What We're Working On

Not one to usually comment, but since it was asked for: I league started as Crackling Lance Assassin, and I feel like I can comment on some of the issues.

The big one is that it just... feels kind of bad with intensity. It doesn't feel like you really do any damage until you have your stacks, and thus if you have to move at all, you hit like a wet noodle. Perhaps that is just a general issue with intensity and there's not much to be done, but then the problem makes Crackling Lance feel bad since it's pretty much tied to intensity.

I think it would be cool if the intensity effect on Crackling Lance did something unique and cool, like shock effect or something, rather than tying its damage exclusively to the mechanic. That way if you like the current gameplay, you can just socket Intensify support, but this makes it feel better without massive investment into cast speed.

Alternatively, give Crackling Lance an exception to intensity since it's built-in: make it work with Spell Echo/Unleash. That way you can build up your stacks significantly faster, and it would massively mitigate this issue.

Overall I love the aesthetics of the skill, the team really nailed it, but it's kind of clunky when its main damage is tied to intensity. In other words: getting the intensity stacks should feel like a nice bonus and strong damage boost, but not required for the skill to function.

Hope it helps! Enjoying the league a lot!

does it really take fkn 10 ex to link one shitty armour ? rng ? . its this the way of having fun ? more like raging to punch fist thru screen and say fuk this game.

Some feedback on Flame Wall. I tried putting in in a trigger setup to get extra fire damage on my projectiles, but for some reason it usually casts behind me even if there are no enemies there. No idea why, or if it would be considered a bug.

I'm sorry, but this change is just too bad in my opinion. Yes it solved the problem of some people, but totally destroyed the league mechanic and uniqueness. Now it's just another map with some more clicking and more loots.

I have been playing Blazing Salvo and firestorm throughout the beginning of the league. I do have some suggestions for both:

Blazing salvo has a hard time when a mob comes close and it fails to shotgun due to minimum travel distance. I actually like the interactions with unleash and intensify gives a different tempo to the skill. I would enjoy a change to travel distance and maybe the base cast rate or damage.

Firestorm is in a tough spot interactions with supports is strange cascade lowers the big meteor damage. Unleash has you run around the short lived storms and intensify plants you in place leaving you vulnerable to damage.
I think something cool would be to add a second meteor when a storm is half done allowing you to reposition or just better targeting AI

Icestorm:
I really think the storm limit of 5 is very low. You can raise it to 10 storms and the skill will not be broken and will feel better with the classic playstyle of CWC. In addition to this i don't think 10 storms will impact so much in performance. Before the patch we could have much more than this.

Firestorm:
Here again I think you can increase the storm limit from 3 to 5 to make better use of supports like Intensify or Awakened Spell Cascade. Plus the meteor damage or overall damage needs to be increased. And congratulations for the new visuals of the skill. It's one of the most visually satisfying
skills right now.

Performance and stability, both client and server, were really good right from the start. Yes, i call this a really smooth league start. Well done, GGG!

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"The launch day went quite well with just a few small hotfixes to address minor problems"
This is a great meme but we acknowledge that there were issues with the launch. It wasn't perfect by any means. We're sorry about the issues that have prevented people playing the content smoothly and we are working to fix them as quickly as we can.

Bex, I'm sorry you bear the brunt of the complaints, but now you're doubling down on an inaccurate characterization.

There were definitely non-minor issues.

The "how did Heist launch go" post did not acknowledge that some players weren't even able to play the new league content, nor did it acknowledge that some of the bugs would potentially affect Trade league economy.

It was disingenuous to post that the Launch went well. And the post did say that.

It was *very* buggy, even for a league launch (which, let's be honest, we expect to be buggy).

And now you're downplaying people's complaints by saying it's a meme.

Not cool.

Comment on Crackling Lance, and the Intensity mechanic in general. I think the mechanic is a fine idea and it can work. However, the game is built around actively dodging things. This is counter-intuitive with the Intensity mechanic. Channeling skills face similar issues, but there is now a lot of support in the game built around reducing damage taken while channeling that makes it feasible to take hits. Additionally, channeling skills aren't punished for moving. Either they don't need to ramp at all (Blight) or there's a short ramp time before you release for an additional rewarding burst (Blade Flurry).

Intensity on the other hand, takes the same amount of time or longer to ramp up and then you must not move in order to enjoy the benefits of the intensity mechanic. Because anything less than max stacks is less damage than most other skills or builds. But even max intensity is barely more damage than most other skills or builds. The +1 max intensity notable is mandatory to make the mechanic at all worth it in terms of damage, but then the issue with stacking intensity vs dodging just has another stack added to the problem. Compare this to the most commonly compared skill - Arc: the mechanic to get more damage is to increase chains which does not add any extra mechanical issues or conditionals to get that damage - you just get 15% more damage per chain. There is not enough upside to the massive downsides of intensity to justify standing still with no built in extra layers of defense that channeling skills enjoy.

In conclusion, the intensity mechanic has all the downsides of channeling skills, and has very few upsides that do not make it worthwhile. The new Apex Mode jewel is practically mandatory to use to not make dodging as punishing, and that is an inherent problem with the mechanic.

Hexblast:
Is it really necessary for hexes to not gain doom on hexproof targets? Doom only serves to amplify damage for hexblast and impending doom as far as I know and hexproof mobs are just a brick wall for the hex builds.