I’ve played enough today now to feel confident in my evaluation for my seasonal character in the patch:
Density in NMDs feels good. I’m not a huge NMD fan but the increased density in some of the dungeons makes them feel a lot better and a bit more fun. I no longer am forcing myself to do these
Helltides are on a big improvement here. We still need some better targeted chests here to push them over the edge - say a 300 chest that had a higher rate for uniques but the current density is making them a lot better and more fun.
Necro Minions: The damage reduction from the AoE attacks is no longer absolutely shredding them in 2 seconds. So kudos on getting that easy fix in =)
Overall… today was a good day in terms of what I’m currently doing in the game
Rogues are fine except for the malignant heart bug that was introduced and the undocumented fix to Bursting Venoms. Which could have been fixed by accident, hence no mention of it.
so… it didnt just fix bursting venoms. it affected icy alchemist and the toxic alchemist too. Basically my whole imbue spec is completely useless now. takes me 4x as long to clear a level 40 dungeon. i have 50% lucky hit and i still feel like i get no procs on any of the 3 aspects.
My skeletons are still getting deleted by lunatics. My golem never dies, like usual. I taunt big packs of lunatics onto my invincible golem, but my skeletons are lost in the process. Sometimes they run into my stacked aoe and die right before they can detonate.
Yeah, I feel that today was a good day for necro too! We got two big big buffs to two of our resource aspects. And I am very happy for the density improvement too. I agree that NM now are a lot more fun.
The heart that dropped a taunt when you used a Subterfuge skill now puts the taunt on you instead. It made things hella interesting for a bit today until I replaced it.
That trap gem is extremely nice if you play any ranged variant of rogue. I shadowstep in, drop it, dodge out and then when everything piles up I aoe nuke it. Gets everything to ball up for Rapid fire which ricochets.
You can obviously kind of do the same thing without it, but it just stops mobs from spreading out to far. Some mobs are fast and some are slow. So normally if you try to run and gun, everything spreads out in kind of a line. It just helps with that and makes it a ball of food.
A side benefit too is when you place the trap badly. You are punished less because it taunts them into it. Versus you having to do a bunch of batmaning to kite things into it.
Overall, it wasn’t a patch that went backwards. I felt like at least some of the ‘weight’ of my character has been shed. Before, it felt kind of heavy. Like I have several anchors dragging behind me and they took one off. That’s roughly how it felt for my off meta build, anyway. I haven’t tried my other one yet. indeed positive.