I’ve been working on finishing Hardcore Ultimate for months. I’m on my third character, who is a level 82 Witchblade sitting in Homestead, ready to make the push to finish the game. To reach this point I had to apply what I learned from two other dead characters, but my perseverance was paying off. I knew which Devotions to use, and how. I knew where in the game to avoid, and what armor and weapon upgrades to use. I was adept at managing large crowds of mobs, making sure I was positioned to survive no matter what. My gear is not great playing self-found, but I was making it work.
In short, I had learned to play the game on hardcore, and trusted and enjoyed my character. I was excited to finally finish Ultimate.
I logged in after the patch and almost died within five minutes. On trash monsters. I came closer to death on this character than I ever had before. I logged out and did not log back in until today, after the two hot-fixes.
I managed to play tonight for an hour without dying. I killed my first Nemesis boss ever, who spawned outside the Amalgamation boss fight. But the game has fundamentally changed for my character. My health yo-yos like crazy and I don’t know why. I have to play the game like a bullet-hell shooter now. Suddenly all my maxed out resists seem to mean nothing. I suspect what’s tearing me up is physical damage, but I scoured the blacksmith and can’t find a way to get enough resists to mitigate the crazy amounts of damage I’m taking. And why is it a problem now, and was not before the patch?
To be this far into a character, and have this much invested in trying to achieve my goal, only to have the rug yanked out from underneath me for reasons, and in ways, that I cannot understand and are not communicated to me in the game, is too much. As sad as it makes me to say it, I don’t think I can bring myself to log back into the game. The fear of dying now, from threats I cannot predict and prevent, is too great.
And as a player, that feels like the game has betrayed me.
There was an issue with enemy OA in Ultimate in v1.0.0.7, which was corrected:
However, enemies have higher Offensive Ability in Ultimate now, so if you cannot play safely, please tune your build accordingly.
Sorry, if you feel betrayed, but it was meant to bring the game into balance. Please share more details about your char, if you feel this goal was not achieved.
or stop thinking hardcore is the only way to play the game?!
I don’t understand the appeal of having only 1 death on a char in an ARPG at all and never have. If it pisses you off so much you feel betrayed stop playing the dumbest mode ever invented in video games…
Honestly I find the decision bizarre seeing the dps/mage characters dumping all points into physique, except for enough cun/spi to wear items, and crucible favoring physique characters. Like, monsters doesn’t need any more damage. There has to be stuff to make mages more viable instead.
What’s your DA and armors? My Warder barely notices trash while my Trickster has mostly the same experience as your Witchblade. The difference is exactly that.
DA isn’t easy to stack for some builds. So the OA increase still feels unnecessary to me. Though in most of my builds trash dies before it can do anything significant it still stays at the back of my head. Especially in challenge dungeons. I always do tread carefully when in SoT and BoC and more so in Valbury.
The DA and OA nodes lie on opposite ends, and some builds really have a hard time stacking DA.
And not everyone has Veil of Shadows and Gaze of Beronath to increase effective DA.
On my casters and DA deficit builds i usually have either all or most points into physique and yet i can’t sometimes hit the 2k margin. Sometimes i compensate resistances to get Devil’s Crossing DA augments for rings.
I don’t know why Mages are so despised in this game, not every build can use Iskandra’s Vestments and get that 20% Physical Resistance. And not everyone wants to play soldier 24/7
Btw, the Hotfix did reduce nemesis OA to pre-patch right?
No, all mobs including Nemesis got +5% OA - fine way to “tune” the game 1 year after release…Love the game, love the devs but their decissions when it comes to “balance” are on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Now there is like 1!! build which can semi-okish farm Gladiator Crucible (but i am sure that is not OK and the next patch will kill for good the Witchblade build as this one didnt nerf it hard enough)…
I totally get that you can become so invested in a hc toon that you’d rather not play it in fear of death but the thing which ultimately separates hc players from the rest is precisely that you dare to risk it all, no matter how much time or effort invested. The fact is no hc toon will live forever anyway, just try to adapt to the patch to the best of your ability and enjoy the ride while it lasts.
I’m currently having a blast in hc ultimate after a long break from the game, cleared Valbury up until the councilmen with my tankiest toon (Reflect/Counterstrike Witchblade) only to get outhealed by the bosses in the end. Back to the drawing board of adding more dps without losing too much defense - the ever so relevant dilemma in hc …
I could understand the change if this was primarily a multiplayer ARPG, but it’s not. So I’m baffled at a sweeping change that impacts a single player experience.
I don’t have time to post the details of my character right now, but as a hardcore player I prioritize health, resists, and armor, so to be falling short on defense is frustrating. And to be honest, I’m too upset about this right now to be very rational or forgiving. I know my playstyle is in the minority, and Crate can afford to suffer my loss as a casualty of ‘balance’ changes, so I’ll probably just go find something else to play.
I have no problem playing HC after the change. My frustration is that the game changed fundamentally on my current character, so I cannot trust what I have learned thus far. Were I to start over, and re-learn what I’ve learned thus far on my current failed HC characters, I’m certain I could adapt and overcome.
I just don’t have the time or motivation, because now I don’t trust the game to stay in a steady-state long enough for me to be able to finish HC Ultimate on a character.
I have to agree that there is relatively big change when I compare difficulty 1.0.0.6 and 1.0.0.7 HF2. In previous version all of my chars were pretty confident but now it is pretty big change towards painful experience including Log fight. My biggest issue is that mobs sustain much more. On ultimate difficulty. Fights are taking too much time for less powerfull builds. Current settings narrowing down builds diverzity. It is just my opinion.
I am only aware of their OA changing, which would not really account for that (taking longer to kill). Does anyone know what else changed wrt mobs ? The release notes do not really mention anything either
My clear speed did drop significantly, but I chalked it up to the cumulative effect of all the nerfs and tweaks to class skills and devotions in the patch.
The devs will continue to buff and nerf as the see fit, this may benefit a build but most likely it wont. If this trend is to continue then I’d like to see the abilty to respect mastery bars and attributes. At least this would mitigate the changes to your build.
At present we’re getting “we’ve done this for balance, tough, deal with it!”
BTW … the rosy hue in the Blood Grove is erm … (just my opinion)
The clear speed seems fine to me. And i’m saying this while playing a demo-hybrid (Demos got the ES mechanism change that made their DPS display to not account for damage done by ES)
