For the record, I’m actually okay with a nerf. As much as it pains me to admit it. I understand where it’s coming from, in the 2.6.5 PTR I was thinking Chantodo’s might have been a bit overbuffed. It probably shouldn’t have gone live the way it was.
However, my immediate thought on reading the patch notes was that it’s a weird way to implement the change though. It’s not a good mechanic. There’s no indication in-game of how it functions. The set item description for PTR Chantodo’s is still exactly the same as on live. For a player who doesn’t read the patch notes, how will they know it was nerfed? They are just going to log in and do less damage and not know why. I thought that was exactly the kind of thing we were hoping to avoid in the game.
It’s unclear how exactly it’s implemented. It’s confusing to players.
In my opinion, a far simpler option would have been just to leave the APS scaling the same as it is on live, but reduce the damage per stack of Chantodo’s Resolve by an appropriate equivalent amount (2000% weapon damage per stack? 2500%?). I think this makes far more sense as a mechanic for nerfing Chantodo’s that should have the same end result. And will be transparent to players to avoid any confusion when 2.6.7 drops.
I posted about this on the wizard forums as well, reposting here for visibility.
I just retracted my initial Bug report after reading through Cratic’s testing. While we are still able to prove/test that a 5.0 APS multiplier is in place, it’s absolutely unclear how this nerf was put into place. As of now I can’t think of a mechanic that explains what we are witnessing right now and I have absolutely no clue how and what to test to confirm or disprove the nerf/mechanics at hand.
While I am accepting an overall nerf to Vyr/Chantodo and I am content with the decision to do so, the current solution is not feasible. Hence, I couldn’t agree more:
I want to pile on Tinne’s suggested solutions:
NERF 1: Cap the Attack Speed Multiplier at 2.5 APS (from 5.0).
NERF 2: Reduce Chantodo’s Resolve Damage per Stack to 2000% (from 4000%).
NERF 3: Reduce Chantodo’s Maximum Stacks to 10 (from 20).
All three options are clear to the player and each of them is halving the damage output of Chantodo’s.
The first option allows for more cross-set compatibility with Chantodo’s; Tal’Rasha as well as FireBirds can reach 2.5 APS comfortably and therefore incorporate Chantodo’s - as of now only Vyr’s can reasonably reach the 5.0 APS cap.
The second option retains the Status Quo of gearing choices and is just halving the overall damage output. No new builds/ideas are available with the change at hand.
The third option allows us the reconsider abilities for “out of Archon Chantodos stack gain”. Furthermore CDR becomes more relevant, since shortening “out of Archon” time is now a bit more beneficial.
I’d suggest to remove the current “nerf” and put a clearer solution into place.
I mean it also wouldnt be that hard to do either a nerf that scales higher as IAS goes higher like a logarithmic equation to determine the overall bonus for each amount of IAS or you could simply just find APS @ 1 then multiply [ ( APS ) / ( 1 + % nerf / 100 ) ] instead of find APS @ 1 then multiply
As mentioned, this one is great for balance between different set builds that use Chantodo.
However, I will agree that it is very unclear how this is affecting, at the moment.
I think this would be interesting - there are a lot of alternate skills that could be used - but I fear we’d be locked into gearing a lot of CDR. As it is now, we have choice in that matter. You can gear higher or lower per player preference.
We even had many builds that placed Zei’s this season instead of Gogok. It’s a great thing seeing so many little differences between otherwise similar Vyr Chantodo builds that are close in power.
If this route is chosen, I’d be more in support of a combination of “Nerf 2” (perhaps at 3000%) and “Nerf 3” (perhaps at 15 stacks max).
However, I still think it’s confusing to players. Especially those who don’t read the patch notes. Since the Chantodo’s Resolve set bonus description doesn’t make mention of how the APS multiplier is implemented, players will log in and be doing less damage in 2.6.7 and maybe not know why.
I think implementing one of the alternate suggestions is still the better route. It will make the mechanics more transparent to players.
Problem is that if we’re going to stick with the 4/7 = 1/1.75 scalar, things get a bit messy.
Would be capped at 5/1.75 = 2.857 for equivalency to the way the nerf is currently implemented.
Would be 4000/1.75 = 2285.7 to match the way the nerf is currently implemented.
Would be 20/1.75 = 11.4 to match the current implementation. Round to 12?
The way he described it in the bug report, he took the ratio of damage at 5 APS to the damage at 2.13 APS? But if it’s a flat scalar, then it appears in both damage components. So it cancels out.
E.g. if damage5 = base damage * 5 * (unknown scalar)
and damage2.13 = base damage * 2.13 * (unknown scalar)
damage5 / (damage2.13 / 2.13) = (base damage * 5 * unknown scalar) / ((base damage *2.13 * unknown scalar)/2.13) = 5, i.e. the ratio will be 5 regardless of whether there is an APS scalar in the damage calculation, and regardless of what it’s value is.
Based on what he said in the bug report, I think a flat scalar can explain what he observed.
Or when he tested it live was it more involved than that?
I agree, it’s still very confusing to players, especially considering the previous implementation was (as we were assuming) based on the Attack speed cap.
Implementing the damage nerf as an adjustment via scalar value (ratio) rather than as an attack speed cap reduction means other sets will not be able to be balanced well in comparison to Vyr.
Basically we’re stuck with either Vyr being powerful or another set (Tal or FB) being more powerful when it comes to Chantodos.
I would much have preferred reducing the attack speed cap in regards to the benefit of AS damage scaling.
My thought here is, why adjust the amount of damage from scaled attack speed, if not to introduce more balance between these builds?
Any of the other methods presented in this thread would have served better for another purpose.
okay that makes sense… suppose best thing would be to test with the same items everytime but that can be rough.
So ya its not an attack speed nerf at all? Its simply a nerf … 4/7ths of its current damage, thats pretty large nerf, wasnt rats still competing? Why in God’s name do they need to nerf something when it isnt even the highest solo build for its class?
Chantodos doing 96% of the Vyr damage waS ridiculous. Not objection to Chantodos doing less damage, but let’s not kill Vyr in the crossfire. I think halving Chant damage is the most reasonable, transparent and balancable option.
Can’t speak for barbarians since I have little to no experience with them. However regarding archon, it’s partly because chantodo wave is an automatic passive ability, as such for it to do more damage than manually casted abilities (hence the archon abilities) is unappealing; also it makes chantodo far more mandatory for vyr when it should just be a complimentary set instead.