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

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casval776 wrote:

Piety resists Lightning. If you're a sporker, you're probably going to cast Conductivity or Elemental Weakness to compensate. In reality, you're doing 0% more damage from casting the curse. Resists are capped at 75% but that's only for the sake of damage calculations towards the end of the formula. So, really, Piety could have 200% Lightning Resist for all you know and when damage is calculated, it's lowered back to 75%. At the time the Curse reduction is calculated, the Lightning Resist is still 200%, then reduced by the curse amount, then soft-capped to 75%.

I know this isn't directly dealing with curses, but it's worth noting that the Penetration support gems work differently, ignoring overcapped resists and instead subtracting from the 75% directly.

However, dealing with curses, it's the most powerful ones which are going to set the standard. Things like Enfeeble and Temporal Chains are mightily powerful and much more difficult for enemies to negate. Discussing some of the weaker, more situational curses does not do justice to the subject of "are curses mandatory?"

Uniques that are too powerful. How do I define too powerful? These uniques are no brainers, and beat almost every rare except the top 2%.

-Auxium Belt
-Soul Taker Siege Axe
-Rainbow Stride Boots
-Voidbattery Prophecy Wand

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MasterCard wrote:

Uniques that are too powerful. How do I define too powerful? These uniques are no brainers, and beat almost every rare except the top 2%.

-Auxium Belt
-Soul Taker Siege Axe
-Rainbow Stride Boots
-Voidbattery Prophecy Wand

I don't have a problem with very powerful uniques, as long as the following two principles apply:
1. They are never better than a perfect rare.
2. If the unique is better than all but x% of rares, then its droprate is sufficient low so that it is not rampantly more abundant than that x% of rares.

#2 is the main area in which GGG has been failing. Can you craft a better rare physical bow than Lioneye's Glare? Sure you can. However, the LGs will outnumber similar — not superior, merely similar — rare physical bows by at least a 20-to-1 ratio, and truly superior rares will be hundreds of times less common than LG. This leads to situations where no one tries to craft one, because it's just not worth it; it's just far too economical to settle for LG. This could be fixed by just making LG drop (and Chance) much, much less often, so that the incentive to farm/craft a rare physical bow isn't utterly killed as it is now.

Same deal with the uniques listed by MasterCard (especially Soul Taker). Although sometimes I wonder if Auxium is just straight-up better than any rare you could possible craft or find, and thus would be a category 1 error.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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MasterCard wrote:

Uniques that are too powerful. How do I define too powerful? These uniques are no brainers, and beat almost every rare except the top 2%.

-Auxium Belt
-Soul Taker Siege Axe
-Rainbow Stride Boots
-Voidbattery Prophecy Wand

I don't have a problem with very powerful uniques, as long as the following two principles apply:
1. They are never better than a perfect rare.
2. If the unique is better than all but x% of rares, then its droprate is sufficient low so that it is not rampantly more abundant than that x% of rares.

#2 is the main area in which GGG has been failing. Can you craft a better rare physical bow than Lioneye's Glare? Sure you can. However, the LGs will outnumber similar — not superior, merely similar — rare physical bows by at least a 20-to-1 ratio, and truly superior rares will be hundreds of times less common than LG. This leads to situations where no one tries to craft one, because it's just not worth it; it's just far too economical to settle for LG. This could be fixed by just making LG drop (and Chance) much, much less often, so that the incentive to farm/craft a rare physical bow isn't utterly killed as it is now.

Same deal with the uniques listed by MasterCard (especially Soul Taker). Although sometimes I wonder if Auxium is just straight-up better than any rare you could possible craft or find, and thus would be a category 1 error.

I think that for those MasterCard listed they are a combination of the problems

FWIW I agree completely and have been complaining the problem isn't their power, but their relative power to a comparable rare.

Soul takers power is partly in its dps, partly in its unique effect. I think that the unique effect is good, but because of its dps which is top of the rares. If its dps was reasonably easy to get a better rare, it would be powerful for its 6l no regen effect, while not being overpowered based on dps.

Auxium has an ES that is impossible to roll (which is very powerful with all the %ES on tree/int), along with an effect that makes chill almost ignorable. I would say no belt can compare

Rainbowstride offers more ES than any comparable boot while still giving great effects. Essentially a perfect rolled rare is still potentially less valuable, while also being super rare.

Void battery offers a dps, with power charges, that dwarfs any comparable item. This is the closest to a potentially available balance because its based on power charges, but the items power itself is just too much. If keeping up power charges got you more dps than a rare if you had lots, but average amount of 3-4 was a big decrease in power, it might be a good upside/downside

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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casval776 wrote:

Piety resists Lightning. If you're a sporker, you're probably going to cast Conductivity or Elemental Weakness to compensate. In reality, you're doing 0% more damage from casting the curse. Resists are capped at 75% but that's only for the sake of damage calculations towards the end of the formula. So, really, Piety could have 200% Lightning Resist for all you know and when damage is calculated, it's lowered back to 75%. At the time the Curse reduction is calculated, the Lightning Resist is still 200%, then reduced by the curse amount, then soft-capped to 75%.

I know this isn't directly dealing with curses, but it's worth noting that the Penetration support gems work differently, ignoring overcapped resists and instead subtracting from the 75% directly.

However, dealing with curses, it's the most powerful ones which are going to set the standard. Things like Enfeeble and Temporal Chains are mightily powerful and much more difficult for enemies to negate. Discussing some of the weaker, more situational curses does not do justice to the subject of "are curses mandatory?"

My armor invested jumper could not survive by using any of the curses listed above. He can not survive -without- warlords mark though. Their power is quite situational. They also reduce your kill speed significantly. If a ranged character want to play safe and slow with non-damaging curses, I don't see the problem there.

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jawsofhana wrote:

My armor invested jumper could not survive by using any of the curses listed above. He can not survive -without- warlords mark though. Their power is quite situational. They also reduce your kill speed significantly. If a ranged character want to play safe and slow with non-damaging curses, I don't see the problem there.

That's the gist yeah. The evaluation is in kill speed or worse build compensation. Which is a shame because, like pre 1.0.0 auras, they encourage reliance instead of choice.

very good OP. raises some valid concerns.

The problem isn't identifying where the game need changing it never has been, its the changes that GGG make that are totally out of step with the game its as through they only play the game with OP GM spawned items to check balance.
There are many many examples of this from the total "nerf" of totems which made them more powerful to the IR/dex nerf to the total ignoring of low life builds/CI builds even with the near deafening outcry about them.

Many times ive seen that they are going to make a change to some passive and i think ok they are going to buff it and then they do the exact opposite like with the MF changes that are meant to help solo players..... errrrm what????

Identifying these problems was where they made errors in the first place.

Was there really a need for offensive totems, which simulate the player minus large amounts of risk? It appeared to be a problem, and now here we are.

Their changes are pretty sudden and heavy-handed, which is not the way I would do it, but I ultimately only care about the end product. It's of no use to design lots of content and only have 1% of it be used with regularity.

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Back to the main post, a huge number of the suggestions here were implemented in 1.0.

I've quite happy about that and excited to see where they take the game. I'm confident it's for the best and that the growing pains will wear off. Lots more things still need to be fixed, both content-wise and otherwise.

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pneuma wrote:

Back to the main post, a huge number of the suggestions here were implemented in 1.0.

I've quite happy about that and excited to see where they take the game. I'm confident it's for the best and that the growing pains will wear off. Lots more things still need to be fixed, both content-wise and otherwise.

Would you consider updating the main post in a few days (when all the 1.0.0 changes are more final and unambiguous) with respect to the changes implemented? I'd find it helpful, if nothing else.