This might be the first season that I don’t play crusader. None of the builds really appeal to me. I was a lazy shotfun player, but with the ivory tower nerf it’s kind of meh. Short of them boosting blessed shield out of nowhere I’ll probably stick with HC masquerade necro and regular leap quake barb.
While I do agree that they did mess up how to nerf it, I still dont agree with that way of doing it.
You can effectivly gain 100% up time on prophet and the 16s bombarment. While you do lose the damage aspect from crimson you also gain slots in the cube to counteract the loss of or toughness, be it from cubing aquila or leorics crown.
If you want to switch bonuses, rather switching the 2-piece and the 6-piece would have made a better impact.
But there was several instances where the buffs/nerfs fell apart.
Norvald’s buff does buff some builds, but it was unnecessary, those buffs could have gone to buffing both akkhan set and/or khasset’s (the foth belt). Norvald’s was good for the thing it was supposed to do, give you a massive speed boost. Instead it’s become the go-to weapon for 3 builds. Pure invoker needed aoe clearing power, which it got with the first round of buffs, instead they doubled down on single target and made it slightly more annoying to play. Foth needed damage and toughness, both damage and toughness could be fixed by increasing the damage on the belt and switching the cost reduction to all cost reduction. And I doubt a6i2 was intended.
As much power as it gave us, norvald’s did wreck a lot of things, if they had played their cards right, norvald’s would find its place because there would still be need for speed builds.
So this leaves us with:
- A still powerful a6i2 build.
- A clunky invoker build with no aoe clear.
- A fast but very squishy Foth build.
- Other akkhan builds lagging behind because you cant effectivly buff the set anymore.
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@Rashiel.
You cant use A6I4 for a very simple reason. Even if you cube Leorics crown, you are exactly at 16s bombardment (and no, aquilas will not let you have enough cd for back to back bombs).
exactly 16s bombardment means you will have to correct your cooldown of bombardment after 2-3 cycles (intentionally skipping 1 rotation to sync with Coe). This translates to 25%-33% damage loss. For this build to be optimal, you want 1s excess cooldown on bombs to sustain dps throughout the rift and the RG fight.
Go test it out and come back. Use exactly 16s bombs and see how you perform in the Rift and RG fight.
So you’re saying 33% damage loss on the original I2 bonus swapped with I4 would break the build? 
Assuming you get 5 stacks of thorns buff on single target RG, with the original value you get 3.5 * 5 + 1 = 18.5x thorns multiplier (21.5x with Reflective Skin). Lossing 33% damage makes it equal to around 12.3x (14.3x). The current I2 buff gives you 0.9 * 5 + 1 = 5.5x thorns multiplier (8.5x with Reflective Skin), and CC3 damage buff makes it about 8.5 * 1.656 = 14.1x.
Not to mention you can get 60.5% CDR with Vigilante Belt in A6I4 (no Leo’s Crown required) for 15.42s cooldown Bombardment, which makes your argument baseless in the first place.
*Above calculations were done based on max CDR in all slots.
@Hunter : you only have 3 cubes in non season, no way you can Equip Vigilante Belt and cube Belt of Trove.
They nerf it due to non season (which builds are permanent, season only last 3 months).
The optimal way to play this build is to attack every physical cycle.
Those 6k-10k Players in non seasonal ptr managed to clear GR150 (pre-nerf). They cleared it because it was back to back bombardment. If you tell them to only bomb 2 times out of 3 possible cycles, they wont clear the 150 at all. Reason is they didnt clear the 150 at 6mins. They cleared it at 12-15 mins. If you tell them to lose 33% damage, the top player who cleared at 12mins will turn out to clear at 15min - 16mins. (because he lost 33% damage)
Sometimes you really need to push with the build to understand. Will the top non seasonal ptr player with almost 10k paras eventually clear the 150? Answer is yes. But he needs to fish harder (which is what God DH did, fish for the best rift and best affix.)
That’s true if you want to push in non-season, which I don’t really do anymore.
@hunter
Many classes can solo 150 in seasons. This was demonstrated in past seasons. Be it due to broken mechanics or pure themes. If A6I2 rekt the S22 Seasonal LB, Blizzard doesnt care. Because its 3 months.
Like i mentioned earlier, you and others, base your calculations on paper. But sometimes what works on paper doesnt equate to actual game play.
For me, they nerfed A6I2 and in the process of nerfing it, they destroyed I6 . I am sad. Because although they nerfed it, i still cleared 149 in live server and missed 150 by 29s. They didnt stop the push. They only destroyed the other Sader builds that some might like to play (Invoker 6).
Can i clear 150 anytime soon? Answer is yes. Because in only played 4hrs a day since patch and almost everyday i was streaming my solo games, i cleared 1 GR higher (146 147 148 149). This is way easier than GoD6. Where you throw thousands of keys for 1 missile dampening in festering.
I thought about A6I4 (with original I2 bonus) in non-season some more.
With Leoric’s Crown in cube for the CDR needed (63% total CDR), toughness may seem an issue due to losing CC3. However losing CC3 also means Laws of Valor Unstoppable can be replaced by Laws of Justice - Immovable Object or Decaying Strength to compensate for the toughness loss.
It will still be huge toughness loss compared to Laws of Valor activated with CC3 but I think it should still be in the doable level at p10k since the damage output would be higher than current A6I2.
Edit: This also means Vigilante Belt can be viable with Belt of the Trove in cube.
Dont forget that while you lose the cc3 defencive bonus, you also gain the I4 bonus, which is a stable 50%.
Even if there is a small damage loss, it still doesn’t help the other issues that I mentioned, such as akkhan not getting buffed.
I agree, they didn’t handle Invoker6 as they needed to. We have a pure set build that is outdone by a hybrid in the RGK role as well.
They should stick an additional 400% multiplicative thorns bonus onto I6 and call it day.
Players with 10k paragon are already on the way to GR150 with A6I2 Bombs. They nailed current A6I2 build balance with GoD6.
A6I4 would have been overpowered. Casual players would have played it with Aquilas and Laws of Justice and Long Arm of the Law for mega tankiness and easy stacks. Even if you manually casted every 32 seconds, that thorns multiplier was 88.5X.
88.5/2/1.6= 27.6x
You could even be a real slouch, dump Norvald’s, keep CC3 and still come out ahead.
88.5/5 = 17.7x
Remember, we are comparing these to 13x.
I didn’t forget about it, otherwise I wouldn’t say toughness should still be ok. However it’s still less than the usual 64% DR from CC3 (82% when Laws of Valor is activated).