3.20 Balance Manifesto: Jewels and Ailment Mitigation

The changes all sound cool. I want to believe that they will be cool. I do worry about a couple of things:

- will this be the same thing as "removing filler crafts" from Harvest?
- if all the jewels are desirable, will this increase build homogeneity because everyone will be using all the good ones?

A year ago I wouldn't be questioning the execution, but now I am. I hope that this pans out well.

I'm not sure if I want to play the next league, with all the nerfs.

If you need a Unique Jewel, do you have to corrupt now every Jewel you find?

As usual, a lot more grinding:(

Problem: Players have too good loot drops in 3.19
Solution: Nerf (DELETE) unique jewels drop.
WTF
ANOTHER NERF WAVE? WHY YOU PUNISHING US?? FOR NOTHING!
[Loot Removed by Support]

Making stuff that was widely available rare doesn't end well unless, like last league, you included buffs to those things. I understand and empathize with the hesitation, but I don't see this ending well.

If this comment section is seen at all as feedback to be onboarded I'll simply say I highly disagree with that change. Take more time, consider the full breath of options and implement only after you're able to justify making them rarer.

PS: Apologies if this comes off sounding very preachy lol. But I've seen this pattern before, I can already tell it's gonna be an unpopular change. Again, I just highly implore you, to sit on this one. Don't make jewels a problem, they're inoffensive and can't solve the major issues of the game (certainly not if it's done like this).

#MakeCraftingGreatAgain
#MakeMeleeGreatAgain
#MakeWraeclastGreatAgain

These changes sound neat to me! Keep up the good work.
Only thing I feel unsure about is expanding mod pool on jewels, because it seems saturated enough to me already.

These are great changes, and I'm happy with them. I look forward to the rest.

I would appreciate it, if GGG could tease what happens to a few unique jewels. For example dead reckoning, rain of splinters and clear mind. This could make for good teasers and give us an idea, of what to expect.

Read ok. I suppose the devil is in the details and implementation.

Hey guys, back for some more sharing of a casual player's concerns.

While I understand that finding a certain rare jewel might make you feel excited to potentially try out a build around it, the opposite also applies - wanting to find certain build enabling uniques just feels more frustrating and buying them will be an even higher investment of time and currency. Hopefully the vendor and more deterministic options help offset that feeling, but I've read mosts comments and people have serious doubts. I think others have covered the points on mod cost-effectiveness and exclusive corrupt results quite well.

Another big concern I have with the builds I like the most - minion based - is that rarity won't likely be compensated in almost never used jewels. Remember Soul's Wick, anyone ? 'Cause even I almost never do, despite the cool aspects of the modifiers, it can't beat permanent spectres and could use a rework.

Balance-wise, spectres are in a really bad spot and could use improved scaling. Despite the few buffs to some golems, elementals and chaos are still quite inferior to physical ones. And it was said a few times already that there aren't unique/viable ways of building minions in general, not with the passive tree we currently have.

I doubt you'll consider bringing certain threshold unique jewels back, or even create new ones, but I'd like to see jewels bring proper investment to skills. For example, rather than just the primordial jewels we have now, there could be a new jewel to boost each golem's skillset (like making chaos golem's damage auras stack with a slight damage penalty, ice golems would have a cold DoT skill proc on crit, lightning golems could have a lightning counterattack like tempest shield, flame golems with fire tornados, and so on).

Also, please consider making defensive scaling on minions worthwhile via new items or masteries. Same concept review for counterattack skills, we're having to adjust our defenses with increasing mob power and mechanics, but the skills that are based on pure defensive scaling don't really follow that trend, being a tank shouldn't mean being passive and slow paced with low damage (and yes, I know there are items that scale damage off armor, I mean scaling the skills themselves and giving them proper identity).
Oh, and please don't forget Reaper. I think I can say the boost to ailments could use better refining, especially for bleeding.
Cheers !