Delve Balance Changes

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jables wrote:

Should have nerfed QoTF too, just saying.

How many times do you want to nerf this poor item? Wasn`t "capped at 100%" and 240-380% eva down to 200-240% already more than enough? In fact compared to pre 3.1 Qotf is 100% pure bullcrap now!

Pretty good.

For me it seems like again the witches is doomed to be HP based and NOT casters.

None ES boost, none direct clean casting spells boost..

Why GGG not finally delete the Witches from the classes ?!

What's the difference between them and the Gladiators for instance ?!

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magicrectangle wrote:

Arc trap was not the most powerful build, but the power to cost ratio was easily the best of any build in 3.3.

More importantly, traps were just by far the best way to play arc. Having trap be dramatically better than self cast is a little silly, regardless of how it stacks up against higher budget builds. Self cast spells should be a viable option, and with trap in the condition it was in with 3.3, self cast was just strictly worse.

I'm optimistic about the compensating buffs to actual trap skills. Hopefully we'll see more trappers that use the actual traps, rather than just sticking a spell on a trap.

It had an ok cost ratio, but there are things better with similar cost rations none the less. The reason why it's being nerfed is because of how overplayed it was, despite the fact that it is by no mean the moist powerful build. GGG seems to not understand one thing and they seem to never understand this one thing. When they change something massively or make something new, it tends to be played a lot in that league but then one of two things happens. Either it is abandoned by most cause it sucks or it keeps being played that league cause it's good. Arc traps was the second, but come a new league the prevalence of this would have been massively decreased. There was no nerf needed just to ensure build diversity (granted it should be players who chose what they want to play, not GGG forcing players not to play certain things by making them trash).

Now I will also agree that playing Arc Trap is way better than playing selfcast Arc. But let's go to the crux od the issue here. For starters, playing Arc Trap will still be much better than playing selfcast Arc. In that nothing has changed other than Arc Trap now not being viable and because of overall nerfs that were made specificly to traps, no trab build is viable now! Second, Arc has always been a bad skill and it still is a bad skill. You can say whatever you like but it is bad, it doesn't clears fast enough as selfcast, it doesn't deals enough boss damage. It was always a trash skill and it still is a trash skill. If anything it was traps that made Arc worth playing at all!

You are hopeful for the compensation to traps. I am not, I'm am sure it will be terrible. Traps have always been treated very poorly by GGG and even now they were only viable because guess what, "GGG made a mistake". Go figure! All trap spells are ok but ok is not good. Ok is a meme build that you play when you don't care about the league anymore and you don't plan on doing high level content or play seriously in any way. Traps should be able to stand up there with the top tier builds. There are top tier self cast builds, top tier totem builds, top tier ranged and melee build, top tier minion build, even top tier mine builds. Why can't traps be a top tier build? Because GGG keeps treating traps like it has to be a meme. Heck they are even trying to make golems a serious build but traps? Nah, fuck traps!

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Delve Balance Changes

Trap Throw Time, Multitrap, Cluster Trap, Minefield
Traps and, to a much lesser extent, Mines, on certain skills were more powerful than we were comfortable with, invalidating other ways of using many skills. We've increased the throw time on traps and the damage penalty on Multi Trap Support and Minefield Support, while lowering the number of traps thrown by Cluster Trap by one. We'll be increasing the damage of trap skills and mine skills like Lightning Trap and Fire Nova Mine to compensate for this damage loss.

Arc trap was OP but weak skills like icetrap suffer from this type of adjustment.
Would be nice if traps were decent without playing sabo too.

new Caustic arrow is probably the only thing keeping me interested in playing right now.


Should have nerfed stat sticks

Should have nerfed elehit

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Delve Balance Changes

Trap Throw Time, Multitrap, Cluster Trap, Minefield
Traps and, to a much lesser extent, Mines, on certain skills were more powerful than we were comfortable with, invalidating other ways of using many skills. We've increased the throw time on traps and the damage penalty on Multi Trap Support and Minefield Support, while lowering the number of traps thrown by Cluster Trap by one. We'll be increasing the damage of trap skills and mine skills like Lightning Trap and Fire Nova Mine to compensate for this damage loss.

I don't understand the logic behind this nerf. It is clear Arc is the main culprit behind this as Arc eclipsed any other trap skill available, for lightning damage based build or otherwise. The issue with Arc traps was not truly in their damage output but clear speed and ease of use. Comparing Arc's ability to clear 2 screens of monsters by effortlessly tossing 1 or 2 sets of cluster traps to any other trap skill shows how much better Arc is. Again, it is not its damage potential but how easily it clears monster packs.

This huge damage nerf to traps (25% for Cluster traps alone), however, undermines those other skills rather than kills Arc. Arc will be still used because it has abundance of damage and it will still retain its excellent clearing speed. This nerf just increase gear requirements to bring Arc trap to end-game.

I also share the sentiment others have expressed that such significant nerfs to trap skills in next update after the one that make trap decent is disheartening. Most extreme outliers should be toned down but these adjustments should be more surgical rather than this blank carpet bombing GGG has used.

I wanted to make trapper as my starter in Delve league but it seems I will be picking totem build--it would still be Arc, just instead of traps it would be totem build.

I was about to buy Stalker support and Dreadforge support packs (I loved wings and weapon effect from Stalker but not the armor from the pack) but seeing these changes I will hold back. I might still buy Stalker support pack but certainly wont be buying both.

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Delve Balance Changes

Sunder
Sunder is a very powerful leveling tool that provides strong damage and great crowd clearing from a safe distance. We've left the damage intact but we've lowered the length of the rectangular damage area by 20%. Sorry, Sunderboi.

That makes absolutly no sense. Nerfing, cause player level with it ??? Giev these player other options. If you still want to nerf it, why not minus 20/40 % range at lvl 1, 0 % at lvl 20


Other Players get spellblock buff, Gladiator don't need it or benefit from it, cause ascendandy.


so RIP Gladiator-Sunder-Build - and this wasn't a meta build ...



The main point, archer builds wo clear 10 screens with one shot don't need a nerf?
Thats not balanceing, that's shit.

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Baron01 wrote:

This nerf just increase gear requirements to bring Arc trap to end-game.

That's the nature of almost every single nerf poe has ever seen. With mirror tier gear you can always play almost every build.

Some good nerfs in these notes, but also a lack of understanding of why the nerfs are needed, that leads to a failure to provide the necessary compensating buffs.

The Shield Charge nerf is great: having so many casters running around with Brightbeak is ridiculous (and I've done it myself). But, the reason why this happens is that the caster movement skills really suck, the witch area basically has no access to movement speed on the tree, and witch builds have no reason to path to movement speed nodes.

Flame Dash needs abandon the charge mechanic. Seriously, no ifs, no buts: a movement skill with charges is just not viable. I get that that means it needs other control mechanics. But there's several available. For example:
* Increase the mana cost dramatically; or
* Make the travel distance scale with elemental spell damage. (i.e. so inc spell damage and inc elemental damage both scale it); or
* Go the whole hog, and make flame dash require a wand or a sceptre.

The problem with Lightning Warp isn't that it's lousy at low levels, it's always lousy. This is, (a) it needs a three-link to be competitive with a bare leap slam, a four link to go zoom-zoom, and (b) Lightning Warp makes would make most sense both thematically and as the only real available option for summoners, but they are already socket starved.
I get that Lightning Warp is mechanically the most powerful move skill, together with Blink Arrow, and so needs some restriction.
- I would buff Lightning Warp so that it performs as well unlinked as it does now with Faster Casting, Less Duration, (i.e. balance it against Blink Arrow) but to make it a staff-only skill. Remove the Duration tag and make cast speed the only determinant of how fast it goes.

I would also suggest a new movement skill that does a reverse convocation i.e. teleport to where your minion is (that is, to the minion nearest to your mouse pointer).

Also, good job on nerfing KB, but please listen to those saying "that means there's nothing viable for wands". TBH, the 3.3 buffs to Power Siphon probably satisfy this complaint already, but think about tweaking this up a bit. Let Culling Strike Support stack with Power Siphon cull. That would also make Power Siphon a real alternative to Barrage for wanders.

Likewise, please listen to the anguish over Trap and mine nerfs. Maybe increasing the damage penalty on Multi-trap/decreasing the number of traps on cluster trap is a fair way of reducing the massive pre-load for boss deletion, but increasing throw time just makes them non-viable for clearing, and more importantly achieves "balance through nerfing fun". Revert this nerf. Trappers, and especially miners, should be great boss killers and poor mappers, but all builds have to be capable of doing both, just not optimal.

Instead, you should have specifically nerfed Arc that's not self-cast. I would say, "Arc has one less chain when cast by a totem, mine or trap". That's already 15% less damage built in. And if that's not enough, then two less, or three less.


As for Vaal skills, well you're going to get some complaints that this reduces build diversity by ending use of Vaal skills as a primary skill. But I can see that you're OK with that, as relegating Vaal skills to a secondary "Moar powerrr" skill increases design options. So I'd say stick to your guns on this.

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Elhazzared wrote:

It had an ok cost ratio, but there are things better with similar cost rations none the less. The reason why it's being nerfed is because of how overplayed it was, despite the fact that it is by no mean the moist powerful build. GGG seems to not understand one thing and they seem to never understand this one thing. When they change something massively or make something new, it tends to be played a lot in that league but then one of two things happens. Either it is abandoned by most cause it sucks or it keeps being played that league cause it's good. Arc traps was the second, but come a new league the prevalence of this would have been massively decreased. There was no nerf needed just to ensure build diversity (granted it should be players who chose what they want to play, not GGG forcing players not to play certain things by making them trash).

If this were true we'd have expected to see a drop in arc trap play in the flashback league, as the supposedly "more powerful" builds took over. We did not. Flashback league saw arc trap skyrocket. It was easily the most played build of the flashback league - and many arc trapper items were ~5x as expensive on flashback as they were on incursion (due to demand), which was the only reason it wasn't the clear cost/performance winner in the flashback league.

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Now I will also agree that playing Arc Trap is way better than playing selfcast Arc. But let's go to the crux od the issue here. For starters, playing Arc Trap will still be much better than playing selfcast Arc. In that nothing has changed other than Arc Trap now not being viable and because of overall nerfs that were made specificly to traps, no trab build is viable now! Second, Arc has always been a bad skill and it still is a bad skill. You can say whatever you like but it is bad, it doesn't clears fast enough as selfcast, it doesn't deals enough boss damage. It was always a trash skill and it still is a trash skill. If anything it was traps that made Arc worth playing at all!

Okay, but you could say the same thing about basically every self-cast spell except blade vortex. Even glacial cascade, which has been pretty meta on mines and totems the past few leagues, is garbage when you self cast. They're only able to make blade vortex good self cast because its mechanics make it borderline useless on totems, and completely useless on mines/traps. The root problem is totems / mines / traps scale spells better than self cast does, unless there's a mechanic in the skill itself that gimps it on those.