What We're Working On

This was such a big restartless update, that you noticed it without even having to check Twitter or the forums.

Heist instances past 2am here where clearly updated and already much more enjoyable.

You can already really tell this League content was made with Core in mind. As in, you can just leave it as is, just slightly tone down the heist drop rate and marks drop rate and people will have a "second type of map" to enjoy.

Glad the issues are being worked on at the pace things are moving now. And it could be that I just don't notice, but the economy is much much healthier now. It seems that there are huge reductions in the amount of bots? As in Chaos isn't already completely worthless day 3 of the league and the typical items "jdsklwerqujiopdfsa" named characters want to buy don't lead to an insane tidalwave of trade requests either.
Amazing job!

The modified Glacial Cascade is much to my liking so far. It is not stupidly overpowered and not weak to the point where you don't want to gear for it.

Crackling lance was surprisingly awful somehow. Blazing Salvo seems a bit undertuned and so does firestorm.

Hexblast supposedly is a lot of fun, but haven't seen too much of it yet.

While the mixed bag stuff is great, it isn't that great at the league start. Picking a reworked / new still shouldn't make or break your league start and once again it does. This hurts retention. I didn't stick around for long when I started with Lancing steel, that stuff was terribly bad. No matter how good it is now, I'm not going to try that again...

I didn't play much with the curses or spells but spent some time on the steel ones and poacher's mark, here is my feedback:

Splitting Steel:
It's too weak to be used compared to any of the other steel skills, I would guess that because it has a higher base damage, its usage is linked to call of steel but sadly, the impale burst from it doesn't even get close to the massive AoE damage Shattering Steel does.

Shattering Steel:
It's strong against mobs mostly because of call of steel, making an incredible AoE burst but falls off a little bit against single target, not only that but the extra projectiles are pretty much useless against bosses, as well as a big problem with steel generation against single target as it consumes 2 per attack but can only get 1 steel shard from call of steel per impale.

The other steel skill:
Didn't try it out but just from the looks of it in the preview and reading the description I can say it is not worth it.

Marks:
Marks should have a REALLY BIG targetting range, right now you need to directly aim on an enemy and apply the mark, if the enemy moves too fast or does erratic movements, you will more often than not miss the mark.


Suggestion:
Splitting Steel:
Increase area of effect of the main projectile and remove the damage and area fall-off from smaller projectiles, instead make them have "50% decrease impale effect".
This way the skill will retain ability to burst mobs down but won't be able to kill multiple mobs with call of steel if they weren't hit by the main projectile.

Shattering Steel:
Make it so it always fires +2 projectiles without the need of consuming steel shards, make it so using call of steel will have 20% increased effect per steel ward the user has and reduce the max amount to 5.
This way if you fire 5 times with 100% impale chance, the enemy will end up with 5 impales and when you use call of steel, you will get back the 10 steel shards that were used to inflict those same impales, meaning that a 100% DPS uptime is possible if you time your call of steel every 5 hits.

Lancing Steel:
Just kill this concept, I can't see this working in any instance without some serious investment and even then Shattering steel will probably be better.
Instead of firing steel shards, it becomes:

Crushing Steel
Strike, melee, AoE, physical

Swings down a sword/axe to inflict a heavy damage on a target, consumes 1 steel shard to inflict special impale instead that deals stored damage in an area around the target and lasts 2 more hits.


Marks:

Make them cast like AoE curse (or hexes) for targetting, make it so it prioritizes unique > rares > magic > normal monsters. Same thing for casts from triggers.

I'd like to talk about the Steel skills, or maybe more specifically, Shattering Steel and Call of Steel as these issues hit these ones the hardest.

To make this easier, I'm going to split it into two parts: Shattering Steel, and Call of Steel.

Shattering Steel
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For one, Shattering Steel's range is simply too low. As an attack/projectile skill only able to be used with melee weapons, there's a significantly limited number of pure damage supports that actually affect all of Shattering Steel.

This means Slower Projectiles is basically mandatory, reducing the already small travel distance even further, which leads to the problem of Shattering Steel feeling too long-ranged for a melee skill and too short-ranged for a projectile skill.

Close Combat feels like it should be a no-brainer as a support gem for this skill, but it only affects Melee damage. That's no fun! It already has the restriction of being used with Axes/Swords, surely you could just make it a generic More without breaking anything, yeah?


Shattering Steel feels bad to play without investing into projectile speed. Honestly, the range of it could stand to be doubled, or at the least increased by 50%. You already have the modifier of range decreasing the damage you deal, so players are still incentivized to stand on top of bosses/uniques/rares in order to deal as much damage as possible.

With no projectile speed, the projectiles themselves should go out up to 30-40 units away for the sake of QoL. It just feels bad to use a ranged skill and have to run on top of everything just to deal damage.

There's some other problems with it too, right in the core design of the skills interaction with Call of Steel.

Call of Steel
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Right now, Call of Steel deals no damage to the target that you're pulling the impales from, as far as I can tell. You only get 6 amplified attacks with Shattering Steel. At a base of 5 impales, you only get 1 attack on the enemy at max impales before you have to use Call of Steel to pull all of your impales out and start the process all over again, meaning the main target ends up taking significantly LESS damage than with any other steel skill.

And you might be thinking, "You can use The Impaler keystone to negate a lot of issues here.", and you'd be wrong. (Side note: The Impaler Keystone should add impales equal to your max number of impales, not just 4 extra, show Champion some love would ya?)

Because you have "ammo" in terms of Shards, you aren't always going to start off with 12 before you hit the main enemy. What if you only have 6? That means the total potential damage to the boss MIGHT be higher, but you aren't allowed to use Call of Steel until you're POSITIVE that you've used up all of your charges, otherwise you lose 50% of your DPS right away by being unable to re-Impale the target. It's just not a fun way to play the skill when bossing, where you need your damage the most.

There's a few ways to solve the problem:

Method one: Reintroduce shotgunning mechanics to Shattering Steel. This solves the problem of not being able to stack enough impales on the target before you have to pull them all out with Call of Steel, and introduces a reason to want more than the 3 default projectiles. On the balance side of things, this is probably the wrong move because it gives the skill too much damage for free, but if you toned down or removed the bonus damage for consuming shards it might work.

Method two: Make Call of Steel also deal damage to the enemy you're pulling the shards from. Slower attacking builds would get more consistent damage, and faster attacking builds could get little bursts of damage. Honestly, this feels like how I imagined the skill worked when I read the description.

After sitting here for 30 minutes thinking about how to redesign the skill to incorporate this change so that it wouldn't be a direct buff, I think I have the answer: If the monster you're pulling Shards from isn't damaged by the Shard explosion from other monsters/corpses, then it also takes damage from it's own Shard explosion.

I've provided some examples below to further illustrate my point.
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Example One:

Monsters A <- B -> C

B is impaled, the rest are not.

Call of Steel is used.

B explodes, dealing damage to A and C.

B takes damage from its own Shard explosion.
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Example Two: Monsters A -> B <- C

A and C are impaled. They are too far away from each other for either to be hit by the area damage caused by their respective Shard explosions.

Call of Steel is used.

A explodes, dealing damage to B.

C explodes, dealing damage to B.

A and C both take damage from their own Shard explosions, and B takes damage from both A and C.
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Example Three: Monsters A <- B -> C - D <- E -> F

B and E are impaled, the rest are not. They are too far away from each other for either to be hit by the area damage caused by their respective Shard explosions.

Call of Steel is used.

B explodes, dealing damage to A and C.

E explodes, dealing damage to D and F.

B and E both take damage from their own Shard explosions.
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Example Four: Monsters A -> <- B -> <- C

A, B, and C are all impaled.

Call of Steel is used.

A explodes, dealing damage to B.

B explodes, dealing damage to A and C.

C explodes, dealing damage to B.

A, B, and C all take damage from the Shard explosions of another monster, so they take no damage from their own Shard explosions.
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This is the option I believe to be the best, as it makes the most sense for how to deal with the problems that Call of Steel introduces.

I do have one last thing to say about Call of Steel, however, and it's that it should be Instant, or by default have a 0.25 or less cast time. If it weren't a skill that replenished your "ammo", it would probably feel fine, but since it's necessary to continually spam it, having it force you to stop every 6 attacks means you're using it every 2-3 seconds, meaning over 10 seconds you've had to spend 1.5 - 2.5 seconds just casting Call of Steel.

Re: new skills: I'm using a bunch of them up to early maps so far and finding them solid and novel. I'm running blazing salvo with fork, void sphere with curse on hit, a flame wall stacked on top, and using frost sphere for defense.

Salvo is great, although I've found it difficult to know exactly what my projectiles are doing. It's really hard to see the explosion, so I have little idea what kind of AOE I'm generating. I could use more or less AOE if I could see what it looked like, but I'm blind.

Void Sphere is cool, but I'm never quite sure why sometimes it doesn't pull certain enemies in. Are certain enemies immune? The biggest problem with void sphere (and frost shield) BY FAR is that sometimes the whole effect will be culled, and you won't know if your sphere or shield even casted! But I see it on cooldown, so I know it must be out there. **This is a huge problem.**

Frost Shield is fun. It seems solid with minimal investment. I like that.

Please fix the culling! I have dynamic culling disabled.

Feedback on Crackling Lance:

1. High end damage is good, my best theorycraft build puts it about 1.25x Arc's top end dps. However, this is with 4 stacks of intensity. At 2 intensity and below it's significantly weaker than Arc. That's a major problem because 90% of the time you aren't allowed to stand still on boss fights or you get killed by skills that are intended to be dodged. This means you spend most of the fight at 1 intensity. The design of the game is that you CANT tank everything, yet this skill demands that you stand still and take damage, it just feels like it's punishing you for doing the boss fights properly.

IMO here is what crackling lance needs:

- intensity stacks should drop much slower, about 1/3rd as fast but lose all intensity when teleporting. This allows you to clear with low intensity but not be penalized for dodging boss hits.
- The skill needs to have a bit of "auto targeting" and fire at enemies close to your cursor. Also, be able to target lock on a boss when you click it directly. As it is it's easy to miss 1 or two mobs that are just to the left or right of the beam
- Slightly faster casting speed, maybe 10% faster casting to spend less time at 1 intensity where it's dps is significantly less than Arc's.

still no mention of a fix for bugged beast crafts

Sniper's Mark

I very much enjoy this skill. For the few days that chain was broken, I was able to use this combined with fork to jerry-rig a decent setup for mobbing on my SST character. However, it also highlights the problem of needing to hit one specific target that is moving on a skill that cannot pierce. I felt less like a sniper and more like someone trying to play pachinko on a tilt-a-whirrl. Snipers mark could benefit from some method of making attacks always hit the marked target first if the target is namelocked.

Marks in general:

The power of them and being able to mark any boss is very welcome and helps with single target for skills that previously lacked them. However actually casting marks is a pretty clunky affair. They expire fast and are easy to accidentally cancel. I tried using Arcanist Brand to apply them instead but the very long cast time and short brand + mark time ended up not being worth it.

To help with this problem, I suggest marks should have an area of effect in which they search out the most powerful/rarest target if a cast would otherwise fail.

Even if I haven't get any answer in my previous post, I feel that I've been heard. Thanks!

Shattering and Splitting Steel feedback:
- The cast time of the call of steel skill is too long. Impales typical favour fast attacking builds so having this fast attack followed by a relatively slow Call of Steel feels really bad. At minimum Lord of Steel should be the baseline at best it should be instant with a short cooldown (perhaps change Lord of Steel to instead make Call of Steel instant?)

- They both feel really bad against bosses. This is largely due to the fact that when there is only one enemy call of steel only generates 5 shards meaning you run out super fast. You can dodge the boss and wait for it to get full, but again it just makes the skill clunky. A bonus amount of shards on unique bosses would be great

- Similar to above, because you are removing all your stacks each time, whilst call of steel works well for clearing on bossing it is really bad. A bonus damage multiplier to unique bosses would be great.

Firestorm feedback - This is from friends
- Damage is really low
- The impact time of the meteor is really long. Way too long. A way to scale this would be awesome. Perhaps a threshold jewel to make it really fast?
- The 60% more multiplier on the new jewel is good for making the meteor hit harder, but more ways to focus on a meteor centered build would be amazing (perhaps jewel as listed above?)

pog