This is the reality of the post-bonding change.

rinat114

I don't think much words are needed. Neither of the above were with a special "buff" party, one DC, one GF, one Paladin, that's about that. No MOF CW, no HR, nothing that should warrant those kind of numbers.

We're not even talking about Warlock's Killing Flames, my damage is not supposed to be so broken. I feel extremely uncomfortable with this. Adjustments should be made, so many players provided feedback on the change saying it'll be too overpowered - here's your proof of how overpowered this is.

(and before this becomes a "again, the BIS GWF's talk, you don't represent yadayada", this isn't about any class. I'm positive a lot of people noticed they're doing nearly double their potential damage post this patch and it's not supposed to go down that route, period.)

beckylunatic

@terramak
This is exactly why people were so incredulous when you said it was WAI (for now). Your players know the mechanics, they know what's going to be broken when you let it into the live build. You guys need to listen when people tell you something is ridiculous, and you need to not release it like that if you don't want the backlash when you have to turn around and change it and people get mad because they've heavily invested in it. It's not a good business model regardless if we take it as tinfoil-conspiracy or bungling.

flyingleon

I did not get it. If you can reach high peak damge now with bondings, you can do it before. Is there some other bug?

rinat114

flyingleon said:

I did not get it. If you can reach high peak damge now with bondings, you can do it before. Is there some other bug?

The change allowed people to switch out from just Warlocks to any other companion they wish to use (like the Sellsword and Ambush Drake, they provide some pretty serious debuffs and they even stack) - now that's fine. People should have the ability to choose companions according to their playstyle without having to commit to something just because it's BIS.

This brought in 3x offense options rather than 2x offense and 1x defense, since everyone got high stats at all times, ITF is as its full potential at all times, DC's provide you some serious power due to Weapons of Light and the buffs don't need to be coordinated anymore since they're fully empowered at all times, so hits that could happen once in a million are happening all the time and I find my power rising to the 100 - 150k mark back and forth in an uptime of 80%.

If that's not broken I don't know what is.

flyingleon

@rinat114, all makes sense now. I also reminded them but they just screwed up a lot stuff. This problem is not even a priority for now, sigh.

Edit: I actually always laughed when reading the suggestion to make companions equal foot. It cause a lot balance problem than people thought. At the end, there are still some BIS companions out there, just different.

jaegernl

Hell, I'm scared to think what'll happen if you get a good Righteous DC in HP, MoF Rene in HV and a Longstrider spamming HR with you next time.

urabask

flyingleon said:

@rinat114, all makes sense now. I also reminded them but they just screwed up a lot stuff. This problem is not even a priority for now, sigh.



Edit: I actually always laughed when reading the suggestion to make companions equal foot. It cause a lot balance problem than people thought. At the end, there are still some BIS companions out there, just different.

It needs to be fixed before August though. T3 dungeons will be a joke if this is still in game.

This makes the elol set look silly in comparison. TUC was switching dragons in DF with 8:56 on the clock. Most of the time was just spent walking between dragons : \

sockmunkey

urabask said:

flyingleon said:

@rinat114, all makes sense now. I also reminded them but they just screwed up a lot stuff. This problem is not even a priority for now, sigh.



Edit: I actually always laughed when reading the suggestion to make companions equal foot. It cause a lot balance problem than people thought. At the end, there are still some BIS companions out there, just different.

It needs to be fixed before August though. T3 dungeons will be a joke if this is still in game.

What makes you think T3 dungeons will be all that hard to begin with? After all there is only a 400 point item level difference between T1 and T2. The latest hardest content is only rated for 2.5k. There is absolutely no reason at all to believe they will do anything requiring more then 3k. I would personally expect it to be more around the 2600 to 2800 range.

T3 will be easy, brace yourself for it. This will not be something that will take weeks to master. Power guilds will be clearing it on day one. Expecting anything else is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

urabask

sockmunkey said:

urabask said:

flyingleon said:

@rinat114, all makes sense now. I also reminded them but they just screwed up a lot stuff. This problem is not even a priority for now, sigh.



Edit: I actually always laughed when reading the suggestion to make companions equal foot. It cause a lot balance problem than people thought. At the end, there are still some BIS companions out there, just different.

It needs to be fixed before August though. T3 dungeons will be a joke if this is still in game.

What makes you think T3 dungeons will be all that hard to begin with? After all there is only a 400 point item level difference between T1 and T2. The latest hardest content is only rated for 2.5k. There is absolutely no reason at all to believe they will do anything requiring more then 3k. I would personally expect it to be more around the 2600 to 2800 range.

T3 will be easy, brace yourself for it. This will not be something that will take weeks to master. Power guilds will be clearing it on day one. Expecting anything else is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

It was never about difficulty anyways. The difference between T1s, T2s and CN are just the amount of time it takes to run them.
So ostentibly T3s will be longer than CN. With bondings as they are now nothing that Cryptic can do will increase the time it takes to run a dungeon short of just making it longer. CN at least has mechanics that can make runs take longer (e.g. balls, green beam of death) but nothing that Cryptic can add to T3s will matter if it just becomes an exercise in running from point A to point B because everyone has 200k power and a ITF working off 50k def. And to make matters worse it just helps cryptic justify making dungeon drops crappy because we burn through them too quickly.

deathbeez

Why is 3 static stacks more powerful then when you could get 6+ stacks with the cooldown bug?
What am I missing here?

scathias

those 6 stacks were for 1 player only, and those 6 stacks were only active for a few seconds, so you had a small window of opportunity to get a good hit off. if that didn't coincide with good buffs from teammates then the 6 stacks were "wasted".

Now, you have 3 stacks all the time, and your whole team has them. so your party is operating at max capacity all the time (ITF will always have the best buff possible from the GFs stats, they only need to wait for astral sheidl) (DCs have max power for sharing with AA and BoB) (DPS classes have 80%+ crit all the time, right from the first seconds of battle). Now you can wait to time all your best skills for when the buffs are up.

the reason it is OP is because the average sum of the total party stats is way way beyond what the average total party stats were before

jonkoca

With DF runs now, the main problem is not dying or failing anymore... It's all about... Not accidently killing the dragons too early.

talon1970

rinat114 said:

flyingleon said:

I did not get it. If you can reach high peak damge now with bondings, you can do it before. Is there some other bug?

The change allowed people to switch out from just Warlocks to any other companion they wish to use (like the Sellsword and Ambush Drake, they provide some pretty serious debuffs and they even stack) - now that's fine. People should have the ability to choose companions according to their playstyle without having to commit to something just because it's BIS.

This brought in 3x offense options rather than 2x offense and 1x defense, since everyone got high stats at all times, ITF is as its full potential at all times, DC's provide you some serious power due to Weapons of Light and the buffs don't need to be coordinated anymore since they're fully empowered at all times, so hits that could happen once in a million are happening all the time and I find my power rising to the 100 - 150k mark back and forth in an uptime of 80%.

If that's not broken I don't know what is.

I posted it yesterday in the German forum, we did an CN Run after the patch with 2x DC (both righteous but with different paragon pathes), 1x Spellstorm Ren CW and 2x TR (Pve both MI exe with different builds)
Too bad our screenshots didn't work so you can believe it or not.
Situation was:
Hallway lots of adds, DC castet Anointed Army, everyone had the stack from companion (Zent lock, Lillend, Fire Archon), we TR entered stealth, firing up our Whirlwind daily....... my fellow TR was on 290k power and myself was on 320k (Whirlwind can increase the power for a matter of time + shadowborn feat from the exe tree), we reentered stealth from a passive, and with our rota dazing strike, smoke, blade furry we cleared the hallway in a few seconds....
commentary from our CW in teamspeak: "Uhm well i had no time to do anything, because there were no enemy left"

All bosses including Orcus himself was laughable, he hit us TR's with an full hit (bc our companions had aggro) and nothing happend to us, normally a Tr is dead meat after that if the Gf losses the aggro against an companion.

So even if i like it to play with an active companion, these is ridicolous and i have choosen for me not switch to an companion with 3 attack slots and 3 ring slots for more power or whatever.

P.S. I know my english is not the best anymore but i hope you understand what i mean, it is quite over 20 years ago since my last english lesson at school.

Greetings

rapo973

If I look at the overall story of the recent class balance changes and the bonding runestones fix, I really don't understand where they want to go.
GoH and OP bubble were nerfed to the ground because they made the contents too easy. In the meanwhile they decide to give us this overpower feature which generate the same effect at the end: contents are too easy.
The current b.runestones mechanic is a contraddiction against the spirit of the class power balance...
The only difference is that the bonding runestones require an investment and probably money flow around them: that was not the case for the DC/OP interaction.

lantern22

rapo973 said:

If I look at the overall story of the recent class balance changes and the bonding runestones fix, I really don't understand where they want to go.
GoH and OP bubble were nerfed to the ground because they made the contents too easy. In the meanwhile they decide to give us this overpower feature which generate the same effect at the end: contents are too easy.
The current b.runestones mechanic is a contraddiction against the spirit of the class power balance...
The only difference is that the bonding runestones require an investment and probably money flow around them: that was not the case for the DC/OP interaction.

you can probably add mount bonuses and SH boons to that as well

silence1x

While I agree that this is broken, I'd still love to see that much damage just ONCE on any of my toons

There are so many interactions these days, I'm surprised we don't have more SNRs that we already do - artifact weapons, set bonuses, companions proc'ing bonding stones as well as their own powers, etc. It's a mess no matter which way you look at it.

If I were middle management, I'd put some resources to fix Alliance stuff first and bonding procs second but, alas, I am not.

santralafax

I still don't get why the stones were buffed to begin with. I understand this is just me. But they were already considered BIS and broken in some ways. The only good thing I see here is the ability to choose a companion you want. The trade-off to those stones were the risk and effort in keeping those stacks up.

muckingfuppet

so what rings are best to use on a companion? as I'm lost on how to set up my mercenary? and how the hell do you get 320k power at best my gwf has 80k with twisted stacks, and 3 x rank 12 bonding stacks and elvish battle fury buff maxed out

rinat114

muckingfuppet said:

so what rings are best to use on a companion? as I'm lost on how to set up my mercenary? and how the hell do you get 320k power at best my gwf has 80k with twisted stacks, and 3 x rank 12 bonding stacks and elvish battle fury buff maxed out

You're not a TR, you don't have Whirlwind of Blades, chances of you getting over 300k power just like that are scarce.

talon1970

Well there is definitely more possible, than 300k Power for an Rogue.

Lets say "best" situation:

An Guildgroup, BiS 4k+, all SH Boons for power, all of them has an mount with max power boost and insignias, poitions, overload enchants, a Companion with 3 Attack and 3 Ringslots full with +5 Brutality Rings and so on....
1x Gf, 2x DC, 1x MoF Rene (or an SW with the feat to buff the power) and 1x Tr.

For such an maxed out group, i think they can buff an Tr when he is using Whirlwind of Blades in an large add group to 400k or maybe 500k power (sure only for a few seconds, but who cares.....with the rotation i have posted above there are no adds anymore).

[/sarcasm on] Rogues are the new OP Add Killers and hey on bosses we could do maybe a little damage too... [/sarcasm off]

darthpotater

I think this is just something for a few months.
When module 10 comes with class balance, they will just adjust the 400 stats -> 1% to 800 stats ->1% and done.

When they changed the formula of stats and dmg they already told that the new system will be easier to adjust in the future.

urabask

darthpotater said:

I think this is just something for a few months.
When module 10 comes with class balance, they will just adjust the 400 stats -> 1% to 800 stats ->1% and done.

When they changed the formula of stats and dmg they already told that the new system will be easier to adjust in the future.

Yeah this would kill the game. They can't balance things around something that a minority of the player population can do.

They could bring back diminishing returns on stats but straight up 800 to 1% would make new players RQ.

archangelzorak01

talon1970 said:

Hallway lots of adds, DC castet Anointed Army, everyone had the stack from companion (Zent lock, Lillend, Fire Archon), we TR entered stealth, firing up our Whirlwind daily....... my fellow TR was on 290k power and myself was on 320k (Whirlwind can increase the power for a matter of time + shadowborn feat from the exe tree), we reentered stealth from a passive, and with our rota dazing strike, smoke, blade furry we cleared the hallway in a few seconds....

When I first read this I started to ask myself, "How are these people getting such high power ratings with whirlwind"? I've never been able to get higher than 228k power after a whirlwind.

Then I realized you were taking Shadowborn into account, which is doubling your effective power for a single attack.

asterotg

desisti said:

Meh, same story as LM set. Now it is WAI, next year on this day they will make some claim that they made a mistake and nerf strikers and bondings to the ground.

This. And while I agree, that they are to strong for the dungeons now available, I hate to pay with my ADs for their miscalculations. Just waiting for the posts about 'bonding abuse' and 'fixing bugs', while everyone knows how they work and it was confirmed by Devs in the preview forum, that this is WAI.

In a few month ppl will call everyone with bondings a cheater or exploiter, I will look for the Dev post, that confirmed, that this is WAI and it will have vanished in thin air.

ironzerg79

So is it really the damage buff from ITF that's causing all this? Are GF's getting their DR to ridiculous levels, which is in turn causing the damage buff from ITF to be off the charts?

I'm just trying to cut through the noise to get to the real cause of this...If people are hitting for 6 million+ damage, there's something seriously wrong going on, and I hardly doubt it's being caused by just the Bonding Runestone change. I'm sure that's a factor, since it helps power the ITF bug, but let's get to the root cause here.