Lightbane Raiment... Nerfed?!?!?!?!

So you took an already highly underused seemingly weak item which had some hidden potential, and nerfed it into utter shit? Over the past 2 months I have spent countless hours testing and theorycrafting builds to use Lightbane Raiment, and now all of that is thrown into the dumpster?

The previous iteration of the item required you to spec heavily into DoT and block nodes. The reward was a little bit of damage vs regular mobs and some very nice dps vs uniques and rares due to the damage being % health. The drawback was using up a valuable chest slot with no life and bad defenses on it. It seemed to be pretty balanced as I was at least able to reach 70 maps for a cheap price with it and with a better build and items I certainly could get further.

Now I feel like I am in the twilight zone with it's current state. Did Zahndethus kill one of the dev's pets or something? In addition to the aforementioned flat damage being mind numbingly bad (pathetic 75 chaos damage compared to the 300-10,000 it used to do), the awesome sound and visual effect is gone. Say goodbye to that satisfying buzz and cool black plague.

This change needs to be reverted.

Edit: After using an updated version the damage still pales in comparison.

200 dps vs 300-500+ vs white mobs
200 dps vs 1000-3000 dps vs rares
200 dps vs 5000-10000 dps vs uniques

Item in it's current state is trash when it used to be semi-viable.

I'm inclined to agree. Unique item should have a unique function. This one being a % based DoT. Wasn't OP either.

Exactly. It was supposed to be the mirror opposite of the % healing that consecrated ground gave. Why change this to a flat number?

The only feasible explanation to give it the nerf hammer is that they found it to be OP. Which in my experience, was simply not true. Sure you could kill extreme health bearers like Piety very quickly, but you also had to block her to proc it and with the defenses this give she was going to likely hurt. Overall the item was balanced. And regardless the item is a disgrace in it's current state.

It's really unfortunate GGG used the same effect for the skill and changed the damage to balance the skill. Legit complaint imo.

e: I guess the percentage value would be OP for the skill and they chose to give both skill and item the same effect.

Even if you take 100% increased chaos/dot, you're only dealing...... 8%. That will kill a non-resistant mob in..... 12.5 seconds.....

I guess it really would have been OP.

% based damage is potentially significant against bosses, but the dot for the raiment, how does it function now? how much flat damage does it do per second?

It probably deserves a damage buff, or at least a way to scale the damage it does...

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anubite wrote:

% based damage is potentially significant against bosses, but the dot for the raiment, how does it function now? how much flat damage does it do per second?

It probably deserves a damage buff, or at least a way to scale the damage it does...

If you read the original post, you'd see that currently it does a measly 75 chaos damage/second. I'm not going to waste my time calculating what that is with passives, but the old version was able to do:

4% (1+.89(dot)+.73 (chaos) + .4 (vulnerability) + .4 (Le heup of all) = 14%

14 % of the average 5000 hp white mob = 700 dps
14 % of 50,000 rare/unique = 7000 dps

with shock stacks that could be some pretty nice free damage as you can see. Compare that to the insulting 75 dps.

As a unique item with pretty severe drawbacks, I just don't consider it OP.

We'll see what happens.

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CanHasPants wrote:

Even if you take 100% increased chaos/dot, you're only dealing...... 8%. That will kill a non-resistant mob in..... 12.5 seconds.....

I guess it really would have been OP.

Following BalSagoth1 you can reach 14%. That would take 7 seconds. And you get corpses on top of that you can explode, buff your minions with, etc. I don't know if that would be OP but certainly very very strong.

The unique doesn't provide corpses, it shouldn't have low damage. In its current form, it's just a meh leveling unique.