Nerf Ancestral Bond - it should have a downside

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MoLoK13 wrote:

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.

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TreeOfDead wrote:

Poison Arrow is the Issue, not Ancestral Bond

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ment2008 wrote:

Another nerf requests?

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Wispo wrote:

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ment2008 wrote:

Another nerf requests?

Yes sadly. Like if a skill that SIMPLY WORKS must be nerfed -.-

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Wispo wrote:

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ment2008 wrote:

Another nerf requests?

Yes sadly. Like if a skill that SIMPLY WORKS must be nerfed -.-

eyp, and why are we here?

OMG GGG NERF CLOAK OF DEFIANCE NERF EB TOO GOOD OMG

when actually they were just about viable for hard endgame.




With the damage boost to mobs the old arctic armour cloak of defiance builds would get absolutely smashed because their defenses at the best of times were crap and their already minimal leech was a considerable part of their survivability. But you know, better to nerf that one thing that works on a budget than look at why the alternatives for budget es gear casters are not working. Now everything is equally as fucked and people just go armour scion with a bm gem or run a totem build because wtf else are they going to do? Its that or play attack based and they simply do not want to play attack based, you cant force the entire community to play attack based because you want 2.0 to be path of melee meta.

They completely fucked things up with 2.0 imo, instead of presenting a new game with lots of old problems fixed they threw out the most broken, in need of fixing trash build meta I have ever seen in this game since we came out of open beta. Its like they knew what they wanted to destroy but had no ideas of what they would replace it with, so they just settled for destroying popular areas of play and whatever happens happens, note on the fridge to work out how to fix the game again in another 6 months time.

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MoLoK13 wrote:

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.



Why is any of this a problem?

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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MoLoK13 wrote:

Ancestral Bond is the Issue

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

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This leads to totem-based meta with boring gameplay.

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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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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.

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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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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.