You are being way too restrictive with acrobatics. Needs FULL redesign.

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goetzjam wrote:

Please enlighten us all on how they can add something in the game to make it so melee is more viable because lets take a look at what they have added\changed:

I just said it. A paradigm shift, because clearly any balance to the current paradigm will only further reinforce that paradigm's flaw--ranged is inherently favored to melee by all shared mechanics.

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The problem isn't that, it's the nerf to melee characters of all kinds, ranger or shadow, when going acro which was completely unnecessary.

It is a side affect to the necessary changes they had to make, that being said most "melee builds" that I know if unless you were ci\super heavy crit didn't even start in the shadow area because of RT being on the other side of the tree. Shadow is more then likely the best class for an ES build, which acro already makes it extremely hard to use, so no I don't think it was directly just to nerf melee, if it did "o well" cause other builds abused it moreso then melee.

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Further, the shadow simply has lost the option to use acro at all without penalty and the node is placed right outside his starter area meaning he was intended to get it in some builds.

Perhaps these builds were ranged bow builds?

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As for your question about ranged using a mechanic, simply adding a melee-dps based defense mechanism to the counter gems or what have you would have been fine. IE, you get a damage shield equal to your melee damage on proc. Ergo ranged would not benefit because their melee dps would be low. Came up with that shitty solution in thirty seconds, toy can do better if you take the time.

Ok so dagger spectral throw builds will have even more damage then before, trust me your "shitty solution" is truly shtty. Just saying the first dumb idea to come into your head isn't helpful as I just took your "shitty solution" and told you why that won't work, probably took me less time to tell you then it did for you to come up with it.

As for @canhaspants your mechanic idea is nice, until you have dagger users (or other melee weapons with ranged builds) getting even more powerful by being closer to the mobs.

^ I said it wasn't my idea ^-^ No credit to me. I didn't name its originator because it's paraphrased/slightly altered, and I don't know if they'd appreciate me sharing their brilliant ideas for them.

Whatever problems may arise are merely bridges that must be crossed at that time. The entire concept is horizontal expansion of mechanics, since vertical scaling only serves to strengthen or weaken the established paradigm.

Right now, melee lacks the mechanics to prop them up; they play by the same rules as other, ranged builds, in a rule-set that favors the freedom of movement and engagement, and freedom from threats that ranged provides. Scaling those rules solves little except to push the extremes of what those rules are capable of.

So.. point is, the wheel needs to be reinvented.

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CanHasPants wrote:

So.. point is, the wheel needs to be reinvented.

Except this game isn't in beta anymore, a change of a very large magnitude might be offputting to quite a few players. I am not saying melee doesn't need help but a wheel getting changed might be too much.

The combo of dodge+block+evasion was too strong and everyone knew that.

Think GGG is pushing towards making you choose 1-2 defense type and not stacking multiple ones for obscene effects.
There are still some really powerful combos around.

Before you had characters running multiple of defense layers for extravagant defenses where as now you have a shift toward defense specialization.
For lightning coil to achieve similar effectiveness you need higher lightning resist, for block you need to invest more than before, and so on.

However i do agree Acrobatics seems to be a bit too restrictive.

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goetzjam wrote:

It is a side affect to the necessary changes they had to make, that being said most "melee builds" that I know if unless you were ci\super heavy crit didn't even start in the shadow area because of RT being on the other side of the tree. Shadow is more then likely the best class for an ES build, which acro already makes it extremely hard to use, so no I don't think it was directly just to nerf melee, if it did "o well" cause other builds abused it moreso then melee.

The nerf was necessary, going about it in the way they did was not. There are other things they could have done to nerf block, such as simply capping it at 40%. Moreoever, doubling the penalty for acrobatics users was improper. If they don't want acrobatics characters to reach high block levels, cap block for acrobatics users at the default value (24-32% for whatever shield you might be using, 15% for dual wielders) so that AT LEAST default builds can get the default for their class without getting nerfed for no reason.
I mean literally, I can take the default shadow (glass shank with viper strike) add the offhand of ANY AVAILABLE CHOICE and go to the nearest keystone (which IS acrobatics, tied with CI and conduit) and immediately lose a good portion of said benefit for picking up that offhand. That's bad design.

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goetzjam wrote:

Perhaps these builds were ranged bow builds?

As I've already said, if you're going to be a ranged bow build as a shadow, why did you pick shadow? Reroll ranger because odds are it will be more efficient. At this point we can just move acrobatics into the ranger starter tree.

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goetzjam wrote:

Ok so dagger spectral throw builds will have even more damage then before, trust me your "shitty solution" is truly shtty. Just saying the first dumb idea to come into your head isn't helpful as I just took your "shitty solution" and told you why that won't work, probably took me less time to tell you then it did for you to come up with it.

So reduce spell and projectile damage by 50% while the barrier is up?

I'm not going to fix everything for the developers. If I come up with the cut and dry best idea for fixing these skills, your next comment will be "but they have to code it first! Are you going to code it for them? No? Then you're wrong to suggest this." No, I'm not wrong to suggest it, I'm giving my feedback - which is valid given the state they've created and that there are other solutions. And which feedback is the point of this forum, suggestions are for the suggestion forum.

Again, I agree with you fully that some nerf was necessary. My problem is that the change is a direct nerf to 75%+ of all the available build options for the 2 classes nearest to the node, leaving only the ranged bow users to fully benefit from the node. And those untouched bow builds were the biggest offenders last patch, rolling over atziri with trash rares they picked up from docks and still are that way this update. Meanwhile the ever-suffering melee options continue to get nerfed. Lol.

Just throwing this out there:
If it truly was EV+Block+Acro that necessitated the nerf (and not that Str-side blocking was OP as well), then they could have simply swapped the order of precedence to Block/Acro, then EV, and this would have been a significant nerf to EV simply due to how entropy works (would have had more "true" random EV rolls, rather than past-precedence affected rolls). From there, if the combo was still too powerful, then Acro and/or Block themselves could have been made to affect EV entropy for even greater effect.

More-so the point was that such a change would have laid the groundwork to adjust the game's mathematics, if the change itself proved too ineffective.

As opposed to a force-fed acceptance of lesser or sometimes different returns from blocking.

I never liked the *minus* attributes that have been added to Acrobatics at some point during CB
Or that Dodge and Evasion should be 2 different mechanics (give me an example of a Kung Fu movie that shows this! lol)
So maybe a redesign is in order keeping in mind that Dodge and Evasion could be merged. Game is complex enough to handle the outlining process of all aspects for a good self-designed build (not copy cat'ing an existing one).
I feel like this just wants to make the travelling to that area be less attractive to non Ranger starters who also picked up Ondar's (and way formerly IR).

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

... but that sort of after-the-fact rationalisation leads to all sorts of bad things. It leads to stymied development and stunted tree growth.

Agreed and nice spotting!
Like people who play a bad joke on someone and if nobody is laughing they change their mind and say: Sorry it wasn't meant to be funny.
This is why I do enjoy reading your posts.
Very insightful (or oldschool: 'wise').

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Legatus1982 wrote:

I mean literally, I can take the default shadow (glass shank with viper strike) add the offhand of ANY AVAILABLE CHOICE and go to the nearest keystone (which IS acrobatics, tied with CI and conduit) and immediately lose a good portion of said benefit for picking up that offhand. That's bad design.

No, it isn't. Not if the overall benefit is a benefit to your character.

Say there was a node that halved your off-hand damage, but tripled it for your main hand. That would be a very powerful node, bringing up your damage from 2x to 3.5x. And that's in a universe where both weapons are used equally, which isn't the case in this game, so the benefit would be even greater. Same sort of deal here. You lose 30% of your block. You gain a flat 40% dodge chance (because nobody stops at 30%).

Say you had a 40% block chance as a dual wielder (which most likely you won't hit in 1.3). Losing 30% of that knocks you down to 28%. You went from taking 60% to taking 72%, a 30% increase in damage taken. But of that 72%, you're going to dodge 40% (well, you'll dodge 40%, then block 28% of the 60%, but same result), meaning you'll only take 43.2%. That's still over a quarter less damage than you were taking before. A quarter less damage for a 4 point investment. Block nodes are only a fraction of that. So it is still worth it. And that doesn't even count the value of spending one more point and dodging 30% of spell damage.

Of course, that's for a pure evasion character. If you wanted to take a bunch of ES and Armor, then yeah, the cost goes up, since those guys are hit as well. But that's the breaks. It's a Keystone node. It is supposed to get you to build around it to a certain degree.