I’m not able to log on to the PTR right now, but I don’t have to do that to realize that this is a horrible change. Restricting Etched Sigil to only benefit Energy Twister is going to ruin dozens of fun builds. Tal Meteor Shower and Explosive Blast are the ones I’m most concerned with, but there are many more. I’m not talking about a damage nerf here; these builds simply aren’t going to function without ES procs, especially now that both ES and Deathwish have a one-second windup.
Moreover, this change is completely needless, because Energy Twister already has several dedicated items. If you feel like it needs a bigger damage multiplier, put that on Twisted Sword, or Ranslor’s Folly, or the newly redesigned Valthek’s Rebuke. That way, you can buff Twister without affecting other builds. Why was this not an option?
The developers previously stated that this was going to be a “balance patch”. I guess they figure that, the more builds they remove, the easier it will be to balance the ones that are left. That’s not the kind of “balance” I enjoy.
TLDR: Revert the change to Etched Sigil. Add Energy Twister support on the items that already exist for it. That is all.
SUre it was way better we could play with a lot of different builds now with that the wizard is really fragile and really with most of the new builds unplayable, I’m really sad with the changes. They should buff the etched sigil and leave it as it was…
I completely agree! I would be fine with keeping the newly buffed damage value of 200-250%. But what’s most important is getting rid of the Energy Twister restriction. Etched Sigil needs to interact with most spenders like it does in the current patch.
No, really… as much as I like my channeling playstyle, upping global damage on Etched Sigil is no good. The item is and was fine the way it was. We have a problem with channeling infesting the class but to break channeling completely is uncalled for.
We had so many suggestions regarding channeling and how to deal with it but Blizzard doesn’t read the wizard forums, at least it seems so. When was the last time a blue post was dropped there? I can’t even remember…
They need to give us viable options, not restrictions that gimp our options and make the class a complete joke.
To my honest belief, Etched Sigil has stay the way it is on live. They just need to give us alternatives on the offhand part.
Well they could have a plan for the channeling later on and did what they also have done before…not say anything and let the players get mad until it’s shown in a later patch.
I’ve no doubt that they have a plan (or at least some part of a plan) for handling channeling. The channeling dw/es pairing is such a predominant combination that it’s used in nearly every wizard build (you won’t find many wizard players who won’t agree that it’s predominance was a problem); however the issue is blizzard’s decision to change etched sigil to energy twister-specific (even though energy twister already had 3 legendary items prior to this…) had culled a majority of wizard builds and worse yet blizzard hadn’t added anything that could possibly fill the void that etched sigil had left behind.
In short this type of change resulted in a massive loss in power for the class and shouldn’t had been done unless that loss power was properly reallocated to the necessary items, skills, and passives of the wizard class, which in this case didn’t happen.
Oh believe me I know. As it stands right now, it really only looks like typhon/vyrs being at the top for wizards. Twister would need more damage or a better rune as for what I’ve seen.
I am not doing PTR but been watching Bludd play it.
Not only Energy Twister, but a lot of the items and skills need to be buffed since they lost ES.
For example, all of our channeling skills, meteor, explosive blast, etc. all definitely need buffing.
While the skills that were buffed in this patch (hydra, energy twister, and arcane orb) may need further buffing.
Channeling skills are worthless without Etched Sigil. The damage is and always has been weak because these skills have no dedicated items apart from DW, ES and Mantle that improve their damage and no set to support them.
Tal Rasha once did to some degree but they destroyed that last patch by adding the 1 second delay. Firebird is unplayable garbage, DMO, Vyr and Typhoon are out by design. Leaves LoN/LoD and those two needs enough support items - yup, nothing there. Slorak for Dis (lol), Light of Grace for RoF (bwahaha) and zilch for AT. See, it was hard enough as is to actually use channeling skills as main dps source. It was doable for T16, somehow, but hard to gear for.
The majority of the damage from a real channeling build came from Etched Sigil procs. Now that even ES is done for … yup, channeling skills are dead and unplayable beyond T13 as a source of damage.
Yeah, the best solution imo would’ve been to changed Death Wish and Etched Sigil to buff channeling skills only (then further increase the damage modifiers of those two items). Now if blizzard had chosen to do that instead of what they actually chose to do, then I might actually have hope for future balancing. But as things currently stand, I don’t have much faith.
Mind telling Blizz how to kill the bazooka build without damaging other builds. That was no doubt the reason why they made such a change.
Don’t know if my suggestion would work. But what I would do is make only one change to all channeling pieces of gear. Make it where they only affect the damage of channeling builds.
Then make other legendaries that buff the skill damage of the other skills such as Meteor and Explosive Blast.
This should also change things where every wiz build isn’t a channeling build.
Again I say that the change to the Sigil is to kill the bazooka wizard build. Not just to further support the twister build.
Without compensation that change is annihilating all the channeling builds that currently work thanks to the autocasts.
The problem was easily solved if they had made DW twice as strong but the buff limited to all channeling skills … and Etched Sigil three times as strong but only affecting channeling spender and autocasts from ES.
If they fear ES + Hydra, they could have excluded Hydra from being autocasted. There you have it…
That would have allowed them to revert the 1 second delay as well.
Another offender is Reverse Archon. That thing has to go, the sooner the better. But their solution will be something like making Swami a Shock Pulse item…
I was going to create such topic myself. This change is just ridiculous. If they want to buff twister - fine, do it, the you need to increase it significantly more, but why removing the only valuable build strategy from wizards? Did they even think of lod-builds? They will just stop working.
I have started playing on PTR and I agree the ES changes were a bad idea, ruins many builds. It was nice to have an option other than vyrs (which I don’t like), however that seems to be the one they want everyone using.
Only toon I play is the Wizard, will likely just stop playing if this goes forward as is.
I hope they rethink this and put ES back the way it was.
I read the first sentence and instantly liked the post. there is absolutely no reason to “ruin” a cool item.
If they wanna give this season a Energy Twister flavor then increase the multiplier either on Twisted Sword or Valtheks and revert ES to be more flexible with the 150% affix.
the 4th cube slot is gone afterwards anyway and therefore the build back to only played casually (missing x4.25 Deathwish multiplier)
they didnt change Etched Sigil retroactively, so basically they didnt “kill” the build. if you want the already lacklustre build to remain, get yourself a decent Etched Sigil before the new patch.
There’s also the chance that the 4th slot will become permanent. They have not said anything about this and they may be judging some of these changes to all the classes based on having an extra spot in the cube.
This won’t fix everything but some stuff it will change quite a bit like using DW with the new twister.
Not a heavy player but I agree with the first comments, there was nothing wrong with the Etched Sigil. I like the random arcane Orb for crowd control works good with they hydras, then I could pop my own Arcane Orb for double safety. I’m just wondering how it all will work with the 4th spot and putting Fragment of Destiney in there… -Lost