Melee nerf really

Increasing Flesh and Stone mana reservation only really hurts melee

Pretty sure the expectation is that now we are reserving things with mana AND life now.

Not true, several caster builds (esp. low life) run flesh & stone in sand stance for the blind chance. But yeah kinda sucks that they changed this for all builds, instead of finding a way to make it less useful for casters. Whenever they make some sort of skill/mechanic based around melee such as fortify, it always ends up being exploited by all sorts of non-melee playstyles :D

I was fine with everything in the balance manifesto except this change.

I disagree with their reasoning: first, flesh and stone offered damage on par with other 25% reservation skills, not beyond it (linking with maim appropriately increased the reservation, and of course this interaction could have been removed if necessary). Second, the defensive benefits were clearly powerful but they also represent one of VERY few defensive reservation skills which could reasonably be added to a build (seriously, 50% reservation defense skills need a buff).

Frankly, I understand nerfs to player dps but rarely understand nerfs to survival. The game is not lacking in ways to kill us (often before we can react).

I am using flesh and stone on 8 characters, of those only 3 are melee builds and i'd bet the overall representation of that skill kinda looks like that. 50% worth of evasion for 25% mana reserved is kind of a joke. I mean if casters and ranged builds use a supposedly melee aura you know something is wrong here.

That said, i'd wish they had changed it's effect to something less powerful instead of changing the cost, having to redesign 8 of my builds because they can no longer handle the mana reservation is going to be a massive pain.

PS: Lets all wait for the sure to come rage topic of a certain someone that melee is now completely useless and destroyed and that this is actually a buff for caster builds.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

That said, i'd wish they had changed it's effect to something less powerful instead of changing the cost, having to redesign 8 of my builds because they can no longer handle the mana reservation is going to be a massive pain.

I feel similarly! I was able to replace it with HoP on some chars who really were melee, but for my pathfinder what the heck do I replace it with? Arctic armour?

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MasterTBC wrote:

Increasing Flesh and Stone mana reservation only really hurts melee

indeed it does but what did you expect from GGG when it comes to anything melee?

well.. FaS is and is going to be a no brainer choice for the one and only unaffected party: aura bots. thats alone is a sign the nerf went the wrong way

second.. does it really hurt melee? melee dies to spells, elemental spells far more than anything else. endgame bosses rarely if ever attack you and if they do - i is lousy autoattack you dont care about. melee or not melee. it is the endgame fights design that is fundamentally flawed. you having 0 or 100000 evasion in MOST endgame fights makes exactly 0 difference

mapping is different but.. honestly, if you let mobs attack you - your build sucks anyway (melee in general fails this step more often than not but it is not 'melee only problem)


problem is: at 35% this skill is.. useless. it got nerfed for 'sand' part, yet 'blood' part is total crap even at 25%, EVEN for phys builds. noone is going to spend extra passives to fix that. passives are THE most precious build resource, you dont waste them just like that

Blood and Sand - 10% reservation, 15% more damage
Flesh and Stone - 35% reservation, 16-20% more damage depending on if you link it or not + maim. maim is useless because you have 4 other sources of it even if you dont care.

this is the problem. people who get its benefit for free (aurabots) are unaffected, casters/archers (standof type) might pay more but still use it in sand stance only (this part of the nerf is ok) melee players.. will drop it because the blood part sucks massively and sand is useless vs bosses

4/10 change, needs improvements

One more uncalled nerf to melee for whatever reason.

Reducing it's reservation thru passives, why??

I rly don't get some changes.

Flesh and Stone is used by casters too even if you don't get stance part of the aura, it's that obvious and strong of a choice.

100% deserved nerf and I say cut the physical damage taken by half and it'll be the same tier as rest of the auras.