Revised list:

Basically it aims to bring melee back to slightly less powerful than they were in 1.21z and bring poison/fire/foh down slightly as well. Keep in mind the values I give are an outline and certainly subject to tweaking.


Melee:
-Crushing blow values more or less halved from 1.21z values. So gores/rends etc. 3%. Ber 2%. 2H max of 10-13%, 6-7% 1H(regarding uniques, sets, and RWs mostly).
-IM slightly toned down. 1hit KO's are fine for endgame 2h IMO, one of the few ways to keep melee in check. To be honest I have no idea how much to bring it down if at all, I just know it was made a bit stronger in the most recent patch so maybe roll it back to the value before 1.3a?
-Amp values the same as current patch.
-Strength and dexterity bonus for weapons slightly buffed. Around 50 more on most weapons sounds reasonable.

Skill changes:
-Firestorm only cast-able from human form. Also synergies adjusted to 18%(from 20%) on firestorm.
-Poison/plague javelin based off AR. Also synergies adjusted to 12%(from 16%) for plague and poison javelin.
-FoH synergy lowered to 18%(from 20%) from holy bolt.
-Increasing TK's range to matching the higher res. Static field may need a slight increase as well.
-Bring back holy auras to -20 pierce. Make clones for the RWs/items and leave them at -10(and make sure the clones are the same on different items).
-Berserk 2% magic pierce per hard point
-Find item 15% gold&magic find per hard point
-Shockwave buffed to 33% synergy maul.
-Rabies damage nerfed slightly and split into 60 point build. 14% poison creeper and 14% SoB synergies.
-Magic Arrow converts 3% more magic damage to physical per hard point(if this isn't possible just set it to 100%, and switch the MS/GA pierce synergy to 2% hard point on magic arrow).
-Magic Arrow 1% magic pierce per level synergy from MS and GA.
-Multiple Shot 15% AR rating per hard point.
-Guided Arrow Multiple Shot synergy buffed to 15%.
-Blizzard nerfed slightly. Either reducing the number of hits or a nerf to the base damage or synergies.Under review.
-Freezing/Immolation Arrow buffed to 20% damage synergies. Also Freezing Arrow's radius buffed to 4.5.
-Fists of fire, claws of thunder, and blades of ice buffed to 30% synergies.
-Phoenix strike buffed to 35% damage synergies, 15% fire dmg/per sec.
-Spirit blade and Spirit wolf summon delay set to 60 and 50(previously set at 50 and 38). 25 delay=1 second. So a 60 delay is just shy of 2.5 seconds.
-Return enchant to a 60 point build(20% warmth syn).
-Firewall delay set to 25(from 55).


Miscellaneous:
-Return A2 mercenary auras, holy freeze(no pierce), blessed aim, and defiance. I'd recommend replacing NM mercenaries with these.
-A5 Combat merc, replace battle cry with shout.
-Anti-Rush removed and stricter quest flags added(see other thread). Under review.

Concerning skiller spawn rates. The lowest possible spawn rate that works is rarity 1 (higher numbers mean more often and 0 pretty much never except under specific circumstances). All the skiller affixes were already 1 rarity to begin with. The only way to possibly further reduce skiller chances from the old rate would be to greatly expand the charm affix pool.

As for the poison cloud only proccing on an actual hit thing... I'm not sure if there's a missile function that will specifically allow for that since skill functions are not my expertise. However... any missile, nova, cloud, or some other manner of ranged attack can be forced to have an AR check with a particular flag (which also happens to integrate some melee weapon damage into the missile). Since poison clouds persist though it would probably be prudent to have next delay added so that a poison zon doesn't get the chance to apply ranged CB every frame along with other weapon effects.

Could we basically code the skiller to act as a unique or whatever? Basically independent from the charm affix pool. It would suck not being able to re-roll them, but that's probably for the best anyway.

Actually the unique charms aren't technically charms as far the game engine is concerned. However... Having the unique charm base items set to drop under an extremely slim chance in the TCs that's comparable to zods code wise should work. Of course how the game's RNG will actually handle the coded chance will prove an other matter since the RNG is unfortunately skewed.

Would that require much editing? I didn't really wanna put a big workload on anyone should they wanna pickup my suggestions here. But I know a lot of people enjoyed the aspect of finding skillers for trading and pimping. I figured at a very low drop rate it wouldn't be game breaking at all while still giving us crazy farmers that thrill of finding them again.

Also just how rare could you potentially make an item? Or would the funky RNG always get in the way of wanting to do something like that? I was talking over with my brother and he pointed out how SC could get quite a few skillers even at zod rarity. Them in addition to soul shards could definitely cause some problems. Love the ideas of skillers though.

The RNG will atleast roughly obey the coded chances. I'm just saying that even if I do everything in my power to make the coded chance for the unique skiller charms equal to the zods there's still the chance the skewed RNG may just make one thing spawn twice as often as the other or some other amount (and we'll have no way of knowing which way it will skew till we actually do it since no one seems to know how the RNG is exactly skewed in the first place). The edit itself would not be particularly difficult for me. The hardest part would be carefully working through the TC chains keeping track of the probabilities involved so that things really are rigged so that the charms really are in the same league as the zods atleast coding wise.

As for the rarest lowest chance drop thing without getting into no drop belongs to the rune drop TCs. rune drop TC 17 has zod at chance of 1 while rune drop TC 16 has a chance of 1200 to be selected (which means even if the zod TC gets selected all the time it has a really high chance of dropping down to a lower rune drop table).

Have you considered these changes in tandem with Dew's changes? I actually really like your ideas so far, if you itemized it I bet Dew would throw em in (though he said he didn't want to nerf anything so he may not want to put in the jav/foh/fstorm changes)

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That was my intention slappy, I think you missed this part of my post:

lol whoops. I was just scanning through the proposed changes; the amp with removal of boss hats (and maybe cb too) was the only potential conflict that I could think of. BUT I'm ok risking having melee be a tad overpowered and just adjusting values after

this thread needs more love and attention. With these + dew's changes I think we could have a solid patch

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I can code these changes if needed.

Most changes I can get behind, but imo keep Dew's amp + bosshats and leave CB as is. Doing this with a live test will let us see how much, if any changes are needed. Better to adjust during beta, than a mini update later.

I especially want the shapeshifter change for fire druids, they're way too stout as it stands now.

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I agree strongly with these. I suggested the firestorm change the last patch but no one liked it. Rest of the ideas are good as well I'm just like 75% sold on them.

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Ber buff agreed it's a hr others could make too much of an impact

np easy fix

imo 1 pt should be 40% maxed 60%

buffed existing items ctc what other items do you have in mind?

np

would need to add 21 unique gcs for this
sure np
to hit is enabled but so was always explode so no matter if the jav hits or not it always produces the cloud

np
imo these should be 3-5% pierce and mastery. pierce has a double impact compared to mastery

just my thoughts

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I agree with you mostly, scrap the skillers(too difficult to implement correctly at the moment), if current ctc amp/crep items are buffed that should be plenty, and 3-5 facets pierce/mastery sounds fine(maybe 4 max mastery, but either should be fine).

I guess the biggest issue is whether to use your idea of lower max amp+low cb and adjusted boss charms or CB+higher amp to give melee that boost. I'm fine with either really but I lean towards the latter for a couple reasons.

1.Higher amp+decent CB is a tried and true way to make melee viable/useful.
2. Bringing amp progression to match LR would put 1pt amp(which will be the majority of necros) around 30% give or take late game, which is going to be pretty lackluster versus trash and sub bosses for anything doing physical based damage. I just feel casters are still going to be able to stack quite a bit of elemental pierce while melee/physical chars are going to be sitting at very low amp values which is going to be a pretty big difference versus trash(something melee are already painfully slow against).
3.The hardpoint amp progression hurts necros who are primarily a hybrid class. Once again we will be relying on maxed amp necros to really put melee on the map versus act/lategame bosses. The problem with that is the only necros with the extra points for a maxed amp would be a summoner.

Could we possibly meet somewhere in the middle? What about leaving amp to it's current softpoint progression and meet the CB somewhere between it's current value's and what I've proposed(so something like 3% Ber, 2% gloves/boots, 6-12% CB 1H/2H)? Obviously this would be in conjunction with your boss charm adjustments.

The only real issue I see with higher CB values would be smite, which we could adjust somehow. I'm thinking switching Ber and gloves/boots around to 2% and 3% respectfully to keep smiters from stacking so much CB into a gris caddy. Or perhaps making smite AR based, or buffing it once again and removing CB from it completely. This idea might be a longshot but perhaps there is a way to assign a negative CB value to smite? All I know is other melees need that CB to even begin catching up on some of the powerhouse elemental builds versus act bosses.

Also does anyone else feel prayer needs to be adjusted? With the new HW RW it can become a little over the top. Anything breaking over 1k heal pulse is pushing it.

The real nich that was created for melee with what I have done is made them gg vs sub bosses and with the exception of dury b/c of his smite even 1 point amp is pretty usefull. But we can go live on testing with your values and if its op it can be brought down. That's a 2 second fix in one file. Afterwork tonight I'll throw this togethere.

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Sounds good man. Thanks for working with us to get this patch out, I for one really appreciate it.

I've been messing around with curses with the intention of giving some of the lesser used curses some love(attract&dim vision mostly). The first problem I've noticed is that dim visison and confuse have their duration drastically reduced in hell. Making a 16 second curse into around a 5. Anyone know if this is intentional? Perhaps confuse was reduced in duration in hell because of it now working with amp? Which would leave me wondering why dim vision was bunched in as well. Probably a coincidence.

Also another question, is there a way to make a curse only affect trash? Like how confuse, attract, and dim vision work but also on trash bosses/super uniques. Basically I want to make a curse work on all trash mobs/superuniques/champs, but not on act or sub bosses.

Yes aura filter controls this. Its hard to explain how it works tho b/c the functions are becimal converted to binary. I have the binaries for the functions somewhere in my notes .

Btw dim vision is gg for a bone necro. Cast it and rape with teeth. Safest playstyle when solo farming

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You can change aurafilter of these curses to work like amp etc. then add "possessed" flag to bosses to prevent being cursed.

Why would dim vision be better than confuse+another curse? And it's reduced duration in hell doesn't bother you?

eh.. confuse and dim vision both render the enemies pretty much useless so the short duration is probably warranted.

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Should probably leave them be then I suppose. Any love for this attract change?

Attract-30 ele&phys pierce, and changed to affect superuniques/champs. If you don't know how attract works, it only targets one monster at a time(or per click). So while pierce all seems powerful it would only be used on superuniques, trash bosses, and champs for the most part. Individually cursing a screen isn't really viable unless your party is severely underpowered. It isn't necessary to add this at all but I've literally never seen anyone use attract.

I've also thrown together a few item changes but instead of flooding this thread with massive text I'll start a new one.

I too appreciate all the efforts that are going into this process.

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The only thing that is missing from the list is rabies druids being nerfed and psn in general. And buffs to builds that are underplayed as well as re-evaluation of how powerful a melee will be. PSN is basically going to be the dominant skill again as none of these changes have any direct impact on poison. POISON needs an overall nerf maybe more so focusing on %psn from gear including facets, and %psn on crafts etc. And if physical resists are dropped too low and amp buffed too high with equivalent values or even higher values than what 1.21z had then you can expect smiters to rape every boss easily, correct me if I'm wrong?

Vengeance paladins need some kind of love.
Imo elemental zons/bowzons suck horribly right now and they need some major love. I don't know how it is on SC but for such a fragile class ( high dex, stre req and vita? ) it's very difficult to actually hit max resists on a zon and has anyone actually played a elemental zon through?

I think if a major balancing patch is done then builds that have never gotten any love should be appreciated more. Is anyone even playing Mindsins? There's so many builds that could be viable that aren't. Everyone always goes for the high-end rapage builds and neglects most of everything else.

It's time to start showing love to some of the builds I mentioned. There has to be a way to make vengeance paladins useful, elemental zons better?


Is it possible to have a passive skill give resists to zons only with bow skills? The number of resists I don't know. Just throwing out an idea.

-Increase the radius of freezing arrow to 6 maybe? I don't know how immo zons are. I assume they're much better than freezing.

-Vengeance paladins increase the splash damage to a larger radius while still splitting the damage in half so they can at least be effective at killing trash since there is way to increase vengeance IAS I assume.

-Mindsins buff both skills again and nerf the LoS sins?

-Throwbarbs all throwing weapons should be ETH imo. Anyone else agree? Has anyone played a throwing barb? Or at least have the throwing weapons w/ a higher chance of ETH on drop if it's possible? Maybe add some throwing barb RW weps.

-Warcry barbs I hardly believe the hype that they are decent end game even pimped out. I think they need more love IMO. the 50 50 split was a good idea and contrary to what some people say I hardly doubt it will make them OP as the radius is very very small.

-NERF tiers on rabies and decrease the AR% dramatically. Rabies builds are allowed to have very low AR and still get a hit off because they have a shit ton of life with BO, OAK and LYCAN. Zon/Necro don't have the same advantage. Rabie druids are extremely powerful. There should be some form of ar requirement in order for them to actually land hits. Every rabies druid Ive ever seen on HC rocks extremely low ar and is still super rape. Make AR EVEN more difficult to attain and slightly nerf the tiers. Rabies druids should have the lowest psn dmg IMO and PSN zons should require AR as well to land attacks. They've been nerfed quite a bit already.

Also what about turning rabies into a 60 pt build? It's not fair IMO that rabies druids get 1 syn and similar damage to the other poison builds. It allows for allocation of 60 free pts into w/e else. They still can max oak/lycan on a 60 point build. The syn should be carrion vine or something like that.

-Blizzard also needs nerfed. I don't think the damage needs touched honestly. Blizzards needs to be reverted back to what it use to be ( original radius ) The fact that it's so much more compact turned it into a hellishly OP skill. The radius should be brought back to what it use to be and possibly reduce the fcr time delay to allocate for more effectiveness. If the radius is left untouched then a significant damage nerf should be introduced.

There's a lot more I want to say but for now I'm just throwing out some suggestions. Let me know what you think. PSN needs to be addressed if firedruids are getting nerfed though.

I think more emphasis needs to be put on builds that are never played and get no love.

MA Sins are one of those builds.

If you want to bring true enjoyability back to HU and make the game better than it has ever been then emphasis should be placed on char builds that are continually neglected/never shown love/underplayed.


Rabies druids can also be nerfed in other ways btw.. such as nerfing the accessible pierce for a rabies druid. Currently they can hit

-48 wep
-38 helm
-12 shield
-40 temps

= -138 pierce
take -12 off the shield and it's still 126

For a build that's already such high life as I reiterated.. that's ridiculous amount of pierce.



A list and feel free to add

-Throw barbs
-WC Barbs
-MA sins the elemental.
-Elemental bowzons/bowzons?( Maybe on sc it's diff?)
-Vengeance paladins
-Holy fire, Holy Shock, Holy Freeze paladins
-Javazons(Melee)


That's all I can think of off the top of my head.
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I've played a mindsin fully to the end with 95 pierce and amp they have decent dps on hammer. The range of dmg is what hurts them 12k-40k dmg is a big range.
vengeance has a fix in patch to make the aoe elemental damage/current patch isn't elemental aoe(makes a big difference against trash atleast)
wc barbs kill slower than a summoner without c/e or merc they need the buff and who cares if they get great at trash.

every build you listed has something too improve then in the patch and more
its all in the changelog.

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Way to talk out your ass once again. You know nothing of how smiters, blizzard, MA/mental sins play. You're probably right about rabies but we're in the process of addressing poison. Chill out we've only had these ideas floating around for a few days at most.

-Smiters aren't going to be raping anything without a good 20% CB+ and 75%+ amp. I have them setup to hit around 12-15% with perfect gear, and amp is probably going to end up the same as it is this patch(55% endgame). If you care to recall our hell sammy run with my smiter and how it went, that was at 12% CB.
-Bowzons I'm trying to address their res problems through the endgame bows.
-MA sins will most likely always suck unless someone can think of some good ideas for their skills.
-Mental sins are fine for the most part. Problem is no one really played them this patch so they barely got tested, but the numbers look solid.
-Blizzard is touchy but I'm reluctant to nerf one of the few sorceress skills capable of taking down bosses. To take away their increased hits/smaller range would be to nerf the build completly. I've played them to 99 before and after the change, try and believe me when I say they needed the buff. We'll think of an appropriate nerf to their damage, and I don't think it needs to be too much. I have a 50k, -122 pierce blizzer and would still rather use poison/fire/foh to kill act bosses. The buff to blizzard is also one of the few increase in monster burst damage we've had in a long while.
-Vengeance I'm skeptical will ever be good, but we'll see. Like I said the patch is in no hurry to be put out.
-Rabies and poison in general is still being looked into. I agree with the 60 point build. Off the top of my head I know arachnid's can lose its 10 pierce. Gems are being reduced to -10 and facets -5, so you can knock -17 off that list, -27 if you include arachnids. Your list is also a completely perfect glass cannon endgame druid, hardly a representation of the average rabies druid.

as with ww barbs and every other physical dmg, it's not about how much dps they're doing, rather the immunity and pierce available. Sure, dmg is low with non-eth weapons, but still do-able (assuming you don't run out of weapons, maybe they still need higher regeneration rate). I kind of like the rarity involved with having eth and non-eth, just like having variance on the pierce/mastery on fathom/temps/etc.

throw rw's are fun and everything, but only as offhand wep, seeing as the main hand will throw out and rw will disappear. Hence the rws would need to be spec'd as offhand weapons to really be useful (not focused on ias is really the main difference)

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I have hopes for this vengeance b/c it atleast can make them decent trash killers and any 100 pt build should be able to do something instead of being an aura/curse bitch

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Damn Ben why you attacking me lol I was just expressing my opinion. I didn't say smiters were going to be OP. I just said that if CB is brought back in high enough numbers in comparison to the boss charm reduction and amp whatever that equates to then they have the potential to be very powerful. I don't know the exact values but I was just saying to be aware of that because I saw a lot of diff changes going around and wasn't sure if your list was added on top of dews or what.

But sorcerers are suppose to kind of have that kind of power/damage. They are a very brittle class so It's understandable completely. If they are nerfed(Blizz) I guess just touch the damage a little or increase the cast delay possibly instead.

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Nerf blizz 10% endgame if you are hitting 50k? Still the most dangerous boss killer. Don't know how you play a blizzer but I cast and try to tele away from every one. Ofc I went diamonds over facets cause I hate dying and losing exp so, I never hit that high of dmg

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Sorry I came at you so hostile Lee, you're right it was unwarranted.

50k with endgame gear and all the charms but Mancer's. I go with a little block and she's tanky enough with some good BO(diamonds were never my style). Definitely needs the damage looked at, as she does extremely well from level 28 on, much more than the other sorceress'. 40k endgame definitely wouldn't break the build.

I never really bothered tele'in away/kiting from any bosses or whatever, just let the A2 merc tank sub bosses and then she'll need a tank of some sort to excel versus the harder act bosses on HC. SC I'm sure she is at liberty to be played much more aggressively than I'm used to.

It was said many times before, smite always hit, skip block/def (usually 60% block and 75+% to hit without massive ar charms) checks so it will always be OP when CB is too high (30%+?). And there's no way to change how smite works unless someone rewrites a huge part of the game code.

Btw. blizz seems ok dmg wise, nice to have spike dmg once in a while, just inc delay or reduce futher pierce. Amount of counters it produce with single cast is enough, imo, to keep you in check.

Can rabies finally become 60 point build ?? Creeper + SoB synergies, SoB giving 1 or 1.5% psn mastery and creeper less %dmg (or nerf tier 5 dmg), or both %inc dmg with reduced tier5 dmg. Now you hit max dmg in a5 norm then increase it further with gear, it'd be better to balance its damage with 2 synergies rather than +skills, not having 50k over 7.5 in a4norm and 60k over 7.6 in a4 nm.

Rabies will more than likely become a 60 pointer, it just makes sense.

I didn't quite understand the FoH nerf though(forgot). It's damage is complete shit even at extremely high levels. I've never seen it at high levels against a boss though so I can't completely give accurate advice.

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I'm not really sure Lee. I just know I've seen FoH solo any hell act boss with relative ease. A level 55 FoH is sitting at 14k though, so maybe demon bypass is just that awesome? Does it hit multiple times or something? Anyone who has played a high level one quite a bit care to chime in before we nerf something that may not need it?

well I personally don't think FoH needs nerfed but healerdins/hammerdins should be separated. I don't think a healerdin should be able to use FoH hammer skills etc. that's kinda dumb ( Qwaz will hate me for saying this but truth hurts ) Again I've never seen it personally vs any boss but unless demon bypass is that much rapage for only a 14k hit I dunno.

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Yes ignore demon resist is that powerfull. Imo it should use the damage function that gives them a bonus against demons instead. Then they would atleast have to stack pierce to be effective. Would still nerf the damage though to 9k with a 50% bonus to demons so output before pierce would be 13.5k. You would need about 85% pierce to remain effective then

Unfortunately there was an emergency job at work and I've only had 4 hours sleep in the past 2 days and I'm still working so I haven't worked on changes yet

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I heard imp say this before and I agree with it. Maybe we could buff s.wave a bit then? Just to have another more viable build option for bear-mode if we're taking one away

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Question: why should we talk of buffing shockwave, comparatively FS was far superior to arcticblast for the reason alone. Those 2 skills are lower risk higher reward, but only 1 castable while shifted. I've been saying this for the last 2 patches and no one seemed to show interest, suggested it this patch a few times, but until drrod said it, got ignored. LOLOLOLOL.

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if the purpose of the nerf is to NOT have a tank bear be able to dish out any aoe dps then don't buff it. What I'm saying is that bears will only have fclaw, fbite, rabies, maul and s.wave (which I've heard nothing but poor things of dmg-wise. I mean wc/leap aren't even that amazing and they're better than s.wave)

Honestly I almost would rather just nerf the dmg and still be able to cast in bear form because it's one of the more fun tank builds out there.

Not trying to create an issue here, I agree with the suggested change, and was just suggesting another in response

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List updated with rabies nerf/syn split and a small SW buff(probably needs a bit more to be worth a shit).

Take your time man, I don't think there's any reason to rush this thing out(unless you're that eager to be done with it and move on, which I can understand).

I say implement your FoH idea, I certainly have no better ideas besides a small nerf to damage. Demon bypass is always a really tricky thing to balance.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say by comparing SW to FS and AB. Could you elaborate more? Are you saying Arctic Blast should be castable in wereform as well?

The third sentence I don't really understand either. There's been a ton of a good ideas posted here over time and I think the only reason that no SS+FS idea is finally getting a bit of love is because people see it actually may be implemented. It's a good idea and I've heard it from multiple people in the past, so here we are. Are you butthurt or something(LOLOLOL?) I'm working with dew to try and push a patch, or? If so, that could have been anyone who bothered to step up, it just happened to be me, and I certainly have no monopoly on it. In any case there's still no real guarantee we're gonna be able to get this thing out there.

The list looks pretty good so far. It's never going to be perfect. I'm sure there will be another dominant build in the next patch but the goal is to keep improving upon every patch. It's almost impossible to perfect it but Fire druids/psn were the most OP chars this patch and removing bear from the fire IMO was a good thing. I expect psn to still dominate maybe I'm wrong though.

How much actual global reduction in pierce was there? Like 10%?

-2 off gems
-5 off arach

What else? That's it? PSN wasn't touched in that case. Something should be done to address psn.

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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."

As to my comment about AB and FS, what i was saying is this: making FS not castable in were form, as AB is now. Second, that I don't see the need to really do a much of a buff (if at all) to SW as compensation. Point being a bearform has access to 2 other rather strong skills, which could use a slight buff in survival, being Fbite and Fclaws. Shockwave is ok vs trash, but low range means small area, I'd be leery of too much change.

As to my last comment it was more venting I had suggested it at the start of patch progression and got no response. So, I was a bit frustrated with you suggesting it and getting a quick NP.

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Baby steps my rice eating friend. The last thing I wanna do is go too crazy with the nerfing or buffing. I figure if we can get poison/plague javelins working off AR and tweak rabies a bit poison won't be nearly as powerful. I'm more worried about poison nova/dagger becoming the next top dog more than the two former. Instead of a global poison pierce nerf, it'll probably be a lot easier to balance the damage by adjusting the base or synergies.

From the perfect pierce rabies druid you listed earlier we're down a decent amount. -27 when you include -5 Rlore, -5 Arach, -9 off facets, and -8 from gems. Coupled with a slight synergy nerf(and now 60pt build) they shouldn't be too strong, and if not we can always adjust the damage further.


I'm still having trouble understanding why a buff to SW would affect any of the things you're talking about here. It's a pretty bad skill mechanics wise and reaches a pitiful 20k at level 55. Or are you saying we should leave the castable skills to human form and treat wereforms to only melee and the elemental melee skills? Sorry if I'm being retarded and not grasping something simple, but I've read your posts like 20 times and I still don't think I understand you completely.

Fbite&Fclaws are doing alright I'd say. At least in much better shape than their holy fire/freeze/lit cousins. I know they suffer from survivability just like any other melee that tries to go full elemental. I'm not really sure how to remedy this either.

In a nutshell, the only change is to FS, in agreement with your suggestion. As to SW it's always been kinda lack-luster, short range not great dmg-wise. Not really sure what to do with it, maybe increase range just a touch with a small dmg increase.

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

that's what I was trying to say.
anyways, this is not a big deal compared to other things, was just a simple suggestion to buff s.wave a tad

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Yes but you have to remember that psn necros don't have the same luxury as rabie druids and psn zons. What seperates them is that psn javs were 1) ranged 2) rabies druids had a shit ton of life.

Getting in boss range w/ a psn necro w/o a tank or lifebuffs in the party is much more dangerous imo. I guess this doesn't apply to SC though and more to HC so maybe I'm going off topic here lol.

But I think the nerfs suffice thus far for rabies druids. I didn't look at all the item changes etc. Things lookin pretty good atm.

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Lee I got two words for you son, poison nova. Just because dagger has higher damage doesn't mean poison nova won't rape hell sammy and many others.

Ele pallies got new rws posted in my thread intended for them so they don't have to rely so much on pierce to achive damage. This opens up sockets in armor/helm for other uses.

Shock wave in its current form would work well on summoner druids with new rws again in other thread.

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How powerful is psn nova on bosses tho? Doesn't it require constant application? Have fun novaing around samhain on a psn nec lol I"m sure ur going to be dead as you have to apply it like a mofo.

Rabies/JAv have way longer duration so they don't have to apply it as much. PSN nova on a nec around a boss like samhain would be brutal, lol you saw what happened to my nec.

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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."

Could you link us to the thread or page with those changes dew(I'd assume in the main suggestion thread of yours, but it's 20+ pages long sooo)? I'm having trouble finding them.

@Lee: Constant application means nothing if you have a ranged poison skill(well, outside of venom anyway). Why would applying poison nova to samhain be any more dangerous than javelin? All you need do is kite and nova, which is pathetically easy against a boss like samhain who is weak against kiting+high damage.

I'm not exactly sure why your necro died like a bitch, but that doesn't mean a SC poison necro won't be able to solo samhain with ease.

Fist page has all changes made and rws listed

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Oh duh. Didn't scroll far enough.

So how far are we off from a reset anyway? Damn realm is dead. ISO something 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."

Thing with Foh on pallys is when you have prayer and other aruas running with it(medi/Cov)..Fighting hell Diablo with this build doesn't take Diablo down in seconds its the safty you have fighting D hit him with foh 2to 3 times runs back heal hit 2 to 3 times and just repeat this prossess.. Same goes for any demon boss...So nerfing foh wouldn't be the way to go .. I would nerf how prayer and medi work off one another..Can't remmber there values atm..And Hwill also needs nerf aswell the fact that a barb can have 2 is just silly... Make hwill plus 4 to pallys skill instead of it being what it is now..

Psn builds in my opinoin should all be 80 point builds.. Think Rabies is a tank.. Psn zons have range safty and necro's have mass summons..Taking some of there safty away will make a inpact on how they are at endgame plus keeping there psn from being op in late norm and through nightmare..

Skillers hmm Why not make them a unique charm? sad no rolling them but that would be for the best as Ben said..I think if you make them unique at lvl 95 you can set there chance to drop much more effectively..Example Lvl 95 skiller=Dhorn in chance to drop ..

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Baerk could you look into the blizzard code and let me know what kind of options I have for reducing the number of hits? I'm thinking of tweaking that slightly or the synergies/base damage.

Also the original list has been revised and tidied up.

the spawn frequency can be changed so it doesnt create as many hits while still keeping it a concentrated spell.
also looking over your revised skill list i have completed most of em i should have time to do them later tonight, i hope

also another thought i had was nerfing op mancer shot more or less to the point of him pretty much just being able to throw you far away from him. then giving him a new skill that spawns monsters that make him invincible untill they are dead.
just a though about keeping him hard without making him too ridiculous and it would be hard to beat him with bugs or cheesy tactics.

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special tactics.

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Where's the increased cooldown on blades? Or do you want to maintain this cheap way of beating stuff you wouldn't beat without a real tank on HC?
Also poison needs a bigger nerf. The problem is not only the damage rate but also the duration. Even with the rabies and stab where you have to dive in and hit there's just so little risk involved in the poison chars. On top of that you have some of the biggest damage rates or dps of any build. I think the bosses have to be adjusted so the duration gets shortened alot, however I'm not sure how this works when lr etc is factored increasing the duration
Poison zons pretty much can't be fixed because they don't even have to get in melee range, you can only reduce their dps until they become a fairly niche build. Which I would prefer over what we now or even one with 75% of the dps that it has now.

@Corr the blade cooldown was increased last patch from .5 seconds to 3. It's long enough now to keep the prime evils from healing, but not enough by themselves to keep them pinned the whole fight

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You do realize, and this applies to ALL elemental builds, the problem is pierce. Psnzons, took a nerf this patch from 450k ish to 350k ish and down to around 7 sec duration from the previous 8.5 sec. PLR was bumped (Baal has 95% PLR meaning ALL psn chars must apply more often). As it stands now, any source of pierce, including LR, after the psn res is brought below zero, reduces PLR. That is where the problem lies, not nerfing dmg, but finding a happy spot for pierces. I will guarantee you, when people hear "reductions in pierce" most will say no way to it. As it stands, most say they want it harder, but do everything possible to make it easier.

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Yes I'm aware pierce is linked to it. However poison builds are broken already from a4 normal onwards where you don't have that much pierce.




Was this from 1.3a to 1.3b?

yes

about poison. Gems are likely getting a small reduction to pierce. Facets as well. In 1.3b poison damage was nerfed, and crafts pierces lowered last time as well. Dopplezon was nerfed.

I am not going to nerf a build into obscurity, much less a whole set of them. Run numbers. Give me an idea of values that you seek. Things of this sort cannot be handwaved into being.

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This so much. The last thing this mod needs is another build that does well against bosses to be nerfed into uselessness. We're well aware how powerful poison is. I had some ideas to make plague javelin based off of AR but due to the cloud it isn't really possible from what I'm told.

Like Corr said we'll probably just end up nerfing the base damage/synergies until it's in a manageable state. Reducing the duration for plague javelin would probably make the build even stronger due to it being ranged plus it's ability to bypass AR/Block. Unless someone has some last minute ideas plague is most likely just going to get a damage nerf.

Also just made a few more adjustments to poison pierce, these changes should keep plague javelin and the other powerhouse builds in check for the most part. These would be on top of the synergy nerfs I proposed(12/12% plague, 15/15 Rabies, and poison nova/dagger may or may not need some tweaking).

Emeralds poison pierce nerfed to 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
Remove poison pierce from Arachnids
Poison Facets nerfed to 2-3/5
Nerf elemental belt craft to 2-3%, 4-7%, 8-10%

Have we decided on which Oblivion we're going with? I only ask because dew's is sitting at 30% poison damage which I would like to take down to 20%, or at the least make it 20-25% variable. And I cannot remember or find where kramuti's version was posted.

i just used dew's version. i can scale back the 30 to 20-25 or something if need be.

Are people really using mass Gul runes? I am not really sure I see the point of the reduction to 4% from 5% (really 6 at present). Most things used at high end are usually filled with other stuff, no?

Would they use them in mass if they were left at 5 (assuming they aren't using them now, and will now due to other nerfs?). I am really not so sure. I suppose I have barely played poiszons though.

I think before I keep reducing, we kinda need a pierce value that is acceptable first, then figure out what needs reduced to fulfill that.

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Gul Rune would probably be fine at -5, not sure why I was thinking -4 on them. I use mass runes all the time for pierce over facets on HC, but it's probably a bit different on SC where you can trade for facets.

As far as pierce goes I'm shooting for around -100 or slightly less for endgame poison builds. So far with the changes I've proposed we're looking at around a 30 pierce loss for most poison builds, which should put them around -100 give or take a little depending on how glass cannon you go. The good thing about nerfing poison pierce is every single poison build does extremely well so I really doubt we break anything this way.

From what I understand poison pierce reduces both poison resistance and poison length, making it very effective in high values. So it makes sense to me to have their values a bit less than the traditional elements.

I think even with those (seemingly significant) measures we're still going to play poison unleashed
The thing with poison is that it requires the least survivability in terms of equipment of all damage dealers and ON TOP of that it has one of best damage rates/dps. IMO the duration should be drastically shortened so the build(s) would include more risk atleast and the damage nerfed accordingly. OR the damage should be nerfed to the point where it's a viable build but its at the bottom of all the builds in terms of killing-speed for bosses. Takes a whole lot of tinkering and testing though.
I guess I just want HU to be harder again. All you're doing [on SC] nowadays is either singlespawning and/or waiting for a poison char to "solo" the bosses for you so you can progress your char to act 5 hell. I don't see this changing even if the net outcome is "only" that poison chars deal 20-25% less damage netto than they do now.
Oh well...

I removed always explode on the jav, so if the jav doesn't hit it won't spawn the cloud. That should make an impact on how easy the build is to play. Another thing I can do is check the aggro it causes and maybe up it so its nnot as safe

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It's possible. I'm just reluctant to try and change something too much that has essentially been the same for years. It wasn't until melee was made useless that people really started noticing how powerful poison could be. In 1.21z and before we never heard this outcry of how powerful poison is and that it's the only viable build around. My overall goal was to bring poison down a bit, and to give us more viable options for killing bosses. In 1.21z you had a lot more options of good boss killers to choose from. Particularly melee, which I'd guess make up at least 1/3 of the playable builds.

There's also the ability of ranged poison being able to bypass the Block/AR of bosses(which is why I'm putting my money on psn nova being the next big thing). I'm hoping with dew's change to plague javelin that zons can no longer simply toss a plague javelin and know it's always going to hit. Getting past 60% block and having enough AR to land a hit consistently against Hell act bosses isn't that easy.

And that's the thing. I don't think anyone working on the patch wants to attempt to revamp the way an entire damage type functions. This patch team is pretty rag tag and I don't see dew or anyone else wanting to commit to anything more ambitious than we already have going. Nerfing poison pierce, damage, and making plague javelin have to get through AR/Block is a good start. That's more than what's been done to them in several patches, maybe ever nerf wise. Baby steps, always, in HU balance.

When was it so hard? These powerful poison builds have always been around, and were even stronger back in the day than they are now. We just had more options for boss killers in the past, so they had less spotlight on them. If we can get poison builds down to a reasonable strength, I'd wager that the current HU is way harder than previous patches.

Well we can't really change the fact that people will make the game easier if they can. Making the base spawn even higher is only going to hurt duos/trios that are trying to make it through the game "legit". Hopefully your wrong about the waiting for the poison character to show up, though I have my doubts as well. But like I said earlier at least we're finally addressing this problem, even if the outcome may not be ideal.

Ben is right here with the dmg nerf on zons plague..Now here is what I would do to tame it... The real problem isn't the dmg its the duration of dmg being dealt..340k dmg over 7 seconds is very op and thats for any build really...Increase the duration of dmg being taken and you will see a big differance in boss fights ex...Nerfing pierce will damage all builds but the necro cuz of Lr..
My biggest reason why I wanted 1.21z back was just what Ben said in 1.21z there where many options for good boss killers not just 3 ....

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Poison will always be the one of the most difficult skills to balance. You have to take into consideration that POISON has to be somewhat good on bosses. Poison characters are extremely boring other wise. Who likes playing PSN and killing trash? There are builds built way better and more fun for doing that. Psn should be a viable boss killer.. the problem is just finding a right balance so that it doesn't overly excessively rape bosses but if you nerf psn too much then wtf is the point of playing a psn char? While I do understand your points Corr.. you have to take psn builds into consideration.. there isn't going to be much enjoyability in playing them if they are useless on bosses and everyone else will play something else and bye bye psn.

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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."