Tested for a few minutes with and without bastion of will, either way the Bracer nerf was over board. The 6 piece is awful as well, back to being wrath starved especially on RG's. The lack of aoe/single target damage after the bracer nerf feels poor. Very poor. Perhaps we need the new gem but I couldn't get one to drop last night.
The damage cut was strange, I had a pair of bracers with 391% and those ended up going to 165%, while my holy bracers had 345% and ended up @ 185%. Both damage and resource cost nerfed.
TL:DR Blizzard is the death of fun. Also need to see what that new gem does before I believe that they killed the build with one patch, but if that new gem isn't amazing then this build just went RIP.
Test for yourselves, go to the official forum and demand a change. Ignore the trolls, there are many or tell them to write their own feedback threads if they have a problem, because not sucking is amazing.
Hoping for a revert but people will have to post in the official forums in a constructive way to have that addressed. My initial reaction to the nerf was "let's see how this pans out with pylons and the new gem."
After one just one grift I decided that if pylon hunting is the meta once again I'm finished with this game. It is a shit meta, and its even more shit when you've experienced the play on both sides, with and without the pylons in gr. The model that leaves the power in the actual classes and sets was far better than having the pylons in greater rifts. Now consider the very real imbalances that exist on the current ptr in regards to sets and combine that with pylons.
Really funny to me that every leader board looks to have been re set except our seasonal where Manner had the 54 clear. Wonder why that is?
The problem with RoRG is it doesn't do anything but allow you to keep the six set bonus, and that bonus may be overshadowed by other ring slots and R4, considering how poor the six piece actually is. I'm all for generators being in builds but I tried with the new FR and resource generation with glare/provoke still feels stronger than no generator at all. Even with PM/LOV UF our generators don't keep up with the demands of shield bash, and shield bash already is not meeting the damage requirements for higher grs.
Looks like we're not getting that new gem, so that may be that for Rolands. The answer isn't nerfing barbs, that fixes none of our problems as crusaders and only adds to forum garbage. We should be brought up, same as Wich Doc's and here's why: You can't fight power creep, eventually the game will be nothing but Barbs,DH,Monk and WIz ie classes that can go higher gr's in season three. Which makes sense, if you have the option to drive a Ferarri why the fuck would you drive a Chevette? If you're not born in the 80's make that a smart car or some other piece of shit set of wheels.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/16647734702 Good thread, if you have suggestions keep it positive, its not my thread. If you think Rolands is "fine" as is, feel free to post that as well, but at your own risk much like me Walkin inspects profiles and calls shenanigans on trolls.
The answer is better resource management tools. I kinda like the way Sweep+Bash plays on Roland's so maybe a buff to Golden Flense and/or some rollback on Drakon's / new shield at a later date. IMO the Roland's set itself is fine. It suffers the same problem all things Crusader have (crap resource management, unclear design, weak or non-existent non-weapon support legends)
Admittedly it would be REALLY nice for a third set that offers a medium between the two we have. Other classes have 3+ class specific sets by now and Crusader's still sitting at 2.5.
I haven't been able to get in and test this week but RRoG as far as crusaders go in terms of our greater rift pure dps set ups is almost always a damage loss. The legendary affix of the ring is for us very weak relative to a Barb or DH because our generators/spenders are just not strong enough to allow room for a key equip slot to do nothing other than to let you equip Cinder and maintain the 6 set bonus.
This debate came up with the old firestarter build as well, did cinder coat give rcr plus the elemental fire % increase? Yes. Did running 6 peice akkhan with a proper soj/unity destroy that AK5/CC? Yes. Eventually you have to pay for RCR or any stat stacking and when it came right down to it RRoG/CC combo for firestarter degraded your damage too much when you really needed it, for speedy elite/rift guardian kills.
As far as I know the only time attack speed does adjust raw damage is in the case of pets, otherwise it is just simply a faster attack animation. So it ends up being a crap shoot, in a perfect world where you could have 100% up time yes the APS/RCR may boost your damage enough to compete with other set ups. In reality you have to kite, are going to have down time and may have had a better result increasing your raw damage per wrath spent, which aps does not do.
I'm curious about the R3/Ak3 but don't have the time to sit in q this week at all, so if you tried that out ivory what were your thoughts?
Each enemy hit by your Sweep Attack increases the damage of your next Sweep Attack by 30-40%, stacking up to 5 times
I hope the stack time won't last for 3 seconds as Roland...
Anyhow I'm waiting for video coverage from MannerCookie.
The shield is still shit cause it only increases the dmg of the next sweep attack.Sure it will be good against large packs but single target its going to be so meh.
But some of us are greedy and want to use both, combining Sweep Attack for AoE and Shield Bash for single target by abusing piro mirella and Golden Flense to get the best of both worlds.
Combine that with a new (non shield) armor that increases the damage of Sweep attack and you're golden.
But some of us are greedy and want to use both, combining Sweep Attack for AoE and Shield Bash for single target by abusing piro mirella and Golden Flense to get the best of both worlds.
Combine that with a new (non shield) armor that increases the damage of Sweep attack and you're golden.
Sadly that's not an option
Moreover, I'd really like if they've changed Drakon's bracers so it worked with Sweep too - then Sweep becomes usable (and even deadly) both against boss and groups. Would be nice if they've moved Sweep bonus from that damn old ugly shield to a brand-new belt instead of different "goodies" like omni-slash or belt of hammers (which noone uses at all now if we're speaking about GR progression).
I haven't found the new shield yet on PTR and not super motivated to find it.
so are the new Roland set and bracers and what not just not worth going after? If I've got a semi decent Condemn set is it better just to stick with that?
Hang on to pieces with optimal rolls. As far as clear times go I think the idea is to have the sets be roughly equal, Condemn being faster for trash and Rolands for the RG, pylons notwithstanding.
One thing that needs desperate attention are the animations of shield bash/punish and how those imputs respond when you've got the set bonus stacked to max.
It is as though the game gets stuck bashing, if you hold down bash for any amount of time it can flat out prevent the use of other abilities, this isn't anything new but tonight I was noticing that when I stopped holding bash it took a moment for anything else to become available, as though the attacks were in a q. Which would make sense with the buff, hold down bash for x amount of seconds the game calculates an amount of attacks that should be performed and proceeds, however it prevents defensive skills/generators from functioning properly.
I haven't found the new shield yet on PTR and not super motivated to find it.
so are the new Roland set and bracers and what not just not worth going after? If I've got a semi decent Condemn set is it better just to stick with that?
New Rolands set outperforms Akkhan by quite a large margin.
I was really hoping that they wouldn't go with their plan of adding stacking % dmg onto a shield but alas they did and well I don't want to say it's completely useless without trying, but it's probably completely useless.
The devs apparently want to create a play-style where you use Rolands in this exact fashion
- Sweep Attack for AOE
- Shield Bash for STD
My suggestion was to re-design golden fleanse to give a damage buff so it would be competitive with other Roland viable weapons (Blood Brothers/Furnace to name two).
Make the Sweep Attack shield unlock all Sweep Attack runes and re-design the last rune to be something along the lines of generate 5 wrath per attack and 2-3 additional per target hit.
The current last rune and lightning rune both do pretty much the exact same thing, one freezes 100% and the other stuns 50%.
They will never achieve what they want out of Rolands unless Sweep Attack is turned into a useful utility (unlock runes giving stun/gather/loh/wrath) with an AOE damage buff along the lines of what they did.
Otherwise it's always going to be superior to just go flat out Shield Bash.
But you know, maybe they'll play the set one day and realize that the way their itemization is currently setup for the Crusader class, it makes no sense to give up the shield slot and the weapon slot to make a useless skill do useless aoe damage.
nothing will beat a pure fire shield bash build until they put Denial affix on a belt slot or golden flence to make up for the lost of piro marella and the wrath refund nerf on the bracer. I've tried going 5 piece + cindercoat + RORG and I was still having wrath issue on single target . =/
I'd love to see rcr on Fervor to counteract the downside of 1-handers.
So how is the set now after the Bracer nerfs? Damage and resource return both cut in half, still worth it?
So are we now only getting 2bil crits instead of 4 bil
Tested for a few minutes with and without bastion of will, either way the Bracer nerf was over board. The 6 piece is awful as well, back to being wrath starved especially on RG's. The lack of aoe/single target damage after the bracer nerf feels poor. Very poor. Perhaps we need the new gem but I couldn't get one to drop last night.
The damage cut was strange, I had a pair of bracers with 391% and those ended up going to 165%, while my holy bracers had 345% and ended up @ 185%. Both damage and resource cost nerfed.
TL:DR Blizzard is the death of fun. Also need to see what that new gem does before I believe that they killed the build with one patch, but if that new gem isn't amazing then this build just went RIP.
Test for yourselves, go to the official forum and demand a change. Ignore the trolls, there are many or tell them to write their own feedback threads if they have a problem, because not sucking is amazing.
Urg, just as I feared :'(. blizz saw all the Billion+ crit and gutted it all...
Guess I'm sticking with Condemn, since I already have all the gear and just need to upgrade to Ancient.
Hoping for a revert but people will have to post in the official forums in a constructive way to have that addressed. My initial reaction to the nerf was "let's see how this pans out with pylons and the new gem."
After one just one grift I decided that if pylon hunting is the meta once again I'm finished with this game. It is a shit meta, and its even more shit when you've experienced the play on both sides, with and without the pylons in gr. The model that leaves the power in the actual classes and sets was far better than having the pylons in greater rifts. Now consider the very real imbalances that exist on the current ptr in regards to sets and combine that with pylons.
Really funny to me that every leader board looks to have been re set except our seasonal where Manner had the 54 clear. Wonder why that is?
Don't worry, IK is clearly going to be next for the nerfbat. It's FAR too good.
The problem with RoRG is it doesn't do anything but allow you to keep the six set bonus, and that bonus may be overshadowed by other ring slots and R4, considering how poor the six piece actually is. I'm all for generators being in builds but I tried with the new FR and resource generation with glare/provoke still feels stronger than no generator at all. Even with PM/LOV UF our generators don't keep up with the demands of shield bash, and shield bash already is not meeting the damage requirements for higher grs.
Looks like we're not getting that new gem, so that may be that for Rolands. The answer isn't nerfing barbs, that fixes none of our problems as crusaders and only adds to forum garbage. We should be brought up, same as Wich Doc's and here's why: You can't fight power creep, eventually the game will be nothing but Barbs,DH,Monk and WIz ie classes that can go higher gr's in season three. Which makes sense, if you have the option to drive a Ferarri why the fuck would you drive a Chevette? If you're not born in the 80's make that a smart car or some other piece of shit set of wheels.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/16647734702 Good thread, if you have suggestions keep it positive, its not my thread. If you think Rolands is "fine" as is, feel free to post that as well, but at your own risk much like me Walkin inspects profiles and calls shenanigans on trolls.
The answer is better resource management tools. I kinda like the way Sweep+Bash plays on Roland's so maybe a buff to Golden Flense and/or some rollback on Drakon's / new shield at a later date. IMO the Roland's set itself is fine. It suffers the same problem all things Crusader have (crap resource management, unclear design, weak or non-existent non-weapon support legends)
Admittedly it would be REALLY nice for a third set that offers a medium between the two we have. Other classes have 3+ class specific sets by now and Crusader's still sitting at 2.5.
I haven't been able to get in and test this week but RRoG as far as crusaders go in terms of our greater rift pure dps set ups is almost always a damage loss. The legendary affix of the ring is for us very weak relative to a Barb or DH because our generators/spenders are just not strong enough to allow room for a key equip slot to do nothing other than to let you equip Cinder and maintain the 6 set bonus.
This debate came up with the old firestarter build as well, did cinder coat give rcr plus the elemental fire % increase? Yes. Did running 6 peice akkhan with a proper soj/unity destroy that AK5/CC? Yes. Eventually you have to pay for RCR or any stat stacking and when it came right down to it RRoG/CC combo for firestarter degraded your damage too much when you really needed it, for speedy elite/rift guardian kills.
As far as I know the only time attack speed does adjust raw damage is in the case of pets, otherwise it is just simply a faster attack animation. So it ends up being a crap shoot, in a perfect world where you could have 100% up time yes the APS/RCR may boost your damage enough to compete with other set ups. In reality you have to kite, are going to have down time and may have had a better result increasing your raw damage per wrath spent, which aps does not do.
I'm curious about the R3/Ak3 but don't have the time to sit in q this week at all, so if you tried that out ivory what were your thoughts?
Really interesting read http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/16646354826
The shield is still shit cause it only increases the dmg of the next sweep attack.Sure it will be good against large packs but single target its going to be so meh.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Fordragon-2878/hero/9763301
Kind of annoyed they put this on a shield... Now you have to pick between Shield Bash and Sweep attack for your Rolands build...
That's fair enough Geege...
But some of us are greedy and want to use both, combining Sweep Attack for AoE and Shield Bash for single target by abusing piro mirella and Golden Flense to get the best of both worlds.
Combine that with a new (non shield) armor that increases the damage of Sweep attack and you're golden.
Sadly that's not an option
Moreover, I'd really like if they've changed Drakon's bracers so it worked with Sweep too - then Sweep becomes usable (and even deadly) both against boss and groups. Would be nice if they've moved Sweep bonus from that damn old ugly shield to a brand-new belt instead of different "goodies" like omni-slash or belt of hammers (which noone uses at all now if we're speaking about GR progression).
I haven't found the new shield yet on PTR and not super motivated to find it.
http://www.youtube.com/mannercookie
http://www.twitch.tv/mannercookie
so are the new Roland set and bracers and what not just not worth going after? If I've got a semi decent Condemn set is it better just to stick with that?
Hang on to pieces with optimal rolls. As far as clear times go I think the idea is to have the sets be roughly equal, Condemn being faster for trash and Rolands for the RG, pylons notwithstanding.
One thing that needs desperate attention are the animations of shield bash/punish and how those imputs respond when you've got the set bonus stacked to max.
It is as though the game gets stuck bashing, if you hold down bash for any amount of time it can flat out prevent the use of other abilities, this isn't anything new but tonight I was noticing that when I stopped holding bash it took a moment for anything else to become available, as though the attacks were in a q. Which would make sense with the buff, hold down bash for x amount of seconds the game calculates an amount of attacks that should be performed and proceeds, however it prevents defensive skills/generators from functioning properly.
New Rolands set outperforms Akkhan by quite a large margin.
I was really hoping that they wouldn't go with their plan of adding stacking % dmg onto a shield but alas they did and well I don't want to say it's completely useless without trying, but it's probably completely useless.
The devs apparently want to create a play-style where you use Rolands in this exact fashion
- Sweep Attack for AOE
- Shield Bash for STD
My suggestion was to re-design golden fleanse to give a damage buff so it would be competitive with other Roland viable weapons (Blood Brothers/Furnace to name two).
Make the Sweep Attack shield unlock all Sweep Attack runes and re-design the last rune to be something along the lines of generate 5 wrath per attack and 2-3 additional per target hit.
The current last rune and lightning rune both do pretty much the exact same thing, one freezes 100% and the other stuns 50%.
They will never achieve what they want out of Rolands unless Sweep Attack is turned into a useful utility (unlock runes giving stun/gather/loh/wrath) with an AOE damage buff along the lines of what they did.
Otherwise it's always going to be superior to just go flat out Shield Bash.
But you know, maybe they'll play the set one day and realize that the way their itemization is currently setup for the Crusader class, it makes no sense to give up the shield slot and the weapon slot to make a useless skill do useless aoe damage.
<(^^<)
http://www.youtube.com/mannercookie
http://www.twitch.tv/mannercookie
nothing will beat a pure fire shield bash build until they put Denial affix on a belt slot or golden flence to make up for the lost of piro marella and the wrath refund nerf on the bracer. I've tried going 5 piece + cindercoat + RORG and I was still having wrath issue on single target . =/
Awesome, that's what I want to hear. It seem Blizz wants me to play Roland's, I've had three parts drop over the past couple of days :p.
Do we know if the Bracers are going to be seasonal or what? Also do you think Ashbringer could make a decent weapon for this spec?