General class balance observations

"

Ashen_Shugar_IV wrote:

Due to the frequent skill tree wipes (high-level) Scions make excellent respec dummies later on. I imagine this is not insignificant.

He's talking about temp leagues, I do think this is negligible.

Scion is just efficient. You get to exit for 4 points with a 1pt jewel socket as icing on top.

And Harrier, Sentinel, and Shaper are strong notables.

Also you get to branch without having to go thru the eva or life or es wheels, you get to skip whichever ones are meaningless for your build.

Scion is in a pretty good spot right now no doubt.
I was merely suggesting it's not uncommon to respec characters in HC and STD prior to upcoming temp leagues. My level 96 scion in warbands will serve as a respec mule for my level 100 scion.

I agree with earlier statements that small gains in efficiency can account for massive statistical imbalances between class choices. 1 extra passive is 1 extra passive.

It doesn't matter if a "class" is overpicked, their balance doesn't have anything to do with it.

People pick one "Class" To play one "Build" , one "Skill" in almost all situations , tries to reach a 6L to strengthen a particular "Skill"

Hm...Your right.."Scion is in a pretty good spot" Because everyone Build SRS its Powerful , cheap , got a nice clear speed. And.. Scion is the best character to build SRS.

And... A Bunch of people (Nobrainers) just try to Build/Play like streamers.
Then say "Why everyone playing like Me? Why everyone playing like each other?"
They love that.


In the past : Flameblast prolif ,SRS, Cyclone ,Incinerate, Poison arrow

Now : SRS , Cyclone , Flame Totem , Incinerate , Poison arrow

Maybe GGG will nerf them , but it wont change anything . People will pick another skill with the best clearspeed , Cheaper , etc....

And the balance cycles will happen again ,and again and again , and again.

Until we end up with VIPER STRIKE and make a good trash build with a good clearspeed.

Nothing have changed. This game cant be balanced , And wont be.

The real question is why is Scion so good at SRS, PA, Cyclone, etc?

You can play SRS with Witch, PA with Ranger, Duelist with Cyclone/Marauder - heck anyone.

So why are top players using Scion mostly for these skills?

As someone pointed out, the fact that the Scion has to be "unlocked" should indicate GGG wants this to be a "premier" class that IS better than other classes.

I dont think they are in all of those situations, i think most people playing cyclone do so with a marauder or duelist, with ranger and scion being a more niche cyclone choices. PA, Ive not been keeping up but thats a pretty jewel heavy build choice right? If most PA players are scion, Id have to take your word for that but i have no reason to doubt its true, then I would guess its a jewel thing?

If scion is better, I mean that comes down to how you define better, certainly more flexible for sure and in that sense you could call that better, thats a fair take on the situation. More flexible and with that requiring more game knowledge to realize her potential, and as you say that would seem to be the design goal of the scion. Before jewels scion was actually considered fairly bad for most things, the general call I was hearing from the community was that the scion needed some love and the duelist needed some love, that was the pre 2.0 vibe I was picking up and over all I feel like thats a goal they have obviously achieved through the jewel and gem system changes.


I still think a lot comes down to skill gems. People were up in arms about how bad duelist was, how there were no duelists anywhere on the ladders and they were using this stat to 'prove' that melee was trash compared to spell builds. The other half of this argument came in the forum of 'look how over played templar is' aka look how amazing spells are. But now its reversed, that situation has done a complete 180 despite their starts remaining the same as they were and if you look at the reason for the situation completely flipping its mostly down to changes to 2 skill gems, Enduring Cry and Elemental Proliferation. Poison Arrow and SRS being very strong choices are dictating a lot of the current class choices, and that is reinforced by the ability to craft bis weapons for those builds via the +1+2 master method that has very little rng where a bis physical dagger or physical bow build still probably out performs them but is virtually impossible to obtain in a league environment due to the heavy rng of crafting such a thing.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

I still think a lot comes down to skill gems. People were up in arms about how bad duelist was, how there were no duelists anywhere on the ladders and they were using this stat to 'prove' that melee was trash compared to spell builds. The other half of this argument came in the forum of 'look how over played templar is' aka look how amazing spells are. But now its reversed, that situation has done a complete 180 despite their starts remaining the same as they were and if you look at the reason for the situation completely flipping its mostly down to changes to 2 skill gems, Enduring Cry and Elemental Proliferation.

While that might* be an accurate history, the solution is not necessarily "hey, let's change skill gems up again." There are multiple ways to improve casters in a way which isn't as strong as the old MoM and EB nonsense, and although I think the Templar needs extra help, Witch isn't that UP right now so it would probably only take a little.

* or might not, fuck if I know, but the Warbands data backs up poor caster performance in general