Game Balance in Siege of the Atlas

OMG Nerf Again ? umm game is now boring

How this reads to me is "More nerfs again"

Why do I even play this game anymore?

Who played mines? One build? seismic traps. So let me get this straight.. wand attacks got ZERO buffs, have crap for damage effectiveness. For a miner setup in a 6l. Both blastchain mines and high impact were already a lesser multi. Minefield is like gmp for mines but slows speed to a crawl. So tell me whats the point now with 50% lesser multis on the gems versus more multi gems in a self casting setup which now gets cast speed buffs (which mines do not benefit). I guess if your gonna play a buffed spell from the list in mines it may even out.. but there is now ZERO reason to play any skill not buffed in the list such as KB because it will simply be 2 full supports better to play it self cast let alone that mines required 2 click operation and can be clunky and now simply have 25% less damage for skills that required high investment to be decent anyway. Ya thought nerfing mines.. played by less than 1% other than seismic abuse.. was gonna help build diversity? DAF...

Here are some hard numbers for the threshold jewel nerfs to heavy strike, glacial hammer, and viper strike.

Viper strike now deals 50% less damage. Verified this in POB, a fairly simple assassin build with very low investment (requires 4 1c uniques) can get to 200+ stacks of poison on an enemy, which equates to 400% increased damage with hits and poison from the now removed threshold jewel. The impact of this varies from build to build, but 50% less should be a decent estimate for any build that was taking advantage of the jewel. GGG could have just drop disabled the viper strike skill gem itself and it would have had the same effect.

Heavy strike went from 72% chance to deal double damage to 50% chance to deal double damage (With lab enchant), which works out to being 13% less damage on paper. In practice though, the build is dead. Currently heavy strike builds want to cap their double damage chance for consistency, and they can do so with a single large cluster jewel. With the proposed changes, it will now require SIX large cluster jewels (So, hitting every single large socket on the passive tree) to reach 100% double damage chance. I don't think I need to explain any further to convince you that 100% double damage builds with heavy strike are quite far beyond dead. (You can of course get a bit higher with exerted attacks using the medium clusters. That will still require 2 large sockets + 2 medium sockets and also requires you to find a worthwhile warcry to use with heavy strike. No, intimidating cry does not stack with heavy strike double damage. Have fun.)

Glacial hammer lost built in melee splash from it's threshold jewel. In exchange it gained 40% cold conversion. Glacial hammer builds now either need to weapon swap, gem swap, accept a ~25% loss in damage, or switch to a different skill for AOE. The 40% cold conversion it gained does save you a single passive tree point for cold damage mastery though, so I'm sure this will make up for it /s.

I would have continued and gotten some numbers for cleave and ground slam (and any others I'm missing) but let's be real. Anyone who was considering playing any of these skills is just going to go do it on standard where these jewels still exist. I was planning to start with glacial hammer. I am now planning to make a new character on standard instead. Thanks GGG.

The solution to bow builds requiring too much investment to be competitive look a bit underwhelming. At least to me it sounds like "Endgame bows are now ~30ex instead of 100ex", but this still doesn't change much about the itemisation needed early on.

My big problem with hit-bows early on is that you need to constantly upgrade your bows in maps while leaving a lot of defences behind to not get stuck progressing the map tiers.

A lot of people try to get a Death's Opus early to then farm and farm until they have an insanely good bow, because it is not worth it to upgrade constantly.

To be competitive they probably also need better passives on the tree, especially if you plan to make some non-crit versions possible.



And please give Melee some love, I want to play Lacerate again...

WOW GGG JUST WOW. HOW AM I NOT SURPRISED THAT YOU HAVE SOMEHOW MANAGED TO DO IT AGAIN?? ALL I CAN SAY IS HOW MUCH I UNBELIEVABLY UNDENIABLY UNIRONICALLY love you. Almost as much as I love reading triggered comments = )

awesome can't wait to play another league. TY GGG for all the content and the work u guys put into my favourite game.

Great news GGG! Looking forward to the new Expansion! Thanks for all your hard work.

Edit: Also, the clown fiesta in this thread is really hilarious. Softcore trade plebs who pay for boss kills are malding yet again...

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Jazzhoyt2 wrote:

As a leveling weapon it will become insanely powerful (it sort of already was). 100% increased damage with 3APS at lvl 5... Im pretty sure they will remove the projectile speed from the weapon.

well you dont get the mastery at level 5 already. absolute minimum is lvl 11 (incl granddaddy crab) and thats ignoring all the good passives at ranger start. so realistic is prbly around act 2 start. still hilarious. they HAVE to remove or reduce that.

if ds_lily reads this....what is smell