⚙ Gears of Dreadlands - Performance Testing & Feedback - V2

PTR Feedback
1

This new post focuses on the second PTR patch, which improved the performance and mechanics of Gears of Dreadlands. The Hungering Arrow variant is in great shape and feels well balanced – kudos to the devs for improving it.

There are outstanding performance tweaks that should be addressed for the other flagship primary skills (Bolas & Grenades):

Recorded Clears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO7GicfZtbY [GoD6 HA - GR135]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnyDxGp4unw [GoD6 Bolas - GR125]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0hreBN7jOI [GoD6 Grenade - GR120]

I want to stress the importance of finishing the upgrade of Bolas. You’ve taken the time to spot light Leonine Bow and Emimei Duffel in the patch notes. The community was excited about the choice between Hungering Arrow and Bolas. (elite killer vs trash killer)

Bolas is under-performing to a degree of abandonment. Meaning, if left as is, nobody is going to play Bolas in push; not many will play it in support since the pixel pull is too loose, and the T16 speed stuff is easily replicated with Hungering Arrow. (those sub 1 min clears rock for key farming – and HA will be the first gear we all farm – so expect Shattershot speedsters to dominate).

Performance Test Results
With the above in mind, please review the performance results:

Set Bolas H. Arrow Grenade Impale
GoD6 GR125 GR137 GR120 N/A
M6 N/A GR131 N/A N/A
UE6 GR120 GR131 GR118 N/A
N6GoD4 N/A GR130 N/A N/A
S6 N/A N/A N/A GR131

*I am near 5k paragon, most of the above clears have the potential to be 1-2 GRs higher with aggressive fishing.

Bolas: Increase Power by 11GRs
I use Leonine Bow, Emimie’s Duffel and Dawn (cubed) for toughness. I have given this setup an honest try with the GoD6 set, sinking about 50+ keys into push attempts. I strictly clear trash since we lack the elite damage % affixes necessary to finish off elites, so it is more beneficial to skip them, or hope for a Conduit.

At my paragon, Bolas is dangerous to play – as it requires close range combat, the trash isn’t so dangerous – but death or serious damage loss occurs when surrounded by multiple elites with harsh affixes. (which tends to happen because you’re dragging them across the map.)

I hoped gearing with Stone of Jordan would answer the inefficiencies, but it doesn’t. The loss of F&R is too steep. Incorporating Ninth Cirri Satchel only results in poor performance because the element cycles are reversed (Cold → Fire) – you kill the trash with HA before you use Bolas. If Bolas were superior at killing trash, you may consider holding off on HA cycle. That said, I recommend closing the gap between Bolas and Hungering Arrow.

  • Tighten the pulling effect of Leonine Bow of Hashir, the enemies are too spaced out post pull, try to emulate Ranslor’s Folly tight pixel pull.
  • Implement the following item upgrades:

Leonine Bow of Hashir

  • Bolas have a 100% chance on explosion to pull in all enemies within 24 yards, and also deal 425-525% increased damage

Emimei’s Duffel

  • Bolas explode instantly and deal 425-525% increased damage.

Grenade: Increase Power by 15GRs
Grenade should not be forgotten. Grenade has its own characteristics, it fits in between Bolas and Hungering Arrow – it’s the middle ground between elite and trash killer. You also may play GoD6 Grenade with Endless Walk.

There is a very simple way to buff this skill without impacting Rapid Fire. Update an old item:

Balefire Caster

  • Grenade deals 900% increased damage.

Stone of Jordan
This item was intended for dual skill builds under compatible sets. Assuming you can balance Bolas w/ Hungering Arrow, GoD6 fits this criteria. The problem is the ring itself doesn’t supply enough damage to replace favorites like F&R, Compass Rose or CoE. In another thread, the following suggestion was made and I agree with it because it will separately make items like Etrayu and Balefire Caster worthwhile:

Stone of Jordan
Each of your elemental’s damage bonus is equal to your highest static elemental bonus to skill. Your static elemental damage bonus is now doubled.

Holy Point Shot: Another 4-5GRs Please
We must get this balanced with other class elite killers. Impale must meet the new standard of intra-class balance:

Holy Point Shot
Impale throws 2 additional knives and deals 250-300% increased damage.

Thank you again for all of your hard work, we look forward to seeing how the next patch settles.

25 Likes
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Honestly, some stuff is just more magical than others. I think it’s a mistake for every item to be equal power. Or to try and make everything the same. Most casuals who play at GR90 aren’t going to notice the difference.

But I enjoy your posts very much. :slight_smile:

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Yea, I am in this same camp. If GoD gets the tweaks it really needs it will be perform great as a Support build, Solo build, and Speed Build. IMO, thats already alot for 1 set to be accomplishing. I personally am not that interested in having another GoD build that performs similarly to GoD HA but with Bolas instead. I rather they buff Bolas pulling effect and other aspects to make it perform better as a zDH. Its fine if Bolas becomes a trash killer I guess, but I rather trash killing be given to another set and not potentially end up in a situation where most DHs would play GoD set and occasionally Shadow or RF build.

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Totally agree about grenades. Please dont leave them in the dust. I would like to see balefire do something like increase grenade damage by x per bounce like the belt, and then give one of the quivers with no power all of the grenade runes and a small damage increase. Then it would all synergize nicely.

3 Likes
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Apache and Blue!! I can’t believe i’m hearing this from you two. :astonished: You want fewer DPS options for the DH class, so you can play a superior zDH?

Blue, the other day you posted this, why the change of heart?

A player who is content doing GR90s won’t notice the difference – I agree with this. But as for the rest of us who are investing our weekends, reading these forums, finding bugs, and pushing on a PTR board for the greater good of this game – we do care. Having more builds makes this game deep, it gives choice to the players, enhances the loot hunt, makes the leaderboards more interesting, etc.

Leaving the itemization unfinished, results in a monochromatic, play-only-one dps kind of game.

If this patch were to stop being worked on right now, the leaderboards would be flooded with only GoD Hungering Arrow, followed by S6 Impale and the occasional Rapid Fire clear 500 ranks beneath. It’s going to be exacerbated by the sheer volume of players who will drop their WDs, Barbs and Crusaders to play this… one… new build.

So again, why wouldn’t we ask for both as the original post suggests?

There is no second chance for Bolas – so let’s get it done right and not leave it behind.

And I’ll conclude this with the following sentiment: I want to be kept occupied before Diablo 4 launches, so I’ll need many skills to enjoy. Before 2.7.0 hits – you can count a resurrection of the DH Proposal posted in the General Forum asking for the ghosts of Elemental Arrow, Chakram, Multishot, Cluster Arrow to be brought back from the dead. Bolas should not be on that list.

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I want as many DPS options as possible, hence me saying its fine if Bolas becomes a trash killer. I am just less interested in a considerable amounts of builds sitting on one set.

My prior post does not conflict (at least imo) with what I said here. The full post says “If the devs want Bolas to have great damage” I would try to make it into a trash killer skill. That doesn’t necessarily mean its what I want.

As long as GoD set doesn’t end up being practically the only set DHs play after the balancing patch, I don’t mind Bolas being a damage build.

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I fell out my chair laughing as I read this, being able to hear such disappointment in your tone. Not that it’s funny on the surface, but my imagination of what this would have sounded like on discord blindsided me into humor.

Sry, I have nothing to add :frowning:

2 Likes
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I’m afraid this is going to be the case regardless with HA. HA just does everything better. It’s the best trash killer we got, the best RGK (maybe), the best hybrid dps/supp build option, the best at speed farming, the best at T16 and bounties.

I understand where you’re getting at, but what you fear is already happening. All dmkt wants to do is bring bolas/grenades up to par with HA, so that if GoD6 does end up doing everything better than all the other sets, at least you have a choice of which generator you want to use.

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I did a 135 with 3600 paragon. He already did a 136 at 4800 para.

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I hear you Blue – seeing the same set do everything can be dull as well.

Here’s another way to look at it. We have 16 easily identifiable skills that do damage, and only 6 sets, LoD included. Each set has to bring more than 1 skill to an acceptable standard, otherwise you’ll end up with only 6 useful skills/sets.

GoD6 represents 5 primary skills w/ Entangling Shot as utility. It would be nice if majority of the primary skills were equally effective so we can check them off the list. As it stands:

  • Grenade: 1/2 the strength of Multishot
  • Bolas: equal to Multishot
  • Hungering Arrow: 550% stronger than Multishot
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I second your testing dmkt. I’ve seen you playing hours and hours and making a huge effort in order to give proper feedback always with real numbers and being true to the purpose of testing and seeing whats viable and not viable.

I really really hope that Blizz can see your post before going live or perhaps a new PTR patch who knows… Those changes would make DH a really fun class to play without having the problems we had before.
And thanks Blizz for hearing us out before the last PTR patch the new set is much better now.

3 Likes
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I’ve uploaded video of a sloppy GR135 clear.

3 Likes
16

Good video. can you tell me what Echoing fury does for us? Why is it better than using Entangling shot?

Edit: I used echoing fury and I did a lot of damage, but I don’t know how. Also I run out of hatred a lot.

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Nice run. Imagine if you had conduit on first map xD.

When you die on RG like that you should use “Revive at last checkpoint” option. No?

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You’ll run out of hatred quite fast with EF, so you’ll have to pulse it. You get more attacks outside of Strafe, some extra run speed too. The benefits are gleaned firing arrows in-and-out of Strafe mode.

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I’m not the most updated player these days but I just logged on to PTR and saw a 150 clear with a GoD6 Bolas build, 1700 paragon. That seems not bad at all.

One might argue that it is too strong, but I will leave in game politics to those who still play religiously. I have more or less quit playing D3 because I don’t like the poweecreeps.

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If you get the Night Stalker passive you can strafe around forever and not run out of hatred (as long as you are hitting stuff). It goes well if you like the taeguk style of play. It’s better for seasons though…

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The highest solo clear I see is 144, and that guy is botting his a.s.s. off with 12k paragon.

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That’s because it was a zero dps DH abusing of the season theme buff. In reality if you played on the PTR with bolas you’d see that they currently can’t go higher than 125 as dmkt tested and showed here. So you gotta be very careful with the info you post here if you have no idea of what is going on or you just don’t dig deep enough to know why that is. Remember this is a PTR feedback and all classes currently are doing 150 running any char with zero dps because the dps comes from season theme and not from them.

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You are right, posting wrong stuff might break the life of dedicated players, or make life miserable. It’s easy to forget when you don’t care that much anymore.