I was actually thinking of that before I saw this thread. But imo it should be a set especially if we’re going fire. With the current itemization, fire retal will always be the worse choice because it lacks support. So 1 set (I think crate learned a lot from sentinel set so it shouldn’t be OP) then make it support vindictive flame and something like cd forcewave or anything not named counter strike, cause csgo is already very good even without additional support.
4 Likes
If adding new items is out the question and we gotta make do with what we have now like Zantai says, what about adding Retaliation bonuses to Justice? Hear me out for a minute.
It already has a large chunk of Fire Retal on the set proc and supports Judgment (which deals RATA through HoW), Blitz and Forcewave. It probably just needs flat and % Fire Retaliation damage on each gear piece and the 3-piece set bonus and 1 or 2 skill modifiers to give RATA to Blitz or Forcewave somewhere that isn’t overcrowded in modifiers already (so the Faceguard or 4-piece set bonuses).
3 Likes
“The Pummer” could then be changed to support Fire retal, as it blends well with commando FW anyway. Either change it to fire damage + fire conversion or just add fire and burn damage. The rest supports FW and BS
1 Like
some more.
War Cry transmuter is probably the most useless thing now. No one takes it as it’s just no reason as you can pick up flat RR in the devos; also, the value of this RR is absurdly low.
I dunno what to do with it. Remove it completely or, maybe, add armor reduction to it. Anything would be better than now.
Hellhound. One of the worst pets now, if not the worst. Not tanky, not super-damaging, it’s always a 1-pointer for pet and 1-pointer for its aura. Increase its damage, animation speed, add support (again, maybe a new set dedicated specially to Hellhounds - not to mention Lost Souls where they’re still supporting and the whole set is crap now).
EDIT: Overguard’s transmuter is absolutely useless now too. Remove the penalty for retal, or non-retal, do sth. But ofc retal would be better as with transmuter it gets damage shredded twice.
5 Likes
So I’ve been working on an elemental AA battlemage off-and-on for a few months. I originally wanted to do a Discord Cadence focused build but after finishing leveling and gearing up I realized that the damage just feels…weak.
I guess this might actually just be a Discord (and other cadence-based conversions) bash post instead of specifically battlemage but I think it contributes somewhat
My overthinking for anyone interested
So cadence is a decent AA replacer if you’re doing physical, pierce, and possibly bleeding. Basically it’s intended purpose, no problem there, makes sense. Now if I want to use the skill mutator or one of the rarer uniqes/MIs that have a 100% converison, sure the actual cadence hit will work fine and do a huge chunk of the intended damage type, but what about the other two hits? Well unless you have some other source of static conversion they’re just going to be doing regular physical damage, and if you’re tooled up to boost your intended damage type you’re not likely to have much for boosting physical damage.
This gets worse when looking at other things that a normal AA build wants to have. Just in soldier the two WPS skills can be used to boost DPS between cadence hits are going to be receiving no bonus damage from your preferred damage type and just be adding a bit extra %weapon damage to hits.
The worst offender, in my possibly skewed opinion, is Deadly Momentum. What is normally one of the best buffs for a Cadence build is made nearly useless when using conversion. The extra physical and internal trauma damage will be converted during the Cadence hit, but the juicy % damage bonuses are thrown out the window since it’s a buff while active and not a skill modifier like Fighting Form, so the conversion will happen before it can take effect (I think, I gotta admit I’m not completely sure about this, just going off of my own testing and what I have gotten from the rest of the community).
Alright so TLDR what the heck is Discord for? If I want to use Cadence with one of its many conversions I always feel like I’m sacrificing a lot of the bonuses that are put right in front of me just to make it work. I guess the only suggestion I can offer is to allow Cadence conversion effects to work on both of the buildup hits, just like how a constellation effect bound to Cadence will work. I’m worried suggesting that since I think there are some Cadence conversion builds that already do make it work pretty well (Valdun set in particular is already strong for Purifier, who knows what it could do to Tactician with this kind of change), but I think Discord in particular just needs some kind of re-examination of how it should work.
It’s for appealing to people that think they want to use it and that bitched when Discord was changed into something actually usable, thus getting that change reverted.
Saboteur sucks.
The mastery combo is plagued by a number of issues:
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Most obviously, little damage overlap
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Not-so-obviously, terrible OA/DA (though DA on Temper alleviated this somewhat)
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Terrible core stat gain (Physique/Cunning/Spirit) As a combo, Saboteurs tend to lack the Physique to equip heavy chestpieces or legplates, and struggle to acquire the Cunning or the Spirit to equip Swords or Daggers respectively, sometimes even needing help to manage Jewelry.
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Terrible energy potential. This mostly matters for caster-archetype Saboteurs, which can solve some of the above issues (one can pump Spirit/Physique and opt for Scepters, and try playing at range with Phantasmal Blades or BWC to take fewer hits and circumvent the DA conundrum) but is a very noticeable issue. For non-casters, between Flame Touched/Temper/Vindictive Flame and the occasional Shadow Strike for mobility, it’s not impossible for melee-based Saboteurs to run into energy issues as well.
However there are some generalized solutions to these issues that can be implemented without shaking things up too much.
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Some additional Chaos -> Cold conversion that doesn’t conflict with Weapon Slot (Chillheart/Chillflame Evoker) or Belt Slot (Chains of Nightfire). Between the aforementioned items and a few armor pieces, it’s reasonably possible to set up a damage-type synergy between the two masteries as Fire -> Cold comes in large quantities on those items and Lightning -> Cold is present on some other pieces here and there, such as on Morgoneth’s Chestplate. Because Thermite Mines reduces Elemental Res these days, Cold is a viable possibility for Demolitionist, it just needs a good means of actually building up in the mastery.
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Fixing OA/DA issues is a little tougher without unbalancing other masteries. OA is less of a concern because of the DA reduction inherent to Flash Bang. The only OA reduction available to the combo, however, is on BWC and Veil of Shadows, and the former is both clunky to manage (sometimes you won’t always hit the enemies you want to/keep it up as long as you need to) and expensive for non-casters to maintain uptime on at significant values. I’d suggest some skillmods to VoS to improve its OA reduction for items that inherently satisfy the above conversion requirement or that address the below core stat requirement…
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Items like (Really) Pretty Great Pants or Legwraps of the Tranquil Mind or Arcane Harmony Leggings are amazing for Saboteurs…which kind of sucks because they aren’t really all that incredible outside of the Spirit/OA/DA gain. Tranquil Mind gives +3 Flashbang, but that’s about it. Some stat-heavy items with bonuses to, for instance, Fire Strike or Canister Bomb or Lethal Assault or Execution would go a long way for some varying Saboteur archetypes. Alternatively, reducing stat requirements on Swords/Daggers/Scepters/Jewelry (again, again…again) would help Saboteurs as well and likely wouldn’t upset the established balance for every other mastery combo that doesn’t have stat issues (which is all of them).
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And, simply enough, Energy Regen bonuses (or Spirit bonuses) would go a long way toward easing Saboteur’s actual playability if and when it found itemization that enabled all of the above to be remedied. Energy Cost Reduction isn’t really a huge concern as - to my knowledge - it doesn’t affect Energy drain on buffs like FT/VF, though it wouldn’t be unnoticed on Shadow Strike-heavy playstyles.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
11 Likes
I can’t fathom how much work would or could go into this…it seems an impossible task but this is what makes Crate so great.
Before you begin to balance the mastery combinations, I think a thing that needs to be remembered is what is the measuring stick that mastery combinations are being judged by. This is more specifically asked of @Zantai
As a group that builds entirely off meta, we don’t expect to be rocking SR 75 or sub 6 CR. After all we have mastery combinations using sets that are not meant to fit that combination still doing amazing things.
The issues we tend to have are skills that have too many stipulations to be useful. Flash freeze is a prime example. We wish that skill would affecting everything, but bosses it would do something like reduce attack speed or damage dealt reduction or something without having some sort of gimmick set to work.
But to be on topic, generally the issue we run into is poor stats from certain mastery combinations in terms of OA, DA, and health. Poor energy regen and the force taking of regen devotions. RR can be an issue, however we feel this can be filled by creative item choices providing they exist.
Enough examples were given above without me having to write them all over again.
Lastly, don’t knock commando, it’s way better then people think 
Indeed, It’s A/S-tier in my personal list for more than a few reasons.
Ulzuin nerfs weren’t too kind though.
It’s A/SS tier even. 
It’s tanky class but don’t have really good dedicated builds. It’s no longer viable option as Auto attacker, melee or ranged. FW needs more love!
3 Likes
Probably the transmuter nerf can be lowered a little bit again but even now fw commando is pretty good, as I’ve tested it a lot.
1 Like
Warder does not have in both schools -% RR to physics
1 Like
+1 to that. Terrify transmuter is useless, to keep it’s thematic purposes; it can me fumble/aim debuff, OA reduction or even %25+ Elemental Resist reduction(like viper but more) so Discord Cadence which mostly lacks RR can be make use of it.
No one talks about our little Saboteur!(As I am still writing someone made a meme about it! lol) @Ceno
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/aZq9qP5Z This is my saboteur build, I never played caster Saboteur so my point will be mostly on melee ones.
The Nex & Ortus blades are really really good weapon set, maybe one of the best. But the class has no gear support. Even with SR set it’s hard to balance some stats like resistances, OA,DA etc.
And in SR(since I am not able do crucible) the build’s performance is not that great. Yeah you can do 75ish, but it’s not easy when you think about all the defensive stats given by SR set(which lacks support your damage type specially obviously), without it that build can’t do even that. Kuba in a small boss room mostly your death sentence, even with 1v1 againts him, it take long time to kill after 75.
Now let’s change things a bit; this is the same character with Deathmark Set. https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YNnOJOy2 Well, it performs a lot better, since the set purely supports nightblade and it’s weapon pool skills. It’s more like a glasscannon as it expected even I tried to make a more balanced one.
Now I gaved these information about my build for a reason, let’s get to that you should be bored of reading. The build is limited with only one damage type, and it’s cold. As we need some gear support except SR set for Cold damage Saboteurs, we also need it play as Fire even if it means some lower performances but atleast, we should able to that. So my suggestions are;
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We need a Fire resist reduction modifier for Veil of Shadow/Night’s Chill. Since a conduit with this mod would be some improvement for also Cold Saboteurs(maybe not), atleast we may have it on a fire amulet with some cold>fire conversion. But there is no possible amulet that we can add such a mod, so a new one might be needed. OR since we have already this belt and this gloves adding this modifier to one of these shouldn’t be a problem and a few more items that support pierce/fire Saboteur would be really nice and enjoyable.
PS: I’m aware that there is a set which gives -% elemental RR to veil of shadow but they are kinda low and useless for melee builds. -
We need GEAR. There is only two belts and two gloves for it except the Rings and N&O blades for Cold&fire Saboteurs. Yeah there are some pants that every build can use of it as @Ceno referred but are they enough? No.
Now the parts with N&O blades which I think needs to change;
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Piercing>Fire to Shadow Strike modifier on Ortus does nothing actually. It should be Vitality>Fire to utilize Shadow Strike more efficiently.
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Why the Shadow Bolt on Nex proc does Vitality damage? Yeah I get it, because it’s shadow…
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With the devotions setup, it’s not hard to get Elemental storm and bind it to the Blade Spirit and use it’s 32 flat elemental RR. Or even Acid Spray since we have %100 acid conversion. Constellations also gives good stats that the build might need. Why don’t we do that? Because there is already 26 flat elemental RR on N&O blades set bonus proc. Highering that RR could give some little damage boost to the builds, even for the build that uses those swords without nightblade class combo. You can make it 30, shouldn’t be a balance issue, so they become more equal to the devotions that gives flat RR.
Part 2. It is becoming an article now so thanks for your patience;
Every build that uses this set, lacks Physical Resistance. I’m not sure that is the problem of the set because it mainly a problem for Fire support Constellations. But since the most used gear for fire build is Justicar set, providing some more physical resistance to it might be the only option that won’t create a balance issue for other constellations. Balancing OA is also another problem with the set but since you can use other gears and devotions to make it efficient but physical resistance is a must imo.
Thanks all the devs for the dedication to keep updating the game
can give vines -% physical RR?
1 Like
Nope. Not possible.
Only viable candidate for -% RR in Warder is Devouring Swarm. Of which there are already a few -% Phys Resist skillmods to DS.
Just searched through old patch notes and couldn’t find anything on this, though I easily could have missed it. Unless you’re talking about the time when it was 100% to lightning instead of elemental but I think it would still have the same problems it does now. I’ve only been playing this game seriously for about a year so I’m actually just curious what you think the better solution was?
It was this.
This got moved to some specific items (e.g., Stormheart/Exonerator) but was a much better option than a tri-elemental split Transmuter.
the swarm must spread like a curse. and make a swarm -% rr to physics too
3 Likes
or add on the wind devil -% physical rr
3 Likes
QoL requests:
- Speed up BWC animation for god sake;
- Speed up TSS animation;
- Increase duration of Savagery and Righteous Fervor charges on the character after the hit.
Balance requests:
- Spam Calidor Tempest is too weak compare to other spam skills like Primal Strike or even Forcewave;
- Rework a bit the 3rd nod of TSS. It’s one of the most difficult skills to play in terms of convenience. The randomness in form of x% to do x damage makes it worse.
9 Likes
This, would be the first thing that comes to mind on class combos. Good mentions
3 Likes