You have to understand that not every single build will be able to complete CR 150-170 because the game would be boring if every single build was able to do so. Also your statement about callagadra is wrong not every build can kill it.
with enough patience i bet every build could kill her 
(since she lets you kite)
*snip fire archon/fire BAmando argument *snip
not sure if it’s my place to butt in in this debate, but as i read it, and sorry if i’m being presumptuous in all this (or out of line); it doesn’t seem like Grey has unreasonable expectations of a build, but highlighting a (potential) flaw
-something like SR favouring/allowing you to build defensive and tanky and do stuff 1v1 + tanking your time as your please, doesn’t exactly address, fix or counter that issue
if a build, that by any other means “should” work, is suffering, from “just” 1 factor, ex low dmg/dmg archetypes, that in any other fashion would easily clear the same, (assuming here the/grey’s example is “any other BA dmg type build or fire build”), it might be worthy of consideration and at least not just outright dismissal “just because SR/Cruci difference build performance”
^PoV also being mostly when i read grey’s builds/complaints they don’t strike me as outright absurd/greedy and asking for balance changes just for BiS run/personal build’s sake
Unless you suck at endgame like me. 
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just run around in circles poking her for like 3-10 hours or something, “patience” 
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This is what makes me reject calling builds like this “Calla killers” and grey’s statement on the subject as well. No one wants to spend 10+ minutes running around kiting Callagadra with the chance of making a misstep or mistake, getting OHKO’ed from her sand or something else and having to start over. Anyone that opens up a build touted as a Calla killer expects to it do it relatively safely.
Can every build kill Calla? Technically yes. Should the majority of them be called Calla killers? No, not in my opinion.
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no disagreeing with that, also why i wouldn’t put any weight if a build was posted just saying it could kill calla, without a timeframe. Tho i don’t think (most?) builders would do that anyway/be deliberately that misleading leaving out mentioning it took 20+mins or something
but still serves to “devalue” the yard stick a little of countering with using Calla as measuring stick just because “technically hardest boss”, which that part i agree with grey
I built pierce Rimetongue. It was almost fine, but lifeleech is knd a low and pierce modifiers to Blade Trap is far worse than cold
Also I would like to suggest to swap the conversions on the offhand:
- Make global vitality conversion instead of chaos. Pierce builds are obliged to go for Scales to have flat rr, making some sacrifices. So such move should be more beneficial for casters as soon as they have to invest into spirit for the offhand losing points in cunning.
- Change PB mod to chaos conversion instead of vitality
Well, I’m personally ok with it being casted on casters. Plus it survived the patch that made Blade spirits perma-pets, so I think devs don’t intend Devils to be the same. It’s specifically on EOR that they become incredibly annoying to me.
While on the discussion about Blade Trap, I really wished devs would take a look at mutations. And I have 1 question, like really… is it INTENDED to “fish” for the right mutations when starting crucible or SR? Because those CC mutations make a huge difference to how well these skills perform. Hell you don’t even need Rimetongue or Mageslayer - I’ve seen purple bosses get petrified from Korvaak’s devotion proc. It’s a pretty big difference. I’ll probably get hated for saying it but I would prefer if they removed both enemy CC mutations so I don’t have to deal with such RNG.
Make flat resistance reduction stackable 
Yikes /10chars
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50 RR to arcanist / madlee
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I’d still suggest weakening negative mutators a bit, especially the ones that boost/shred mobs’ CC resists.
It’s not like just deal less damage, it means that your main CC skill (blade trap/olexra EVEN with hourglass and mageslayer) is almost useless.
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I would have to agree with this. I don’t think full removal is a good solution, but modifying the values would help. In it’s current state, depending on which one you hit, your build can feel entirely useless (+ monster cc resist) or completely broken (minus monster cc resist).
The bonus on goredrinker negating bleeding damage made me think about the following; would it be possible to add +max to certain forms of CC to a couple sets or some of the less common devotions? Ex +max petrify or stun resist to vire or +max freeze resist to leviathan
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^exclude Fabby from crit/oa and player “marked” in fabby session mutators now, and grava (+Slathsarr) from timewarped ? 
even on casual shards/SR those aren’t really fun… not gonna bother imagine on 80-85+
Why isn’t Reaping Arc a 500% WD 10 meter AoE nuke yet?
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Came back to check out some new-ish melee stuff, notably the set for fire Sabo and the green fire two-handed sword (with commando). Made the builds more tanky than i usually did to account for my absence and rustiness.
Both builds performed well, new items are pretty good. I could facetank any 4 Nems in Crucible. Except for Grava. I even died to him solo. In that regard nothing has changed: solo Grava vs fire/lightning melee >> 4 Nemesis.
If you guys plan any balance changes regarding the enemies, i’d look at this boss first of all. Not just at raw numbers, but rather actual gameplay of fire/lightning/ele melee builds vs him. I specialized in melee and Crucible, but i played my fair share of casters and SR. Nothing in this game is as extraordinally imbalanced as Grava, to the point where it kills any motivation to play endgame (did it with me last time, did it again).
I remember Z repeatedly said Grava’s fumble pools’ effect is halved in Crucible. But the windows of not dealing dmg to him (and not leeching anything) are very long. I’m not in the position to speculate on what is happening in the fights against him, i’m just reporting my experience. This boss is solely responsible for cutting more than half of otherwise perfectly capable melee builds off of Crucible.
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Banana_Peel : Grava is too strong and limits the gameplay of melee builds especially in end-game.
Z : Hmm, you’re right; I’m going to add a high DoT/debuff to reaper only acticates when you move so now there is a nemesis to destroy kiters aswell.
Perfectly Balanced.
Besides from joke. I can only ask if pools/fumbles had to stay as they are for concept; diminish the Fire and Lightning resistances of the Grava so atleast those melee builds can kill it with more ease.
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I bought this up a while ago but since its still a playstyle which I am interested in trying, I will bring this up again. Currently skills like Ring of Flame, Ring of Everlasting Flame, Rimfire and Kilrian’s Flame are only really of use when facetanking enemies due to their very small radius of 4m or less which does not increase on higher gear verisons.
I never really had a big benefit of those procs (damage wise) to be honest. Lately I am also experimenting on aura builds a bit and it would be so great to use those skills also on casters which don’t are built to completely facetank enemies and use it also when kiting enemies around a bit. Therefore I propose the idea of having an increased radius at least for higher gear level versions.
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I was tinkering around with Venomlance rifle and came up with… a Paladin? It’s such a meme concept really, cuz why would you go acid Paladin if you can go fire, aether, pierce, physical and with Goredrinker - bleed? The answer is: because Venomlance is a rifle that is intriguing, but doesn’t have much to offer when you actually try to build around it. But 1.1.9.0 changes to it and Gulgazor’s Heart were a push in the right direction.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jQdlEN
This is what I came up with. Affixes are the best I happen to have in my possession.
I have no idea how viable it is in-game, because I can’t waste a week or more for leveling and gearing just to feel dissapointed. On paper though, I can see multiple problems with this concept:
- Lack of skillpoints. +2 to OK and +1 to Inquisitor is not enough, sadly. I barely managed to cover the basics. If by some chance this rifle received +2 to Inquisitor instead of +4 to Ravenous Earth (no one will play acid RE with a rifle - no one!), it may have a chance at being something.
- Righteous Fervor transmuter converts fire to vitality - this means all fire from Smite and Bursting Round are wasted. You can’t ignore this transmuter either, because we can only have ~75% physical to acid, and we lose +% acid/poison from charges (just checked this, it only adds % physical and fire even with transmuter). Is it possible to change this conversion to acid? Or at least remove it completely? RF on its own has only burn damage and it is already half converted by Path of the Three. Gulgazor’s Heart now gives 100% fire to acid, which are useless with this transmuter in effect. For vitality RF it’s even more harmful. So basically the only purpose of this conversion is to botch retal builds I guess?
- Rather low health. This can be somewhat fixed with affixes and more points in Vigor and Haven (which we don’t have). But even that will raise it to ~13k. Raising Health on the rifle to ~700 would be decent. Maybe add some health to Widow’s Sting as well?
- Physical resistance is only 10-12%. Armor isn’t that high too. Bloodied Crystals can help with that, but stun res will be bad (and less health).
- This you cannot combat, but still: RR is rather low - only 78%. Maybe Manticore’s RR can be buffed a bit? Even to 30, that would still be an improvement.
Surprisingly, resists are fine, attack speed can be capped with lucky rolls, sufficient crit damage, rank 24 RF and 22 Consecration. That’s quite an achievement to be honest.
@eardianm, seeing you as a ranged weapons expert, what’s your opinion on the matter?