Ok, so I think most people will agree that playing Diablo 3 = fighting Inferno champion packs. And Blizzard once promised us that we'd be able use any skills we like to play the game. As I've found, those two pieces just don't fit together, for the following reasons:
1. All you can snare is hot air - snares just don't work on Inferno champions. The slowdown isn't even noticeable with the naked eye until you bring the skill up to something crazy like 80% movement reduction. Also, control impairing effects such as Stun and Freeze appear to have their durations slashed by half. That's why most champion fights end up being these crazy dances.
2. Fixed damage reduction - if you try out many different skills and pay close attention to the actual amount of damage that you deal with them, you'll notice a clear trend: skills that deal a low percentage (20-60%) of your weapon's damage seem to deal barely any damage at all. And the reason for this is that the damage resistance on mobs is fixed, i.e. any time you would deal damage the same number is subtracted from it. In my experience this results in a rather awkward discrepancy where skills that claim to deal 3 times less damage (f.e. from 105% to 35%) end up actually dealing 10 (!) times less, rendering them completely useless. Skills and runes that suffer from this are those that have a high rate of attack, have additional "side-effect" damage bursts, are damage-over-time abilities or deal their total damage in several quick hits (like Spectral Blade).
These two factors make around one third of all abilities, both active and passive, unusable. So if Blizzard wants to fix the issue of people never using some skills, THIS, IMO, is where they should start.
Who's noticed the same and agrees?
And Blizzard once promised us that we'd be able use any skills we like to play the game.
The game as they refers to is normal, nightmare, and hell. inferno is just the extra "hardcore" difficulty put in there to "satisfie" the "better" gamer.
in hell you can pretty much roll around with any skills of your choice and have a really fun time. the only problem is that there is almost no reward for doing it.
im not aware of any monsters preventing damage other than block.
some had resistances to certain elemental damage, and it got removed.
also all the skill balance was pretty much rushed as the new and final system was put inplace just a few months before release, except to see alot of skill changes in patch 1.0.4 hopfully and alot more in patch 1.1
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im not aware of any monsters preventing damage other than block.
some had resistances to certain elemental damage, and it got removed.
If you haven't already, turn on damage indicators on opponents. Then compare the real damage dealt by a 40% skill and a 100%. In my experience the difference was between 1500-2000 and 8000-10000 (for a 13k dps character). So the supposed "40%" ended up actually dealing closer to 19% damage. This effect becomes the more noticeable the smaller the percentage. The only logical conclusion is that the same flat number is being cut off in both cases. After some calculating I estimate that number to be around 1400 for Act I Inferno starting mobs, higher for Act II.
also all the skill balance was pretty much rushed as the new and final system was put inplace just a few months before release, except to see alot of skill changes in patch 1.0.4 hopfully and alot more in patch 1.1
Let's hope this issue is resolved, or at least abated.
1. Working as intended and any type of cc/stun/snare/root/lifeLEACH is reduced by % on inferno [75% if i`m not mistaking]. So your 2s stun is actually ... do the math, only 25% of actual duration.
Which means there is no reason to use those skills unless you completely devote to a specific build. Build diversity demands that they be useful in any build :|
About the % weap damage, perhaps there are some bugged skills/runes that are not working as they are supposed to but just an example cyclone monks: a huge part of theyr damage 50-70% is entirely made by that skill which deals only 20% of weapon dmg.
I don't know, if it were a bug I figured they would have fixed it by now. I'm just basing this off of my own observations. Of how using certain skills feels like your trying to tickle opponents to death.
Anyone who disagrees with the premise probably hasn't made it to Inferno yet.
The equation is pretty simple...
1) The strength disparity between champs and white mobs is massive.
2) If you have the gear to kill champions effectively, it's almost meaningless what you do vs white mobs.
3) Any build that's based around killing white mobs more effectively (AoE mainly) is pretty much unusable.
Of course Blizzard has already made it so that creating builds isn't really a part of D3. There's not much of a theorycrafting element. But these mechanics make it even more cookie cutter.
It's not even like a build "might" be good with certain gear. There are clearly defined builds for every class because some skills / passives are obviously better against champs.
Could you post something about your class/spec?
Basic example:
Spell A. 10k dmg - casttime: 1s
Spell B. 4k dmg - casttime: 0.4s
I already switched up my build (for obvious reasons) so these are just what sticks out in my head:
Wizard
13.4k DPS, no passives or actives that alter damage
1.4 attacks per second (using a wand)
Arcane Orb (Tap the Source rune): 12k - 18k damage per hit, about 1.4 attacks per second
Shock Pulse (Piercing Orb rune): 8K-10K per hit, about 1.4 attacks per second
Electrocute (Lightning Blast rune): 4k-6k damage per hit, about 2.2 attacks per second
Blizzard (Snowbound rune): 1K-2K damage each second (for a total of 9K, a far cry from the promised 210%)
Temporal Flux - no effect on champions
Slow Time - no effect unless you use the Time Shell rune
> complaining about build diversity
> complaining about some packs unkillable with certain builds
> having 13.4k dps unbuffed
> mfw
So you're saying that glass cannon is the only way to go? How is that considered build diversity?
Also think of people fresh in Inferno, who do not yet have a lvl 60+ weapon (and don't want to use the AH, a common complaint)
Farming better gear is the way to go.
Farming matching gear for certain builds is the way to go.
I know. But farming is in and of itself playing the game. I doubt that people like having to use builds that aren't their own for months on end just so they can finally use their own build again when the game is essentially over (they will probably have passed Inferno by then with the more efficient skills).
Blizzard - how many ticks do you get from one blizzard? You cast one spell(1 cast-animation) - do you expect it to tick for 12-18k with 5-6 ticks? It's an aoe-spell with a frost component, so the spell should give less dmg that Arcane Orb(frost + cold-passive vs arcane + slow passive). Not sure but as I recall you get around 5-6 ticks (if you hit the mob for the full duration). That's around max 12k dmg with the numbers you posted. Isn't that viable when you get a "free" slow with it?
Except that the slow is non-existant for elites So you end up spending 6 seconds dealing less damage than a single Arcane Orb for more cost. Which is why noone has any reason to use it. And that is bad.
And you're missing the point. I'm not complaining about my character's efficacy in Inferno (I'm already in Act 2, BTW), I'm pointing out issues Blizzard should address if they want greater build diversity.
There's really only one class with almost no build diversity prior to having top-shelf gear and that's the WD, which blizzard is addressing next patch.
There are skills/runes in every class that need work, some more than others, but I think for the most part every class (again, exception for the wd) has a handful of inferno viable builds that don't requite you to hit high benchmark stats. My monk is wearing less than a mil worth of gear and progressing using two different builds, with quite a few more to try. My barb has cleared up to the beginning of act4 and can comfortably farm most of a3 with at least half a dozen different setups.
..., but I think for the most part every class (again, exception for the wd) has a handful of inferno viable builds that don't requite you to hit high benchmark stats.
Don't you feel it should be more than just a handful?
..., but I think for the most part every class (again, exception for the wd) has a handful of inferno viable builds that don't requite you to hit high benchmark stats.
Don't you feel it should be more than just a handful?
I think more will become viable over time, since there are bound to be tweaks in patches and discoveries of new skill combinations to come. I also think that it's a good thing to have some limitation to inferno-level builds. I would really hate to see inferno become so trivial that any combination of skills could do the trick even though I do want to see the functionally bad skill/rune combos of every class addressed eventually.
Just to be clear on what constitutes a handful, I'm talking about a half-dozen or more template builds per class. If you're willing to accept build variant by 1 or 2 skills then the number of viable builds for non-wd is pretty large considering how young the game is.
I would really hate to see inferno become so trivial that any combination of skills could do the trick even though I do want to see the functionally bad skill/rune combos of every class addressed eventually.
Well, obviously one should need a good balance between damagers and utilities for their build. I am just hoping they make the choice of viable damagers and utilities more broad, because right now there are ones that aren't viable in any combination with anything.
Just to be clear on what constitutes a handful, I'm talking about a half-dozen or more template builds per class. If you're willing to accept build variant by 1 or 2 skills then the number of viable builds for non-wd is pretty large considering how young the game is.
Well, obviously one should need a good balance between damagers and utilities for their build. I am just hoping they make the choice of viable damagers and utilities more broad, because right now there are ones that aren't viable in any combination with anything.
Can you give me some examples of skills that simply aren't viable in any way? Because I know of a lot of under-used skills that are of situational use at least. I'm not saying they don't exist, but I don't think they make up the bulk of the skillsets either.
Can you give me some examples of skills that simply aren't viable in any way? Because I know of a lot of under-used skills that are of situational use at least. I'm not saying they don't exist, but I don't think they make up the bulk of the skillsets either.
Since I currently only play Wizard in Inferno, I can only speak for Wizard skills. The following are unusable against Inferno champions:
Active:
Spectral Blade: all Runes
Electrocute: all Runes
Energy Twister: all except Gale Force (because it's 60% each second, the real damage dealt leaves a lot to be desired)
Slow time: all except Time Shell (and it's very difficult to catch them in that smaller bubble)
Hydra: all Runes
Meteor: surprized? The trailing 60% damage over 3 seconds gets hit by resistances so bad, it's essentially 0. And you have better options for 200% damage (and even for 260% with the Molten Impact Rune).
Blizzard: all except Frozen Solid Rune
Passive:
Paralysis (due to significantly reduced duration)
Temporal Flux (effect not even visible)
Spectral Blades (Healing Blades, I believe) is a melee Wiz build variant, as is Energy Twister (I believe Gale Force is the desired rune).
Both Snowbound and Stark Winter are legitemate Blizzard runes.
Venom Hydra is one of the single best Wizard abilities in the game.
At this point I feel like either you are horribly mis-informed, or you're just trolling. You very well know that most of these "issues" are going to be fixed in 1.0.4, that Blizzard has been working on this for well over a month, and you're still going on about it as if somehow we don't know that Toad of Hugeness has no use in Inferno.
You're not providing meaningful feedback. It's no different than whining that Legendaries suck right now. It doesn't add a damned bit of anything to the process. Continuing to identify things that are already on the radar and on the list of things to be fixed in the short term doesn't do anything. So, ultimately, what does this thread do that is new? What feedback are you providing that hasn't already been brought up a hundred times in various class forums?
Since I currently only play Wizard in Inferno, I can only speak for Wizard skills. The following are unusable against Inferno champions:
Active:
Spectral Blade: all Runes
Electrocute: all Runes
Energy Twister: all except Gale Force (because it's 60% each second, the real damage dealt leaves a lot to be desired)
Slow time: all except Time Shell (and it's very difficult to catch them in that smaller bubble)
Hydra: all Runes
Meteor: surprized? The trailing 60% damage over 3 seconds gets hit by resistances so bad, it's essentially 0. And you have better options for 200% damage (and even for 260% with the Molten Impact Rune).
Blizzard: all except Frozen Solid Rune
I think Spectral Blade with Deep Cuts is the bread and butter of some meele wizards who still don't have AP on crit or enough crit chance to keep AP up.
I thought Hydra (Venom) was one of the best "passive dps" abilities out there.
I've seen other Blizzard runes being used in Inferno (the reduced AP one and the bigger AoE) with decent results (it functions similarly to Hydra, low sustained dps).
Slow Time (preferably with the 20% bonus dmg rune) can have a 100% uptime with a crit mass build, so it's really good for meele Wizards as well.
And wasn't Meteor also a staple of meele builds a couple patches ago, with the trail giving solid Life on Hit procs?
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just pointing out a couple things that drew my attention there. Spells like Wave of Force, Ice Armor or Storm Armor are quite bad though.
I can agree with Electrocute, Paralysis and Temporal Flux, though. They seem just too weak against champ packs.
Both Snowbound and Stark Winter are legitemate Blizzard runes.
Snowbound would have been good if it were possible to stack Blizzards (but it's not). As for Stark Winter, I can't see how an increased area of effect helps against champions.
Venom Hydra is one of the single best Wizard abilities in the game.
An 18% DoT? Is that damage even visible with the naked eye? Or perhaps champions have a weaker resistance to Poison for some reason? I guess I'll have to check that out.
At this point I feel like either you are horribly mis-informed, or you're just [yada yada...]
I'm well aware of the upcoming changes and I'm just doing what we all refer to by the lovely name of "providing feedback". Even though the way we actually do it is oftentimes less than lovely
I think Spectral Blade with Deep Cuts is the bread and butter of some meele wizards who still don't have AP on crit or enough crit chance to keep AP up.
I've actually tried that. But it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth to have it purely for the sake of charging up Arcane Energy.
I've seen other Blizzard runes being used in Inferno (the reduced AP one and the bigger AoE) with decent results (it functions similarly to Hydra, low sustained dps).
Perhaps what you've seen is people farming one or two acts below of what they're capable of. And they switch up skills when they go to the upper acts?
And wasn't Meteor also a staple of meele builds a couple patches ago, with the trail giving solid Life on Hit procs?
Hmm, well I suppose that if you have a ton of LoH then yes, that is the one case where you'd want to use Meteor for it's rapid trail. But I'd rather see it used in different builds as well.
Well, it was a friend of mine who used his Wizard's Blizzard with other runes on Act 3. He got bored of it and switched to Barb though.
And the Slow Time I've only seen on solo builds, didn't mean for coop. It might still be good if you have like a Monk and a Barbarian to hold enemies at bay and a ranged DH/Wiz dealing the dmg, since the enemies tend to stay in the bubble fighting the meele guys. They're generally facetanking stuff anyways (except arcane/desecrator/firechains).
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1. All you can snare is hot air - snares just don't work on Inferno champions. The slowdown isn't even noticeable with the naked eye until you bring the skill up to something crazy like 80% movement reduction. Also, control impairing effects such as Stun and Freeze appear to have their durations slashed by half. That's why most champion fights end up being these crazy dances.
2. Fixed damage reduction - if you try out many different skills and pay close attention to the actual amount of damage that you deal with them, you'll notice a clear trend: skills that deal a low percentage (20-60%) of your weapon's damage seem to deal barely any damage at all. And the reason for this is that the damage resistance on mobs is fixed, i.e. any time you would deal damage the same number is subtracted from it. In my experience this results in a rather awkward discrepancy where skills that claim to deal 3 times less damage (f.e. from 105% to 35%) end up actually dealing 10 (!) times less, rendering them completely useless. Skills and runes that suffer from this are those that have a high rate of attack, have additional "side-effect" damage bursts, are damage-over-time abilities or deal their total damage in several quick hits (like Spectral Blade).
These two factors make around one third of all abilities, both active and passive, unusable. So if Blizzard wants to fix the issue of people never using some skills, THIS, IMO, is where they should start.
Who's noticed the same and agrees?
The game as they refers to is normal, nightmare, and hell. inferno is just the extra "hardcore" difficulty put in there to "satisfie" the "better" gamer.
in hell you can pretty much roll around with any skills of your choice and have a really fun time. the only problem is that there is almost no reward for doing it.
im not aware of any monsters preventing damage other than block.
some had resistances to certain elemental damage, and it got removed.
also all the skill balance was pretty much rushed as the new and final system was put inplace just a few months before release, except to see alot of skill changes in patch 1.0.4 hopfully and alot more in patch 1.1
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Let's hope this issue is resolved, or at least abated.
Yes, that's what we mean when we say "not viable" and "unusable" :).
I don't know, if it were a bug I figured they would have fixed it by now. I'm just basing this off of my own observations. Of how using certain skills feels like your trying to tickle opponents to death.
The equation is pretty simple...
1) The strength disparity between champs and white mobs is massive.
2) If you have the gear to kill champions effectively, it's almost meaningless what you do vs white mobs.
3) Any build that's based around killing white mobs more effectively (AoE mainly) is pretty much unusable.
Of course Blizzard has already made it so that creating builds isn't really a part of D3. There's not much of a theorycrafting element. But these mechanics make it even more cookie cutter.
It's not even like a build "might" be good with certain gear. There are clearly defined builds for every class because some skills / passives are obviously better against champs.
I already switched up my build (for obvious reasons) so these are just what sticks out in my head:
Wizard
13.4k DPS, no passives or actives that alter damage
1.4 attacks per second (using a wand)
Arcane Orb (Tap the Source rune): 12k - 18k damage per hit, about 1.4 attacks per second
Shock Pulse (Piercing Orb rune): 8K-10K per hit, about 1.4 attacks per second
Electrocute (Lightning Blast rune): 4k-6k damage per hit, about 2.2 attacks per second
Blizzard (Snowbound rune): 1K-2K damage each second (for a total of 9K, a far cry from the promised 210%)
Temporal Flux - no effect on champions
Slow Time - no effect unless you use the Time Shell rune
Also think of people fresh in Inferno, who do not yet have a lvl 60+ weapon (and don't want to use the AH, a common complaint)
And you're missing the point. I'm not complaining about my character's efficacy in Inferno (I'm already in Act 2, BTW), I'm pointing out issues Blizzard should address if they want greater build diversity.
EU
No, they were designed for Normal difficulty. And Blizzard admitted that they need to be fixed for them to be used in Inferno.
There are skills/runes in every class that need work, some more than others, but I think for the most part every class (again, exception for the wd) has a handful of inferno viable builds that don't requite you to hit high benchmark stats. My monk is wearing less than a mil worth of gear and progressing using two different builds, with quite a few more to try. My barb has cleared up to the beginning of act4 and can comfortably farm most of a3 with at least half a dozen different setups.
I think more will become viable over time, since there are bound to be tweaks in patches and discoveries of new skill combinations to come. I also think that it's a good thing to have some limitation to inferno-level builds. I would really hate to see inferno become so trivial that any combination of skills could do the trick even though I do want to see the functionally bad skill/rune combos of every class addressed eventually.
Just to be clear on what constitutes a handful, I'm talking about a half-dozen or more template builds per class. If you're willing to accept build variant by 1 or 2 skills then the number of viable builds for non-wd is pretty large considering how young the game is.
Still feels a bit cramped to me
Can you give me some examples of skills that simply aren't viable in any way? Because I know of a lot of under-used skills that are of situational use at least. I'm not saying they don't exist, but I don't think they make up the bulk of the skillsets either.
Active:
Spectral Blade: all Runes
Electrocute: all Runes
Energy Twister: all except Gale Force (because it's 60% each second, the real damage dealt leaves a lot to be desired)
Slow time: all except Time Shell (and it's very difficult to catch them in that smaller bubble)
Hydra: all Runes
Meteor: surprized? The trailing 60% damage over 3 seconds gets hit by resistances so bad, it's essentially 0. And you have better options for 200% damage (and even for 260% with the Molten Impact Rune).
Blizzard: all except Frozen Solid Rune
Passive:
Paralysis (due to significantly reduced duration)
Temporal Flux (effect not even visible)
Both Snowbound and Stark Winter are legitemate Blizzard runes.
Venom Hydra is one of the single best Wizard abilities in the game.
At this point I feel like either you are horribly mis-informed, or you're just trolling. You very well know that most of these "issues" are going to be fixed in 1.0.4, that Blizzard has been working on this for well over a month, and you're still going on about it as if somehow we don't know that Toad of Hugeness has no use in Inferno.
You're not providing meaningful feedback. It's no different than whining that Legendaries suck right now. It doesn't add a damned bit of anything to the process. Continuing to identify things that are already on the radar and on the list of things to be fixed in the short term doesn't do anything. So, ultimately, what does this thread do that is new? What feedback are you providing that hasn't already been brought up a hundred times in various class forums?
I thought Hydra (Venom) was one of the best "passive dps" abilities out there.
I've seen other Blizzard runes being used in Inferno (the reduced AP one and the bigger AoE) with decent results (it functions similarly to Hydra, low sustained dps).
Slow Time (preferably with the 20% bonus dmg rune) can have a 100% uptime with a crit mass build, so it's really good for meele Wizards as well.
And wasn't Meteor also a staple of meele builds a couple patches ago, with the trail giving solid Life on Hit procs?
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just pointing out a couple things that drew my attention there. Spells like Wave of Force, Ice Armor or Storm Armor are quite bad though.
I can agree with Electrocute, Paralysis and Temporal Flux, though. They seem just too weak against champ packs.
Snowbound would have been good if it were possible to stack Blizzards (but it's not). As for Stark Winter, I can't see how an increased area of effect helps against champions.
An 18% DoT? Is that damage even visible with the naked eye? Or perhaps champions have a weaker resistance to Poison for some reason? I guess I'll have to check that out.
I'm well aware of the upcoming changes and I'm just doing what we all refer to by the lovely name of "providing feedback". Even though the way we actually do it is oftentimes less than lovely
I've actually tried that. But it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth to have it purely for the sake of charging up Arcane Energy.
Perhaps what you've seen is people farming one or two acts below of what they're capable of. And they switch up skills when they go to the upper acts?
The problem with that Rune is getting your party to stay in one place Which in most cases is suicide for all but a tank-only party.
Hmm, well I suppose that if you have a ton of LoH then yes, that is the one case where you'd want to use Meteor for it's rapid trail. But I'd rather see it used in different builds as well.
And the Slow Time I've only seen on solo builds, didn't mean for coop. It might still be good if you have like a Monk and a Barbarian to hold enemies at bay and a ranged DH/Wiz dealing the dmg, since the enemies tend to stay in the bubble fighting the meele guys. They're generally facetanking stuff anyways (except arcane/desecrator/firechains).