It's now been over a month since the start of ladder season 13 and almost 2 months since the release of Reign of the Warlock (RotW). After playing through the Warlock extensively on ladder and in PTR I'm ready to give some feedback on the changes being made, as well as some ideas for the future of D2R.
Let's go over the patch notes for the 3.20 PTR and my response to every single one on how it feels and if further changes are necessary after testing.
Overall this patch has performance and stability issues. Load screens are extremely long, CPU & RAM usage are very high, and overall the game can be laggy or even freeze at times. I hope this instability doesn't carryover to the regular game when it goes live.
Reset stats/skills at Akara does not work and all quests are completed so we cannot re-specialize our build in the PTR but Blizzard finally gave us a few tokens so we could try a few build variations.
Future game idea: the game also needs a way to respec 1 point at a time. Perhaps through the use of a single essence to refund a single skill point instead of a full token for a full reset.
DEMON TREE Changes: Overall there are lots of good changes being made to the Demon Tree but there are some further changes necessary. I feel Goatman needs a swing back up in attack speed, the Tainted needs re-work, the Defiler needs a nerf, Blood Boil needs a buff again, Consume doesn't do what tooltip says, and Bind Demon needs a major re-work because it feels really bad now.
Demonic Mastery - Max demon count now requires base skill point investment to increase its value.
Hard points only affect demon count, points from items still grant the damage and speed buffs.
1-9 points = 1 demon, 10-19 points = 2 demons, 20+ points = 3 demons
Note: this includes your bound + summoned demon so if you want to run a defiler with a bound demon then you need 10 hard points
Overall this is a good change to demonic mastery by requiring hard points. It forces investment to get more than 1 demon (i.e. 1 point wonder) and it still gives bonuses to demons if you get more soft points from equipped gear.
Summon Goatman - Attack Speed bonuses granted by skill are capped to 50%.
I Invested 1 hard point + 13 gear points (1 max goat, ~1k dps, 41% attack speed, ~2.9k hp, 6% crushing blow)
Overall this feels like a mediocre change. It takes 20 points in goatman to hit the attack speed cap but Goatman still feels pretty weak as a companion compared to other summons and bound demons. I'd like to see the attack speed raised up to 75% and maybe add life leech to their attacks so they survive better.
Summon Tainted - Fixed Summon Tainted damage to increase from Blood Boil synergy.
I tried this skill as a 1 point and 20 point variation and found a bug with how the new synergy damage scales. TAINTED IS CURRENTLY BUSTED ON PTR DUE TO A DAMAGE SCALING BUG FROM THE CHANGES AND THEY ARE DOING 45K DPS. This feels like they made the synergy multiplicative instead of additive and it's doing 16x the damage instead of 4x the damage from the maxed out synergy.
Overall I feel the Tainted should be a support summon for the fire warlock. Once the damage bug is fixed it'll feel very weak, especially against fire immunes. Since a warlock is capped at 3 demons there will be no reason to run Tainted because it cannot handle fire immunes. I'd like to see this demon provide a holy fire or fire resist aura and provide a negative fire resistance to enemies upon hitting them (fire exposure). This would be a natural pairing with the fire warlock build that could make it a more enjoyable build experience once you hit the fire immune enemies.
Summon Defiler - no changes in patch notes.
Defiler still feels too overpowered at spreading damage screen wide with its damage share ability. I'm surprised there wasn't a nerf to amount of damage shared between targets or fewer linked targets per level. It also feels very tanky without much investment so a slight HP nerf is necessary too.
Blood Oath - Damage Transfer stat capped at 50%.
This was a good change because it avoids damage sharing up to 99% and it doesn't really hit the 50% cap as a 1 point wonder so it still requires serious investment to hit the 50% cap. Most people will only put 1 point into this skill unless they're doing a demon only warlock build so it should feel fine going forward.
Blood Boil - Range updated to have three distinct ranges based off level thresholds:
Level 1-4: 2 yards. Level 5-9: 3 yards. Level 10+: 4. yards.
This was a really bad change to Blood Boil. It's difficult to locate demons where you want them to deal damage because once you teleport them they run off randomly. I saw no advantage for how the range used to be and even at 20 points this skill feels bad. I'd like to see these range changes revert and a slight nerf to the damage (~10-15% nerf) or put the skill on a skill delay to compensate for having the larger damage radius.
Consume - Updated bonuses to provide different values based on game difficulty of the consumed demon when it was bound.
Consume change only works for bound demons in the PTR. Summoned demons give the same values in every difficulty at every skill level which seems wrong. Otherwise I agree with the intent of this change because it should give lower buffs for lower level demons.
Bind Demon - Requires base skill point investment to bind demons.
10 – champion. 15 – unique. 20 – super unique.
Synergy for chance to bind from Death Mark reduced from 1% to 0.5%.
Reduced the benefit missing health grants. It now increases the chance to bind to demon and varies by type.
Introduced max health cap which varies by each demon.
Cursed Affix chance to cast Amplify Damage skill reduced to 5% from 75%.
Mana Cost reduced to 9 per second.
Removed Conviction Aura, Holy Fire Aura, Holy Lightning Aura, Blessed Aim Aura, and Might Aura from possible pool. When these roll they are now replaced with Fanaticism, Vigor, Thorns, Concentration. Holy Freeze can still roll on a bound demon.
Fixed Bind Demon to not roll a bind chance every 2 frames, now checks to bind on the 24th frame.
This is the worst change in the PTR patch. I CANNOT BIND A DEMON. I am literally spamming bind demon on every demon I see and it's not working. I am holding down the channeling and taking enemies down to lower HP levels and it still refuses to bind enemies.
On paper I should be at a 25% chance to bind at 10 points invested so I would expect to bind any demon in 4+ attempts but I literally cannot succeed. I don't know if it's the synergy nerf, the bind every 24 frames change, or the chance to bind based on missing hp. All I know is I either die or kill the demon I want to die before I can get it bound.
These changes need to revert. Binding a demon shouldn't be this difficult. They finally gave me a bound demon on a new PTR character but once I lost it, I could never get a new one back.
Here are some suggestions to change how this skill works:
1) don't base bind demon chance on missing hp because when we kill enemies quickly then we cannot bind them because they are either full hp or dead. I've run into this problem every time, I end up killing the demons I want to bind because I can't stop them from taking damage from other sources.
2) chance to bind needs to be real. If it says 25% but I cast it 100 times and get 0 binds then it's not accurate. This is most likely due to a bug or over nerf, but still the sheet info should match reality. A 25% chance to bind should bind a demon in 4 tries so the chance to bind calculation needs an update to match what the actual chance is when you hover over the demon.
3) remove the demon max hp cap or greatly increase it because the low hp cap ruins the idea of a demon warlock build. The new hp cap lets demons die quite easily in the end game. If bound demons are intended to die then maybe bind demon should simply create a copy of that demon and then you can re-summon it once it dies like Valkyrie and Clay Golem. Otherwise the demon needs to be tanky enough to survive most encounters because I cannot gear them up to survive and binding a new demon is a time wasting task.
4) cursed demons should cast amplify damage on a timer, instead of on a chance. Once every 5 seconds they should cast their curse and the curse should last 3 seconds. The old way everything was cursed screen wide easily but the new way I rare see curses on enemies. This ensures consistency in cursing but not to the point where everything is cursed all the time. I'd also like to see other curses other than amplify damage, such as decrepify.
5) Fanaticism needs to be removed just like Conviction aura. An argument could be made for removing all auras A2 mercs can provide as well so that we don't have overlapping auras. The fire and lightning auras shouldn't be removed from bound demons. I'd also like to see more auras added to replace conviction and fanaticism like Vigor, Resist Fire, Redemption, and/or Sanctuary.
CHAOS TREE Changes: The changes here were a bit surprising. RoF nerf feels unnecessary but doesn't hurt leveling experience at least. Flame Wave and Miasma Chains were over nerfed by a bit and need a slight buff again.
Sigil: Lethargy - Removed the Damage Taken stat.
It's an ok change, but maybe replace damage taken with cast speed instead of just removing it that way the sigil slows attackers and casters which fits its description better.
Ring of Fire - Damage reduced to be more similar to Frost nova damage.
In Normal this isn't noticeable which is good but at higher levels this could be an issue because that's typically when this skill falls off. It just feels like an unnecessary change because ring of fire is a leveling skill that's super powerful in Normal campaign and there's better fire skills in the end game. If anything they should've nerfed its early game damage and left the late game damage alone.
Flame Wave - 15% Damage Reduction.
This change is not noticeable in early game but it seems like too big of a nerf in the end game, especially since it's the only reliable fire damage skill in end game. I hope they walk back this nerf to maybe 5-10% reduction instead.
Miasma Chains - Removed casting delay. Added active chain limit of 5. Reduced cloud damage by 50%. Fixed Miasma Chains clouds to not exponentially tick. Fixed Miasma Chains clouds to respect next hit delay if they were generated by the same chain.
Cast delay removal feels amazing but limiting the chain and nerfing damage by 50% is too big of a nerf to this skill which wasn't that powerful to begin with. This skill needs to be as good as other chain and dot skills. It's a similar playstyle in a way with the chaining but it's a dot and requires positioning so it's actually worse than current chaining and damage over time skills.
Miasma Chains needs more damage and chaining to more targets doesn't hurt. There's no way to scale magic dots in this game like we can with poison dots so the base dps has to be decent. Chaining number should go up with points invested and can hit perhaps up to 10 targets (1 target per 2 points allocated up to 10 chains).
Overall Miasma Chains damage nerf should be maybe 25% instead of 50% and max targets chained should be 10 not 5. This combined with no cast delay might make it a viable build.
Miasma Bolt - Fixed Miasma Bolt so that it no longer double ticks.
This is a good bug fix, and it's working fine. However, it is a big nerf to the skill which means the other nerfs to miasma aren't as justified. The miasma skills feel awful as a result.
Abyss - Fixed Enhanced Entropy so that Abyss Radius, Miasma radius, and miasma duration, increases with bonus skill level for break point increases instead of base skill points.
This seems to work fine as a bug fix but again it feels like a nerf to the miasma cloud. They nerfed miasma chain cap, miasma chain damage, the double tick of damage on miasma bolt, and the abyss cloud radius and duration. Overall the Magic Damage Warlock build now feels terrible in PTR and needs to be buffed again.
ELDRITCH TREE Changes: These nerfs were needed and warranted. This tree still feels S-tier in the PTR with the right gear and points invested.
Echoing Strike - Reduced damage synergy bonus from 5% to 3%. Fixed Echoing Strike damage bonuses to be additive and not multiplicative. Fixed Echoing Strike not rolling to hit. Fixed Echoing Strike not incurring durability loss on the weapon.
Echoing Strike feels nerfed but still strong. I can clear P1 Hell fairly easily still but I cannot delete Uber bosses like I could before.
However, I'd like to see Echoing Strike not be an FCR + AR hybrid skill because itemization isn't built around a hybrid attack/cast skill like this. I'd rather it scale with attack speed + AR (like a traditional attack build) or if it remains a caster then FCR scales attack speed and have hit chance tied to amount of points in the skill up to max hit chance (95%) at 20+ points.
Eldritch Blast - Life and mana steal made static at 5%.
Overall this change is ok but I think it should start at 1% and go up to 10% (1% every 2 points). Most people use this skill as a 1 point wonder so it plays well into that but I think people should be rewarded for investing points into the skill.
I'd also like to see all 3 Hexes be the synergies for this skill, or at least the bottom Hex be the synergy, so someone can choose which of the 3 hexes they want to use with it. This would ensure the skill is being utilized for its intended purpose which is Hexes.
This concludes the play testing of all the nerfs to the Warlock. Overall I think Blizzard did a good job of bringing the Warlock back down to the existing classes in the game. I think they over nerfed fire and miasma slightly, they got echoing strike into a pretty good spot, and they completely botched the balance of the demon tree.
Terror Zones/Heralds/Sunder Charms Changes:
Colossal Ancient Statues can now drop from non-Terrorized act bosses.
I really don't agree with this change. I think Terrorized Act bosses having a unique drop tied to them, which then further unlocked a new end game, was a great change. If this change does go live then I hope the non-TZ act bosses have a much much lower drop chance than the TZ act bosses.
The chance to drop Worldstone Shards is no longer modified by player count.
I absolutely love this change and I hope they start applying this philosophy to more items in the game. I believe player count is a very contentious thing in the game now that people realized how good the drop rates are in P8. People now want P8 in online even when playing solo. I think removing player counter to magic find formulas and giving everyone the same drop chances would be a welcome change to the community.
Heralds now spawn and hunt players immediately upon killing any monster in a Terror Zone. The chance for a Herald to hunt you is increased with each monster killed within the same Terrorized Zone.
Heralds spawn way more frequently now and it feels like a bit of an over correction. I think they should find a halfway point between what it was and what it is now. This also resulted in heralds spawning directly on top of you out of nowhere which nobody likes. Hopefully they go back to the heralds spawning off screen again.
Latent Sunder Charms can drop from any monster, Terrorized and non-Terrorized, using Magic Find.
This is not the change I wanted for Sunder Charms. I absolutely love sunders and was not a fan of them never dropping. However, they should only ever drop from TZ's so that they are not rewarded until someone beats Hell and unlocks Hell TZ's. This also makes Gheed's Charm even more rare because unique charms can now be Sunders in non-TZ games. I'd like to see this change reverted so Sunders can drop from any TZ monster.
The increased chance to drop a Latent Sunder Charm now starts at Heralds of Dread (Tier 2) instead of Tier 4.
This is a great change. It was very difficult to get a Tier 4+ Herald to spawn in a game and when it did, it was very difficult to kill and didn't drop Sunders ever. Now it appears everyone will get a chance to farm a Sunder, which is great.
The increased chance to drop a Latent Sunder Charm from Heralds is no longer heavily modified by player count.
Again, this is a great change in the right direction. D2R drops should never be modified by player count. This would end the discussion on people requesting a toggle to change player count in their online games.
If the increased chance to drop a Latent Sunder Charm from Heralds fails to drop a Latent Sunder Charm, there is an increased chance of dropping something desirable instead, like a charm or amulet.
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