Season 2 Balance Feedback - Week One

My few cents:

LLD:
- Again stun need to be nerfad badly by at least 50%.
- Skills like firestorm, cyclone, molten strike, kinetic blast, barrage imo are too strong right now, especially first 2.
- Molten shell should have cooldown that start after explosion, this skill can oneshot 1,6k life with 76 fire res(happend to me once) and can be recast immidetly.
- Imo chill time is too high(it is refreshed almost instantly with some bulids like ice shot, fp ect). Its one of the strongest mechanic that gives you tons of control especially with temp chains
- I agree that elemental eq should be nerfad a little. Its impossible for any mid tier players to overcap res by 50(and for casters that are using it its like insta win) and really hard for high tier players to do so. Maybe -40 res in pvp?
+ Much more diversity than season one
+ Flask change - without it casters would be meta by far
+ 2,5 sec Clever construction duration

HLD:
- Damage overall should be tooned by like 30% or so. Even though all these hld events are definitely fun its a little too much about 0,5 sec kills.
- Explosive arrow dmg should be tonned even more than 30% its by far most dominant skill and cheap to bulid.

offtopic:
Fix crasing from ctf and bring back that event!

Purely a self interested post here...

- would it be possible to reduce Elreon's Mti-Mod craft for LLD (maybe give a similar version to Leo)?

Reason is LLD is the entry point to PvP and gearing is a barrier. Many casuals who are interested in LLD would find it difficult to justify spending 2ex in order to multi craft a single item.

Lowering the cost for LLD might help make it more accessible.

Cheers.

"

kuan999 wrote:

My few cents:

LLD:
- Again stun need to be nerfad badly by at least 50%.
- Skills like firestorm, cyclone, molten strike, kinetic blast, barrage imo are too strong right now, especially first 2.
- Molten shell should have cooldown that start after explosion, this skill can oneshot 1,6k life with 76 fire res(happend to me once) and can be recast immidetly.
- Imo chill time is too high(it is refreshed almost instantly with some bulids like ice shot, fp ect). Its one of the strongest mechanic that gives you tons of control especially with temp chains
- I agree that elemental eq should be nerfad a little. Its impossible for any mid tier players to overcap res by 50(and for casters that are using it its like insta win) and really hard for high tier players to do so. Maybe -40 res in pvp?
+ Much more diversity than season one
+ Flask change - without it casters would be meta by far
+ 2,5 sec Clever construction duration

HLD:
- Damage overall should be tooned by like 30% or so. Even though all these hld events are definitely fun its a little too much about 0,5 sec kills.
- Explosive arrow dmg should be tonned even more than 30% its by far most dominant skill and cheap to bulid.

offtopic:
Fix crasing from ctf and bring back that event!

What i am saying is from the very top hld on standard-experience I got;

In lld people tend (imo) to die as fast, or even faster than in HLD. I have good gear and can't kill anyone in. 5seconds on any of my chars.

OT fix the crashes in blitz before trying to balance something, how about that?

Flicker Strike as an engagement/gap-closing skill seems to be much more powerful than disengagement skills in LLD. Smoke Mine, for instance, requires you to lay a mine AND maintain line of sight for the tradeoff of allowing instant movement. There doesn't seem to be a ton of counterplay available to someone that can instantly warp to you and start stacking the stun/freeze/curses. It might be less of a problem in swiss-style events where you can mitigate status effect more easily, but it's still instant movement directly to the feet of your opponent.

When it comes to balancing pvp a philosophical decision has to be made for event types as well.

Blitz and Swiss are so different that there are builds that shine simply because of the right potions.

For Blitz, Jades, Diamonds, Granites and Taste of Hate are suuuuuper powerful but very close to useless in Swiss. Some builds and skills synergise so well with these flasks that it changes them completely. The most obvious ones are the kinetic blasters which do well only because of Diamond flasks.

For Swiss the potions pretty much always include at least 4 health potions depending on the build a bit. Especially with the damage nerfs introduced in the recent patches this makes it so that the duels are long and potion management becomes key.

Swiss tournies are all about the potions to be honest. This is why I dislike the fact that sometimes you can deduce your opponent and sometimes you cant. This fact can singlehandedly decide who wins the next game. There should be more consistency in knowing what your opponent is going to be so you could either try to fully counter your enemy with potions or you shouldn't be given any info about your opponent. The current format is not exactly optimal.

I would like to highlight firestorm is the only skill that is extremely good in both environments. I find it hard to believe dsfarblar would lose a single game in the coming swiss tournies (unless hes extremely unlucky or makes big mistakes!).

I would suggest focusing on Swiss balance. Swiss tournies are supposedly the most competitive of all the events and that is where the focus of balance should always be, just like Greendude and some others already stated. And yet again, puncture has been nerfed enough. There are already so many ways to counter it.

More CTF match definitely

In my opinion balance should focus on swiss events not blitz for reasons already pointed out.

- LLD stuff below

One of the things bothering me is how easy it is to stun with skills that hit multiple times per cast/attack - tornado shot, firestorm and molten strike. In my opinion the more times a skill hits the less stun duration it should have.

Another thing only partially related to balance is fix the ilvl of leo's items! Almost nobody is using/crafting theese items right now (basing my claim on how many leo's vs how many elreon's items are for sale in torment/bloodlines), and I think this is limiting the meta.

Elreon's jewellery is so dominant I can't imagine doing a build without atleast 1 such item, 2 whenever possible. Mana cost for most skills is balanced for PvE and nobody is running with 5/6 linked items by the time they are level 28 so maybe you should review mana cost and how neccessary it is to have elreon's jewellery in LLD.

Other than that I am pretty happy with the balance, wanders are ok, ts/punc is ok, sword melee is a bit too dominant compared to anything else melee which is well known but doesn't concern me too much. Not sure about trappers, the 2.5 sec trap immunity was a good call, some people pointed out the immunity should be made in sync with trap reload time which is a good suggestion (2.5 -> 3 seconds), in my opinion trappers still have one of the most OP keystones (high explosives).

The requirement of the corrupted item should be raised to the respective level of the curse it provides.

i.e. lvl10 temporal chains on hit gloves should have a lvl requirement of 46 to wear.

Not only is it incosistent, but one more thing that adds to the perpetuation of the pvp scene to be dominated by the rich people.

Ladders don't represent the true standing of builds. Most of the top players never queue at the moment. Right now, people only queue to test or improve their build/play. And the more you queue the higher you stand on the ladder. Like, I haven't fought top caster/trappers even once and I know I'll lose every single match against them.

"

Pyrokar wrote:

The requirement of the corrupted item should be raised to the respective level of the curse it provides.

i.e. lvl10 temporal chains on hit gloves should have a lvl requirement of 46 to wear.

Not only is it incosistent, but one more thing that adds to the perpetuation of the pvp scene to be dominated by the rich people.

This is ridiculous. You can buy curse on hit gloves for anywhere from 5 chaos to 3 exalt, which is very attainable for even the most casual players.