On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

The biggest issue that the attack/spell damage charge changes made is that it is enforcing a dichotomy in a weird way.

In 2.6, the charges were divided between crit and non-crit damage. If you wanted more crit, you go power. More general damage, go frenzy. Both, go both.

What you've done with this change is made a different divide, crit spells vs. non-crit attacks. The main thing is that anyone that doesn't fit into these two categories has to either do both or waste stats. Both crit attacks or non-crit spells can't just invest in one without it feeling bad.

I think the more elegant solution would be to split the damage between the two. 2-4% damage per power and 2-4% per frenzy.(depending on whether you want the top end the same or not) With this, you're achieving your stated goals (give non-crit builds something to do with power charges, make frenzy charges less mandatory) but you're not enforcing this artificial dichotomy that you've made in wave 4. Instead, you've made a different divide: if you want crit chance- go power, if you want attack/cast speed- go frenzy. No one feels bad for missing out on stats because you paired them weirdly.

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The_Wuggly_Ump wrote:

personally i agree 100% with the assassin nerfs, i like the frenzy change, and i disagree with the current values/strength of shock and chill (which apparently y'all do too). what i don't like is the spell damage added to power charges - this seems to make building crit for spellcasters a better choice 95% of the time, which seems counter to the whole reason you nerfed assassin in the first place

Building crit = get as high crit chance and multi as you can as your primary way of scaling your damage. So either you mistyped or your definition of "building crit" is just inaccurate.
Because if you're not stacking crit as a spellcaster, you still want a decent crit chance (about 20% in most cases, depending on the spell, ascendancy and your choice of support gems) to proc Elemental Overload. Which is a must have for any non crit build.

Now, many if not most builds making use of EO used to rely on PCs to reach a decent crit chance in order to get as close to 100% EO uptime as possible. And for every single one of these builds, the change to power charges is a really nice buff.
Sure they might have to allocate a few more passives in crit chance nodes than they used to, but all in all you're basically looking at 60% more spell dmg rather than the old 40%, so yeah building crit? Not required at all.

Why would you make a chest piece for trappers based around frenzy charges, and then make it so that frenzy charges don't effect traps?

You can be as defensive as you want about your design decisions, but there's no getting around this design conflict. Left hand, please start talking to right hand.

I agree with the changes, as long as frenzy charges apply to ailments (ignite, poison, bleeding). It would have been nice to have a Unique Item to make frenzy charges viable to spellcaster too adding more diversity.

An idea could be a unique that says that power charges does not provide more spell damage and frenzy charges give more damage (as it was before the nerf).


We believe in you GGG, keep up the good work!

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Forestal_Revenge wrote:

I agree with the changes, as long as frenzy charges apply to ailments (ignite, poison, bleeding). It would have been nice to have a Unique Item to make frenzy charges viable to spellcaster too adding more diversity.

An idea could be a unique that says that power charges does not provide more spell damage and frenzy charges give more damage (as it was before the nerf).


We believe in you GGG, keep up the good work!

Whos ''we''?

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Arrogant wrote:

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Chris wrote:

While processing player feedback in preparation for 3.0.0, we found four requests that we could address simultaneously with our proposed charge changes:

• Nerf total crit chance available. It was getting too close to cap, too easily.
• Nerf the Assassin. This was frequently requested.
• Provide more uses for power charges on spellcasters (especially non-crit ones).
• Make it less mandatory for general damage dealers to invest in frenzy charges.

I'm sorry but I disagree with #4.

Making it less mandatory for general damage dealers to use frenzy charges does not mean make it impossible for spell casters to use frenzy charges.

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GGG_Neon wrote:

We will re-evaluate the Power and Frenzy charges situation over the weekend. It would be very useful to hear your explanation of why certain builds or items have been damaged (or improved too much) by the change, with specifics and explanations. Many of the posts so far have just said "X is ruined". While the initial feedback has been somewhat helpful, proper discussion and analysis from the community will really help us fine-tune (or abandon) this change.

Alright I'll start with an example. Bitterdream freezing pulse is a character I played once. Ice Bite is no longer useable for spell casters now as it no longer provides more damage from frenzy charges. That frenzy charge generation and more damage application made it worth while to use a very low spell damage 3 linked mace instead of a full 6 linked chest or staff. With Ice bite (assuming it still generates frenzy charges, I haven't checked) no longer being useful as a caster I can't see any reasonable usage for Bitterdream anymore.

Edit 3: Ok so I'm now seeing that Level 1 Icebite gives 2-3 added cold damage to spells per frenzy charge. That uhh... Doesn't really come out to 4% More damage that a frenzy charge would. It does add value yes, but not worth using bitterdream over better options.

So what are you arguing? Using a bitterdream isn't better than using a traditional 6linked weapon or chest. You should probably use better examples to argue your point that you dislike the change.

This reply is timely and helpful and I very much appreciate it being made.

The vocal minority in my eyes are "the game need to be harder" elitists, i like to see where they are coming from and it's almost always a mid 80s maybe one 90 for the challenge janky life build and a few they gave up on. Not trying to put them down but the ones crying about es and clearspeed are people that have never even tried it, their attitude makes them very upset when they see people doing better on things they dislike. Even Ziggy D said clearspeed wasn't an issue and he has AT LEAST 20 ggg dicks in and around his holes.

Isn't this a little bit too much and just outright pathetic?
Not talking about the changes, i can agree or disagree, doesn't matter.
I am talking about the communication part of the process.
And not about that it's bad or lacking but quite the contrary - it's too much.
There is a reason why when a dev team reaches a certain size in terms of playerbase, they end up setting up a PR department and focus just on the game it self.
This is bizarre when a bunch of reddit users can blow an elephant out of a fly and guess what - developers including the lead dev him self fall in line like toy soldiers trying to explain them selves.
It shouldn't be happening, it's not how you manage good communication, it's how you end up getting lawsuits and a whole trainload of entitled players.

It's still in beta, will remain so for the next week, plenty of times everyone has panicked (remember aura snapshotting? apparently removing it supposedly completely would have killed the game) and everything generally turned out fine.

But the amounts of entitlement players seem to absorb on almost monthly bases is just bizarre.
I don't mind devs being communicative in form of regular news updates, frequent devloggs, or something like that but bending over and opening up one's arsehole like a theater curtain whenever some random player throws a tantrum because apparently shaking up the known meta as a whole is like nuking a toddler right after setting it on fire, is way too much.

keep in mind also that the changes to chill/shock basically make chance to shock/freeze completely fucking pointless.
because again anything below the damage threshold is ignored. this means to reach the damage threshold you need to go crit, to which then you don't need "% chance to".

ailments and any threshold based on damage of % hp is always going to be fucked up. this is the root of the problem and it needs to be removed, just like it was for damage over time.