On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

Power siphon really dislikes the change to power charges.

Frenzy charges seem meaningful in their previous state, reworking them to be a niche for attacks will reduce build diversity by giving casters less reason to traverse the skill tree to seek frenzy charges from the ranger/shadow/duelist trees.

While you may think " we want to reinforce the identity of our classes " you are in fact making skill tree builds stale and less diverse.

What about giving frenzy charge +1% more attack and cast speed or similar ( while reducing the other bonuses)?

Quick question, when you guys get worried about "vocal comunity" is that an expressive number? because i think people like me, that doesnt even bother posting anything on reddit but still reads it, are a majority by far, people don't go to reddit to thank you for your work (except in rare ocasions) they just go there to flame everything, change in general is good for the game, makes players have to think again on how they'll aproach the game. I liked changes so far, maybe the shock and chill changes have to get more work into it, kinda doesnt make sense to take 50% of one's hp to have an ailment on it, it would die on the next attack anyway but you can't simple allow everyone to shock every boss with ease, so it's kinda hard. As for frenzy and power charges i really like the changes, we are in a clear speed meta and casters stack a LOT of attack speed and will continue to pursue frenzy charges for attack/cast speed, having the option to not play that meta and just go for power charges and getting dmg out it for non crit builds is really nice and opens up new possibilities. (sry about bad english is not my first language)

edit: typos

Here's my take on the changes. Sorry if this is just a repeat of something said earlier, but there are quite a few pages already.

Charges

I like the idea that charges are bonuses for everyone, regardless of the caster/attacker archetype.
Power = be stronger
Frenzy = be faster
Endurance = be tougher


Why shouldn't a marauder get to hit harder when he has a power charge? Is it not a boost to your "power"?

I think the changes in beta take away the general utility of Power/Frenzy charges by restricting them to particular archetypes. My suggestion is to embrace the theme of "stronger, faster, tougher":

Power: Take the "more damage" mod from frenzies and put it here. Nerf the crit chance a bit more. If you're worried about it being too abusable for crit builds, make the "more" multiplier stack additively with crit multiplier rather than multiplicatively (e.g. a build with 500% crit multi and 50% more from power charges would do 550% more damage with crits as opposed to 750% more). Power doesn't need to necessarily be about crit. It should be able to benefit non-crit and DoT builds as well.

Frenzy: Keep the "more damage" mod off of it. I'm fine with that change. Maybe buff the speed aspects of it. Cast speed and attack speed. And since the theme is "be faster", why not throw in a movement speed bonus as well?

Endurance: These are in a pretty good place already, but it might be cool to allow characters to increase their maximum elemental resistances through endurance charges. Maybe +1% max ele rez while at max endurance charges. Maybe +0.25% max ele rez per charge. My motivation for this suggestion is that a well-geared character is already going to have maxed-out elemental resistance, which makes the elemental resistance bonus from endurance charges useless to them. It would be nice if there was still some kind of useful elemental aspect to endurance charges for endgame characters.

Chill and Shock

I like that you've made it easier to achieve conditional bonuses for status ailments, but it seems you've overnerfed the ailments themselves. As someone else pointed out, you get the most bonus from shock when you least need it. If you're able to two-shot an enemy, that 50% more damage taken from shock thanks to the first hit does not add any value. Conversely, if you're fighting the shaper and are only able to inflict 0.1% of his health per hit, the bonus from shock is not even there. I think you could mitigate these opposite extremes by making the percent-increase to damage taken be a flat amount, much lower than 50%, and allow shocks to stack to some degree. For example, maybe the shock amount could be 5%, stackable up to 4 times. Maybe bosses resist that debuff to some extent (I think they already do?). Anyway, I think this would make shock more of a useful utility.

For chill, I think there should be a minimum amount of slow that is greater than 0%. Maybe just 5% or 10%, but something enough to make chilling meaningful. Again, conditional bonuses for "against chilled enemies" are all well and good, but against a big boss, the current changes make chill itself a non-factor.

..

Okay so here is my feedback about charges:

I tend to generally agree that crit cap should not be possible or be extremely hard and demanding to reach in terms of skill node and item investment. Assassin made and is still making crit capping way too easy.

If frenzy charges are supposed to work with attacks only then make power charges crit chance for spell only. Id also suggest to lower power charge crit chance even more to about 20% per charge but buff spell damage per power charge. this also kinda balances Lord Skyforth the OP.

About frenzy charges: I think a MORE multiplier in damage be it attack or general is TOO BIG for a charge bonus. We cant have proper frenzy charge generation on hit because frenzy charges with their more damage multipliers are imbalanced compared to the bonuzs of the other charges. Make it 20% attack damage and 5% attack speeed for each frenzy charge then its fine. This also balances overpowered raider.

Currently raiders gets with optimized build 10 charges = 40% MORE damage this is like getting Aspekt of Carnage from berserker without any drawbacks instead you also gain elemental alignment immunity at full frenzy charges that are generated on hit against uniques and bosses for raider only. The more multiplier on the frenzy charges has to go! This automatically balances raiders a bit more and allows to introduce some opportunity unique items that provide frenzy charges on hit without a deadly drawback the red trail.

Regarding Tinkerskin. Give it an additional mod that allows "the new" increased damage mod from frenzy charges damage to apply to traps. Problem solved.

Here is a comment of a member of the non-vocal community :
I love the changes to power charges.

I like the changes you've made to charges but I'm not sure now's the right time to do it. There are several uniques and skills that have anti-synergy with themselves after the changes, so maybe save this for patch 3.1 or something like that because you've already got a full plate with 3.0.

Ever since frenzy charges got the ridiculous "More Damage" mod everyone who can has been using them, there's nothing versatile about it, it's just something you always use. I'd be happy to see these changes in the future.

I normally stay part of the silent majority of people who enjoy your game and think you're doing a good job. There are so many ridiculous comments in this thread I thought I should chime in for the sake of sanity.

All of the changes you've made so far in beta seem spot on- and I'm excited for the diversity of new options they will create. I think you have gotten really good at not overnerfing things, and many of the things people are claiming are unplayable will definitely still be used, if not still the strongest option.

The frenzy charge change seems a little sad, as I always like the diversity of these charges, but understand if you want to create more identity and draw out different bonuses from them. Is there a way to just make frenzies about speed and not damage? Amp the attack / cast speed up and remove the damage?

This game has gotten better with every patch. Keep on doing what you're doing.

its okay

I'm personally the last one to cry about changes, I actually really liked most of what you guys did in beta even though there were some nerfs to my current builds plans. Buffs happen, nerfs happen, it's all good.
And then we have situations like this. You drop the bomb without any notice, one unfortunatelly looking completely thoughtless.

1. Chill and shock are plain useless in current form as many has noticed before me. Earlier I was considering, do i want to go crit and use it to shock enemies or go ele focus. Now i know that not using ele focus will be plain worse. I'll better use vlt for what it's even worth. Chill just doesn't even matter.
2. Vinktars lost some utility in form of mana leech,shock is weaker though ok, but most important thing, being life leech stayed. Wtf ggg? wtf?
3. When it comes to charges,eh,seriously, who complained about charges? Right now they are getting to closely tied to main archetypes, lowering our possibilities. Just unnecessery. If nerfes were needed(but were they really? None of them are broken good and too easily available. Only one ascendancy can easily keep up frenzy without need to use shitty namelock skill and if ascendancy is not enough cost, i don't know what is) they could be done in other way.
4. Why even kicking assassin? Right now in most cases i'll probably go ascendant assasin and feel like it's advantageous. And that's something.

I'm not against these changes. But rather against how poorly them seem to be implemented. None of these help any build that would really require that, but hit builds that didn't need to be hit.
Also there's issue with droping these changes a week before you want to put it in live realm. If you did it with wave 2 maybe,it could be perceived as chance to test and discuss. Now people are happy that you didn't just inform us about such big changes in patchnotes.

Maybe you guys try to do to much, in too short time you're not able to meet. Maybe.
Maybe you have no idea how your game works. Maybe.
I don't know and so I don't want to condemn. All I know is that it looks, well, not good.