Focused Akkhan 2.7.4 Feedback

PTR Feedback
1

Baleful Remnant

  • Avatars from Baleful Remnant seem to proc Condemn.
  • They do NOT appear to benefit from Blade of Prophecy or Frydehr’s Wrath.
  • Their Condemn procs appear to be buffed by A6.
  • They do not benefit from Eternal Union.

Falling Sword: Rise Brothers

  • Avatars from Falling Sword do NOT proc Condemn.
  • They do NOT benefit from Eternal Union.

The above issues make Baleful Remnant and Falling Sword kind of useless for the time being.

Phalanx Avatars

  • Do no damage themselves, even with all items designed for them.
  • Archers seem to always fire on the same enemy/area, which really limits AoE potential.

Condemn

  • Gameplay feels very clunky without the Unleashed rune, which means we will probably still have to equip it - still testing the other runes and no rune though.

Doors

  • Judgment does not break doors, and Avatars do not break doors - this is a problem, going to have to carry a skill just for doors depending on what you are doing (Akarat’s Champion does break doors fortunately).

It is hard to give suggestions on how to improve the set without knowing if Baleful Remnant Avatars’ Condemns should be getting fully buffed or not.

Right now the set is clunky though.

Something I didn’t mention above is Judgment is a crowd control which quickly maximizes enemies’ CC resistances by the looks of it.

Some possible ideas…

  • Add actual Phalanx damage to the build
    – Maybe on A2?
    – Maybe on Baleful Remnant?
    – Buff Warhelm of Kassar or Unrelenting Phalanx?
  • Change Archers’ arrows to pierce
    – Downside is it would the Bowmen rune the clear winner, but it’s not like other builds don’t have a clear winner
  • Give Unleashed automatically in the build somehow
    – The damage delay adds so much to the clunkiness I’m experiencing
8 Likes
2

You actually don’t need to use bowmen to proc condemns.

This makes using the no rune of phalanx the best way to proc the condemns because you can pack for example 25 mobs up and every phalanx cast will trigger 50 condemns (+ blade of prophecy for 150 condemns total) and reset 25 seconds of AC cooldown (if you play unrelenting phalanx for double cast)

It seems to be able to clear a gr150 at 16k paragon which is decent but not amazing.

Single target dmg is the biggest issue by far as usual with condemn builds.

1 Like
3

Ideally, I want a new Phalanx set and keep Akkhan as is

If they can’t then buff the damage values to the shield and helm (60% is low), rework the flail to make them benefit from your skill bonuses/eternal union and add more supporting legendary powers to items that don’t have legendary powers.

4

Sorry if I implied you had to use the Bowmen rune. That just happens to be the rune I tested a lot and made a suggestion for. Most of my testing was with Bowmen and Bodyguards because those are the actual “pet” themed Avatars.

Going “No Rune” did offer up some interesting results. It’s not really a Pet/Knight-Commander build ironically. It’s more like the old Stampede build from early on in RoS. Great for massive damage with large groups of enemies, but very weak against single target. Also uses the most Wrath out of all of the rune possibilities.

5

I have cleared 117 at the moment with 775 Paragon, augments on most items and decently rolled items, far from perfect though. I have tested different setups and runes for both Condemn and Phalanx and this is what I conclude so far:

Akkhan Set:
I like the overall changes to the set, BUT it feels incredibly clunky, because grouping up enemies and actually making all or most of them get hit with Condemns is very difficult and requires constant repositioning and re-summoning of the Phalanx. In general, I think it would be absolutely fine if Phalanx triggered Condemn regardless of Judgment, it feels somewhat unnecessary and just adds to the “clunkiness” of the build.

Possible solution:
Give Condemn Unleashed and Shattering Explosion WITH the set, additionally Judgment should be used to pull enemies together, but this is not possible with the current iteration, because of the Immobilize, I think “no longer immobilizes enemies” would be a great addition to the set so we can actually pull enemies together. I would also be quite happy if Condemn would always be cast by Phalanx instead of needing Judgment on the target, ESPECIALLY for speed content (which is what we mostly do in the game).

Support Items:
This area feels a bit messy. We have 1 Weapon + Shield for Condemn, and then Baleful Remnant and Unrelenting Phalanx for Phalanx, which means we cannot use all dedicated support items for the build. Other support items such as Warhelm of Kassar are unclear to me as I cannot be sure that they even increase the damage of the Condemns cast by the Phalanx (same goes for the “Lord Commander” passive).

Possible solutions:
Baleful Remnant feels overall very weak and could simply be fused into Unrelenting Phalanx to make clearing trash easier. Warhelm of Kassar and Eternal Union could use a further buff, since the overall damage of the build is quite low.

Overall gameplay:
It is a bit boring to be perfectly honest. This is because Judgment is the only thing that we are actively doing, other than re-summoning to make sure the AI isn’t shooting some distant small mob in the corner. It would be much more fun if WE would trigger additional Condemns with Judgment on enemies that have been hit by our Phalanx, that way we could not only more actively do damage, but we could also more easily focus our damage instead of relying on the AI, which quite frankly is a bit lackluster.

Another alternative would be to step away from “Bowmen” and “Bodyguard” and give more support to the active versions of Phalanx. For that we would need the Resource Cost reduction from Akkhan back though, or even just remove the Wrath cost from the skill. Either way, I would appreciate MORE control and MORE active gameplay.

Season Theme:
We currently do not really have any power for the new Akkhan Set that does anything for us. I’m assuming you intended for us to use Falling Sword, but the Avatars from it don’t do anything and the angels don’t appear strong either.

1 Like
6

I tried it out and feel almost the same. It tries to be a “pet” but not pet thing…and casting judgement just to do damage is like you said annoying and boring

  1. One button problem: because condemn is triggered by Phalanx, you have to spam Judgement every where on every enemy…its worse than Primary skill buillds, because there is a small delay…so it just feels bad.
    –Fix: Remove the judgement requirement, revert the set’s RCR, so the player can cast condemn which procs more condemn when Phalanx attack

2nd Problem: “Unleased” rune is almost a must…which is sad because before, all runes were useful…this makes the build even more boring on top of the clunky style

Props to Blizzard for creativity…but this mix of pet/not pet build does not play well in game.

Its reminds me of Zuni Dart with a big difference that you dont control the pet’s action.
—Maybe make Eternal Union cast Condemn at range like WOL, and every time you cast it, the pets also cast, or proc…IDK,
Or Just have a Phalanx items buffed and be a true pet build, and buff Condemn with a bracer…

It was very frustrating to play…you have to debuff the enemy, summon pets…and you dont have options of using different runes.

POSSIBLE FIX: Summon Phalanx (Bodyguard) cast condemn when you do, (Eternal Union add damage to either Condemn damage, or similar to Bonespear…Avatar’s Condemn does more damage.

This will keep the original playstyle similar enough, not the most active, but at least it felt smooth.

7

Agreed, we must save a Pylon for the boss with Nemesis so we can trigger more damage.

While the most performant and hands on build, Unruned Phalanx is a bit much on the lag. Unleashed helps the whole experience feel better, but I’m not sure they can let Unruned go live due to the lag it causes.

I got used to it after a few rounds and went up to GR133 solo so far with 42k strength.

I strongly feel they should modify the A4 set bonus like this:

A4 Set Bonus:

Attacks from Phalanx Avatars reduce the cooldown of Akarat’s Champion by 0.5 seconds. Phalanx Avatars Bodyguards apply Condemn Unleashed when attacking enemies that are affected by Judgment. Increase the damage of Condemn and Blessed Shield by 100% for every Avatar under your command. (Restricted to Bowmen and Bodyguards)

  • Reduces Lag by restricting Condemn to 4 Bodyguards.
  • Reintroduce Blessed Shield back into Akkhan as a competitive option, while allowing it to power up Blessed Shield.
  • Pump up Condemn’s Damage by 400% (10GRs). (4 Bodyguards).
  • Pump up Blessed Shield Damage by 400%, (10GRs) (4 Bowmen). There is no mathematical incentive to use Unrelenting Phalanx over Jekangbord.
  • Allows the user to cast Falling Sword to raise their DPS by 75% (4 → 7 Avatars). Good for CoE bursts, somewhat counterproductive for Blessed Shield unless it’s done before Fire cycle.
  • Default to the Unleashed rune so we don’t have to carry Condemn on the skill bar, instead we can use Falling Sword for the +75% damage boost.

What do you all think of this suggestion?

1 Like
8

What about buffing back the 6p bonus or even buff it higher?

9

If we get that, what is to stop someone from running A6I2 very defensively? I think we tested it out without a horse and it was mid 130s. The crazy thing is now you can cube Akkhan’s Addendum and cast a crapload of Rally Bombardments.

I still need to test A6I2.

10

Blizzard,plz keep Baleful Remnant away from Akkhan condenm,it must recall a large number of Phalanx Avatars lag the game.Buff Akkhan 6p bounus plz,2000% now,and
Phalanx Avatars cast condemn triple bounus.(we should not encourage the Cru cast condemn,he looks like a commander and a Presiding judge,you removed Akkhan 2p 50%RCR bounus,so Cru have not enough energy to cast condemn himself,he prefer command the Phalanx Avatars to cast condenm)

11

Ahh yes I was the last bloke on your stream whit the stupid questions. :laughing: I haven’t thought of A6I2.

12

Made a new thread without seeing this one. I’ll copy paste my feedback here.

Hard to give feedback due to possible bugs.

  1. It feels TERRIBLE that the Phalanxes don’t proc Stricken. Condemn is already heavily punished on single target due to the Blade of Prophecy effect, and at the high end, you need to run a slow generator to proc Stricken so the RG doesn’t take forever.
  2. It feels very bad the build doesn’t use Baleful Remnant or Rise Brothers.
  3. It feels very bad the updated season build doesn’t utilize the seasonal effect. The only one that fits is the archangels, which seem to scale with difficulty, not with your stats. Could be wrong. Either way, they don’t seem to do much.
  4. It feels bad that the best build right now doesn’t use Eternal Union, the buffed legendary for the season, due to Baleful and Rise Brothers pets doing nothing.
  5. It feels bad that Unleashed is currently required due to the bug I posted on bug reports, where non-instant Condemns can lose Akkhan and Akarat Champion multipliers (ie. do effectively no damage) if the Phalanx despawn or get resummoned.
  6. It feels a little bad that Phalanx Condemns don’t proc area damage so area damage is useless. They are also unaffected by Condemn%. Seems like the only way to stat is with CDR/RCR just for the sake of Captain Crimson, or potentially putting attack speed on nearly everything to hit the 18 FPA breakpoint for Bowmen. Not necessarily bad in and of itself.
  7. This set is too clunky for anything besides pushing. Not sure how that could be changed without overhauling the pets or making Judgment into an aura. I hope the damage is competitive enough where it’s a top solo pushing build since it won’t be good for anything else given its reliance on pets and Judgment spam.
1 Like
13

I think after dmkt stopped the stream, and I didn’t have his voice to keep me focused I just passed out lmao… PTR start sucks when you’re on EU.

14

Yeah it was like 0:30 AM here :laughing:

15

I’ll have to try this tomorrow. I hadn’t considered this playstyle because of the developer notes from the PTR saying they wanted Akkhan to be a “Knight-Commander.”

This may be a good thing despite conflicting with the design intent and playing similar to Blessed Shield. The pet playstyle feels bad to me due to the AI and the need to Judgment every mob.

16

The single target element of the build could be enhenced, by buffing Phalanx items maybe. Atleast it’s a posibility. I would suggset Warhelm of Kassar to have 500%-600% dmg multiplier. Lord Commander passive 200% to Phalanx. Unrelenting Phalanx: Casts Phalanx twice and enemies hit by Phalanx Avatars take double dmg from all sources.

17

The single target is bad, but perhaps we just accept it. On the Unruned clears, the Guardian fights were tolerable, I did my GR132 without a pylon (Ember), the GR133 was done with Maiden w/ Power Pylon. I believe my ceiling is GR134-135 without optimization/augments.

Nobody is really saying anything about the near Immunity from Akarat’s Champion. The Unruned version casts can erase the cheat death icon very fast. But if the damage is just too great (Standing in Arcane Beam) you will trigger twice and die. I died a lot more playing the Bowmen, than with Unruned.

Agreed. I liked the thought of having the option for different scenarios. The player will feel like a strategist for mixing and match Bodyguards and Bowmen for different rift objectives. I just worry about the lag.

Eternal Union has to be worth more than 50% damage to be used. While I liked not having the CoE cycle to worry about while playing F&R. I would prefer the option to swap Auguild for Kassar+Strongarms+Eternal Union+CoE. If Kassar were actually helpful.

This is a good idea, especially as a 20 yard radius (double range). Only how would it work… I’d expect constant Immobilization. The player has to decide when to Immobilize for this to be tolerable in groups.

Maybe Consecration would make more sense for this set? Change the fantasy. We don’t put Judgement on our enemies, but instead Consecrate our Phalanx to Condemn evil. The set would need some DR back.

In speed content I suppose you just self cast Condemn like normal. If Phalanx had a damage buff like 1000% that’d allow them to wreck T16.

1 Like
18

I was actually thinking they should do something similar.

Instead of enemies hit by Judgment, enemies hit Blessed Shield can then proc Condemn from Phalanx Avatars.

  • Armor of Akkhan (2-piece bonus): Blessed Shield and Condemn damage are increasdd by XXX%.

  • Armor of Akkhan (4-piece bonus): Attacks from Phalanx Avatars reduce the cooldown of Akarat’s Champion by 0.5 seconds, and also apply an Unleashed Condemn when attacking enemies that have been recently hit by Blessed Shield.

Something like that anyways was where I was leaning.

Blessed Shield is definitely relegated to LoD with this current Akkhan change.

I think the most telling thing during my testing was how often I had to keep casting Judgment in an attempt to make sure all enemies were properly Judged/debuffed. Left little room to do anything else like use my own attacks.

2 Likes
19

Blessed shield triggers a condemn explosion when it hits an enemy. :sunglasses:

5 Likes
20

We don’t need condemn in Phalanx build at all and please remove it as my eyes cannot handle 20+ condemn in every second. We need the pure Phalanx Avatars damage (1T per shot OK???) The Sky Angel need a huge damage buff also can benefit from Eternal union.

1 Like