"Doubling melee attack costs for slams" is the most unnecessary balance change ever.

Preface, I love the game's current state (except the ground loot nerfs), league, and everything about it. One thing I am growing vitriol hatred for is that melee players are now spending the same mana as old spellcasters. even worse than spellcasters in pre 3.15.

yes, not all melee players are suffering from this issue. if you are not using warcries on automatic, or not using a significant mana spender utility skill, you are good. like lacerate costs nothing, lightning strike can be sustained, but for slams? Ground Slam of Earthshaking's base cost is 14 mana at level 20, meanwhile Spark's base cost is 21 mana.
For most played slam builds at the moment
-> Ice Crash | 14 Mana
-> Earthshatter of Fragility | 13 Mana
-> Crushing Fist | 14 Mana
-> EQ of Amplification | 13 Mana

On average, we are competing with the most mana-hungry spell of all time. one more bump to the mana cost, and we are at the levels of Spark.

To make everything worse, slams are nothing without warcries. And if you are using automatic warcries, in average, you are using three warcries minimum. This means that every (average) 5 seconds or so (if you are not using generals cry, which will make the issue worse by a shorter cooldown), you are also spending 30 mana. Currently, I am sitting at 3 3-second cooldowns for all warcries, which means that every 3 seconds I spend 30 mana. If you are self-casting more warcries, then more mana costs. Suppose you are automating more warcries, well, even more mana costs.

Previously almost all skills base cost was 8 mana at all levels. 3.25 almost doubled the cost of the attack and now without any investment in reduced cost of attacks, mana regen, whatever, we are facing the same mana issues with Spark.

just get mana cost on rings, mana flask, invest in tree

but why should I? Why are we playing a rat-and-mouse game with artificially created issues in every single league? This wasn't an issue at all before 3.25, and the mana cost was literally nothing before 3.15. These are all artificial issues created for nothing. No, I won't sacrifice any of my flasks, spend 8 skill points just to make the build playable, sacrifice 2 suffixes just so I wont default attack from time to time. All 3.25 did was the making this skill "playable" by buffing the numbers, and now there is another artificial unnecessary and bullshit change that has no purpose at all.

All slams should revert to the pre 3.25 mana costs in 3.26. I know a mid-league balance wont come, so I have hope for 3.26 that we will stop shitting out artificial issues and make things "playable" for making it "playable", not for playing a f**king Tom and Jerry episode.

Thank you.

"

canercetin wrote:

Preface, I love the game's current state (except the ground loot nerfs), league, and everything about it. One thing I am growing vitriol hatred for is that melee players are now spending the same mana as old spellcasters. even worse than spellcasters in pre 3.15.

You need the veiled craft and more reservation efficiency, this would be true for any build that reserves 85% of their mana. And has several skills firing off, not just their main skill.

What do you mean "just get cost rings" ?? As if thats not the answer, this is a problem for ANYONE doing something like this. What am I looking at? 15% unreserved and you dont want to get the veiled crafts? You think that doesnt apply to ... every build that would try this?

How are you gonna mock the cost craft on rings but in the same headspace take these on your own tree





Because if you dont you wont get your version of this build to work.

Alkaizer has one with no mana issues and guess what craft he has on both his rings and what nodes he takes on the tree?

To keep it simple,

Your first problem; you're running full autoexertion setup, you are going to have mana issues if you just auto exert everything + herald + blood/sand.

Like with this kind of setup youll have to go to the top left and get reservation efficiency nodes this looks painful to run without those. Much less the cost rings. Or get an annoint at this point.

Is it that big of a pain for you to, not-auto exert at least one of these cries? Like full auto or nothing is your playstyle? Cause it might be not the skill for you then :\.

Mana "issues" that are happening here arent being created by GGG unfortunately.

"

and the mana cost was literally nothing before 3.15

I dont know why were are talking about 3.15. A lot has changed since then im not sure drawing comparisons to a completely different version of the game 3 years ago is anything we should be looking at.

I agree with OP. As far as i know attack based builds were supposed to have accuracy to deal with while casters are supposed to deal with mana. Now melee builds have to deal with both. Reason for it? None really. The mana changes were completely unwarranted and unnecessary.

Sure, those newly created issues can be fixed with a keystone, a support gem or 5+ points on the passive tree and i am sure the white knight brigade is going to swarm in any second now to enlighten us all on this obvious fact while completely ignoring the simple fact that these issues shouldn't be there to solve in the first place.

/edit and they are already here...

I agree everything meshgesture said, but comment still proves that this is an artifical issue that requires passive tree investment and investment on items. Steps explained by meshgesture wouldnt even been necessary if mana costs werent bumped all across the board.

warcrys reserving mana is meme

melee was bait, rip melee league.

Also 3.15 was just the beginning of this “we create this issue, now go fix it” chase with the introduction of spikes to cost and reservation multipliers. This is what killed Spellslinger and many other skills. That is why I am drawing points to the 3.15, it is the pilot episode of whatever the hell we are playing right now.

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Cchris07 wrote:

warcrys reserving mana is meme

melee was bait, rip melee league.

%15 mana reservation and no buffs. Overexertion provides the solution to our yet another artifical problem of “you have reserved equal mana to %50 reserve damage aura” tho. yay. *we had call to arms literally 2 weeks ago*

i mean, u can get -cost helm implicit/ -non channel cost ring/amulet / use inspiration, but im sure ur aware of all this, IMO though, if you ended up one of the 20,000 zdps 20 problems to solve builds. then just reroll a new class while its still early :P

But I am trying to understand how these things are even issues to begin with.


You say

"

requires passive tree investment and investment on items

Like how is this not true for every build that reserves 85% of their mana, and has several skills going off at the same time?


Why are you drawing some arbitrary line in the sand at the ring crafts and the tree, but are perfectly fine with taking several nodes on the tree already?

Why not just say "man I dont wanna reserve anything, GGG cmon these artifical problems wouldnt be a thing if we didnt have to take mana reservation efficiency, its so silly".

There are steps to mitigate your issues until you get those crafts and/or reservation but you stand like an oak tree and go NOPE IM NOT GONNA YOU CANT MAKE ME.

Like thats fine and all, but that would be true about anything in this game. You wanna do your own thing, there are sometimes consequences to that.


For your build honestly, just automate one less warcry and you probably wont have to worry about anything lol. Like you dont NEED full auto. Cmon more than one button I have faith in you.

We make axe we make slam but we not so caveman cant use more than 1 button or hand hurt much ouch.

Like cmon. Automate one less cry.

Edit: How are you living without enduring ? Where are you getting your endurance charges from? I see you traited one the tree but... how are you generating them? Why are you taking the fortify node if you have fortify support......

Ok im gonna stop.

"

Mashgesture wrote:

Like how is this not true for every build that reserves 85% of their mana, and has several skills going off at the same time?

Just goes to show your complete lack of knowledge on the matter. If you had any actual experience with melee you'd know that melee builds used to reserve most of their mana in 3.24 and before as well WITHOUT having to expend so much effort on fixing mana issues. You didn't even need - mana cost rings before. 50-60 open mana and a mana leech node used to be enough.