Guys,
Did the nerf have any negative side effects on other Wiz channeling builds like TR-6 Meteor Shower and the LoN/LoD Meteor Shower?
You know that Blizzard failed to nerf Bazooka effectively ?
The real nerf is postponed to S20 at the earliest.
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No. I think it shortened the window in which you can retain the Deathwish and Etched Sigil buffs after popping Archon. Bazooka is still fully possible, it just requires tighter timing (apparently it’s basically impossible for non-macro users now).
This should have no effect on non-Archon meteor builds.
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How about other Reverse Archon builds that employ Death Wish (Bazooka is a Reverse Archon build)?.. Are any of them negatively effected? Has anyone done any regression testing?
…and thanks for the explanations and insights.
Shouldn’t matter.
As I understand it (and I won’t claim to be an expert, I’ve never played it) Bazooka builds basically exploit the Archon activation to cancel the channel animation while leaving the channel buffs (i.e. Etched Sigil and Deathwish) active for a short window while you are in Archon. So you get the Archon damage buff on top of all the other buffs, which you shouldn’t really be able to do.
It’s not really a true reverse Archon build, since you are actually landing one super powerful Star Pact while in Archon form, instead of a bunch outside Archon while Swami is up. There’s another version of Archon Star Pact that I would call a true reverse Archon build, where you do land a bunch of smaller Star Pacts outside of Archon with the Swami buff active. I’d call that one a true reverse Archon build, but Bazooka is a little different. It’s only the bazooka variant that was being targetted with the nerf.
In theory, true reverse Archon builds (whether it’s proper reverse Archon Star Pact, Frozen Orb, etc.) shouldn’t be affected, since they don’t exploit the Archon animation cancellation buff extension. With proper reverse Archon, you’re just leveraging the normal Swami buff outside of Archon.
In terms of what they are exploiting, it’s totally different mechanics. A fix to the Archon activation phase really shouldn’t affect the generic Swami buff. That being said, weird regressions definitely do happen!
I don’t know that anyone has tested it specifically against something like Frozen Orb reverse Archon or anything. That being said, there’s definitely some anecdotal evidence that the Swami buff is still functioning normally, since Chantodo Vyr’s is still dealing appropriate damage in the Swami overlap phase. I think that’s enough to demonstrate that the Swami buff is still working properly, which suggests that true reverse Archon builds should still work fine.
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I play reverse archon meteor shower and the bazooka nerf does not affect it. Any channelling builds that uses deathwish and etched sigil are safe to play including reverse archon variants.
Bazooka isn’t a reverse archon build. Bazooka worked the way it did because you had a small window where you can transform into archon and still retain the channel bonus from deathwish and etc.
Reverse archon builds are builds that use archon to build stacks to increase damage strictly outside of archon form. The nerf that blizzard implemented did nothing to reverse archon builds
Many thanks guys. I was hoping there were no side effects and/or leaks/bleeds of their nerfing work into other aspects of Wiz items and mechanics.
Additional nerf incoming in 2.6.7a. Read Neve latest post in the thread in GD. They’re targeting arcane attunement.
I wouldn’t call that a nerf, it was clearly an exploit used by very few people and it needed to be fixed.
I agree. I just hope there’s no colateral damage that affects other builds.
They did already with first attempt in 2.6.7 on live. Less Chant. stacks carry over to next archon is very annoying (and is about 1GR nerf additional to Chant. nerf itself). I hope that it will revert it back (when it dosen’t fix Bazooka).
Looks like a possible nerf to bazooka wiz’s Wave of Force from Nev’s patch 2.6.7a post.
I think the Arcane Attunement pre-stacking is a bug the developers missed. If they are stripping away pre-stacking I don’t have a problem with that. Otherwise, I would fully expect WD’s to complain since they can not start a GR with Zuni-6 equipped and a full brood of fetishes.
A question for the Wiz community would be, how does a slightly modified Reverse Archon version of the build perform at trash clearing?.. If it is completely unusable in a Reverse Archon design then what are the alternatives for efficient trash clearing in high level GR’s?