80% LESS damage... GGG world record for hardest nerf?

You guys are being way too short-sighted. If they just sat around and did nothing to this build, a massive amount of people would have used this build because of how effective it was. Please, let's be real, pre-nerf this build was melting level 78 maps with a 4 link and 2 curses. Even with just 1 curse you can kill the entire screen within 1 second and the amount of currency invested was very minimal.

This build was so damn good and so damn cheap that honestly, why would anyone who plays the game even semi-competitively make any other build, especially in the new leagues? If anything, this build would have killed diversity because, why would I play anything else when I can just shoot a reflect proof arrow into a pack of mobs and 1 shot the entire screen in less than 1 second?

People who play the game purely for fun will play what they want regardless. This nerf didn't affect those people. People who have fun by 1 shotting the map with no currency investment are almost by definition min/max optimizing players. All those people would basically have no choice but to play this build because it outclasses everything else by a significant margin.

The same people crying in this thread now would have been crying 3 months from now saying things like, "OMG GGG please nerf MA, why would I play any other build if a 2ex budget build is 1 shotting 78 maps" "GGG all I see is MA builds in public parties" "Nice balance. My 50ex level 95 does less damage than a level 70 character with 5ex of gear." Don't pretend like a lot of you would not have been crying for the nerfs. You guys are just astounded by the 80% number which honestly just tells you how powerful the skill was previously.

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Boem wrote:

@snorkle, partially agree, prolif should have never remained in the state it is for so long. Pretty much all mechanics around it are excessive and if not that, then they are abusive.

ya absolutely, i do agree mate, it could have done with being put in place on the last league changeover, maybe even the one before tbh. Its just too 'free', its been in a bit of an overpowered state since kripp was playing, and thats a long time to be leaving something so cheaply overpowered in play.


Its sort of funny tho that for a long time fire was the element that people hated in open beta, at the start the view was that shock and freeze were semi broken strong and that left fire as a really shit choice. Obviously its been buffed a little since then with changes to what scales burn, something that made sense mechanically in isolation i think but in game terms opened up the gates to something very few were using but was probably already really strong without the buff.







I feel that its hard to balance things like that, because the community decides something is shit, like say armour atm, evasion at one point, and they just wont stop calling for the buff, make it useable GGG its so shit needs a buff... and often theyre not shit its just 95% of people saying it havent even tried it and 95% of the remaining who have were doing it wrong, theyre just going on group logic, its what everyone is saying so it must be true right? They have dodgy maths to prove it etc. So they buff it a bit and that gets people playing it... and then they find out its absolutely ridiculous now and 6 months down the line the same people are calling for the nerf, to put it back into a 'balanced' place that probably resembled exactly how it was functioning when they were calling for the buff. Like its not GGGs place to say "you guys are making shit builds this is how you make X work" because that takes the fun away from us finding builds etc, and sometimes I think they feel they have to overbuff a thing to give the community the confidence to explore it and find the builds, at which point we realise what they knew all along which is it works, and now actually works too well.

Weve known about burn prolif for too long tho, and it keeps rearing its ugly head.

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Explicitskill wrote:

You guys are being way too short-sighted. If they just sat around and did nothing to this build, a massive amount of people would have used this build because of how effective it was. Please, let's be real, pre-nerf this build was melting level 78 maps with a 4 link and 2 curses. Even with just 1 curse you can kill the entire screen within 1 second and the amount of currency invested was very minimal.

This build was so damn good and so damn cheap that honestly, why would anyone who plays the game even semi-competitively make any other build, especially in the new leagues? If anything, this build would have killed diversity because, why would I play anything else when I can just shoot a reflect proof arrow into a pack of mobs and 1 shot the entire screen in less than 1 second?

People who play the game purely for fun will play what they want regardless. This nerf didn't affect those people. People who have fun by 1 shotting the map with no currency investment are almost by definition min/max optimizing players. All those people would basically have no choice but to play this build because it outclasses everything else by a significant margin.

The same people crying in this thread now would have been crying 3 months from now saying things like, "OMG GGG please nerf MA, why would I play any other build if a 2ex budget build is 1 shotting 78 maps" "GGG all I see is MA builds in public parties" "Nice balance. My 50ex level 95 does less damage than a level 70 character with 5ex of gear." Don't pretend like a lot of you would not have been crying for the nerfs. You guys are just astounded by the 80% number which honestly just tells you how powerful the skill was previously.

I'm blown away by people who either just don't read the thread before giving their opinion or ignore all the people they disagree with and blow forward with their point.

Just about everyone agrees the build should have been nerfed. Some people are upset about the timing, some people protest nerfs regardless of what the target is, but the real people arguing get that the skill is too strong. The problem we have is that it didn't deserve an 80% nerf, the largest nerf given ever. There's also the problem that this is another skill which is being nerfed without the real issue of ele prolif being addressed. How many prolif-able skills will be nerfed because of how strong they are with it before prolif finally gets adjusted?

Also, you guys are completely overestimating the gear cost of this build. If LL w/o a shavs was easy to assemble why isn't it more popular? Shavs isn't cheap either.

Is there anyone besides the maker and devs defending these changes that has actually played the build? It seems like a long line of people making guesses as to it's power level and gear requirement.

Posted once and wasn't going to come back. Nerf/Buff (Balance is the word all of you are looking for) threads are pointless.

Put yourself in GGGs shoes for a minute. I personally imagine they have three areas that they have to take into account:

-Capability/Efficiency
-Total Cost of Build
-Skill Required

All builds target capability/efficiency. At least one of the other two should be significant, and match the respective capability.

This particular build was exceptional in the first category, and required little of the others. This was probably one of the easiest decisions they have ever had to make in terms of balance.

I understand the frustration, we've all had builds that were hit by a change at some point. I can personally claim two builds that were completely unrecoverable after a change. The rest just needed some slight tweaks. One of the dead builds was my favorite to date, but I understand why they did it. I was collateral damage, unintended consequence....but that's the nature of the beast.

What you guys are asking for would end very very badly at the macro level. Basically an escalation that never ends.

EDIT: If you really wanted to get down to it, capability could be split into several sub-components (Survivability, Damage, Speed, etc.) but you get the point.

This case show us general problem with this declining game/company. Instead of hard nerfs they could produce more and better content. But because this game is so short and every powerful build makes it boring, they need constant nerfs in order to make people stay. Only problem with this so far: it makes the game itself boring. Would D2 be that popular, if there was always a staff member who is watching every night if there is a "new build" - in order to nerf it overnight? - NO!

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Moosifer wrote:

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Explicitskill wrote:

You guys are being way too short-sighted. If they just sat around and did nothing to this build, a massive amount of people would have used this build because of how effective it was. Please, let's be real, pre-nerf this build was melting level 78 maps with a 4 link and 2 curses. Even with just 1 curse you can kill the entire screen within 1 second and the amount of currency invested was very minimal.

This build was so damn good and so damn cheap that honestly, why would anyone who plays the game even semi-competitively make any other build, especially in the new leagues? If anything, this build would have killed diversity because, why would I play anything else when I can just shoot a reflect proof arrow into a pack of mobs and 1 shot the entire screen in less than 1 second?

People who play the game purely for fun will play what they want regardless. This nerf didn't affect those people. People who have fun by 1 shotting the map with no currency investment are almost by definition min/max optimizing players. All those people would basically have no choice but to play this build because it outclasses everything else by a significant margin.

The same people crying in this thread now would have been crying 3 months from now saying things like, "OMG GGG please nerf MA, why would I play any other build if a 2ex budget build is 1 shotting 78 maps" "GGG all I see is MA builds in public parties" "Nice balance. My 50ex level 95 does less damage than a level 70 character with 5ex of gear." Don't pretend like a lot of you would not have been crying for the nerfs. You guys are just astounded by the 80% number which honestly just tells you how powerful the skill was previously.

I'm blown away by people who either just don't read the thread before giving their opinion or ignore all the people they disagree with and blow forward with their point.

Just about everyone agrees the build should have been nerfed. Some people are upset about the timing, some people protest nerfs regardless of what the target is, but the real people arguing get that the skill is too strong. The problem we have is that it didn't deserve an 80% nerf, the largest nerf given ever. There's also the problem that this is another skill which is being nerfed without the real issue of ele prolif being addressed. How many prolif-able skills will be nerfed because of how strong they are with it before prolif finally gets adjusted?

Also, you guys are completely overestimating the gear cost of this build. If LL w/o a shavs was easy to assemble why isn't it more popular? Shavs isn't cheap either.

Is there anyone besides the maker and devs defending these changes that has actually played the build? It seems like a long line of people making guesses as to it's power level and gear requirement.

I dunno mate, theres tons of people criticizing the nerf, and yes 80% was justified. The fact that the change effected nothing but the prolif spec makes what you say about the skill being nerfed to suit prolif sort of meaningless, the skill hasnt been nerfed, its a movement skill and the decoy has the same effective life as before due to taking less damage. So now all those other countless builds that used the life value of the decoy as damage have been hurt needlessly? Not rly because they dont exist.


The fact that it uses a shavs does not mean anything flies because shavs is expensive. People who have seen the videos know how overpowered it is, you dont need to play the spec to see how ridiculous that damage is. Its gear requirement is not that high, considering in most op shavs builds the shavs is one of the cheapest items in the build, this was more op than most of those and will work with a 1 chaos solaris chest. Does it need a loath bane, morbid knuckle, atziris acuity etc? No, and every one of those things is far more expensive than a shavs.

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SuperDumbo wrote:

This case show us general problem with this declining game/company. Instead of hard nerfs they could produce more and better content. But because this game is so short and every powerful build makes it boring, they need constant nerfs in order to make people stay. Only problem with this so far: it makes the game itself boring. Would D2 be that popular, if there was always a staff member who is watching every night if there is a "new build" - in order to nerf it overnight? - NO!

congratulations on living up to your name. I guess rather than nerf this build they should have spent half an hour last night making a whole new act I guess? Like what are you even talking about? Diablo 2 had fuck all endgame compared to PoE, nothing you said is even remotely attached to reality or sense.

... On topic, No, this was not the hardest nerf in GGG history.

Release Shockwave Totem easily takes that prize.
0.9.9 -> 0.9.10:
- Removed its critical strike chance (5->0).
- Reduced its radius of effect (roughly halved).
- Reduced its damage (roughly halved).
- Reduced the frequency of pulses (2/s to 1.1/s, against almost halved).
- Increased its mana cost.

Then shortly afterward in 0.10.0, AB was changed from a notable to a Keystone. When it was a notable, it did not disallow non-totem/trap/mine damage, so you could run double totem and cast or attack alongside them. So that was a massive indirect nerf to SWT.

Stare upon it and weep. SWT has gotten literally nothing but buffs for the last 3 years and its still not as strong now as it was on release.

---

EDIT: Lest I forget the runner-up, Shock Nova. 0.9.6 rewrote it and completely and utterly nerfed it, numerically and mechanically (from "most popular build in the game" to "hasn't been used as a main damaging skill since").

The damage nerf was something like an 80% less damage reduction and it also introduced the deadzone. Cheers. :)

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

I dunno mate, theres tons of people criticizing the nerf, and yes 80% was justified. The fact that the change effected nothing but the prolif spec makes what you say about the skill being nerfed to suit prolif sort of meaningless, the skill hasnt been nerfed, its a movement skill and the decoy has the same effective life as before due to taking less damage. So now all those other countless builds that used the life value of the decoy as damage have been hurt needlessly? Not rly because they dont exist.

I'm telling you from playing it. Post-nerf it's very cumbersome, inconsistent because of the unreliable ignites (which was a factor pre-nerf) and because it can't kill reliably quick, a missed ignite or two in a row you're fucked. Now with an ignite you could end up fucked anyways. Curse immune and/or fire res packs you just need to outright skip because you could clear a map before killing just them. God forbid if they have life regen making them literally unable for you to kill them.

I'm also sick of hearing of what the skill was intended to be used for. As the minions don't have your life total, them having your life reserve total doesn't make sense. If this was actually an unintended interaction then why when fixing the bug related to it, why didn't they just remove the LL factor? Just make it work on MI like other minions, not like zombies start off on LL because the user has it. So I don't get the arguments that it's meant to be just a decoy/movement skill, they could have destroyed the build mechanics rather than teasing us with poor damage.

"

The fact that it uses a shavs does not mean anything flies because shavs is expensive. People who have seen the videos know how overpowered it is, you dont need to play the spec to see how ridiculous that damage is. Its gear requirement is not that high, considering in most op shavs builds the shavs is one of the cheapest items in the build, this was more op than most of those and will work with a 1 chaos solaris chest. Does it need a loath bane, morbid knuckle, atziris acuity etc? No, and every one of those things is far more expensive than a shavs.

Shavs is one of the most expensive chests in the game, actually isn't it the most expensive if you remove mirrored and legacy items from the picture? What chest in torment/bloodlines would be more expensive? A +3 bow w/o links is on par with any good, but not-GG weapon and a 6l will ofc is not falling out of trees. The helmet doesn't exist early in leagues, currently in torment I've only seen a handful of non-Vertex helms that compare to it. Which is the problem with most of the gear, if you go non-shavs route the shit is a pain in the ass to find. ES + Chaos res is a counter logic because of CI, people don't keep that type of gear unless it's really good.

I didn't find this build particularly cheap, also it was much more difficult to gear than most builds I've done. My GSer cost about the same, weapon is probably a little cheaper yet comparing the builds now my GSer would blow my MA build out of the water, without question.

Again, as everyone seems to take it black and white, totally agree it needed a nerf, 80% was just way too fucking much. Look at the skills pneuma listed that got comparable nerfs, shockwave totem which was dead until recent huge buffs, shocknova which is still dead and in other places I've heard dual totem spork. These builds were all overnerfed rather than seeking actual balance. Took 2 years for shockwave totem to get properly balanced and now it's an amazing end game skill, great clear speed, fun, interactive, literally my benchmark for comparing MA as SWT is my only build I have taken over 91 and I know it the best.

A build mind you that was under 50 ex and could carry 2-3 people through a courtyard on it's own, and I routinely did.

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Moosifer wrote:

I'm also sick of hearing of what the skill was intended to be used for. As the minions don't have your life total, them having your life reserve total doesn't make sense. If this was actually an unintended interaction then why when fixing the bug related to it, why didn't they just remove the LL factor? Just make it work on MI like other minions, not like zombies start off on LL because the user has it. So I don't get the arguments that it's meant to be just a decoy/movement skill, they could have destroyed the build mechanics rather than teasing us with poor damage.

so you think they should have completely destroyed the build rather than nerf its damage? That doesnt really make any sense tbh, youre pissed that they nerfed it but wouldnt be pissed if they nerfed it even harder to the point where it didnt even exist? Bascially you were playing the build and now ur pissed, well ok, but it needed nerfed so youll have to deal with it.

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Moosifer wrote:

Shavs is one of the most expensive chests in the game, actually isn't it the most expensive if you remove mirrored and legacy items from the picture?

If you remove mirrored chests? A mirror by itself without the fee is worth more than a 6 link shavs yes, so every current mirrored chest is worth more than a 6L shavs, and every original chest thats even remotely close to those original chests people are mirroring are worth 2 or 3 or 4 times more than a shavs, and the originals that are still mirror worthy are worth what? they dont even have a price.

If you look at a low life spec throw build the dagger is worth considerably more than a 6 link shavs, so is the amulet, and both rings, and the gloves, and the shield, and the belt... thats 7 items on those chars that are worth significantly more than a 6 link shavs, and thats a 6 link were talking about, this build doesnt need a 6 link shavs. There were shavs going for 17ex in bloodlines, I was using a shavs as a skin on my cloak of defiance and Im not even remotely close to a wealthy player in the bigger picture.