Breach As a Core Game Mechanic

"

Nephalim wrote:

Oh good, I look forward to playing this incredibly over tuned game with outrageously bad 6000 life builds.

"

Qarl wrote:

Spoiler

Breach has been a very successful league. It had a great launch, and continued with high player engagement. Players have also been very vocal about wanting to keep Breach in some form.

When we look at Breach we can see it has the right recipe for being added into the game in a variety of ways. It has world interactable encounters that players can come across, and these open up the rest of the league's content (as well as the dangerous opening to another dimension that the monsters and Breachlords flow in from).

This leaves us the questions of how should it be available. Randomly in the world, or only from Maps? From Zana? As a sextant mod? By some other means? How common should it be?

When we ask these questions, the general answer we have is, we don't need to decide this all just yet, due to the nature of the 2.6.0 league. We'll try a few changes there, and see how they play out, and then work out the detailed plan of Breach integration for when 3.0.0 comes out.

A few things have been worked out. We know that breaches are almost certainly going to be more rare and we will flatten out the odds of the various Breach realms. Uul-Netol and Chayula breaches will be more common relative to the other lord's realms, but will still be rare. Boss spawn chances have been considered, and will likely be increased based on the rarity of breaches. In the 2.6.0 league this change won't be in as a numerical change, rather, this will be handled through a league feature. If it works out well, we may need to incorporate that in the future also.

The monsters, lords and general mechanics of the breaches will not be changing in any dramatic ways.

One of the big successes of the Breach league was the new uniques that were introduced. These were designed for impact on gameplay and on build choices. There were some definite hits in the Breach unique line up. We won't be doing strong changes on the balance of these uniques, but will focus most rebalance efforts on older league-specific uniques.

We had been considering a nerf to Hand of Wisdom and Action. As 2.6.0 will not be getting changes to damage-over-time mechanics (and damage bonuses applying in two ways to some damage over time), we are likely to hold off on major nerfs to this item. While the builds with Hand of Wisdom and Action are incredibly strong, they provide a non-degen counterbalance to the major degenerative builds. As builds relying on damage-over-time will be affected by mechanics changes in 3.0.0, the Hand of Wisdom and Action will likely be nerfed along with them.

We are also still working out our plans for Energy Shield and related mechanics (and Keystones). Changes to this defence affect Hand of Wisdom and Action builds significantly, and there may not need to be a nerf to Hand of Wisdom and Action if ES and Vaal Pact based build-options are changed significantly.

We are very pleased with how Breach league came out, and are glad players have responded to it well. We look forward to seeing players interacting with Breaches, in some form, in the upcoming 2.6.0 league, and going forward from 3.0.0 onwards.