AoE + Leech utterly buggered in 1.1

"

_Elminister_ wrote:

I didn't read this thread. Leech prior to 1.1. was too strong. It is mandatory.

If something is mandatory, it means, that it is needed. Nerfing it doesn't make it less mandatory, but merely unavailable.

What I find funny is that they decide to make this leech change... While releasing the most ridiculous, hit-everything-a-million-times Vaal skills.

"

tackle70 wrote:

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

I don't get the design reasoning for these leech changes. It seems to me GGG is taking a problematic game mechanic — reflected damage — and just making things worse. An explanation would be nice, because the way I'm looking at it now, it's just arbitrary and punishing.

This * 10000000000

Don't understand the justification for the nerf. I'm not necessarily complaining - I can always make a new build that doesn't need so much leech. I just don't understand it.

I've had some time to think on it, and I kind of get the reasoning behind the change a little bit. I still feel it's clumsy, but at least I get it. I agree leech changing from what it was is in the best interest of balance — it was an insanely strong, overused defense, outshining alternatives such as life gain on hit. But I do not believe leech changing to what it is becoming is in the best interest of balance.

If I had my way, leech would actually be treated as a status effect you place on monsters, very similar to ignite. Each leech status would have a fixed duration (more on this later), and its strength would be determined by the strength of the hit, and multiple leeches on the same monster would not stack, and (just like ignite) the status would continue even after the monster becomes a corpse. However — and this is a key point — leeches from various different monsters would stack, allowing them to feed you simultaneously — the rate at which one could leech would therefore not be determined by max Life, but by the number of monsters which could be effected simultaneously, and the amount of damage dealt. (It would also lead to some interesting interactions involving shattering corpses you were previously leeching from.)

In terms of how long that fixed duration should be, just look to the slowest attack speeds of weapons. Seems to be about 1 second, so 1 second it is. Overall, this would not make leech anti-AoE, but it would make it anti-attackspeed, which I think is a nice contrast to Life Gain on Hit. After all, the more you exceed 1 aps, the more leech you're theoretically losing through non-stacking. It's also possible a duration of 2 seconds would be better, factoring in some time for repositioning between attacks.

This differs from the 1.1 system in that you can only have one leech in place at a time — the different monsters do not stack. This makes AoE damage laughably bad at leeching, which isn't good for the game.

"

tmaciak wrote:

"

_Elminister_ wrote:

I didn't read this thread. Leech prior to 1.1. was too strong. It is mandatory.

If something is mandatory, it means, that it is needed. Nerfing it doesn't make it less mandatory, but merely unavailable.

not really.

p.e. the 100k+ builds aren't needed. removing a dps link and lowering their dps to say 70k to put in an additional lgoh/ll gem won't break them.

even normal builds with let's say 20-25k dps can still sacrifice p.e. added fire for lgoh/ll on top of what they have. or they can switch off hatred and put a second defensive aura to minimize reflect.

selfcasting immortal call vs reflect groups is also a thing.

and rerolling physical reflect maps is also possible.

Bino's kitchen knife it's gonna be very expensive for life/crit build. I'm so sure

VP crown builds were grossly overpowered, this way, they should die instantly to reflect instead of being able to 1 shot 78 mobs in 6p parties with no drawbacks. the best part is that they didnt actually need to legacy yet another ridiculous item to achieve this effect. Anyone who has experience with ultra mirror spammy end game ES builds could have seen these nerfs a mile away.

Both armor and evasion(ondars + acro) can be used evade reflect and I think GGG wants to slowly move the game from uncapped leech allowing you to instantly heal to full ES per attack in addition to providing reflect immunity.

The nerf to leech itself is somewhat troubling because AoE dps is the single most important factor for an end game build and now its mostly a ticking time bomb.

Honestly I just thought they would remove VP completely.

"

So, just in case the implications aren't obvious to you, this means if you fire a Chain LMP Arrow into a group of reflect monsters in 1.1, you are still going to take damage 9 times, but instead of leeching 9 times, you will leech once. Hell, even if the monsters don't reflect damage, you are still only going to leech once.

Assuming a single hit is enough to leech 12.5% of your max life, this would not make a difference right?

"

mad4thrash wrote:

Bino's kitchen knife it's gonna be very expensive for life/crit build. I'm so sure

won't help much:

crit daggers builds already do tremendous single hit damage on their crit, enough to sustain LL for several seconds, since higher leech will overwrite lower, they don't suffer in this regard.

where they suffer is vs reflect, and bino's didn't do anything for that (nor with any of the changes atm will do now).

the only ways to not instagib yourself with crit daggers vs reflect were:
cwdt-IC (still working)
vaal pact (bino's is a regeneration effect so you wont benefit if you have vaal pact)

"

Nephalim wrote:

Anyone who has experience with ultra mirror spammy end game ES builds could have seen these nerfs a mile away.

Maybe, but people with 200+ ex worth of gear will always be able to make broken builds. This nerf affects the ordinary player far more than it will the folks running around with BiS gear.

"

tackle70 wrote:

"

Nephalim wrote:

Anyone who has experience with ultra mirror spammy end game ES builds could have seen these nerfs a mile away.

Maybe, but people with 200+ ex worth of gear will always be able to make broken builds. This nerf affects the ordinary player far more than it will the folks running around with BiS gear.

Ordinary players will generally not do enough damage to instantly gimp themselves vs reflect unless their defensive is severely under built. This is with regards to just vaap pact, the leech stacking nerf is a bit harder to gage.

"

Sachiru wrote:

"

BisuProbe wrote:

"

Nanaya_Kiri wrote:

And CI physical/crit builds get hit harder, since LGoH doesn't work with it, you can't use flasks to take advantage from the change to VP and you won't even have enough armor/evasion, since pure ES gear is already pretty expensive, while good hybrid gear is out of the question for most people...

they probably dont want people to use CI and vaal pact together, theres a reason why they are both so far from each other, they complement each other way too well. the es passives are buffed besides

WUT?

Seriously, WUT?

CI Bow builds are already very difficult because

a) You give up potential ES from shield
b) Bow crit chance isn't high
c) It's extremely difficult to get good gear for your build (you want ES+Evade if you run IR or Dodge, or ES+Armor+Shitton of Resists)
d) You have an inherent weakness to stun and freeze.
e) Builds are benefited the most only by map-only uniques (Auxium, Voltaxic if you want)

If you add even more difficulty to this....

I guess the CI quiver will really be needed even more then. Talk about creating artificial demand.

im playing a ci crit ranger since september, and i can wholeheartedly + this. getting it going to a effective level, wher you can be uesefull on high maps with difficult mods, is very hard and expensive, and even now i cant do "all mods, all bosses". this is by far not a no brainer afk build.
afaik last one week nem race analysis showed, only a fraction of players took the ci/vp route. everyone went ir/block yada stuff.
atm im beyond angry. its just sad, coz i liked my char. i started out on open beta, and as it looks ggg has relieved me from my need to play this game.