Absolutely 100% in your camp about this mechanic in arpg games. Being prevented from interacting with an active game situation due to stun (and similar mechanics) is by far my most irritating experience. I find it so bad that I will sacrifice virtually every other aspect of a build to prevent my char from being subject to this because it totally ruins my playstyle.
The only time I have ever really rage quit playing a game is when this mechanic keeps preventing me from progressing. I see upgrading defences like resistances, armour, health, dodge etc. all as normal challenges, but holy hell, I hate having to build around being stunlocked.
By contrast, I have no problem losing a turn to stun etc. in turn based games - there is just something that clicks over when I am playing actively and anything that stops me from interacting drives me up the proverbial wall.
Indeed it is, and Im on the side of the more the better about power, but instead of going around&around the same theme, Ill stick to this part , Devs here are extremely caution concerning the power of builds, power of exalted itens, power of uniques, they risk taking away the fun of the game for veteran players. Just like you said, pushing the game to mediocrity. Its nothing different from mediocre when beauty and cool intereactions / mechanics the players discover are thrown away the way they are handling things.
No offense dude, but I have literally no idea what you’re trying to say in this thread. What we’;ve all been saying is ‘Stunlocking is OP, that should be whats nerfed, not the stuff that wasnt as OP.’
What you seem to be saying is simultaneously ‘Stunlocking is fun actually, if I press a stun button, the thing should get stunned’ and ‘Stunlocking is OP, and im going to pretend you’re arguing that its fine’
I understand that people like OP stunlock builds. Stunlocks are OP. EHG goes strange ways in balancing/nerfing/fixing stuff. I see no other builds in that corruption ranges so the build is overperforming. Yes you are an above average player and I’ve taken this into account as well, still your whole setup makes the game a joke what is most likely not intended.
Hope this delivered my opinion on the topic and is followable.
I feel like you’ve missed what most of us in here have been saying then, we’ve been saying that stunlock stuff should be nerfed, and that nerfing the stuff that requires skill as a way to bring down a build, when it also includes stunlocking that isn’t touched, is a bad way to balance.
We’ve all been arguing the opinion you’re saying lol.
Yeah, for a topic about nerfs/balance changes, this thread is the least controversial I’ve seen in a while. After enough evidence/video footage, everyone seems to agree the nerf was unjustified, and that stunlock is the real culprit. You don’t see this kind of universal agreement on topics of balance very often.
It really is a shame, that such a cool (and very unusual) build like mana sorc was taken away from the game. A part of me regrets pushing it so far. Maybe if I hadn’t, it would still exist for everyone to continue to enjoy.
Now, ALL the builds are back to stacking hp and ignoring endurance threshold, stacking a ton of ward, or both. The same boring defensive setups that have existed since forever. And also the same boring offensive options - typically involving lots of minions, prevalence of mostly-one-button-spam rotations or both.
And, of course, the way to scale damage for every build is now solely through the usual plain mechanics - attack/cast speed, resistance/armor shred and +whatever-damage modifiers. So one-dimensional. The mana sorc’s unique max-mana/mana-usage damage scaling was a breath of fresh air among- well, among everything else!
I heard Runemaster’s attack options are less braindead, at least.
If we take what EHG has said verbatim then all they did was fix a bug, that unintentionally allowed your build to perform exceptionally well. I don’t think EHG should be balancing or tuning builds to be able to run 6000+ corruption since there really isn’t an incentive out there, but not necessarily seek to punish players who are out that far. If a bug fix has inadvertently slowed your progression that’s bound to feel bad but what can you do really?
It sounds like they’re planning to implement some way to re-buff mana taken before health’s interaction with endurance and threshold again.
There’s an undertone of discussion about stunlocking and perma-cc being capable on bosses and I think we can all agree that shouldn’t be possible.
All in all I’m not really sure what the end-goal with the post specifically is. I think the demonstration of mega-high corruption is really interesting but I don’t think EHG should put any weight into the decisions based on it unless it is demonstrating something game breaking (like stunlock).
The point of the post/discussion is that the nerf didnt technically nerf how far the build can push. It just forced teh buiild to abuse stunlocking more to achieve what it was before. If you want to look at it from simply terms of how high can it go, that hasnt changed, its just the route there is more stunning.
But that was not the goal of why this post was made. I think a lot of the intention behind the post was lost and I just want to make sure it’s established here.
Officially the bug between mana and endurance was patched which nerfed a high corruption pushing build. I do not think EHG came to this decision because they wanted to nerf the build, as it’s extremely high investment, but rather they were unhappy that the current implementation of mana and endurance worked through an unintentional bug. They have stated already they plan to reestablish the link between mana and endurance with other options.
By my own opinion it looks like this post was made to demonstrate high corruption pushing and as a cautionary tale to other high corruption pushers. Inadvertently it exposed stunlock as something that allows these builds to even obtain that corruption in the first place.
I don’t think high corruption pushers need to be worried about their build being nerfed because it can push high corruption, but rather that it will be inevitable that the gameplay gets reduced to “don’t get hit” and stunlock will/should not be a viable option.
The endurance + damage to mana interaction was not the main nerf. The main nerf was changing Volatile Outburst to not apply to Static Ground, but only to on-hit sources. It decreased the build’s damage by 15x (volatile outburst with 1500 mana was 1500% MORE damage, it was the main source of damage for this build).
They clearly targeted THIS specific synergy for Static Orb, even though there are many, MANY DPS builds that are far better at DPS (i.e. Flame Wraiths, Squirrel Druid, etc). And even though Gnasherrr and I were literally the only 2 people to extensively use the mana sorc at 1000+ corruption. It’s very puzzling - WHY nerf my specific build (especially since, again, only 2 people really made full use of it), when there are so many better builds for farming/DPS/tankiness? And on top of it, WHY completely ignore all discussion of stunlock, when both Gnasher and I have been showing off the stunlock to everyone on discord since the very beginning?
I don’t think high corruption pushers need to be worried about their build being nerfed because it can push high corruption, but rather that it will be inevitable that the gameplay gets reduced to “don’t get hit” and stunlock will/should not be a viable option.
If anything should be taken away from this experience of mine, anyone playing ABSOLUTELY SHOULD be worried about their builds being nerfed for “doing well” at ANYTHING, even if that “doing well” can be attributed to skill/dedication.
That’s completely fair. I can’t seem to find that change listed in any of the 0.9.2 patch notes or fixes, nor anywhere on the discord. Was this an unlisted change? I see that the node specifically says “The explosion’s damage ramps up more with distance, but it travels slower.” but I can’t confirm if the text was the same in prior builds. I would even be lead to believe the interaction there should still exist because of the wording of the other node: “The explosion now leaves behind Charged Ground dealing lightning damage over time in an area. Creating another Charged Ground halves the remaining duration of all existing ones.”
The explosion ramps in damage, and leaves behind charged ground, which in most skills leads me to believe the damage multipliers on skills that proc other skills are transferred.
That’s kinda what I wanted to explain that I think some of the dialogue in this thread was lost and your takeaways were getting somewhat hidden. I’d like to know what the reasons behind this change were from EHG since it doesn’t seem like this follows normal interactions.
(Also as a side note, I’m not entirely sure how these two nodes are meant to interact with mana stacking as it sounds like Manacharged still works with static ground? But maybe I’m missing something that you’re a lot more familiar with.)
I forgot the exact skill name, I gave the wrong one. The nerf is real, the skill in question is Overcharged Detonation.
The nerf to (EDIT: overcharged detonation) is definitely in the patch notes. And yes, mana charged still contributes to Static Ground, which, once again, heavily suggests they targeted Volatile Outburst solely because Gnasherrr and I were using it.
Yep, that one. Very suspicious, right? Who the hell, aside from me, Curse and Gnasherrr, used that alongside Static Ground? Really, who even used Sorc + Static Orb?
Let’s compare this node to some other skills that scale off mana:
Judgement Pious Offering: More Skill Damage per 1 Mana Consumed: 2%
Detonating Arrow Infused Discharge: More Damage per Mana Consumed: 1% (has max cost)
Both of these nodes increase the cost of the skill, and cause more damage based on the mana that was consumed in the skill.
The only real difference in the node is that rather than increasing the cost of the skill, it removes the piercing aspect and makes it explode on hit. If the tradeoff of the node is that you lose pierce and gain damage I don’t really see a reason to limit that damage to just the explosion part of the node. Moreover the % more damage probably should’ve just been dropped down to 2% at most, but I could see why that node specifically would also be hit related since it’s the same node that alters that aspect of the skill (not saying that’s good or bad.)
Again, I’d probably want EHG’s response on exactly why that change was needed at the same time as the other changes related to mana.
Yeah, imo I think the endurance/mana interaction makes sense to change. Endurance protects life, its just a change in order of operations similar to how ward + endurance works. This change is fine, and is imo logical. So that I can reason out.
Why did static ground get absolute blasted? I dont understand the 3% to 0% immediately off the bat, static ground scaling is so fucking bad. without that node working on it, its literally unplayable as a build for any normal human who isnt minmaxed to the teeth
Samething with the bastion changes, a mini manifesto going over some of these extremely heavy handed nerfs would be a good thing.
