There’s been a lot of talk about the change to Imperfectly Balanced and confirmation on that from Blizzard, but I haven’t seen anything from Blizzard or much discussion on the unlisted nerf to the Serration passive, which is far far more significant and should be corrected.
If you are not aware, patch 1.1 changed Serration from granting 0.9% crit chance per 10 essence at cast (at 3 points) to 0.9% crit chance per 30 essence at cast. Taking into account the other unlisted nerf to max essence on items, this means that at the highest realistic max essence that this is a crit chance nerf 18% ((200 / 10) x 0.9) → 5.4% ((180 / 30) x 0.9) for the first bone skill at max essence. That difference of 12.6% is higher than the maximum crit chance you can receive from any individual item (the highest being gloves with 12% at a perfect roll) and cannot be made up even with perfect gear.
This nerf also means for builds not at the end game which don’t have much essence above the default 100 that each point invested in Serration only gives 0.9% or 1.2% crit chance (((120 or 90) / 30) x 0.3). This enormous nerf makes the passive not worth taking until having at least 150 maximum essence and almost not worth taking thereafter.
The nerf to Imperfectly Balanced, which Blizzard has acknowledged and said they would correct, is less impactful than the nerf to Serration, which Blizzard has not as far as I know said anything about. I think everyone’s reaction to the nerf to Imperfectly Balance and not Serration is simply because it is easier to see that Imperfectly Balanced can no longer take more than 1 point, while the nerf to Serration requires the player to read the tooltip and be aware of its previous value. I think there is added confusion from players about the distinction between the Serration passive, which got nerfed, and the Serration aspect, which (as far as I know) did not.
Blizzard please fix this change. I am not sure whether it came from an earlier version of the patch and was meant to be removed or if it is an intentional stealth nerf, but either way this change hurts bone builds, which rely on critical strikes to deal any damage whatsoever, from working reliably in end game context, and makes them struggle more through early-mid game. The nerfs to Grasping Vines and (especially) Splintering were needed, but this nerf in addition was not. I personally would prefer to see this fix in the next patch over any other fix to any part of the game — it is that important to me and to all crit bone builds.
To the Nec community, please make sure that you communicate the existence of this nerf.
It is far more detrimental than the Imperfectly Balanced nerf and others should be made aware of it so that it also gets fixed in the upcoming patch.
I do think they hit serration too hard. It seems obvious from the design that the whole point of bone skills is to lay into crit mechanics and this was a I think an over-adjustment.
I’m swapping to lucky hit and decrepify to try and get the cooldown reduction on bone storm lower so I can use it more to try and get the +20% crit chance on it.
Yeah. They had already nerfed it from 1.5 per 10 to 0.9 per 10 shortly after release. That was understandable since with 200 essence 30 crit from a passive is a bit much. For a build completely reliant on crit damage (which is most of what’s available through paragon) massively nerfing one of the build’s main enablers make the late game setup feel anemic.
Also not a fan of needing to rely on bone storm uptime for the crit… Maybe once I find lidless I can try that but without being pure lucky hit shadow infinimist getting the cooldown lower (especially with the cdr nerfs) is very tough.
Im not a fan of how this nerf went about. There was no mention of it on the patch at all. One can argue that it was a last minute addition, but if that were the case Blizzard had weeks now to say something about it post patch. Since so many of us are impacted by this, not knowing if its a bug or nerf, it leaves many at the point of waiting to find out before switching builds.
In my opinion the nerf to serration was heavy-handed, much like most of the other nerfs in the patch. I can understand tuning it back, but to reduce its effectiveness to under 30% of its original power and was way too much.
Im level 93 now with pretty good affixes in all my gear and still find myself often basic attacking stray mobs 5-6x over because i’ve used up all my essence with core skills trying to kill it. Without a critical hit, mobs at mid-higher tier NM dungeons take far too long for necros to kill with basic attacks. This creates very slow and frustrating game play.
If you are Bone, you should be 100% full at all times, never depleting your essence. You lose a ton of damage by running at low essence. Ossified Essence and the Aspect are key.
Gameplay should be 1-3 Bone Spear (depending on your cost and maximum Essence) > Generator > Repeat.
Umbral (ring only) that yields Essence (up to 4) when you crowd control an enemy. That’s basically insta-full with Grasping Veins.
There’s also Exposed Flesh (again, ring only) that gives a large Essence gain when you hit a Vulnerable Enemy with a Bone Skill. It’s Lucky Hit though.
I don’t use either, but I have used both in the past. I feel Exposed Flesh works better because the Bone Shards reflection can trigger it (so post-cast). It also works with Bone Storm. Pop Storm in a pack, pretty much unlimited Essence.
Umbral tends to go off before engagement, so you don’t really make good use of it. It’s good for sustain if you quickly hop from pack to pack on empty - but again, I don’t recommend that style for Bone. It also only goes off once per mob per CC, so you can’t continuously cast Decrepify to gain Essence.
What are you using for sustain if youre not using either of those? I have/am using both but it still doesnt stay perfectly topped off. You still need to throw in basic attacks vs stronger mobs that require multiple hits
Just generator + Wisdom. Like I said, usually 1-3 Bone Spears, then Bone Splinters. Splinters has a nice Lucky Hit rate, and I use the 20% damage reduction aspect. I stay topped up, unless there’s Resource Burn around.
Oh, there’s Essence on Kill as well. It’s on the Paragon Board.
It’s not really Bone Spear, it’s all the supporting Paragon Boards, really. Anything with Bone, Physical, Crit, Crit Damage, +Max Essence just scales with it.
Honestly, if they removed the cooldown of Bone Spirit, I’d build around that. But the fact I can fire 5+ Bone Spears in the time it takes for a build up and cooldown of one Bone Spirit means I’ll opt for Bone Spear.