The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Harmful Content

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Pioneer2 wrote:

I have a few comments with some of the things you mentioned.

For Koam's Heart: Having to use a 2H is a drawback, you miss out on the great defensive benefits that shields provide, or the innate dual wield bonus of dual wielding. Koam's Heart probably does need a change, but look at the 4 month leagues, without Koam's Heart, ES is 99.9% of the time the better option to go. Koam's Heart should not be changd/nerfed until after Life/ES is nerfed, because Koam's Heart is pretty much the only thing keeping ES and Life even remotely comparable. This is a bandaid solution, of course, but you shouldn't tear off a bandaid when you still have use for it.

For Shavronne's Wrappings: Not sure those options are the best way to balance the item. Maybe make it so you take a bit more Chaos damage, maybe a 20% more multiplier or something like that.

For Auxium: This item is overrated, in my opinion. It is a great belt, of course, but I do think there are plenty of rares that can be better in a lot of scenarios.

For Eye of Chayula: Meh. This item has drawbacks, which is you are forced to use up your neck slot for an amulet which pretty much only gives stun immunity. Life doesn't need stun immunity as much, since stun calculations are based on life. Only vs. chargers does it really matter. I don't think this item needs changes, to be honest.

For Cleave: Needs a bit more downsides for dual wielding, I agree. However, what other options do dual wielders have? Most melee abilities only focus on the main hand for damage calculations.

For Discharge: I don't think this ability is that strong. It has great offense, sure, but it is extremely vulnerable to reflect, even with Vaal's Pact. Also, it is very gear dependent, requiring very strong rares, and a couple of pretty pricey uniques to be able to run effectively.

For WED: 70% more elemental damage, not just 70% more damage in general. Considering how much physical damage was buffed, I don't think that such a strong support for elemental damage is such a bad idea. Mana cost is a bit high though, lowering it down to 50% would be nice.

For Iron Reflex: I don't get what you are saying. Hybrid armor/evasion gear are already connected. Evasion and Armor can still be balanced individually. I like this node, it is really clever, pretty much unique to this game. The problem is still that Armor is better than evasion, which makes this node a problem. Making evasion better would make this node more balanced.

For Resolute Technique: I agree, but another big problem with getting crit on melee builds is that there are so few nodes that aren't dagger specific that give crit to melee weapons along with other stats.

For Vaal's Pact: I agree, again. However, it needs to be changed so it is not only less desirable to CI, but more desirable to life at the same time. Not sure how to make that happen, maybe just cutting the regain in half instead of removing it completely. Or another possible change is to increase the amount healed by a %, maybe 10% more life gained from leech. Or make it so you leech mana instantly as well. Who knows.

For Strength giving life: Why compare Strength to Dexterity? Why not compare it to Intelligence, which gives ES? I think this mechanic is fine.

For Magic Find: I never bother with the stuff on gear since I'd much rather have stats that keep me from dying, but what I do presume is that this stat has heavily diminishing returns. I doubt that 200% more item quality means you get 3 times the amount of rares/uniques.

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springHeeled wrote:

Very good post, OP; a few thoughts.

Shav's could be balanced by simply giving it a ton of chaos res. If you max out your chaos res chaos damage isn't much of a concern with some life. This makes low life builds viable without being EZmode.

With the changes to reflect and evasion Lioneye's isn't as good as it once was. Although I'd still like to see it nerfed further.

Aurumvorax isn't an endgame weapon, which exempts it from balance.

This wasn't mentioned; Reduced Mana being effectively mandatory (unless you're EB and not using % auras) for running auras late game isn't interesting.

I notice you didn't mention Blood Rage, which is effectively free Frenzy charges if you're CI.

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I'll keep this short. There need to be more enemies that scare ranged users. They either need attacks that are stronger at range in a reverse Point Blank way (Ice Spear is a prime example) or they need to only use their strongest skills at range and those skills need to only hit at range (Perpetus's bear traps is a decent example). Until ranged is as scared of the average mob composition as melee is, there will never be a balance between ranged and melee and "choosing melee" will always be the wrong choice.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

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I'll keep this short. There need to be more enemies that scare ranged users. They either need attacks that are stronger at range in a reverse Point Blank way (Ice Spear is a prime example) or they need to only use their strongest skills at range and those skills need to only hit at range (Perpetus's bear traps is a decent example). Until ranged is as scared of the average mob composition as melee is, there will never be a balance between ranged and melee and "choosing melee" will always be the wrong choice.

This needs its own thread. Seriously. The closest thing we have is Flicker Strike, and even that's a poor example because it screws over melee almost as hard as ranged - it's just that melee is better equipped to facetank stuff.

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heyyous wrote:

Lightning arrow: Make the additional hits deal something like 60% less damage. Thank of melee splash here, We have one main target and then we are happy to be damaging all other enemies. Everyone and their brother uses lmp with LA so it makes it like hitting 3 main monsters + splash damage. Currently the only other way for bow skills to effectively hit other targets like lightning arrow does is to use pierce. I have no problem with this and not only do I love that it is different from just spraying but you have to work for it. Pierce needs to have a damage modifier on it. I also think we would probably need an elemental pierce and a physical pierce to keep the damage scaling from being out of whack.

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pneuma wrote:

Nothing on these forums approaches a petition. Game design is a GGGocracy.

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Mune wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

Nothing on these forums approaches a petition. Game design is a GGGocracy.

Sadly, if you say it like this, I assume GGG stopped listening to us players .. ?