State of the (low level) Game in 2.0. (new edits 8-10-2015)

I always have trouble getting to 11 before Merveil, and even then 2 cold rings is not enough for her (don't even get me started on adding fire damage to that fight in this sig). I find it dumb that you need if not capped then close to capped resist against her. It seems to me that Merveil is intended to teach new players that resists are important, but new players will most likely have not found any gear with resist on it by that point. This is if they player is playing slow, let alone racing and trying to rush past everything and not do the optional quests/side zones.

I also HATE losing points because I died in the race. It basically makes my last X number of hours playing wasted and makes me not want to play the game. Players keep their points in the void races so why not in main game races?

I have also given up on leveling as melee in this game. Not only is it super dangerous until the Fortify support gem comes in late Act 3 (which is almost mandatory on a main skill), it is super weak with the weapon nerfs and the whetstone recipe nerf. Why was the whetstone recipe nerfed anyway? That only affected melee as casters are and have been better off with the +1 recipe rather than the spell damage recipe.

Overall, hope that these changes are made as leveling is a pain right now and racing is still in a bad state. I hope some of the devs see this and take these changes in to consideration. I love this game and I like racing but I want to be able to enjoy playing races.

i agree with the edit that ghost dont belong in signature races. i was playing templar with fire spells earlier this season and arsonist ghost went into fidelitas. this alone made me lose 45 sec for no reason and id say arsonist fidelitas/weaver or any other boss is unkillable as melee in this type of sig

Great post, I agree with most of it, just have a few comments on the following:

- Accuracy: Racing as a Duelist, I can't say that accuracy is ever a concern. Sure it's annoying to miss every 5 hits or so, but not a big deal. This is based on dual-hand cleaving which is pretty fast, so the consequences of missing occasionally are low. Of course later on in a race Duelists get tons of accuracy and then it is entirely a non-issue. As a Marauder, I can see accuracy being a much bigger issue in the early game. If you are not reliably 1-shotting with 2-handed ground slam early on, then low accuracy is probably quite brutal. I think it would be more interesting to buff ground slam (directly or indirectly) instead of messing with accuracy, though. Making GS hit harder, so you are either 1-shotting or missing, sounds good.

- Leap Slam changes: I'm actually happy that Leap Slam is no longer the best movement AND damage melee skill, partly because I'm sick of it after 10 seasons of racing, but also because it was just too good. In its current form, Leap Slam still has a lot of uses. Given the choice I'd prefer that Flame Dash's movement abilities get toned down instead of restoring the old Leap Slam.

- Armor movement penalty: the penalty for str and str/int chests is currently -5%, and -3% for any chest requiring dex. Admittedly it is a little weird that this encourages Duelists to wear pure strength chests while Marauders will tend to fare better in a str-dex chest (or no chest)!

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unsane wrote:

Pet peeve: large posts that are edited with no indication of what was edited.

Those of us that have read it, don't really want to re-read it and try and figure out what has changed.

Added in a marker for where the edit occurred, since it is just additional sections added as I read or think or are reminded of them.

I agree that Ghosts have to be removed. I had to logout 4 or 5 Times these Season because a Ghost had empowered a Pack, where i had no chance to run away . Some Ghosts with their mods are just crazy. I died once at the Signature Race at Fidelitas, because he was so fast. I died in 2 sec, too fast for me to logout. I don´t know why a Ghost can spawn near a objective in Races at all...


While Racing as Shadow, i barely hit level 11 before Merveil. I kill her with no resists 95% of the races. But for a Melee, this is literally suicide. And a Scale Doublet before Weaver would be a nice life saver. Espacially in Races with Extra Damage like Emberwake, a better Chest would make a Huge difference. Most people didn´t have the exakt level to wear these Armour Pieces when they need to. I hit 17 most likely right before Northern Forest, but i kill Weaver at ~15/15 and a half, so i have to wear outdated Gear instead.

cheers

i think movement penalty should scale somehow at lower levels. -2%, -3%, -5%, -8% ...based on armor levels or something.

i agree with ghosts being removed, they dont seem to add anything noteworthy to racing. i did get fid in sins ghosted once, that was pretty insane.

i agree with the majority of the post, but ive said it before and ill say it again. i think we should tread carefully in regards "to we play this game x and use this strategy therefore the game should cater to that type of play and strategy" proposals. which is why i personally didnt agree with the give everyone free dex amulet argument. while i agree that res rings should be lowered in lvl requirement (by 1), i think if you were to look at statistics MOST players aka the nonelite/racers hit lvl 11 before merv, probably way before.

there should be some risk and consequence to playing that fast and at that echelon of skill/knowledge. ya you get to merv before lvl11 but so what? you also want to get spoon fed the fight? there is a price to pay for implementing x strategy that pushes the limits of progression. Now you need to think about the fight differently and cant steam roll merv with 2 cold rings.

-HeaT

Playing fixed seed Emberwake and getting a ghosted Blasphemous Weaver and getting vuln+silenced by his EK as a caster sure is fun. Trying to fight it, realizing it's basically impossible and will take an absurd amount of time, nearly dying and logging out, then needing to run all the way from the Western Forest waypoint through the entire Weaver's Chamber's again. Sure does make me wanna play Emberwake more.

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Signature Races are Fixed Seed events, meaning that each participant plays through the same area layouts. In addition, all Signature races in a Season will use the same layout.

Yeah, sure they do. If ghosts are gonna be part of fixed seed then they need to be as fixed as the terrain, and not just spawn as random types in random places throughout the zone. They can kill a run (super dangerous boss in a boss forcing zone reset), slow it down a lot (less dangerous ghost in boss), or just give you a bunch of free items by passing through some easy blues.

Strongboxes have the same problem, they seem to be guaranteed to spawn a certain type of box (eg. Jeweller's in City of Sarn this season), but they spawn in totally different places with different mods. They aren't as big of a deal because they are not literally required to progress.

However, when one racer randomly finds a box along their path and gets easy/highly beneficial mods (additional items or rare items, 3 packs of magic monsters for exp with some danger), and another gets something incredibly dangerous and unrewarding (ice nova, freezes, etc), then there ends up being a huge RNG disparity even more extreme than Exiles, which were removed long ago for similar concerns.



I think the level requirements of the movement skill gem's level 1 version should be bumped down a level or two. It's very common for experienced players to kill Brutus at levels 7-9 (even casually playing in a non-race), yet the movement skill gems require level 10 to use. It's clear to me that most of the movement skills have always been designed to be first used in Prisoner's Gate because of the obvious huge shortcuts over cliffs. Now that all the act 1 zone levels are slightly lower, I find myself not even using Leap Slam/Flame Dash/Blink Arrow until Cavern of Wrath.

You could make the argument that there's a tradeoff in strategy between farming the earliest zones slower and getting early levels, versus quickly running to Brutus super under-leveled and killing him slower, then needing to get levels in Prisoner's Gate before you can use your movement skill. But I think the reality is that simply running as fast as possible while only killing what is convenient is ultimately the best racing strategy anyway. Every zone is so low level now that running into experience penalties is difficult.

As a new racer i have tried to include all classes in my adventures..

playing cleave vs playing magma orb or totem in most cases is really underwhelming.. how can i a new player hope to compete with a caster with the same EXP level as me..
(i am not trying to compete with the "top tier" races just trying to have fun with each character that i decide to race on..)

so i agree with the changes proposed a marauder should be able to do as well as any of the caster classes.

with that being said there is something to be said about maybe changing a few starter gems might be in order indeed

Salutes
sirvneomik
twitch.tv/sirvenomik

I'd love to see torment ghosts removed, I've had one point I was on my way to get the Spider Boss on act 2 but instead he got pocessed by a torment spirit which I didn't catch on my sight and before you know I got litteraly one-shotted, imo they shouldn't be allowed on any boss room with that kind of RNG on any non-eternal race

I agree with the resist rings and i'd love to see less goats on climbs and more friendly monsters like the fire-dogs/skeletons or add something else instead of 90% goats and 10% easy monsters

Personally I struggle usualy on getting lvl 11 before Merveil to get my art of gladiator to wear my chest for the ignore movement speed or/and resist ring if nessasary

I'm a new racer and ofcourse i do make mistakes here and there but i had to watch streams/vods of Mors/helmannn etc to get used to the locations in Descent/other races, they're not friendly races for newer people like me, for example the best area's to enter in descent

sorry for the bad english

Can't comment on the melee part, but getting a boss possessed by a ghost is beyond retarded. In the last sig I got fidelitas + rogue ghost which made a pretty intense and unfair fight.

Now on Descents, why the fuck the brute can pull you with his spear attack through a frost wall ?