1.0.4 Class Preview: Wizard
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Like the other classes, the wizard is also seeing a lot of tuning improvements to help promote build diversity. Rather than focus on those minor adjustments, though (which you'll be able to learn more about in the 1.0.4 patch notes), I’m going focus the majority of this preview on Hydra.
Here are the major points I'll cover:
From a development standpoint, we love Hydra and put a lot of effort into its design. In fact, Hydra took many times more development time to create than an average skill. There are more art variants, more spell effects, and more lines of code associated with Hydra than almost any other wizard skill in the game (except potentially Archon). We did this because Hydra is an iconic skill in the wizard’s arsenal and we wanted it to stand out. When you’re in a multiplayer game and you see that Hydra spawn, it’s instantly recognizable. And for those who are familiar with the class, you can also immediately tell which rune variant a wizard is running with.
Our goal for Hydra is to not just have each rune variant be visually distinct, but also for it to be better at something than the others. Specifically:
New Tristram, We Have a Problem
Despite these goals, it doesn’t take long to figure out that Venom Hydra is simply the best Hydra to use, regardless of the situation. This is mostly to do with its very high damage output. Although (technically) against fast-moving targets the Lightning Hydra does slightly more damage, Venom Hydra does three times more damage if you get the target to stand still, and that difference is simply too big to pass up.
The other rune variants have similar issues. The range on the Frost Hydra is too short to be useful. The DPS loss Arcane Hydra takes for being good at AoE makes it too weak versus single targets (especially when you consider that most of the hard fights are against high health Elites). The niche for Mammoth Hydra is very narrow and, if you can get a target to stand still, Venom Hydra does more damage in hallways than Mammoth Hydra anyways.
Five Heads Are Better Than One
To address these issues, we’ve decided to boost the damage of Lightning, Frost, Arcane, and Mammoth Hydra. Venom Hydra will remain the best against stationary targets, but if the targets are moving in any way, Lightning should be a clear winner. The range of Frost Hydra has been more than doubled as well, which should allow it to fill the intended role of snaring. Arcane Hydra will do less damage than Venom Hydra versus a single target, but rather than doing approximately 60% less damage, choosing it should only cause about a 15-20% DPS hit against single targets — and you should be much better against groups. Mammoth Hydra will be getting a modest bump, but ultimately “good in hallways” just doesn’t seem like a very good specialty. We’re going to keep an eye on this one for now, but down the road we’d like to find something much cooler for the Mammoth Hydra — like giving it the ability to move around the battlefield without needing to be recast (just as an example).
Here are some raw numbers:
Skill Diversity
One concern is how this change will affect skill diversity. If our goal is to promote a large variety of builds, why are we taking one of the most powerful wizard runes and then bumping all of the variants to match it rather than simply nerfing Venom Hydra?
From our point of view, it's okay for Venom Hydra to be extremely powerful. One of the trickiest things throughout our design process has been creating lots of appealing skills. You only have six skill slots, so the more appealing skills we can make, the more significant your choice becomes of which skills earn a spot on your bar. If a Signature skill is on the strong side, it starts to trump the other Signature skills. If a Signature skill is way too strong then it starts to trump your Arcane Power spenders as well. This hurts build diversity. Similar situations exist for Arcane Power spenders, many defensive skills, and the trio of Armor skills (Ice Armor, Storm Armor, and Energy Armor).
However, in the case of Hydra, the risk of trumping other skills is much lower. It’s totally okay for Hydra to be one of the most used skills because there’s still a lot of flexibility beyond making it your only source of DPS. If you can spare the skill slot, you’ll almost certainly want to combine it with a Signature skill to cast while the Hydra is out. If you can spare two skill slots, you can do even more damage by adding a secondary Arcane Power spender.
Trigger-Happy
While patch 1.0.4 has very few nerfs, one of them does affect the wizard. Rather than waiting for players to discover this change in the patch notes or while playing, I wanted to call it out here because it affects a build that I find to be quite cool and enjoy a lot.
Energy Twister is having its proc coefficient reduced from 0.25 to 0.125. For players who may not know what proc coefficients are: they affect how effectively a skill triggers procs (or effects that have a small chance to activate). Many skills (like Magic Missile) have a proc coefficient of 1. Skills that hit multiple targets or pulse multiple times have lower proc coefficients.
In the case of Energy Twister, specifically Wicked Wind, the 0.25 proc coefficient causes the skill to generate more procs in a given time period than any other skill. Currently, this is used in combination with Critical Mass to lower the cooldown on skills like Frost Nova and Diamond Skin. By reducing the proc coefficient from 0.25 to 0.125, the build still works and remains fairly strong, but it won’t be quite as good as it is now. (For those with extremely high Crit rates, you may not even notice much difference, but I wanted to call it out anyway. )
Originally, we weren’t going to make this change, but 1.0.4 also brings with it a number of new Legendary items, and many of them have phenomenal new proc effects. If we left high proc coefficients as they were, then a handful of skills with higher coefficients would become the de facto choice to use with these sexy new items. We were faced with a choice: we could either reduce the proc coefficient, or we could make it so these skills could not trigger the procs on Legendary items at all. We opted for the former because it seemed like getting a Legendary with a proc effect but never seeing it trigger would be very disappointing. Regardless, having well-balanced proc coefficients on all skills is not only better for Legendaries, but also for the long-term of the game.
Buffs, Buffs, and More Buffs
The reduced proc coefficient is just a drop in the bucket, and overall wizards are seeing their fair share of buffing.
In addition to the Hydra buffs, we're also increasing the damage of some lesser used Signature skill runes. A few skills are very popular right now such as Seeker (Magic Missile) and Piercing Orb (Shock Pulse), so we’ll be buffing the other runes to match. We'll be revisiting all of the other Signature skill runes with much the same philosophy as Hydra.
Meteor and Arcane Torrent are both going to get buffs, as well, since neither of those feel strong enough to justify the Arcane Power expenditure.
Meteor:
Meteor requires the player to correctly predict enemy movement in order to deal maximum damage, and Arcane Torrent requires you to stand still for extended periods of time to do damage. Since a player is putting in some extra effort to use these skills, some extra damage seems justified.
Be sure to check out our other class previews for patch 1.0.4: Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III. He's seriously considering dressing up as Psy from his "Gangnam Style" video for Halloween.
Here are the major points I'll cover:
- Skill design philosophy for Diablo as a whole
- What makes Venom Hydra as strong as it is
- Why, rather than nerfing Venom Hydra, we're simply going to buff all the other Hydra variants
From a development standpoint, we love Hydra and put a lot of effort into its design. In fact, Hydra took many times more development time to create than an average skill. There are more art variants, more spell effects, and more lines of code associated with Hydra than almost any other wizard skill in the game (except potentially Archon). We did this because Hydra is an iconic skill in the wizard’s arsenal and we wanted it to stand out. When you’re in a multiplayer game and you see that Hydra spawn, it’s instantly recognizable. And for those who are familiar with the class, you can also immediately tell which rune variant a wizard is running with.
Our goal for Hydra is to not just have each rune variant be visually distinct, but also for it to be better at something than the others. Specifically:
- Arcane Hydra: Best at AoE
- Lightning Hydra: Good against targets that move a lot
- Venom Hydra: Good against targets that stand still
- Frost Hydra: Good for snaring
- Mammoth Hydra: Best in hallways
New Tristram, We Have a Problem
Despite these goals, it doesn’t take long to figure out that Venom Hydra is simply the best Hydra to use, regardless of the situation. This is mostly to do with its very high damage output. Although (technically) against fast-moving targets the Lightning Hydra does slightly more damage, Venom Hydra does three times more damage if you get the target to stand still, and that difference is simply too big to pass up.
The other rune variants have similar issues. The range on the Frost Hydra is too short to be useful. The DPS loss Arcane Hydra takes for being good at AoE makes it too weak versus single targets (especially when you consider that most of the hard fights are against high health Elites). The niche for Mammoth Hydra is very narrow and, if you can get a target to stand still, Venom Hydra does more damage in hallways than Mammoth Hydra anyways.
Five Heads Are Better Than One
To address these issues, we’ve decided to boost the damage of Lightning, Frost, Arcane, and Mammoth Hydra. Venom Hydra will remain the best against stationary targets, but if the targets are moving in any way, Lightning should be a clear winner. The range of Frost Hydra has been more than doubled as well, which should allow it to fill the intended role of snaring. Arcane Hydra will do less damage than Venom Hydra versus a single target, but rather than doing approximately 60% less damage, choosing it should only cause about a 15-20% DPS hit against single targets — and you should be much better against groups. Mammoth Hydra will be getting a modest bump, but ultimately “good in hallways” just doesn’t seem like a very good specialty. We’re going to keep an eye on this one for now, but down the road we’d like to find something much cooler for the Mammoth Hydra — like giving it the ability to move around the battlefield without needing to be recast (just as an example).
Here are some raw numbers:
- Arcane Hydra: Weapon damage increased from 28% to 60% per Arcane Orb
- Lightning Hydra: Weapon damage increased from 34% to 64%
- Frost Hydra: Weapon damage increased from 31% to 36%
- Mammoth Hydra: Weapon damage increased from 22% to 67%
Skill Diversity
One concern is how this change will affect skill diversity. If our goal is to promote a large variety of builds, why are we taking one of the most powerful wizard runes and then bumping all of the variants to match it rather than simply nerfing Venom Hydra?
From our point of view, it's okay for Venom Hydra to be extremely powerful. One of the trickiest things throughout our design process has been creating lots of appealing skills. You only have six skill slots, so the more appealing skills we can make, the more significant your choice becomes of which skills earn a spot on your bar. If a Signature skill is on the strong side, it starts to trump the other Signature skills. If a Signature skill is way too strong then it starts to trump your Arcane Power spenders as well. This hurts build diversity. Similar situations exist for Arcane Power spenders, many defensive skills, and the trio of Armor skills (Ice Armor, Storm Armor, and Energy Armor).
However, in the case of Hydra, the risk of trumping other skills is much lower. It’s totally okay for Hydra to be one of the most used skills because there’s still a lot of flexibility beyond making it your only source of DPS. If you can spare the skill slot, you’ll almost certainly want to combine it with a Signature skill to cast while the Hydra is out. If you can spare two skill slots, you can do even more damage by adding a secondary Arcane Power spender.
Trigger-Happy
While patch 1.0.4 has very few nerfs, one of them does affect the wizard. Rather than waiting for players to discover this change in the patch notes or while playing, I wanted to call it out here because it affects a build that I find to be quite cool and enjoy a lot.
Energy Twister is having its proc coefficient reduced from 0.25 to 0.125. For players who may not know what proc coefficients are: they affect how effectively a skill triggers procs (or effects that have a small chance to activate). Many skills (like Magic Missile) have a proc coefficient of 1. Skills that hit multiple targets or pulse multiple times have lower proc coefficients.
In the case of Energy Twister, specifically Wicked Wind, the 0.25 proc coefficient causes the skill to generate more procs in a given time period than any other skill. Currently, this is used in combination with Critical Mass to lower the cooldown on skills like Frost Nova and Diamond Skin. By reducing the proc coefficient from 0.25 to 0.125, the build still works and remains fairly strong, but it won’t be quite as good as it is now. (For those with extremely high Crit rates, you may not even notice much difference, but I wanted to call it out anyway. )
Originally, we weren’t going to make this change, but 1.0.4 also brings with it a number of new Legendary items, and many of them have phenomenal new proc effects. If we left high proc coefficients as they were, then a handful of skills with higher coefficients would become the de facto choice to use with these sexy new items. We were faced with a choice: we could either reduce the proc coefficient, or we could make it so these skills could not trigger the procs on Legendary items at all. We opted for the former because it seemed like getting a Legendary with a proc effect but never seeing it trigger would be very disappointing. Regardless, having well-balanced proc coefficients on all skills is not only better for Legendaries, but also for the long-term of the game.
Buffs, Buffs, and More Buffs
The reduced proc coefficient is just a drop in the bucket, and overall wizards are seeing their fair share of buffing.
In addition to the Hydra buffs, we're also increasing the damage of some lesser used Signature skill runes. A few skills are very popular right now such as Seeker (Magic Missile) and Piercing Orb (Shock Pulse), so we’ll be buffing the other runes to match. We'll be revisiting all of the other Signature skill runes with much the same philosophy as Hydra.
Meteor and Arcane Torrent are both going to get buffs, as well, since neither of those feel strong enough to justify the Arcane Power expenditure.
Meteor:
- Base damage increased from 200% + 60% over 3 seconds to 260% + 60% over 3 seconds
- Molten Impact damage increased from 260% +78% over 3 seconds to 390% + 90% over 3 seconds
- Meteor Shower damage increased from 80% to 104% for each smaller Meteor
- Comet damage (of initial hit) increased from 240% to 312%
- Arcane Power cost reduced from 20 to 16
- Base damage increased from 175% to 210%
- Arcane Mines damage increased from 150% to 180%
- Cascade damage increased from 175% to 210%
- Death Blossom projectiles are now less random
Meteor requires the player to correctly predict enemy movement in order to deal maximum damage, and Arcane Torrent requires you to stand still for extended periods of time to do damage. Since a player is putting in some extra effort to use these skills, some extra damage seems justified.
Be sure to check out our other class previews for patch 1.0.4: Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III. He's seriously considering dressing up as Psy from his "Gangnam Style" video for Halloween.
At Least 50 Procs Being Added
If the examples given in the Legendary item preview were not enough, you should be happy to hear they have at least 50 Procs being added in 1.0.4
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The video on Legendary Items and 1.0.4 Legendary Item Improvements developer blog we posted covered but a small portion of all the procs being added. In many cases we chose ones that were easily recognizable for the video, but there are more, oh yes, there are more... >: ) …we’re currently on target to have at least 50, in fact!
Class Previews are Previews
Lylirra confirmed on the forum a question some players had regardling the class previews. There will be more changes listed once we get our hands on the patch notes.
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The previews are simply that: previews. They're not going to detail everything that's changing (this is what the patch notes are for), but instead will offer an overview of what you can expect to see. In general, each preview has some sort of focus -- they'll talk about a few specific changes with specific examples, but they'll also delve pretty deep into the reasoning and philosophies behind those changes. That's the trade-off.
Wyatt was pretty adamant in making sure these previews were more about providing explanations about what was changing rather than getting really granular with the details. After all, you'll get to see exactly what's been changed in the patch notes and when you play. While they are intended to give you an idea of what's coming, the previews are ultimately more about opening a window into the development process and sharing that experience with the community.
Wyatt was pretty adamant in making sure these previews were more about providing explanations about what was changing rather than getting really granular with the details. After all, you'll get to see exactly what's been changed in the patch notes and when you play. While they are intended to give you an idea of what's coming, the previews are ultimately more about opening a window into the development process and sharing that experience with the community.
North American Battle.net Account Update
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
As a precaution following our recent security update, players on North American servers please take a moment to visit Battle.net account management, where you will be prompted to change your security question as well as update your Mobile Authenticator. There you'll also find helpful tips and an FAQ, as well as instructions on how to add additional layers of security to your account, including the Battle.net Authenticator or the Mobile Authenticator for those that aren't already using one.
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Posted Aug 15, 2012Blog.posts++
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Posted Aug 15, 2012The game is probably getting so easy that Inferno will look like Hell with all those buffs to characters and nerfs to monsters. You really want to complain about a nerf to a incredibly easy to make freeze-locking build?
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Posted Aug 16, 2012It's as if blizz is so addicted to nerfing/tweaking the game to force players to play it THEIR way that they just can't stop, even though it's clear that at this point it's caused a significant portion of players to quit. Which has cost them money in the RMAH.
Good job blizz! Idiots... hope it costs them customers in the future.
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Posted Aug 16, 2012-
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Posted Aug 16, 2012More build diversity and less OP builds seems the right way to me, but it's a tricky one.
Let's wait and see.
Thanks for sharing, Molster!
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Posted Aug 16, 2012They're making a lot more than 50 changes. They're adding "at least 50 procs" but they've changed a lot of legendaries without adding procs as well.
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Posted Aug 16, 2012-
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Posted Aug 16, 2012Diablo3 was released in a beta stage and it needed at least one more year of development in order to meet common quality standards. It was the first game in the history of gaming on which the customer support stated that it is perfectly normal reset and loose all progress in the game when the game creates impossible situations. The next thing would be stating that crashes are actually valid game features. ...for sure some will believe it and think cool of it.
The game is full of flaws starting with overall design errors, going through bad tunning that sometimes is fixed by nerfing items bought with real money, and ending with bugs and development gaps (like no implementation for mentaining nepalem valor on disconnects, mobs attacking the target with less agro and so on)
Diablo3 could have been one of the greatest games ever!
Diablo3 will never be one of the greatest games ever!
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Posted Aug 16, 2012It's not really the fact that they're nerfing energy twister that is the problem... I think it should be done... but...
1.) So you're nerfing Energy Twister but not Sprint Tornadoes? How is that fair?
2.) Your reason is legendary items? So you're balancing a skill on an item that the majority of people won't have? Also, what about barbs getting said legendary items? You don't care if they abuse the procs? Makes ZERO sense.
3.) Those procs don't have internal cooldowns? Wow.... I figured any of those weapon procs would have internal cooldowns since that's HOW you balance it in cases such as these.
It just doesn't make sense to nerf Wizard tornadoes and not Barb tornadoes (for the record I am a neutral party that plays a WD).
Also... why did they focus the entire article on boring changes with Hydra and then barely talk about actual exciting changes (changes to meteor and arcane torrent). I don't know about most wizards, but I think they'd care more about those buffs because that's actually something that might promote build diversity... not buffing the damage on non-venom hydra. This is the first blog that was poorly done.
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Posted Aug 16, 2012The proc coefficient of Sprint Tornado was already less than WW. The changes aren't that big of a deal anyways if you have a high crit rate. The ability was insanely overpowered to begin with.
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Posted Aug 16, 2012Barbarian still takes an incredibly expensive set of gear in order to pull off the double WW or Chaos builds (the ones that you see Kripp using when he streams) - and of course everyone argues that it's overpowered because you're seeing one of the best barbarians play with it... Even with that said - even with that expensive gear - barbarians still take a TON of damage when they play... Yes it's offset by high AR/VIT/Armor - and yes it's offset with high LoH... However... They're still taking a ton of damage...
Now let's compare a top end Wizard, who is ABUSING this build... They are able to do Act 3, and Pony farming, with 20K HP, 400 AR, and 5K armor using Energy Armor Force Armor, and keeping EVERYTHING PERMAFROZEN... taking... you guessed it... NO DAMAGE...
Sorry... I'm a Critical Mass Wizard - through and through - I farm with it, I love it, I love the playstyle - but there comes a point where this is just broken... And the fact that some of these CM Wizards are not taking ANY damage, means they can go much higher Crit Chance and Damage, and not worry about defensive stats... well... guess what... now you do...
Myself and another streamer I play with, have always told new CM wizards - get your defense up first, and worry about damage second - don't focus on how these other people are playing... get you 1K AR, get your 6K armor, get your 30-40K HP, get your 800+ LoH... get all of your defensive gear first, then focus on the rest... and when you do that, your starting set is NOT THAT EXPENSIVE... and as you continue to farm, and progress, you can slowly start replacing your gear with more expensive gear that also has offensive stats on it as well...
In addition... this is only affecting the proc rates of your TWISTERS... you still have Explosive Blasts! which as you get better/proper gear in general - you'll start to cast more explosive blasts which will now take up a greater portion of your crit production...
It's not a crazy insane OMG GG WE CAN'T PLAY ANYMORE nerf... it's not... it's to hopefully stop these broken builds... guess what guys, as CM wizards, we're going to have to take a couple hits now... so get your Defensive gear out of the stash, shake it out, dust it off, and let's go dungeon crawling
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Posted Aug 21, 2012