It’s possible that it will still need further changes. We prioritised getting a quick change in while keeping the mechanic to see if it could exist in a balanced state. The ward generation from enemy ignite/damned stacks from a max roll AoM has been reduced from an average of 1.69 per stack to 0.18 per stack, which is an 89% reduction. The highest ward total I’ve seen recorded with the previous iteration was around 650k, and that was on a build that maintained around 200k normally. Those values will be more like 70k and 20k after the change, which is still a lot, but 89% is a big change so we’d like to see how this settles before changing it further.
7 Likes
Poison used to grant 7% more damage per stack, before resistance changesI’m not able to test, but I think how its worded ignite could now be 5% more damage per stack
We prefer to state damage changes in percentages, because the flat values can be misleading, for example adding 1 base damage to poison would have a much bigger impact than adding 1 base damage to meteor. It can be easier for people to understand the implications of a change if we just state the percentage change in total damage.
In this case, the base damage of ignite was changed from 37 to 39.
6 Likes
I’m a bit surprised about the Zeurial’s Hunt buff. I kinda expected it as a pre release falconer unique for a possible hybrid playstyle. Seems like you really want us to play it with MM. It’s just…spamming DA is more effective, does more dps and feels way better from a playstyle perspective.
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Ok so its not 5% more damage per stack?
It’s not a mechanic change like that, just a numbers change. If your ignite stacks were dealing 100 damage before, they’ll be dealing 105 now.
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Rings can still maintain stupid amount of ward against 4 targets
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Ok gotcha
Look mom!
IMO this ward generation could get nerfed by another 90% and it would still be broken op XD
Most builds need to invest entire skill tree, passives and gear to get around 10k ward, and with that ammount you are already immortal to anything the game has to offer so dunno…
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Ty for answer.
The highest ive gotten pre nerf is 2M+
Ive seen 4M from other players:
I understand that EHG is trying stuff up while we are in beta, exploring ideas and options. I think that is great but after playing for so long this kind of power disparities make me wonder.
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I think that is a really good balance way of doing it, plus let not forget we are still in beta, so it’s really the time to test stuff 
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It is sad to me to see such broken stuff coming out at this point. Wars just needs to go away
At the low end stuff like Ashes aren’t that powerful, but the testing is definitely slipping when it comes to optimally geared characters.
Ward doesn’t need to go away, just needs to be balanced. balanced in such away that specific skills and class build setups don’t vastly perform over the top in comparison of others. Ward should be a mrchanic you build into, thats separate from hp and dr, so that if you choose to build into a lot of ward, it would be comparable to building hp×dr sources, with no additional modifier that scales with attack speed, but ends up with comparable ehp values of health+endurance+ other sources of dr.
For example. I go to the store and I have the option of buying either chocolate, or strawberry ice cream 
both are very good flavors, loved by millions of people. This is how ward and health should translate. Two very good flavors of something, separate from them selves a better example would be do I want a 
for dinner, or a 
3 Likes
On the Isadora set specifically. What is the theme of the set? It has a lot of necrotic themes but the gloves give a substantial amount of flat cold DMG.
I am a firm believer that anything can be adjusted to a useable state with numbers but for these set items (some of the older ones especially) I think it’s worth asking what niche do these items fill.
You cant really balance this ring without giving a massive reduction in Ward Retention
These rings should give -90% LESS Ward Retention, so if you have 2 you most likely cant sustain Ward at all for longer than a few seconds tops
Not really.
The infinite scaling nature of the rings is the main culprit in my view, there is currently no upper limit on the ward generated with each proc, and the proc has no CD.
If either limitations were to be in place, the generated numbers would be much more reasonable.
Alternatively, they can nerf the ward generation number so that they get reasonable on the more optimized builds, but that involves very significant reductions in the values.
EHG seems to be opting for the second route.
Personally, I would have preferred the first option, because it forces the item in a very tight niche where it can possibly be used only by highly specialized builds.
Ultimately is a matter of deciding who the rings are for.
You can tune the rings in such a way that they still have infinite scaling but do not get too overpowered, but then the ring will be useless for everyone but the most specialized builds.
Alternatively, you can remove the infinite scaling, but then the item becomes more of a generic powerful item for all builds that have access to ignite, and not a dedicated item for ignite buids.
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They could also decouple the ward per damned stack 'cause I don’t think there are any builds that stack damned on hit.
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But it wont matter if your individual stack of ward only lasts .5 seconds instead of more than 5
I’ve had my rant about the knife edge model of ward either being invincible or paper so I won’t repeat myself on that but my main take away from this patch is seeing interesting item effects like humming and ashes being gutted rather than address the systems that is driving the unbound scalability. It’s not the first case of absurd levels of ward and I’m sure this won’t be the last.
I 100% get that we are on the home stretch to 1.0 so the scope is on a tight lock but I’d just really hate to see the game hit that milestone if there is a large instability in the overall player power balance. It might seem like a distraction to the scope but as a player I would much rather see those things addressed rather than bandaiding and gutting items/skills.
Ignite definitely needs some love to its base effect, though I still find it odd thematically that ignite does less damage than bleed. Getting a paper cut is worse than being set on fire!
3 Likes