V1.1.9.2 Discussion

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Pierce->Lightning used to be on Canister Bomb’s transmuter but it got pulled out at some point, probably because of builds that used it performing stronger than the developers wanted so it was restricted to fewer builds, hence Barrelsmiths. It’s seen more nerfs in general since then as well.

Shouldn’t a perfect affixes MI be equivalent to or better than a Legendary :stuck_out_tongue:. How easy is it to find both affixes legitimately versus finding a M. Zolhan’s Revenge? Similarly, i wouldn’t say that perfect affix MIs are a bar that Legendaries (non-set ones at that) should be aiming to hit in terms of stats offered.

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Working on fire RF pistols at the moment as Pally, having @romanN1 seeing if this completes crucible. I’ll delete myself if this is somehow 5 mins or less

Full stronghold set feels awful for RF, definitely go fire strike for that. Have tried 2x dagallon, dag with deviltongue, and now settled on dag + 2 piece stronghold that appears the “fastest”, although it’s struggling for damage. SR75 is doable although occasional deaths (I’m realizing this is a bit of a trend with pistols in general, I feel like I have to sell out full damage to keep up with other playstyle kill times but alas). 3 piece Justice set feels mandatory to scrap together any fire flat, meaning you either take gloves for RF mods, or helm for smite damage (or Gaze of Empyrean for aura and +1 all I spose), or I guess a defensive chest piece ala Fateweaver because you can’t really find big fire flat on chest with useful + skills. Getting cold or lightning conversion is troublesome so just focusing on fire WPS with some passthrough. Fwiw firestrike side has interesting options with either justice flat fire or chaos/lightning conversion individual gear, but RF just needs to try to convert all physical.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/M2gPx4yV

Yeah there is fire strike sitting right over there wanting to be used with fire but my crusade for additional ranged options, especially with pistols, continues. This feels lackluster for a “standard” skill damage type, and the pistol options can’t carry it. Deviltongue proc is nice for survival but I don’t really feel the burn dot/damage. The rest of the fire bonused pistols carry chaos damage, so it was down to a second dagallon or 2 piece stronghold. Fire gear options seem too big to try to adjust at this point, so I spose my hope would be something to beef up fire RF on deviltongue

Dreeg DEE https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lV7O3y5V

I think spam DEE energy cost is a bit too high, maxed all node will result in 118 energy per cast, and I quickly losing energy during a fight in SR or campaign bossroom where there is only 1 or 2 enemy. Only with Viper and Arcane Spark currently it help with energy regen despite I already have 150+ energy regen. Perhaps reducing the energy on the first node by 5-10 and the rest by 5 will be a good QoL for the base skill.

Additionally, I think the Dreeg set should have +1000 Energy, spread within its item and set bonus. On the build I post above it only have 2k usable energy due to Sentinel small energy pool and big reserve skill.

I tested Kalis’Ka’s Harvest again with Warlord, physical/bleed this time and I presume this is what it’s made for.

Bloodrager Kalis’Ka’s Pitlord

Tried to have some physical damage aswell so I can leech, used Serenity to have another circuit breaker and reflected damage reduction(instead Oleron’s Wrath); made it more balanced. Stats looks great right? Lifesteal is still bad, you can only trust your circuit breakers and hit&run. No possible way you facetank and regain your life by hitting. Good part is you have high physical resistance.

I don’t know what it can be done, just wanted to give some feedback. It’s not my playstyle so I didn’t push it’s limits to see what it can do or can’t.

However I wanted to compare it with Targo Warlord(plus they said me toy with Judgment and VM); then made this,

Grey Knight Warlord

Same problem. This build have more physical damage support but have less lifesteal. If I didn’t use Azrakaa it would have lack a lot of stats including health. Physical resist is very low for a shield build. It’s very good on farming mats etc(2 sec Judgment and VM) but not suitable for end-game; hardly kills Morgoneth.

So just my 2 cents about One-handed Blade Arc with two different examples. Both have more DoT damage than flat, so both can’t lifesteal at all, which makes it less desirable to spam one-hand BA. I did manage to survive with Vitality Warder version because that build had huge Counterstrike support, Rattosh devotion and Scales; these trauma and bleed ones have no such sustain sources to rely on.

Again I’m not sure what can be done to fix this issue but I’ll leave it here so maybe you can figure it out.

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1h BA works fine with conversion i think, like ex Chaos BA
not saying that’s what it was made for, given their obvious native stats, but stacking the MI bonuses unto Chaos BA provides a neat noticeable boost,
and weird as it may be, at least for the weapons, it’s strangely an instance of where fudging the affixes isn’t actually necessary and native phys affixes do well/“best”

Since last day I got struck by Dreeg madness and tried to make Acid FoI paladin, I’d love to see actual acid FoI support. Maybe in form of standalone shoulders or belt

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image wonders if Acid Purge is a thing

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It is, but FoI is more meme xD

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Followup on fire ranged pally @romanN1 best run, 5:05

Told the average is closer to 5:30 range. Run had ideal resist mutators and no bad target spawns so seems to make sense. Wouldn’t complain about a small damage buff but doesn’t need a drastic overhaul

I have a pile of feedback, most of it is more of general observations so it won’t be accompanied by build links or videos because it’s related to my experience as a whole (mostly with melee builds).
In no particular order:

  • Lightning, fire, elemental and bleeding melee is in a bad state.
  1. Lightning melee basically doesn’t exist outside of PS spam. There are several drawbacks to it which put it so far below other dmg types there is absolutely no reason to play it even in MC, unless you just like the word lightning.
    First and foremost, a lot of flat and %flat sources have very high dispersion. It is thematic to lightning but should be compensated by leech access or abundance of dmg. But you have neither. In fact, lightning is the only dmg type that has no possibility to fully convert the “leeching” dmg type - vitality - to patch your weaknesses.
    RR. Lightning is the only elemental dmg type without its own passive source of -%RR. Moreover, fire and cold have access to mods to increase -%RR by a lot. Lightning has none. ON TOP of that, lightning is the only elemental dmg type with %RR delay application from devos.
    Lightning has very poor sources of flat and little to now access to flat conversion to increase melee dmg output and make it more stable.
    All of the above combined with Grava make any attempt at strong 1H lightning melee futile. No dmg, no sustainm nothing. You have too many disadvantages to overcome.
  2. Fire melee works a little better but mainly because it’s easier for fire to convert vitality and get access to PASSIVE leech. Hence every successful 1H fire melee in history features Blazeheart. You can go by with other weapons but it requires taking two blue rings and blue shoulders which handicaps you too much.
  3. Elemental melee has extremely poor itemization. Being tri-dmg type, you have to have access to superior % dmg, superior flat sources, superior devos. While the third is partly in place, first two are not. Here is the best ele DW i could come up with https://www.grimtools.com/calc/wV1OA0PN and to no surpise it doesn’t work at all.

Suggestions: increase flat sources for fire/lightning melee (and make them more consistent), add more ele flat conversions on melee focused items. Add -15% li. res to Nightblade’s conduit or replace lightning ABB (the single most bizarre conduit of all time) with -15% li res to VoS, +50 li flat to Pneumatic.

  1. Bleeding suffers in Crucible greatly. Aggro fix made it very hard to play dot builds with target switching. Before you could leave a boss bleeding out and move on. Now you cannot because it will chase you down and apply every bebuff it has. And hit you hard. And you have no way to leech (because you are bleed with low flat base and you are debuffed into oblivion).
  • Grava is still head and shoulders above every boss in Crucible. Fumble duration reduction made almost nothing to him, he spawns new pools instantly anyway.

Aggro fix made it so you in 30-40% of boss combos you are fighting all of them at the same time wherever you go. Which is a good thing as a principle. But a lot of bosses in GD are VERY fast for some reason. To this day I haven’t seen any merit to Reaper or Kuba closing in on you off screen in 0.5 sec. Just why? Smart positioning does nothing to your performance against these enemies. So when you have Couple of fast heavy hitters accompanied with Grava, with his fumbles and constant high DR, it’s like you are playing completely different game. And not a fun one at all.

Suggestion: Greatly increase Grava’s DR ability cooldown, compensate with melee attack buffs. Reduce movement speed of lightning fast bosses, compensate with stat buffs.

  • Glaring disbalance in ranged. There is Fire Strike, there is couple of pass through abusers and there is everything else down in the bottom.
    Not an expert in the field and i feel like i don’t even know how half of ranged mechanics work but smth must be done here. Why would i play ranged RF, or Cadence, or 2H Savagery when i can take FS, hold left click and win? Projectile mayhem of FS that makes packs of bosses cease to exist in 2 seconds is probably the funniest abuse in the game.

Suggestion: Maybe look into decreasing projectile count, especially on FS, and buff the flat base and WPS %WD across the board? Like, i want to play as sharpshooter with strong shots for single target focus but i just can’t.

  • Crucible became less fun.
    Partly it’s the burnout but when you think about it… I like the game, the concept of this gamemode is appealing to me. But I get tired of Crucible so very fast. And it has nothing to do with speedrunning, I like all kinds of builds with active gameplay and consider a success any build that can reliably clear Crucible in ~5 mins and SR75-76 within the timer.
    Even testing new builds in Crucible is tiresome for me and i can understand why the gamemode is not very popular. Dunno what resources Crate has to consider changes to DLC. I think there is still some potential to interest people in a purchase because the concept of the gamemode is simple and effective.

In any case, suggestions:

  1. Replace 170 (or add another wave) with a mini-version of Celestial boss fight, with a chance to drop the corresponding MI from the chest. This will strongly increase the incentive to buy the gamemode: you have a chance to get that sweet MI without switching your favourite build to some tanky retal cookie cutter and tedious pharma management
  2. Rework mutators or remove them from the gamemode altogether. They add nothing to Crucible, literally no merit, and go completely against the arena spirit of the mode. All mutators that affect monsters are kinda ok but player mutators are a bag of unfun. Alternatively, adjust all mutators that affect dmg output. A run with Shattered, negative RR, -speed and Unstoppable vs the same spawns with Marked, Swift and positive RR will net up to 1 minute difference even for the fastest builds.
  3. Add more variety to monster pools in higher waves. Even out the spawns. For instance, the difference between Blugrug and Packla at 157, Gargoyles and everything else at 157 is staggering. The difference between Temple Guardians (3 strong bosses) and Ilgorr (slow punching bag) is just absurd.
  4. Make more use of Tributes. Maybe special items at vendor for tribute cost? Maybe drop boosters for when you have a tanky build that wants to go in without buffs and banners?
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It has been requested numerous times, I think adding more 10-20 waves to make Crucible fun and new again is necessary. It’s an option-challenge like deep SR to push power of builds to the edge, as common Crucible <170 still can end premature.

Crucible already has much better loot gain than the main game, i don’t think further stripping of the few incentives to go into the main campaign is a good thing.

Plus, given the scaling of Crucible, the Celestial would most likely be way stronger than its main campaign counterpart, making it stay biased to retal builds.

I think they made it to provide an extra cold>lightning conversion. Still can’t get %100 with Stormserpent belt, MI shoulder and that conduit though but I agree it is non-sense because I tried to make spam lightning ABB work, you just can’t get skill points and the damage together. And I’m not exactly sure why anyone tries to get that conversion with a nightblade(instead SS variant); to convert Nether Edge? No way you get proper vitality and chaos>lightning conversion even if you get pierce %100. Just for Execution? Doubt it. For Raging Tempest flat cold? no big deal. DoT from elemental awakening? Again not a crucial damage to convert. Maybe I can’t see it, somewhere some build can use that amulet for conversion maybe lightning blade spirits or something. But lightning ABB is not even meme so yeah I wouldn’t miss it if they replace it with a more useful variant.

Crucible, a DLC with a price tag, is currently pretty bad for loot farming compared to FREE Shattered Realm. SR doesn’t punish nearly as much for deaths, and even the farm rate in SR is higher.

What is even an incentive for a loot oriented legit player to buy Crucible? To torture themselves?

A chance of Celestial MI won’t break anything. Overall it will be much harder to farm it in Crucible than in campaign, on your terms and having the whole Cairn for kiting.

Shattered Realm isn’t free, lol. It’s part of FG, an expansion you have to buy on top of the base game AND AoM.

Because some people like survival horde mode? Plus, Crucible was a Kickstarter stretch goal, it was gonna be made regardless if the devs were gonna make it incentive for loot farming (in my opinion it should never have had loot in it in the first place).

Zantai went as far to remove certain boss items from the Crucible recently. I very much doubt he wants to start putting Celestial MIs in it.

To be fair this has gotten noticeably better over the last two patches with more non-FS builds pushing 5 or lower results with consistent 75-76 clears (rutnick pally or oppressor, deathdealer warlord [cadence!] or oppressor, vitality RF oppressor, and now the passthrough sandspitter pally or oppressor options off the top of my head) but overall could still use some love compared to throwing together almost any firestrike build. Smite on pistols, especially with damage mods, is so strong it can basically carry RF builds if there is a decent amount of flat, for better or worse. Savagery and primal strike ranged have world beaters with VoS but much more modest (PS) or not fun to play (savagery) without it imo.

Handful of additional buff requests in the ranged thread or elsewhere as I’m not expecting another baseline gun revamp after the additional of a bunch of physical conversion mods and hydra revamp in 1.1.9. If elemental cadence, fire RF, and some options for savagery land in 1.1.9.2, I’d personally be happy with the diversity. Top end fire strike is still going to be better than 95% of other builds with the green crossbow, dagallon, or insane flat damage darkblaze, but that ship has probably sailed. If you tone down FS now to match RF/Savagery/Cadence, then all of ranged is a tier lower than average melee or caster build which seem to trip over 4:30 SR75-76+ stable options these days. Could just be the design plan, as even with bumrushing mobs ranged can definitely still kite say grava where melee can’t, while in theory leeching better than non-weapon damage casters (that now basically don’t exist because everything has a leech option).

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I was gonna answer to you but then i saw this

and i think we’ll just stop here to avoid cluttering the topic.

As a player who played a lot of SR, but was completely new to Crucible since a few weeks ago, I disagree with this sentiment. I really tried to learn Crucible, Tributes, the buffs, the turrets, but in the end I just ended up GDstashing the Tributes over and over again. IMO, Tributes and their bonuses should be completely removed and naked Crucible should just become the Meta. It should help with drawing in people who don’t want to learn alien, isolated mechanics in an otherwise heavily inter-connected game. I thought the community views Crucible as the best place to test builds. Tributes and randomness are hampering that build-testing ability.

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