First: Necro Amp is still required to do a good job. I thought as a team game having a competent team was central to the idea of being able to do things well.

Second: Using end game gear to test isn't a valid test. Poison zons were OP the second they got Decoy in Normal. So by the Summoner they could breeze through the game.

Third: The Amp Change. It happened to monsters to. Max DR won't be hit on anything wielding a two-hander with monamp also getting fixed.

Fourth: Stacked meteor and poison is still better DPS than Fury will ever be (Excluding poison on Andy).

Fifth: Test it on another boss other than the first one in Hell. I guarantee Dury will rock your world and you won't leech Meph near well enough to not chain juv and Diablo well you won't get near him without Dia Wep Fade Cleanse and hope you don't get caught with IM at a bad time. Baal minions well it isn't pretty.

Sixth: I still don't know why we're basing a whole patch's validity over the first Act Boss. Any party has breezed through this game with competent players if a Melee and Necro happen to be that party I see no fault in it good luck with clearing trash solo on that melee it's a chore.

Seventh: I in all honesty forgot about the Blue strength buff. This should've been toned down a bit and I never really paid attention to it anyway because melee's sucked donkey balls anyway.


I tried to avoid any negative comments in this post and tried to lay it out for you the best that I could. I agree with you in some places but with a few MINOR changes everything should be kosher.

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1st: Obviously a necro is required to do the job but I killed Andy with Decrep so I imagine it can be done aka all act bosses with a L1 amp wand. Again some more testing would indicate the effectiveness of that. Maybe it takes 30 sec instead of 10. If Dec can take andy out I'm sure L1 amp can take dury/meph and several other bosses out. There is a difference between a team who takes down a boss effectively than a team who makes Hell Bosses look like weaker than Shiboshi in Cold Plains or whatever his name is.

Second: Melees have never excelled in normal,nightmare and started showing some better damage in Hell. In HU melees have always played a tank /support role in NORM/NM and then in Hell they always go from one extreme to the other. End game gear is much stronger than whats available in norm/nm. This is not to say the same with caster items throughout the game.. part of which why besides decoy poisonzons excelled more effectively. +skills are much more easily accessed earlier in the game and that is what makes builds like poison excel. Melee weapons.. you can't say the same about. A simple breakdown in actual melee gear throughout the game shows this.
It goes from one low extreme to one extreme high.

Third: DR is still accessible and I imagine with such over kill high damage and high leech you can effectively leech any leechable boss and survive w/ amp. You don't need decked out DR if you are leeching accordingly and with 100k listed damage and Feral + Whatever else leech your gear provides... I'd be interested in knowing how much you can leech a hit.

Fourth: Stacked meteor taking out andy in 10 seconds on a 2 spawn? I don't believe that is possible. I'm sure a fury druid with amp will beat any poison char or meteor on the first 3 act bosses and any non im boss. I'd be surprised to see them beat the FuryDruid with AMP.

Fifth: With amp/feral you'll take dury out easy and with a necro you have some support summon wise. You won't take every hit. On top of leech you can still juv. I don't know how leechable dury is but again with extremely high damage I'd imagine it's decent. Diablo and others I can't speak on because no one has tested it yet.

Sixth: It's not basing it off the first act boss alone. It's taking an educated guess on what it means when you can take down Hell Andy in a 2x spawn as fast as a Shamaan in Blood moor. Further testing only validates what is obvious already.

Seventh: I agree on the Blue stre buff. It should be toned down because on conjunction with the buff amp and boss shard nerf Melees are buffed big based on 1.13z. They only lost some CB and how much I don't even know.

I'm avoiding negative comments as well. I'll keep this post clean. I noticed Mancer closed the last topic so I'll tone down quite a bit.

I will add to say this. I actually put the argument on this to rest and agreed that the IM check/balances was ok for now but persistent discussion let me back to defend what I still think is true.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

How much are you thinking of bringing the str bonus down by? I like the option of going pure str on a melee char (that needs to be in the danger zone already) and trying to balance power + life. The old str bonus wasn't worth the tradeoff over pure vita. I'd like to see the option of going pure str offensive remain, as it differentiates melees (DPS or tank).

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Dury has an extra 20% DR he's still beyond physical immune.

Meph still has horrid drain resistance.

Drain effectiveness is 1/8th listed in Hell. (I believe would need clarification for the actual number)

Without testing it is basing it on the first act boss alone. You can't extrapolate D2 tests from Andy to Dury it doesn't work like that. Dury has 20% Extra DR and can OHKO you with leap attack. (Remember blades and decoy all got nerfed as well)

What's level 1 amp? It may not be able to do it. Decrep is flat and doesn't change amp progresses.

And Kevin maybe...something like

2 handers 375%
1 handers 300%

or something of the like.

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1/6 drop on most 2 handers and 1/5 on the majority of 1 handers then. I could live with that. 3 str on a 1 hander = 9% skill ED. Still decent i guess.

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I don't believe in over nerfing

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At least things are starting to get productive and we are agreeing on a nerf. I have never seen dury leap attack kill anyone in HC and I use to run him solo on a fire druid for shards. No idea how common it is in SC but it just doesn't happen on HC. Never seen anyone die on dury actually.

Even with the boss shard nerf and AMP dury is still PI? Are you sure? I don't think that's right. Again.. actual testing has to be done. Speculation does us no good.

If pure Stre remains then other things need nerfed such as two hander %damage on weaps.

If your killing HELL andy that fast you can do any boss in the game on SC I'm sure of it Dury may be an exception, however, if andy drops that quickly not much will change.

You can either CB baal or dia and kill them or you can fury skillfully and avoid an IM death and still kill them. They have MONCURSE the chance of IM being casted is what? 10%? Skilled players may be able to avoid the death of a IM hit and on SC death means nothing anyway.

Again my test was not with a fully decked out Fury druid. The damage was very low. You can get CB on eth rares now, correct? You could roll a eth T maul with 3% CB and hit 100k damage probably maybe higher with 350 stre or so. Which is a 200 stre investment.

1/6 a drop isn't a bigger nerf than you proposed LDown you said 2hand 375% and 1h 300% that's like a 25-30% nerf.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

1/6 would take a 450% ed to 375% if I'm right.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

I was agreeing with what Kevin said. People on softcore don't gear massive PDR MDR (well outside of a select few) it happens all the time.

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Oh well the main emphasis needs to be on end game items more so than mid/low level items. It's the higher end items like Sorrow and eth Tmauls etc. that are extremely powerful due to all the %ED buffs available.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Actually a lvl 1 amp is only like 22%. A decrep proc would actually be stronger. Lvl 3 amp is -33 physical resist. Lvl 4 amp is probably 37%. Lvl 5 amp is -40 physical resist. Lvl 6 (charges on some unique) is -42 physical resist.

A -60 amp isn't till like lvl 38. Duriel has 105 base physical resist including boss charm's +40. His smite gives +28 physical resist if I recall correctly (which means duriel should no longer become a hard physical immune). You won't be breaking duriel with decrep or a real low level amp while the smite is active. Hell Difficulty Mephisto, Diablo, Baal have 110 base physical resist including boss charm's 40 and 15 leech effectiveness. Hell Andy has 25 leech effectiveness and 105 base physical including boss charm. The hell Leech divisor is 4.

This means you would be getting 6.25% of your actual leech % vs andy. For duriel leech is going to be hurting due to all the physical resist from smite cranking it to like 133 physical resist soft immunity (meaning you will need more than lvl 3 amp to break). Against the likes of Meph, Diablo, and Baal in hell you will only be getting 3.75% of your leech %.

we'll nerf the str bonus from 450 to 300. 1 handers will also get a corresponding nerf to the str bonus. plenty of ed can be had from items and skills, considering most melee items got a generous buff. bows may also see a change as well.

on a side note the patch most likely won't be ready by friday. it may take another 2 weeks or more. the new resolution has a lot of problems and needs a lot more testing. we're still waiting on ki4m for that.

One other thing to consider... Life leech is a very slippery slope to balance just like flat DR. It's entirely possible to have too much of it. Depending on how quickly life leech recovers the health orb and how quickly a boss can can shred a health orb a change in life leech can actually have surprising effects. I'll give an example in the next paragraph.

Let's say hypothetically a boss isn't physical immune so a smiter beats on it with life tap. Due to the life tap the smiter is recovering a full health orb in one second. If the smiter wasn't leeching/potting the boss would destroy 90% of the smiter's health orb in one second. If lifetap's strength were cut in half then that smiter would die in 2.5 seconds without rejuvs.

While it would be entirely valid to say this sort of context would not apply to tank melees the problem is this context could prove entirely valid for a DPS melees. While the DPS melees may not have very much life it still won't change the fact they have very high damage like Pious's barb Behemoth. You combine that sheer damage with life leech and all of a sudden you got a very strong defensive force from the leech and potentially a leech lock.

@Pious it sounds like a start. No idea how much ed that is I'm assuming 450 is 4.5 and 300 is 3.0? It'll be a 300% drop on 250 stre and a 500% on 350. . Kevins idea of nerfing base damage is much more better because attacking the weapon base makes overall % ED less useful. But again it's a start. I'm sure even with 1/6th of a nerf they'd still have extremely high damage. But in comparison to 1/6th wep nerf with same ed verse ed w/o 1/6th wep nerf have no idea what the numbers would be maybe Kevin can throw a range out there.

@Baerk a L40 feral rage has 51 percent life leech alone. 51%.. so I'm sure even L35 is pretty high. Add any LL from gear and you can hit pretty high LL theoretically. Add that to the crazy high fury damage and intense FPA your pretty much a God in any leeching area with IM being the only thing to strike you down. If your skilled enough to avoid a strike on IM you could take down bosses like Diablo and Baal.

And again if you kite/are skilled enough you can kill the bosses.

Again it was my recommendation to allow Fury druids to only use Feral. Feral should also take a significant LL hit. More or less half the % that is now. 50% is insane high.
Also that leech becomes effective on the 1st strike unlike Maul which requires multiple hits to reach the height ( which isn't hard on a fast wep )

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

I think you guys shoud nerf that mele druid if it bothers you that mouch...and what about fire arctic blast druids and poison amazons every one knows this chars are all op but you know what lets nerf mele!excause my french but wtf?if you nerf mele again you will get same result next lader you are forcing people to run poison zons and other op chars to farm with them,I dont like the idea of having to build something that I dont want just to stay competetive...and beeing able to farm gear for my meles cous they are crap.

@Zen hard to understand where you are going there...

@Baerk one thing I may have missed previously is...

How much was boss charm phys res brought down by? 10%? 20%? 30%?

And something to estabilish real quick for me please.

A boss who has phys res 120% will a 70% amp drop him to 50% phys res?

What I don't understand is.. someone differentiate the difference between nerfing boss PHYS res and not simply upping AMP.

If amp was UPPED rather than nerfing boss charm phys res is the effect the same? Or is nerfing boss charm phys res + conjunction of amp = result of higher pierce?

Need some clarification on how this works. Thanks.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Boss charm wasn't touched base physical res was. You're also missing the part about leech effectiveness in hell Lee. IDC if you have 100% life leech because you'll really have 3.75% because of the overall leech effectiveness. And Decrep is stronger than amp until level 8-9 anyway.

I think Leech is fine where it's at you have to have a lot of it to compete. Cobra Strike has almost double the amount of leech feral has but it's a charge-up skill so that shouldn't be a problem.

Amp was returned to soft point progression and boss base phys res were lowered charm is still there. I believe if immune it works at 1/5th effectiveness or some such shit. Don't quote me on that though I know thats how convic and LR work.

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is conviction and lower res also getting soft lvl progression ??

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'may the force be with you' - Yoda??

Fire druids and artic druids were only OP because of Valor/Armageddon runewords. The fire/cold mastery has been removed so their dmg should come back to down to earth.

As far as poison zons are concerned... I have the best Pzon on HC.. Hands down she has complete perfect gear except for LoS charm and she struggles to do Hell bosses now. Thats with last patch's gear mind u.. So 6/6 facets +3 templars. Those have been scaled back so the killing power is even more reduced. The people in control have done a good job scaling back poison and the ele druids.

I haven;t attempted anything on my poisonzon I may log on and try a baal run with her and see where they stand. I use to run Meph Ice Dragon and Baal without issue I'll see whats up.

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Concerning the boss charm's physical resistance boost... As long as a given boss's other sources of physical resist don't hit 100+ to create a hard immunity then the boss charm can only give a boss a soft immunity. A different kind of immunity results when a boss reaches 100+ resists only because the boss charm helped boost them that far.

Hard immunities get the prominently displayed immune as well as the 1/5th strength breaking penalty everyone is familiar with. Soft immunities (which currently only occur for physical since that's the only resist the boss charm grants) do not display the immunity on the monster and are broken at full strength. This is why a lvl 4+ amp can break duriel's physical immunity while his smite is active despite the 133 physical resist (which would be impossible to break if it was a hard immunity which is what it used to be in patch 1.3a).

In context of meph, diablo, baal even if you had an awesome necro amp this would only bring their physical resist down to around 50. If you had 100% LL you would be leeching under 2% of your listed damage each hit. I would especially interested in hearing the damage values for fury and the CTH values that go with them. Even if the fury boasts incredible attack speed if it lacks a certain degree of CTH the zeal bug will prove crippling for it.

So amp is only 1/5th as effective against Meph Diablo and Baal? If so then most of Lee's concerns an be put to rest.

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Wrong... All the act bosses have soft physical immunities (meaning full strength break from amp and decrep but duriel's smite makes him too high for decrep to break). Anyways... I'm currently working on an actual chance to hit table for Fury for what's your actual chance to hit at a given CTH listed on the character screen.

You need somewhere close to 35k-40k AR to hit Baal consistently 25k-30k for Diablo.

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Here's a CTH table for Zeal and Fury at 5 swings.


Was a pain to get that table to format nicely but atleast I did. Anyways... I recall Steel accusing Lee that Lee's preferred weapon which was a RW only gave him 60% CTH against andy. Given that a 5 swing zeal type attack only actually has about 28% average CTH when the CS CTH is 60% I kind of find it hard to believe a fury druid would be totally out of control when 2 out of 3 swings whiff (so much whiffage that it pretty much offsets the sheer attack speed). Would you care to explain further Lee how a fury druid could be totally OP when that zeal bug could prove crippling?

I prefer not to hear any further AR numbers. They are meaningless without the boss defense numbers that oppose them or at least the CTH it generates. If you want to throw around AR numbers then you better throw around the CTH they generate or accurate boss defense numbers as well.

Those numbers were for a poison necro with an ETH in wand so for melee the number is going to be higher.

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So if you had 50% LL and you did 100k damage with Ds thats 200k you'd leech 2,000 damage a hit or 1,000 on 50% Phys res. Is that correct?

Regarding the boss charm.

My sole reason is to compare 1.21z or 1.13 whatever it is the last patch Mancer himself worked on to the current values that are suggested.

That means I want to know how much boss physical resistance was brought down in conjunction with the amp nerf in comparison to AMP from 1.21Z.

That means In 1.21Z let's say amp was 80%? I don't know if it was that high.

Now amp values highest is 63% in conjunction with boss phys res nerfs what is the total %? Does it beat AMP last patch or is it close? That's what I am trying to figure out.



Hold on. I've never heard anywhere that Fury was bugged as Zeal is. Are you sure that is the case? Also you will never hear of a zealer doing 100k or even close to 50k damage zeal. Another thing to note is within simple testing you find that even Pious barb @ 100+ k WW could not kill Andy faster than a fury druid @ 15-67k Fury W/ 25k AR. I have no idea what gear Steel was using but sacrificing some life charms for ar/max or ar/life and playing with gear should allow you to hit high ar and even using emers if you want.

I don't know how many attacks per second a Fury druid with max FPA has but it's single target attack decimates targets quickly. Much much faster than WW.

Again are you positive Fury shares the same bug as Zeal? I wasn't aware of that...

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

OK so explain this to me.. did bosses have the same soft physical immunities in 1.21z? What I mean is.. was amp in that patch JUST as effective as it is now on bosses or was it at 1/5th effect.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

If the boss charm actually gave physical resist in 1.21z then yes they would of had physical soft immunities that broke at full strength. The 1.21z amp actually got up to like -90 from what I recall (I know that -90 was possible at one point because my necro that attempted LOS actually obtained an amp that big). A maxed amp in 1.3a with + skills could hit around -55 or a bit higher. Considering this beta's amp is -60 at lvl 38 and only budges a couple % points higher from there it really isn't improved all that much from 1.3a (aside from no longer having to max it for a good drop and actually having item procs drop physical resist more than a drecrep proc).

I just looked in the skill.txt file concerning fury's coding structure. It uses the same exact skill functions as zeal and the only real differences are that it's restricted to werewolf and has different ED/AR/mana progressions. So that would be a dead certain yes that fury is a clone of zeal and as such subject to all its bugs.

One thing concerning the boss charms and quest monsters though. This is a bug that has actually cropped up in Purerage's mod at random. Purerage basically took Blood Raven and turned it into a door monster. This door monster has a mon equip that gives it a bunch of unbreakablely high soft immunities so that its immune to all damage without displaying immune to all. This immune all so that a player is forced to find a special item to bypass its immunities. For some strange reason sometimes the "blood raven" door monster spawns without the its immunity charm (all purerage's other door monsters never suffer this no immunity charm equipped bug however). Considering all the act bosses spawn the same way as blood raven save for except maybe diablo they could be subject to this no boss charm equip bug at random as well.

--Double Post--
Concerning Fury's attack speed. Technically the final breakpoint is actually a 1 frame attack. It's just this mod doesn't have enough on weapon attack speed to actually hit it or a 2 frame fury for that matter. With the right weapon though a 3 frame fury is possible though.

--Triple Post--
Someone on the forum lately has been insisting that Deadly/Critical Strike don't increase the amount of leech you gain even though the damage is doubled. Given that Crushing Blow itself has no leech the idea isn't off the wall itself (especially since deadly strike can supposedly surpass the damage cap meaning it would be a separate hit just like crushing blow).

I know what the problem was, she had 2 items on the same line in monprop.txt meaning she had to choose between them. You need 1 line for each item they have or it will pick 1 item from 1 line. All bosses here have 1 item so they will always get it.

The highest attack speed you can get on fury is 4,3,3,3 frames. Also, don't forget that druids shapeshift skills all go thrugh the chance to hit routine TWICE. if any one of those chances gives a miss, it will override a hit. If you don't have 95%CTH on a ss druid you will suffer alot more than you might think.

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Ah... so that was actually a misplaced concern. Good to know. Atleast that guarentees the bosses always get their boss charm.

That's why all attempts to use 99lvl chars vs 87lvl boss(hell andy) are fail.try to use a 88lvl barb with full IK for testing. Or higher lvl boss, meph is 97lvl. Or learn to play.

You don't need to use a L97 char LOL. 90-95 is just as capable of the same damage. Thanks for your useful input again.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

After further testing I've just done now.

A fury druid W/ 19-60k damage because I never did charge maul fully really I just mainly used feral/some maul and then fury killed all three seals bosses with around 3-4 juvs.

I was expecting Dia to kill me. I had no fire abs% but I was able to easily kite him. That means hit and run, dodge his attacks, attack again etc. I was able to kill Diablo in around 15-20 seconds probably more close to 15. Feral allowed me to leech most my life. I used less than 4 juvs I believe 2 because I had no belt on.

This was with around 28K Ar.

Who wants to see me rape meph with like 2 juvs and 4-5 mana pots?? It's pointless to continue testing what I already know to be true. Every boss is going to get the same rape. The only thing TRULY capable of striking down a fury druid is IM in trash areas.

If you die to IM at Baal/Dia you suck horribly at kiting because you're killing them so fast so it's much easier. It's quite easy to stop attacking once the IM curse is casted and wait for it to end but due to such a fast killing speed the chance is much higher that you'll kill dia or baal before they even cast IM on you. If boss fights were 3-4x longer the chance of death to IM increases by a lot.

So much for the assumed Zeal bug btw and Ar issues. I'm sure even 30k can be hit with a ETH T-Maul. Hell you could 1xETH it and still do more damage than a sorrow wep.

I don't want to hear anything about AR/Zeal bugs etc. if I'm killing bosses this fast than they are completely irrelevant. Feel free to go test yourselves on SP L40 amp ctc on attack and put on a good wep make reasonable gear just put the mods of gear u'd wear on a charm or something to make it easier.


Of course WW barb doesn't have the same luxury of kiting like a fury druid can because you can get IMed while you WW but theoretically it's possible on SoftCore anyway but hey It's SoftCore mod, right?

So again my recommendation is to do something. Even removing maul usage from a fury druid won't stop the rape. I hardly used maul on any of the bosses. End game damage is just too high.

What would Pious 450 to 300 on stre drop the damage by anyway? 5-10k?

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Baerk you never answered me.. how much was boss physical res dropped by?

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

the problem isn't melee damage lee. the problem is feral rage leeching at unusual potency. i've discussed this before with several people.

possible options:

1. hard points only will grant life steal to feral rage. 20% at max life steal feral rage is not nearly as strong as 40+

2. cut the gains in half. 1% life steal per 2 points hard or soft. this may reward end game chars a bit more who have more skills gear.

the idea is to keep a topped out feral rage at 20% range and no more.

@Pious I think your right. Feral should be cut down accompanied by the stre nerf it should tone them down acceptingly.

I mean I was using 100% DS also which isn't possible with a eth rare maul. I think. You can get what.. 15 rends 10 belt 15 forsaken moon 25 on highlords

So a total 65%? That lowers the time u kill by a 1/4th prob. Accompanied with the stre nerf maybe it'll tone em down quite a bit more. Also.. the longer it takes aka less damage Fury druids do more than likely they are to be struck by IM or killed by it I suppose.

Anyway I think Pious suggestions are the best so far actually.

Reduce the stre 450 to 300

And cut feral and I think they are going to be balanced pretty well.

You won't get much DR/ABS and if the LL is toned down It makes it much harder/difficult to just kite/smoke bosses you'd have to juv like crazy.\

The 2nd option is best Pious I think. It'll more than likely balance at around 15% LL which is what feral should be considering you get the LL on 1st attack unlike maul which charges up by consecutive hits.

WW barbs again have to deal with IM upon WW = insta death so It's easier to see a check/balance IM system on then again. I think FuryDruids are the only real physical/melee threat which is why all I'm talking = them.

Sorrow also had 25% LL which means I had a total of 75% LL. But ofc using sorrow is a pain in the ass due to decrep can't really use it on bosses but of course you get LL from other gear as well. So that 25% can be made up through other gear but anyway would have used a eth t maul just can't edit one in SP no idea how to.

Skillwise let's see

with a eth tmaul +skill wise let's see..

Uh +5 Rlore
+1 end game armors
+1 highlords
+2 rings

Thats the ideal range.. you can't get much + skills unless you switch around gear etc.

So then you'd need all 5 shards anni + 5 skills @ 99 so it's 11

Total is 20 = Lvl 40 feral

Again u can reach +40 with a different setup then what I suggested by using more +skill gear but yeah the 2nd option is by far the best.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Lee did you just shit up 5 threads and go all psycho over an issue pious was already aware of? Stand down sir, stand down! Really though, you should take it down about 5 notches, you're scaring the children.

U still used lvl 40 amp for it Lee.. Which means you had to group with someone else to get that amp (on servers ofc).

yes a lvl 40 amp (-60) is very much a player necro cast only amp. It either has to be decrep or an amp no more than lvl 6 amp (-42) for soloability purposes.

As for old boss resistances... In 1.3a between base and charm hell baal was the highest at 145 (90+55).

That means -63+35 = 98%

You said Baal is 110 now, right? So with AMP bosses actually have lower phys res than previously.. which explain why AMP+fury decimates everything.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Well aware of it maybe but the damage is still something to think about now that AMP is buffed and boss res have been dropped substantially. If you think nerfing feral rage to 20% can stop LL well technically it can but I was at 75% during my test.

Cerebrus can get 18% LL
Nos coil 10%
12% on rends
6% on 1 bk

U could hit 66% with that right there. 9% LL won't make much difference with that kind of damage. Btw isn't that all standard gear for a fury druid? I think so. But without L40 through soft points you'd prob realistically hit 60% which is a 15% nerf. Not sure again how substantially that effects your leech.

LL may be part of the problem but with AMP/boss shard nerf on major bosses it totals to 98% pierce at least according to Baerk anyway.

Damage in some form or another has to be touched as well. I think the ed nerf on stre will do something.

And yeah five threads of chaos I know.. but it's worth it if we want to play a balanced patch this time around. The whole point of so many people being involved was to create something much better than Blue. Seeing one class over dominate again is like going in circles.

Again.. I'd probably be the first one to capitalize on builds like this. Remember SoulKhan? lol. If I was really gay I could have said nothing and just made one. I'm sure 1h cb on a fury druid is pretty fast and you can get up to pretty decent CB on a 1h alone like 12% but realistically 14%? Any other sacrifice to gear would prob rape you. Not sure how fast that is.. actually in practice. but anyway.

I was actually going to make one on reset. That was the 1st char I was going for. I even told Baerk in SP as we discussed the ed% from skills and stre and the possible damage. I just knew they would rape with the buffs etc.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

@Baerk @JnDmX the spawn has increased to 2x the life now. Even soloing for a psn zon with the %psn nerfs would be at least 2. something times slower than previously. Solo in general is going to be 2x as tough. Doubt you'll see much soloing going on period. Would be slow until full twinkage.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

there will be no more nerfs to melees after the ed per str and the feral rage nerf. the whole point of this patch was to give melees a hand. lets try not to forget that.

Yeah that's fine I realize that. I believe those nerfs will suffice. So guess there is no more point to this discussion probably going to stop posting and talking about this. Looking forward to the reset now. Hope Baerk can get all the bugs ironed out. High res is a pain in the ass.. crashes a lot for unknown reasons.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

True story on the Hi Res. Hopefully it gets ironed out in a reasonable time table

Yeah dunno.. seems bugged to hell. Have you crashed at all? I just crash sometimes without any reason at all then I go back to the same area.. perfectly fine. so weird.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

I had always wondered about this. If the new character screen is believable (i dunno) then you do NOT get all the LL at once.

If there is a nerf to the LL of feral there needs to be a reason to actually but hard points into it. Having the same 1% per 2 lvl for hard and soft up to 20 make it not worth spending the points. It's damage addition to fury is trivial. This isn't to say that the synergy should be upped, it's just to say there should be some incentive to max it.

For a different view on testing vs 95gear and level 40 amp: At 24k fury at 4fpa, decrep from Reaper's Toll and 70ish% lifesteal (about 20-25k AR), you don't get near the effects that Lee is giving even at Hell Andy. Again, not to say that his results are wrong, it just very heavily biased to a very twinked character, and having a source of amp that is not available to a mutt alone.

If D is getting wtf pwned using his setup, then yes something should probably be done.

Edit:
gear used as reference (1.3a versions)
Reaper's Toll with Uber Amythest
Chains of Honor (43 res)
Elemental Set
Jalal's with res all jewel and 2 Uber Rubies)
String of Ears
Sapphire craft boots (for AR)
Diamond craft gloves (more AR from blessed aim)

Skills:
20 fury
15 feral
20 oak
20 maul
20 Lycanthropy
This is a much more reasonable for lower acts imo. Not perfect, but better.

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The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

Testing with a level 40 Amp and 100% DS doesn't help much....

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Look you can try to distort the reality of the picture here all you want but the fact of the matter is my test did not utilize the highest possible damage weapon in the game which is a eth T Maul. Using a reapers toll is like Fire druids this patch using Wizpike instead of Armageddon. How are you conducting a realistic test here by using a L78 item?

Realistic for what? The area? As I've already stated several times if you've played HU long enough you know how melee/phys are structured. They aren't like +skill builds etc. that are accessible ALL throughout the game. They have always been LOW extreme to HIGH extreme which means they don't utilize their true damage potential until Hell a5. What does that mean? They play the role they were actually intended to throughout the game. NO WAY REALLY?! What role is that?! They tank the boss and do some damage but they don't TANK It and KILL it.

LOW to HIGH extreme means if you look throughout the game on weapons you see a huge difference between damage from low to mid to high which is why end game they get exponentially VERY high numbers rather than compared to mid-early hell.

The game is designed for party play. I'm tired of hearing the "U USED A HACKED AMP" accusation when the bosses life were buffed to DOUBLE what they use to be. You know what that means? EVERYONE or a majority of people single spawn bosses. Now people actually have to do bosses in groups of two or more even PSN is going to be noticeably slower now despite still having solo ability.. not sure with the new decoy though.

So I don't want to hear "testing with a level 40 amp doesn't help." The 100% DS is irrelevant as well. I wasn't even using the highest damage weapon possible nor was I using maul which adds 10% ds I believe.

Regardless even if you to want to continue to argue this with a lost point because really I don't see any good point against it.

Melees are more powerful than what they were in 1.21z. The stre ED blue proposed was a 50% buff from the original. The pierce values with max amp now total 98% in Hell which is higher than original 1.21Z amp was I believe.

Stating that the new screen shows you don't get all the LL on one hit only further validates that it needs NERFED because I was ONLY using the initial hit when I was leeching bosses. You have to be joking me.. I would have been super hacked if that is true.

What do you mean there is no incentive to max it? It's a synergy to fury 200% damage and it allows you to leech. That seems perfectly balanced to me.

What do Barbs get for maxing Bash or Leap Attack? What do Paladins get for maxing sacrifice? 20% and a 10% syn is fair enough. You aren't complied or compelled to max it. You have other options. You can pump Werewolf for AR/DEF. You can even go Rabies/Fury and 1 pt feral/maul. You can drop 20 into bear. You can max Oak/HoW. There are several other options if you don't want 20% LL and 200% ed.

After researching your claim you are correct. I had only 37% leech during all of my testing. Wow.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Oh it was prob 45-50% actually forgot I reduced skills doing some other test.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

a thundermaul isnt a furydruids weapon of choice , its a tomb reaver , you cant get 3 fpa fury with the maul.

well not all melees are furydruids lets not forget that , and i believe guided arrow zons will be much better for dps tbh. i can understand you dont want melee dominance , do you want casters to be the main dps or what do you want ? balance is tough like someone else mentioned.

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'may the force be with you' - Yoda??

With what weapon can you hit that damage? Sorrow rw? It has ctc dec so you're screwing high lvl amp, other weapons are just too slow for fury druids. Tomb reaver or perfect death craft are ultimate fury wpns, but in all honestly you can only hit like 40k tops with Treaver. Post your gear/hp/def.
For everyone's information, it was a Soulmancer's idea but I was the one who edited files tho.

And btw. Deadly strike/crit doesn't buff any leech.

Please list your equipment, and skill distribution. It would help a lot so that we can have definitive comparisons made.
I wasn't distorting anything. I used gear that was available at the level I tested. What exactly is wrong with that? Are you seriously going to have an eth Tmaul with cb in act1 hell?

I also noted that your tests in act 4 are indeed worrying. I did not say your tests were useless at all. As you said, others should test things. I did. Thanks for taking it seriously. Much appreciated.

200% skill ed is fucking trivial compared to the rest of the ed that you have on fury...I said nothing close to feral would be useless. I was just saying that there should be a definitive difference in soft vs hard points. Do you disagree? I could care less what the numbers actually turn out to be.

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The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

There is no point in continue to argue. I'm not going to waste my time arguing and I'll explain why.

First of all there are several different choices of gear to use even in my test. Let's hypothesize and say the gear was rearranged and Dia died 5-10 sec slower in which I killed him in 15-20 it could be less it could be more.

Again my HP is irrelevant because I didn't drop below 75% fighting Dia. It's easy to kite him on a fury druid. You just run up and attack and dodge projectiles and run up again. Sort of like rabies but more consistent.


The amp/boss nerf buff surpasses that of 1.21z.
CB has been added back @ up to 15-18%? 19%?
DS has also been added and CB has been added to 2h weapons.

Melee has been extravagantly buffed while all elemental faced a 50% slash of end game damage.

My test was conducted with NO cb at all and it was using NO other form of LL in gear and somewhere around whatever L40 1st strike in feral + 25% leech from sorrow gives.

Yes I understand Sorrow can't be used. I realize that. There are still other choices including a rare eth tmaul which can get 3% cb on it. A fpa slower so won't change much in the kill speed. Eth Tmaul would have been more damage by the way 400+ more atk? I don't know what do they hit?

The nerfs pious are doing are not groundbreaking to fury druids. They will still dominate and rape. They will still probably be the top tier melee/phys class choice and people are still complaining?

Whining for the sake of whining gets you no where. Being upset about SLIGHT nerfs one in which shouldn't be here in the first place because It was Blues added stre bonus is hardly worth listening to.

Nothing being done here is so crippling that it should make anyone upset. Again I explained.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO MAX FERAL RAGE.

You don't have to max Bash and Leap Attack on whirlwind do you?

If you don't want to max it because it won't give you overkill leech then don't max it. It's still a useful skill 20% LL and it's a syn to fury.

If pious goes softpoint route you can simply 1 pt it.

Again pointless complaining whining without any reasonable justification. The ability to use maul/feral and fury in itself is pretty over kill. Now your upset because Feral Rage doesn't meet your criteria to max? Please. Just stop.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

That would theoretically make up for some lost damage then. What fpa do you hit on sorrow?

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

4 fpa with sorrow

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'may the force be with you' - Yoda??

I generally don't stoop to this point, but...

Did somebody take your lollipop away or something? I guess giving a comparison to your tests with gear that is a bit lower level is just fucking stupid to you.

I recognized several points that you made. I agreed that something should be done. Is that hard to comprehend?

WTF is wrong with having a difference in hard vs soft points. All you say is you don't have to max it...no shit sherlock.

Any time somebody disagrees with you, you act like your panties are stuck so far up your ass that you cannot find them, which makes you sad because you want to walk around the neighborhood sporting them. Grow the fuck up and learn to be civilized.

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The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

Pointing out a funny:

for 1.3a i spent 2-3 days balancing fire druids skills with brevan. Then on top of that, geddon RW got fire mastery and that threw everything to shit.

for 1.3b I adjusted amp so it was at roughly a halfway point between the original values and the 1.3a values (with softpoints too). Then on top of that, bosses actual phys resist was nerfed too.

WTF is going on here? Revert the amp back to 1.3a levels if boss resists have been shot to fuck, as it stands bosses are gonna be running weaker phys res than they were in 1.21z (bad). Eiher revert the amp values or the boss resists. The 2 combined is a HUGE shift in power that has been pretty much ignored and slipped in quietly. Not to mention dropping the resists on the charm now means norm and nm are even more of a joke than they were previously. How easy do you want this to end up? Kinda wish I had frapsed my melee zon in norm and nm against all bosses as she destroyed act 5 nm bosses with only 2 charges of decrep from spellsteel used. Since I won't be needing that in NM anymore, I can safely use tap, become immortal and kill each boss in seconds.

I personally think this is going way too far and has way too many unco-ordinated changes that is gonna turn nto a huge shitstorm. What happened to simple small changes to fix what was at fault? Mark my words, you are gonna see a repeat of the valor/geddon mess if things stay as they are.

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No one is acting like anything. I'm not going to flame you because there is no point in getting this thread locked like the previous. You need to chill the fuck out though.

You keep saying you have no reason to max feral rage now and I am explaining that you don't have to max it and now your pissed at me?? Jesus Christ.

And we are on a gaming forum please don't talk about civilization on a gaming forum. Don't take my words too harshly. You were being repetitive about saying there's no reason to max feral and I am simply trying to point out you don't have to max if you don't want to just like Bash/Leap Attack on whirlwind for example.

But regardless the skill won't be useless was my point. It still provides a syn and 20% LL.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

@Kevin I'm confused so help me understand. I hope it isn't what I think it is.

Are saying boss resists were nerfed on blues patch on top of amp being cut in half? And then boss resists got nerfed again this patch and amp buffed up?
I'm sorta lost.

Can you briefly explain to me WTF is going on.

Why is it such a huge shift in power if boss resist are shot and amp @ 63%?

This is why I was trying to establish the amp values along with boss phys resist being nerfed on what the actual effect would be. I came up with 98% but am I wrong?

Btw reminded that I began this discussion in the first place was to prevent a relapse of what Blue did. So now that the discussion is in place we can figure out a solution but first someone has to explain exactly what happened here.

Again I came up with 98% what was amp in 1.13z 1.21 1.3 w/e the fuck the patch is called lol.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

I understand now. I get it. We were trying to meet halfway compared to the last mancer patch on Melee/phys so you adjusted amp to 63% and boss phys res was suppose to be left alone. So someone explain to me why was it also nerfed? That's why bosses are getting smoked like crack.

Leave the stre @ what blue placed it at and re-adjust the boss charm values to what they were previously. Again was suppose to meet halfway. Turn melee/phys into being playable again but now I understand why bosses with 2x the life are getting shitted on like nothing.

Wait let me see if I understand it even further.

Blue bashed nerfed amp but he also cut boss phys res in 1.3b, right?

So on top of Blues nerf they were slashed again and amp was put at 63%, right again?

I knew something was fucked up but I couldn't pin point it. Damn this shit is still confusing. Wish someone could create a timeline from 1.21z to now and explain what boss phys and amp values were so we can get an accurate number here.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

What Kevin is saying is Amp was nerfed. Boss values were left alone in Blue's patch. THEN in this patch amp was put at a halfway point and boss res were slashed.

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So then is anyone in objection to re-instating boss res to originality and keeping AMP at 63% and leaving fury druids alone? Clearly the problem wasn't fury druids. The whole time it was just the powerful combination of the amp buff and boss phys res nerf.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Actually really not much of an amp buff. A maxed amp at lvl 60 in the 1.3a patch would actually actually be a -60 amp. A lvl 60 amp in 1.3b would be -63 -64. However if the boss physical resists are really too low then that's a much simpler fix than messing with all the weapon Str/Dex ED%'s.

Since people have a bad habit of testing Andy with end gear instead of a realistic char level and gear level I will leave andy's physical resist as is for moment. As for the rest of the hell boss physical resists meph will become 115, diablo 120, and baal 125 (125 being unbreakable by drecrep even as a soft immune). However for the testing don't just use a lvl 40 amp which is obviously a necro grade amp. Also try using a lvl 5-6 amp (to see how realistically soloable it is). This will give a range of physical resists to try against atleast.

boss phys resist will be about the same as it was in 1.21z with max necro amp this patch.

what about barbs lee? and zealers? you're only testing druids. barbs don't look all that impressive even with the current str bonuses. you want nerfs to all phys chars again without looking at them? my barb didn't look that impressive considering hes one of the only pure str melees on the realm, and needs a full party of buffs to stay afloat. i could name at least 5 other chars capable of soloing far better than my power barb.

tomb reaver is pound for pound the best weapon for a 2 hand druid. max speeds, eth, indestructible, 2 sockets. lee there is a reason my druid had a tomb reaver on for los necro.

lee you're saying elemental chars lost 50% of their dmg end game. because every elemental character has perfect gear and no skill synergies right? you really blow things out of proportion.

i'm not making any more changes based solely on 1 persons testing of 1 melee character with end-game gear. that doesn't sound unreasonable does it?

A maxed amp at Level 60? Are you being funny or sarcastic? That's 40+ skills if you know 2+2.

And thanks for the smart ass andy comment. You could have just said "Since Lee." I don't recall anyone else testing her. Of course my testing wouldn't have been relevant anyway if you didn't drop a bomb on boss physical resistance.

Again don't just say what you're going to do without explaining why. It was suppose to be middle ground just like Kevin thought.. just like I thought. What made you so inclined to drop a bomb on their physical resistance? I saw nothing in the patch notes either.

How many solo chars do you think will be roaming around? The boss life was increased by 2x and 50% elemental nerf end game. Last I recall... poison and Armageddon firedruids were the only characters I saw soloing shit. So again.. stop talking about solo. If anything the chances of soloing shit just went down x2. Poison may be an exception still but I don't think a firedruid will be as effective without a necro to LR or a Conviction paladin aka can't solo anymore.

I'm more interested in Kevins opinion regarding this. I don't think you really know entirely what you're doing here with boss resistance. Had I not said a single word nothing would have changed.

Melee would have been untouched and boss resistance/amp similar and the patch would have been a disaster. Again I reiterate.. I don't think you know what you're doing.


Either buff AMP and don't touch boss resistance or nerf boss resistance and go back to 1.3as amp. Again I'm trying to understand the reasoning here.

Did Pious tell you to do it Baerk or did you do it yourself?

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Did you not read Kevins post? His opinion is what I'm going off of. I've already stated several times I've felt/thought Fury druids were the only char that needed to be evaluated.

But Kevin's post said the patch would be a disaster if you went the route your going so why are you firing shit off at me?

I've already stated I thought Fury was the only problem but I'm more inclined to listen to Kevin because I know he has the most experience modding here. I originally felt Fury druids were the issue.

So again don't throw all the fire my way and blast me with the 1 man testing argument. My opinion changed after reading Kevins post.

If you want to argue take it up with him but I think he has a valid point.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Also we could always just specifically try nerfing Fury druids if their attack mechanics are just that nuch stronger than the rest of the melees. It would be entirely possible for me to do something like make maul werebear only (so a fury druid can't access its honking huge ED). It's entirely possible to bind any of the SS attacks to only one specific form like fury.

As for the hell act boss physical resist thing I threw out. It's just my idea and was just throwing it out. Since we are doing one more beta patch anyways to make sure we got a good patch set up concerning the normal/high res anyways we might as well test are the melees where they really should be.

Btw I wasn't implying that 50% of their damage was gone. That isn't what I meant at all. I just meant a 50% nerf to accessible elemental damage is now gone no matter what you do, you can't get a single % of that 50. Before you could get all 50. That's my point. It was a global elemental nerf. You blew what I said out of proportion.

So I can't get udie2 to work Or i'd gladly go on SP and test it with REALISTIC gear but remember this. The AR with Tombreaver will be higher. And your FPA is faster. So someone feel free to go test it and let me know how it goes.
I'm sure there is hardly a difference. And if a ETH Tmaul can drop Diablo in 15-20 sec why would you use a ETH Tombreaver just because its 1fpa faster?

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Ok just need to throw this out there one more time.

I NEVER tested any other character because I only thought FuryDruids were the issue.

I saw Kevin's post and I automatically jumped on his bandwagon because I ASSUMED he wouldn't post something like that and be unsure or whatever. So I took what he said word for word.

My question is. Who else agrees on the same amp values as 1.21z? I thought the amp values there were too strong which is why Kevin took it upon himself to go halfway. This is what confuses me.

If we want to go back to 1.21z why are we nerfing CB? Why are making ds less accessible? Clearly Melees completely dominated in 1.21z and we are trying to avoid that direction.

It makes no sense at all to allow one dominating aspect of that patch to exist and then every other aspect is met halfway. Gear, cb etc.

Because the dominating aspect that is left to exist is a HUGE one, especially with the stre buff melees received.

How many people even had over 90% amp in 1.21z? The current is 98%

Is it not reasonable to meet halfway on pierce and amp? I don't understand it. Simple question.

Oh I went off topic. My bad.

Well the fury druid definitely kills much faster than the Barb does and I don't think a zealer can compare with Fury druids ED.

There is obvious confusion about the direction this is going though. I sided with Kevin until someone can explain or give good reasoning why the pierce values were met with 1.21z or actually even higher.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Lee,

I think you misunderstood most of the posts that I made earlier, specifically with feral. It just really did not seem like you really read what I was saying, and just (seemingly) tried to paint a lot of generalizations that I did not make at all.

The point I was trying to make was that there needs to be a differentiation between hard and soft points spent. I don't really care how the balance of life leech on the skill is actually reached. I just don't like the idea of it only being used as a one point wonder. The ed% is not/never has been the reason to max it.

The reason I asked for a list of gear that you were using was so that we could find where the balance could actually be reached. This is why I tested hell andy with gear that could most likely be found by that point in the game. It was not to say your tests had no merit, The tests you did on diablo showed that there was indeed a perdy big problemo.

ps. you don't know me well enough to actually piss me off.

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The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

Of course it was a problem. No one else tested with me though. I honestly can't even stetup udie2 to construct a realistic test but obviously you don't need perfect gear to see that there's a problem when a 200% life boss drops that quickly.

If I misread your posts I apologize. This thread is getting rather crazy kind of like the last. There's just a lot information/confusion in my opinion at the moment so it's easy to get caught in the mix.

The andy test was probably over board. I do agree. I only did the test to get an idea of how a fury druid could kill and that is the fastest act boss test you can do in my opinion. Maybe meph is about the same. The results indicated an issue though that I knew was to be true. She dropped FAST. We aren't talking about a reasonable fight but she looked like a Shamaan in Cold Plains. So I knew there was a balance issue after that test.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

we'll go with the hard points idea then kramuti. i agree that hard points should be rewarded vs 1 pointed feral.

I didn't understand that is what you meant. I agree also hard points should be rewarded. I thought you were stating that Feral wasn't worth maxing now period.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Ya, I can understand Lee. It is why I just made a directly belligerent post.

Cool beans Pious. Much appreciated.

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The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

@ The end of the day my only intention here is help balance the game. If something goes array or something ends up OP then it won't be my ass. I think the time spent making sure no repeats of armageddon druids occur is worth it. Another screwed up ladder isn't anything any of us want to do or play. I'd lose the desire to actually play again if it happened and I actually do enjoy playing HU. It's the only CPU game I waste time on. So if your positive Pious that the amp/boss resistance changes are acceptable then that's fine. If your right then well we wasted our time discussing this and we should throw faith your way but if your wrong then it's on you to explain.

If Kevin thinks theres something wrong with it well then I know you respect his opinion much more than mine so you should at least be willing to discuss it and talk to him about it because he didn't sound very happy when he found out.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

there are plenty of very experienced sc melee players (kannli, steel) whose opinion doesn't completely agree with lee or kevin. when it comes to melees, especially druids, they know their stuff. i know for a fact that i'd never put my pure-str melees on hc anywhere near iron maiden. thats my opinion which is quite different from yours. that is from having played pure-str melees many ladders on sc where i learned how fast you die with high power.

you don't realize how easy it is to die to iron maiden lee. probably because the only melee you've played recently is the one you have on single player right now. fury swings don't stop that means if IM is cast at the beginning of your swing you're gonna land a few more. its a matter of luck and if you're willing to take your chances go ahead.

why are you writing iron maiden away so readily lee? i have quite a bit of experience on HU with melees and it has always been a big issue for my chars.

Ok like I said. I trust your opinion/expertise. You are a far better player than I. But no one is perfect a mistake can happen or a misconception is possible and an imbalance occurs. Kevin is a very reasonable person though. Half the patch was him. He posted a list that you couldn't really argue with and he has more modding experience than anyone here. We could expect he knows more about balance than most of us.
Again I trust you know what you're doing 99% of the time but no one is perfect so my only intention is to help in the balancing aspect of the game. And Kevin should still be heard. I mean I know you highly respect him and his skill so I'm sure you'd listen.

But all said and done. I'm out of this one. I've posted like 100 posts in t he last few days over this and that's way too much. I only wanted to see a balanced patch put out.

It'll be up to Kevin to make his point on how he feels. I'll still be around the thread but I'm not making anymore big posts.

Btw I don't have much experience with IM but I know a character like WW barb is more likely to die. I guess fury can too because of multiple attack.

Anyway Pious or Baerk should make a post after it's all said and done to what is being changed. Is Baerks boss res going through? is the stre gettin nerfed? etc.

Again.. only intention is to assist in balancing. I realize things got crazy. Emotions flared. I got into a huge fight with steel. I said some very cruel shit that I shouldn't have. Apologize to Steel and everyone else. I've been a E-net dick. I'm not going to lie. My posts have a very arrogant, insulting tone to others. But anyway it was all frustration from arguing/trying to get points across etc. so hope everyone is cool. Looking forward to the patch. Everyone chill now lol

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Let's not forget about CB/DS/CS cut too. Pure phys damage wasn't a issue, ability to half 3mln hp of diablo in just few secs was. Maybe when you had all 95lvl gear then a phys damage was doing better than ele/psn, but again like I have previously said, there are no bosses without ironmaiden when you reach 100k ww. Don't forget again about high def and ctblock on bosses that affect only physical attackers too, it's not like you land every hit with 30k fury, you can half your dps and compare it to cold nova/blizz sorcs with conv/lr and 80% pierce, 200 fcr.

With maxed amp you're still doing 45% of your listened damage.

I should reiterate that I do not mind a nerf, even to hard points in feral. It was really the one-pointer issue that really bothered me. It's probably kind of a pain to figure out where the point where life leech will not save you compared to when it's way to easy too live on bosses that should be difficult to take down.

so far, what we know is 25-30k with decrep and 70% (30 or so from feral) LL won't save you in early hell. 60ish?k and 40ish LL with high amp can turn into wtf pwnage at D.

Is there some agreement on numbers that can be reached?

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The reader should not be discouraged if...he does not have the prerequisites to read the prerequisites. P. Halmos

Well I talked to Pious on realm just now and from what I know

5% increase in boss phys resist
450 to 300 on STRE ED%
and feral cut to 20% hard points only

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Maybe this has been mentioned..Maybe not. Why is the test ONLY being done with amp? Are we sure that phys pierce is the problem and not the overall dmg?

Has any testing been done with a fury druid without any phys pierce? Because imo i find it ridiculous that testing is being done with a large amp. While every caster has access to some form of pierce save melee. Their equivalent is LL. From the looks of the nerf just mentioned it swings the favor back to Hammerdins/ Casters.

Only one question comes to mind here, why hit other melee druid builds? Not every druid that uses life leech is a fury druid. What does this do to biters and fireclaws? Even with changes neither Geddon nor Valor have life leech. This nerf will impact them as well. The ed and phys changes will have little impact on them.

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"The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits" Albert Einstein

I feel like bashing my head into a wall at this point..

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At the end of the day nothing is going to be perfectly balanced but it brings a good point even if Melee do rape a little.. at least they're doing something. What were they doing with blue? They still require a 2nd party to be effective. Maybe the values were a little too high maybe not but again.. what direction are we going though? Barb would certainly die to IM and a zealer well probably wouldn't be as great. Fury will still be pretty good as the stre/ed nerf won't bash into the ground but of course IM will still 1 hit kill.

My emphasis was only to ensure that no armageddon druids came back. That was my initial fear with fury. The ed stre buff was added by blue and not anyone else. That's why it should be removed.

Even if Fury is overkill (but it probably wont be so as bad with feral slashed etc.) this patch then so what... if enough people are upset Pious will turn it down. Guess what though if Blue was still here he wouldn't touch jack shit or turn anything down.

So my point being.. nothing will be ENTIRELY PERFECT but at least we have someone coordinating the patch who is reasonable and willing to listen. Worst to be worst something can be fixed/adjusted/changed w/e. We have someone who is willing to do this now.

So put all worries/rest aside and just enjoy the patch. We've moved milestones in achieving balance than we did with Blue.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

The point about a maxed amp being = to this patches maxed amp:

You COULD get the same values of amp, but it required the necro to MAX amp or sink at least 10 hard points in it to get it to a decent level. Nobody wanted to max amp so everyone complained. I switched it so you get decent amp purely from soft points so amp will be more commonly used.

1.21z amp would drop hell baal to around 50% phys resist
1.3b will also drop it to around 50%. (from what I read earlier in this thread anyway)

You should be aiming for it being dropped to around 70% if DS and CB are being added back in.

Also, this should all be done in HELL ONLY, you are making norm and NM even easier than they are currently if it's boss hat changes.

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That was my really main concern was the NORM/NM thing. There really shouldn't be a reduction in nm/norm resists. That could be a bad combination with amp and any physical based build. Hell bosses were the general main concern. I did ask Pious on realm to revert to 1.21z amp values instead of the boss charm because of that. I still think that is the ideal direction to go if you want to keep the same amp values at 1.21z. Again I'm not going to start a huge argument or debate about it. I'm just stating if the current %pierce values for Phys are to stay it should go towards AMP.

This kind of made me end up asking the question. Can't the Hell bosses just be directly edited to reduce their Phys res rather than a universal nm/norm boss charm nerf?

The reason I'm stating this is because by globally nerfing boss phys a necromancer isn't really useful until Hell. Parties will be able to use decrep as the equivalent of 55% amp. 30% + 25% = 55%. Decrep also slows the boss down etc. That will be inadvertently too strong. There was nothing like this even in 1.21z. While yes.. you could get a amp wand that hit 55-60 I think.. you couldn't hit that value with decrep. That's why nerfing the boss charm is not going to be good. Of course you could remove decrep from being attainable via charges etc. and that would fix the problem as well. But then there are amp charges still.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

I think you interpreted what Kevin said wrong Steel. Kevins main concern seems to be about Normal/NM in which the boss charm will affect. That will allow people to run solo without a necro/use lifetap.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Admittedly the normal boss charm's physical resist was dropped to 30 from 40 (class boss boss charm which effects seal bosses/LOS/Soulmancer/Baal's minionns has been untouched and remains at 40). We could always bump it back up some (along with act boss resists).

Blah I see where the confusion came in at. I confused Kevin. I confused myself. Everything and everyone is confused lol.

The only drop to norm/nm bosses was actually like 10%? Kevin thought it was 35% I assume since my posts? That's why there is so much distraught going on. I said baal was dropped by 35% or something like that maybe I mentioned the boss charm?

Now that it's clarified... we can put this at rest.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

There's 12 different boss charms. Each act boss and Samhain has their own charm that isn't shared with any other boss. Diablo Seal Bosses, Baal's Minions, LOS heroes, and Soulmancer get their own "class" boss charm. Then there's 5 more boss charms used for the rest of the bosses. These 5 more got nerfed only 10%.

Baal's boss charm actually got nerfed to 40% from 55% (as part of making all the act boss charms 40%). Then act boss physical resists were adjusted so that when including the boost from the boss charms the current scheme is 70% physical resist for normal, 90% for NM, and 110ish % for Hell.

If I'm not mistaken those physical resists for the normal/NM act bosses is actually pretty high when compared to the physical resists of the rest monsters of the difficulty.

IIRC Bosses skills were pumped and mdr was cut by 1/4 from diamonds.

Guided arrow could use some "AR" love if you're afraid that amp/bosses res nerf will be too much. Dunno if dexzons exist on HC but on SC on 1.21 they were able to kill almost everything, clear all los acts in 10-15min... oops.

How do dex zons do that? Don't they have like shitty life?

Btw I've noticed boss skills are pumped. Tobial is like a crack head in Hell and with some certain mods he can kill you instantly I believe. He is bugged or just insane with certain mods now. In my sp testing he chased me all over the place as I tried to run for my life and I had 200% FRW he was just as fast. Not sure about other bosses.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Actually I've only pumped the act bosses skill wise at the start of the beta. Tobial should only be faster traveling from the high res changes.

Ok, i'm still a bit confused as to what boss resists have actually been changed too (boss charm and monstats combined)

1: norm bosses resist droped by? (seperate prime evils from sub bosses)
2: NM bosses resists dropped by? (seperate prime evils from sub bosses)
3: hell bosses dropped by? (seperate prime evils from sub bosses)


(hell baal now 110 with charm?)
80% with decrep
50% with amp (around the same skill level as 1.21z)

(hell baal 145 with charm before)
112% with decrep
60% with amp at 85% (80% amp was the average before)

Mainly curious as during the 1.21z reset, i killed all bosses in norm > nm > hell with an untwinked smiter using obedience, goblin toes and bad blood crafted gloves pretty quickly with only 2k listed smite damage. + was the only damage dealer in the party (1 summon druid with me in norm nm and hell act 1, 2 and 3 + amp charges wand and 1 summy necro with us for act 4 and 5 hell).

I would personally aim for 70-75% resist with necro amp against meph, diablo and baal in hell. As long as you can use decrep against a hell boss and still deal good damage, the boss will be extremely easy due to the weaken and slow effect.

If the boss charm has 55% phys res on it like before, that stops any imbalances in norm/nm. The values for physical resistance listed in monstats will then be roughly = the bosses resists while amped in hell (give or take 5%).

Have a think on it anyway. Thats the angle I would approach it at.

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Where in the blazes are you getting the idea that decrepify drops monster resists more than 25 Purerage? Decrepify drops the effected stats 25% regardless of skill level. If Pious's idea goes through this will put the later hell act bosses at 115 physical resist.

This means decrepify will only put them down to 90 physical resist. In order for a good necro amp of -60 to have an end result of the boss having 70 physical resist would require the bosses having so much physical resist that decrep straight up can't break them.

I already answered a lot of the questions with my previous post already actually. Non act bosses without "class" boss charms only had a resist drop of 10. Act bosses had their physical resists dropped varying amounts in order to meet a scheme. Normal act bosses have physical resist of 70, NM 90, and Hell 110ish.

I never said it drops resists by more per level. Whare exactly did you see me say that?


I forgot i dropped it to 25% for 1.3a, but thats still 110-25=85% resist

Decrep couldn't break them before. thats the point... Have you fought meph/diablo/baal with decrep active? It's completely retarded, you can slow them even further in hell due to more slow gear availability. Adding more on top of that + allowing CB's to land (even with high resistance, CB is still a massive power shift in the early stages of the fight).

Guess I'll be rolling the whole game with spellsteel on switch now. Especially since decrep in 1.3a was dropping prime evils in NM to 80% phys res and in hell with 1.3b they will only have 10% more (only 5% if they remain at 110, YIKES!) than that at the very end of hell difficulty. Also alot safer than using amp.

If bosses have 115 resist to phys then amp will drop that to 55%. (currently with 110 resist they will be dropped to 50%)
1.21z amp could drop them to 50% and melee's dominated stuff in 1.21z. The aim should be for closer to 70-75% with amp with the boss resist "charm" staying at the old values. (Remember most unique items damage was buffed in 1.3a from 1.21z too)

You dropped the resists on the regular sub bosses charms so they are now even easier than they were in norm and NM. Have you seen a well build melee vs bosses in norm/nm with spellsteel on switch? I have as I played one. They can kill nm baal waves with only 2 charges of decrep with ~4k life (after buffs) due to high damage + leech + low phys resist + slowed + weakened bosses. You should be targeting resists in monstats.txt as all you are doing by adjusting a difficulty independant item is making the whole game easier instead of just fixing the problem in the only difficulty phys resist is a problem in (HELL).

Anyway, I'm not trying to change your mind, I just wanted to know if I would be building more phys based chars than ele based this patch. The answer is a huge yes atm. Less imunity's too , not to mention anything other than meteor sorc/poison zon are getting slightly shafted end game (ele caster wise).

Also making sure there is no "you buffed amp too much, this is your fault" shitstorm coming my way. I'm not happy with those values, especially not the adjustments to norm and NM bosses. I could maybe live with them if it was monstats only adjustments but not global nerfs. NM is gonna be easier than normal at this rate and hell probs slightly harder than norm if not = to norm). I hope it won't but I suspect it will be.

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+1. Decrep as of now looks the way to go.

Although you guys are raving that hell act bosses should not be breakable at all by decrepify at least consider this. In 1.3a most of the LOS heroes are actually technically physical immune breakable by decrepify (down to 90 physical resist with decrep). Only the LOS barb and paladin have enough base and boss charm physical resist to avoid being broken by decrep.

Considering the LOS heroes physical resist has not been tampered with at all (nor has decrep's physical resist drop for that matter) doesn't this go to show in the first place that the hell act boss resists were actually rather high considering most of the LOS heroes didn't even have that sort of physical resist?

My concern isn't about decrep breaking phys immunes. My concern is for the melee classes outside of the smiter/fury druid. Reasoning being that they are required to find a form of amp/decrep (im aware a wand isn't hard to come by) to break many bosses in hell. HOWEVER Casters have access to Pierce/LR and Convic to break many of the "soft" immunities on bosses.. (Obviously a pzon is not gna break Andy etc.etc.etc.)

The thought is that "balance" is being achieved by breaking LL and dmg on certain builds and CB.. However shouldn't the balance be looked into Phys Resistance and the ways to break it. For example, Wouldn't a fight with say Hell Andy be harder and more challenging/balanced for melee if her phys resists are JUST BELOW immunity and theres no way to reduce and no CB. As opposed to immune and things such as 60% amp or 25% Decrep to break the immunity and CB being available.

I know I stated I'm out of this and I'm tired of posting but for the sake of doing what I think is going to be beneficial to the community in entirety I have to continue trying to help resolve this for a balanced patch.

I do believe in the importance of this discussion for as long as someone like Kevin disagrees. If what he says is true then there is going to be major dissatisfaction when the patch unveils and time is passed. Again the community will break itself from inside. Again the same shit will happen and especially being so that so much discussion was brought about to preven it from happening. So it is important to continue discussing this until we find a proper solution.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."


Let us be reminded of what happen in 1.21z. We all need a history lesson here because I think too many of us have forgotten the history of Hell Unleashed.

During 1.21z a dev team was formed by Blue or I don't know who but a Dev team was formed. In that Dev team which is still accessible today you can see the proposed changes.

Quote by JarL:

"I think we are ALL in agreement that AMP breaks the game currently. Maybe no so much if CB was removed and act 1 physical mercs removed."

JarL seemed to firmly believe that AMP was a major problem for 1.21z. I think there was a LARGE agreement aka a majority agreement that Melee/Phys dominated in 1.21z. That was word for word quote by the way.

Why I continuously will repeat and emphasize this. What is the point of going in that same exact direction? The idea is to balance the game not imbalance it. If something was an issue before what makes it not an issue now? CB is still accessible, just not high in high amounts but still accessible.
DS is added back. Weapons were buffed again.

I have heard no proper logical argument for the above. Nothing even relatively worth listening to. The only thing I've heard is that IM is a factor but apparently it wasn't a factor before. And I still don't think it will be a factor in SoftCore. Moncurse is random. There are 10 curses that the necro has. I'm unsure if Moncurse is a random formation of all 10 but regardless I don't believe IM in itself is going to be a magical balancing point for melees.

Someone as PureRage could further elaborate this. Do you believe IM is a check/balance point for Melee/Phys Kevin? And can't Barbarians just 12x ber 2x socket weapons and WW away?

I just want to understand what is the reasoning for going back into history and repeating something that failed before? No one. Not a single person here can argue against that. No body. 1.21z was a melee/phys patch.

So if that is the agreement then it's obvious the current proposition will not work. Unless you've succumbed to justifying why 1.12z was balanced for Melee/Phys or you've appropriated an argument worth listening to on why such values as they are now are a necessity to balancing the melee/phys class.


Again post your arguments and supporting evidence. It's very difficult for me to agree with something that isn't much elaborated on by the ones proposing it. There isn't any logical bearing behind it. What are we correlating Melee/phys balance to? If we compare it to Blues patch they were just sky rocket buffed to Heaven and beyond. If we compare it to Mancers patch they were still extremely buffed according to Kevin due to the AMP/Boss resist issue.

Again I remind how important discussion is. Had I not raised a melee/phys issue they would have been completely untouched with a 450 STRE buff and whatever else.

If actions can be justified for melee/phys then It's hard to disagree or find reasons to argue but if one is left to wonder then it becomes inevitability that they question. Very similar to Blue. You have to justify anything you do now. It's part of the equation that was created when Blue was removed.

Everything needs justification now. It's what was inevitably agreed on. Unwillingness to compromise is just going to result in further havoc and more unrest in the community.

The whole point of this post was to establish that Kevin is probably right. History itself would agree and more needs to be done.

Now I am hardly an unreasonable person. I am very far from it. It doesn't take much more than a neutral set of ears to see the merit of what I speak on.

Again my ultimate goal is to balance the game and prevent the community from tearing itself from within again which is what will happen if we can't come to agree on balancing.

Again I've heard the arguments against Melee/Phys but I have yet to hear anything supporting it. So how can I feel at peace or how can Kevin be at peace as well if no one is willing to put together a well written post explaining why the amp/boss phys nerf are important in the balancing of the Melee/Phys class and why my or kevins argument is a null point.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Let us be reminded of our dear friend Blue.It was his inability to compromise that lead to his demise. A fire was started and instead of putting it out he allowed it to grow and eventually jumped in it and burned himself. Is the same thing happening again really the direction we are going? No one wants that I'm sure of it. A fire is clearly starting again and it can either be put out or it can allow to grow. Arrogance will kill any man in any position in anything. It's the humility and humble who truly survive. This discussion has gone on way too long and still there is no solution. It needs to be stopped and compromising has to be done. It's time to set aside all childish things including arrogance and inability to accept being wrong like Blue did. Now the question all are waiting for is will we see humbleness and humility or will arrogance, bitterness and sheer inability to compromise result again? The same aspects that destroyed Blue.



The main problem is the fact that instead of simply adjusting amp melee bosses were also touched in resist. That should not have happened at all.

In fact that amazes me is that PureRages patch list was quickly accepted by the majority of the community and even Pious himself quickly jumped on it but now all of the sudden PureRages ability to balance is irrational or not worth listening to?

Kevin should be amongst the first person heard even heard louder than I when it comes to balancing most of entire proposed list was put into patch and very quickly accepted as a balancing patch. Now his opinion on Melee/Phys is skewed? I find it very ironic.

In fact a simple look through Kevins patch proposed list shows you how well he is when it comes to balancing.

Would you take advice from a Ph.D in economics if you weren't a Ph.D? Kevin has modded a long time, has played very long and is a skilled player. His voice is important in this discussion, period.

With that being said if Kevin is not satisfied then I find it hard for myself to be satisfied because my ability to balance is no where near his level due to modding experience amongst other credentials. So that would make any player such as my self extremely worried.

Instead of even meeting with 1.21z amp actually pierce values are now HIGHER than what they use to be.

Kevins suggestion is simply a decrease in 1.21z by what? 10-15%? From 80-85% avg to 70-75% with boss resist left alone? That isn't even meeting halfway. He is actually being reasonable enough to go more than halfway. Return all boss values to originality and simply adjust AMP to fix this simple problem.

Or what is it? Is the same sheer arrogance that ruled Blue going to assimilate again? What's the problem?

Again Kevins entire patch list was immediately accepted and jumped on like a handout virgin bitch. Why is he being put into question now?

It's time to compromise.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Lee, are you satisfied if cb and amp are removed?Your walls of text tells one thing: melee characters(the hardest characters to play) should not kill bosses. They also suck at trash mobs. Just make the game casters unleashed, maybe then Lee will stop yelling.

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Out of darkness, out of mind,
Cast down into the Halls of the Blind.

Amp was a part of the problem I do agree. However, that being said we also had a whole host of changes, much as we are getting now. Think about it a moment. Amp,lr,conv, cb,ds,cs,dr,res,sorbs,and str (on gear) all took some major cuts and in the case of str on gear was virtually obliterated.

Soulmancer also warned several times "small changes can have a huge impact on game play".

No matter how this mod is balanced, some will feel it's not the way they envision the mod through their eyes. Everyone here has a differing opinion on what balance truly is. No matter how hard we try there will be a couple builds that everyone turns to as the "flavor of the patch" builds. When that happens, they should be dealt with singularly and not have a wet blanket thrown on other similar yet less powerful builds. Smiters with CB and ctc amp should not result in virtually all physical damage builds being rendered null in a boss fight as happened with 1.3a. What also happened was a few builds that were already strong got a bit of help in the form of buffs to several endgame caster pieces making them stronger than had been. It's a viscous cycle and one that will never please everyone. When the mod is balanced with endgame in mind, one must use care not to hurt builds as they hit hell and haven't found that elite set of items that make them so strong they can decimate virtually everything in sight, while maintaining making it very difficult to solo hell bosses with ease.

I don't think that is what is being said. To me, they are attempting to retrun physical chars to having a decent amount of dps vs act bosses and subbosses. I do agree though, adjust amp or the monster, not both. Set it so maxed amp can break hell Baals phys res to around 80%ish and no hell boss below 80% using decrep. Decrep shouldn't be the curse of choice in hell. Nightmare maybe, but not hell. If the adjustments are being made to the MC's and not the monsters themselves, that is bad. Amp on beta caps at what 65%? If so using that + old phys res values yields Andy at 120% before amp and 55% after. Fair if nec is partied. 95% using decrep and 87% if Atmas still has lvl3 amp. It sould only get tougher from there. No way lvl3 amp should bring hell Ball below 100% phys res.

My two cents on this.

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"The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits" Albert Einstein

This kind of talk is going to yield no response from me. You're just angry/ranting. Look at the reply below yours. That's how you should reply. Try that method.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

I strongly agree with the 1st point you made. It is difficult to yield a good sense of balance. It is something that requires a lot of thinking and effort but in theory it isn't impossible to do. There is always going to be a build that will be better then another. The idea is to balance the roles of each character though. While Poison Zons dominated highly because of a immobile godlike tank things have changed. No longer do PSN zons get that tank. While Fire Druids completely obliterated everything they also had a weapon that granted over 120% passive fire mastery. No longer do they have that and they also lost around 25% extra mastery on top of that. Boss life has doubled. The roles of these characters quickly puts into perspective what kind of characters they are.

Should a meteor sorc do more damage than a fury druid? Should a fire druid do more damage than a whirlwind barbarian? These are questions with obvious answers. The survivability of a character focused on elemental damage will always be lower than that of a character built to stand in a bosses face. The same goes for any area or aspect of the game.

Elemental and Melee/phys will always play two different roles. The problem before was just that spirit blades tanked bosses and decoy tanked as well.
Both have been fixed. The roles are being readjusted again but this time Melee/Phys will play the role of tanking and killing the boss quite easily. There is no balance in that.

There is a difference between small increments of imbalance allowing some builds to dominate and then a much bigger increment which will allow melee/phys to dominate again which is the boss/resist amp dilemma we face.

The facts are facts. While DR is cut while ABS is nerfed etc. a melee/physical character will beat the threshold of survivability of most elemental characters by a lot. They have life leech. They have more DR. They have higher life. They have higher defense. ABS was increased again. DR is also higher in ber runes now. Melees have received a lot of buffs.


While I'm confused on your second point so I got lost here. Just trying to understand what you're saying. Your in support of buffing the amp rather than touching boss resists but to what extent are you in support of it? Kind of got confused but I think I understand what you're saying.

Here's the question to you though.

Amp was average 80-85% in 1.21z. It's now 10% higher then that. What are you in support of? Dropping it to 70-75% Or what? That'd be only 10-15% less than what it was in the patch that they raped in anyway.

Such a small compromise to ask for eh.

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"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

I agree decoy and blades made good castable tanks. Question now is, how long had they been just as they were? I know for a fact it was well before last patch. The only reason it came them getting adjusted is people saw no need for a melee tank that would do no damage and cause counters if they attacked. Blades was a no brainer, tweak the cooldown and make it a bit harder to spam vs bosses. Decoy, imo anyway, got ass raped. Two nerfs, cooldown and life lost. Mind you, my plaguezon's gear is far from endgame being only lvl 89, but before her decoy lasted about 6-7 seconds vs Leo before nerf. Now it lasts 1-2 seconds with a massive cooldown. To me it's a bit too harsh.

Facts are there also. Melee alone got some needed buffs, most other phys builds are virtually untouched. Dexazons got no new buffs outside of amp changes, likely a few other builds but can't place them atm. (I should be sleeping)
What's confusing? I did agree with what Kevin is saying. Actually, in 1.21z you could get amp of 90%+ with endgame gear. In 1.3a it maxed out at 55% so I'm saying it could use a small amount of help so that if a necro is using it, then physical damage is somewhere between those two patches. Remember too Lee, hell Baal with charm has 145% phys res, using the maxed amp from 1.3a would bring him to 90% phys res. With 65% maxed amp it becomes 80%. Using the 90% amp from 1.21z it would be 55% on him, based on a known fact that 90% was easily achieved with only 1 point in amp. I'm saying to hit 65% amp with 20 hard points. With the return of a reasonable CB, it will help act as a check on that. We all know CB is affected by phys res the same as pure phys dmg is. The other point I was making was that decrep shouldn't be able to bring a boss to it's knees. Decrep has -25% to phys res, slow and weaken. Hitting Andy with decrep should not be an option. With the old values hitting her with decrep would drop her phys res to 95% which is as it should be. My comparison was between decrep and lvl3 amp from Atmas, so that is likely where the confusion came in. A lvl3 amp has -33% to enemy phys res so imo, shouldn't be able to break the soft immunes of Meph, D or Baal.

So, I'm trying to show some compromises here myself.

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"The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits" Albert Einstein

@ Barek's LoS argument...

Only the LoS hero's are capable of killing you in 0.25 secs. When was the last time you done LoS? Looking at the files is good and all but if you haven't actually been there in a long time, you don't know what you are talking about. With the druid now knockback immune, I'd love to see someone try to tank him with amp active. Those fights are SUPPOSED to be fast and scary. The regular bosses/act bosses are not scary at all, they deal small damage so they should also take longer to kill.

What you have done is make the bosses that deal insignificant damage take less time to kill. Thats fine but I don't see any boss damage buffs to make u for it. There are 2 types of bosses

1: the ones that are super deadly and require you to use lots of pots in a short time if you are tanking.

2: the ones who deal rather low damage but take a long time to kill so you use the same number of pots as vs the deadly bosses but over a longer time.

Like I said, don't change it on my account. IMO, it's a really bad move to have decrep in hell dropping bosses to the same resist as NM bosses with decrep in 1.3a. If you had actually played 1.3a you would know how fast bosses fell with just decrepify active in NM. Have fun playing hello kitty unleashed again. 1.21z was a cake walk, you have just gone back to 1.21z values but with the added benefit of decrepify breaking hell bosses.

Think about it this way. In 1.21z in hell. If you used decrep vs blood raven you couldn't do damage. If you used a level 1 amp charges wand (40% pierce vs the 33% of decrep) she was dead in less than a minute. Now you want decrep to lower bosses further than that???

I want some of whatever you have been smoking!
Blue MKII here we go...

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here's an idea, dunno if it's possible to do it or not but, why don't you cap the % of phys & elemental res u can break from bosses¿? let's say that u can not bring phys res below 93-95% for example.
Cuz if I've not missunderstood all the posts, what you're trying to avoid is to make bosses die fast and make them not soloable.
This could also include restating all the items that give amp/decrep in a way that you could only get bosses res down to 98-99%; so only good necs could give powerfull curses.

PD: again take it easy on me I kow nothing about modding and started playing HU a few days ago, just trying to help.

you can cap bosses minimum resists but it's too much of a mission for this stage in a mods life.

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Some would say the hi-res changeover was too late as well. If it helps balance why not? I do not know what it require though as i am no modder

I'm no modder either. I do know, that it's far easier to control boss res via amp changes at this point in time. ATM from what I'm reading, most bosses are set far too low. I believe I read where hell Ball has 110 total phys res. If true can you say easy times? A res that low can be hit with decrep for a triple dip of goodness (slowed, weakened(deals 50% less phys dmg and 25% less ele), and amped(-25% phys res). My humble opinion is revert bosses back to previous values and cap amp at 65%ish when maxed. Remember, the old days of 1.21z had 90%ish amp with one point in it.

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"The difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits" Albert Einstein

What if act bosses were simply curse immune? And put their phys res at different numbers. Like Duriel having the highest phys resistance atm.

Given that all the act boss charms have empty property slots it would be a very simple matter to make them curse immune.

then they should immune to conviction aure and any other source of phys/res reduction.

Conviction only lowers elemental resists and defense. Not physical resist. Physical pierce has been kept out of gear so there would be no other sources of physical pierce besides the curses.

Im just giving a suggestion Baerk. If the problem is that melee's are trampling over the bosses once they've been amp'd/decrep'd then maybe try balancing without it. Obviously it will affect casters as well (IE Lower Res) and hopefully Convic can be somehow dealt with. SOOO the overall balance for all classes/chars will have to be reworked .. Which may take alot of work.

+1
It's unbelievably stupid how guys are sad because chars do their job well done(bosses). It's not like melee chars will be able to solo things around their lvl because times when you had 30%cb from lvl 48+ are gone. You'll at least need some sort of life buff (oak,bo) and amp from nec or high lvl rw(brand).

In 1.3a Melee sucked hard on every aspect of this game. Buffs should help them and I agree bosses should be harder, but instead of balancing chars, balance them. There's a whole big game except act bosses, melee chars suck at farming because it takes too long, melee chars don't run in MF gear and killing bosses alone isn't really an option unless you farm 2-3acts back. Let's not forget ele chars have been killing bosses without melee for 8months now, I don't know how you can make this game easier from that point.

Melee's didn't suck in 1.3a until hell. I killed all act 5 NM bosses with 4k hp on a melee zon with just spellsteel on switch. The fights were over super fast too (2 charges per boss). Not to mention achmael is one of the easiest ones as you can use lifetap + holy craft armor/gerkes.

The problem was hell difficulty, so why have global resists been dropped when it was widely agreed that they only had issues in hell?
Ps. check your PM's steel i have a question for you about mercs (i aint messed around with hireling stuff much myself)

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Dunno if all resists were dropped. We agreed with Pious/Baerk/Kramuti on realm that NM bosses should have their phys res increase to match bosscap res nerf. I remember Pious saying there were no reason to make them(nm bosses) easier maybe except nm baal res. I always refer to hell tho... even when I like norm/nm the most. Hell is just a boring ride to 95lvl, and norm/nm is all about building your char and switch gear every 7lvls.

If norm/nm are left at the same values they had before then i'm happy enough with that. I don't care about hell either

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