First, of all I want to say that greater rifts are great addition to the game. It adds a much needed competitive aspect to the game. However, its far from perfect and there's a few issues I want to address. I've completed up to tier 48 at the time Im typing this so I feel I have enough experience to gather the following issues.
1. This is the main problem, it arises from two items: Furnance and Rimeheart. If you look at the leader boards, all the top teams are dominated by some combination of zero dps, extreme mitigation/ crowd control Rimeheart Monk/Barb, and Furnance characters. It makes little sense for zero dps characters to be at the top of the boards. As long as these tow items exists as they are, it will be impossible to balance the rifts unless you drastically reduce the mob's health to a point where the game becomes too easy.
2. Randomness of maps/ monsters. They said they normalized the rifts so there's less variance between mob density but still, there is a great deal of variance. If you get a dense rift with easy mobs, its much easier to complete and get a good time. My suggestion would be to make each tier the exact same static map and monster type.
3. Jewel Artisan. As implemented the Artisan has a better chance to spawn the higher the tier but she only spawns when you fail a rift. This means if you want to efficiently upgrade your jewels you have to purposely fail higher tiered rifts over and over again. This doesn't lead to ideal game play. My suggestion would be to make her spawn regardless if you fail or complete the rift, higher chance the higher the rift.
4. Arcane Dust and Veiled Crystals. If you spent a lot of time on greater rifts, you'll quickly realize that you run out of these two mats rapidly from enchanting, since mobs drop no items. My suggestion would be to have the boss at the end drop large stacks of these two materials to compensate.
5. Inventory management for rift keys. I have half a stash tab just filled with various level rift keys. It's becoming a bit absurd. How about storing the keys like how blood shards or gold is stored, when you click on the obelisk just have a menu for us to pick what level key we have available for.
Not to mention the unity + follower item which is broken (preventing the follower from taking damage instead of just preventing death) which every solo player is using on top tiers
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Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
these rift is meant for ladder only, they are not to replace mat farming or gear farming. They need variance otherwise people will just get horseshoe into greater rift. The other points i short-a agreed on like normalize rift but don't make them static otherwise people will be oh that rift is next or w/e skip it completely or w/e. But they do need to balance out that crazy random rift especially as you go to 35+ if you get act 4 -5 mob and lack of density it's game over. The jewel people can just get more greater rift key and just do that. The furnace and the rime heart do need to be look at, i love these two item but I know a change to them is needed for the longevity of the game. I want to see the game succeed.
Thanks for your feedback - also make sure you post this on the official PTR forums. Do you care to share with what class/spec (or in case of group which class/spec combinations) you got to level 48?
I completely agree on 1-3. Point #2 is one of the main reasons for PTR, they're balancing that right now. #3 is something we discussed already in another thread. To #1 I might add Exploding Palm - I think it should be based on the monk's damage and not the mob's HP. Everything that's based on mob's HP, like EP, or which ignores mob's HP, like Rimeheart or Furnace, kind of breaks the system. I'm not too confident that they'll change it... given how super rare Rimeheart is they might just leave it in. But it makes no sense to make top spots in leaderboards dependent on if you find the rarest weapon in the game...
As for #4, nope. Greater Rifts, as it stands now, are already the place to go for legendary gems, XP, and the "test my limits" endgame. I don't think we should make it the best place for crafting materials as well. Yes, you'll be starving crafting mats if you run GR 24/7; but that's supposed to be the point in my opinion, you shouldn't just do ONE thing in the game all the time, there's more stuff to do. If you want crafting mats, run regular rifts where there's no timer. Earning crafting mats should take time, and not just rushing to the GR guardian who drops a stack of 100 AD+VC.
Sure its no secret. All the top teams run some combinatoin of Rimeheart monks, rimeheart freeze barb, and someone to proc furnance. The mobs hp are so high that your dps is insignificant (although it could be argued that its beneficial to have one dps character to finish the mobs off once furnance does its job). The only way to quickly kill is to shatter the mobs with rimeheart that have EP on them and let EP take care of the rest.
I forgot to add EP, but I completely agree. It needs to be looked at it. Any skill/item that scales with monster health is just broken at higher tiers and becomes mandatory.
Regarding toughness, it doenst even really matter how much toughness you have at 45+, most thing will one shot you. In fact at 51, white mobs one shot my barb (who has close to 100m toughness fully buffed) if I dont have ignore pain up. It becomes a game of crowd control, and simply avoiding damage. If you can CC the mobs enough, you dont die, and thats the only way.
Lastly, I did post this on the official forums. I'll link it below, but if you guys can comment so the thread gets more attention, awesome.
Well, if this goes life, I'm set; got Rimeheart on my monk and Rimheart+Frostburn with CC on my barb. But I sure hope this will get fixed, it's just a bit ridiculous.
I really don't get how they recognized the brokenness of crushing blows, removed them after a few weeks very early on in internal beta, but added items like Rimeheart, Furnace, and kept EP in. Totally don't get it.
I think the real issue here is that the higher you go in greater rifts, the more HP and damage the mobs have but the amount of kills required stays the same, which makes it more difficult sure, but hits a point where you need to start using these kind of things, ie. Rimeheart, Furnace, Exploding palm to get any further.
I think the best fix for this is to increase the amount of monsters required to finish a greater rift the higher you go, while keeping the monster health and damage relatively stable after a certain level. For example, you reach level 30 greater rift, that is the highest monster health and damage go, almost like say a Torment 8, if torment 8 existed. The higher you go from 30, the more monsters are required to finish the rift. This way it's more about skill and teamplay than it is about using broken mechanics. The faster you kill, the better you are. That's how it should be in my opinion.
I think the best fix for this is to increase the amount of monsters required to finish a greater rift the higher you go, while keeping the monster health and damage relatively stable after a certain level. For example, you reach level 30 greater rift, that is the highest monster health and damage go, almost like say a Torment 8, if torment 8 existed. The higher you go from 30, the more monsters are required to finish the rift. This way it's more about skill and teamplay than it is about using broken mechanics. The faster you kill, the better you are. That's how it should be in my opinion.
I think, for testing purposes scaling everything (damage, hp) is fine. However the scenario you describe from white mobs one-shotting you reminds me of Inferno act 2 in early D3V. That was just too much to bear and drastically favored ranged classes.
For the live implementation I agree with Shadz' suggestion of capping the monsters' damage at a certain point. Whether they further increase their HP or their number doesn't matter imo. The gearing process would be the same: get enough toughness to survive and then improve your killspeed until the end of days.
Also, I definitely agree with removing anything that bypasses monster health. However I do want Static back! (jk )
I thought of another critique, inventory management of rift keys. I have half a stash tab just filled with various level rift keys. It's becoming a bit absurd. How about storing the keys like how blood shards or gold is stored, when you click on the obelisk just have a menu for us to pick what level key we have for.
I thought of another critique, inventory management of rift keys. I have half a stash tab just filled with various level rift keys. It's becoming a bit absurd. How about storing the keys like how blood shards or gold is stored, when you click on the obelisk just have a menu for us to pick what level key we have for.
They mentioned this on Reddit and it *absolutely* is a major issue.
It would be best to simply flag the account for rift levels (ie: you go in your very first time and clear 1-20, your account is now flagged for 20). Reduce GRift keys to one type, just like existing Rift Fragments. When you open a GRift you're given a menu that allows you to select from unlocked levels. Perhaps, to keep things balanced (so that you don't farm low levels for keys to high levels) a high level rewards more keys but also consumes more keys.
Bottom line, even if my solution sucks, even if they migrate keys to currencies, the best solution involves NOT having one potential key type per potential GRift level. That's just too many items. Period.
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1. This is the main problem, it arises from two items: Furnance and Rimeheart. If you look at the leader boards, all the top teams are dominated by some combination of zero dps, extreme mitigation/ crowd control Rimeheart Monk/Barb, and Furnance characters. It makes little sense for zero dps characters to be at the top of the boards. As long as these tow items exists as they are, it will be impossible to balance the rifts unless you drastically reduce the mob's health to a point where the game becomes too easy.
2. Randomness of maps/ monsters. They said they normalized the rifts so there's less variance between mob density but still, there is a great deal of variance. If you get a dense rift with easy mobs, its much easier to complete and get a good time. My suggestion would be to make each tier the exact same static map and monster type.
3. Jewel Artisan. As implemented the Artisan has a better chance to spawn the higher the tier but she only spawns when you fail a rift. This means if you want to efficiently upgrade your jewels you have to purposely fail higher tiered rifts over and over again. This doesn't lead to ideal game play. My suggestion would be to make her spawn regardless if you fail or complete the rift, higher chance the higher the rift.
4. Arcane Dust and Veiled Crystals. If you spent a lot of time on greater rifts, you'll quickly realize that you run out of these two mats rapidly from enchanting, since mobs drop no items. My suggestion would be to have the boss at the end drop large stacks of these two materials to compensate.
5. Inventory management for rift keys. I have half a stash tab just filled with various level rift keys. It's becoming a bit absurd. How about storing the keys like how blood shards or gold is stored, when you click on the obelisk just have a menu for us to pick what level key we have available for.
Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
Thanks for your feedback - also make sure you post this on the official PTR forums. Do you care to share with what class/spec (or in case of group which class/spec combinations) you got to level 48?
I completely agree on 1-3. Point #2 is one of the main reasons for PTR, they're balancing that right now. #3 is something we discussed already in another thread. To #1 I might add Exploding Palm - I think it should be based on the monk's damage and not the mob's HP. Everything that's based on mob's HP, like EP, or which ignores mob's HP, like Rimeheart or Furnace, kind of breaks the system. I'm not too confident that they'll change it... given how super rare Rimeheart is they might just leave it in. But it makes no sense to make top spots in leaderboards dependent on if you find the rarest weapon in the game...
As for #4, nope. Greater Rifts, as it stands now, are already the place to go for legendary gems, XP, and the "test my limits" endgame. I don't think we should make it the best place for crafting materials as well. Yes, you'll be starving crafting mats if you run GR 24/7; but that's supposed to be the point in my opinion, you shouldn't just do ONE thing in the game all the time, there's more stuff to do. If you want crafting mats, run regular rifts where there's no timer. Earning crafting mats should take time, and not just rushing to the GR guardian who drops a stack of 100 AD+VC.
I forgot to add EP, but I completely agree. It needs to be looked at it. Any skill/item that scales with monster health is just broken at higher tiers and becomes mandatory.
Regarding toughness, it doenst even really matter how much toughness you have at 45+, most thing will one shot you. In fact at 51, white mobs one shot my barb (who has close to 100m toughness fully buffed) if I dont have ignore pain up. It becomes a game of crowd control, and simply avoiding damage. If you can CC the mobs enough, you dont die, and thats the only way.
Lastly, I did post this on the official forums. I'll link it below, but if you guys can comment so the thread gets more attention, awesome.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/13271627565
Cool, thanks for link!
Well, if this goes life, I'm set; got Rimeheart on my monk and Rimheart+Frostburn with CC on my barb. But I sure hope this will get fixed, it's just a bit ridiculous.
I really don't get how they recognized the brokenness of crushing blows, removed them after a few weeks very early on in internal beta, but added items like Rimeheart, Furnace, and kept EP in. Totally don't get it.
I think the best fix for this is to increase the amount of monsters required to finish a greater rift the higher you go, while keeping the monster health and damage relatively stable after a certain level. For example, you reach level 30 greater rift, that is the highest monster health and damage go, almost like say a Torment 8, if torment 8 existed. The higher you go from 30, the more monsters are required to finish the rift. This way it's more about skill and teamplay than it is about using broken mechanics. The faster you kill, the better you are. That's how it should be in my opinion.
For the live implementation I agree with Shadz' suggestion of capping the monsters' damage at a certain point. Whether they further increase their HP or their number doesn't matter imo. The gearing process would be the same: get enough toughness to survive and then improve your killspeed until the end of days.
Also, I definitely agree with removing anything that bypasses monster health. However I do want Static back! (jk )
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
It would be best to simply flag the account for rift levels (ie: you go in your very first time and clear 1-20, your account is now flagged for 20). Reduce GRift keys to one type, just like existing Rift Fragments. When you open a GRift you're given a menu that allows you to select from unlocked levels. Perhaps, to keep things balanced (so that you don't farm low levels for keys to high levels) a high level rewards more keys but also consumes more keys.
Bottom line, even if my solution sucks, even if they migrate keys to currencies, the best solution involves NOT having one potential key type per potential GRift level. That's just too many items. Period.