^^more fun skill to play = higher chance to nerf^^

Is it normal that skills that gives me fun are always over-nerfed? I can't imagine myslef playing with them and doing 5 way Legion, Simulacrum farming or regular 600-1k delve runs... . I'm talking about balanced build with few layers of defense, HC viable.

In general DoT and Channelling skills are in very bad spot vs end game activity like Simulacrum, 5 way, Delve or even Sanctum - all these activities promote hit base builds.

Here is my take of most fun skills that I've played since 2012 and doesn't exist in my eyes anymore:

1) Caustic Arrow/Poison Arrow - back in a days used to be the best for everything. ATM numbers are too low to deal with end game content;

2) Lightning Trap - red map viable;

3) Essence Drain - last league it was strong it was in Harvest league - 2020. So 5 years since the skill was deleted;

4) Stormburst - this skill sit in very bad spot with all channelling skills. Standing still = punished;

5) Blade Vortex - if you get mirror trier gear its good but still force you to go LL and RF for more damage. Even with mirror tier gear you can't be super tanky and deal superb damage at the same time. It's just not allowed :)

6) Brand skills - same as above. Forcing me to go LL and RF. Damage = defense. If you want build Stormbrand build with great defense (SB on release was one of the best skill to farm Sirius in HC) you just can't. You lose too much dps to handle end game content;

7) Icicle Mine - another red map viable;

8) Winter Orb - moving while dealing damage? Fun not allowed;

9) Cyclone - same as above. It's just 1 button build - you can't. It's not allowed;

10) Blade Flurry - released in 2016 - deleted 1 year later;

11) Bleed Bow builds - just damage is not there vs uber content. Affected by many map mods and you can't build multiple layer of defense because if you want deal with end game you don't get enough damage;

12) Corrupting Fever / Exang - another DoT build. Same problem like with Wintertide Brand. Good until you kill mobs enough fast;

13) pure Arc or BL - want deal real damage that can deal with end game activities? Forgot about tankyness... ;

14) Bane and curse builds - lack of single target. Penalty on bosses is ridiculously high. If you afraid of that just make pure ascendancy class/node dedicated for curse builds and give people some fun. Allow them to play around Blasphemy and curses. Allow them just to have fun and let them delete that Uber Exarch or Wawe 30 simulacrum;

15) sweet spot for Lightning Strike or even all Strike skills after the next patch.

Did you seriously list LS as unplayable during a league where it's like the most played skill ever? AGAIN? There are plenty of other strikeskills with very high viability. DSoA, MsoZ, FB, FBoK just to name the most popular ones.

Other than that, yeah channel skills are bad aside blade vortex and a few others. Dot's are good in general because they leave you with more time for dodging. Simu in general is more about the defenses of your build rather than your damage output/skill.

5 ways requires high clear speed and nothing else. Not every skill is suitable for it, some simply don't get the clear required but like half of the ones you've listed would work fairly well.

The only things from your list that i'd consider to have been nerfed to death are cyclone, winterorb and maybe bleed bow, not sure how that works now with aggrevate.

well.....yes....that's how it goes.

You LIKE the skill because its super powerful, cheap, and also defensive. It's TOO good, so it gets nerfed.

That is the nature of skill balancing. It HAS to be top-down (nerfs) because if it were bottom-up (buffs), we'd all end up dealing billions of damage and the monsters would have trillions and quadrillions of health.

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Unk_Particle#4226 wrote:

2) Lightning Trap - red map viable

I wonder what your metric for "viable" is cause you can take this ability as league starter all the way to Uber fights, delve and full sim runs without insane multiple hundred divine investments or struggles.

Same goes for most of the other skills on your list as you could easily push them way beyond just red maps. You may have a harder time with things like chaos dot or bleed bow past a certain power level but it's not impossible.

The current state of the game lets you pick any skill for any content. There are obviously some skills that work better for certain areas but it matters very little when people are even using Vigilant Strike as a main skill.

It becomes even more silly when we compare our so-called meta (totally not a popularity contest of content creators rather than an accurate representation of builds) to the chinese realm and see entirely different setups and builds including stuff OP mentioned. I am so glad public build resources for their realm exist even if I don't understand the language because our realm has become stagnant.