Witchhunter is perfectly balanced, but here comes 0.5...

Witch Hunter is perhaps the best example of a perfectly balanced subclass in the game. No overpowered or broken skills or passives, no gazillions of damage, no one-shotting bosses, or weird synergies with subclass nodes. Every node is good and makes sense in any build (+100 weapon points is basically two builds in one), it has its own UNIQUE type of defense, a UNIQUE passive bonus against demons!
Since everything is so great, maybe Witch Hunter has become meta and 30% of players play it? Oh no! Only 5% of players play it. Do we need to do anything about this subclass to get people to start playing it? NO. It's well balanced and doesn't need buffs or nerfs.
And then someone from below started knocking: "But Sorcery Ward is so overpowered! 30% of evasion and armor turns into a shield!" And I reply, "Friend, you lose 35% of your character's TOTAL EVASION AND ARMOR and gain 30% defense in return. It's a fair trade, considering you have 1500-1800 HP (thank goodness there are no HP nodes in the tree, right?).

Well, I have one question for GGG: why make the 35% penalty EVEN WORSE? Maybe you'll just leave what works?

P.S. I'm a simple man - I love this game. I love Witch Hunter and don't want to play meta builds, I don't want to play minions. I respect your work, I really want to play 0.5, but the balance changes are ruining it all.

When I saw that I thought...wtf? How is this in any way shape or form justified or needed? The 35% penalty already made it utterly tragic and now it's just gonna get you killed all the time. Plain and simple.

It's to 'balance' the "At level 65, you should have approximately 33% more evasion, tapering down to 15% at level 80+."

But yea, if anything, I think Witchhunter is already in just okay spot at best. Not even OP.

By all means, 4 points Ward was still worse than ES with the rigid 7s gap and no recovery option like leech or skills.

and yes, it's still unfair massive nerf because 15% more armor/ev is less significant than the extra 15% less armor/ev

For example:

Old: 100,000 * 0.65 = 65,000
New: 100,000 * 1.15 * 0.5 = 57,500

That's a huge nerf for WH defence.

Might as well just avoid this ascendancy. The rest of the nodes aren't very build defining, nor appeal to class fantasy too. Just very generic.

seems like unnecessary and demotivating nerf indeed.

you know i would not mind it that much if they actually added some simple armor/evasion nodes around that part of the tree , you know just straight 20-30% increased without you get hit or have not been hit nonsense.

"

Exilion99#5481 wrote:

It's to 'balance' the "At level 65, you should have approximately 33% more evasion, tapering down to 15% at level 80+."

But yea, if anything, I think Witchhunter is already in just okay spot at best. Not even OP.

By all means, 4 points Ward was still worse than ES with the rigid 7s gap and no recovery option like leech or skills.

and yes, it's still unfair massive nerf because 15% more armor/ev is less significant than the extra 15% less armor/ev

For example:

Old: 100,000 * 0.65 = 65,000
New: 100,000 * 1.15 * 0.5 = 57,500

That's a huge nerf for WH defence.

Might as well just avoid this ascendancy. The rest of the nodes aren't very build defining, nor appeal to class fantasy too. Just very generic.

No matter how much they buff evasion/armor, a sorcery ward takes 35% of it and gives 30% shield (the player loses 5% evasion/armor to the void). But now, a sorcery ward will take 50% (again, no matter how high the evasion/armor is, a sorcery ward takes 50%! and will only give 30% shield). So, after this patch, a sorcery ward takes 20% evasion/armor to the void, giving NOTHING in return. Imagine paying full price for lunch, but they take 50% and only give you 30%.

+1. Absolutely dumb nerf for one of the most unpopular ascendancy. Welcome <1% witchhunter players. Just imagine any other ascendancy that spend 4 points to receive -50% to defences. Thats a joke. Great balancing.