I love the set specific leader boards! It allows me to push with the build I like, and it feels much more meaningful to go for top 100 or frontpage on my set than barely getting top 1000 on the overall leaderboard. Awesome!
Also, it’s quite clean data for how strong the different sets are, which should be very helpful for game designers. If a set clears 10 GRs lower than another set on top clear, top 10 clear and top 100 clear, then chances are a little buff would benefit the game balance.
I am proposing:
pick one or a couple sets that perform at a good level, and use these as a reference baseline. Innas will be nerfed I assume, but some of the stronger sets not up for nerfs would be good. Maybe marauders or firebirds? Taking suggestions, and exact choice shouldn’t matter much.
Go through all other set leader boards across all classes, and see how much lower they clear. Look at top clears, top 10, top 100. Look at paragon, and try to get a rough idea of how many GRs behind the reference sets it is.
If more than 5GRs behind, buff by about a third of the difference. So a set that clears 10GRs lower than the reference sets, buff by around 3-4GRs, so maybe 60-70% more damage.
This is key. BUFF IS ONLY A STRAIGHT DAMAGE BUFF TO THE 6-SET BONUS. Nothing else. This is not a rework, this is a balance tune. This ensures an accurate buff that affects all builds on the leader board, and only builds on the leader board, because the set leader boards count all builds with 6-set bonus from the set. No unintended buffs to other builds.
That’s it. iterate each season, and within a few season we will have all sets at a much more similar level, with very low risk of over-buffing anything along the way.
But but but: potential issues
Everyone plays flavour of the month. We might over-buff secrectly OP builds because no one plays them. Yeah need to look for even a few high clears on less played leaderboards. But I think enough players enjoy playing off-meta sets that we don’t have too many secretly OP builds. And this is why we only buff by a third of the difference, not the full difference, in step 3. It’s a small risk. And honestly I wouldn’t mind if a rarely used set suddenly comes out as one of the best sets with a new approach. That’d be awesome actually!
Monsters have higher damage at higher GR, [my favourite set] wont be able to clear higher due to incoming damage. Yeah, true. Many sets do lack defense compared to the more recently introduces or reworked sets. But that’s a more complicated change, and it’s not as easily measured and a bit more subject to opinion. Let’s keep this very simple to something everyone can agree on. At least you’ll get your damage buff rather than just staying forgotten for years.
what about [my favourite LoD build]? There is no easy way to tweak all LoD builds of a class, and only LoD builds, like we do in step 4. If every class had it’s own LoD gem then we could tweak that, but as it is, I can’t think of a good way to buff only no-6-set builds. At least we’ll get the sets balanced…
Buffing [set I hate] based on top clear will make it too strong on lower GRs Yeah should probably look out for that and make exceptions if needed. Rats would be such a setup, but as it’s LoD, it won’t apply here.
What do you think? What off-meta sets would you considering going back to playing with a damage buff?
The majority of builds in the game (at least when playing solo) have the option of trading 2-3 GRs worth of damage for 2x toughness (which is 31 GRs of toughness) just by dropping CoE for Unity, or F+R for CoE + Unity, etc.
So, if your build was going to get a 10 tier buff, and you were afraid increased incoming damage would kill you, you can always just take only 7-8 tiers of the damage, and also be far tankier than you were before.
Yeah, really depends on the particular build. Some non-top builds see a ton of play, others very little. And then there are odd cases like Raekor HOTA, which hardly anybody plays anymore… except 엔류, who is basically the best Barb player ever, and who has cleared, I think, 148 non-season and 150 season using it.
So, yeah- gotta look hard for those outliers!
At this point I think pretty much every Barb set (except maybe H90/Frenzy) is within roughly 5 GRs of our best set, Wastes (using Rend). And Rend, in turn, is pretty close in power to Firebird, Arachyr, and Marauder.
If Inna gets the axe, I think the strongest pushing builds around will probably be LOD WOL Monk, Bombardment Crusader, and Twister Wizard…
Any particular sets sets you enjoyed, that don’t really perform atm?
I’ve been in love with typhon myself last couple of season. It’s quite strong already, although it definitely could use a few more GRs of power!
I also really liked the bone-spear playstyle, especially playing support wizard with it, so I’d enjoy if that got re-buffed to become a somewhat viable XP run again.
I kindof enjoyed the GoD runs back with old GoD, but not sure if that can ever be the same with just a damage buff.
And I honestly have no idea what off-meta sets are around for WD, sader and barb, would be cool to see what they can do!
edit: I’ve no idea why, but whenever I reply with “quote whole post”, the second I post it becomes edited, and the quote is gone. I have to edit it back in again. Hence the two edits… Is this a known forum bug, or am I doing something wrong?
Sets I do not enjoy (would require more than a damage buff)
The Legacy of Raekor
Armor of Akkhan
Roland’s Legacy
Seeker of the Light
Raiment of a Thousand Storms
Grace of Inarius
Pestilence Master’s Shroud
Trag’Oul’s Avatar
Mundunugu’s Regalia
Raiment of the Jade Harvester
Delsere’s Magnum Opus
Tal Rasha’s Elements
Sets I could enjoy (may require damage or mitigation)
Immortal King’s Call
Might of the Earth
Natalya’s Vengeance
Monkey King’s Garb
Uliana’s Stratagem
Bones of Rathma
Helltooth Harness
The Typhon’s Veil
Vyr’s Amazing Arcana
All not listed are either playable to my degree (which admittedly is not world-class) or are sufficient enough that I don’t think they need much modification, directly.
Most set power is known due to the set leaderboards. Season 23 leaderboards is a great place to see set power for lower paragon players.
I already organized it for DH. (500 key clears for experienced players):
The more challenging data to gather is the current strength of unused skills. I bring this up because I believe this is really what people want addressed in combination with set buffs.
Tackling it involves play testing and open discussion to reveal the pain points (because the gameplay should be satisfying).
For DH and Crusader I could probably produce another chart with all of the skills ranked by GR @ 5kp fairly quickly. If devs need to know this, they should just openly ask for it. I am positive the community would be extremely cooperative.
This is not so straightforward. Take UE6 for instance, currently the frontrunner skill is Hungering Arrow. So we match this to M6 and now the GoD6 set is no longer the champion for generators. I believe the correct solution is to address the set bonuses and select legendary items.
On a side note, at this very moment in time I believe more is needed than set/skill balance to win back players who left to Lost Ark.
Paragon rework, with greater diminishing returns on main stat investment
Follower expansion, letting them use LoN/LoD and gearing them for damage, allowing them to take the place of a player in 2 and 3 player group
Legendary item tuning
Legendary gem revamps
Augments that offer more than main stat
I’d even consider nerfing all sets to GR120, raising the gem cap to 300, and introducing a critical gem up system that always grants +2 ranks at 100% chance, with a smaller chance to +2 as the success rate is reduced.
I was kind of hoping that is what they would do. But no, instead they look like they are still doing what they have been doing before separate set leader boards existed. Buffing builds x,y, and z to crazy heights during a season and even for some builds non season. Then nerfing the crap out of them in the next season so there are new meta builds to play.
At least we’ll get the sets balanced…
