s anecdotal, but somehow a lot of Crucible runners have felt this. I have also heard it from SR players.

It might be our imagination, of course, but I think it’s at least worth investigating.

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I have not a slightest clue. Game engine is so old and wonky and there are some bugs that have become a part of the game and devs can’t fix them (like physical damage/armor bug) and there are some mechanics that devs can’t explain so it’s possible.

A good example of a bug that occured after introduction of a new mechanic is Primal Strike. DW-version was introduced and Thunderous Strike has been nefed slightly (on paper) but adtch for some reason dropped down significantly. There is also weird Torrent interaction which has some kind of inner cooldown and sometimes doesn’t trigger.

I don’t have anything concrete but I have noticed that everything has seemed to feel more unresponsive, especially movement skills. Far too often I use my movement rune (whether it’s a charge or a blink) and it goes on cooldown and I don’t move anywhere. Maybe that’s just my skewed perspective though :man_shrugging:

Aggro issues are also infuriating but everyone is well aware of that. I don’t really see much point in writing more with all the condescension in this thread.

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I have noticed that too. I have not played since late Aug last year and a couple of weeks ago I hit the game again and clunkyness of movement runes have become more severe from my perspective.

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I play the game constantly for years and I have not noticed anything with the movement runes. But what I have noticed is that in some patches there are more CTD’s than in others and in this one I have them practically every day at least once. 1.1.5.x was extremely stable.

This does happen. Mostly vs large clusters of mobs, or big targets in general And on chars that need it it can be pretty bad. Maybe it has to do with the reduced travel distance from last patch, idk

Maybe it’s a bug, maybe it’s intended.
The same can happen if you press movement skill while holding spamming skill button.
Your movement skill will just stop and interrupted then your char will continue the spamming skill.

This happen with forcewave + blitz and I can see it can happen in other similar situation also.

I notice it too and take it as a part of CC effect mutation. Rushes and blinks get interrupted by enemy skills much more often than before.

If my char isn’t extra tanky, i always fight Aleks under the arc. Because otherwise i know i can die to his meteor and nothing will save me. This patch i died to his meteor after my rush being interrupted far too many times.

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This behavior most often happens when I have a filler ability on my left mouse.

Experts at the game have come and gone before you guys ever came around to stake your claim as the defacto “leaders” of the meta. The narrative is always the same though: the self-proclaimed experts think they know better than the devs and they know better than every player that disagrees with them.

Are you better than the experts that came before you? Maybe, but I doubt the difference is a 50% decrease in clear times. It’s almost as if there are other factors at play.

I don’t consider 100% facetanking the hardest content in the game to be the standard of balance. I’m shocked players that care about skill would think otherwise, but perhaps you think the real skill comes in assembling the item combinations. While there is a talent in that, it should not be enough to completely erase the necessity for skill of play, or at the least not also allow for incredible clear times.

I have no doubt that builds have to make adjustments from patch to patch to achieve similar results to before. An ARPG is a complicated beast with many moving parts and changes reverberate across the entire ecosystem.

It becomes a problem only when it is not possible to clear the content anymore on a build because of our changes, and I am more than willing to admit mistakes whenever that happens and perfectly willing to make changes if constructive feedback is provided.

However, I don’t consider a build going from 5 minute Crucible runs to 6, or even approaching 7 for that matter, to be in need of fixing. It’s you guys that decide such builds are “dead”.

I’ve got “people” telling me to buy our DLC so I can play it.

Telling the dev that designed, tested and balanced the Crucible that they need to play their game so they can understand how it works is the very definition of arrogance.

If you expect anything but a “condescending” tone in the face of that, you’re in the wrong forum.

I could have issued any number of bans over the months/years for repeatedly stirring drama on the forum, insulting people for not playing on the same level and generally inhibiting the health of the build section because some players dare post things they find “fun” instead of effective at the meta you guys cherish.

But I’m the one getting accused of moderation bias. Lol. Think hard about what the real bias is and be mindful of that bias running out of patience.

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No changes to CC behavior. Some vanilla enemies getting a bump a few patches ago to match the threat level of expansion enemies is likely the largest contributor to the opinion going around.

The interaction between armor and physical damage works exactly as it was coded to work, thus it is not a bug. There was simply no point in ripping out an entire system and rewriting it when the game was balanced around this behavior.

I’m not sure what mechanics we can’t explain. Except that vendor in Port Valbury duplicating, there must be a portal to hell at those world coordinates.

With some detailed information provided by a Praetorian recently, we were able to pinpoint the cause of monsters choosing to remain in the spawn areas of the Crucible and have addressed two separate bugs for v1.1.7.0. I have not observed the issue anymore, or I would if I ever played the Crucible I guess.

In most cases, CTDs can be addressed on the user end with driver/software updates, verifying game files, checking Antivirus software. That said, code changes happen virtually every patch, so it’s not out of the question that obscure issues that only affect certain system configurations can be introduced.

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