Yeah the hammer of fate nerf was stupid, I routinely do more damage with my daunting light as an AoE attack then hammer of fate can do to a single target now. So my encounter power is now better damage then my daily? This makes no sense.
I've been trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but more and more I think they only did it to placate whiners in PvP about how overpowered it supposedly is. Nothing about this change makes sense in the context of PvE.
Moontouched does 10% healing for me on a CN run. The uptime will be cut to about 40% of what it currently is, so I can expect it will be doing ~4% healing after the change. The most significant difference however, is the loss of mitigation uptime. HG will only fill every other gap between astral shields. Before the constant mitigation made large pulls possible. Since every boss is essentially a "large pull" with infinite adds, I'm not sure what will fill the gap now.
You could feat Bastion and get a 10% resist buff that way. It'd also trigger Foresight so you'd probably be fine on the mitigation side. The dumb 10% heal decrease on Bastion makes that feat so hard to pick though.. and Bastion won't be always up either if you have to spam it during every shield downtime
So to update my feelings post patch, there is a lot of stuff I like. Most of my concerns regarding the changes aren't all that bad, and mobs seem to have been scaled as well. It is now quite viable in some cases to deal with the boss trash adds by killing them off instead of kiting them, makes the fights feel much less stupid.
That being said.. HOF still I don't get, perhaps with the changes it was doing way to much damage in context, but honestly it now feels pretty limp wristed, and the "trade off" in 15% ap gain seems really lackluster. If the AP gain were worse than I thought it might have felt better, but it's really only a sliver of an empty gem. Probably perception in that HOF AP gain will only ever be after using it so it's always a sliver in a mostly empty gem, but still it took a double whammy in reduction of damage and frequency of use, and the additional AP gain back IF you manage to use it to finish something off, doesn't really make up for the loss in relative damage, and yes it does feel like it's lost some of it's punch even with some of the balancing changes. Reducing it to balance with other changes made to bring it in line would be one thing, but that could have been done without the other change, which I think we got because they did actually nerf the damage even relative to other changes. I guess maybe it's more justifiable to use it in a group instead of a ground AE buff for everyone, but unless I'm gaining enough AP that I can put it in between ground AE's with little downtime, it'll be the group buff instead. PvP is probably where this hurt the most although it still seems to do a decent amount of damage... at least in the context of an encounter, but as a daily it now sucks compared to what else is available.
Comments
I've been trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but more and more I think they only did it to placate whiners in PvP about how overpowered it supposedly is. Nothing about this change makes sense in the context of PvE.
Kaylee Krankenwagen, level 60 GF | Tavandruil Wayfinder, level 49 GWF | Aldith Langley, level 51 HR
You could feat Bastion and get a 10% resist buff that way. It'd also trigger Foresight so you'd probably be fine on the mitigation side. The dumb 10% heal decrease on Bastion makes that feat so hard to pick though.. and Bastion won't be always up either if you have to spam it during every shield downtime
That being said.. HOF still I don't get, perhaps with the changes it was doing way to much damage in context, but honestly it now feels pretty limp wristed, and the "trade off" in 15% ap gain seems really lackluster. If the AP gain were worse than I thought it might have felt better, but it's really only a sliver of an empty gem. Probably perception in that HOF AP gain will only ever be after using it so it's always a sliver in a mostly empty gem, but still it took a double whammy in reduction of damage and frequency of use, and the additional AP gain back IF you manage to use it to finish something off, doesn't really make up for the loss in relative damage, and yes it does feel like it's lost some of it's punch even with some of the balancing changes. Reducing it to balance with other changes made to bring it in line would be one thing, but that could have been done without the other change, which I think we got because they did actually nerf the damage even relative to other changes. I guess maybe it's more justifiable to use it in a group instead of a ground AE buff for everyone, but unless I'm gaining enough AP that I can put it in between ground AE's with little downtime, it'll be the group buff instead. PvP is probably where this hurt the most although it still seems to do a decent amount of damage... at least in the context of an encounter, but as a daily it now sucks compared to what else is available.