Ways to balance low-life shavronnes builds and daggerers/wanders

The only thing that need to be adressed about daggers,is their ability of some to scale attack speed up to 2+.Otherwise dagger notables,followed by claws have indeed the best notables on the tree,and the most interesting ones.They don't need to be nerfed,other weapon type notables need to have better passives with UNIQUE properties-like adder's touch,or the leech passives of claws.
Otherwise,low life is definetely overpowred for RANGED attacks,while it is balanced on melee,cause the amount of ES you give up actually matters alot when you are in melee range.THe change should be in the mechanics somewhat,rather than nerfing uniques.
Auras i beleive do need to be adreesed,severely.As i stated on other threads(with providing numbers),my 95 CI aegis soultaker shadow,takes 20 aura passives.The results of putting these 20 pasives on actual points on defense-offense resulting in half the effectiveness or less,than spending them on auras.That's unbalanced IMO,auras should not give greater benefits than passives towards a desired goal.Auras should be the icing of the cake,you just choose 1 or 2 to boost a certain aspect of your build.Investing in more auras should be limited to people who 1)Want to invest alitle be to afford a second one,or to have more mana 2)People who want to invest abit more,cause running a third aura would be very beneficial 3)People who invest heavily on all aura passives should be dedicated party supporters.Other than that,Investing heavily on auras(something that most builds do now) should give diminishing returs compared to spending them elsewhere.The auras with the current situation do more damage than your weapon,provide infinetely more armour than your gear,provide rediculous amounts of ES and max resists.

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Veruski wrote:

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Startkabels wrote:

Wands or bows are definitely not similar to daggers like the people said who disqualified this suggestion. Switching to bows or wands with this build means you will typically have less damage, less attack speed and less crit

not sure where you got got this

wands have higher crit than daggers. windripper has higher crit than daggers.

wands and bows open up CHAIN, which results in a fairly substantial effective dmg boost.

for the 324792347397th time, people use daggers because of WHIRLING BLADES, a movement skill.

i don't know how many fucking times i'm going to have to repeat this

No everybody is using daggers because it's the best melee weapon with the best nodes in the tree they can use with the best ranged skill that can be used with melee weapons: ST, which throws projectiles that have a boomerang effect are capable of hitting enemies multiple times.

Everybody is using daggers and ST with this build. ST has a design flaw that is also a slap in the face of melee. ST should be designed similar to wand and bow skills actually so ST only works with a specific weapon and has easily controllable damage.

Everybody is making the same mistake over and over and cannot seem to get their head out of the context of this low life build, totally ignoring the impact their nerf suggestions have on other builds.

Your suggestions are not properly aimed at this build but short sighted nerfs.

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Startkabels wrote:

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Veruski wrote:

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Startkabels wrote:

Wands or bows are definitely not similar to daggers like the people said who disqualified this suggestion. Switching to bows or wands with this build means you will typically have less damage, less attack speed and less crit

not sure where you got got this

wands have higher crit than daggers. windripper has higher crit than daggers.

wands and bows open up CHAIN, which results in a fairly substantial effective dmg boost.

for the 324792347397th time, people use daggers because of WHIRLING BLADES, a movement skill.

i don't know how many fucking times i'm going to have to repeat this

No everybody is using daggers because it's the best melee weapon with the best nodes in the tree they can use with the best ranged skill that can be used with melee weapons: ST, which throws projectiles that have a boomerang effect are capable of hitting enemies multiple times.

Everybody is using daggers and ST with this build. ST has a design flaw that is also a slap in the face of melee. ST should be designed similar to wand and bow skills actually so ST only works with a specific weapon and has easily controllable damage.

Everybody is making the same mistake over and over and cannot seem to get their head out of the context of this low life build, totally ignoring the impact their nerf suggestions have on other builds.

Your suggestions are not properly aimed at this build but short sighted nerfs.

Startkabels, this thread is about properly balancing lowlife builds. It's not about ST, or about ST making melee dull in comparison. The reason people want to nerf the attack speed bonus of blood rage is because it contributes to lowlife builds being overpowered, and is solely a LL property. No other build, except LL builds, would be affected. In fact, nerfing ST would have a MUCH greater implication for every other build besides BR, but nerfing the attack speed bonus of BR would only affect LL builds. It has NOTHING to do with ST, a specific attack you think is OP. Is ST OP? Maybe, that's a discussion for a different thread. A nerf to BR attack speed would very evenly balance out LL being OP. It would effect no one else. A nerf to ST, on the other hand, would have much more universal implications.

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Startkabels wrote:

No everybody is using daggers because it's the best melee weapon with the best nodes in the tree they can use with the best ranged skill that can be used with melee weapons: ST, which throws projectiles that have a boomerang effect are capable of hitting enemies multiple times.

Everybody is using daggers and ST with this build. ST has a design flaw that is also a slap in the face of melee. ST should be designed similar to wand and bow skills actually so ST only works with a specific weapon and has easily controllable damage.

You're simply wrong.

People are using daggers because it allows the usage of whirling blades.

That is by far the biggest reason.

If you you could use whirling blades with wands or bows, nobody would use daggers.

I will simply correct you over and over until you get this into your head.

Also, spectral throw is NOT the "best ranged skill" -- not even close. Which is why nobody would use it, if it was not for whirling blades.

Well that isn't quite true either.

Daggers are still on par with wands. Wands clear weak things faster, daggers are better for sustained damage like doing uber atziri.

Maybe not if wands use barrage, but not all builds have a dedicated single target skill, most would rather have a cast when damage taken setup.

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CabooseDog wrote:

Startkabels, this thread is about properly balancing lowlife builds. It's not about ST, or about ST making melee dull in comparison. The reason people want to nerf the attack speed bonus of blood rage is because it contributes to lowlife builds being overpowered, and is solely a LL property. No other build, except LL builds, would be affected. In fact, nerfing ST would have a MUCH greater implication for every other build besides BR, but nerfing the attack speed bonus of BR would only affect LL builds. It has NOTHING to do with ST, a specific attack you think is OP. Is ST OP? Maybe, that's a discussion for a different thread. A nerf to BR attack speed would very evenly balance out LL being OP. It would effect no one else. A nerf to ST, on the other hand, would have much more universal implications.

No it's not about lowlife builds, it's about a very specific end game build. That's the build that is used as a reference by the OP.
I think you should consider all the ingredients of the build, also and in particular ST.

I see that nerfing attack speed on BR only affects low life builds though so I'm not necessarily against nerfing BR anymore.
I actually missed the low life part on +0.75 increased Attack Speed when on Low Life so point taken :D

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I see that nerfing attack speed on BR only affects low life builds though so I'm not necessarily against nerfing BR anymore.

So you didn't even know the attack speed mod was lowlife only? I feel like you lack knowledge about the build to be making judgment calls on the so called ingredients.

If ST ceased to exist it would make no difference. Shavs + CoE is still the most overpowered combo. I gave my suggested nerfs earlier which only affect CoE and lowlife builds.

Spectral throw is insignificant when discussing that combo. It just so happens to be the only ranged skill that works with daggers so it works with whirling blades. It does not clear faster than wand or bow alternatives but it honestly doesn't matter. At their overkill DPS it's all about movement speed and dodging ability which whirling blades is best at. It's better than bow alternatives since you can use a shield for uber atziri.

As for BR there is a few things to consider:

- It works like the old righteous fire which was based only on life. This means lowlife builds are unfairly getting all its huge positives without any negative. A change to make it based on ES + life instead of life would mean lowlife builds need 10+ passives/completely different tree that's less offensive/chaos res gear.

- Damage auras/physical damage gear scale with IAS. Both are a lot better with that huge bonus.

- The lowlife bonus was designed to have that massive bonus before enhance/empower/shav existed. It was a bonus to have when you were nearly dead. It's fine to keep the bonus since that's the gimmick of lowlife but it should be reduced. It's silly that it currently exceeds the damage of a support gem and equals 15+ average IAS nodes or x5 the best IAS node on the tree which is haste.

- Changing BR's IAS bonus and making it affect ES/HP instead of just HP will only hurt LL builds in the current meta. Other popular builds that use BR such as CI and crit life builds are unaffected. Changing ST or many other things people have suggested have much more negatives consequences to other builds.

I've never used Shavs, CoE, BR, CoC, CI, Atziri's Acuity. None of that, but I've got a pretty good idea of what build all these trending topics are about lately.

It's not about any of those solely but about the power of a very specific end game build and BTW the effort and investment part to make the build is completely ignored all the time.

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Spectral throw is insignificant when discussing that combo. It just so happens to be the only ranged skill that works with daggers so it works with whirling blades

"insignificant" Really, are you this ignorant? ST just happens to be the only ranged skill that scales with just any melee weapon, has a boomerang effect and hits enemies multiple times you mean? Do you realize how much less limitations this result in for the build both passives as items wise and how much it benefits from the way ST works considering the context of the build?

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Startkabels wrote:

I've never used Shavs, CoE, BR, CoC, CI, Atziri's Acuity. None of that

good, glad you're willing to admit you have no idea what you're talking about.

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I've never used Shavs, CoE, BR, CoC, CI, Atziri's Acuity. None of that, but I've got a pretty good idea of what build all these trending topics are about lately.

You do not gave a pretty good idea if you've used none of those. Not even sure why CI is mentioned.

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"insignificant" Really, are you this ignorant?

Yes it's insignificant. Whether ST is too strong or not is also irrelevant. The build does not depend on ST and the ST variation is not the fastest clearing. It's the fastest moving(that uses a shield+ranged skill).

I'm not saying anything about spectral throw in this topic, I don't have a strong opinion on it eitherway. For all I care it can be removed but that doesn't change the core of CoE + LL builds.