Feedback Request: Tempest League

- Are the Tempests impactful? Are they scary?
Tempest felt boring at the very beginning. From cruel onwards they picked up harder mods and constant map mods which are more interesting. However this being HC league people are used to avoid risky content and will probably just wait for some of the harder mods to end because they can make act bosses one hit you easily. There also doesnt seem to be much of reward on killing them harder (or i havent encountered one yet)

- Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?
So far no, at lvl 66.

- Are they better at higher or lower levels?
Higher, because at low levels they do nothing.

- Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?
Havent checked global chats but we share information over teamspeak.

- Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?
Warbands seems more interesting but havent tested it. I usually try the SC league at the very end of the temporary leagues.

- Did you play Warbands when you normally would have played Tempest?
Nope.

Rejuv tempest on a boss fight makes the fight unbelievable frustrating, I had to fight cruel piety and it took about 10 minutes, not really challenging, just frustrating. Not impossible though.

They just don't seem worth the time. At the very least, any buff you get is instantly negated from having to stand around waiting for the Tempest to fire. It's an anti-fun mechanic, as opposed the Warbands which feels like the opposite.

I've only gotten to Act IV normal so far, but I love Tempests (not as much as Nemesis, though).

Not sure I'll make it to higher difficulties, so I'll post my feedback now :D.

I'm playing Tempests because I always give the new HC leagues a shot. Playing HC for me feels totally different and I play in a different way compared to SC leagues, so it's partly because of the new league mods that I am playing Tempest, but also because playing alone I prefer HC.

So far, Tempests have not been challenging, but fun. However, I got the feeling that in higher difficulties Molten and Glacial Tempest might be dangerous. Looking forward to it.
Transmogrifying Tempest - was having a ball with this one :D.
Shrinking Tempest - that one is so cute.
Stinging Tempest - Now that is some serious fun and at the same time very frightening, although for now I was able to survive it without any trouble.

I love that the effects affect enemies and player alike. So, with stinging you get 100% crit chance. At the same time, monsters also get this. In Merciless I imagine this can make times very interesting indeed. :D

- Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?
Not really - but I'm not sure it is really necessary, since the effects (so far) seemed quite obvious or are described in the buff/ debuff icon you get when affected.

One thing I'd love:
Alphabetical order in the Challenges tab.

- More interesting than Warbands?
Not sure. Haven't played Warbands, much, yet.

I rarely post anything on the forums but I will say that I normally play Hardcore leagues. I love the thought of playing carefully and the economy being stable through items being lost through dying.

That being said Tempest seemed awesome in concept, but in practice most of them dont do a whole lot. I think if they were made more dynamic it would make the player base like it a lot more instead of "Oh this one again" or "Oh cool extra ghosts".

Hey, I really hope you're reading though all the posts here. First off, I've only played both leagues to act 1 cruel so far, but so far I like the tempests much more then Warbands. So as for higher levels in cruel and merciless I can't really comment on, but my first impression is generally the idea is pretty nice.

Are the Tempests impactful?

Sometimes.

In Normal difficulty, their impact is much lower. I think it's basically OK for it to be like that (even though people might get the wrong idea about it), but gives you a chance to try them out and familarize their mechanics.

In Cruel difficutly, the game very noticebly takes a huge step up and makes them much more impactful over all. Esp with the combination of more map-like modifiers all over the place.
Though I have to say I prefer the modifers that actually modify the tempests themselves, even more so then the map-like modifiers. Quite frankly the values are hidden unless you're viewing the dat files, but I've found increasing/decreasing tempest AoE and increasing/decreasing their occurunce speed very interesting.

What I'd actually like to see in terms of mods something that increases the buff duration significantly for example. Or multiple tempest types per zone (as long they have a distinct colour, i.e. never two tempests with the same colour ... that would be confusing) to add more variety to a single zone.


Now there is a second part to it, as how well they work mechanically. I think there's a lot of potential there which could be improved.

First off, I think it's an issue that the acivation of tempests takes decent timing, basically often ends up in basically waiting. This goes for good as well as for bad tempest. For the bad ones you want to lure mobs in there, but if you take too long they walk out of it; slow mobs like zombies may also take forever to get in there.
As for good ones, you don't really want to be sitting inside of them, rather at the edge or there is a chance mobs get the buff.

But again the keyword is sitting inside of them, meaning often spend some time waiting for them to go off - in a fast paced game this isn't very optimal. I've been playing a melee char, and it may be better for ranged chars and casters as they can wait in there and attack enemies, but as melee char I have very limited range (using groundslam which has a *bit* of range).

So addressing that problem tempests could be much better if they'd have manual activation in addition to the automatic timer. For example, running over the center of a tempest would activate it - i.e. the same for enemies, if they walk over the center, they'd activate it. I believe that could add better strategy (even in terms of using moveskills to proc them, minions, totems or anything of the sort).


Secondly, the buff duration is really short. It seems to be sightly longer on enemies (?), but 10 seconds seems to be somewhat lacking. It's barely worth getting into one and using this as advantange. In addition, the duration doesn't seem to stack up, so *at best* you're refreshing your duration if you step into one agian.
So I think several things could be done; first increasing the base duration sightly possibly 15-20. Secondly allowing the remaining time to stack up in a way that doesn't get too strong (i.e. assuming the base duration was buffed to 20 secs, it could be some kind of regression, so stacking becomes less effective the more seconds you already have left. If you have 20 secs, you only get another 30sec. If you have 30 sec, you only get 5 secs, just as example) .


Thirdly something to make it more interesting with the hardcore aspect is to look at the Monster AI. I think it would be nice if could be tweaked so they (sometimes) seek out benefical tempests (<- I feel that would be good for a champion or rare monster) or try to lure the player into bad tempest (good for normal/white mobs that would suicide into it?). This probably shouldn't occur all the time, but sometimes.
Not sure how feasible is in terms of AI programming, given time constraints and so on.


Then there is also something I'm unsure about. The global restriction. I think it's interesting, since you have some way to work together, but at the same time it's kinda restricting. You *really* want to stay away from a zone sometimes if it has a bad tempest, and if you *need* it to progress, i.e. like The Harvest or so, there are only really two options, either go in there and potentially die or wait 1 hour for it to pass.

Compared to maps for example you have at least option to reroll ot simply not do the map, since you don't have to, but here you are forced to still (or sit out). I can see that's kinda the intention between both leagues (i.e. a global effect), but as for tempests I'm not sure whether it's actually that great. Maybe there could be a set of two different (mutually exclusive) tempests active for the same zone? So you could *at least* choose between the lesser evil (for your build). Alternatively they could change more often.

Additionaly as I've mentioned earlier it would be nice to actually have mutiple "regular" tempests (i.e. not the map mods that modify the tempests themselves or the map) so it's a bit more varied per zone.



Are they scary?

They can be. In particular certain combinations can be really deadly and dangerous. Maybe too dangerous as other people said -- sometimes you'd rather not risk fighting a boss like dominus with certain tempests active.
Or in confined spaces where you can't avoid detrimental ones very well.

Certain ones also seem much more dangerous then others. The posion cloud one seems really crazy strong.

Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?

Besides the one that turns items into the their sell value I didn't have had any others so far. And that one didn't feel useful at all. Rather detrimental even.

Are they better at higher or lower levels?

Seem more interesting in Cruel.

Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?

I can look though the map. AFAIK someone made a website for sharing them and someone recommended a reddit global chat, but other then that I do not know.

Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?

Yes. Warbands sounded more boring and in practice also feels much more boring so far (just another group of exile-like mobs).

Did you play Warbands when you normally would have played Tempest?

No. I usually play both SC and HC leagues. If I stay away from Tempest currently it would mostly be due to overtuned bossfights in Act 4, not due to league itself.

It has probably been said already but its really annoying having to wait for a Tempest buff to go away if you have to kill a boss in that area.

I'm playing melee, fairly tanky, comfortably moving through early a4c right now, except when nasty tempests show up...

Are the Tempests impactful?
Yes. As someone who eats has to eat hits with their face I definitely worry about them.

Are they scary?
Yes. Most tempest spells are mere obstacles, and some vaal spells are horribly lethal. What happened, I thought we agreed unpredictable spike damage is unhealthy? Other mods are just overtuned: Of Poison, in addition to poisoning on hit, adds massive chaos damage to mob attacks, so why isn't this noted in the description? I'm normally feeling nice and tanky but when this mod shows up it's terrifying.

Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?
Maybe refining is neat, but it's too much trouble to acquire tempest buffs and then attempt to farm in a paltry 8 second window. Losing clear speed for these mods just isn't worthwhile, and moreover it's irritating.


Are they better at higher or lower levels?
I'm not super high level yet, but they were more evenly balanced in low levels. It seems they become very unpredictable and spiky as they ramp up at high level. (I hear horror stories of summoners being 1-shot by vaal ice novas)

Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?
Not that I've seen, but I haven't looked around much. Too busy progressing, and I don't find the rewarding tempest to be rewarding enough to bother.

Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?
I do think it's more interesting than warbands, but I'm playing HC because I like HC, not because I like Tempest.

Did you play Warbands when you normally would have played Tempest?[/quote]
Not yet, I'm playing some Warbands to play with a friend, but I suspect I'd play Warbands while waiting for a nasty tempest to pass.

Final thoughts on tempest:
-I love the idea, but I don't think it's balanced enough to be fun. I never feel powerful when I get a buff tempest but mobs feel far scarier when they get hit, and large packs seem to get constantly blasted by tempests.
-If a damaging tempest wipes out a pack it's never a huge boon, it's charming but it's just a drop in the sea. If a tempest wipes out a player though... well that's a big deal.
-Deliberately drawing mobs into tempests to be killed may sound fun, but if your damage is so poor that you need to waste time elaborately killing mobs with tempests then you shouldn't be in that zone in the first place.
-Players need to keep progressing to earn wealth and improve their character, but pausing to grab a beneficial tempest, or searching for rarity tempests (which may be in low level zones with less desirable uniques) makes for sluggish gameplay.

I want Tempest in Endless Ledge, Descent, Descent Champions, etc. I feel like Tempest will be a really great racing mod in general.

Can we do this but for warband?