Development Manifesto: Content Update 2.1.0 Balance Changes

GGG I'm wondering how many of the changes from the poison manifesto will be implemented in 2.1. I've seen lots of chaos changes in the new passive tree and they are very exciting, but I'm wondering if Viper Strike is getting any changes in the upcoming patch. Also, which skills will the new notable Fatal Toxins apply to?

GGG I'm wondering how many of the changes from the poison manifesto will be implemented in 2.1. I've seen lots of chaos changes in the new passive tree and they are very exciting, but I'm wondering if Viper Strike is getting any changes in the upcoming patch. Also, which skills will the new notable Fatal Toxins apply to?

how about elemntal hit skill gem? no buff? i am eager to use it but its too weak

wow nerf incinerate just cause the community wants you to? i think thats nerfing it for the wrong reason and then buff srs wich does 10mto 15m dps and incinerate does maybe 150 to 200k damage if your lucky. and yet thats needs nerfed i hope its not a big a nerf

''JSON file'' how does it work? what do I need to run it?

Can't wait for the new league. Here are 10 questions that address the manifesto post by Rory.

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Rory wrote:

Leech (Buffed)
Life and Mana leech granted in the passive skill tree is now much larger. The Strength area of the tree has the highest values, while the Dexterity area of the tree now includes Elemental Attack Damage as well as Physical Attack Damage as leech granted. The Duelist now has a combined life and mana leech cluster, to reduce the traveling distance required to make the best use of Leech.

1) Will Blood Rage have its leech changed to work with all attack damage? If not, why? Just think of the diversity!

2) The two leech nodes up by Shadow were not changed; they are still only Physical and are still only 0.4%. Was this intentional?

Shadow is a versatile class with options to play as every damage type, so it would make more sense to have the leech apply to all those attack types.

3) Why can't all of the leech nodes on the tree apply to all attack damage (some are still just physical)?

Players are punished for using skills with built-in damage conversions (molten strike, glacial hammer, etc.), because then they only get the physical part of the leech back. Sustaining mana is twice as hard with those skills, and it pushes people to opt for blood magic or switch to a different skill entirely (like cyclone...).

4) Marauders still have no mana leech nodes. Rangers still have no life leech nodes. Templars still have nothing (not even ele attack leech?). Why? Every attack build needs life/mana leech.

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Rory wrote:

Surgeon's Flasks (Nerfed, but not retroactively)
Surgeon's flask mods now grant a chance to gain a charge on critical strike, rather than unconditionally granting one. This will not change flask mods spawned before the deployment of 2.1.0 - they will still work the old way.

The Surgeon's mod made many flasks too easy to keep full for a heavily specialised critical strike character - far beyond what was originally intended. Players today have many more options to reach very high values of Critical Strike Chance, Attack and Cast Speeds than when the mod was created. These stats all have a compounding effect on the power of the flask.

5) Why not just remove Surgeon's entirely and get it over with?

Everyone knows it's an easily exploited mod that makes the game difficult to balance. The mod always felt out of place anyways, and made flask managment biased toward builds with high attack speed and crit chance.

Surgeon's is a power creep nightmare that's going to warp the way you balance the game as long as it's here. Even if you make it less effective, that isn't going to change the fact there will still be builds can abuse it.

It's time to leave this old crutch behind and move on. A legacy mod will be created either way, so you might as well dump the whole thing now so we don't end up with more legacy versions later down the road.

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Rory wrote:

Mana per level, Melee mana costs (Buffed)
Players now gain more mana every time they level up, and most Melee Attack skills no longer increase in mana cost as they level. These changes are to allow Mana to be used more reliably by late-game builds that don't have high amounts of intelligence, as Blood Magic was the prevalent way to use almost every melee attack skill later in the game.

6) Why only melee skills?

7) What about melee skills that also work ranged? Will they be changed?

8) Will base mana costs be adjusted as well? Many attack skills already start out with a high cost at level 1 and only go up 2-3 mana by level 20. Certain skills could see a very high reduction in cost (i.e. Elemental Hit, Cyclone), while others won't change very much (Dominating Blow, which probably needs the most help in terms of mana cost).

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Rory wrote:

Incinerate (Nerfed)
Incinerate now receives less of a bonus per stage, as its damage was too high. Its general damage has been rebalanced, resulting in less overall damage at higher levels. The skill was dealing far too much damage once fully charged, trivializing some end-game encounters. There were significant community demands for this skill to be adjusted.

9) Why not reduce the cast speed instead of reducing the damage? This would help many other balance issues with the skill as well.

Reducing the cast speed not only lowers the DPS, but it also:

- Reduces the mana needed to use the skill. Clarity and mana regen is never enough for a skill that is cast 15 times/sec. No wonder so many people just go Blood Magic rather than bothering with trying to sustain it with mana.

- Slows down the speed you advance to the next stage. Part of what makes Incinerate unique (and balanced) is that you need to stand still for a while to get the full effect. Really high cast speeds negated this and advanced you to the highest stage almost immediatly.

- Reduces silly abuse cases with Scold's Bridle and other things that need high casts/sec.

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Rory wrote:

Cyclone (Slightly Nerfed)
There was a display bug that caused Cyclone to show the wrong DPS value and attack speed. We have fixed this bug, so you'll now notice the visual DPS almost double and the attack speed on the gem shoot up a lot.

In addition, we have reduced the damage of Cyclone by around 10% and have reduced the damage of its initial hit. Even after this change, Cyclone is still one of the strongest melee skills in the game. It just doesn't out-damage Heavy Strike for single target damage any more.

10) If cyclone's mana cost is reduced to the point where people no longer need blood magic, then you need to realize that people will have another link for damage/whatever. You'll need to do more, but I wish you could think of other ways to balance cyclone than to just slash the damage.

There's a reason people say they'd still use it even if it does less DPS than other skills. Think about the other things that make it strong. Should it only have stun avoidance/recovery instead of total immunity? Should smashing through a pack of enemies slow you down even more? Should block/dodge/crit chance be reduced while you're flailing around wildly? There are a lot of things you could change besides the damage effectiveness.

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SoTroll wrote:

I have a question concerning the 2.1 tree. Does the 100% increased damage with poison notable passive works with the new skill Contagion? Thanks

Given that they changed the name of Poison arrow to Caustic arrow to note that it would not be effected by poison damage increases only the chaos ones, I would venture to say it will not increase with poison damage. From the poison development manifesto, it looks like Poison effects will be effected by both Chaos damage nodes and Poison specific nodes, but chaos will only be effected by chaos (DoT where applicable). So unless the skill states "Poison damage," or has the Poison keyword, it won't be effected by poison nodes or enhancements.

Dear fucking god... the amount of physical damage in the shadow tree... and phase run is back...

Now I am really hyped to remake my crit dagger puncture shadow. I'm pretty sure I will one shot anything that moves.

And just as exciting is the poison changes. Hooooooooooo

GGG really made puncture OP with this one though, LOL

Interesting Stuff, can't wait for the Patch Notes. Should be some good Changes.