The game feels horrible to play the 3.15 nerfs + the 3.16 nerfs have just killed this game

"

Xarien wrote:

So it's not the support gems that gives them 10x the damage, it is all gear and mods on said gear. Gear that I will never be able to afford unless I get a mirror drop. That's why I say that nerfing flasks and support gems being the ultimate solution to the problem is wrong here. They could nerf the support gem multipliers all they want, item mods would STILL put the DPS of players with too much time on their hands to play 10x+ ahead of mine.

i dont think gear mods are that impactful when you go from say a 50 chaos version of a build that anyone whos mapping should be able to afford vs 50 exalts on the same character might be 100% more damage, it might double the dps, if you then go from 50 exalts to 500 exalts again, honestly thats even less of a jump that might be 25% more dps in most cases.

the cases where you see expensive gear making the real leaps is stuff like mana reserve, extra curse, dps flask, stuff where the gear enables another more damage multiplier..





ill give you an example, attack builds are the most item dependant, and their most important dps item is their weapon. lets look at elemental claws as theres legit builds using them atm so the market is a real market with competition for the gear.

anyone can farm 20 chaos in a day from chaos recipe, heist, delve etc, any endgame player can afford 20c for their weapon.


20c right now gets you a 385 dps claw.


how much does it cost to double your damage?

a 750 dps claw, not quite double but almost, its 80 exalts which is roughly 10,000 chaos at current rates.

so you go from 20 chaos to 10,000 chaos budget for that slot and you dont even get double damage, you almost get double damage.

if you look somewhere in the middle there, if i put in 550 dps and search the first weapon is 3 exalts, about 375 chaos give or take.



gear should matter, theres got to be a reason to go from a 1 chaos weapon to a 20 chaos weapon to a 10,000 chaos weapon, it should be significant. but when we start seeing disparities of builds doing 10x, 50x, 100x as much damage as others then access to layers of multiplicative scaling really does start to play a massive role in those numbers. sometimes its gear like expensive dps flasks, 6 links, mana reserve items etc, sometimes its simply build type A can take advantage of certain scaling methods that work as more multipliers like phys as extra elemental or having 2+ effective dps curses where build B cant.

its gonna come down to stacking successive layers of multiplicative damage scaling and in order to get this game to a point where they can even attempt to balance it that means they got to look at every source of 'more' damage and bring it down. stuff was riding around the 50% more damage mark, now its around the 40% more damage and the flasks have been significantly taken out of the picture. imagine if they went further, imagine they can get it down to around 25% more damage being the average we are seeing for a multiplicative damage layer? that would be so good for the game, that would give them the power to make real progress with skill balance, monster balance, content access.


and yes gear, some of the gear stats, extra elemental as chaos for example has been busted for how long? but a lot of it revolves around another aura getting in, another curse, something like intimidate, exposure, its access to a mechanic via the gear. so its tuning those mechanics, yes for sure supports is only part of it, it was also flasks, curses. bring those down and the gear that enables them falls in line.



the only thing actually standing in their way on this is us basically, its us not understanding the theory behind how to get from here to there and throwing a big outrage revolt when they announce theyre turning down some numbers on our characters.




so if were not killing things fast enough, im not sure i agree with that idea but its just say its a thing, the response to that is turn down monster hp. thats got to be the go to dial for that problem and we should see the size of the damage gain we get from flasks, gems, EE, exposures, overload etc as separate from the idea of how long it takes to kill a monster. these mechanics have much wider balance implications to the point where they shouldnt even be considered in terms of our overall kill speed power. these things should be considered purely in terms of balance between different skills, damage types, builds, player knowledge levels etc, when we see them change these numbers thats where we need to look, how does this change effect those issues.

if we then go into game and it takes too long to kill rare mobs, the game feels tedious, ok we now have a monster hp issue and we need to bring that up in the forums, make the case for it being reduced. we cant allow that aspect of the game to hold wider mechanical changes prisoner that we need made in order to get what we really want when it comes to build balance, were shooting ourselves in the foot when we do that.

+1, fully agree!

The way things are currently going I wouldn't be surprised if GGG end up nerfing the only viable builds left so that every single build is dead.

They wonder why player retention is bad yet force players to play one of 3 builds or not be able to enjoy game, which of course leads to players quitting.

They wonder why their servers keep getting overworked, yet they make only the most spammy projectiles + speed builds viable and discourage slower play. So naturally that's gonna create more work on the server side.

Despite these glaring truths and pages of supporters of these requested changes on the forum, they will ignore the community and instead listen to only the streamers. THE STREAMERS DO NOT REPRESENT THE MAJORITY OF PLAYERS.

This happens every league:
Streamers: "This build is broken"
GGG: "OK, we nerf it"
Real context: They got given a full set of broken items from their collective mass of followers and basically have an unfair advantage over normal players, meaning any build they play is going to be 'broken'. Build is then nerfted into the ground and never played again.
The players: "Well the amount of investment that build requires, I never got to that point anyway"

Streamers: "The game is too easy"
GGG: "OK, we make it more difficult"
Real context: Of course game is gonna be easy for them when they have their followers giving them items, currency, constant advice and suggestions.
The players: I keep dying too much and my build does shit DPS.

Streamers: "The game is too slow"
GGG: "I enjoy watching this streamers zippy fast gameplay on twitch so this must be how game should be played, lets make changes so everything requires this level of speed.
Real context: Streamers do drugs and need to slow the hell down in most cases, it might be entertaining but that should not be the standard.
The players: "But I want to play glacial hammer :("

At the end of the day the game is suffering because the streamers have too much influence over GGG devs, due to the GGG valuing streamers advertising capabilities over the enjoyment of it's players. This needs to stop and GGG needs to start listening to players more.

I don't actually think the nerfs in 3.15 and 3.16 were that bad. Sure, they affected the game, as intended, but that was needed.

The immediate problem is more to do with the league mechanics, which quite frankly are shockingly bad...
- Timers again. Every time they put a timer in, they mainly exclude casual players
- VERY rippy mechanics. Casual players excluded
- No rewards unless you're godlike. Casual players excluded

To properly balance the game so casual players can again play, they need to do a few things:
- REMOVE any 'more' damage sources
- Alternately, make 'more' damage sources give diminishing returns
- REMOVE ALL 'more more' damage sources, like chance to do double damage
- REMOVE any timer content
- A rebalance of mob damage would of.c. need to be included

The multiplicative damage modifiers are what creates the wide difference between casual players and the top 1%. For the game to work for all, they have to go...

Sadly GGG will not do this...

I am curious - do you guys consider Blight as timed content?

"

Johny_Snow wrote:

I am curious - do you guys consider Blight as timed content?

I'd say so yes... Anything where you have to deliver X damage in Y time or lose is timed content. Blight would count as such.

Consider Expeditions...
- You could just stand there and nuke it if you had the power to do so
- You could play more evasive (as in manual evasion) and deliver damage now and then
- You could even dart in, deliver a bit of damage, dart out and recover

All three would deliver rewards, but the difference was the speed.

Compare that to Blight or the current league mechanics, and you can't do the last two... meaning only the top players can get any rewards from it.

"

EstocSlayer wrote:

+1, fully agree!

The way things are currently going I wouldn't be surprised if GGG end up nerfing the only viable builds left so that every single build is dead.

Based on the common GGG approach 3.17 will butcher Champion and put his Identitiy defining Fortify notable on the skill tree in a nerfed form same they did to Gladiator with Versatile Combatant, nerf Toxic Rain Duration, Nerf its damage via gem level scaling, nerf all Duration on skill nodes/clusters jewels and probably nerf Determination and Grace.

On an additional note: I think its horrible to let people have 500k - 1 million armour without any armour gear but all armour comes from flask + Determination + Iron Reflexes + Grace.

It should be the other way around. High armour gear should be the base and flasks/grace/determination/Iron Reflexes should then scale of the base armour from gear similar to what Blind change achieved for Evasion builds.

Maybe its just me and my dated view about the game. Maybe its modern to just cheese all stuff.

Came back and tried a generals cry shield crush build (with +29k armor, res capped and all) and still get oneshot ... wtf. Was so frustrated because of this that i changed to standard league to rebuild my CI Toxic Rain Trickster... this was an even bigger WTF surprise becuz i can basically delete the char. I think i can delete all the chars because this changes. Everything in this endgame feels like a chore and an endless chase for chaos orbs and exalted and spending so much time just trading feels just bad. It feels like a kick to the nuts from GGG. Im done with ARPG's until D4 releases.

This sums up a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlDOc7t89P4

I am playing a meta build now. Champion/Toxic Rain. I thought that a tanky character with good defences would be fun. And sure I am not dying as much with this build.

But...I am also not having as much fun. I can't explain it. You'd think not dying as much would be good but I am finding the build boring.

So many things now seem "mandatory". 100% spell suppression, capped resists including chaos, layers of armor, movement speed, etc.

I use to have fun creating unusual builds. Sure I might never beat the top end of the game, but I still could have fun.

Now everything seems to be mandatory. There's no room for creative building. Just follow a guide and pray you can get lucky with drops because if you can't get 20+ ex in a league, even meta builds are crap.

GGG, I'm lucky if I can find 5 ex total during a whole 3 month league!

I hate playing what everyone else is playing because it's the only build that works.

No fun.

"

This sums up a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlDOc7t89P4

It hurts a lot that most of the problems/issues still not resolved/improved after so long. I love this game so much...

https://ibb.co/mNgKPkM
Just the 2nd week

Since coming back this league after quitting for about 2 years I feel like every build I make is 7-10~ nodes too short or you have to have 200 exalt in gear. Damage is too hard to come by while getting decent survivability. You have a gimmick to do damage or you don't do damage come red tier maps...So many worthless skill gems still because they do trash damage...or only effect certain mobs and are worthless on bosses.

I came back and tried all phys archer. Tried impale and bleeds etc. Damage is trash even geared to the max. At least loot drops seem improved. I feel bad for melee after trying ranged not even going to touch duelist or marauder.

Marks are complete trash now and impale and bleed nodes are moronic. Still see there are tons of gems that only work on certain mob types so rendered worthless without a secondary use to actually be useful in boss encounters...ya know the most important part of the game.

It looks obvious to me they completely trashed several ascendancies. WTH did they do to elementalist and assassin?

"

dan166 wrote:

Everything in this endgame feels like a chore and an endless chase for chaos orbs and exalted and spending so much time just trading feels just bad.

Why I quit the first time.