Well… StarPact is/was essentially Bazooka and that was one broken crap mechanic for sure. Caused by yours truly Deathwish.
And Vyr’s is not a real wizard… it’s Archon, with own separate skills. I never liked Archon, and never will. Not to mention that Archon itself is completely underpowered, no matter how you look at it. It’s the Wave of Destruction from Chantodo that dishes out damage, which is even more moronic and boring when you compare it to unruly Mirror Images. But let’s leave it at that…
Yup. Final notes on the shards will tell a lot about the potential results. They need to ditch that pet shard or the bottom on the monk and DH leaderboards will be like 145.
Indeed. Archon isn’t like the other classes transformation skills where it enhances the wizard’s skills. It comes with it’s own set of skills that you have to use (not that I’m complaining, because I love archon, probably to the annoyance of fellow wizards). It’s only via Swami, or reverse archon, that you can use Archon to buff the wizard skills, which goes into the problem where reverse archon being stronger than archon itself (which I won’t elaborate on in this thread).
I’d like to add that Barbs–and I say this as a (former) Barb main–are in a very good place: Only one of our sets is fundamentally broken (Raekor), and excellent parity between our other sets/builds can be fixed with one thing: more damage. Increasing the multipliers on build- and skill-specific items would bring all out builds, even outliers like Pro Slam, into greater parity. Even Raekor could be Band-Aided with larger multipliers on Skular’s and 300th Spear.
Of course, I wouldn’t say no to more DR for certain builds–Pro Slam, H90, and IK HOTA–but more damage does a lot to offset this.
I’d never say no to more Barb love from the developers, but ever since we got that Barb-heavy patch with the Rend and Wastes rework a while back, I’ve been confident that other classes–namely WDs, DHs, and Monks–really need more time and attention, and this upcoming Season is no different.
A sensible thing to do. The individual in question had some good opinions when a political argument broke out a few months ago despite constantly reminding everyone that such an argument was off-topic, blah, blah, blah. But nothing good lasts, right? Back to the nonsense.
That is fine. The presented analysis was about solo power. For paragon grinding, leveling gem, and experiencing multiplayer, each class has a different frequency which they were part of the 4 man meta. This old post is out of date but it demonstrates the frequency that classes were part of the 4 man meta in seasons 1-19.
Lexa, how would you describe “good” mechanics? And, is there a build, current or otherwise, that really exemplifies that to you? Doesn’t have to be Wizard, unless you want it to be.
They’ve dominated the META for almost a decade? That’s impressive, because the game was released in May 2012, i.e. less than a decade ago, and the Necromancer DLC was released in June 2017, i.e. 4 years 5 months ago. So, its domination was so strong that half of the decade it was dominating in was before it even existed?
So, because they’ve played support in 4-mans for the past 20 seasons, how is that relevant to their solo clearing ability?
For this purpose of a solo analysis, the relevance comes in that a couple of classes had regular access to the 4 man meta that meant that these classes could presumably level the legendary gems higher and more easily in groups. In that regard, it actual makes the solo analysis of barbarians and monks worse, since one would anticipate that their legendary gem (and augments) would on average be higher than classes not-part of the 4 man meta.
Fantastic math c: I think this is a true eye-catch for the WD who’s gotten such a shaft. Hopefully we can continue to get updates to their builds and help curve this.
What a MONSTER statement this is. Disregarding inclusion in meta or not, the solo potential of our class was somewhat in a huge lull until Rend was reworked. A good rework like that had such a transformative experience with Wastes as a set, and honestly looking forward I believe that’s how to approach builds for all classes that are lacking. Adding multipliers is fine and all, but certain builds like MOTE and Raekor, as well as a few other class builds have fundamental limitations that won’t be solved with just a higher % of damage. Thanks for your time and math!
Well… you are asking the wrong person, I guess. I’m a solo-only player who really hates to play seasons (didn’t even test the upcoming theme, just what they did to Firebird). I just do it to unlock the rewards, mostly… because I know I can’t compete as a solo player. Not that I care, I give a damn about leaderboards, multiplayer or what is the current META. I play a little here and there and do it to relax, not to compete. And I mostly (99% of the time) stick to wizards since pretty much day one.
So, if I tell you all that and you go and look at my current paragon it is obvious that I’m one hell of a lazy punk, given that I haven’t even reach 4k yet.
So asking me for a good build or good mechanic is a little pointless. It also depends on personal taste, but you asked… so let me at least answer, although it will be me ranting quite a bit.
All I can say is that I don’t enjoy mechanics that are overly complicated or require a ton of micromanaging or those that feel “slapped together without real reason”…
Let me give you an example:
Hydra (Typhons Veil)
Okay this set should have potential. Place Hydra, avoid getting hit, pets do damage. Hm. So the character is passive in terms of damage and the pets do their work. Seems easy. Now here comes… Deathwish… a perfect item in this situation to support our snakes, because channeling buffs all damage and Hydra benefits. You won’t need to attack the target, just channel somewhere. Pretty simple, no? And the issue… people said “booring, Deathwish again, no more channeling, booooh… and btw, Bazooka is bad, fix it!”
So the devs destroyed Etched Sigil, nerfed Deathwish with a 1 second cast delay, changed Fragment of Destiny to all signature skills (good) and let Hydra gain a stacked buff. Egh, pkay, so you need to constanly land hits now, which means a bit more active playstyle, but those hits do zilch. Not to mention the buff to Hydra is weaker in terms compared to Deathwish - the mechanic is just more annoying. Then to top it off, they change Etched Sigil to Twisters and slap an orphaned skill (Blizzard) on Winter Flurry that makes things even more nasty, with another condition to buff Hydra. What the f*** did they smoke? This is not fun, it’s disjointed and feels both strange and unfitting and way to forced (to remove channeling). Keep in mind, the buff to Hydra on WF is way more complicated and still only on the level of Etched Sigil. Is this fun? NOPE, at least not in my book.
So, just an example - imagine this instead:
Change to Deathwish:
AT/RoF/Dis deal 325% more damage every second, stacking up to five times. Hydra heads now attack with your channeling skills when you do.
Not saying I would have done that but in a nutshell this would have killed off Bazooka and linked channeling and Hydra. Now it makes sense to channel, you need to attack actively and your Hydras would target what you do. Just an example… it would work in Typhons, it would work with LoD/LoN… Typhons is stronger, though.
Then let’s see… Winter Flurry… yeah right. Screams cold. This one should have simply been “Cold skills deal XXX% more damage. Enemies hit or killed by cold have a chance to release your Frost Nova.”
But if they REALLY want to make that one Hydra, then we just need to look at the Magistrate, an existing Hydra item, to find a skill that can be used instead of Blizzard:
“Enemies hit by Frost Nova take XXX% more damage from you for X seconds. This effect is doubled for your pets.”
See what happens then? Not saying it would be perfect then but at least it would make way more sense.
But now for those who say… boohoo Hydra + channeling, we don’t want to channel any longer… yeah, heard you. Now, what? Let’s see:
Fragment of Destiny… now this one has potential, but the devs did NOTHING to make this one fit the picture. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Pretty much looks like a band-aid that too small to cover the wound.
So, let me ask… why did they make a link between signature skills and Hydra and just stop there? Just to add a condition so that we cannot use Deathwish? Huh, then at least make FoD strong enough to outmatch the sword. What kind of crap is this… not to mention Signature skills feel disjointed since Typhon, the Hydra set, has nothing to do with them, or Blizzard. Those two are just useless annoyances we have to spam to make Hydra stronger. In return this robs us of our mobility because, you know… movement speed where? Can I use Aetherwalker? Ouch.
If they link our signature skills to Hydra, then for Pete’s sake make those skills at least part of the damage. Buff them on Typhons so that an item like Fragments makes actually sense. I would go even further.
If Typhons is a pet set (and you bet it is, the set only buffs Hydra atm) then it should be exactly that. I would look at our orphaned skill Mirror Images now. Remember? The one they axed on Firebirds. How about we migrate them to Typhons and have them stay close and attack with our signature skills when we do. Let that be a legendary or a set effect, whatever… just do something meaningful and we are talking. This is your active non-channeling build right there. Now FoD with Signature skills and Hydra makes sense and works in our favor. And you won’t channel… perfect. And you don’t feel bored, since you know… your own attacks actually make your Mirror Images attack and they also deal damage. A bit like Simulacrum/Masquerade. Stolen? Well, maybe, but if it works…
So, let’s say I don’t actually have an existing wizard build I really like. If anything I liked Mirror Images as a concept. Not necessarily every little thing, but that build could have worked as a concept. Had they improve on the AI a little, reduced the damage and made them part of a set. I think I would be happy.
Oops, a bit lenghtier than I thought… so there you have it, even if this has strayed offtopic quite a bit.
Yeah, that change definitely bumped us up a good bit in terms of GR level cleared. But, since that change happened, we’ve had only 6 clears in the top 100 (out of a possible 300). It would have been a different story if AoV had not been so powerful. Had that set not existed, Rend would have accounted for ~45 of the top 100 in Era 12. But… it did! So we didn’t!
That much at least sounds a good bit like me. I’m also a bit under 4k, even though I’ve been playing since shortly after launch in 2012. And I’m 100% SSF.
Everything you say about this makes sense. Definitely sounds like a very slapped-together set of conditions to make the build work.
Maybe you should try a different class! There are a lot of different builds out there… maybe one of them will make you happy. I was mostly a Monk player quite a while back, but then I discovered Leapquake… and it’s been a Barb, Barb, Barb, Barb World for me ever since.
Well, if the devs do what I expect them to for wizards in S25 - that is nothing more than what we’ve seen so far on PTR - I actually might do just that, at least for S25.
But I won’t be investing too much time anyways. I haven’t even played non season seriously, though I should have done just that as long as Mirrorbird still exists.
I think it depends on how you define " while that other class always gets all the love"
If you’re solely looking at which builds can I clear the highest GR with then highest DPS wins.
With the change to set leaderboards, it’s been more interesting not focusing on DPS of one class vs another class.
I love WD. I love the variety of playstyles because Darts is different than Garg that’s different than Jade that’s different than Mundu SB. I like the change to Arachyr because now it has a distinct playstyle that’s different than the others. I liked that they finally fixed Lakumba’s so getting killed on an RG with no adds isn’t a cascade of continuous deaths.
What I wish is that levels of various builds inside a single class were more balanced. Because even if you just stick to one class, I have a tendency to play the build with the highest GR potential. It’d be nice to just to randomly pick any WD build a within a class and know that’s it’s going to be as comparable to every other WD build.
I think that type of balancing will come over the next few years.
There are a lot of sets that need reworked and they are slowly getting to those with I’d say at least moderate success (the fact most eventually need more dev time later is not good).
But, there are also a lot of sets that just haven’t had their numbers updated to keep pace with the game, and it’s that low hanging fruit that could quickly alleviate a lot of player frustration.
The big winner in terms of these rankings post necromancer release in comparison to pre-DLC were crusaders. Obviously as the data shows, necromancers during their time have the second highest percentage.
