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While I agree with you to some extent, I don't think this really contradicts the point of the OP and other posters. Whether Fortify is mandatory or not, the implementation of it seems subpar. There are several ways they could have implemented it that would be better from a gameplay standpoint.
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Posted byBurnedInEffigyon Jul 9, 2015, 8:49:58 PM
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Ah, welcome to the big trap that screwed over Blizzard in SC2. 'TvZ is fine at the Korean Pro level, there's no need for us to balance anything!'
You can't balance only around the 1%. Yes, alot of your changes should be based on a more experienced player, however it's ridiculous to balance the majority of the difficulty of content solely on that 1%, because it's unrealistic. This is exactly what killed off alot of niche games that were great because of their inability to change. DotA/DotA 2 didn't make this mistake, and doesn't balance solely around professional play (although the vast majority of their changes are in fact due to professional play). Alot of changes are based around the top 15% or so as that's a much more realistic number of who is going to participate in your 'end game.'
Balancing at various skill levels is indeed important.
However, the whole "Fortify is mandatory" thing stinks to me as something the top 1% wound give zero fucks about. If they are even playing melee, they probably still would have an attitude of "just max deeps and don't get hit, silly."
SC2-style micro should be possible now with lockstep, after all. Fortify for survivability? More like Whirling Blades. Maybe with a CoH setup.
No, I think you all are flattering yourselves in thinking Fortify is balanced around the top 1%. I don't think Fortify was even designed with them in mind.
Oh no, I'm not saying Fortify is balanced around the top 1%. I'm saying that GGG increased the mob physical spike damage due to the presence of fortify in order to kill the top 1% using fortify.
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Posted byallbusinesson Jul 9, 2015, 9:05:34 PM
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Ah, welcome to the big trap that screwed over Blizzard in SC2. 'TvZ is fine at the Korean Pro level, there's no need for us to balance anything!'
You can't balance only around the 1%. Yes, alot of your changes should be based on a more experienced player, however it's ridiculous to balance the majority of the difficulty of content solely on that 1%, because it's unrealistic. This is exactly what killed off alot of niche games that were great because of their inability to change. DotA/DotA 2 didn't make this mistake, and doesn't balance solely around professional play (although the vast majority of their changes are in fact due to professional play). Alot of changes are based around the top 15% or so as that's a much more realistic number of who is going to participate in your 'end game.'
Balancing at various skill levels is indeed important.
However, the whole "Fortify is mandatory" thing stinks to me as something the top 1% wound give zero fucks about. If they are even playing melee, they probably still would have an attitude of "just max deeps and don't get hit, silly."
SC2-style micro should be possible now with lockstep, after all. Fortify for survivability? More like Whirling Blades. Maybe with a CoH setup.
No, I think you all are flattering yourselves in thinking Fortify is balanced around the top 1%. I don't think Fortify was even designed with them in mind.
Oh no, I'm not saying Fortify is balanced around the top 1%. I'm saying that GGG increased the mob physical spike damage due to the presence of fortify in order to kill the top 1% using fortify.
I'm not inclined to think the spike damage is designed around them, either.
I imagine the top 1% as a group which holds currency and/or XP per hour as its sole metric(s) of viability. As such, their undivided focus is on killspeed.
These folks never play melee, because ranged AoE is always going to be faster. Even if they did play melee (Ice Crash?), they'd never use Fortify, because spending a socket from their 6L is an unacceptable DPS loss, and using a non-automated skill for defense is *also* an unacceptable DPS loss.
Literally no amount of spike damage would ever make these guys use Fortify. The mob AI just isn't good enough to force them to use it.
So... what is spike damage designed around?
It's a lot more common-sense than the "top 1%" conspiracy theory.
1. Instant healing. Vaal Pact, Atziri's Acuity, to a lesser extent instant flasks. If a character goes from 1% max life to full in half a second, thhe game cannot kill unless it kills in under half a second.
2. Instant escapes. Alt+F4, logout, to a lesser extent portals. If a character can survive a deadly attack if they have time to react, kill them before they have time to react.
GGG's stance on point 2 is befuddling, but it is obvious they're aware of point 1. However, instead of admitting Vaal Pact is a mistake and legacy Acuities break the game by their very nature, they further uptune monster damage and fiddle hopelessly with leech mechanics.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jul 9, 2015, 9:51:19 PM
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Posted byScrotieMcBon Jul 9, 2015, 9:48:38 PM
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I'm not inclined to think the spike damage is designed around them, either.
I imagine the top 1% as a group which holds currency and/or XP per hour as its sole metric(s) of viability. As such, their undivided focus is on killspeed.
These folks never play melee, because ranged AoE is always going to be faster. Even if they did play melee (Ice Crash?), they'd never use Fortify, because spending a socket from their 6L is an unacceptable DPS loss, and using a non-automated skill for defense is *also* an unacceptable DPS loss.
Literally no amount of spike damage would ever make these guys use Fortify. The mob AI just isn't good enough to force them to use it.
So... what is spike damage designed around?
It's a lot more common-sense than the "top 1%" conspiracy theory.
1. Instant healing. Vaal Pact, Atziri's Acuity, to a lesser extent instant flasks. If a character goes from 1% max life to full in half a second, thhe game cannot kill unless it kills in under half a second.
2. Instant escapes. Alt+F4, logout, to a lesser extent portals. If a character can survive a deadly attack if they have time to react, kill them before they have time to react.
GGG's stance on point 2 is befuddling, but it is obvious they're aware of point 1. However, instead of admitting Vaal Pact is a mistake and legacy Acuities break the game by their very nature, they further uptune monster damage and fiddle hopelessly with leech mechanics.
I'm talking about the top 1% that play HC and go for the top 100 early on. Not everyone in there plays casters, actually a good chunk play melee. Some of the balance is designed to basically kill those characters that heavily rely on block and aegis aurora to offset damage.
Last edited by allbusiness on Jul 9, 2015, 10:56:52 PM
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Posted byallbusinesson Jul 9, 2015, 10:56:29 PM
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While I agree with you to some extent, I don't think this really contradicts the point of the OP and other posters. Whether Fortify is mandatory or not, the implementation of it seems subpar. There are several ways they could have implemented it that would be better from a gameplay standpoint.
Umm, if you read the OP and compare it to Snorkle's general argument, he's saying that even if Fortify is "mandatory" or not strictly "melee exclusive" those really aren't problems.
CWDT was never as mandatory as people liked to make it out to be. As I've said, it sounds great in theory but it rarely translates into practice when you have other priorities like dodging instead of proccing a buff of sporadic duration and benefit.
Increased physical damage in 2.0 notwithstanding -- that just puts more pressure on the player to find a reliable passive defense, not one that requires so much more painful micromanagement.
Perhaps this just means we will have a return to form to tankier builds instead of just expecting the life-per-level buff to carry every glass cannon.
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I'm talking about the top 1% that play HC and go for the top 100 early on. Not everyone in there plays casters, actually a good chunk play melee. Some of the balance is designed to basically kill those characters that heavily rely on block and aegis aurora to offset damage.
I'd be surprised if block-based builds were all that popular after the nerf from awhile back. I got the impression that everybody just cast-on-crit or Mjolner'd their way through stuff, while block might just be a funsies build.
Last edited by DeviantLightning on Jul 10, 2015, 12:16:45 AM
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Posted byDeviantLightningon Jul 10, 2015, 12:13:45 AM
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While I agree with you to some extent, I don't think this really contradicts the point of the OP and other posters. Whether Fortify is mandatory or not, the implementation of it seems subpar. There are several ways they could have implemented it that would be better from a gameplay standpoint.
Umm, if you read the OP and compare it to Snorkle's general argument, he's saying that even if Fortify is "mandatory" or not strictly "melee exclusive" those really aren't problems.
CWDT was never as mandatory as people liked to make it out to be. As I've said, it sounds great in theory but it rarely translates into practice when you have other priorities like dodging instead of proccing a buff of sporadic duration and benefit.
Increased physical damage in 2.0 notwithstanding -- that just puts more pressure on the player to find a reliable passive defense, not one that requires so much more painful micromanagement.
Perhaps this just means we will have a return to form to tankier builds instead of just expecting the life-per-level buff to carry every glass cannon.
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I'm talking about the top 1% that play HC and go for the top 100 early on. Not everyone in there plays casters, actually a good chunk play melee. Some of the balance is designed to basically kill those characters that heavily rely on block and aegis aurora to offset damage.
I'd be surprised if block-based builds were all that popular after the nerf from awhile back. I got the impression that everybody just cast-on-crit or Mjolner'd their way through stuff, while block might just be a funsies build.
Block during the beta is probably as strong if not stronger than it was back in Invasion. You used to have to sacrafice alot to make block work (current live), however Jewels in the endgame make block builds far stronger than they used to be.
Last edited by allbusiness on Jul 10, 2015, 12:25:34 AM
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Posted byallbusinesson Jul 10, 2015, 12:25:06 AM
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I guess? I wasn't that impressed by the one MoM+block based build I did see as it really didn't seem to be very good at mitigating a large number of hits. To say nothing of attacks that simply ignored block.
Probably okay up to a point, but it really does seem to be a tree-sprawling build, that, as noted, requires endgame jeweling to work. An RNG-based defense seems of little comfort when it drops the ball and the spike damage goes through.
Last edited by DeviantLightning on Jul 10, 2015, 12:30:28 AM
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Posted byDeviantLightningon Jul 10, 2015, 12:29:13 AM
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I guess? I wasn't that impressed by the one MoM+block based build I did see as it really didn't seem to be very good at mitigating a large number of hits. To say nothing of attacks that simply ignored block.
Probably okay up to a point, but it really does seem to be a tree-sprawling build, that, as noted, requires endgame jeweling to work. An RNG-based defense seems of little comfort when it drops the ball and the spike damage goes through.
When you layer block ontop of endurance charges, high armor, and big life stack it's actually pretty good. Block nodes got buffed, jewels make block better, and overall it's in a much better spot than it used to be.
MoM is pretty bad, that's a low armor build. High armor/Block is gonna be the way to go probably unless they drastically tuned down phys dmg.
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Posted byallbusinesson Jul 10, 2015, 1:44:20 AM
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Well okay, agreed. It's just looks to rapidly hit a point of diminishing returns, that point not being near the full block cap of 75%.
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Posted byDeviantLightningon Jul 10, 2015, 2:45:06 AM
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I feel like they just want the game to be hard, they want it to be a game where you can die, where you probably will die if you push high enough. I dont think theyre looking at one particular group and saying "we want to kill these guys" and then thats unfair for other people for whatever reason, theyre just looking at the game and saying "we want everyone to potentially and even probably die." Thats just the kind of game they want, they dont want a game where you can expect to never die no matter what you do.
Back when kripp used to play, so wayyyy back, defense was the thing. Everyone was thinking defense first at every turn. At some point it just became a dps game though, and its sort of boring, you really dont need that strong a defense to hit 100 in hardcore, you just needed decent dps and some vague budget defense. People just use all dps auras, invest virtually nothing in armour or evasion etc, dont keep up endurance charges, they just do fuck all defensively and manage to get by. The game didnt used to be like that, the power creep just went too far and it got too noobed and carebear in the mob damage department.
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Posted bySnorkle_ukon Jul 10, 2015, 7:04:38 AM
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