An extra 450% increased damage modifiers wouldn’t give 450% more than what you’re getting now (assuming you don’t currently have 0% increased damage).
Im not saying your build is bad. Its very good! Keep them coming.
Im just saying that.companions even pure builds that only have 1 minion can do as well or better.
Dont forget about the might spriggan just watch that first 1 min!!
I know, but would still make a big difference (the 5-6 sec or so) was just a guess
Ah ye forgot about your Werigan build heh. I know you didnt say my build was bad just wanted to point out it was mid level geared and more focused on defence when compared to other pet builds that had max level and better gear 
1 Like
Hello Cujo, glad to have the one that made me think of this topic come weigh in!
I think you kind of glossesed over the biggest point about why the vine build is so unique. For the amount of investment in damage it’s return is truly incredible.
To show the negative impact this has on the game lets consider the increased variety of viable vine builds that could exist if this interaction was nerfed, and the skill was buffed to allow for similarly small investments into the skill to be just as powerful. This would open up room for investments in say minion health to make a build that actually made interesting use of the vine walls of the spriggan, and more importantly for a non-shaman build to be able to make use of vines.
I think in this discussion we are repeatedly mistaking that nerfing these specific cases has to be the end of the changes. Whenever I’m suggesting these things my head sounds more like “oh if we nerfed this then we could do all these other things.”
Maybe it would help to feel the issue more personally if you considered how might you change cujo’s build to have similar performance with a different use of vines that fit more what you saw as a fun interesting setup. If you can’t pull out of that specific shaman node without the skill becoming worth way less, than it’s doing something none of us want, its pidgeon-holing us into one choice not opening new interesting ones.
Dev-time gets spent making each of these things in the game, and the stronger the synergies they have with one specific thing more than any other the fewer fun (viable) ways we get to use the fruits of their work.
On DoT builds I do have to say I don’t know nearly enough to say whether these builds are overpowered now, but I can say that the way they’re balanced is super precarious. Releasing say options for the stats that allows a player to get 10% more of each than they were gaining before will multiply to a 33% power gain, while if a similarly better investment became available in just a single stat (increased damage) they would just see the 10% gain.
You point out that only those 3 (chance, duration & effect) are unique to DoTs, but these are 3 stats that the devs seem to treat a lot more freely like they do with “increased damage” unlike their very stingy treatment of most other “more” modifiers.
So I suppose what I am saying is less that these stats are inherently a problem, and more that I would like to remind the devs that in the long term they need to be careful and treat these as the highly multiplicative modifiers they are (to give them the very stringy “more damage” treatment).
Hey Azikiel
It is good yes, and compared to some other pet builds i made, its superior in terms of damage. But as @Boardman21 has shown with several builds its not the top end pet build.
However imo i think companions should get bigger effect than vines from +flat damage.
I really wouldnt call this a negative impact, as shamans are the true underdogs of Ladder (currently theres only 1 shaman on the ssc ladder which is this one, and i couldnt even go half the waves the leaders are at), so i really would call it a positive impact that shaman finally has 1 build that aint below top 200. (there probably are other shaman builds that can do it, but they havent shown up on ssc ladder yet)
Both Druid and BM are very viable Vine builds, this for example : https://studio.youtube.com/video/nd0XWQ7loms/edit
(I did make a BM a while ago which was even better than the druid, but lacked the mana, but with the recent change to attunement that gives mana, im going to make another one soon)
Compared to some other pet builds its quite good, but compared to what a whole lot of other chars can do, its really still in the middle of the bunch 
If it were possible to get base damage for ailments (like you can with spells, melee, throwing attacks, bow attacks & minions) then yes, they would need to be a bit more sparing with them but as it’s not possible to get base damage for ailments they had out the % chance like candy to the classes that they want to be DoT classes.
The increased effect & increased duration are pretty rare modifiers.
Fair, both of you guys make solid points and I trust yall know better than me on the specifics. The concerns being understood and heard out gives me more confidence.
Really appreciate yall taking the time to discuss with me, its been very enjoyable 
1 Like
I think the biggest worry on this is that something similar to D3 will happen in LE. In D3, hitting for 2 or 3 million, 100 million damage or more became virtually needed for speed-running, and some builds just became the current “meta” because they can hit those rediculous numbers of damage. The damage scaling towards “end-game” became crazy, whereby swapping one piece of gear would take you from 10 million damage to 30 million damage. I believe WoW began to suffer from this exponential scaling towards the end as well. It made the numbers so huge that they stopped meaning anything.
My biggest worry is that eventually LE will get to the same point, where damage scaling will be so crazy that the numbers stop meaning anything. It’s already getting to that in some places. A few thoughts in how this can be tackled, if it is a concern:
-
Remove overlapping modifiers. For example, “Increased Damage Over Time” and “Increased Poison Damage” both affect Poison Damage, but Damage Over Time also affects Bleed, Ignite, etc. This means that I can enchant my weapon to have BOTH of these affixes to have even higher poison damage. The same is true for “Elemental Damage” and “Cold/Fire/Lightning Damage”. True, this in many cases becomes a conscious choice on the part of the player, where they need to either give up some defense, crit or other utility in favor of this, but it does open the door for some very over the top damage.
-
I’d have to say I’m in the camp of “100% crit is too much”. Most other ARPG games I’ve played getting 50-60% is top of the line, but in LE right now it’s pretty easy to do for anyone. This may be something that sets the Rogue apart from other classes (it’s ability to get to 100% crit chance?). As mentioned, multiple other mechanisms in the game would have to get balanced around a reduction in overall crit chance potential.
Great post by the way, Azikiel, love your use of formatting and outlining. Good read!
2 Likes
Actually, just wanted to elaborate on one of my points…
I do think that LE actually suffers from affix bloat right now. I know there has already been one pass that condensed it a bit, but there are also, in my opinion, too many that stack with eachother. I do think that there should be some form of an “exclusionary” system, whereby for example I have to CHOOSE between a general “Elemental Damage”, whereby it affects all elements, but at a reduced damage (as it currently is), OR a specific element, let’s say I want to choose Cold Damage (currently playing a shatterstrike spellblade, so this is at the top of my mind). I think that stacking them leads to an excessive damage bloat, whereby it takes me 4 mana bars to down Emperor (which is pretty much what happened when I got to him). It takes some of the excitement out of the fights, especially with big bosses.
I would rather get excited about increasing my damage from 4000 to 4500, than that seeming almost meaningless when I’m doing 50,000 damage crits non-stop.
Long story short, when numbers have too many "0"s at the end, they stop really meaning anything. D3 or PoE are perfect examples of damage bloat where the numbers end up being so high they stop meaning anything. This was one thing I actually felt GD did really well.
1 Like
I suspect the more generic modifiers (like increased DoT, increased elemental) are there to support hybrid builds that deal multiple different elements.
Oh I know, I’m sure that’s exactly why they’re there. This is why I suggested an exclusionary either/or mechanic introduced, so that hybrid builds can choose the generic one, but specialists can choose that option instead.
I believe the issue is more fundamental to how endgame works - in that monolith is the most rewarding content and there is no real reason to do Arena.
Monolith is by its very nature a speed meta and Arena is by its very nature a survival meta, no matter how the game is designed people will optimise for what gives the most returns when farming.
What we need is to make Arena WAY more rewarding, as it currently just barely is equivelent to a monolith run when you reach wave 100, it thus needs to get more and better chests WAY faster, especially as it requires an arena key to do in the first place. So that tanky builds have a reliable place to farm in the post game I would expect the chests to get better ten times faster than they currently do.
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.