I’d settle for being able to play the build when you want to play it. If it (usually) requires high paragon level to stay alive, but playing it at p200 with one of these gems instead of an offensive gem is possible, I’m good with that.
I just want options. Flexibility.
Yes, you could. But that is if you have enough paragons to compensate, or another multiplier you want to use.
My main issue is that these type of bonuses are just mutually exclusive.
At some point more damage is more useful to you, at another more survivability. For instance, I don’t use CoE ring for my GoD DH. I use Elusive, when doing hard GRs simply because I hate random one-shots.
Yes, you change gems and change gear to optimize new bonuses to best meet your build’s needs. However, your build is still the same in essence. You just changed the source of your bonuses from one slot to another.
This an illusion of character customization; nothing more.
I guess, I just hate the fact that when the community wants to make certain items usable they focus on the easiest route — bigger property numbers.
I like suggestions that go beyond the norm and propose something more meaningful to make D3 more interesting.
Fair point, I’ll copy my OP and reply it there.
Players who are 3000+ Paragon have gained a lot of toughness from their paragon primary stat. But lower players often still have survivability issues in high GR levels. For some of them, taking off one damage gem to put on a survivability gem would be worth the sacrifice, if only the survivability gem was good enough to significantly impact their survivability. Right now, Esoteric Alteration is the only good survivability gem.
I’m not asking for the game to be made easier. Just for players to have more options. The best gems are still the best and I haven’t made anything better than that. Stop with the knee-jerk reaction where you treat any suggested buff as though it will enable players to make new thresholds in the game. It’s a buff to something that was useless, and after the buff it will still be less popular than other options. It won’t make a new higher maximum potential power level, it’s just giving the player the opportunity to choose 3 from 4-6 gems that might be useful for them instead of “choosing” the only 3 gems that would do any good.
You mean, like, whenever they’re trying to level up the legendary gems that they have equipped? Or whenever they’re trying to level up gems to Caldesann’s +Stat on their gear, and they want to get those gems as high as they possibly can before they do so? Because both of those things happen somewhat regularly for a lot of players until they’re done with all of that. I’m still trying to push higher GR tiers myself.
Unless they’ve already got a ton of damage, and they just can’t survive the monsters they’re capable of killing. I’ve seen players die multiple times in Grifts that they can complete in 3-5 minutes. They can’t even do the max GRifts their damage is capable of handling in 10-15 minutes because they’d die too much to kill anything. For them, extra toughness could mean going up 5-10 more GR levels because they can already handle killing it. If they’ve got an oculus ring on their follower, then that toughness can even increase their damage output by enabling them to stay put inside of the ring even when it’s right in the middle of a bunch of arcane, poison, plague, descration, lightning, frozen and molten, from two packs in the same area.
Don’t treat every suggestion for rebalance like it’s asking for a handout. None of these buffs will increase players’ potential. It just gives them more options so they can choose and change to adjust their build until it has the strengths and weaknesses that they can handle. Every buff comes at the cost of not getting a different buff that could have gone in its place.
Have you ever heard of support builds? When a player’s build is all about supporting by buffing other players and weakening enemies, after grabbing two legendary gems for support, they might just want some survivability from their third gem because buffing their own damage output won’t help anyone. Toughness helps; it gives you the freedom to stand directly underneath target enemies on top of a stack of dangerous enemy ground DOTs applying your debuffs and crowd-controls directly to the targets with no fear of death.
That’s what I was going for.
Where your defense is coming from is still a change. There’s a difference between Esoteric Alteration protecting you a massive amount from non-physical damage, or a gem protecting you from melee damage, or a ring that protects you from everything after using a skill. The ring gives the most reliable defense, but takes a skill on your skill bar to utilize. The other options only protect you from particular things; you can ignore those damage sources now but still have to worry about other sources of damage. That changes your playstyle up because it changes which kinds of enemy damage are a threat; which you can ignore and which you have to avoid.
Not all of my suggestions are mere number changes. More than half of them are, because there are a lot of things to change and I don’t expect Blizzard to completely change everything, but a bunch of easy number changes they could certainly implement. I’m not just being lazy by not coming up with more creative solutions. I think about what it would take to implement those solutions. Coming up with an idea only takes me a few minutes, but implementing a new idea could take multiple people hours, while changing a number would only take them a minute.
if you remove power from the game, then it’s finally dead. how ignorant are you?
Good to know.
All this time I thought aRPGs were about a character’s journey through wilderness and the hunt for magical items to further customize their skills and abilities.
Turns out it is just a power-hoarding game.
I’m cool with some gems being designed specifically for certain task or builds. So Bane of the Powerful really doesn’t need any buffing at all. It is fine as a gem used for speed farming.
Could buffing a defensive gem in this way and maybe tweaking some other things make it possible to not make other DR items mandatory? Like for instance if the defensive gem is good enough to make Elusive Ring something that can be left out and replaced by another damage dealing ring?
I know it is something that will require a lot of tweaking all round and maybe bringing in rules to combat DR stacking so more of a thought experiment of leading to fewer Barbarian builds requiring Band of Might by replacing it with something that can do damage and the two combinations being more suited to different skill options.
It adds +20% damage, and another +15% damage against elites. How is that fine for speed farming when there are so many options that give +60-100% damage?
That means that Icy Veins has it all wrong. You don’t use that gem at all except for as a starter gem. Then when you get your three gems you never use it again. Not even in lower tier GRs for farming or leveling gems for augs right. Bane of the Stricken or another gem from GR1 to the top GR that your build can handle right.
So I need to stack damage during speed farming. Great idea why not make some guides showing others you speedy clears at faster times with nothing but pushing builds all focused on damage alone.
You are just changing the slot from which you’re getting your bonuses.
You might think this is build customization, but it’s not.
In the end, all you care about in this game is to not to get one-shot and kill monsters faster. So, for instance:
Basically, you still end up min-maxing damage multipliers vs damage reduction.
Except you don’t see your error in logic there either. Sometimes, you don’t have that other toughness item, but you do have the gem. If you swap the gem you do have and legendary you don’t have (even if it’s a little better) to make the build work, that’s called. Wait for it.
Customization.
“Staying alive or dealing more damage” is NOT customization.
These are examples of customization:
I’m sorry, I really don’t think you have much to the offer to the conversation. Tweaking the build to use item A, or B, depending on which you have is exactly customization.
You’re now suggested: Nerfing gems to reduce player power.
Removing all + % damage gems.
You’ve opposed bring up low-performing gems to par.
And you’ve claimed mixing and matching items is not customization.
And I can’t find a single basis when your argument(s) makes any kind of sense (to me). I think we’re done, here 
I think that the one you are replying to needs to take a look at other games that have customization done right. Where you do get affixes that do more than just damage and toughness.
So damage and toughness numbers should be the sole bases for customization of a build. Are you sure that you are not one of the ones that originally designed D3.
The difference is how those damage and defense multipliers are applied. Most of them require a change in how you play to take advantage of them. CoE requires timing your highest amount of damage to be done while it’s active. Oculus requires being able to stay in one spot (and survive doing it) while dealing damage, and immediately move to the new spot when it moves every 8 seconds. Elusive Ring requires one of a few different skills to be used every 8 seconds. Esoteric Alteration enables you to stand wherever you want, but doesn’t protect you from physical damage so now instead of worrying more about DoTs on the ground, you’re actually exclusively paying attention to the enemies that are attacking you. Mutilation Guard makes it so that you can move with no fear of getting trapped and killed by melee attackers, but doesn’t protect you from anything else. You probably don’t want TWO defensive buffs in valuable slots at the same time, so which one you choose will drastically change your playstyle as you cater to avoid the things you’re still vulnerable to, unless you’ve dedicated enough to defense to worry about nothing which meant sacrificing other potential.
Or, alternatively, you could be moving a defense jewelry buff in cube over to a gem slot, now enabling you to choose another jewerly buff in the cube. You now have to cater your gameplay to the different type of defense buff, and different type of buff to damage output, because most of them aren’t just adding across-the-board damage, but rather situational buffs that are used best in different circumstances. When you don’t have as many viable options, then the only thing there is to do is min/max by choosing the strongest option. When you have a lot of choices that can work effectively, then it’s not just about min/maxing anymore, it’s about picking things that you’ll do well conforming your playstyle to utilize, or picking things that match your playstyle so well that you don’t have to conform; however you prefer.
Bane of the Powerful (20% to all +15% to elite) isn’t helping you speed clear any better than Bane of the Trapped (60% dmg to slowed enemies, easy to slow all enemies and it slows them itself), Taguk (+80% dmg for channelers), Simplicity’s Strength (+100% dmg for primary skill builds), or Stone of Vengeance +80% dmg (if ranged) for dealing damage. Bane of the Powerful doesn’t make you run faster, and it’s not increasing your damage by more than any of those others, there is nothing that it does to make speedclearing GRifts easier. You can argue that for speedruns there are more useful gems than damage gems, and I never asserted that you would only use damage gems no matter what you were doing – but you’d never need Bane of the Powerful in its current form instead of another gem, no matter what you were doing. If you did want mobility, it doesn’t give that, but Wreath of Lightning does.
What you said pretty accurately sums up the flaws with what he was saying before, but you’re a bit late. His last post, right before yours, was actually a pretty good post:
I’ll reply to each part individually.
It is. More defense could enable you to deal more damage with an Impale build because you can survive moving directly underneath an Elite Pack to stand under your oculus ring that just got placed in the middle of where everything’s dying, to throw 3 knives that deal 75,000% damage to the first enemy hit but don’t do much to anything they ricochet or pierce to – hitting the target directly is the only way to deal significant damage to it. I’ve used an impale build before, and I could clear rifts twice as fast with the increased survivability compared to a whole extra damage buff instead. Then on top of that, changing what items you get your damage, survivability, and maneuverability from does more than just change those stats, it changes how you play to utilize those bonuses because each bonus is being applied in a different way.
Especially when each of the different ways of gaining damage or survivability is causing you to adjust your playstyle to take advantage of what you’re now stronger against and avoid situations that you’re now vulnerable to that the new buff may not entirely help against. That’s why situation-specific buffs need to be bigger than across-the-board buffs, so that players really have choices to make about how they want to buff themselves and how they’re going to play to utilize those buffs most, instead of everyone just maxing all of the across-the-board buffs.
Good example. It’s already ingame. It’s a really good support gem, even helps your team kill the targets faster with +10% crit chance. Helps you slow everything to a crawl, much slower than just a 60% Slow effect, to the point where everything is nearly Frozen. Chilling everything gives Necro +300% DMG instead of just +100% vs Slowed enemies. One of my favorite gems in the game, and very underappreciated. I’d like to see it adjusted to do something more useful to most players, though; all of that extra chill isn’t necessary for most teams.
Another great idea. We don’t have this in the game in an effective way, but we do have the Poison Gem which does more by making enemies weaker than it does by its actual damage which rarely contributes.
A fire gem would be great to see in the game. Dealing damage based on a % of the damage dealt, rather than Weapon Damage, stacking because fire builds up. Maybe 15% of initial damage dealt per second for 5 seconds, stacking, and with the L25 Bonus causing Burning Enemies to have a 15% chance to be Blinded.
You mean abilities like Wrath of the Berzerker, Akkarat’s Champion, Archon, and Vengeance, among others? There are a lot already that make you immune to crowd-control and significantly increase your survivability. Combine that with a mobility skill and you’re an unstoppable force.
Another great example of customization. Thankfully that kind of thing is in the game, too.
There are many abilities and items that cause targets in an area to take increased damage, or allies in an area to gain increased damage, in a wide variety of different ways. When you trade out items and gems, sometimes that enables you to change your abilities or put on a damage item that drastically affects how you are contributing damage to the team.
Show me where I said replacing Trapped with Powerful.
Bane of the Stricken occupies the third and final jewelry socket during GR progression. Building up your damage multiplicatively in prolonged fights and with a level 25 bonus specifically targeting Rift Guardians, this gem is designed to assist AoE heavy builds in their struggle against single target, high HP enemies — a category Seismic Slam falls firmly into. Note that if you are doing lower tier Greater Rifts for farming or gem leveling purposes, you should exchange this gem (Stricken added for clarity) for the universal, well-rounded bonuses of Bane of the Powerful.
This is what I am going by. I have seen this in every solo push build that doesn’t have a dedicated speed spec using other gems. Plus I would say that the lightning gem wouldn’t be much help in low tiered GRs unless you are the WW spec or some other spec that can make use of it.
Now with a straight face tell me that Bane of the Stricken isn’t used in the majority of all builds as the third gem for pushing specs.
The only way this can happen is if they homogenize the gems and everything else under the sun. That is the only way to make all things equal and have many different choices. Where each choice is just a different flavor.
I was talking about Bane of the Powerful’s stats and how that compares to other options that give 60-100% DMG, including Trapped. You responded sarcastically, essentially implying the opposite of what you said. Your goal was to assert that the Bane of the Powerful was useful for speedrunning. If you use it, it takes up a spot, and you can only use three Legendary Gems, thus if you use Bane of the Power, you are replacing another gem. When there are 3 or more options that add more DMG than Bane of the Powerful, that means you’re replacing one of those gems when you opt to use Bane of the Powerful instead. I didn’t say you suggested specifically replacing Bane of the Trapped, I listed several gems that are better than Bane of the Powerful and asserted that those were the types of gems you would be replacing if you used it instead. Don’t use sarcasm as a way to communicate things that you’ll deny later in an attempt to make the person responding appear to have misunderstood you when your drift was caught.
For GoD, one can use Taeguk for +80%, Simplicity for +100%, and then Bane of the Trapped for 60% or Zeis for +80%. Any of these options will perform significantly better than Bane of the Powerful.
There are a wide variety of builds that can either channel, or use a primary, to stay within those top 4 damage gems. You still either attack at a distance to utilize Zei, or attack at a close range to benefit from the large IAS from Pain Enhancer, your second gem as Bane of the Trapped is still useful to everyone. In the event that you do not use primary skills and do not channel, and do not use LoD, yet despite not channeling still don’t benefit from Gogok of Swiftness, then you still have Wreath of Lightning, which gives a high enough chance on hit to keep Wreath of Lightning up and increases your movement speed by 25% while it’s active. If, despite the whole justification for this being that you were speedrunning, you’ve decided that you don’t actually want increased movement speed but would rather prefer a minor damage bonus instead, then now Bane of the Powerful is the next best thing for your third slot after eliminating all of the possible better choices.
Yes, Bane of the Stricken is used for pushing. However, that doesn’t mean that when you speedrun, Bane of the Stricken is the only third option to be replaced by Bane of the Powerful. If you’re speedrunning, there are still several other gems that will help you speedrun better, including ones that will add more damage. In the event that you’re using a build where there is no third damage gem whatsoever that applies to you, then there’s still Wreath of Lightning, which increases your movement speed (and no, you don’t have to be a WW barb or closerange to maintain the speedbuff). If you use Bane of the Powerful, you’re replacing one of those many gems that could be helping more. I’ve listed several gems that are better. You only get three gem slots, and there are 7 gems that could be useful for speedfarming, though depending on your build only 3-4 of the ones that are better than Bane of the Powerful may be available to you, though that’s still enough to fill your slots without needing Bane of the Powerful. Just the fact that you have to go through such a process of elimination before it even becomes useful by being the only thing available, is proof that the gem isn’t serving its purpose well as a Bane of the Powerful. In fact, it’s used for the opposite of what it claims to be.
You don’t have to make everything the same to make it balanced. You just have to have an eye for balance and have the mental capacity to effectively compare cashews and watermelons without getting confused. Some people can do it, and some can’t. If you can’t compare two unlike things, then you shouldn’t be trying to balance them. Things can be completely different and still be balanced in comparison to each other, with careful effort.
I’d like to suggest a second alternative, one that would make it focus more on its effectiveness against Elites:
Bane of the Powerful - **Increase damage versus Elites by 10% (+0.5% Per Level) and take 15% less damage from Elites.
**Level 25 Bonus: +25% damage for 20s after killing an Elite Pack.
Caps at 85% Damage to Elites after L150, +60% at L100. The 20s bonus damage duration will be best used for speedrunning the way it was originally intended, while the elite damage helps for taking out elites in all situations. When pushing, the temporary bonus damage simply won’t last long enough to be a significant help. For whatever reason people’ve gotten it into their heads that Bonus Damage vs Elites is better than Bonus Damage, just because they are hunting Elites. Bonus Damage works against Elites, too, folks, remember? So Elite Damage is less valuable, not more, and needs to be more powerful since it’s forcing you to specialize. This will make the gem one of the best things you can use for killing Elites. Some of you protest that, but if it’s not even among the best at the only situation it works in, then what good is it?
In GRs where enemies are dying fast Stricken won’t help you at all. It will slow you down. That is why it is a good candidate to replace it with Powerful. You still have a damage buff that will help you out.
I have not seen a single guide that said to replace some other gem for speed GRs other than Stricken.
Oh btw I took at look at your profile and your seasonal character has powerful on it in a setup that is no doubt used for death’s breath farming. Mind telling me why you are using such a low class gem for death’s breath farming. You should have some other gem there like Wreath of Lightning or some other gem.
I get what your saying here. There are more ideal options that could be customized. However, Diablo 3 being what it is, they aren’t on the table. DIablo 4 is attempting to go more that route; and I hope it works out for them.