Hello!
This is a follow up to our pre-PTR set power projections for Season 29. Upon checking the PTR 2.7.6 leaderboards, Rage and I solidified our predictions for S29. As anticipated, the PTR showed strong pushes on powerhouses like Tal’Rasha, Raekor, and Trag’Ouls, but many others weren’t pushed to their limit.
To see a full picture of how all sets may stack up in S29, please refer to this chart and the column titled Final Score. There is a legend below to help explain each column definition.
I will update this chart should new changes emerge in the final patch notes.
| Set |
Base Power |
Paragon Loss Penalty |
Fragility Penalty |
AD Bonus |
Paragon Swap Bonus |
Max Resource Bonus |
Final Score |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Wiz Tal Rasha |
153.9 |
-5.0 |
-1 |
4 |
0.5 |
1 |
153.4 |
| Necro Trag’oul |
152.6 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
152.1 |
| Barb Raekor |
152.0 |
-5.0 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
3 |
152.0 |
| Wiz No Set |
152.0 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
151.0 |
| Necro No Set |
150.8 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
150.3 |
| DH Marauder |
151.0 |
-5.0 |
-1 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
149.5 |
| Monk No Set |
151.0 |
-5.0 |
-1 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
149.5 |
| Necro Rathma |
151.2 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
3 |
1 |
0 |
148.2 |
| Barb Wastes |
148.6 |
-5.0 |
0 |
3 |
1 |
0 |
147.6 |
| Barb No Set |
149.0 |
-5.0 |
0 |
2 |
0.5 |
1 |
147.5 |
| Wiz Typhon |
148.0 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
147.5 |
| Wiz Firebird (Meteor) |
148.0 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
147.5 |
| Necro Inarius |
147.1 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
146.6 |
| Crusader No Set |
147.2 |
-5.0 |
-1 |
4 |
1 |
0 |
146.2 |
| DH Natalya |
149.2 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
3 |
0.5 |
0 |
145.7 |
| Wiz Delsere |
148.2 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
145.7 |
| Crusader Akkhan |
151.4 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
145.4 |
| Necro Masquerade |
146.9 |
-5.0 |
0 |
3 |
0.5 |
0 |
145.4 |
| Barb MOTE |
145.8 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
144.8 |
| Barb IK |
148.6 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
2 |
0 |
1 |
144.6 |
| Crusader AoV |
146.6 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
4 |
1 |
0 |
144.6 |
| Wiz Vyr |
145.2 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
144.2 |
| Monk PoJ |
144.4 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
143.9 |
| Monk Monkey King |
144.4 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
143.9 |
| Monk Uliana |
146.2 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
143.7 |
| DH Unhallowed |
145.1 |
-5.0 |
-1 |
4 |
0.5 |
0 |
143.6 |
| Barb H90 |
146.7 |
-5.0 |
0 |
1 |
0.5 |
0 |
143.2 |
| WD Arachyr (Spiders) |
148.1 |
-5.0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
143.1 |
| WD Zunimassa |
145.3 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
142.3 |
| WD No Set |
144.1 |
-5.0 |
-1 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
142.1 |
| DH GoD |
144.5 |
-5.0 |
0 |
2 |
0.5 |
0 |
142.0 |
| WD Helltooth |
142.9 |
-5.0 |
0 |
4 |
0 |
0 |
141.9 |
| WD Jade Harvester |
142.1 |
-5.0 |
-1 |
3 |
2 |
0 |
141.1 |
| WD Mundunugu |
145.7 |
-5.0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
140.7 |
| DH No Set |
141.6 |
-5.0 |
-1 |
4 |
1 |
0 |
140.6 |
| Monk Raiment |
141.6 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
3 |
0.5 |
2 |
140.1 |
| Monk Inna |
145.3 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
1 |
0.5 |
0 |
139.8 |
| DH Shadow |
144.2 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
2 |
0.5 |
0 |
139.7 |
| Crusader Roland |
141.2 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
4 |
1 |
0 |
139.2 |
| Crusader Invoker |
144.7 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
138.7 |
| Necro Pestilence |
141.6 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
137.6 |
| Crusader Seeker |
141.5 |
-5.0 |
-2 |
2 |
0.5 |
0 |
137.0 |
Legend
-
Base Power is the top Adjusted Clear @ 5k paragon.
-
Paragon Less Penalty is the loss in tiers resulting from the 800 paragon cap.
-
Fragility Penalty is the loss in damage output certain sets exhibit by playing less aggressively to survive due to Armor/Resists loss from the 800 paragon cap.
-
AD Bonus the increase in tiers by allocating more paragon points into Area Damage. Certain sets do not benefit from area damage, and therefore will not gain GR tiers.
-
Paragon Swap Bonus the tiers gained by optimizing 200 point spend within each paragon category. This mainly zooms in on point distribution within the Offensive category.
-
Max Resource Bonus a separate metric to show the tiers gained from this particular paragon allocation.
There many unmentioned particulars such as legendary gem optimization, gear swaps, changes in the hybrid set, changes in uptime to certain skills, diminishing returns of certain stats, etc. While they may not be directly represented with their own column, we tried to account for them.
14 Likes
So people cried over about 0.3 minimum to average 2 tier nerf then demanded the cap to be removed or capped to some absurdly high number without considering the expanded attribute limits?
As I have always said, if they deem the boost worthy the developers won’t back down from increasing the paragon cap. I reckon they won’t touch anything but they could just tweak the builds itself or Follower abilities to work around such penalties after season or leave it for Altar to balance it out.
Certainly preliminary, but I’m suprised how little the paragon cap has affected things in general. I thought 4200 less paragon would have been a bigger difference.
3 Likes
People often overestimate the contribution of paragon to GR clears.
Could come from someone going from 800-1000 paragon up to 3000 paragon and saying “wow I gained so much power, like 10+ tiers!”. Except that gain wasn’t just from paragon, they also massively improved their gear over that time.
The extra AD in season 29 is also pretty massive for a lot of builds, you can get crazy AD scaling. I think people are probably underestimating the value of that, it closes at least some of the gap in damage lost from paragon.
7 Likes
200% area damage is a big counterbalance, especially with large radius attacks and/or if the build doesn’t typically prioritize AD on gear, but still benefits from it.
2 Likes
Not a big Crusader player, but as far as I know Seeker of the Light can not utilize AD% with BH. How did it score 2 on the AD% difference? Does it use another skill that I’m not aware of or did maxroll got it wrong?
https://maxroll.gg/d3/guides/sotl-blessed-hammer-crusader-guide
It clearly says “Area Damage doesn’t work” on the cons of the build.
This happens surprisingly often. It seems that the “relativistic change” is rather foreign concept to many. People look only at the absolute numbers rather than thinking what the actual change is relativistically.
Some brainiacs were even certain that the highest clears would be around GR120 in S29. That should tell how bad misconceptions some people have about the paragon.
5 Likes
Paragon don’t do much. Why cap it so low?
2 Likes
Or, why complain about it?
2 Likes
Looks like barb & necro for me
I’m going to be interested to see who clears 140 with Mundu. Mundu doesn’t benefit from AD. I pushed pretty hard with over 1000 keys with Mundu in PTR and only got to GR130.
Of course, I only had augments at 125 and my gems were around 120. If I maxed those, I could probably squeeze out a few more GRs.
2 Likes
Hi Nak, Blessed Hammer does have AD. Maxroll says it doesn’t get buffed by Hammer Jammers – and they advise not to incorporate it into gear. My own recent tests confirm AD is present. I recorded a video and watched:
100B hit turned into 10B AD splash damage. My AD was 50%.
This means is the 100B hit would produce 40B area damage to neighbors in S29.
On average…
15 Enemies
@50% AD with 14 neighboring mobs, it goes from 100B + (14 * 10B * 20%) = 128B
@200% AD with 14 neighboring mobs, it goes from 100B + (14 * 40B * 20%) = 212B
65.625% damage increase in optimal battlefield conditions.
10 Enemies
@50% AD with 9 neighboring mobs, it goes from 100B + (9 * 10B * 20%) = 118B
@200% AD with 9 neighboring mobs, it goes from 100B + (9 * 40B * 20%) = 172B
45.763% damage increase.
5 Enemies
@50% AD with 4 neighboring mobs, it goes from 100B + (4 * 10B * 20%) = 108B
@200% AD with 4 neighboring mobs, it goes from 100B + (4 * 40B * 20%) = 132B
22.222% damage increase.
When you factor the Stun requirement for Hammer Jammers, radius of Falling Sword not encompassing all enemies, the small hit radius of Blessed Hammer and a periodically dwindling pile of mobs, I think +2GRs is a fair assessment of a skilled player keeping combat in optimal GRs
1 Like
Quite a handful of top clears were blatantly using hud in ptr… they actually paid for it lol
Similar to D4, i hope they issue account closures daily for people who uses overlays.
The top clears who were cheating in S29 ptr is almost the potential clears that will happen in live servers (paragon capped, no more excessive powers to gain from main stat)
Those guys were having perfect gear (aside from 150 augs) in those runs.
If i were cheating, prolly my AoV could have achieved 140-141 with endless walk setup
But you have almost infinite materials in the PTR, it’s not unreasonable to have perfect gear there.
perfect gear gives you less than 17% advantage in damage over the person who doesnt have perfect gear.
But map hack can give you even 5 tiers of GR advantage over another person
2 Likes
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with AoV. The GR144.6 estimate in the chart is based on Heaven’s Fury. I have high confidence that FotH can match the estimate – especially with a theorycraft concocted after the PTR.
1 Like
theorically it can achieve.
but toughness wise is another a big headache at 800 paras. 1 touch by a mob = proc lol
AoV’s damage is really greatly under estimated by many people who didnt play enough AoV during ptr
Even outside of the PTR, it was underestimated. On live, it can trash clear mid GR140s @5kp – that is if the group can survive the lag. I even have done GR137 solo clear in a previous era. As long as Fissure lag isn’t a thing, I can stand behind this skill. Heck, I played a Lightning Storm Druid in D4 because it reminded me of FotH when there was no Paladin/Crusader class to turn to.
Isn’t this a 15-20 point power drop over last season for a lot of these builds? Theoretically being able to clear 150 far different from theoretically being able to clear 160+.