then don’t claim that there is any. you said “IT’S BEEN PROVEN”
and then said you don’t need to produce any, that is the same as expressing a religious belief in the devs as gods.
produce the proof.
I will not go further, hacve a nice day! 
I won’t have a nice day until they fix my class.
Nerfs aren’t fun for sur. Bugfixes aren’t that greate either most of the time :). On the other hand this patch completly opened VK up for me and that’s a big gain. On top of this I like to play Druid even while i call the class shafted since the first time I’ve seen the Werebear tree. I just make it work somehow and can have fun with builds that aren’t fotm, over performing or broken.
Is Rogue realy fubar because of all the changes? I realy don’t think so and the devs revert some stuff sooner or later. I think it’s good to do such changes in a not released state but sadly some stuff lands on the cutting block.
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Not sure whom you were referring to here, but it’s just as non-productive to condescend as it is to whine. Let’s stay on topic.
Werebear wasn’t working correctly and is still strong, I don’t think anyone is debating that. My biggest concern was wandering spirits (and isn’t even a build I play anymore); it wasn’t nearly as powerful as the “top” builds right now. Or maybe I built it wrong, I was using the interaction with spirit plague and death seal+WS but perhaps I missed something that pushed the build even more. It certainly never had infinite stacking for me, DID I miss something? It was nothing comparing to the current paladin javelin build, or the flame reave>sunwreath build, shaman avalanche autobomber, lots of rogue builds…
My complaint/concern/feedback is, considering it is early access/beta testing, I’d like to know if the level WS is at now is the expected power level for all builds to wind up at. If it is, I disagree with it and woopdy-doo, not my game and not my choice but I’d like to know before I invest more time into testing a game that I won’t want to play (and I believe this to be how many players feel when you say they’re whining). Is that so bad?
Really, we just like to be aware of where the game is headed during development, and completely slaughtering builds out of viability either 1)doesn’t affect you, you don’t play it or 2) feels bad for the people who are playing it. I’d certainly be more upset if I was still playing it, I’d feel like I wasted my time. Why do nerfs have to be so complete and destructive, rather than “balanced” which is what the aim is anyway?
For clarification, no build is considered “viable” by players if it can’t do at least SOME pushing in arena (100+)/push SOME corruption in monoliths (200+). Why? Because those are the endgame systems with recognition (arena) and gated loot (Orobobo).
The issue wasn’t so much with the core power of Wandering Spirits. It was strong, but not necessarily over the top. However it did have several issues that prompted us to rework it.
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The number of spirits it kept up on average caused a lot of visual noise, especially in multiplayer, and especially with the spirits all casting Spectral Putrescence. This was particularly concerning in a class that also had other visually noisy options that could be used at the same time, such as large numbers of minions. We have to take edge cases like that into consideration, even if they’re not necessarily popular.
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Because it could keep generating spirits constantly if used whenever it came off cooldown, it was often best to use it just press the button whenever it came off cooldown, or auto cast it. We prefer active abilities that go on the ability bar to either have an active component where there’s some decision making that goes into when or where to use it. Otherwise it may as well be a passive skill. This doesn’t mean we want the active component to always be something that you use frequently (e.g. it’s ok if skeletons rarely need to be re-summoned), but we don’t want it to be something where it’s best to just auto cast it a fixed interval, regardless of the situation.
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The power of the Spectral Putrescence nodes warped both the power of the skill and the power of Poison Lich in general (alongside Spirit Plague’s stacking buffs). This meant we couldn’t buff other underpowered poison Lich skills and options without making the build as a whole overpowered.
Because of these reasons we wanted to shift power away from the average number of spirits, the uptime of the skill, and the Spectral Putrescence node, and move it into the damage of the individual spirits. As it turns out, we didn’t increase the power of the individual spirits enough and as a consequence, the long cooldown and the random nature of the skill can make it feel very underwhelming. It’s definitely not at the power level we’re aiming for right now and there will be more buffs for it, either in subsequent hotfixes or in 0.8.4, or both.
It certainly never had infinite stacking for me, DID I miss something?
The infinite stacking for damage over time Lich builds came from the Pestilence node on the Spirit Plague tree. This was originally intended to give a global stacking buff of 15% increased damage over time when you cast Spirit Plague, but due to a miscommunication ended up applying whenever Spirit Plague was applied to a new enemy, which could happen very frequently as Spirit Plague spread on death. The increased damage led to Spirit Plague killing more quickly causing it to spread more quickly and give you stacks of the buff more quickly. This all resulted in some people gain astronomical amounts of increased damage over time.
To resolve this issue, we put a cap on the buff and reduced the amount of damage over time it gave. Unfortunately that change has had a knock on effect on the power of a lot of other damage over time Lich skills, including the new Wandering Spirits, which were otherwise pretty weak. Some of those were buffed in 0.8.3’s hotfixes, but are probably still not up to the correct power level. We want these skills to be good in their own right rather than their power depending on something like the Pestilence buff.
Really, we just like to be aware of where the game is headed during development, and completely slaughtering builds out of viability
When an individual skill or build is a long way above the right power level, it can be very difficult to know whether it’s power needs to come down by 40% or 70%, and if we pick the wrong one two things can happen
- It can still be OP and go on to dominate the meta of another patch cycle, continuing to crowd out other options and give the wrong impression of how easy or difficult content is.
- It can end up underpowered or even non-viable.
When we do pick the wrong one, we try to make corrections to it, but both can still cause people to feel bad after the initial patch, because we’ve either had to make multiple nerfs in a row, or their build that used to be really strong has ended up underpowered. The best approach of course is to try to avoid builds ending up crazily overpowered in the first place, but with so many interconnecting possibilities it can be challenging to achieve this consistently.
21 Likes
Good thing we can say that they never talk to us or explain their reasoning or anything. That’s just crazy talk!
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Oh, the post is coming… I’m at work right now so I can’t deal with it right away, but the post is coming…
The irony was not lost on me that as soon as a non-necromancer class had an issue, the lead dev shows up with his rationale and a warm glass of milk for players to drink while he assures them that everything is going to be okay… but the post did give me insight into exactly why they hate the necromancer: multiplayer.
You should relax a bit, have some cold drink or i don’t know what else, but quit one moment, think to or do something else before becoming the wandering spirit yourself. Really.
I’ve seen too many times this kind of reply “DEVS HATE MY CLASS !!!” in 20+ years on the internet to not guess how this is going to end, and it quickly gets old and boring.
Just discuss of your problems or feeling without assuming everydoby’s hypothetical hidden will.
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You’re clearly new here, so I won’t yell at you.
But I’ve been discussing the problems with my class for over a year now, and they only managed to get worse. In my 20+ years of living on the internet, this is evidence that the class isn’t favored.
This was an amazing and well thought out response, thank you so much. While I will maintain my concern regarding “heavy handed” nerfs it’s very apparent that this skill still has your attention and hasn’t been put on the back burner, and that’s a relief honestly. Too often I’ve seen skills destroyed and ignored for literally years and I just don’t want to see that happen here; your words make me feel like it won’t, and I can’t complain any further.
Llama, when I was more active here roughly 8-12 months ago, I saw eye to eye with you on most things. Your response today was just childish and you are SO much better than that, I’ve seen it. I’m sorry if I caught you at a bad time. I know the devs are VERY responsive, and they APPRECIATE feedback. I tried to give mine with some thought AND feelings behind it because I really love this game. Stop crapping on my opinion.
EDIT: I Just realized Llama was responding to someone else. Oof. I’ll leave my OP intact to avoid confusion.
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As for this reply I can’t be mad, I know this is often a fair response to a post like mine. BUT…
I’m not “threatening” anything (like leaving the game), I’m sharing feedback and the feelings it gives me at the time of my experience. I already own the game, I’ve given more than just the purchase price.
These guys at EHG read and use our feedback and I gave mine. I’m glad there’s folks who don’t want them mistreated, but I did nothing of the sort. I felt strongly and spoke as such, trying to demean my feelings on the subject doesn’t do anyone any good unless it made you feel good.
If it’s any consolation, it didn’t make me feel great either, but appreciate the accidental defense.
Well, that’s the whole basics of communication, you never should yell at someone, no matters if they’re new or not. And if you keep doing so, do not complain losing people’s attention.
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1:wandering spirits change didn’t effect the fundamental issue with the skill, if it was a decent damage skill right now people would still put in on autocast even with the cooldown and cast time because of the very nature of how it operates - being a cast and forget spell.
because they took the easy option with wandering spirits they only ended up changeing it from a spell people autocast to a spell nobody will use at all.
2:shadow daggers is a skill that requires 4 stacks to do its full damage, making it harder and harder to add those stacks just makes it inconsistant. If they really want shadow dagger to be a skill that takes some time to deal its full damage and don’t want people to use builds to apply as many stacks as possible in the shortest time (such as the idol bug from a while back) then they should instead have it proc the damage when it wears off and prevent further stacks. Making the skill clunky and unfun to play by dropping its proc rate to 20% is not a solution.
3:WB EQ, adding the mana cost to that unique makes it essentially useless, there is no benefit to casting a skill on dodge that has no cooldown and costs a ton of mana when you can cost it at any other time. If it made the proc’d earthquake weaker with less aoe but free, then it would create a scenario where the dash isn’t allways the best option. But this nerf is just removing the playstyle from the game entirely, something I do not approve of.
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Ok, I’m gonna ask then. What scale are you using to judge the power of a build? Arena or Corruption Monoliths? Because I don’t think you are using both.
Shadow Daggers can still push very high arena due its mobility, but is an absolute turd in Monoliths and if you are using only one piece of endgame content to judge a build’s power, you end up doing changes that make it unplayable in half of the game. I understand arena has ladder as is “The competative mode”, but it’s only a fraction of the game and shouldn’t be the be all, end all scale of a build’s power. Hell, if that’s the case, and you want a “competative” mode make a ladder for corruption levels, the same as arena waves.
The logical change would have been to reduce the damage of Shadow Dagger and force people out of Smoke Weavers (because the mobility is the reason to push hundreds of waves), rather than heavily reduce the proc rate and completely break the Monolith experience.
There are actually 3 Shadow Daggers builds, and only one was nerfed this patch.
#1 - Puncture SD - buffed, from 100% to 200% chance of applying SD.
#2 - Cascade SD / Sync. Strike Cascade - using Daggers Dance with Porcupine’s Wrath - nerfed this patch, but even before this patch it wasnt meta due to SD effect affix changes. This one was Arena pusher and before SD effect change was stupidly strong, it felt like cheating while playing this build 
#3 - Sync. Strike SD / Crit Cascade - this build is SD Mono meta now, huge Ward generation, area, damage, you need some SS mana eff. and over 22 mana regen to get it work.
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Oh, don’t worry, it was totally childish & I am better than that, but so is Zarono (better than how some of his posts are coming across at the moment, just for clarity).
And yes, I was a bit pissed off/frustrated/etc at the time.
2 Likes
Yes, because of the double Smoke Weaver. Force Smoke Weaver. out Fix that instead of gutting the entire build. Force people out of it by nerfing the item, if you don’t want to harm the other 2 builds.
You don’t need any mana regen for it at all, it’s QoL to have it. The build functions perfectly fine with the inet mana regen from Shift and Cascade. However, simple Crit Cascade without Shadow Dagger is far easier to assemble, because you don’t spread your gear so thin and functions just as well, if not better (I’m currently at 400 corruption with a simple crit cascade build). You only need to stack 3 stats: mele attack speed/crit multi and phys damage instead of like 5. In comparison I have t7 shadow dagger effect chest and t6 helm and I haven’t put up the items in order to get to that point. I’m currently stuck at around 300 corruption with it.
As to cascade Shadow Dagger, I can still do high corruption, the issue is, nothing dies on my way to the objective. I have to stop, start spining around and eventually take 3-4 times longer to clear a monolith, compared to a crit cascade build.
I really want to try the puncture SD, but I haven’t gotten to it yet and I don’t even know how to supliment the lack of aoe with it. I don’t know where to begin xD. What’s out there, as builds is simply not on par to how I want it to perform in that part.
All that said, you have a point and I neglected the other builds that a SD damage nerf would have effect on.
The devs didn’t intend for Shadow Dagger effectiveness to reduce the number of hits required to proc damage, that was what was fixed, then they doubled the damage to make part of the loss up & make it significantly more powerful at the low end.