A serious look at Blood Rage, the most broken gem in the game

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Crackmonster wrote:

@Scrotie

Now i read your post quite carefully, and i'm not going to comment much on your idealism of the Life, ES, Mana trinity. The only thing i will say is that i try my best not to make suggestions that require changing the basic mechanics and ideas behind the game. Because in the end, it is GGG's game, and i made such suggestions once but have stopped, they will continue to make their game, and if you demand a change in understanding for a change to make sense, it is demanding quite a lot. Not saying that it cannot happen.

I totally get that, which is why I wasn't so much suggesting anything as I was explaining how I believe it should have happened. The point of the post was to explain where I'm coming from in terms of what I think the skills should have been, which is separate matter from what to do about them now; separate, but related.

I was thinking about my earlier suggestion and realized changing Shavronne's — again — would be a disaster, for the same reason any change to Shavronne's would be a disaster. Creating yet more legacy versions is something to avoid, unless absolutely necessary. I imagine one option would be to make Blood Rage not technically do damage at all, but instead apply some form of negative life regeneration which bypasses the concept of "damage" entirely... but that might be too janky or weird.

I guess another thing worth thinking about would be switching the bonuses — making the attack speed always-on, and make the leech low-life only. These wouldn't necessarily be at the current values, by the way; this idea is separate from, but does not exclude the possibility of, numerical changes to the gem itself. I mean, going low-life for a bunch more attack speed sounds like something which is always better for the build; going low-life to get a bunch more leech sounds like something which is a little less obvious of a choice.

And then, of course, there's simply nerfing the thing numerically. Lower the attack speed numbers, or lower the leech numbers. I don't feel this is a particularly awesome thing to do, because it effects both abusive and non-abusive builds by a percentage, when the non-abusive builds don't really need the nerf. But it might be used, especially if doing the attack/leech swap described earlier.

To be completely honest, I don't like any of these suggestions. There's this quote I've been trying to find, I think it was Napoleon, who, when asked what he'd do if he was in the shoes of another general who was soundly defeated at a certain battle, replied that the reason he's such a great (military) strategist is that he never allows himself to be in those situations in the first place. The whole Blood Rage thing is a mess, and at this point is so ridiculously tangled that there's no such thing as a clean break.

guys

simplest, cleanest and the most elegant way of solving ALL problems that are related with low life is..

making 'low life' count HP+ES as a whole and apply its effect only when people are below 33% of COMBINED HP + ES

this would finally bring 'low life' to what it should have been from the start - bonus for living on a verge

currently low life is a cushioned car for wealthy and fat

Scottie why should creating legacy items be avoided under all circumstances and how do you justify a nerf to other builds that want to use BR?

For example take a life based melee build that uses BR and has to invest in a lot of life regen to sustain it. Let alone the current status of melee in general. How do you justify a nerf to that build by nerfing BR while you really want to aim for balancing a very specific end game build by that nerf?

Makes no sense to me...

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sidtherat wrote:

guys

simplest, cleanest and the most elegant way of solving ALL problems that are related with low life is..

making 'low life' count HP+ES as a whole and apply its effect only when people are below 33% of COMBINED HP + ES

this would finally bring 'low life' to what it should have been from the start - bonus for living on a verge

currently low life is a cushioned car for wealthy and fat

+1 for a direct change to LL

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You're not seriously looking at BR, the title is totally misleading. What you're seriously looking at is a low life build specced for aura stacking, ES with CI, ST and daggers supported by very specific end game uniques: Shavs, CoE and Atziri's Acuity.

You are totally ignoring the effort and investments, that's one. And two you are aiming for the wrong components of the build over and over.
Nerfing auras like you suggested before will impact almost any build really and is totally ridiculous.
Nerfing BR affects any player that wants to use that skill obviously and you cannot justify a nerf to a life based melee build that uses BR for example.
Nerfing CoE and nerfing the spell to attack damage mod in order to address LL build is wrong, instead you should address low life itself if that's the problem.

I don't know why i keep hoping you will understand the most basic things, but here i go again trying to explain where you misunderstand things.

First, if you actually read my suggestions you will notice how i, where appropriate, always focus on how it will affect a wide variety of builds. I know, in your mind, that isn't the case, but i assure you i discard ideas that wreck the game very fast.

Just look at what i have suggested for blood rage here. The only change i have suggested that would affect regular users of blood rage is a slight nerf of it's AS/LL.

I have even reasoned why that is, because it is just too much nobrainer power to be well balanced. If you read a bit more, you might realize that i even took particular care when suggesting numbers that it would primarily be a change in the quality bonus, in order to affect only rich builds using quality gems and enhance.

Still, i suggested a 10% base attack speed nerf and a 1% base LL nerf. I could easily have kept those constant. Doesn't that make you wonder why? As i have even written, it's because i believe that would be the best balance for all, it's on purpose. You just don't understand what you read and go on a crusade of blindness, writing post after post that adds nothing to the discussion because you simply do not even understand the basic meaning of things.

Auras are another example of things where i do on purpose suggest to nerf damage auras. It's not just to strike low life builds, but it because auras themselves are out of balance. Wrath does more damage than a perfect weapon, for christ sake. You assume so many things, things you so clearly misunderstand and then keep going with it, refusing to listen to what people tell you. It's pretty much anyone with a brain that gives up on talking with you after a few pages of discussion, all for the same reason. You just don't get things, and keep acting hard about how people don't get shit. Hilarious really.

And i have never suggested to nerf CoE nor Shavs, so please, stop talking trash, it's starting to get annoying.

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sidtherat wrote:

guys

simplest, cleanest and the most elegant way of solving ALL problems that are related with low life is..

making 'low life' count HP+ES as a whole and apply its effect only when people are below 33% of COMBINED HP + ES

this would finally bring 'low life' to what it should have been from the start - bonus for living on a verge

currently low life is a cushioned car for wealthy and fat

+2

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I was thinking about my earlier suggestion and realized changing Shavronne's — again — would be a disaster, for the same reason any change to Shavronne's would be a disaster. Creating yet more legacy versions is something to avoid, unless absolutely necessary. I imagine one option would be to make Blood Rage not technically do damage at all, but instead apply some form of negative life regeneration which bypasses the concept of "damage" entirely... but that might be too janky or weird.

That's the primary reason i don't want to touch shavronnes, it wouldn't help standard at all.

I gave thought to this and even had a section in my last reply that i took out, but depending on how items are programmed it might actually be possible to change that without creating legacy shavronnes, which is why i took it out.

Imagine if the item data is saved like, it has affix number 746 with value 1. If that is the case, then changing affix 746 would simple make all items with affix 746 show the updated text and functionality. Unlike if they nerf crit multiplier there might be an item with affix 315, value 65. New items can only roll affix 315, value 42 or whatever, so they wouldn't be automatically updated because they still are saved as value 65. I think you know what i mean even though it was badly explained, it may be possible to make such a change to shavronnes, depending on how item data is saved.

Yes Crackmonster after a second look on BR I realized I missed that you're change only affects LL.

And I do support sidtherat's suggestion to directly nerf LL a lot more than nerfing BR, but I never use LL and wouldn't care.

But my point was that you're not looking at BR and LL, you have a very specific end game build that you're using as a reference according to all the topics you posted about it.

So do you really want to change LL or do you just think the specific build is overpowered?

I think that bloodrage giving up to almost 19% is something that needs to be changed. It's basically like amulet, rings, gloves and most of a lifeleech gem. So yes, more than making low-life builds immortal is it a bit too much for other build too. It trivializes itemization when one thing gives so much.

low life is the problem, not blood rage

currently low life has INCREDIBLE bonuses including MORE spell dmg, incredible leech or attack speed

and that is 'ok' - because low life is risky?

well, low life is a shavrones build. there is NO RISK playing low life. you get shavs and you are just as safe as with 'normal' build - extra bonus of 'extra' auras is ofc responsible for better survivabiliy

(i absolutely ignore solaris lorica)

so it looks like this:

low life without shavs DOES NOT EXIST

low life with shavs is the most powerful and obscene build that can freely use several of available LL bonuses (some of these were balanced around idea that 'low life' == risk)

as long as ONE ITEM (shavs) makes low life a joke no item/gem including 'low life' component shall be ever balanced