Determination Nerf

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Belegur85 wrote:

Is there a patch note for this? I haven't seen it. If it's the same as the changes they made to ruthless determ a few leagues back, then I agree with some of the comments that it's more of a nerf to characters without base armor than characters heavily invested in armour. However, OP also might have a point that it is mainly a nerf for players using armour, which is bottom left in a lot of cases.

Ruthless from about a year ago-

Determination no longer causes you and nearby allies to gain additional Armour in Ruthless. In Ruthless, it now has "You and nearby allies gain 55% more Armour" at gem level 1 (previously 40%), scaling up to 74% at gem level 20 (previously 49%)."

So there is a breakpoint where it becomes better/worse depending on how much base armour you have from other sources. At lvl20, without extra 2000 flat on aura, its about 12000 flat (1.49(x+2000))=1.74x). Most builds are not going to have that, it's like brass dome + unbreakable + armour shield + granite flask + other. Though as some people have pointed out, builds with more armour will be less effected, or potentially even better once they pass the break point. So if your character has 8000 base armour and 200% increased armour, it will still have about 94% total armour that they had, so, a slight nerft but relatively similar. Builds that are just running a 1500ar granite flask and 500ar on gear and 100% increased armour, will have about 58% of what they had. So it's a much bigger nerf if not heavily invested in armor.

Therefor if it's the same as the ruthless changes -

Builds with very high flat armour above breakpoint (Buff)
Builds that don't use determination (No effect/ relative buff excet vs the above case)
Builds with flat armour approaching breakpoint (slight nerf but less so the more you have)
Builds with lower flat armour (bigger nerf)
Builds with no other source of flat armour that use determ (nerf/ no benefit from determ)

So basically you have the video for the qol of 3.25 and the armour is lower, im too lazy to find the way people did it but they figured it was a level 22 gem and yet has 50% of the armour added. There are still some its just lower than before.

If they buffed enough the defense from item it might balance itself out but we have to wait until we have more information about it.

Edit: its in the aura qol change.

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So basically you have the video for the qol of 3.25 and the armour is lower

Haha, ic. Unbelievable how attentive some people are. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

So if that in fact is a lvl22 gem, I guess its different to the ruthless version and just a straight up nerf of 1000 base, but maybe countered by the changes you mention for quality. Item slots with (20-30%) more - (20-30%) increased. I think this is going to be roughly the same for a lot of builds but could be buff for some armor builds and probably a nerf for builds that don't have much armour on gear. If you are wearing brass dome that will pretty much compensate straight away, even if not doubled by jug, if i'm doing the calculation correctly. Chest armor with about 2k, you might get about +350, then all the other slots. But for builds without armour on gear could be a nerf sure. Builds with defense on gear but not running defensive auras should be helped as well. Yeah, wait and see. Sounds like buff for ES to me, which is already strong this league from what I can tell.

I think GGG is going to need to make crafting high defense values easier if they really are moving some defenses from auras to gear. Especially if we are expected to swap more items around for new bases when we go up in tiers/levels/attributes.

Right now using max tier essences for defenses can be slightly worse that a t1 roll, but many people would want to use other essences or methods to craft their gear. Like freakin essence of horror for 15% phys to cold conversion.

Something like this really needs to be spelled out and explained in patch notes instead of a Easter egg in a video. This change on its own is enough to change a lot of breakpoints for defenses, even with the changes to quality.

I am hoping stuff like Fracturing orbs and synth beasts become more common to help people actually craft. One of the few nice things about the graveyard crafting system was the availability of good fractures.

Still this change feels like it could really hurt builds that rely on armour but use a unique ev/es chest to function.

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Belegur85 wrote:

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So basically you have the video for the qol of 3.25 and the armour is lower

Haha, ic. Unbelievable how attentive some people are. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

So if that in fact is a lvl22 gem, I guess its different to the ruthless version and just a straight up nerf of 1000 base, but maybe countered by the changes you mention for quality. Item slots with (20-30%) more - (20-30%) increased. I think this is going to be roughly the same for a lot of builds but could be buff for some armor builds and probably a nerf for builds that don't have much armour on gear. If you are wearing brass dome that will pretty much compensate straight away, even if not doubled by jug, if i'm doing the calculation correctly. Chest armor with about 2k, you might get about +350, then all the other slots. But for builds without armour on gear could be a nerf sure. Builds with defense on gear but not running defensive auras should be helped as well. Yeah, wait and see. Sounds like buff for ES to me, which is already strong this league from what I can tell.

there a new tier of armour bases, certainly for chest armour and presumably for all base types, in the videos they showed off a new ES base armour with significantly more ES than a vaal regalia.

there is also a mouse over of some boots that have 120 life but no flat defence, the other prefix seems to be hybrid % defence + stun recovery. so the implication there may be that it is 1 life roll on boots that is a bit higher than the current T1 life + T1 hybrid life/defence. its possible this means that hybrid life is gone and it will just take 1 life prefix to get the most life out of an item, freeing another prefix for a local defence roll.

what this potentially all means is that 1k base armour is gone from determ and instead we are going to be getting that back from our gear. this will presumably also be happening to grace and discipline.



its shifting some power from people who invest in mana reserve gear to people who invest in wearing actual armour/evasion/energy shield.





if thats what theyre doing its a good move. i hope they are removing hybrid life, i argued at the time they should absolutely not add hybrid life because it would compete with defence and that would force the already misguided meta at the time that defence was worthless and you should focus only on life.

people like etup were making the case for hybrid life because rolling life gear was 'boring' compared to es gear as you only cared about 1 roll, life, where es gear you cares about all 3 prefixes. my argument was that they should have fixed that by making people wearing armour and evasion care about getting armour and evasion, not by burying the idea of having armour and evasion on your gear in a graveyard by adding hybrid life. that was 9 years ago or something, are we finally there? are we actually at a point where we are seeing that people should need armour or evasion to survive, and they should be getting that primarily from their body armour/helmet/shield?

i hope so.

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roundishcap wrote:

I think GGG is going to need to make crafting high defense values easier if they really are moving some defenses from auras to gear. Especially if we are expected to swap more items around for new bases when we go up in tiers/levels/attributes.

Right now using max tier essences for defenses can be slightly worse that a t1 roll, but many people would want to use other essences or methods to craft their gear. Like freakin essence of horror for 15% phys to cold conversion.

Something like this really needs to be spelled out and explained in patch notes instead of a Easter egg in a video. This change on its own is enough to change a lot of breakpoints for defenses, even with the changes to quality.

I am hoping stuff like Fracturing orbs and synth beasts become more common to help people actually craft. One of the few nice things about the graveyard crafting system was the availability of good fractures.

Still this change feels like it could really hurt builds that rely on armour but use a unique ev/es chest to function.

should they tho? should we be getting everything from crafting and getting it ease? what about just alt spam for life then regal then exalt like we used to? or actually pick up gear that drops? i think the idea that we should all get gear primarily from crafting and it should be really good gear is something in the game that needs fixed rather than encouraged.

if someone uses an ev/es chest maybe they should be an ev/es build and survive using those mechanics? maybe they shouldnt rely on armour if theyre not wearing armour?



i think sometimes these things are not a concern when you are not target nerfing a specific build. if you want to nerf DD so that it doesnt outshine other competing fire spells then you want to look carefully at how your change leaves the balance of those specific builds.

but if you are just making a change because of a core principal which this would seem to be i feel like you just make the change and whatever happens happens? theres always a best way to build, a bad way to build, a meta will form and there will be something on top and something on the bottom. it doesnt rly matter that much what those are, its hard to predict at the best of times and somewhat irrelevant.

we know that getting defence primarily from auras will be less effective and getting it from gear will be more effective. that much is clear to see and i think that seems to be the intention. how much this actually shifts things we just have to wait and see. if more people start using defence rolls on rare gear and less people use defence auras then good, if not then just change it even more next time. what that means for X specific build doesnt really matter?