What We're Working On

Hey, since you guys wanted feedback on the new skills. I'm playing a Hexblast / Impending Doom Occultist. Important gameplay issues with those new skills to me are:


1) I don't see whether Doomblast is triggering or not. It does not show up on the skill bar currently. It is only visible when pressing 'c' for the character screen. This is making it rather difficult to chose proper support gems.

2) Hexblast does not automatically target cursed enemies. If you have several packs of monsters swarming you, it would be very good if hexblast couldn't target non-cursed ones. This is very important to the 'curse and wait for Doom stacks to build up'-playstyle.

3) It is very difficult for me to see when Doom stacks are at maximum, particularly during boss fights, where I need to focus on dodging while waiting on the doom build-up and where curses mostly disappear behind their model.

Did not have any lag issues as I used to have on first day of the league, and the perfomance fps wise is better than ever with vulcan for me. But i can't play the game for more than 20minutes without getting DC or game crashing..

And the portal being in front of you when you enter the heist is very annyoing

I league started crackling lance arcmage, honestly the worst league starter i ever had. First of is the damage, way too low. and that is with arcmage and unleash, could barely oneshot a white pack. The Aoe on the skill feels so bad to use since you have to either do no damage or do the same damage as arc but you only hit one or 2 monsters. Even on bosses when i got it fully charged it felt like i was punished for dodgeing since i had to go trough the whole charge up thing again. And even with this downside the damage is still bad, allmost worse than arc.

I rerolled to a Lacerarate glat on day 2 tho and its probably one of my favorite builds, I used splitting steel to level and it was really nice. good damage and good clear, i dont get the people who dont like it becouse call of steel. to me it felt just fine as a leveling skill. Perhaps if i were in maps and went faster it would feel bad so maybe there should be more sources of extra call of steel charges on the tree or gear.

"

The Rogue Harbour Waypoint - I don't like running

Seriously? How much time do you think you're losing? Like 5 Sec? Ridiculous.
Eventually this will destroy the "arrival at the harbour" - effect.

Pog

Please don't kill the alert mechanic.... Please.... This completely kills the heists. It is no longer challenging. Just boring. Just fix the bugs and crashes....

I levelled a bit (too much tbh) with Crack-Lance and it was bad. When I tried it with unleash and spell echo it was very underwhelming. If the skill gained its intensity within the casts of spell echo and unleash, had its area incerased a bit, and had its damage improved it may feel like the handsome cousin of arc.

If you want it to be better than arc the intensity needs to fall of a lot slower. The game is designed so that you need to move a lot and standing still for a long time just gets you killed. The intensity change plus keeping some side crackles all the time - for better area - could make it able to blast packs in a medium area in front of the charater most of the time. Players will also have to play around with their movement so that they can keep a nice level of intensity up.

These are just some thoughts on the skill. In general I like the league and the direction the game is going in. Well done and keep it up GGG!

Hey GGG, thanks for all the support, can't imagine the tension and stress that comes with league release. I'm playing in HC Private League, currently lv88.

League started archmage hierophant, lv28 crackling lane.

started pretty well, tried spell echo and unleash immediately when I got those gems. I dropped unleash immediately because skill interaction with it isn't justified. fasting casting would be better. was a little disappointed that intensity stacks did not increase with the repeat from spell echo which does seem to be shown in reveal video prior league release (but it could be something else like a proper re-casting instead of a spell echo repeat?).


the crack lance skill seems like it will be strong with the right setup, maybe with supercharge on the cluster jewel and a lot of cast speed to ramp up the intensity stacks. Also not sure how the interaction with +1 intensity on skill tree works with the gem. Assuming without it you would reach the "laser" at stage 3 (max), but with +1 max intensity, I experienced that I only reach "laser" at stage 4 (also shown in the video reveal that this is the case). But according to the gem info, it is 33% less angle per intensity stack(99% at max stack). does this change to ~25% (or something similar) just to hit that 1% off with a max stack of 4 intensity? or is this just a visual issue. I wasn't sure, and I couldn't find any response on this.


so around 50+ I swapped to hexblast ignite. it felt much better, clearing and bossing was smoother due to the DoT nature. Pre-nerf heist was fun and manageable, I'd be able to target the guards before getting locked on by them. Saw some questions about doom calc for ignites, especially with curses that reduce the resist, etc. would be nice to have some clarity on them. also having some visual cue on max doom stacks would be nice!

Doomsday feedback :

Not sure if it's intentional (which means the keystone description is wrong) or a bug, but I see a problem with it.

1-You selfcast an hex, it creates the hexed area (this part works).
2-Before the hexed area ends, you cast bane with 3 other hexes (it doesn't create hexed area, but that's ok, they are not selfcasted hexes.)
3-The hexed area ends. Doomsday says "Hexes in the Hexed Area gain up to maximum Doom". Hexes being written as plural, and having no written conditions for the hexes in the area to gain doom this way, I attempt that every hexes in the area gain doom. But indeed, only the one that created the hexed area seems to earn doom. I tested it with hexblast, and the first hexblast seems to deal really more damages than the 3 others.

I don't know what was the goal of Doomsday, but I think it has to be change a bit, either by written "Selfcasted Hexes in the Hexed Area gain up to maximum Doom" or by changing it's behavior, so every hexes in the hexed area gain doom (but keep the fact that only selfcast hexes create it). I think the second option is better, 'cause Doomsday doens't feel really good actually.

Other curse stuff feedback :

The new mecanic around hexes and marks is a really good idea.
The fact of having a way to mark bosses more efficiently is great, even if some build can find themself a bit forgotten, non-crit non-proj spell have no mark for them, but marks being more dext base, it's ok.
Maybe sometime a little hard to mark the boss when they are lots of adds near him. A sollution could be to transform marks in an area spell that mark the ennemy with the more health in it's aoe. Doing so, only one ennemy will be marked, but it will be easier to mark a boss lost in a pack of monsters.

The doom mecanic is really good for improving selfcasted hexes.
I think occultist should have earned something to interract with doom in it's ascendency tree, even if it's a less important point. Howerver, occultist was supposed to be the curse specialist (speaking in term of design, not in term of top tier build), and doom is a great mecanic for hexes, but occultist and doom don't fit well. I mean, Malediction focus on multi curse while Doom is focused on single Hex ('cause it's a bit weird to sefcast 3-4 Hexes...). So, adding someting on Malediction could be great. It's only random ideas, but maybe something like "your triggered hexes generates doom over time, but their maximum doom is reduced by X%" or "for each hexes that have reach maximum doom on an ennemy, X% incresed effect of doom on that hexes."

For impending doom, it feels a bit overkill so I'm not really sure of what I think about it. I've tested it only with an hexblast build (which deals area damage against hexed ennemies), with the explosion from occultist and the area reflect from punishment... So I can't really know which explosion was from what.

About hexblast, I think it's really a very strong spell. With the need of doom on the target to deal high damage, it will never be a fast clearing spell, so it's fair for it to have elemental ailment, scaling on lower resist and high damages to compensate. A very well designed skill I think.

Heist feedback :

A great work, a great idea, and I'm really fan of it.
But actually, they really are problems with alert level. Most of my hesit, I trigger the alarm before the final room without oppening any chest nor killing any patrol, and still don't know why.
When the alert level will be fixed, it gonna be a great league I think.

Other changes feedback :

Not tested as deep as the previous points, but blazzing salvo and crackilng lance seems to pretty well designed (visually and in term of gameplay).
The four spells about area control can fit nicelly in many build, are usefull without being overpowered, and that's a really good point.
About steel skills, tested them only during leveling phase, and they seems pretty good. I don't really love the gameplay (having to keep an eye on the charges), but it's more a personal taste, and I think they do their job pretty well.
Not tested pinpoint nor the changes on intensify, but they sound well. Will certainly try them on an other char later on the league.

When THE PATCH comes?Don't want run any heist before it.
BTW how about bugged doors in heist?