I have (maybe) a bigger question. WHY is Blizzard continuing to tweak this game? Isn’r D3 considered ‘legacy’? We aren’t paying for developers or servers, And there are no microtransactions (thank heaven). To date, seasons have involved what seem to be relatively small code changes (double bounties) but this one is large and we already know it has serious problems. Adding a 4th cube slot for seasonal characters but non-seasonal still get three? That sounds ugly.
Why the heck are they re-balancing now? For free? I an confused. And no, I wouldn’t pay more for it. So why? What’s in it for them?
What did people do/say to get Blizzard to consider making changes to the shadow clones? Why can’t the same be done for Sigil. This is where you’re suppose to provide feedback. If as many Wiz players are upset by this change that this post seems to state, then some how we have to get this post or some other post to relay that to Blizzard or whomever signs off on these changes.
Or is this forum, as was previously stated, just a comment card left on the table at restaurants.
Question: will my Sigils in Non Season play be grandfathered and not affected by this or will this change eventually sliver it’s way to non season too?
Your etched sigils that exist in non-season will remain unchanged, that is unless blizzard goes ballistic and either forcibly change their effect or disable it and make it a useless legendary item.
My point being was that the change was made probably because Blizzard noticed that Wizards are mostly playing the same old tired builds season after season, over and over again, ad nauseam by virtue that Etched Sigil was a global item used by most (if not all) Wizards.
By making the change on Etched Sigil to a Energy Twister only, players will now have no choice but to think out of-the-box and try something else.
I know your point, but as I said if blizzard wanted players to try other builds then they’re going the wrong way about it. In fact, if these changes go live like this, then players would more than likely play other classes instead of wizard.
On second thought I don’t even think the Diablo 3 developers want players to think outside the box, otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to force these changes and instead would’ve made fragments of destiny and winter flurry damage boosts global instead of hydra specific, nor would they had changed etched sigil in the way it is.
Instead changing death wish and etched sigil to be channeling only, while also buffing many of our other arcane spenders, would’ve offered so much more build variety for wizards to explore instead of what was actually done.
Agreed. Please keep ES and DW as it is. This is the only good item we have for channelling build. Every class should have some form of channelling build. DH has Strafe and Rapid Fire. Bab has WW. Monk has Tempest Rush. WD has Firebat. Necro has Siphon Blood with Blood Nova. Cru is the only class that has no channel skill at all.
Please keep Wiz channel skill alive. You already have 3 other items for Twister. Twisted sword, 2 hand staff and bracer. Maybe combine with many other off hand from Wiz and design it for Firebird, DMO and Tal set. There are a lot of other craps that need to improve or make them useful to open up variety of build. Possible combinations are endless for Wiz but keep DW and ES for the channel build. Don’t kill it.
What I love about ES and DW is a lot of possible skills combination. People might say everyone using the same items for meteor build but I have like 7 different settings for Firebird, Tal and DMO set. DMO has twister build as well as Arcane ball build. FB and Tal both use channel (Disintegrate and Arcane Torment) which combine with Meteor, Blizzard, Arcane ball.
First grouping mob with Twister or Blackhole, then use Blizzard to freeze mob while Meteor shower for channel set up OR Arcane Ball (non channel) to hit them. I find it so fun to put many different skills to make me feel powerful but still it is no where near enough for Hydra or Vyr with Chantodo set.
So please keep it as it is for Etched Sigil. Also any love for Firebird set? Seem very weak compare to Typhoon set or new DMO or Tal.
As I said earlier, I quit playing WoW because I didn’t care for being forced to play the way someone else felt was best. I bought D3 off the shelf and, while I do feel bug fixes are appropriate, I didn’t buy it so that the developers could decide that the way I was playing (and enjoying) It should be forced to change.
To be honest, humans need to be forced to do some things whether they like it or not. Only species on earth that produce non-reusable waste. When it comes to games, there really isn’t a need to and in this case, there wasn’t a reason to. They could have upped the damage on all the other twister items to achieve twister being a viable build once again. And I would welcome this.
I don’t want to be forced to do something different. I still want my freedom of choice.
I like strawberry ice cream but occasionally I will try chocolate or rocky road.
I liked my meteor builds but if I want to change it up, it should still be my preference. Blizzard shouldn’t decide for me and frankly, why should they care if we’re playing the same ole tired set over and over. It’s called freedom of choice.
I see no justification to kill meteor builds. You want me to try another build? How about to try this? Give it an awesome buff, then I’ll try it.
To be honest, this has been the Blizzard way in most of their games for years. When they design some new build/dungeon/playstyle/etc that they want people to try, they ensure people will try it not by making it fun and useful to play, but by gutting everything else so people are pretty much forced to use the new way.
They want to be able to say “Look, everyone is using the new thing, it was totally worth paying us for the time to put it in!”. What they aren’t saying is that most of that time was dedicated to breaking all the previously fun methods, not in implementing their new one.
WoW has been like this for years, i’ve pretty much given up on Blizzard as a gamer-friendly company. You play their current in-house flavor of the month way of playing or you suffer for it. They want you playing THEIR way, not the way you find fun…even if it had been that way for years, YOU are the one who is wrong in their eyes for wanting to keep playing what you liked. It’s just a catastrophic disconnect from their playerbase. Our purpose in their eyes is to validate the time they spent on their work, not to actually have fun playing their games.
Except perhaps, as I’ve said previously, Blizzard may have noticed that Wizard players are ONLY using Etched Sigil. And so now, because of the change, may need to to think of something else instead.
Some have already switched to using Winter Flurry instead.
Me?
I continued using Etched Sigil with Typhon’s Veil, but replaced Blizzard with Slow Time. This provided me with the mechanism to progress further/faster with less effective items compared to my non-PTR Wizards.
That’s why I support the change to Etched Sigil and do not want it to return to what it was.
That’s great but, Etched Sigil was literally the only cool wizard item that existed. Shouldn’t they create items to compete with it instead of destroying it? That change completely destroyed every channeling meteor, explosive blast build. Not only did they lose a 2.5x damage buff they also lost an auto cast which worked in sync with deathwish. To me this change is nothing short of a disaster and only amplifies the developer(s) lack of knowledge about their own game.
Once again why not just add another build that competes? Instead of hey look at 75% of that small wizard population still playing meteor builds in gr 80. Let’s just break that item so it’ll be impossible for them to even play it.
Has it never occurred to you that changing the legendary property of Etched Sigil has opened up the door to builds that do not use Meteor and can still be as effective?
But that’s the real problem, isn’t it? Most everyone wants to play the fan created prescribed builds (In this instance, Etched-Sigil Meteor). And in doing so, miss out on the opportunity to experiment with and have fun with other builds.
Fan created? That’s a good one. I was almost going to start taking you seriously until you said that and this: “miss out on the opportunity to experiment with and have fun with other builds.” What if I like playing meteor? Too bad? I guess I could always manual cast meteors and have fun doing gr 50’s.
Just as I had fun playing Typhons Veil + Etchced Sigil + Blizzard.
I got myself into a rut, and got stuck at GR105.
With what I’ve learned from PTR, the new version of Etched Sigil allowed me to progress further.
By replacing Blizzard with Energy Twister, I could use the old Primal Etched Sigil to emulate the new version. As a result, I moved up to 108 this very morning, and could easily go higher if I wanted.
During PTR, I built my Wizard up with the same skills and items that I use on Hermione (my off-season, non-PTR Wizard), with the exception that I used Slow Time instead of Blizzard, and obviously the new version of Etched Sigil.
Where Hermione needed Paragon 1500+ to get to GR105, with all items augmented to 100, my PTR Wizard (Cassandra) required only Paragon 850 or so to get to GR95. And then with only 2 items that where augmented.
The point being, which I think everyone has missed, is that the changes to Etched Sigil have actually been well thought out, and do indeed work to the advantage of players.
It really doesn’t nor has it been thought out especially since the change resulted in a nerf to 5 out of 8 of our arcane spenders (none of them being overly powerful mind you). It would be 7 out of 8, but thankfully Hydra and Arcane Orb had the loss power redistributed to them, the other 5 arcane spenders weren’t as fortunate.
Now if Blizzard had properly redistributed the loss power to all affected arcane spenders, then I may see and agree with your point.
Prometheus:
The point being, which I think everyone has missed, is that the changes to Etched Sigil have actually been well thought out, and do indeed work to the advantage of players.<
Well your point is probably half correct. They probably did think the change through but it’s not an advantage of players. If most wizards see the Sigil change as bad because of killing off meteor builds. That’s a disadvantage.
But one man’s castle is another man’s junkyard and vice versa.
You can eat rocky road and I can eat strawberry. That’s what Blizzard should’ve did.
But what they did was force everyone to eat rocky road. What about the people whose allergic to peanuts?!?
Blizzard hasn’t forced anyone to do anything, other than to look at Wizard builds that they ordinarily would not have thought of or even considered.
Some may not see it, but changing Etched Sigil to auto-cast only Twisters has actually provided the player with more choices than before. I, as stated before, I have replaced a selected favorite arcane spender with Slow Time, to great effect.
I fait to see how an improvement in individual progression can be viewed as a negative, as many are because of this change…
