Why has this topic become rocket science? Arcanists are top ST dps and Thaum is probably the worst AOE dps. They should have just stuck with increasing Arcanist AOE which they actually nerfed with ST.
This thread was always about ST because it originated after the uproar on TOMM statistics. The Thaum's didn't deserve an AOE nerf so they are not in the wrong for complaining about it.
The dev team posted the changes here and asked for feedback. Players told them that they are nerfing Thaum for no reason and instead of nerfing arcanist ST some other way (which apparently is only nerfed by 5%), they start bug fixing the whole of Thaum and in the process, completely Hamstering all other classes that have been waiting desperately.
So none of the playerbase is at the wrong here, the dev's however..... You need to start by increasing warlock and fighter ST dps and then move to arbiters and barbs. Mod 18 apparently won't save you from your peril from the looks of it.
While a nerf to wizard shield was needed in PVP, the nerf shield got probably killed that power altogether. I doubt the shield power will remain in use at all. While that outcome is preferable to leaving shield as it is on live, I'd look into finding a way to make wizard shield useful at least.
As for how I'd expect PVP wizards to adjust to shield being nerfed, good ones likely would go glass cannon, similar to what the best rogues and rangers do. Likely very scary if using 4 dps encounters. They'd have some forms of defense like a little bit of self healing and shadowclad, and probably a little more HP than they currently run. Some might also add in some crit aviod.
It might be possible to build wizard similarly to dps clerics, which can have nearly maxed out defense and crit aviod and still dish out high damage. I don't know much about cleric's mechanics but I do know this build runs high critical chance in addition to high defense and crit aviod.
At any rate, wizard will probably be fine, though I won't be suprised if a bunch of wizards cry about this nerf for a bit.
I would not go full glass cannon in PVP. Every other class has faster casting times, and casting powers on wizards is a bit odd. It takes time to build up stacks of chill and arcane mastery to get your buffs up to do good damage, not to mention that control sucks in pvp (except if you're a ranger or rogue), so you need to be able to survive, and since you can't dodge but once or twice, all they will need to do is sneeze and you'll blow over.
I think it was a mistake to nerf shield so much if at-all. I've tried building a tanky wizard in pvp (in m17), it changed being one rotated by rogues and rangers to taking two rotations. The shield isn't all that powerful.
What they need to do is find a balance between M16 and M17, they need to reduce damage taken and healing, no reason a rogue should one rotate the tank on your team like he's just butter. Sometimes they can even get you with just an encounter and a daily. Also, while the new simpler mechanics of stats may work in PVE, they don't work well in PVP. To have any defense or deflect chance, you have stack over Arm Pen and Accuracy, but by the time you've invested so much into defense, and you get your 10% DR (after 80k defense), you have no stats left for anything else, and they can still one rotate you. It's better to invest in stats such as Arm Pen, Accuracy, Awareness, and Crit Avoidance, because you only ever need to reach a minimum for those stats to be maximally effective. Every thing else (other than hp and power) has to be stacked over and over invested in to be effective. This is problematic for builds that rely on crits to proc other class features/feats.
Try explaining why we need a larger stat pool in PVP, and people just say that it's not fair to allow people to get stats from companion bonuses. They blame this that and the other, but the real problem is the core mechanics.
Currently (on live) people who have built their wizards with low defensive stats or have a middle ground setup are abnormally hard to take down compared to the other dps classes. And wizards can still dish out very high damage, have great node control due to repel, and are ranged. This does impact the leaderboard, wizards have an easier time advancing than rogues or rangers do. They have an easier time turning matches in their favor thanks to the combination of shield + lots of repels + lots of damage. They get a lot fewer deaths too.
I don't know what your personal experience with trying out a tanky wizard is but I've fought other tank wizards like jerico and kalina and they are extremely difficult to kill. Even steven's 108k defense fighter and the several 90k+ defense 50k+ crit aviod clerics walking around aren't as difficult to kill as these wizards. It makes no sense to even attempt killing tank wizards inside of a match, unless you have the help of 1 or 2 other coordinated good dps and they don't mess up. I adjust my stats and powers for the enemies I fight on a regular basis and am nearly maxed out so I know it isn't a build issue on my end. It is possible for me to kill them in "one or two rotations" but realistically, this is difficult and partially luck based to line up and I'd be trying over and over again for most of the match before I get it. Or more likely, one of their friends shows up and prevents me from landing it at all.
As for the tank classes, those classes need some work done on them, they do seem to be under preforming. Some of this is the majority of players not building well but even the good ones seem to lag behind to some degree.
I'm not opposed to lowering crit damage and healing in PVP, but only if they are both lowered at the same time.
As for the whole stat pool too small for PVP thing, as new mods get released, you'll be able to stack more and more stats. That and I'm not sure I agree with this premise anyways. We definitely don't need companion active bonuses in PVP. Though I'd like having access to a little bit more critical strike, allowing the massive amounts of HP, busted bonuses, and stats from companions in PVP didn't go well.
Rogue and ranger do have strong control, but the control I've seen come from fighters, some paladins, and barbarians is also formidable. The control that wizards do have seems to be the most effective for winning matches, repel is quite a tool, especially when they can do this 3 times within a short timeframe. So I don't agree that control sucks for everyone that isn't a rogue or ranger.
balancing based on pvp kills the game. just saying is all
Well the warlock needs an overhaul in reality, which is going to take time, too many key problems
Soul puppet needs a rework - too much relies on something that does a very small amount of damage, is uncontrolled, and can be killed, it also cannot deal Combat Advantage damage which is a really stupid issue.
Soul sparks needs a rework - just bad design, at least on the Hellbringer side, better for Soulweaver but needs improvement, half the content does not let us generate these, its like a cleric or a paladin having 0 Divinity Regen, VERY crippling.
Curse synergy/Curse consume needs a rework, its too punishing for little gain.
Dailies are weak, and we have ZERO action point gain anywhere, no feats no class features, nothing, this is a double whammy, Tyrannical Curse split damage has been bugged since preview, and does not scale with armour penetration OR accuracy, meaning instead of a 15% damage transfer, its closer to 3%
The majority of class features are rubbish, so you just end up getting pigeon holed into everyone using the same ones
Creeping death is either - Bugged, and does not stack like its supposed to( like it de PRE Mod16) or if it was intentionally designed this way for Mod16 that person is a clown, what is the point in a DoT that is constantly overwritten so never does any damage?
And these are not even the whole list, so ye, its gonna take time and a rework in places
However, some things NEED to be changed by Mod18 release in my opinion, and these little magnitude bumps are just not enough, and in the most part, badly thought out, Cough dreadtheft Cough
1. - Fix Eldritch Blasts 3rd hit, it is supposed to deal double magnitude as AoE, THATS THE WHOLE DAMN POINT of this at will. 2. - Fix Tyrannical Curse Split damage - should not have to wait 10months for a simple fix like this 3. Enable the soul puppet to deal Combat Advantage, its a glorified companion, and they deal CA damage, hell even artefact summon monsters deal CA damage...... 4. Remove the AoE penalty from Fiery bolt, This has to be the only AoE ability in the game, that suffers a 50% damage reduction. i mean really? it does not even hit hard to start with. if it did 350 magnitude to the main target and 175 as AoE? then sure, but 200 to the main target and 100 AoE is a joke 5. Change lesser curse damage to 40magnitude. - Lesser Curse damage is a joke - 12 magnitude over 8 seconds? really? 3 magnitude every 2 seconds? this is the defining feature of the warlock, and it deals least than 1% of our damage, it does so little in fact it barely registers on ACT
Do these 5 things by m18 launch and you might convince the warlock players to stick around for longer, waiting for a proper redesign of things, i mean these are hardly comprehensive changes, but they need doing, like... 7 months ago
Another weakening of the wizard, and no bugs from the beginning of 2019 have been repaired.
Wizard
Chaos Magic: Activates extremely rarely. Often, throughout the entire fight with the boss does not
activate even once. In addition, not all bonuses from this skill work. Alternate ability (Iced Lightning)
is useless. Doesn't match any builds.
- Rapid recovery: Gain 100% Cooldown Recovery Rate for 5s. And in practice it gives 0% Cooldown Recovery
Rate for 5s.
- Repel: Repel charges 0.09% AP. It is almost 10x less than other skills.
- Directed Flames: Smolder now deals 75% of its total damage instantly when applied but no longer deals
damage over time. And in practice smolder deals 50% of its total damage instantly when applied but no
longer deals damage over time.
- Arcane Singularity: The control effect is so weak that monsters easily run out of the area of skill. Even if a monster sucks, it does not fall in the center of the skill area, only where it managed to run.
as it is now top dmg of hunter its dot dmg from roots cause one 6% of crit severity its less than overall dmg of roots and for sure pray, predator 10% dmg on one target and distruptive shot for 10% dmg, i hate lower melee dmg, but in infernal citadel you need to hit hard with bot easily
Enhanced conductivity now only procs (+50mag) on the Lightning Enhanced Weapon Strike (+30 mag lightning damage), and not on the rest of our attacks (Maybe its always been this way?) after activating CotS.
Also, Nature's Envoy (after Forest Ghost) does not work on ranged at-wills.
Would it be possible for Nature's Envoy and Blade Storm (and perhaps Twin Blade Storm) to work on archer builds?
Please take an eye on pvp when you increase 'Dc' dmg, Dc overperforming in pvp
All powers should have a different magnitude if in pve or pvp to avoid insoluble balance headache. It has always been done with stats and control feats.
Please take an eye on pvp when you increase 'Dc' dmg, Dc overperforming in pvp
All powers should have a different magnitude if in pve or pvp to avoid insoluble balance headache. It has always been done with stats and control feats.
Agreed, not to mention that some classes can give themselves CA over you which is an often underestimated advantage. Combined with the way critical severity is now multiplicative with combat advantage damage, 100% effective in pvp, and how most people think awareness is useless in pvp, classes that can easily gain CA over you can shred most players, even tanks. A measly 10k more combat advantage stat can net a big boost to a burst of damage if hit critically.
In M16 combat would take forever, if build right, no one would die (which is why I ended up quitting the game for 4 months). In M17 it's very common to get killed in less than 2 seconds, especially if there is more than 1 opponent, and rogue and ranger will demolish anyone (which is why I'm about to quit the game for another 4 months). Rogues and Rangers can afford to build glass cannons because they can become "invisible" basically at-will, which is *the* best defensive ability in the game, hands down.
Note, I say "Invisible", because there is no counter check given to players to reveal "stealth-ed" opponents. In D&D it's near impossible to "Sneak" into a brightly lit room full of enemies. You would have to use Invisibility combined with a move silently check.
I don't know what caused the developers to make CA multiplicative with Critical Severity, while that might have been more appropriate before m16 when CAD was relatively low, and almost never went over 50% bonus, now it can go up to 100%, and I feel making it multiplicative at this point, broke a lot of balance that had been in place before. Even in PVE classes that can give themselves CA have a big advantage over those that can't in aoe situations.
At this point, Cryptic might as well scrap the entire class system, design a new one from the ground up, and give every existing *character* a free class re-roll.
Alternatively, reinstate the combat system from pre-Mod 16. They destroyed something that worked (and worked well), and replaced it with a broken mess.
I See this pop up a lot in videos and other posts about how amazing and fun pre Mod 16 combat was, and how it should be brought back, but no one ever actually states why they think it was better, or what specific features they miss and how its different to now. What exactly do you mean?
For me, the only thing I miss is faster more fluid combat, quicker dailies ( but not too quick) and lower CDs on encounters.
I Do not miss buffing or life steal, it made content a joke where you could just stack up without moving ignoring everything and just bully through everything mindlessly.
So im interested, what do you think is lacking now from before, and why? what did it bring to the game "Fun" wise And I mean for combat, not feat trees or boons or power points or any of that. Combat only
> @tempus86#1158 said: > I See this pop up a lot in videos and other posts about how amazing and fun pre Mod 16 combat was, and how it should be brought back, but no one ever actually states why they think it was better, or what specific features they miss and how its different to now. > What exactly do you mean? > > For me, the only thing I miss is faster more fluid combat, quicker dailies ( but not too quick) and lower CDs on encounters. > > I Do not miss buffing or life steal, it made content a joke where you could just stack up without moving ignoring everything and just bully through everything mindlessly. > > So im interested, what do you think is lacking now from before, and why? what did it bring to the game "Fun" wise > And I mean for combat, not feat trees or boons or power points or any of that. Combat only
I miss all the things you mentioned - both the ones you like, and the ones you dislike
Buffing was brilliant! It was what made DCs fun to play for me, and recovery was absolutely pivotal for that playstyle. (And for many other classes too.) My main - a GWF (I refuse to use the laughable new moniker slang) - was a beast, and lifesteal plus self-buffing allowed for the precise up-close-&-personal melee approach that class is *supposed* to have (and did have).
Ultimately it boils down to this for me: I enjoy the fruits of my labor, and in a game such as this, that absolutely means being able to steamroll all but the latest content solo once I'm BIS/near-BIS. Mod 16 obliterated that, and I've had no great desire to play since then.
I suppose it's not all bad, though. I've saved a lot of money, and added it to my stock portfolios instead, and the time sink that is MMOs being removed from my free time schedule means I've experienced many other more satisfying things.
So why do I still comment? Because this game did have a great & fun fast combat system, and it pains me to see well-put-together things destroyed - call it an aversion to vandalism. Also, I detest incompetence and bald-faced lies, and think neither should be rewarded nor go unmarked.
Ffs. The lame anti-bot filter here swallowed my detailed response after make one, one-letter edit despite this not being my first post. Imagine if Cryptic exercised the same diligence in-game, eh?
Many of you gave feedback that you'd like some balance adjustments now, rather than waiting for bigger/more accurate ones in a later module so that balance could be closer in the short term.
Whisperknife:
Impact Shot - magnitude increased to 400
Shadow Strike - magnitude increased to 375
Shuriken Toss - magnitude increased to 45
Vengeance Pursuit - base magnitude increased to 150, stealthed bonus magnitude increased to 550, but also fixed issues with multi-proccing when it shouldn't have been
Dagger Threat - maximum benefit is now 20' instead of 15'
Gutterborn's Touch - no longer increases awareness, now increases ranged damage by 5%
Blitz - stealthed usage no reduces encounter cooldowns by 2s
Love the Whisperknife changes. Maybe after this we wont see 100% Assassin Rogues. As a Whisperknife myself, I just want to add 2 suggestions.
Disheartening Strike (At-Will) . This At-Will is currently bugged. Its DoT does 50 magnitude instead of the 100 magnitude the skill states, and it only lasts 5 seconds instead of 10 seconds. SUGGESTION: revise the tooltip to actual, but add to the effect that if a target dies while under the effects of the DoT, the Whisperknife gains 5% Stealth.One of the biggest complaints i see about Whisperknife is that it has slow Stealth regen. Disheartening Stike is a single target skill that deals less damage than any other at will. This would give it welcome utility as a support at-will.
Cloud of Steel (at-will): This skill is rarely used by Rogues and does poor damage. Versus a single target, Shuriken Toss deals more damage. SUGGESTION: raise the damage increase to 5% per stack.It is tough to stack and can only really occur versus bosses... the extra 25% damage will not make it a preferred at-will, but at least it could then be useful to Whisperknives with a lot of range damage bonus.
*** These two at-will changes would NOT increase damage of either paragon. Right now the skills are garbage. Changing them would make them viable alternative options. ***
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gabrieldourdenMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,212Arc User
- Arcane Singularity: The control effect is so weak that monsters easily run out of the area of skill. Even if a monster sucks, it does not fall in the center of the skill area, only where it managed to run.
This is pretty true for any control skill in the game. Either monsters resist way too much any kind of control or control is too weak to start with.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
I See this pop up a lot in videos and other posts about how amazing and fun pre Mod 16 combat was, and how it should be brought back, but no one ever actually states why they think it was better, or what specific features they miss and how its different to now. What exactly do you mean?
For me, the only thing I miss is faster more fluid combat, quicker dailies ( but not too quick) and lower CDs on encounters.
I Do not miss buffing or life steal, it made content a joke where you could just stack up without moving ignoring everything and just bully through everything mindlessly.
So im interested, what do you think is lacking now from before, and why? what did it bring to the game "Fun" wise And I mean for combat, not feat trees or boons or power points or any of that. Combat only
I'm with you on this, especially on lower CDs on encounters. Lower recovery rates have basically killed the ranger playstile. Warden is still viable but stuck into a fixed routine you can never change or adjust.
Le-Shan: HR level 80 (main)
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
I do miss recovery, while also understanding the reason for removing it. Too much recovery broke the concepts behind having encounter and daily powers that were used to turn the tide of battle.
I think one problem that we have is a very limited selection of mostly very weak at-wills, and then you can only have 2 slotted at any given moment. So we have 3 encounters that mean something, but we can only use them once per encounter, usually (hence "encounter power"). Then, we are left poking at monsters with straws. One problem I have with wizard and rogue atm is a lack of good aoe at-wills. Barbarians have a really good aoe at-will. Sure you have chilling cloud on thaum and shuriken toss on wk, but they are lack luster or slow to affect multiple targets, or have weird animations and/or slow cast times. However, thaum is being turned into a trash mob clearing path which is what whisperknife is imho, and I really don't see a point in spending a loadout for trash clearing, an aoe build for fights that last longer than 10 seconds will do just fine at trash clearing, BUT, lack of aoe at wills on assassin and arcanist.
I think we need a larger selection of at-wills that are slightly more powerful, and each paragon path should have a good aoe at-will that feels natural, like Rangers and Barbarians have.
Another problem I have is these artifact sets that clearly benefit one class over all others, rangers and the daily activation artifact sets. Daily use is too sporadic for these sets to really be useful in any boss fight last more than 2 minutes, which is why orcus set will probably still be bis for everything except CN, the new zone and boss fights that end in 30 seconds. I also don't like that you release a set that is only useful in the new zone, which means it might be bis there, for a mod, then in all likelihood we will have to switch again in m19 and have 3 different sets to switch out in order to be maximally effective in various content. Seems like a scam. You (the developers) could have made orcus set obsolete in m16 simply by removing the dependency of using dailies from arcturia's and trobraind's sets and adjusting the damage bonuses accordingly.
From my testing on preview, Fighter Dreadnaught still not tomm viable with the temporary tweaks implemented on preview, I am not sure if any of the dev's have tested the difference between preview and live, but I have and compared to benchmarks with HR/CW/TR and not even close. I get that you don't have time to change some of the base flaws with Fighter Dreadnaught by the time mod 18 releases, but I do think more temporary fixes and/or adjustments need to be made so the class actually be viable tomm before waiting for mod 19, not sure what you are afraid of, these are just temporary fixes so if you go too heavy you can always modify until the overhaul in mod 19. In case you are wondering, biggest issues are encounter cooldowns too long, lack of damage buffs in feats/class features, lack of crit sev buff (none), slow and clunky at wills and, of course, the worst mechanic in the game, vengence squat.
Love the Whisperknife changes. Maybe after this we wont see 100% Assassin Rogues.
For me Rogue = Deft Strike. It is the most fun power of the whole class. I mean, for daily running around, boss fights might benefit from other choices more... A rogue without DS? Well, OK, the smoke bomb is a nice thingy, but I really feel that switching to a paragon without DS is gutting the fun out of the class.
So, regardless the changes, as long as Whisperknife does not have DS, it is not tempting. For me, of course.
I see it’s nice to to buff up some of the characters that’s always a great sign, I’m super annoyed and feel let down by the encounter magnitude boosts to the warlock compared to other class encounter magnitude boosts, the only encounter boost to get any decent magnitude boost is the dreadtheft which is a gamble when used due to only doing great damage to a horde of enemy’s when they grouped.. single target build for the warlock is so bad due to the single targets magnitude damage being so low. Only decent magnitude damage attack is killing flames at 500-750. So I’d like to see some better magnitude on the warlock,
Hi I know this thread has become quite long, but I just want to make sure of something concerning all the nerfs to Wizard and Arcanist in particular.
From my understanding these nerfs are a result of data collected from ToMM runs, and I just want to make sure that you (the devs) are looking at it in detail and not just as a whole. For example, not just "Arcanist is doing X% more damage than other classes on average, so lets nerf some of arcanist's class features to balance it out."
The reason I am concerned is because I've been doing LoMM runs all day on my Wizard who has 190k power, in groups not consisting of another Wizard/Thaum, and all about the same power levels. I use common builds that are widely accepted as being FotM builds, and I consistently do NOT out perform others, if anything, I'm lagging behind, haven't been in first place paingiver at all today (even a soulweaver warlock using a bunch of tenebrous did more damage than I).
I want to point out again that these are groups not consisting of a Thaumaturge in the group and this is important. Smolder has been bugged since even before mod 16, and in mod 16 now there is directed flames. The bug is this, if I am on Arcanist, and another Wizard is on Thaum and applies smolder, every time I apply chill, I proc his smolder and directed flames doing damage for myself, as Arcanist.
I just want to make sure that this bug isn't the reason why you guys are nerfing arcanist so much, when in reality you should be fixing that interaction with smolder, chill, and other wizards.
I See this pop up a lot in videos and other posts about how amazing and fun pre Mod 16 combat was, and how it should be brought back, but no one ever actually states why they think it was better, or what specific features they miss and how its different to now. What exactly do you mean?
For me, the only thing I miss is faster more fluid combat, quicker dailies ( but not too quick) and lower CDs on encounters.
I Do not miss buffing or life steal, it made content a joke where you could just stack up without moving ignoring everything and just bully through everything mindlessly.
So im interested, what do you think is lacking now from before, and why? what did it bring to the game "Fun" wise And I mean for combat, not feat trees or boons or power points or any of that. Combat only
DCs were buffing AP gain and lower encounter cooldowns. So you basically use your daily every 4 seconds or so to decrease cooldowns by 2 seconds. In addition to that you also have to hit allies with Divine Glow, cast BtS/FF every 8 seconds, cast one of the At-Wills every 10 seconds in range of allies and cast another encounter every few seconds on one or two of the DPS. All of that obviously trying to achieve no downtime in buffs. Compare this to some DPS classes or Devout cleric nowadays where 2/3 of the time you're doing nothing or using At-Wills which deal little damage. Combat was objectively more engaging. DPS had to be mindful of buffs that are not up 100% of the time like GFs commander strike and HRs Longstrider + the encounter that only buffs encounters.
The problem was that buffs were multiplicative with each other. So a GF at 500% effectiveness from buffs was able to simply double that effectiveness to 1000% (for his own damage). Double damage skill just added a whopping 500% of relative increase. That was the only flaw. Normally you would expect a skill like that at 500% effectiveness to bump it to 600%, which is only a 20% relative increase.
Similarly Lifesteal was based on the amount of damage dealt. Literally 100% of the damage you're dealing. Even DoTs were dealing >10k hits easily. Again normally you expect only a portion of damage dealt would be used.
Thanks for bringing this up again and reminding me of better times!
Personally I don't mind more methodical, strategic and slower combat if done right. If not I wouldn't play turn based games. But as you said the fluidity worked great, to a point were the combat was faster and more engaging then many other MMOs or games in general that were made with primarily flashy looking action combat in mind.
Even now for Hellbringer and Dreadnought instead of lowering cooldowns a bit they just increase magnitude of everything. Hopefully with Mod 19 they will be able to take a look into this and are able to make it a bit more fluid again.
From my understanding these nerfs are a result of data collected from ToMM runs, and I just want to make sure that you (the devs) are looking at it in detail and not just as a whole. For example, not just "Arcanist is doing X% more damage than other classes on average, so lets nerf some of arcanist's class features to balance it out."
That is not where the balance changes can from. They came from data which included a much wider view of the game with lots of different endgame content.
Comments
This thread was always about ST because it originated after the uproar on TOMM statistics. The Thaum's didn't deserve an AOE nerf so they are not in the wrong for complaining about it.
The dev team posted the changes here and asked for feedback. Players told them that they are nerfing Thaum for no reason and instead of nerfing arcanist ST some other way (which apparently is only nerfed by 5%), they start bug fixing the whole of Thaum and in the process, completely Hamstering all other classes that have been waiting desperately.
So none of the playerbase is at the wrong here, the dev's however..... You need to start by increasing warlock and fighter ST dps and then move to arbiters and barbs. Mod 18 apparently won't save you from your peril from the looks of it.
Soul puppet needs a rework - too much relies on something that does a very small amount of damage, is uncontrolled, and can be killed, it also cannot deal Combat Advantage damage which is a really stupid issue.
Soul sparks needs a rework - just bad design, at least on the Hellbringer side, better for Soulweaver but needs improvement, half the content does not let us generate these, its like a cleric or a paladin having 0 Divinity Regen, VERY crippling.
Curse synergy/Curse consume needs a rework, its too punishing for little gain.
Dailies are weak, and we have ZERO action point gain anywhere, no feats no class features, nothing, this is a double whammy, Tyrannical Curse split damage has been bugged since preview, and does not scale with armour penetration OR accuracy, meaning instead of a 15% damage transfer, its closer to 3%
The majority of class features are rubbish, so you just end up getting pigeon holed into everyone using the same ones
Creeping death is either - Bugged, and does not stack like its supposed to( like it de PRE Mod16) or if it was intentionally designed this way for Mod16 that person is a clown, what is the point in a DoT that is constantly overwritten so never does any damage?
And these are not even the whole list, so ye, its gonna take time and a rework in places
However, some things NEED to be changed by Mod18 release in my opinion, and these little magnitude bumps are just not enough, and in the most part, badly thought out, Cough dreadtheft Cough
1. - Fix Eldritch Blasts 3rd hit, it is supposed to deal double magnitude as AoE, THATS THE WHOLE DAMN POINT of this at will.
2. - Fix Tyrannical Curse Split damage - should not have to wait 10months for a simple fix like this
3. Enable the soul puppet to deal Combat Advantage, its a glorified companion, and they deal CA damage, hell even artefact summon monsters deal CA damage......
4. Remove the AoE penalty from Fiery bolt, This has to be the only AoE ability in the game, that suffers a 50% damage reduction. i mean really? it does not even hit hard to start with. if it did 350 magnitude to the main target and 175 as AoE? then sure, but 200 to the main target and 100 AoE is a joke
5. Change lesser curse damage to 40magnitude. - Lesser Curse damage is a joke - 12 magnitude over 8 seconds? really? 3 magnitude every 2 seconds? this is the defining feature of the warlock, and it deals least than 1% of our damage, it does so little in fact it barely registers on ACT
Do these 5 things by m18 launch and you might convince the warlock players to stick around for longer, waiting for a proper redesign of things, i mean these are hardly comprehensive changes, but they need doing, like... 7 months ago
Wizard
Chaos Magic: Activates extremely rarely. Often, throughout the entire fight with the boss does not
activate even once. In addition, not all bonuses from this skill work. Alternate ability (Iced Lightning)
is useless. Doesn't match any builds.
- Rapid recovery: Gain 100% Cooldown Recovery Rate for 5s. And in practice it gives 0% Cooldown Recovery
Rate for 5s.
- Repel: Repel charges 0.09% AP. It is almost 10x less than other skills.
- Directed Flames: Smolder now deals 75% of its total damage instantly when applied but no longer deals
damage over time. And in practice smolder deals 50% of its total damage instantly when applied but no
longer deals damage over time.
- Arcane Singularity: The control effect is so weak that monsters easily run out of the area of skill. Even if a monster sucks, it does not fall in the center of the skill area, only where it managed to run.
Enhanced conductivity now only procs (+50mag) on the Lightning Enhanced Weapon Strike (+30 mag lightning damage), and not on the rest of our attacks (Maybe its always been this way?) after activating CotS.
Also, Nature's Envoy (after Forest Ghost) does not work on ranged at-wills.
Would it be possible for Nature's Envoy and Blade Storm (and perhaps Twin Blade Storm) to work on archer builds?
My Wizard Guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JezPmehRjvkrHQKwEJ9tGGesDuekj2mcfKiWxlx56ns/edit?usp=sharing
My Arbiter Cleric guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UZGOcQIMLCh5I4lrH63REK5YVsa3Kpk1hOyfic21z8k/edit?usp=sharing
In M16 combat would take forever, if build right, no one would die (which is why I ended up quitting the game for 4 months). In M17 it's very common to get killed in less than 2 seconds, especially if there is more than 1 opponent, and rogue and ranger will demolish anyone (which is why I'm about to quit the game for another 4 months). Rogues and Rangers can afford to build glass cannons because they can become "invisible" basically at-will, which is *the* best defensive ability in the game, hands down.
Note, I say "Invisible", because there is no counter check given to players to reveal "stealth-ed" opponents. In D&D it's near impossible to "Sneak" into a brightly lit room full of enemies. You would have to use Invisibility combined with a move silently check.
I don't know what caused the developers to make CA multiplicative with Critical Severity, while that might have been more appropriate before m16 when CAD was relatively low, and almost never went over 50% bonus, now it can go up to 100%, and I feel making it multiplicative at this point, broke a lot of balance that had been in place before. Even in PVE classes that can give themselves CA have a big advantage over those that can't in aoe situations.
Alternatively, reinstate the combat system from pre-Mod 16. They destroyed something that worked (and worked well), and replaced it with a broken mess.
What exactly do you mean?
For me, the only thing I miss is faster more fluid combat, quicker dailies ( but not too quick) and lower CDs on encounters.
I Do not miss buffing or life steal, it made content a joke where you could just stack up without moving ignoring everything and just bully through everything mindlessly.
So im interested, what do you think is lacking now from before, and why? what did it bring to the game "Fun" wise
And I mean for combat, not feat trees or boons or power points or any of that. Combat only
> I See this pop up a lot in videos and other posts about how amazing and fun pre Mod 16 combat was, and how it should be brought back, but no one ever actually states why they think it was better, or what specific features they miss and how its different to now.
> What exactly do you mean?
>
> For me, the only thing I miss is faster more fluid combat, quicker dailies ( but not too quick) and lower CDs on encounters.
>
> I Do not miss buffing or life steal, it made content a joke where you could just stack up without moving ignoring everything and just bully through everything mindlessly.
>
> So im interested, what do you think is lacking now from before, and why? what did it bring to the game "Fun" wise
> And I mean for combat, not feat trees or boons or power points or any of that. Combat only
I miss all the things you mentioned - both the ones you like, and the ones you dislike
Buffing was brilliant! It was what made DCs fun to play for me, and recovery was absolutely pivotal for that playstyle. (And for many other classes too.) My main - a GWF (I refuse to use the laughable new moniker slang) - was a beast, and lifesteal plus self-buffing allowed for the precise up-close-&-personal melee approach that class is *supposed* to have (and did have).
Ultimately it boils down to this for me: I enjoy the fruits of my labor, and in a game such as this, that absolutely means being able to steamroll all but the latest content solo once I'm BIS/near-BIS. Mod 16 obliterated that, and I've had no great desire to play since then.
I suppose it's not all bad, though. I've saved a lot of money, and added it to my stock portfolios instead, and the time sink that is MMOs being removed from my free time schedule means I've experienced many other more satisfying things.
So why do I still comment? Because this game did have a great & fun fast combat system, and it pains me to see well-put-together things destroyed - call it an aversion to vandalism. Also, I detest incompetence and bald-faced lies, and think neither should be rewarded nor go unmarked.
Anyway, I refuse to type it all out again.
Disheartening Strike (At-Will) . This At-Will is currently bugged. Its DoT does 50 magnitude instead of the 100 magnitude the skill states, and it only lasts 5 seconds instead of 10 seconds. SUGGESTION: revise the tooltip to actual, but add to the effect that if a target dies while under the effects of the DoT, the Whisperknife gains 5% Stealth. One of the biggest complaints i see about Whisperknife is that it has slow Stealth regen. Disheartening Stike is a single target skill that deals less damage than any other at will. This would give it welcome utility as a support at-will.
Cloud of Steel (at-will): This skill is rarely used by Rogues and does poor damage. Versus a single target, Shuriken Toss deals more damage. SUGGESTION: raise the damage increase to 5% per stack. It is tough to stack and can only really occur versus bosses... the extra 25% damage will not make it a preferred at-will, but at least it could then be useful to Whisperknives with a lot of range damage bonus.
*** These two at-will changes would NOT increase damage of either paragon. Right now the skills are garbage. Changing them would make them viable alternative options. ***
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
I think one problem that we have is a very limited selection of mostly very weak at-wills, and then you can only have 2 slotted at any given moment. So we have 3 encounters that mean something, but we can only use them once per encounter, usually (hence "encounter power"). Then, we are left poking at monsters with straws. One problem I have with wizard and rogue atm is a lack of good aoe at-wills. Barbarians have a really good aoe at-will. Sure you have chilling cloud on thaum and shuriken toss on wk, but they are lack luster or slow to affect multiple targets, or have weird animations and/or slow cast times. However, thaum is being turned into a trash mob clearing path which is what whisperknife is imho, and I really don't see a point in spending a loadout for trash clearing, an aoe build for fights that last longer than 10 seconds will do just fine at trash clearing, BUT, lack of aoe at wills on assassin and arcanist.
I think we need a larger selection of at-wills that are slightly more powerful, and each paragon path should have a good aoe at-will that feels natural, like Rangers and Barbarians have.
Another problem I have is these artifact sets that clearly benefit one class over all others, rangers and the daily activation artifact sets. Daily use is too sporadic for these sets to really be useful in any boss fight last more than 2 minutes, which is why orcus set will probably still be bis for everything except CN, the new zone and boss fights that end in 30 seconds. I also don't like that you release a set that is only useful in the new zone, which means it might be bis there, for a mod, then in all likelihood we will have to switch again in m19 and have 3 different sets to switch out in order to be maximally effective in various content. Seems like a scam. You (the developers) could have made orcus set obsolete in m16 simply by removing the dependency of using dailies from arcturia's and trobraind's sets and adjusting the damage bonuses accordingly.
A rogue without DS? Well, OK, the smoke bomb is a nice thingy, but I really feel that switching to a paragon without DS is gutting the fun out of the class.
So, regardless the changes, as long as Whisperknife does not have DS, it is not tempting. For me, of course.
From my understanding these nerfs are a result of data collected from ToMM runs, and I just want to make sure that you (the devs) are looking at it in detail and not just as a whole. For example, not just "Arcanist is doing X% more damage than other classes on average, so lets nerf some of arcanist's class features to balance it out."
The reason I am concerned is because I've been doing LoMM runs all day on my Wizard who has 190k power, in groups not consisting of another Wizard/Thaum, and all about the same power levels. I use common builds that are widely accepted as being FotM builds, and I consistently do NOT out perform others, if anything, I'm lagging behind, haven't been in first place paingiver at all today (even a soulweaver warlock using a bunch of tenebrous did more damage than I).
I want to point out again that these are groups not consisting of a Thaumaturge in the group and this is important. Smolder has been bugged since even before mod 16, and in mod 16 now there is directed flames. The bug is this, if I am on Arcanist, and another Wizard is on Thaum and applies smolder, every time I apply chill, I proc his smolder and directed flames doing damage for myself, as Arcanist.
I just want to make sure that this bug isn't the reason why you guys are nerfing arcanist so much, when in reality you should be fixing that interaction with smolder, chill, and other wizards.
The problem was that buffs were multiplicative with each other. So a GF at 500% effectiveness from buffs was able to simply double that effectiveness to 1000% (for his own damage). Double damage skill just added a whopping 500% of relative increase. That was the only flaw. Normally you would expect a skill like that at 500% effectiveness to bump it to 600%, which is only a 20% relative increase.
Similarly Lifesteal was based on the amount of damage dealt. Literally 100% of the damage you're dealing. Even DoTs were dealing >10k hits easily. Again normally you expect only a portion of damage dealt would be used.
Thanks for bringing this up again and reminding me of better times!
Personally I don't mind more methodical, strategic and slower combat if done right. If not I wouldn't play turn based games. But as you said the fluidity worked great, to a point were the combat was faster and more engaging then many other MMOs or games in general that were made with primarily flashy looking action combat in mind.
Even now for Hellbringer and Dreadnought instead of lowering cooldowns a bit they just increase magnitude of everything. Hopefully with Mod 19 they will be able to take a look into this and are able to make it a bit more fluid again.