Random Musings of a Mad Horadrim - Also PTR and Sorc Feedback

PTR Feedback
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I would like to lead off with the single most important conclusion I have from playing many sorcerer builds in the PTR:

If you have to do pit 100 to complete Glyph leveling, then every class should have access to a build for each main skill path that is capable of doing this with equipment that it is reasonable to acquire in a season. Currently based on my PTR experience I can say that this does not appear to be the case for sorcerers. Please fix bugs/boost power/nerf pit or whatever you have to do to make it possible for all main builds in each class to level glyphs without needing to be carried by someone playing a stronger class / build.

While my most preferred solution would be better class/build balance, I know that is not a quick and easy fix, so maybe the simplest solution would be to nerf pit to where 100 is broadly reachable and push the max tier back out to 200 so you still have plenty of runway for broken classes and builds to out themselves😉

PTR Systems:

Paragon/Level Boot: It would be great if we could just get XP scrolls instead of the reset type boost for paragon and level. This would give a greater ability to control how fast we level so we can stop at various stages to test different content at different points in the character power arc. It would also prevent people like me and many others from losing a day’s worth of grinded gear because we assumed a paragon level boost would overwrite the “Part of (my) Character” that was related to what was being boosted. i.e. Paragon and maybe glyphs, not all equipped gear and character inventory.

Ladder Boss: please make boss material caches for at least the lower tier bosses available from M’rak. I ran a few bosses in each torment tier both as soon as I unlocked it and again just before I felt ready to go to the next tier. I would have done more if I didn’t need to farm the materials. For context, most of the content where boss mats drop seems fairly well established and does not require extensive testing, (no testing need to run it for the hours it take to farm substantial mats) so I just don’t want to waste a ton of time doing it once I have a feel for the presence or lack of issues and the challenge/reward at each world level and character power level.

Legendary Caches: (where are the Ancestral Caches?) Please create a separate Ancestral cahche. I like playing in each world level with different levels of character power. I played all game modes I could access a fair bit but with only a week for the PTR It makes sense to do each thing for a short time and move on. Having to go through hundreds of caches, and pick up/salvage dozens of items to get a few Ancestral items that likely are not the ones I need, in an effort to get GA items that I do need to test mid to late endgame build power takes way too long and is likely eating your clock-cycles needlessly: p

COMBAT LOG: This is needed! Especially for PTRs if not on all servers. Hitting test dummies can only go so far in testing suspected bugs with skills/powers/items. I have no way to know if a proc is working as intended from a huge cloud of damage numbers. PLEASE give us an always available combat log that shows all of our skills/powers/effects so we can help you make the game better.

PTR Specific Bugs?:

Potion upgrade quest: quest is not marked completed by using the all boost or max potion boost, and it cannot be completed normally with potion at max level. Low priority I know, but I thought id mention all the same.

General Game System:

Tooltip issues: I noticed several items that seemed to have display bugs or incorrect values. One example, I have a Tal Rasha ring and the stat for CDR says “8.0% Cooldown Reduction [8.1 – 8.8] %” I have also noticed some tempers showing 17.5 value with a stated cap of 17.3

Armory: I find myself still preferring different characters for dramatically different builds (shock / fire / frost), but when creating a build with a different primary skill but similar paragons/skill trees/gear I can just save the main build, modify the char save the new build, and load back to the original)

I also found this immensely helpful for saving variants when developing builds! It makes me less afraid to experiment, knowing I can revert if it fails. Kind of like a Git repo for character builds!

It would be great to have more than 12 characters to make loadout names more descriptive

Season Content: I enjoyed the seasonal content. I found it much more engaging than the realm walker. Some specific points:

  • Head Hunts: I really enjoyed the Head Hunts and I am looking forward to playing it in S7! It felt fun, interesting and rewarding, and provided a decent challenge in early end game. I can’t wait to engage in the story part.
  • Dungeon: Great concept. I liked the creative re-use of the boon/bane mechanic
  • Witchcraft powers – I have to admit these are much more interesting than I expected!
  • Occult Gems – Love these. They made the selection of powers much more interesting and opened up some build possibilities

Ancestral Items & Aspects: It felt like a good drop rate and the change to aspects was notable. Drop rate did seem a bit lower outside of seasonal content. If that impression is accurate, it may be something to consider for eternal players.

Amulets – I’m not sure if this is weighted or if it is just RNG and the desire-o-meter factor, but in the PTR I have got FOUR amulets with GA Devouring Blaze (2 of which were 2ga items), which is now totally useless to most of my characters. I have not got a single Shocking Impact, Icy Touch, or Hoarfrost GA - Where was this in S6 when I needed it lol

The Den – Mercenary shop: Changes here are great. It feels worthwhile to get the masterwork and boss mat caches now! It also seems like the ancestral rate is increased in the items directly available from the shop but the aspect caches seemed to have a much lower occurrence. Not sure if this is intentional. Guessing maybe since the cache is one purchase the odds are thinned to keep parity with odds for other single purchases? I wonder if it would be worth increasing the cost of caches and the ancestral rate for items in them?

Quests:

  • Undercity unlock: The quest did not advance and disappeared from my quest log after clearing Ennead’s Folly in the Golden Snakes segment. There was an active Head Hunt in the zone at the time. Not sure if it is related or not. After entering and exiting the cellar several times the quest finally appeared in my tracker again, but I was not able to advance it. It was stuck on the “Enter Ennead’s Folly” step. After a few more enter/exit cycles the snake dagger quest item was suddenly there at the end of the cellar and I was able to advance it again.
  • Mercenary : not sure if it is a bug or if it is intended that we still have the “Unlock” quests when we already have the mercenaries active. If it is intended it would be nice to have a way to remove it from our quest tracker.

Undercity - Tributes: It seems like the only tributes I get are Harmony. I am aware of the known issue with Titans dropping less frequently than intended but I wonder if there is not also an issue with others?]

Infernal Hordes – Compass: Are these supposed to be super rare now? In 60+ hours played I saw 4 of them. 2X6 round and 2X8 round, never saw a single 10 round compass. EDIT: I finally got my first 10 wave just now from a whisper cache! (a few hours before the end of PTR)

The Pit and Glyphs: Reaching 100 seems virtually impossible for most if not all of the sorcerer builds I tried in PTR. With the need to run 100 to finish leveling glyphs, this kind of sucks. We are left to either get carried by another player playing a stronger class/build or accepting that our class/build choice means that we cannot complete our glyphs.

I have seen many people suggesting that The pit needs to be nerfed, but given that most classes have at least 1 build and some have several that can reach or exceed 100, I feel this is more of an class balance issue. Please continue to focus in this area. Its one thing to have a haphazard build that does not leverage available power be incapable of completing content, but no choice of primary skill when supported by gear/supporting skills/paragon choices that are optimal mathematically should be incapable of reaching Pit 100 and leveling glyphs.

Druid Class:

I was excited to try druid as I have been hearing for a few seasons how awful they are and people were genuinely excited that the notes for the PTR made it look like they may be strong for 2.1. It seems every build I wanted to try was impacted by a bug causing it to instantly erase everything it hit. I did not think it was worth my time to test this significantly in this state. I hope it is good on live as it is my fist choice to switch to if sorcerer still looks as weak for high tier pit on live as it does currently on PTR.

Sorcerer Class: - OUCH – I really, really hope there are some bugs nerfing us that will be fixed

For context I have been playing similar games for decades and have typically been able to complete all top content with self-made builds. I have played and studied a great many D4 builds of all types across many of the sites where the “Experts” post theirs. So while I do not consider myself an expert in D4 theory crafting (yet), I do feel my builds are fairly optimized and at least as performant as what many players are using if not somewhat better than the mean.

I love this class in spite of it’s struggles and many recent power reductions! Overall the class feels a bit less strong than it did in S6 which in turn felt a bit less strong than S5. In my experience anything beyond 80 in pit is a non-starter for many if not most skill/build options. In spite of a few small things designed to help with Boss damage the class still suffers from a significant lack of ability to damage single targets effectively.

I understand that with such wide reaching AOE powers increasing damage output can mean erasing entire screens full of enemies instantly, which would be just as bad an outcome as not being able to kill a boss.

Some ideas on addressing ST damage include:

  • More “increased damage if only one target is hit”
  • Damage scaled to the number of targets hit so that the more targets that are hit the less damage each takes and increasing the base damage
  • Cap the number of targets that can be hit by a single cast of any given skill, and then increasing base damage for the skills.

In pre-torment this class is mind blowing, there are so many ways to play it that are all moderately to incredibly effective!!! Once you hit torment the number of options for successful builds narrows significantly. Once you reach T4 it narrows further, and once you pass 80 in the pit and want to chase 100 you have almost no options and the ones you do have almost invariably rely on shatter and boss fishing. This is a terrible experience. Please help us!

Ideas aimed at preserving 1-60 balance and helping in end game where sorc is awful:

  • A third enchantment at level 60
  • More power in paragon boards
  • More power in class specific uniques
  • More damage scaling with paragon level

General take on sorc main skill paths:

  • Frost: overall the worst of the elemental areas for sorc, especially after limiting options for access to burning damage and denying them devouring blaze. in my experience Frozen orb and frozen orb conjuration builds have joined blizzard/spikes builds in the dustbin. Restricting devouring blaze to pyromancy and the removal of conjuration mastery have left FO variants utterly ineffective for high level play. The damage from conjurations even with high stacks of Primordial is utterly insufficient to make up for the lost damage to Frozen Orb from these changes. The one ray of hope I see for frost is ice shards, which I haven’t personally tested, but someone told me they cleared 101 on it. (I forgot to ask if they used shatter)
  • Fire: still somewhat limited from the builds I tested. It’s frustrating that even though fireball and firebolt/firewall builds do feel moderately strong, they still have to depend on shatter and boss fishing to get anywhere in the pit.
  • Lightning: I have some hope for ball lightning and chain lightning builds, Currently its hard to tell as I hear rumors that Shocking Impact is not working correctly. If this is true and it gets fixed, then lightning builds may be fairly strong for endgame. If it is not true and there is not some other change I do not see how shock focused builds make up for the massive damage loss from conj mastery and devouring blaze.

Passives:

  • Shocking Impact: Many players are convinced this is not working as it should be. I don’t know how I can really test this without a real combat log, but it would explain a lot about why when I go all in on this passive I feel weaker than I do with other options that do not seem like they should be stronger for a lightning build that throws out stuns like raindrops in a monsoon. Also I wonder if it would be too much to ask to change this to change “BOSS” to “ELITE” or “UNSTOPPABLE ENEMY.” This could really help with high level elites. In pit 90 it takes my sorcs longer to kill an elite than it takes to kill the boss in pit 80…
  • Primordial Binding: Because conjuration damage is so limited to start, the dmg modifier on this being restricted to conjuration damage makes it entirely ineffective. Please consider either reverting the restriction or increasing the dmg%
  • Devouring Blaze: the change to this passive is literally devastating especially taken together with the removal of conjuration mastery. i tried all the other passives that were opened up and as many have said even spending way more points in passives doesn’t come close to making up the difference.
  • Permafrost: I can’t pretend I understand why we had to restrict devouring blaze to pyro but open up frost and lightning passives to all dmg types, but if “this is the way”, then maybe this passive could be opened up to others as well since bosses and elites are a real area of struggle for sorc

Items:

  • Okun’s Catalyst: I am enjoying this item and the BL build https://mobalytics.gg/diablo-4/profile/e8462d47-3040-4f77-97d8-fa1406b10b92/builds/95c7ae77-d4bb-475c-bfaa-9a86b49115f3
    I have created around it (for everything but pit)! It feels like the attack speed buff is working but the stat doesn’t seem to change the Attack Speed Bonus in the “Stats & Materials”. (yes I am checking while in combat not while standing in town :p) I’m not sure if this is intended or a display bug, or if it actually does not work, but I do know not having it not show up is causing many players to ask the question of whether it works. Also not sure how others feel about the implicit, but I saw a lot of complaints that it doesn’t work. For me I would never notice if it works or not as teleport is way faster than cast while moving so all of my “Run and gun” builds use teleport enchant. I have main skill on left mouse and tap hold ground button to cast it, so this is a wasted stat for how I play.
  • Strike of Stormhorn: I did not get around to testing this as I heard it was bugged and reported so I focused elsewhere
  • The Oculus: You have a great opportunity here to help us make up for lost power to lightning focused builds IF you remove the RANDOM LOCATION from the evade teleport. Reduce some of the stats if this is seen as too powerful with controlled evade teleport. It would have the effect of giving us a third enchantment (As a great many sorcerer players are asking) for many lighting builds without having to add a third enchant slot. I tried desperately to get this to be useful even as a fringe case for specific content (like IH) but there is literally no content where you can be effective using this with the random location.
  • Fractured Winterglass: with all of the changes for S6 and S7 this item is dead in the water. Please make Fractured Winterglass a focus instead of a neck, and replace the implicit with the old cooldown implicit from legendary focus. It is currently WAY too weak to be worth giving up an ancestral amulet with a good aspect and tempers - EVEN FOR FO/Conj builds. Maybe break its ties to FO and open it up to all/more frost skills, maybe lean into the “Fractured” as in it is broken and uncontrollable … and just replace FO with any non-ultimate non-mobility frost skill to trigger conjurations or be triggered by them.
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Really big + thanks for this review. Hope the devs read this masterpiece.

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WTF, condense your ramblings to 4 sentences or less. devs won’t bother with this

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Exactly the kind of post I expect from someone who has spent the last six months bashing the game, the developers, and other people’s posts and contributing virtually nothing of value in any topic.

Could I be more concise in some areas? probably. Did you actually read any of it to know that there is far too much information to be conveyed in four sentences?

Don’t worry you don’t need to respond we all know the answer.

I do however need to thank you for inspiring me to change the title from “War and PTR” to the current title, so Thanks bro…

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100%. Enchantments feel incredibly weak as a class-defining feature, even more so with the change to Fire Bolt enchantment. That change just shined a light on how bad so many of our other options are. Short of a significant rebalancing of all of the Enchantments, a third Enchantment slot would at least add some of that needed end-game power and allow more combinations.

100%. This feels like an oversight that it doesn’t apply to elites more broadly than just bosses.

100%. Some ideas:

Replace the current Unique Power

Gain the effect of the Teleport Enchantment for free. When you Evade using Teleport Enchantment you are taken to a random location.

with:

Gain the effect of the Teleport Enchantment for free.

This is the cleanest approach and as OP said might need some numbers tweaks but would make using the item actually enjoyable.

Gain the effect of the Teleport Enchantment for free. Evading using Teleport Enchantment drains 10 Mana. If you have no Mana, instead you are taken to a random location.

This option gives the player a puzzle to solve to mitigate the drawback.

Gain the effect of the Teleport Enchantment for free. When you Evade using Teleport Enchantment, there is a 25% chance you are taken to a random location.

This option keeps the current mechanic but makes it not feel as awful, since on average you’re much more likely to go where you want, and it incorporates a call-back to D2.

Gain the effect of the Teleport Enchantment for free. When hit, there is a 25% chance you are Teleported to a random location.

This is a clearer call-back to D2 and might encourage choosing Dodge affixes, but also might cause too many issues in high-density situations.

Gain the effect of the Teleport Enchantment for free. Each time you are hit, you gain 1 Instability. When Teleporting, you have a 1% chance to be taken to a random location for each Instability you have. Teleporting removes all Instability.

This is in a similar vein to the previous idea but removes the issue with density causing a series of rapid Teleports (which could contribute to eye strain or issues with flashing lights).

Agree with the other findings from the OP generally, but wanted to boost these in particular as they really stand out as critical flaws.

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This exactly!

While I appreciate their wanting to address people complaining about being “forced” to use firebolt enchant, (and unlike some I don’t disbelieve the intent, I just disagree with the outcome) I think it’s closer to reality to say that many theory crafters used this out of the options to apply burning because the cost of using an enchantment slot to apply burning is low compared to giving up a valuable active slot. This is largely due to a severe lack of other useful things to put in enchantments vs the relatively high cost of giving up an active slot to apply burning on a frost or lightning focused build.

With only 2 enchant slots It seems most likely to me that theory crafters will just work out the next most cost effective dmg boost available in enchants and use it on every build. I don’t see that as having the end effect of enabling more build freedom I see it as restricting choice and weakening the class.

I think adding a third enchant at level 60 addresses multiple things not least among them; It actually, gives more freedom of choice for builds and increases power for endgame without disrupting the really great balance of power/challenge they have managed to achieve for 1-60.

I also agree enchants kind of need a general overhaul. I didn’t go into full detail on this in the original post, but I had been thinking that enchantments could also be used as a way of helping elemental specialization builds by adding something like

When you have 2 or more enchants of the same element, each enchant of that element increases your damage with that element by 10%[x] up to a total of 30%[x]

This would essentially encourage development of elemental specialization builds and allow them to give up the use of Talrasha ring without having to destroy Talrasha for use in “Elemental weaver” type builds

you could even have the third enchant slot be a Legendary or Paragon enchantment that somehow scales its effect with paragon level further helping in high tier pit where the class just really fails currently. Maybe even steal the power from enchantment master paragon to apply to the enchant in this slot and change the paragon to add 5% more to the bonus and make it impact all enchantments instead of just the “Legendary” one

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I disgree. If we say all builds can do pit 100, that would mean they have to make t4 much harder. Otherwise all other endgame content besides pit is trivialized.
For current t4 difficulty all classes and builds should be balanced around t85 max.

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So you are fine with not being able to level glyphs? This makes no sense to me.

Also, i’m not saying that every single character of every player is able to do this i am saying that there is power available to people who chase it to make it possible with gear you can realistically acquire in a season.

For everyone who is satisfied with achieving T4 and playing the content there and have it be challenging there is no need to chase the absolute maximum power available to a character, but for some of us that is how we like to play :wink:

This is also one reason for my suggestion of tying more late-endgame power to paragon level, as people who do aggressively run high tier pit will achieve higher paragon levels.

Id also love to see higher chance of multi GA in higher tier pit, as this is a way of providing needed power to push further without trivializing lower level content for people who do not play High tier pit, but sadly i don’t think it will happen because people who like to play lower level content will complain that people who play differently to them are getting better items (which they need to accommodate their playstyle)

I’m not sure if you played close to 600 hours, used several of the strongest builds available to sorc, and failed to achieve 100 like I have so far in S6 due to lack of gear. Perhaps our play style and in-game experience is contributing to different views here?

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I’m fine, because there is literally no content locked behind that power level. I also want endgame content remain challenging in t4.
There was good idea about the need of endgame 2.0. It would be another story then.

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OK, so it is in fact down to a different view of the game and personal play style, because to me pit 150 is content and i can’t reach it, so there IS content locked behind that level of power.

If you are saying you need more content at that level to make it worth working that hard to achieve it then i can understand that.

for me knowing there are higher tiers of pit to beat is enough to make me want to chase it. Again, there is no need for anyone who is satisfied with playing T4 and having that be challenging needs to chase maximum power.

EDIT: if they left max pit at 100 (not 150), didn’t require you to reach 100 to finish glyphs, I may feel quite differently.

So let’s throw the number out the window for a second and see if we can land somewhere that we can agree:

I think all skill paths on all classes should be able to achieve max leveling of glyphs without needing to be carried by someone playing a stronger class/build

MAYBE just maybe IF people who don’t care about high pit (just want to play t4 and have it be a challenge) also don’t care about leveling glyphs to max then perhaps tying the power for high tier pit to paragon scaling of damage and higher level glyphs is exactly the right path to go down since people who do care about achieving high pit tiers certainly will want max glyphs and paragon level :wink:

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Im seeing pit more like infinite challenge rift (know it has max lvl, but it’s not suppose to be achieved) and lvl100 glyphs also paragon lvl 300 as goal for hardcore grinders.

If we agree that pit is the only real endgame content, then it make sense - every build should have potential to achieve very high pit tiers then. But that would be a bit sad perspective for the game. I think we need activity variety, where challenging content rewards generously.
If balance around higher power level, they would have to make other activities to scale also - hordes, nmd, undercity, citadel, uber bosses etc.

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I don’t see it as the only endgame. i see it as post-end-game for those same hardcore grinders (myslef included) as a reason to continue to log in and play after T4 has nothing left to offer :wink:

Again i’m not so worried about pit 100 specifically, i just thought of glyph leveling as something that should be achievable.

I.E. If i like my blizard/spikes build i should be able to level my glyphs without having to be carried by a LS sorc or SB…

If glyph leveling doesn’t matter to people who don’t care about high pit, then adding more power to high level glyphs and more power to paragon scaling is perhaps a great way to keep t4 challenging for people who don’t care about it and enable more power in late end-game for people who do. Likely to cause less protest than more multi-GA at higher levels too :stuck_out_tongue:

I think you may be missing the point. the point is NOT to make everyone everywhere more powerful as that is by definition power creep. The point is to find ways to add more access to power in late end game for people who do care about pushing to the max without upsetting 1-60 or t1-4 for people who are happy to play at those levels . And more specifically to make that same level of late endgame power accesible to most if not all builds on all classes. (balance)

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I guess we have different perspectives for the game and thats ok.
If I understood correctly, you prefer power as end goal and I prefer content ( what to do with that power).
Thats fine, d4 targets very diverse playerbase, we all looking for different things sometimes.
I agree with you, that every class/build should be viable for all game content.

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it’s not that i don’t want content… its just that I prefer to still have something to do AFTER i have done all of the content (over and over) , so i don’t have to “Be done with the season” and go play another game.

I’m not looking for the power chase in place of content but rather beyond it, as a failsafe … so there is something left when that is all played out :wink:

I fully get that plenty of people do not play as aggressively as i do which is why i try to maintain awareness of that with my suggestions and tend to at least try to stick with ideas that can expand the potential of one type of play without limiting or harming others

1 Like