Your thoughts on the game speed meta?

delete

the pace is a clear problem imo at this point

even a year ago the game was a lot slower. Im not even gonna talk about open beta.

and its about to get even worse with ascendancy

theres a lot of problems of making the game as fast as possible, but I'll outline the basic, obvious ones:

1.
lack of gameplay variety. sure, we still have things like RF, traps, mines (well mines are kinda clunky) and summoners, but for most part the gameplay really boils down to spam a skill and see screen one-shot. what happens is that right now most skills start converging into same formula only different skin.

I think on one of the podcasts it mightve been actually Zeno who said, DoT is binary - if it doesnt kill a pack, its useless. well, the whole game is becoming (or is already) binary. if a skill doesnt clear a screen instantly, its deemed close to garbage.

this means a lot of ideas are going to the shitter with this pace. skills with delayed effect that are not super reliable are simply deemed garbage in todays pace. secondary skills with conditional extra damage such as flame surge, are simply unnecessary. debuffs unless you have a dedicated curser, are a burden. theres a reason wither is put on a totem, and unless youre fighting a boss, you dont really need the totem anyway with chaos skills once you pass a certain threshold.

2.
not only that, but the faster you kill mobs, the less time they have to deal damage to you. offense is one of the best defenses right now, still. a lot of bosses that arent multiple phase/are one-shot scary, can be downed extremely fast with deeps. the deepenis limiting device aka reflect was removed for most part and you can blindly go into building as much as deeps as you want with no repercussions really

3.
less meaningful balance and constraints. a skill has to satisfy certain conditions or its 'unusable'. any characteristic of a skill or an item that discourages clearspeed is thrown straight into garbage bin.

a marohi erqi used to be a top weapon and its downsides were ok for the upside it provided. who uses it now ? the attack speed is simply too slow compared to other weapons for it to compete.

skills that have a delay or distinct lack of speed(attack/cast/move) basically HAVE to overcompensate by having 1)good, reliable area clear 2)huge damage.

this leads to homogeneous ass skills and lack of creativity. when the prereq for making a skill 'attractive' is to make it clear a screen per a specific short timeslice, theres only so much you can do.

4.
any detriments to clearspeed will be met with pitchforks by angry players who already were given a taste of how fast the game can be. you already have players complaining about bearers (a simple be aware of your surroundings and dont rush blindly as fast as you can mechanic) and such complaints was the most likely reason reflect was removed.

unfortunately imo we went down too far the rabbit hole for GGG to back out here and rectify the situation. too bad.

GGG is giving us earthquake and aoe mines.

Erqi is sub par weapon even if it had the same dps but much higher APS and less physical damage. Plus its a freaking mace and maces suck.

"

Nephalim wrote:

GGG is giving us earthquake and aoe mines.

Erqi is sub par weapon even if it had the same dps but much higher APS and less physical damage. Plus its a freaking mace and maces suck.

earthquake appears to be the essence of my third point. a huge aoe and huge damage in exchange for delay. you HAVE to do it.

same thing with storm call. the aoe is crazy right now even without investment in aoe nodes or support gem.

GGG is trying to overcompensate on less-used skills by making a more uniform aoe and slapping some more damage on it.

maces...well, lets put it this way- there was a point in making a perma-stun solo toon when kripp did it in 2013. what is the point of having a close to permastun solo toon in current pace of game ? you kill slower and if you can one-shot rares, whats really the point of stun anyway then ? sure, its a bit more defensive, but if you can one-shot anyway, what is the point ?

power creep simply leads to more power creep (and absolute power creep corrupts absolutely ;))

"

lukeiy wrote:

"

No.

Excellent contribution!

nah thats his way of doing" Bond. James Bond"

No. I_No

This game has become so easy , it's ridiculous lol .