Unique far pro builds are obsolete, out of reach via stat links. How2fix. & Why defense build > dps?

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

It's like the difference between my two cycloners. Both are pure physical impale, one uses a legacy starforge with 500 increased physical and the other has 1500 dex as a hollow palm. The hollow palm gives up both weapon slots and the glove slots, but ends up having 100% spell sup through dex alone. But besides the extra defensive layer, the starforge only tops out a little over a million where the hollow palm is somewhere between 7-12 mil.

Sounds about right.

Melee weapon scaling, especially physical, is in a real deep valley these days, and suffered more than most builds did in "the great purge" that was 3.15. The 3.16 atlas changes didn't really help either, and pure physical/impale builds are more or less dead in the dirt, apart from some Boneshatter variants.

Elemental melee builds are in a much better state, because you have more ways of scaling them - and you have Omniscience, which can scale every elemental build into heaven.

Anyhow, scaling spells these days is so much easier than scaling weapon damage. While spells have (at least) as many additive and multiplicative scaling options as weapon scaling builds have, they also have +1 on gear, which weapon scaling builds do not benefit from. It's (sadly) totally unbalanced, comparatively - and I EXPECT that GGG will have a look at it next league, because the difference is so big these days, I'm having trouble remembering something worse.

BTW; I saw you guys were talking about crit scaling. Remember that critical multiplier has diminishing returns. Once you start surpassing 700-800%, the diminishing returns are so severe that regular % increased damage starts getting on par.

@obright

I actually made my first CoC in standard a lil while back. But it was a cospri based cyclone with frostbolts and ice nova (eventually). While the crunch sound of all the shatters made it satisfying, it just got more and more expensive the more I pushed to scale it up for latter endgame.

I ended up turning him into my first righteous fire build which to my surprise ended up being a lot more satisfying. He even leveled up in standard, something I haven't done in years for any of the 90+ chars.

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Phrazz wrote:

Sounds about right.

Melee weapon scaling, especially physical, is in a real deep valley these days, and suffered more than most builds did in "the great purge" that was 3.15. The 3.16 atlas changes didn't really help either, and pure physical/impale builds are more or less dead in the dirt, apart from some Boneshatter variants.

Elemental melee builds are in a much better state, because you have more ways of scaling them - and you have Omniscience, which can scale every elemental build into heaven.

Anyhow, scaling spells these days is so much easier than scaling weapon damage. While spells have (at least) as many additive and multiplicative scaling options as weapon scaling builds have, they also have +1 on gear, which weapon scaling builds do not benefit from. It's (sadly) totally unbalanced, comparatively - and I EXPECT that GGG will have a look at it next league, because the difference is so big these days, I'm having trouble remembering something worse.

BTW; I saw you guys were talking about crit scaling. Remember that critical multiplier has diminishing returns. Once you start surpassing 700-800%, the diminishing returns are so severe that regular % increased damage starts getting on par.

Archnem was my first league back after a long hiatus, so there was definitely a lot to catch up on. I'm still bitter about the flasks, especially considering how many nicely rolled flasks I had saved in standard ended up trash trophies.

I did have a stab at omniscience - but I ended up throwing it on an old deadeye quant stacking that was used to run low level burial chambers. I'm sure if I let go of the quant stacking she'd be hitting much better numbers but she's still fun for the content she actually can do.

And yeah that is a good point - elemental spell damage does have more options for scaling up. However, that was also what nearly got my original archnem league starter deleted - it got very gear dependent very fast, at least when focusing mostly on a cold crit theme.

But at the same time, that's what I mean about the "special" interaction. Omniscience to reduce elemental resists, explosive arrow fuse stacking for big ignites, dex stacking for hollow palm scaling... there's always a need for that extra umph.

Like take chaos damage - scaling it up is similar to burning/ignite damage with a heavy focus on damage over time multipliers. But scaling the usual chaos stuff like toxic arrow, caustic arrow can't match up quite the same given similar investment.

My RF runs around like he's constantly surrounded by a caustic arrow, but has a lot better defensives and his main single target doesn't root him in place like toxic arrow spam. I did mess around with TA totems too and while fun they weren't gonna match a solid explosive arrow ignite.

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Phrazz wrote:

BTW; I saw you guys were talking about crit scaling. Remember that critical multiplier has diminishing returns. Once you start surpassing 700-800%, the diminishing returns are so severe that regular % increased damage starts getting on par.

I knew it was up there somewhere, but wasn't sure where. I have gotten past 500% twice, and both times I felt just like Annie Oakley.

...If that tells you anything. :p

Oh and @SeCKSEgai That reminds me to try a CoC build! I live for the crunch... I could potentially respec my HH cyclone toon to do it, also. I have already invested waaaay too much into that toon, so yolo I guess...?

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Obright wrote:

I knew it was up there somewhere, but wasn't sure where. I have gotten past 500% twice, and both times I felt just like Annie Oakley.

...If that tells you anything. :p

Oh and @SeCKSEgai That reminds me to try a CoC build! I live for the crunch... I could potentially respec my HH cyclone toon to do it, also. I have already invested waaaay too much into that toon, so yolo I guess...?

That cospri coc build managed to make cyclone fun for me again, at least until I turned him into the rf he is now.

But I do have a slightly lower level that I tested a rf variant on that will probably do it. Still don't think I'll hit the numbers I really want but its an excuse to enjoy low tier maps anyway.

And its definitely more enjoyable than my pure phys impale starforge cyclone with HH ever was.

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Phrazz wrote:

Sounds about right.

Melee weapon scaling, especially physical, is in a real deep valley these days, and suffered more than most builds did in "the great purge" that was 3.15.

Thats not true melee has the most insane scaling of all normal interactions in this game. I count stuff like aura stackers or CoC as "not normal" here. With enough investment you can easily get even more dps than those builds.

The problem of melee is not damage, its that you cant apply that damage to uber uber bosses. Outside of those encounters melee is actually fine, equip a high dps weapon, socked melee splash or get AoE somewhere and clear everything easily.

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kuciol wrote:

Yea and it would just end up with rolling a dice until you get what you want to min-max even more.

Eh I'm not really all for defending randomized builds, I'm not the first person to suggest this. I've read this a few times or so.

Tho if I have to find a solution to rolling the dice, I've already made 1. You make leagues have a cap to how many alts your able to make for 1 day. So ye 3 to 4 classes per day at max. Then nobody wants to waste a day for league, so most just pick 1 of the 4 on their first day & don't reroll more than a few times per day if they want to. Or something similar to this, works.

Solved.

Would be able to solve the ratio aspect to, you just order all passives by rarity. So rare passives go on the OUTSIDE ring layers. & less rare passives are at the starter middle. Done Ez fixed equality of passive radius. For randomized trees. Just have radius rarity ring of passives ranging rarity by ring. & then your able to randomize all the rings according to rarity of the passive. Solved #2 problem as well. Which was how not to get op passives too near the starter zones, for randomized trees.

Which class is least played, Scion? Because she looks like Barbie right? How to fix that? Hmm maybe some Scarlet Witch Red Hair option from starter that's a rugged ponytail like a rogue. Solved.

Tho ye someone is gonna say her tree position is why & they are probably right & yet mostly wrong. People underestimate appearances. D2 had stationary starter appearances, I'm sure " class identity " wasn't the main reason D2 had zero appearance optimization. Obviously D2 had some class identity as for the story or background origins of these chars. Yet if your not gonna mention that the game being so old, isn't a major part of the reason it didn't have starter hair or face custimization, than your lying to yourself. Sometimes the reason for D2 having a limiting feature ISN'T for some nostalgic ass reason & is just from D2 being a old freaking game from the 90's.

If you're promoting starter zone builds or even 2 major jewel reached builds that go to 2 areas. That still means so are " other people ". Other people are planning for those builds too. So who says that it is more unique to make class identity unique, which is a default aspect of uniqueness. And anything default isn't unique that's general use. So they expect you to go to starter zone passives FOR that class. They expect you to reach to the neighboring areas FOR that class. So everyone does that. That's not unique. Unique planning a build that has enough benefits for travel. Not that it has to either, that's the flexibility of the tree.

So yes reward travel builds with extra points, if they use 20 to 40 stat links to reach somewhere, & then nerf stat stacker builds by 10% or 20% to compsenate.

Just be lucky I'm not asking for shared ascendaries. Those who are fine with how every char looks, good for you, I'm not the only person who mains a class due to appearance. Even if they had alternative starter hair to face to shoulder options. I'd still want some sort of travelers benefit. For the skill tree.

Scion was one of the most if not most popular classes for Delirium. And you know what happened, they gutted the build.

People pushing farther into end game are less concerned with aesthetics and more focused on performance.

For example, I can run a particular setup on my scion that hits around 12million dps, but a similar setup on an elemental witch I have hits tops out over 20mil.

The bonus to the scion is in that particular case shes running raider for permanent phasing but she gives up A LOT of potential damage just to not have to rely on flasking or travels like withering step for phasing.

Given the current state of the game, scion doesn't really offer anything particularly special to justify it over picking a standard class.

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RuneLuthien wrote:

Tho if I have to find a solution to rolling the dice, I've already made 1. You make leagues have a cap to how many alts your able to make for 1 day. So ye 3 to 4 classes per day at max. Then nobody wants to waste a day for league, so most just pick 1 of the 4 on their first day & don't reroll more than a few times per day if they want to. Or something similar to this, works.

Solved.

Not at all, people will just make new account, its free. You like it or not, planning passive tree is major part of the game and it will never go away. Its the most important phase, it is the game.