Winter Orb nerf.... is a buff? Wut?

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Kulze wrote:

So... 50% less DPS while walking is utterly useless to grind clear-speed down, sure... we won't one-shot some rares, the second hit will take care of that while running by though.

It's 50% slower fire rate which is way different in actual gameplay when clearing than 50% less dps.

You'll have to slow down/backtrack to ensure that the mobs get hit a second/third time. The range has also been nerfed which will require you to slow down even more to kill everything. Plus rares + blue packs have had their HP buffed.

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SaiyanZ wrote:

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Kulze wrote:

So... 50% less DPS while walking is utterly useless to grind clear-speed down, sure... we won't one-shot some rares, the second hit will take care of that while running by though.

It's 50% slower fire rate which is way different in actual gameplay when clearing than 50% less dps.

You'll have to slow down/backtrack to ensure that the mobs get hit a second/third time. The range has also been nerfed which will require you to slow down even more to kill everything. Plus rares + blue packs have had their HP buffed.

Ye this is what I've been saying. For some reason people can't see the difference between clear speed and dps. WO will still be able to kill stuff, but at a rate that is probably not competitive with top clear speed builds.

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sidtherat wrote:

They had to 'do' something with Winter Orb and at the same time they know they are doing things against 40 percent of their playerbase.

What company can afford to reduce their income by more than 1/3rd?

Gee, it sure would be smart of them not to enable Flavor of the Month meta rotation bullshit and try to keep everything balanced from the get go then, wouldn't it? :P

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Pizzarugi wrote:

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sidtherat wrote:

They had to 'do' something with Winter Orb and at the same time they know they are doing things against 40 percent of their playerbase.

What company can afford to reduce their income by more than 1/3rd?

Gee, it sure would be smart of them not to enable Flavor of the Month meta rotation bullshit and try to keep everything balanced from the get go then, wouldn't it? :P

You mean GGG introducing actual balance? *Gasp* impossible, that's blasphemy! Which game would ever want to actually introduce proper balance where all the available content is as fun as possible?
They would loose people guys! They have too much fun... maybe die from fun-shock or something!

Nah... but really, that's what I'm talking about in general, there was a time in PoE when everything was more or less viable, you actually had build-variety which wasn't just 'pick meta or your league will most likely suck'. It should go back to be that, balancing the game around the mediocre builds instead of the top-tier... adjusting top-tier to be mediocre and adjusting low-end to be mediocre as well.

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Miská wrote:

Ye this is what I've been saying. For some reason people can't see the difference between clear speed and dps. WO will still be able to kill stuff, but at a rate that is probably not competitive with top clear speed builds.

Not really, using Inpulsa takes immediate care of that, and even if not, using a mace with fire explosion does as well, giving you're tapping into the conversion-line and won't go with herald of ice... which also takes care of it.

The only thing we now need to do is actually invest a little bit into AoE to make sure the explosions hit reliably, it's not such a difference for clear-speed.... just for single-target fights which already were hard to do for the majority of builds.

What has been done is basically invalidating the majority of builds, pushing people ever further to the high-end uses of it instead as those won't see any sort of actual difference compared to before.
What should've been done is adjusting the mechanics to hamper the high-end builds and actually bring them in line with the other ones to create actual variety based on personal play-style.

Hasn't been done sadly.... but that's to be expected from GGG.

Before patch with increased duration passives + lvl20 20% gem increased duration support, I had 10 seconds of winter orb at max stacks.

Now its 6 seconds. Seems like a nerf.

edit, tried it in blood aquaducts, barely kills packs, way more clunkier than before, time to reroll to cyclone

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Necromael wrote:

Before patch with increased duration passives + lvl20 20% gem increased duration support, I had 10 seconds of winter orb at max stacks.

Now its 6 seconds. Seems like a nerf.

edit, tried it in blood aquaducts, barely kills packs, way more clunkier than before, time to reroll to cyclone

That's because with the new one you're not going duration but cast-speed as focus. Allows far more damage and survivability, and the cast-speed causes the channeling to take only a second.

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Kulze wrote:

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Necromael wrote:

Before patch with increased duration passives + lvl20 20% gem increased duration support, I had 10 seconds of winter orb at max stacks.

Now its 6 seconds. Seems like a nerf.

edit, tried it in blood aquaducts, barely kills packs, way more clunkier than before, time to reroll to cyclone

That's because with the new one you're not going duration but cast-speed as focus. Allows far more damage and survivability, and the cast-speed causes the channeling to take only a second.

Thanks for advice, but i will have to scrap it, until elementalist gets some prolif again, have many characters to play anyway on standard, so loss of elementalist wont be felt.

At this point i will rather go RF jugg with all the buffs to melee and immortal call.

Just to make it clear, ebcause there was a bit of confusion throughout the thread:

- cast speed scaling is the same as before, WO always scaled projectile frequency with cast-speed, it was just not mentioned on the gem
- projectile frequency is the same as before while channeling
- projectile frequency is halved while not channeling
- WO scales worse with duration now
- smaller range of targeting

To sum up: new WO is old WO while channeling except a slighlty smaller range. The main difference happen while you are not channeling. So all of this is QoL removal and not gutting the skill. Now you have to build around actual channeling and standing still, which is the downside of the skill.

So far, it feels absolutely terrible while moving. The cast frequency is absurd, you are lucky if it casts twice before the stacks wear off.

Dashing from pack to pack and channeling still works fine tho.

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Doing damage while moving was what made it unique. It needed a nerf for sure, but not this. A reduction in damage would have been more appropriate.

I'm struggling to see a reason to even use it anymore, now that it requires you to channel for even mediocre damage, compared to any other channeling skill which does far more damage.