I just had a good stream about the patch 2.6.7 and while enjoyed some of the changes coming to next PTR for testing, I had the feeling a lot of big concerns were not addressed. While I can point a few in this thread yet a lot of the concerns have to be addressed and discussed.
End game
Since the birth of Bazooka Wiz the end game for Diablo 3 has been achieved and the competition no longer exists whether in season or Non-season. I remember when this happened in season 5 with twister wizard adjustments were done to the build in the following season and related items in order to create a balance between classes for other viable builds to compete. This balance was so important that further adjustments were deemed necessary to keep the competitive spirit of the game in balance with the changes in season 7 and season 8 to the twisters and twister sword. In the recent patch notes a nerf to bone ringer along side a change to blighter was in order to bring the power of thorn’s necro down to be in line with other RGK/Solo builds. Is this approach not necessary for LON Bazooka as well? From my point of view to make the game competitive again is to either increase the GR cap from 150 (is that even an option?) or bring the power of current Wiz setup in line with other classes/specs. Maybe make the Star Pact rune to drop the meteor instantly so there is no double Archon stacks.
You’re right, and it’s not just you that thinks so. 99% of serious players agree that the cap should be removed.
By design GR’s shouldn’t have a limit, this was a blue post that spoke.
If technically possible (for devs), removing the cap will be great.
Change is needed. The most interesting group play is what you don’t expect, just as SP was when it first was popularized.
For good reason meta push is the easy choice, players value their time and want to be productive (more paragon, higher gems and augments). A 15-18GR power gap will do this.
SP centric meta has segmented the community, it was really bad 1-2 years ago. These days i find people are less obsessed with it, open to playing Chantodo/Darts in 130s, willing to bring in impale, invoker RGKs into 140s. I genuinely think this is due to boredom and a shrinking community.
Despite the emergence of 2nd rate options, at any given moment, the amount of compatible players who want to pursue the same activity is reduced because Bazooka is superior to all other trash clearing builds.
People have previously stated that it doesn’t seem to be technically possible given the way the game runs. RG at 150+ would have more life than can be covered by 64-bit integers. I don’t know personally if that’s the case, but it does sound like a reasonable argument:
We are aware of this. But I would like a blue to pronounce on it.
Since the first time a GR150 was completed, there have been posts about this limit. But so far there has been no official pronouncement from the devs. Despite this drawback of the numerical limit of a 64bit system, several ways have been suggested to solve this problem.
Until a blue official pronouncement, we still have hope for the removal of cap.
I don’t think the GR Cap has anything to do with physical limitation. The fact that it has not been removed so far is the legendary gems I think. They have to be changed too accordingly and it might be too much work but then again we need this defibrillation of the game.
This is utter bullsh.t, ofc they can raise above 150, dude… we are in 2019 , have you seen what a serious software house can do nowadays??? Have you ever seen what the modern online games on steam are capable to do? Is just fking unbelievable laziness and incompetence the same 2 reasons why this shameful company is not fighting botting from more than 3 years. Trust me m8, they don`t deserve our moneys anymore, f.ck them.
Please take in Consideration that the D3 Engine is from way before 2012 and written in 32 Bit, upgrading this Engine isnt Worth also comparing this game Engine to current ones is completly out of hand.
Some Years ago Blizz stated that they use Floating Point Calculation for Diablo 3.
32 Bit Float has a Max of 3.4028235 Ă— 10^38, also this is Exactly the Amount of dmg you take when you or a mob get Executed by Frailty Rune OR Executioner (This was also the reason for the Necro-Demon Hunter Exploit) Here a Pic of the Dmg number: http://i.imgur.com/BHCjgu7.png (This is by Far higher than 64 Bit Integer)
Here The Forum Post about that Exploit: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/d3/topic/20757656102
Based on that the Maximum Gr can be 446 (Based on 4 Man Boss HP) Here i calculated that one day and was talking about that in sVr90s Discord: imgur.com/a/NnFredp
The Big downside of Floating Point Calculation is that you have to deal a MINIMUM amount of dmg in order to actually deal dmg to the enemy. This Phenomen can also be seen on ZMonks/zBarbs in High Tier GR Pushes, when monk or Barb attacks a Mob the Health bar dont show up because, even if the monk/Barb gets a dmg number on his screen in the Calculation the amount wasnt high enough to change the Mobs Health Value.
And i think Blizz dont increase the Gr Cap because of that Issue. maybe also because the BK wont do any dmg to the Boss until the stricken stacked high enough that the dmg can actually be calculated.
EDIT: Also this type of Calculation has Rounding errors because not every decimal number can be expressed exactly as a floating point number.
You can check that out here: https://www.h-schmidt.net/FloatConverter/IEEE754.html
Note: a Possible Workaround can be to store the dmg numbers done by the players until the minimum amount is reached but that probably needs much Coding and also more calculation work on our beloved lagging servers.
Players can just speculate and suggest options. There is only one way to find out and that is communicating with people who have a hand in maintaining the game currently.
about the Architecture: Its mostly clear they use 32 Bit floating point Calculation on their Server, because prior 2012 there we also a huge amount of 32 Bit Machines around and 64 bit Processors where not common…
Also if tthe servers would run in 64bit then the 32 bit client wont even work
It is relative to the amount you want to subtract it, because as stated above, not every number can be exactly stored by this method. When im home i can elaborate a bit more. In the meantime you can read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-precision_floating-point_format
Why should we consider zDPS a problem? I mean, a real problem would be when builds that can finish the GR X-1 for around 20 minutes, start doing zero damage at GR X. When would this happen aka at what GR level? In other words how the “high enough” scale/curve is defined? Do we have a visual representation of this?
Three hundred forty undecillion two hundred eighty two decillion three hundred forty six nonillion six hundred thirty eight octillion five hundred twenty nine septillion. Thats a big number in that screenshot.
I thought many people hate D3 GR because it has no cap and it was unattained in the past and demand for a cap. Now D3 GR has a obvious cap, and the players asking the raise or remove the cap for GR.
The only way to “increase” the cap from max 150 to anything above is by lowering the max monster HP per rift from current 17% to for example 8% to have 300 GR cap or 4% for a 600 GR cap. You could probably even have up to 2400 GR max if you increased the monsters HP per rift just by 1% instead of current 17%…
Right now the highiest possible you could go is arround 159 because of the 64-bit integers…