This build is heavily nerfed in patch 0.9.2. I have uploaded these 6000 corruption videos mainly for the nostalgia/memories. To remember a time when EHG was content to let me have my fun. I am also sharing these in the hopes that the folks at EHG will SEE and UNDERSTAND the beauty and fun that they took away from the game by nerfing the mana sorc.
These are examples of some of the jank, the chaos and the adrenaline-pumping combat I’ve experienced throughout my journey to 6101 corruption. It was a wild ride, and I enjoyed every moment of the 700 hours it took.
P.S.: So we’re clear, this kind of nerf also goes against a lot of what they’ve said regarding balance, which is also one of the reasons I will not continue:
Mike: “… So yes, but usually the fear when I say that is that just because a build’s doing well it’s going to get nerfed into the ground. No, super no. …” (source)
Guess they did a 180, nerfing builds because they do well is now completely on the table.
I’ll comment here the same thing I did in your post in the other media,
to me the nerf should be more focused around the permanent stun lock you guys can get in bosses.
A friend of mine showed his mage build and asked my opinion about getting bosses Perma stunned, if it felt like cheat, and my immediate answer, yes, to me it just feels like cheating. No challenge at playing the game like this (to me). I’d rather work in a build that can manage to fight bosses in a state they can fight back and challenge myself with it, see how far I can go with it.
With that said I would not mess with the damage being dealt to mana and also being applied endurance to it. As much as it is considered as not intended to be that way it was a very restrict combination and niche build, being something that helped to bring more diversity and shine &charm to the game and to the enthusiasts of min/max chars to achieve the highest possible content.
It was a very interesting mechanic (although I have never tried it).
But it’s not my decision, IMO it’s a game loss. I’m assuming the boss stun lock is still available, right?
Just shows they took the wrong approach, and Rather than trying to balance the overpowered or overused things they are going the way to trash stuff they don’t want to deal in the moment.
also damage to mana is just dangerous to play even in theory - due to the loss of mana when hit and thus the fact you may end up unable to cast spells at high curruption. There is no reason why such a thing would need to be nerfed.
It is in fact such a specific affix that getting it on gear when you are not planning to run it is the worst possible affix
i mean that if the enemies hit you and drop you to zero mana you cannot cast mana using spells, something that can happen in high curruptions with the damage to mana gear prefix- which means only builds that are running a lot of mana can risk it
Dont worry, mage isnt the only class that can do it. It’s a signficiant problem with the end game (though with the npc, I also managed to perma stun the first mini boss you face in the campaign lmao). I havent seen the devs address it, hopefully it’s on there radar. At least 2 of the few completions in the race for t4 bosses with 0.9 did it by perma stunning, if nothing changes that’s all you’ll see from people streaming their zooming at release, and it’ll 100% become a very known thing.
“I’m assuming the boss stun lock is still available, right?” - Yes, it’s very much available.
In fact, I did not quit because I could no longer push higher corruption, I quit because the build, after the nerf (15 times LESS damage!), is no longer FUN to push with. The build is dead because not only would it take 15 times longer to do ANYTHING, the damage-to-mana/endurance synergy nerf makes it so that you also have to play a lot more careful, offscreening and stunlocking everything. So, much slower DPS, and much more boring (keepaway, stunlock, no finesse, no real action) playstyle.
Like I said to others, I COULD still push corruption after all the nerfs, and still do it quite well, but WHY? The beauty and the fun is gone, I’m not going to play simply for a number.
YEah this sounds similiar to how vk felt with 0.9 (and now, nothing changed about this), the way to really push was to just abuse timelock with anomaly, and chip away into stuff. Stunlocking needs a nerf, becuase otherwise its way too strong, while being the most boring thing that destroys anything the gameplay has going for it. CDR realllly hurt the game.
The reward should be for intense, in the moment skill. Not reserved, plan out in advance, gameplay. Thats what the game excels at, and what design should capitalise on.
Yes, and that’s why I’ve stuck around in this game this long. All the enemies have attacks that can be actively dodged, everything can be actively played around, assuming you have the damage and enough defense to survive a few hits. It makes for some exciting interactions, and the mana sorc build leaned heavily onto well-timed executions, proper positioning and managing cooldowns. If you look at my montage video, I show some very good examples of this. I actively dodged really crazy amounts of attacks, almost all of which, even without damage mods, had the power to kill me within less than 5-10 hits - this clip here is probably the best example.
The enemies are very well designed, they are the aRPG equivalent of Dark Souls/Elden Ring. Too bad that, now, almost all the good builds lean towards button spam and various cheesy tactics (example: walking into a corner and letting minions aggro, etc).
Doing well vs being busted op. That’s two different things where I’m from and I’m happy with nerfs to overperforming builds even if some players hate to get their overpowered stuff taken away.
As long as I play this game and Monolith was a thing EHG always talked about low corruption levels as a goal like 300+ is end end endgame (@Llama8 had the info at hand the last time ^^). Reaching 6k corruption is just stupid.
On top of it the never said “We don’t nerf completely OP builds!” not even once. Even as a non native speaker the quote used looks like eak quibble to suit a certain argument that is invalid.
Then again you enjoyed all of the 700h it took to get there? Well looks like somone got his moneys worth out of the game ^^.
It’s not the build that was OP, it’s the stunlock that enough CDR + a CC skill gives you. it guarantees a shade kill, without the risk of losing any gazes and allowed me to push to 6k, instead of only to 3k. Watch the video - look at how long it takes me to kill the shade, even while it’s stunlocked, and that is pre-nerf. Now, multiply that times 15. I’d STILL kill the shade, it’d STILL be trivial with these nerfs. See the point others are making?
Again, it’s not my build’s DPS or defenses that were OP. ANY build with enough DPS and a stunlock can do the exact same thing. Or, if you wanna look at it from a different angle, I could go into a shade at 6101 corruption, tell a buddy to bring their squirrel shaman or flame wraith necro, and sit there and do nothing but spam snap freeze. I can be Zero-DPS, stunlock the shade, and guarantee the kill simply by asking a random DPS build to do the dirty deed.
So, once again, mana sorc was NEVER overpowered/busted. I said already, I could push corruption with the nerfs, EASILY, in fact I could simply always have a buddy with DPS ready to go every time I need a shade kill. But, it wouldn’t be any fun. No thanks.
You’re correct though, I got well over my money’s worth. No hard feelings, I’m not coming back even if a miracle happens and they revert the nerfs.
Right now I’m not that up to date but how many build can reach 6k corruption without any big risk? Can someone bring me up to speed and mention some builds that can do it? Haven’t found any other 6k corruption videos so far but sometimes google intentionally hides stuff from me .
Sure if a mechanic is OP EHG fixes it. Look at the stupid high ward numbers we had years ago. EHG always fixed overperforming stuff be it classes or mechanics or item interactions or whatnot.
It’s not about any specific build. Blacedancers, and really, any high DPS builds can do the echoes at 5k+ corruption, as long as they avoid health/damage mods (I have been doing this the entire time, whenever I was actually serious about pushing). I have invited plenty of such players on discord VCs, and they’ve seen with their own eyes they could easily kill most mob/echo bosses at 2k+ corruption.
For another example of what I’m trying to explain. A certain bladedancer has almost 3k corruption at the moment. I have suggested to him in the past: “hey, shade is the only barrier it seems, invite me to your shade fights, I’ll stunlock him, you’ll cash in all your gazes every time, you’ll be 4k+ in less than a month”. Now, yes, he declined, because he wanted to continue solo, because that’s the way he is. But, you can see how just about anyone who is willing to climb corruption could bring along some sort of stunbot for every shade kill?
The main hurdle here is always time. I have been the only person to be willing to put in the time, mostly because mana sorc has been such a blast to play.
Gonna take a view here that some may not like and is perhaps contrary to my previous views on the issue of pushing high corruption.
Must admit, while I usually dont care for people complaining about changes when they push silly corruption like this, after watching your play I dont consider your build OP. In fact, you have godlike patience and commitment to get to this level.
Sure you are leveraging an arguably problematic interaction with the current stun mechanic, but imho, you have also worked damn hard to get to this kind of level and I cannot fault you for that. Its not like the build is “broken” like some that leveraged obviously ludicris bugs of the past (stupid ward gen for spellblades etc).
Whatever the “advantage” you have found, there is a level of skill and sheer determination involved here that I honestly feel warrants some praise and shows that that “you” can if you really try hard enough.
and you are nuts as hell, but thats a different story.
Yeah like samjoko has also said, the point here has nothign to do with complaining op stuff has been nerfed, the problem is more that the op stuff hasnt been nerfed. Any build that can perma stun, can push really hight, any build that can perma stun triviliases all content in the game. You only need your rings, belt, boots, helmet and a weapon.
That’s the sole problem. It’s been an issue for a while, and I guess the thing now is that the people who were aware of this more, kinda expected it to be fixed this patch, and as its not we’re looking to 1.0 like ‘oh no’.
Yeah, they’ve said that they want to balance around builds being able to get to ~300 corruption. They have to pick a line as to where they want as many/all builds to be able to get to & balance around that.
Now we are talking, it’s a very specific build and require a lot commitment to a certain playstyle that many including me would not be comfortable to play. You have to walk in map with extreme caution and plan almost every attack to dangerous mobs.
You have to constantly avoid damage modifiers in every echo.
It’s not a realistic gameplay of our everyday session, even for some of our strongest chars.
Many other chars could climb much higher if taking this approach to avoid damage modifiers and to play with caution before attacking mobs. Thing is we don’t have the time or patience, or we just don’t want. Or we don’t have stun lock available.
I like to play jumping in mobs and crushing everything.
People just see the number 6000 and don’t care to do a proper analysis of things. They don’t know the full history and how does it work.
Some start crying, some annoy devs, and and sometimes we have this decisions.
That is not really proper balancing things, it’s listening to wrong people. And maybe the same people who are happy to use stun lock in their other builds.
My initial reaction was exactly that - knee jerk “what the hell is this **** doing at 6000 corruption”… then I watched some of the vids and realised the otherside of the story and had to conceed that this effort is astounding.
I could NEVER have the skill/ability, commitment, patience or even desire to even begin to consider to do this and I have been playing LE for long enough to understand what would be needed to do this - definitely not how I wanna play. As I said to the OP, they are nuts and I LIKE that its possible - just like I LIKE deadlifting next to some mountain that lifts 300kg like he is getting out of bed.
For me the takeaway here is that the wrong thing got “fixed” and even then, because of the skill this requires to play, I am not sure if a straighforward nerf to stun would be the right way to approach a change to this - if the devs decide stun needs changing.
.
Maybe we’ll meet again, in some other game.