Blood Rage

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Mark_GGG wrote:

The current situation is manifestly better for build diversity, because even if too many life builds can use it trivially (which may or may not be the case), this is a lesser number than the number of CI builds who could use the chaos damage version completely freely.

I happen to agree with the re-aligning of blood rage back toward its dex+leech attacker intentions, but this line of reasoning alone isn't sufficient to conclude that the changes were a net benefit for build diversity. Since CI is only a single keystone, and even assuming that "life build" refers in its narrowest scope to any build not using ES mechanics, then in the ideal state of balance, the game will have far fewer CI builds than life builds. It wouldn't take a very large proportion of life builds using BR trivially to exceed in number the CI builds that were doing so in 1.3.

This also ignores the issue of viability thresholds. While I don't believe that this is true, it's at least possible that the benefits of BR were the sole feature propping up certain builds, and its dys-synergy with ES mechanics has now extinguished those builds. So the death of those builds, especially if they represented wholly distinct playstyles, could be a bigger loss than the divergence gained by a few more STR/DEX aligned builds being able to choose to use or not use the new BR.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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zSavage wrote:

It would still synergize with attacks, life, and regen; but it wouldn't be used on every life character anymore.

It's not used on every life character now. It was used on every CI character before (or at least, any CI character not using it was playing suboptimally intentionally).

Regardless of how small you believe the hoops a life build has to jump through to support it now, it's larger than "absolutely nothing" which is what any CI build had to do to completely negate the drawback. Life builds do have to build around the drawback, and not every life build can do it trivially, as you imply.

There are life builds now for which blood rage isn't optimal, because of the changes they'd have to make to ensure they could out-recover it all the time. Thus we have life builds with and without blood rage.
That was not the case for CI builds when the degen was chaos. The current situation is manifestly better for build diversity, because even if too many life builds can use it trivially (which may or may not be the case), this is a lesser number than the number of CI builds who could use the chaos damage version completely freely.

Mark you seem to be too focused on that CI got to run BR for free be4 2.0, but neglect the fact that because it was free for CI, it was one of the major reasons to choose CI over HP despite all the draw backs that CI imposes on the players. stun / freeze / shock / reliance on discipline / way more difficult to acquire appropriate gears / cannot use lightning coil / cannot pick acrobatics etc etc etc. I can list a couple more drawbacks but I think you understand my reasoning here. and no, the recharge delay buff was not a significant buff to CI as the recharge rate got nerfed accordingly, and recharge recovery nodes got converted to recharge rate nodes as well. now that 99% of the CI builds cannot utilize BR, CI builds requires major buffs to compensate. some reasonable approaches can be: some leech nodes over north side of the tree that's easily accessible to CI chars, or significantly reduce the ES penalty on acrobatics, for example.

Please please think about the importance of BR's role for CI's balance, instead of "CI got to use BR for free so we will make sure that 99% of CI builds will never get to use it!"

100% agree. That line of reasoning is basically just noobs screaming for CI nerfs when they never played it themselves.

I think GGG basically wants no one to play CI. It has basically no real benefit other than chaos immunity, which doesn't even matter that much since life based characters are allowed to run around with negative chaos res. Maybe if chaos dmg were tripled in value, more people would play CI.

Currently:

1) Expensive gear
2) weak to all effects
3) limited on unique slots (basically can forget running a unique chest)
4) have to run extra keystones for basic effects
5) forget running br as caster
6) still get wrecked by phys dmg
7) infused shield gives crap bonus
8) ES nodes are super spread out

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karitas wrote:

100% agree. That line of reasoning is basically just noobs screaming for CI nerfs when they never played it themselves.

I think GGG basically wants no one to play CI. It has basically no real benefit other than chaos immunity, which doesn't even matter that much since life based characters are allowed to run around with negative chaos res. Maybe if chaos dmg were tripled in value, more people would play CI.

Currently:

1) Expensive gear
2) weak to all effects
3) limited on unique slots (basically can forget running a unique chest)
4) have to run extra keystones for basic effects
5) forget running br as caster
6) still get wrecked by phys dmg
7) infused shield gives crap bonus
8) ES nodes are super spread out

I won't really call Mark's reasoning "noobish". I think he's just tunnel-visioned at the moment about BR's changes. If GGG can review these feedbacks thoroughly from players' perspectives, I believe in their capability to correct the mistake.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

It's not used on every life character now. It was used on every CI character before (or at least, any CI character not using it was playing suboptimally intentionally).

Regardless of how small you believe the hoops a life build has to jump through to support it now, it's larger than "absolutely nothing" which is what any CI build had to do to completely negate the drawback. Life builds do have to build around the drawback, and not every life build can do it trivially, as you imply.

I know every life character doesn't run it, but just about every melee life character does. I wasn't trying to imply that running it is trivial, just that it's very easy to be able to use if you have a few regen nodes, esp with endurance charges.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

The current situation is manifestly better for build diversity, because even if too many life builds can use it trivially (which may or may not be the case), this is a lesser number than the number of CI builds who could use the chaos damage version completely freely.

I would argue that more people are using the skill now, but you'll find next to no one using it with CI, let alone playing CI at all. This change alone isn't responsible for putting CI in the toilet, but it's one of them.

Basically, CI is so leech dependent that in the current state of the game you can't really expect to survive in situations life builds can easily handle.
While changing bloodrage may have been better for build diversity, it seems like the last patch has really hurt it, from what I've seen.

Thanks for the response though Mark! Any chance there's some changes coming for CI that will make it usuable for builds other than summoners, totems, mines/traps, and those silly silly 18K es regen builds?

-Savage

My opinion: I think GGG is trying to find a way to break many builds that have "automatic" generation of charges for defensive/ofensive automation.

The changes made to Blood Rage, Enduring Cry and go on were simply a way to force the player to use the keyboard or mouse to provide charges, not the automation.

Frenzy charges for me were always useless. I never played a build relied on frenzy charges. The only positive aspect I see in Frenzy is speed movement, a must for survivability.

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Treufeldt wrote:

Frenzy charges for me were always useless. I never played a build relied on frenzy charges. The only positive aspect I see in Frenzy is speed movement, a must for survivability.

there's also evasion for those on ranger side of passive tree. then as of this patch, it also provides a "more" based damage boost.

Physical degen is boring and bad. There is no way to improve your gear in order to better make use of this skill.
Prior to 2.0 getting chaos resistance on my life-based characters actually meant something, and it was something I aspired to. Now I really honestly don't care. In fact, chaos resistance is now largely wasteful taking up a valuable suffix which could be any number of other affixes. With enough investment in chaos resistance it was possible to really minimise the drawbacks of the skill, you could also minimise the hazard presented by vulnerability and slow/no regeneration maps. Being able to do so represented progression.

As for the skill being "free" for CI, that was a consolation prize and the opportunity cost of sockets/supports should never be overlooked. (It gets higher every single time new gems are released)

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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zSavage wrote:

It would still synergize with attacks, life, and regen; but it wouldn't be used on every life character anymore.

It's not used on every life character now. It was used on every CI character before (or at least, any CI character not using it was playing suboptimally intentionally).

Regardless of how small you believe the hoops a life build has to jump through to support it now, it's larger than "absolutely nothing" which is what any CI build had to do to completely negate the drawback. Life builds do have to build around the drawback, and not every life build can do it trivially, as you imply.

There are life builds now for which blood rage isn't optimal, because of the changes they'd have to make to ensure they could out-recover it all the time. Thus we have life builds with and without blood rage.
That was not the case for CI builds when the degen was chaos. The current situation is manifestly better for build diversity, because even if too many life builds can use it trivially (which may or may not be the case), this is a lesser number than the number of CI builds who could use the chaos damage version completely freely.

So prior to 2.0 it was being used on >99% of CI characters. Post-2.0 it's being used on <1% of CI characters and this is considered good, or an improvement? "Manifestly better for build diversity" - I apologise but I do not believe you.
There is now entirely one way to mitigate the degeneration and that is base physical damage reduction (endurance charges and soul of steel). So Prior to 2.0 we had CI and Chaos resistance on gear/flasks (two ways), post 2.0 we have one way..... unless immortal call works (I haven't tested) but I know GGG are doing their best to minimise the role of Immortal Call in the meta-game. Regardless, the method is heavily reliant on endurance charges.

Talking a bit more about CI; what do they gain, and what does it cost them?
The costs for CI are huge right now. Most builds will want additional keystones and all of them will need ways to deal with stuns and elemental status ailments.
Socketing a Life Leech gem is a big cost in damage output, what exactly are they gaining in this situation? (In the context of a comparable life-based build)

dear admins, please fix blood rage asap.

Skill Interactions

Physical damage reduction: Damage dealt by Blood Rage is lowered by physical damage reduction.

i got like 29k defense = 72% mitigation
i got 3.8% health regen per sec
i got zealots oath

*my es still got degenerated like nobody's business*

i don't really mind it being changed from "chaos to physical"

but please fix it if physical mitigation is supposed to work.

thanks a lot.