I’m so excited I can’t sleep 
And how cool main theme!
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I dont think they are not trying to get the fun out of this skill.
I assume they dont want a few skills to dominate the game to much and try to strike a balance with all the skills.
You might be right about killing this skill and then they might adjust it again.
Thats why this is a beta right?
I think you got a good point here. Just not for every skill. Warpath is just spin to win.
However i do see a lot of combo options that we have to do if you want to do good damage. I actually love that playstyle.
I also like the playstyle of needing 2 buttons sometimes. The problem in some games POE for example is that self cast or needing to press more buttons is worse then making it easier (damage wise).
I dont think its fair that players who have to get RSI because they have to press 4/5/6 buttons to get there damage of (which i love btw) should get less damage then players that basicly need to hit 1 or 2 buttons.
I still hope that there is something for everyone, which means more viable builds with 2 buttons aswell. Is it really true though that there are not many viable two button skills in LE? Just wondering.
I agree, sometimes the more interesting skills (which is an opinion not a fact) are doing not enough damage while the skills that you say often in the ARPG genre are on the top of the game. I hope LE wont make the same mistake but so far i did see some really interesting builds with Orbs for example.
Hovering over an enemy now shows most ailments they are affected by below their top of screen health bar.
OMG i love it. all in all the changes sound very awesome again
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In ARPG game design there’s something called a ‘power budget’. Basically, an upper limit of how much power one slot can give your character before it breaks the game. For example, weapons have the highest power budget for damage but a very low budget for defense. This lets the designers keep things relatively balanced, because they know about how much power every slot should give. If you’re making a ring that gives weapon levels of damage you can see/fix the problem before it even gets to the alpha testing phase.
The LE power budget for skills is split between the 5 specialization slots. Individual skills tend to have a ceiling on how much power they can have because an overpowered skill can still be used in conjunction with 4 others. There are some cases where skills can trigger each other letting one skill functionally benefit from 2 trees, but they’re not common and tend to come with significant drawbacks and restrictions on how they can be used.
For example, I was playing around with a lightning archer. Detonating Arrow and Shift are obvious and Smoke Bomb is a nice buff for stronger enemies, but then what? Dark Quiver is fine if you enjoy the gameplay of running around grabbing the arrows, but I don’t personally care for it. The bow attacks can proc multishot, but since I’m scaling lightning damage it does almost nothing. Shift can proc shuriken and/or flask, but since I’m scaling bow damage rather than throwing damage that’s also pretty bad. Nothing else does anything at all. I enjoy the gameplay of dodging around with shift and blasting away with detonating arrows but I just got frustrated that I couldn’t do anything I liked with those last skill slots so I gave up on her.
There are some builds that use fewer skills, but for the most part builds that don’t plan on actively pressing 4-5 buttons are going to end up sacrificing a lot of that power budget allocated to their extra skill slots. It also restricts build choices because you’re forced into the few skills that can make some use of the extra slots, however small that is. It would be great if classes had more access to passive/triggered/autocast skills so players could play a build with fewer active skills and still keep some of that power budget, but the developers seem dead-set against it.
It’s like they have some strange blind spot where they make mostly good design decisions but can’t fathom why a player would prefer the gameplay of a 2 active skill build over a 5 active skill build, while still supporting minion builds that may have one or no active skills.
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really looking forward to it. Thanks for your hard work and keeping us up to date!
Funny i had the exact same problem and did a post about it with Shurikens as a Marksman. Its just useless i basicly heard. Marksman in some ways feels meh to me with to many draw backs and akward decision making.
However when go lightning it has some good options in my opinion.
I wanted to try Dark Quiver but like you said the drawbacks are to akward to make it worth IMO.
I tend to agree but i didnt played all the classes and enough different builds to reflect on that to be honest (beside warpath, static orb etc).
It feels like you want more skills to be usefull with multiple skills slots without it being a combo of multiple buttons am i right?
How do you balance that against people that have to tinker around with 4/5/6 mechanics or skills?
Maybe i missed it in your post, but i didnt seem to get an answer on that.
The thing is, what’s fun for one person may not be fun for someone else & the (all devs) devs are first and foremost people with their own, differing, views on what constitutes fun. The changes will be objectivelyworse for ailment builds, which I don’t think were really a prime focus, but hopefully wont be nerfed too much for hit builds (since it did need a nerf).
And don’t forget the one upside of a longer cooldown, you’ll be spending less time autocasting it so the movement will feel less awkward.
I also have no doubt that if its not performing they will just tweak the numbers again.
They’ll get updated.
Hyperbole doesn’t really help an argument. There are two dps spells that the Void Knight has access to (DO & Smite, let’s ignore Sigils of Hope as a damaging skill) both of which would be used.
These changes don’t address that.
IMO, no they don’t.
You can use it as an armour buff on Shift (Blade Shield), which is how most builds use it.
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The multiple nerfs to devouring orb have killed some of my hype for the patch because i was looking forward to making a char with it…
I will still play the patch and try to get a DO char to endgame, but if it sucks i will not reroll. I really dislike multiple nerfs to any skill that happen simultaneous, when multiple gentle tweaks can be done over a reasonable time frame.
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Thank you for everything! You guys are awesome. Also that sound theme is amazing!!
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fixed it for you
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I want to click that button. I want to hear that sound. I want to keep that feeling!
I get that some people are into masochism, but that shouldn’t be inflicted on everyone.
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Thanks to the dev team. As usual I am excited to get into this new patch and see all the new content and also how my existing builds are affected.
Incidentally, I play DO on my VK and I’m not concerned about the changes. The beauty of this game is that a) we have a great Dev team who understand balance and their game and b) when things change you just need to find the adaption needed and implement it - it’s not difficult.
I think a lot of the doom mongers have possibly come here from another well known game where patches=nerfs. These guys need to get used to the fact that this is an entirely different game with a very different dev team. Patches here don’t involve nerfs, they involve amendments and tweaks. The devs have a great grasp on the overall balance of the game for player vs mobs. As one example, from what I see looking at how my VK will be affected by the DO changes it’s not going to affect it very much at all. Less Orbs, more damage, less casts but more mana cost. It all seems to balance itself out.
Excited for tonight 
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What time of day are patches typically deployed?
Just look at the very first line of the patch notes.
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Sorry, I’m a guy, I don’t read directions…
LOL
Also they dont even ASK 
1 patch have the skill being usefull…
Poor Static Orb
Give the same love to the other skill instead of nerfing the only skill that feel good to play in this game…
One thing is nerfing the damage wich is acceptable but nerfing the thing that make the build work in the first place is bad design.!!
Static Orb wasnt really played until last patch and now they nerfed the only thing that make the skill great in the first place
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