Ascendancy Class Statistics

Surprised to see elementalist so low still, what with shock effect scaling up the base 20% shock on beacon of ruin. Especially since multiple streamers were talking about it.

THICC JUGG

Love to see statistics like this. Thanks!

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johnnyh2 wrote:

When we get statistics like this, I always wonder how many of the top classes have been fed by a "second" or "third" character.

Example: In Harbingers, I played my first character as a Berserker to 90 and then played a second character as a Juggernaut to 90 (as I wanted to compare the two... damage/leach vs endurance).

So statistically, I added +1 to both Berserker and Juggernaut but my primary character for the league (the one I picked at the beginning) was Berserker.

If you get 100,000 players who ran a variety of classes for their first character but then 50,000 of them pick Juggernaut for their second character, then at least 25% (50,000+ of 200,000) of the characters would be Juggernauts.

I would like to know the percentage of "account's first character to level 70+ or 90+", in addition to these simple totals. Which class did people jump on out of the gate (based on pre-league hype, or to fill their stash with currency or to speed through leveling)?

Regardless, I always like seeing this kind of information. Thanks for sharing GGG!

This is an actually really good point to make, considering the idea of "league starter" has been pretty integral to the game for a long time.

It totally makes sense that in the theme of things, players ( accounts ) are going to have multiple characters over the span of a league ( even during the first few weeks if things RNG bad for them ). It also makes sense that many players are going to base their progression on that fact, in which they will pick a class that will get them currency fast at the start, and then switch to a different build / class that is more gear dependent but will take them higher ( or in which they actually have fun ).

Given that, it should be no surprise that traditionally players are going to have at least 1 "comfortable" character on their account, the one they know works; that has either been their starting choice to fund their later interest in trying something new, or as a reaction to their initial "trying something new" not having panned out ( or is currency restricted at that time ).

Jugg and Necro, for example, have always been a safe bet, even if they don't face melt bosses all year round. Their improvements / changes with 3.2 just solidified that bet to be even safer.


Looking at the stats at face value, one would presume that everyone was just playing a single character ( like how real statistics function ), which is why they always look freakishly ominous. In reality, it's like you said, there is a real likelihood that the numbers are not actually that far off from each other, it's just that most people went with jugg / necro / heiro as their guaranteed character slot choice for the league, alongside any other choices they made.

There very well could be another chart they didn't show, that stated every account had at least 1 Jugg, 1 slayer, 1 deadyee, and 1 chieftain on it; every one. The "variance" after that was just personal choice. Or that some players made 5 Jugg characters this league, for some reaosn. Or everyone picked the most exciting one they thought off from the hype of the day right before league started, and then 90% of the playerbase left as soon as the first week was over.

There's so much missing from this that committing to a conclusion is irresponsible.



And let's be frank, exp gain should not be a metric for how popular or well off a class / build is doing. Completing actual content should be determining that; just like when they release the statistics on league challenge completion.

With how busted the game is in regards to "getting started" once you unlock / reach map content ...it's invariably hard to account for how well something is doing, because you very well could just not have the adequate gearing to make it on par with what it's being compared to. You can gain xp ad-naseum with lower tiered maps, it just takes exponentially longer. Players tend to give up because of gearing / rng failing to let players enjoy their experience through the gauntlet, rather than the ascendancy itself letting them down.

As apparent in the stats, you can reach lvl 90 without having done a single lab.

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ogresamanosuke wrote:

Strange to me that Scion seems underrepresented given how awesome her Ascendant buffs were on the whole. I've been playing her a ton and loving it; but she was always my favorite character anyway from both an aesthetics and playstyle angle.

Strange?

She was a favourite pre-ascendancy classes due to her starting position and her fanservice looks, or, if you will, her aesthetics. So if the Ascendancy classes were anywhere near balanced in terms of power or utility, one would expect her to have remained a contender.

BUT

Since ascendancies have been introduced she's been the least played high level character in every league, for the good and obvious reason that for the vast majority of builds players can think of other classes are straight out better choices, and that is not going to change unless GGG changes their mind on one thing: the alternate starting point ("path of the X").

And the reason for that is that the alternate starting point is something that is very powerful for a very few builds, that draw great benefit from starting in one of the two chosen baby-ascendancies starting area and then spending several skill points navigating away from it through low-quality nodes. This is the tree-mastery aspect that GGG wanted to be the Scion's unique strength, enhancing her already unsurpassed ability to traverse the tree due to her starting position.

And that is what the Ascendant class is balanced around. With the original Awakening launch that ability was judged worth roughly the same as getting an entire baby-ascendancy, since you could get either one baby-ascendancy and a path of X or two baby-ascendancies.

Which was plainly ridiculous, as players promptly demonstrated by abandoning the class en masse.

With the addition of the eternal labyrinth and every other class getting an extra minor and major ascendancy node, the situation got even worse. Even with the "generous" upgrade of the Path of X giving 2 skill points, we are still talking the 4th labyrinth adding something that is of truly minor value compared to a minor+major ascendancy node IF your Scion build does not use this ability to jump to great benefit.

Which is a problem for builds that do not get great benefit from this, and there are many, since the Scion is already in the starting position that is best suited for getting around the tree. Oftentimes jumping to alternate start is a clear loss compared to just walking along the tree to where you want to go, picking up stuff on the way. For those builds their two baby ascendancies and 3 skill points compete with 4 minor and 4 major nodes, and most of the time they come up lacking.

That's just how it goes.

It doesn't really matter all that much how they rebalance the baby-ascendancies for individual classes against each other within the Ascendant so long as the Path of the X is considered highly valuable and the 4th labyrinth comparison between characters is between "Path of the X + n skill points" and "minor + major nodes".

And GGG can't make "Path of the X + n skill points" too powerful by adding a lot of skill points or other benefits, because for those builds where Path of the X + n skill points is really useful, it is already highly valuable.

So I expect Scion to remain underrepresented for years to come unless GGG performs a radical change - not to the specific benefits given in the choice of baby-ascendancies such as the choice between ELE, OCC, and NEC, but to the choice of what else to spend Ascendancy points on, and while I consider the current state of the Scion with this major issue left dangling in the wind a mistake, more likely this is intended by GGG as showcasing the Scion as an advanced class where few things work well, but those that do can work very well indeed.


If they DO want to change things it is hardly as if it is difficult, though it could be time-consuming to design well. Rather than the "Path of the X" choice with tree jump, have the player at that point get a second choice (like that of baby-ascendancies) between Tree Jump and some other bonus suited to that character but distinct and unique to the Scion - i.e. NOT mimicking any specific ascendancy class. So the final bonus you could choose for e.g. the witch baby ascendancy would not be something directly copied and from ELE, OCC, or NEC, but something that fit the witch character - or rather the Scion being witchy

E.g. You could have a setup with three choices, the final choice or each baby-ascendancy could be between:

a) Path of $CHAR: $CHAR alternate start + 2 skill points
b) something that fits $CHAR that is worth as much as one minor and one major ascendancy node in $CHAR's own ascendancies
c) something else that fits $CHAR that is worth as much as one minor and one major ascendancy node in $CHAR's own ascendancies

This would quickly reveal to GGG just how valuable players found the alternate start to be. :p


or whatever - could also emphasize the Scion's unique tree mastery nature by e.g. making one choice be about getting more out of the existing skill tree

a) Path of $CHAR: $CHAR alternate start + 2 skill points
b) 10% increased effect of all basic passive skills (or alternatively, all notable passive skills)
c) something that fits $CHAR that is worth as much as one minor and one major ascendancy node in $CHAR's own ascendancies

or whatever...

Anyhow, GGG undoubtedly have their own and possibly better ideas if they want to lift the Scion up such that Ascendant is a competitive ascendancy class in general and Scion will be played at more or less the same rate as other classes, but since they've done nothing to address the fundamental issue of the alternate start being of negligible value to all but a few builds in the years since ascendancy classes were introduced, it seems likely that this is deliberate decision to keep Scion underrepresented and its only strong builds very different from other classes' strong builds.

Are we still pretending, like few queries from the database exported into a table with generic text about said table is a news post? This takes time to execute queries + 5 minutes to make. Also base classes arent ascendancies.

Top 3 regardless.

Juggernaut - Hierophant - Necromancer.

who's the 1 duelist who never ascended, and is 90+? lul

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Ashaya2 wrote:

who's the 1 duelist who never ascended, and is 90+? lul

Maybe he is a member (or leader) of the Anti-Lab Movement! :D

In my humble opinion:
1-70 - entry level,
71~93 - mid level,
94~100 - end game.
I would love to see end-game class statistics.
Does those few passive points make a big difference?