The way I read that, it would have to be implemented very carefully, or else the skills cast by Etched Sigil might not benefit from the channeling buff, which would be a problem.
Admittedly, I don’t know squat about how this game is actually coded, but if it is possible to prevent the Starpact/Meteor skill (or all skills, for that matter) from benefiting from damage portion of Archon stacks outside of Archon, this would solve the problem. It would also encourage people to actually use Archon as it was meant to be used. Some very old, and very clunky builds would be affected, but I doubt anyone is playing those now anyway.
Something along the lines of “Archon stacks increase the damage of your Archon Abilities and Wave of Destruction” would suffice.
Thanks for raising another build that will likely be impacted: Monk - Tempest Rush.
I debated waiting until PTR was live, and then testing and trying to work out the exact impact. But decided to go with earlier feedback in the hope that earlier feedback might equal more opportunity to change / adjust before live.
Plus if (not confirmed) this is targeted at Star Pact “Bazooka” Wizard, it seems really strange to me that the top build (LoD Rapid Fire) for my “under-performing” class (Demon Hunter) needs to also take any nerf. Why make us weaker?
This change was indeed decided for the Bazooka wizard build; the issue however is that as someone else had said, that blizzard decided to use a hammer or shotgun to eliminate the issue instead of a scalpel, and as consequence this will affect almost every build that relies on channeling. I hope that blizzard decides to take a different approach regarding Bazooka.
The issue is the changes they listed to Deathwish & Etched Sigil has a negative impact on other builds as well. It kinda sucks for folks that use those items when it’s the bazooka build that should be nerfed, not the items involved. Other players use them that are not running that build.
I don’t know about other channel builds, but this change really impacts my LoD channel build in a very negative fashion.
Actually, any WW Barb or TR Monk builds shouldn’t be too adversely affected. Theoretically those should be channeling almost all the time, so the 1 second delay will usually have passed by the time they engage enemies.
On a rare occasion one might have to stop or get jailed w/o WotB or Epiphany up, but those time should be relatively rare.
Spirit Barrage WD’s should be okay, since they do damage after releasing prolonged channeling.
However, at least 7 other builds will suffer.
If Archon stacks disappear immediately when Archon expires then Bazooka should be nerfed into the ground.
Kill the Swami. Add the Archon duration to Vyr’s set. Leave the rest alone.
Yes. Meteor shower Wizards have to move around a lot to stay alive. Firebird’s has to kite elites along to kill trash. If the average duration of channeling before having to move is 5 to 10 seconds then a 1 second delay is a 10-20% nerf.
Monks channel to build stacks and drop a bomb. To drop it they have to stop channeling. This is usually done in the center of a giant mob with multiple elites. In High greater rifts the bomb at max stacks and coe on cold doesn’t kill all the whites let alone the blues and yellows. Now you lose that 25% dmg reduction for 1 sec at the time you need it most.
The damage reduction from Mantle of Channeling is pretty critical on many of the solo builds, as if you reset channel (like I do when I hit Vengeance on DH), it is a small fraction of a second normally (a button press), and now it’ll be a full second every time (if they keep the current 1 second delay plan).
Killing Death Wish + Etched Sigil is enough to dethrone Bazooka even w/o MoC nerf. A 1.25x multiplier is not gaming breaking anymore for non bazooka reverse Archon SP, especially after PTR notes with projected new meta trash clearing emerging.
Unless devs have other long term plans for channeling based builds, killing x other builds along with 1 problematic build is not convincing for the player base.
I think the smallest fix for Bazooka will be to nerf the Star Pact rune:
The rune will take the following:
Initial damage of Meteor 740 % weapon dmg + (20 % weapon damage x amount of Arcane)
This is huge!
It will be enought to delete the initial Meteor damage and increase slightly the rune power to:
30 % weapon damage x Arcane.
AND the Meteor delay is removed (change from the Thunder Crash rune).
And the Thunder Crash rune get an other effect…like:
Reduce the impact area of the meteor by 50 % but increase the damage to 1.184 % weapon dmg as lightning.
Exactly, there’s no reason to make it this complicated. Just make Meteor snapshot your Damage at cast. It won’t affect any other builds than the Bazooka as the others want the casts to occur while buffs are up, and doesn’t apply the buffs arter the cast.
This is seriously the reason why snapshotting was created
I would say that there are to many builds in the game that need Mantle of Channeling to be left alone. Why mess up several builds to presumably fix one build?
Any chance of this getting a move into the PTR feedback forum now?
Would really appreciate re-consideration of this Mantle of Channeling nerf, as it effects so many other classes and builds, including my Rapid Fire Demon Hunter.
Blizzard need to actually listen to people on stuff like this… and also maybe throw out ideas before implementing them to get feedback on whether said changes would be well received or not. they do need to get rid of the 1 sec delay on mantle of channeling tho its stupid.
