Recent changes to the Shaper fight

The patch notes 2.4.1 only mention a graphic update to the Shaper fight, a bug fix with the beam and that taunt no longer works. But here are two other important changes that were not mentioned in the patch notes:
- the Shaper will use Teleport Slam even if the target is right under him
- the floating balls of ice had their awareness radius increased big time

The first change means that those who previously tanked the Shaper all the way now need to run from him once in a while and then get back to him. OK, that makes the fight a little harder for those builds while nothing changes for those who always fought the Shaper from range. But wow, you really hate melee builds, don't you?

Now, the second change is where it gets nasty. Previously, the floating ice balls that spawned not near you would not start going after you until you moved within a certain range of them, about 1/3 of the arena size. Now they go after you immediately from almost anywhere in the arena. And when you are standing in Zana's bubble they keep spawning and coming to you, from different directions. In the final stage of the fight they spawn more often, even multiple at once. So it's now a lot harder to keep Zana's bubble safe from them. Once you let a few of them land inside the bubble - you are royally screwed.

That is a very bad change IMO. It's not fair to do this when the player is forced to stay in the bubble. Please consider changing it that the balls of ice stop spawning during the Total Chaos phase.

The melee change is just fucking hilarious honestly they're like HEY LETS TRY TO FUCK BLADE VORTEX AND ICE STORM AND OTHER BUILDS!

ok what about melee?

? what of it

...

What do it

ok

ROFL

The second part is even more funny honestly but you can drop the balls if you're in the middle and it comes at you directly in the sidelines of the bubble so it's not a huge issue if you've well done it 400+ times obviously but you get the point.

"

Kelvynn wrote:

The first change means that those who previously tanked the Shaper all the way now need to run from him once in a while and then get back to him. OK, that makes the fight a little harder for those builds while nothing changes for those who always fought the Shaper from range. But wow, you really hate melee builds, don't you?

Well, I thought that way for a long time too but right now I think they are just too stupid to see what they are doing. I bet it was 100% like I_NO said!

put this on reddit

"

The second part is even more funny honestly but you can drop the balls if you're in the middle and it comes at you directly in the sidelines of the bubble so it's not a huge issue if you've well done it 400+ times obviously but you get the point.

You can get 2 or even 3 balls coming at you from different directions while you are in the bubble during the final stage. Making them all land in a way that still leaves some space for you is a lot harder now and more dependent on random luck.

This fucks ES builds pretty hard because you often need to get inside a vortex to prevent a new ball from taking the remaining space inside the bubble, so you lose some ES, and they just keep coming without giving you any time to restore ES.

That whole part where the balls keep spawning during the bubble phase is BS. It was just not as bad while most of them stayed on the fringes of the arena. But now they all go after you immediately.

"

The melee change is just fucking hilarious honestly they're like HEY LETS TRY TO FUCK BLADE VORTEX AND ICE STORM AND OTHER BUILDS!

ok what about melee?

? what of it

...

What do it

ok

ROFL

The second part is even more funny honestly but you can drop the balls if you're in the middle and it comes at you directly in the sidelines of the bubble so it's not a huge issue if you've well done it 400+ times obviously but you get the point.

Literally everything they change includes a stealth nerf to melee. I'm pretty sure they do it on purpose now.

GGG fucking hates Melee lol. Everything in this game is harder for melee and everything is designed to fuck up Melee.

What mechanics punish Ranged?

*Sounds of silence*

Proximity Shield. DA-BUM TSSS. Nobody ever notices this though.

Looks like the change to the ice balls' awareness radius was reverted. They are back to their old behavior and no longer start chasing you from across the screen. Thank you for listening, GGG.

The Shaper still uses Teleport Slam even when you are tanking him, so I guess that change is here to stay. Oh well. "You can't always get what you want".

I'm 100% sure they wanted to fuck the icestorm / BV users lmao

Does anyone know, btw, how much damage the Shaper slam deals?

EDIT: And what damage type it is?