Delve Balance Changes

Nice :)
I hope to see some more things in the full patch notes though ;)

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Frog1111 wrote:

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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.

I think this nerf was aimed at racing balance, more than long-league balance. Sunder didn't need a nerf at end game, that's obvious. But leveling balance matters, because races are a thing.

Well the past 2 patches have had a lot of buffs. There's bound to be some nerfs now. Nothing huge hopefully.

Very Nice,as always GGG Drives skills in the ground and tries to make them unusable!Why are we always seeing the phrase "Skill are more powerful than others"?(Hence they need a nerf)! Why arent we seeing the phrase "Some Skills are less powerful than others"? (Thus they need a Buff) ?Why kill Shield Charge?WTF was wrong with it?
Cant the GGG people understand that,that is the natural way of things!SOME THINGS ARE JUST BETTER THAN OTHERS!It has always been that way in life!Leave it be that way!You cannot balance everything,and you should not!!If something is slower than other thing,than give the slower thing another advantage,for example in power and vise versa...
How come there is more and more powercreep for monsters with time,and more nerfs for us?Has any of the so called GGG Team that make those decisions ever ran a T16 map with really heavy mods and see what they can achieve?A heavy modded T16 Maps will 99% mean you are always oneshoted by something...If you run Invasion or Warbands...well good luck with that :D !But hey,nerfing things has always been easier than trying to think and really balance things out!The Sunder and Kinetic Blast nerves...Unesessary at all,Kb has NO single target anyway so why take away the 1 thing it was viable for-clearspeed!?!?!I start to understand why players like me who have been arround for 4-5+ years are leaving this game!

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magicrectangle wrote:

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Frog1111 wrote:

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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.

I think this nerf was aimed at racing balance, more than long-league balance. Sunder didn't need a nerf at end game, that's obvious. But leveling balance matters, because races are a thing.

Yes, but as stated they could have had the range level more slowly with the Sunder gem. The way they did it is heavy handed. But I could live with it if they did not hit the block Gladiator three times at once. Not only is Sunder less effective but also spell block is now locked to attack block meaning Atziri's Mirror does nothing now. Of course with a shield + sunder you cannot use swords meaning Shield Charge is the movement skill and that got nerfed as well.

These are little nerfs but combined they are REALLY annoying for block Gladiators who had the short straw last league already by having to use Haemophilia gloves to keep bleedsplosions.

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Baron01 wrote:

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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.

Totally agree on this, I think this nerf will hurt more other trap build like chinsol trapper , arc trap now is actually the best choice especially as itemization is way easier

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magicrectangle wrote:

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.

Any short lived league is gonna go over builds that can be played with less currency than builds that have high currency requirements. As I said the costs are ok, there are more powerful builds for similar or even less costs, for example totems. It's about what playstyle people prefer. A flashback league is never a good measure, you need a normal 3 month league.

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magicrectangle wrote:

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.

I disagree with the root problem being the scaling because Traps, Totems and Mines all have their penalties. Totems need to be summoned, have a deploy time and can be destroyed. I've been in many situations where my totems wouldn't even have time to deploy which made things rather difficult. Mines I never even played cause I hate the playstyle. Having to place the mines where you are, wait for enemies to come close and then having to detonate the mines is a horrible playstyle. Sure some people like it but in general it is a terrible playstyle with very poor clearling speed. Traps still have throwing time and deploy time, even in incursion I often had to move forward, throw the traps and run back because enemies would get to me before the traps went off. This is to say the clear speed while acceptable wasn't the best.

Now if we compare to selfcast skills you are basically doing the A-move and clearing everything at insane speeds. The funny thing is that traps will never have the potential of selfcast. Traps will make some selfcast skills that were trash viable because thor mechanics actually beneficts it in a situation where you just saturate the field with those types of attacks. But the good selfcast skills don't work with traps because the interaction is not that good to begin with and as i said, the selfcast will work better.

So why not leave it as is? The current traps were good as they were. They were competitive at high level but not really at the very top. They made bad skills be usuable too albeit in traps. The way I see it, all thios does is make traps again trash and the skills that were usuable in trap go back to being trash as well.

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Potenz0 wrote:

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.

Indigon flame dash please
1 use = end of map

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Potenz0 wrote:

Also, good job on nerfing KB, but please listen to those saying "that means there's nothing viable for wands".

Um...Can you explain why Kb needed a nerf?I have the strong felling you cannot!This is the same as Porsche producing 2 cars,1 goes with 400Km per hour,the other with 99Km per hour!Now,People buy only 400Km/h cars,and do not buy the other 99Km/h!What do you do?Do you reduce the 400Km/h to 99 so the people have no other choice?Or do you Upgrade the 99Km/h car so people can buy it to some extent?Understand what i mean?Kb didnt need a nerf mainly because it is a Clearing skill!It does not have any single target,not to mention that Barrage was gutted too!SO why cut a skill because it is good at something,instead of making other skills compete with it?!

So they nerf sunder because its only used for leveling.


I would suggest that they have a look to the marauder endgame builds that use sunder.

Next time if you nerf something first inform your self and find a better solution.

Here is a solution and it took me 2 sec.

At level 20 gem sunder, you will have the same aoe as it is now.
Level 20 gem is used on level 70, so no worries about leveling.

Sham