Nerf Ancestral Bond - it should have a downside

TLDR at the top: Ancestral Bond is too good because it gives a huge defensive as well as offensive boost for basically zero downside. This leads to totem-based meta with boring gameplay. Some sort of nerf would be good, particularly to the defensive aspects of the keystone.

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I'll start with a few statements I doubt will be very controversial.

- Flame totem is amazing for early leveling, largely independent of what the final build will be.

- The mechanics of totem skills - lay them down then run to next pack - gives an inherent advantage in clear speed compared to self-cast.

- Flame totem, but even more so shockwave totem and incinerate totem... are all insanely strong and very safe builds, disproportionately to the amount of input put in (either in terms of player effort or currency).

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Why is any of this a problem?

Flame totem as early leveling skill isn't really a problem in terms of balance (except maybe in context of racing, but not really addressing that right now) but it does hurt the player experience. After a rip in HC and I'm thnking of re-leveling, the best way to do it for any witch/templar/marauder/scion is to spec into dual FT and then respec those points later. Sure, you could use your main attack skill as soon as you get it, but you'll probably clear slower and be more likely to die, so just take Ancestral Bond.

This leveling experience is pretty dull. Going through A4C just slap down two totems, wait with drink in hand while enemies eventually die, repeat... Boring, but again, hard to resist when it is so safe and (somewhat) fast.

In the late game totems become just insane as damage scaling kicks in. I played crit SWT and it cleared faster than ridiculously expensive 6L-shavs-lowlife characters I have in standard... While simultaneously being much safer and easier to play. Also, cheap (a total of about 10c in gear, and all the jewels/fuses I found along the way to fuse a 5L Restless Ward).

Low investment, incredibly high safety and clear speed. That is the totem experience.

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Ancestral Bond is the Issue

Ancestral Bond: double your DPS and reduce the chance of enemies attacking you by x%.

The supposed "downside" of Ancestral Bond is you can't deal damage yourself, but honestly why would you ever need to with how insanely strong totems are? (There are also traps/mines if you're especially desperate).

Imagine summoners were given a keystone "double your minions DPS, but you can't attack enemies yourself." Well, they already weren't building to attack enemies themselves, so why is this a downside? It's just an insane boost to their build.

So, Ancestral Bond is so good you can't help but take it as a totem user, but it also removes a lot of interactivity. With Flame Totem/Incin Totem your tactical choices revolve around whether to place totems right next to each other (for tough enemies) or place them further apart (trash mobs). Curse with Flammability for bonus points. Maybe as SWT you're casting Ice Spear with PCOC for some charges (not that you really need to in order to wreck everything).

AB is too good not to use, but also rather boring.

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A proposed Ancestral Bond change

At the top, I want to say that going after totem damage seems like the wrong way to do it. A damage nerf will either be irrelevant or so crippling that the skills vanish from use entirely, which we don't want. A small FT nerf to early damage might not be a bad idea but that's not my main point, which is the late-game safety and utility that totems provide.

Totems can still be strong but they shouldn't be as safe as they are now.

Ancestral Bond should have another downside - some % of damage dealt to totems is shared with you.

The "Bond" part of Ancestral Bond never made much sense to me before. This change makes you literally bonded to your totems, you taking damage when they do too.

How much damage would it be? A level 20 flame totem has approx. 5000hp, after some totem nodes we could say it has about 7500. If you took 10% of damage dealt to your totem it would be 750 HP or about 1/5 of the HP ball for a late game character. Not going to kill you instantly, but you might want to (a) invest a bit more in totem resistance passives/jewels and (b) think twice before placing both totems in front of Malachai's big smash.

What I like about this change is it adds tactical depth (you think harder about where to place totems so they're not both getting hit by the same big AOE, for example), the downside can be worked around with good itemization, but it still leaves the skill viable. It also makes totem users deal with corrupting blood, reflect, and so on which they can otherwise totally ignore. It increases the skill ceiling for totem play considerably.

Try levelling with flame totem and a damage spell/support like fire trap. You're just as safe, and if you play smart, can clear (somewhat) faster.

It saddens me that with the current status of the game, with so many things nerfed, build diversity is huge - up until you actually want to get into the 90s. At that point, your options start to narrow down significantly; yet you're asking for one of those options to be whacked with a stick.

Do you actually want something left that's fun to play at the end of all these nerfs?...

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This leveling experience is pretty dull. Going through A4C just slap down two totems, wait with drink in hand while enemies eventually die, repeat... Boring, but again, hard to resist when it is so safe and (somewhat) fast.

Or use cyclone and do it 10 times faster and still safe. You can also use other skills. A4 is easy if you know how to play.

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Ancestral Bond: double your DPS and reduce the chance of enemies attacking you by x%.

If this would be true everyone would use totems and Soul Mantle would best uniqe.

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The supposed "downside" of Ancestral Bond is you can't deal damage yourself, but honestly why would you ever need to with how insanely strong totems are?

To clear even faster or be able to spec dmg nodes into defence one.

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Ancestral Bond should have another downside - some % of damage dealt to totems is shared with you.

Remove pupose of using totem is bad solution.

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Try levelling with flame totem and a damage spell/support like fire trap. You're just as safe, and if you play smart, can clear (somewhat) faster.

Definitely true, I have also leveled with FT / Fire Trap / Flame Surge and it's very fast. Just much, much less safe which starts to matter around A4C when I wonder "I could lose 10% clear speed but do it 50% safer by just taking double totems..."

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Do you actually want something left that's fun to play at the end of all these nerfs?...

Well, there are lots of things that are fun to play. My personal preference would be a leveling progression more like Diablo 2, where it was functionally impossible to reach 100. Now, people do it in 10 days in HC.

As I see it the options are to either (a) tune down late game damage so all skills are a bit safer or (b) make the "safe" skills a bit more dangerous to balance it out. As (a) unlikely to really happen, and some combination of mods will inevitably be dangerous, just spread that danger around a bit more evenly by making all builds engage with enemy damage output somewhat.

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Or use cyclone and do it 10 times faster and still safe. You can also use other skills.

...and trade for progression weapons every 15 levels, when I could keep using the same +1 fire skills blue stick until Merciless?

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Remove pupose of using totem is bad solution.

Taking 10% damage that totems do still is a huge defensive bonus relative to say, melee, which takes 100% of damage mobs do. Totem builds would just need to drop a few more points into totem resists and their own armor to mitigate damage. Again, it wouldn't instagib you, just require some potion usage when totems are getting smacked around a lot. Only deadly if you play sloppy, which should be the case for all skills.

If the "purpose" of using totems is to be able to ignore the dangerous mods and enemies that every other build must address somehow, then yes that purpose should be removed.

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MoLoK13 wrote:

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Or use cyclone and do it 10 times faster and still safe. You can also use other skills.

...and trade for progression weapons every 15 levels, when I could keep using the same +1 fire skills blue stick until Merciless?

yeah that 5 trades that take 5 minutes in total are not worth clearing content much faster lol.

People don't always go for best option but often they go for easier one, even if easier mean 1% easier. This apply to build, even if we will have almost completed balance where only 1 skill is better than other skills and only by 1% a lot of people wil go for that 1% build.

And if all builds would be equal on streamr would use specific skill and other would use it. And we would get threads about that skill being OP.

We will never get even close to that balance and we will always get complains about bad build diversity and OP skills that aren't that OP.

There are inherent downsides to playing with totems that you're neglecting to bring attention to.

Examples:
1. You can't leech (which even affects survivability at a passive level, via triggers, cwdt, etc)
2. You can't (in most circumstances) benefit from on-kill effects (among other things, results in more effort needed to obtain frenzy/endurance/power charges)
3. You can't (in most circumstances) benefit from surgeon's flasks
4. Totems die quickly in areas with ground effects
5. Totems are easily stunned/interrupted
6. You cannot increase the chaos resist of totems (they die in 0.00001 seconds in pvp vs. poison arrow; they don't even trigger once before going poof)
7. Totems (even a level 25 totem) die in 0.00001 seconds in pvp against most things (like someone standing still spamming arc); also near insta-rips for high APS or CPS totems vs a high level tempest shield and insta-rips for any totem vs a counter-attack gem utilized by a well-built attack-based character
8. Totem AI ignores SRS
9. Totem AI requires extra handholding/attention to take out targets granting invulnerability to nearby enemies
10. Totems have like 0 armour, and there's no way to give them armour. How would your damage sharing proposal handle overkill damage? (if you don't have overkill damage, then players would have an incentive to avoid increasing totem life in order to reduce incoming damage). If you have overkill damage, then players would insta rip vs. many high damage physical wind-up attacks from bosses, chargers, etc., since (in most circumstances) totems are stationary. If you expect players to resummon totems to manually dodge them out of these big hits, how would it handle damage taken for resummoning a totem when at the totem cap? (which currently counts as killing a totem).

In addition to the above list, there are more general downsides to playing a character based on ancestral bond, that aren't specifically stated in the keystone itself. I just stopped at 10.

What is with you people and the whole thing about nerfs? Once more this is one of the very first I see someone complain about ANCESTRAL BOND ffs do some of you just go and say oh hey I really should go make a thread on how to ruin someone's ''play-style'' stop that.

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yeah that 5 trades that take 5 minutes in total are not worth clearing content much faster lol.

Yeah, and cost you a couple of chaos each. Meanwhile my SWT character saved that currency and bought a Divinarius at the same level I can equip it, and now has GG weapon from that point forward, resulting in faster clears, more currency, and more overall wealth.

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There are inherent downsides to playing with totems that you're neglecting to bring attention to.

Examples:

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I won't go through this all point-by-point, but: it is quite easy to get charges on a totem build if you're creative, and the DPS output is so high even without them that it's generally not worth the bother. Can't really speak to PvP but no other part of the game is balanced around that anyways.

Overkill damage should apply. Merciless Dom does about 5.2k damage with his smash, costing you about 520 life from a totem (further mitigated by your resists and armor) so just pop a flask. If you put down two totems in front of Merciless Malachai before he smashes, and he crits, and it kills you... Well, then you're just at roughly the same level of risk as other builds.

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hey I really should go make a thread on how to ruin someone's ''play-style'' stop that.

I guess you just read "nerf" and skipped the rest? Whole point is not to ruin totem builds, just make the risk involved in playing them slightly more in line with every other build in the game.

"I don't like the fact that others have fun, please nerf."

Just don't play dual totem if you dont like it. Problem solved. It is not like dual totem is ruining the game (like vacuum farming did).

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MoLoK13 wrote:

Overkill damage should apply. Merciless Dom does about 5.2k damage with his smash, costing you about 520 life from a totem (further mitigated by your resists and armor) so just pop a flask. If you put down two totems in front of Merciless Malachai before he smashes, and he crits, and it kills you... Well, then you're just at roughly the same level of risk as other builds.

Uhm, no. With other characters you just avoid the smash. Even worse for Core Malachai, or other high-damage avoidable crap like Malformation Piety.