We're taking a close look at defensive skills vs. incoming monster damage in 1.0.5. We’re going to be changing a few defensive skills for each class, including some direct nerfs to skills like wizard Energy Armor and barbarian War Cry - Impunity. However, we're also reducing incoming damage in Inferno, so players will actually come out ahead. In short the plan is:
Reduce the effectiveness of select defensive skills
Reduce monster damage by more than the mitigation lost by these skills
Putting both changes together, players actually take less damage than before
Why We're Making This Change
Why are we doing this? The reason is not complicated. High incoming monster damage combined with extremely powerful defensive skills make those skills and runes feel mandatory. Our goal is that by simultaneously nerfing defensive skills and reducing incoming damage, players who choose to continue using these defensive skills will take less damage overall, and players who choose to forego these "mandatory" skills will find themselves more survivable than what you would currently experience on live. Overall, these changes result in a huge buff in the player’s favor. Just how mandatory are these skills?
As it is now, Energy Armor is used by 83% of level 60 wizards. Also, take a look at the distribution of the War Cry skill on level 60 barbarians:
In developing Diablo III, defensive skills were made potent because we wanted to ensure they would be attractive. In some regards, we were too successful. Many players feel compelled to grab every defensive skill available to them, which can take away from some flexibility in using different build options.
This also creates problems for a class that may have less defensive skills. When one class has massive defensive buffs, abilities like Mortar, Arcane Enchanted, and Plagued can feel pretty modest, and at the same time feel overly punishing to a class without them. We’re all in favor of people being able to build their character for survivability, but there needs to be a balance.
How Much is Enough?
So the stated goal is to make sure the combination of the defensive skill nerf combined with the reduced damage from monsters still results in an overall buff to players. Let's bust out some math! As previously mentioned, Energy Armor is one of the skills being impacted. The exact change is the base armor provided by Energy Armor is being reduced from 65% to 35%, and the resistance increase provided by Prismatic Armor is being reduced from 40% to 25%.
The benefit of these skills is greater at higher levels of Armor and Resistance, so let’s assume very high numbers of each. Suppose a wizard has 6000 Armor and 800 Resist before Prismatic Armor. Assuming a level 63 enemy:
In 1.0.4 this translates to 9900 Armor (75.86% mitigation) and 1120 Resist (78.05% mitigation) with Prismatic Armor, for a total mitigation of 94.70%
In 1.0.5 this will be 8100 Armor (72.00% mitigation) and 1000 Resist (76.05% mitigation) with Prismatic Armor, for a total mitigation of 93.29%
If a monster hits for 50,000 damage, then the damage taken by the wizard will go from 2650 damage to 3355 damage.
This means incoming damage would have to be less than 79% of the current value (2650 /3355) in order for it to feel the same after 1.0.5.
Based on this it’s clear that in order to ensure 1.0.5 is a net buff for all wizards we’d have to reduce incoming monster damage by at least 21%. Prismatic Armor still provides a significant boost to survivability, but it should no longer feel mandatory, opening up other options such as a more offensively minded Storm Armor (which is getting buffed in 1.0.5).
Let’s do another example with the barbarian. War Cry Impunity is being reduced from 50% resistances to 20%.
A barbarian with 800 resist before War Cry against a level 63 enemy translates to 1200 Resist (79.21% mitigation) with Impunity in 1.0.4
In 1.0.5 this will be 960 Resist (75.29% mitigation) with Impunity
If a monster hits for 20,000 damage after Armor, then the damage taken by the Barbarian will go from 4158 damage to 4942 damage
This means incoming damage would have to be less than 84% of the current value on live (4158/4942) in order for the game to feel the same.
As it happens, we’re going to reduce all damage in Inferno by at least 25%. Players who want to be the toughest damage mitigators in the game can continue to use defensive skills and get a sizable bonus for doing so. Players who want to use other skills can do so without sacrificing such a massive amount of survivability. Class builds that don't currently use heavy mitigation skills such as Smoke Screen-focused demon hunters or Gargantuan-tanking witch doctors will find their survivability has gone up considerably due to reduced incoming monster damage.
Class by Class
Here's a quick rundown of what's changing in terms of defensive skills in 1.0.5.
Barbarian:
War Cry - Impunity: Bonus resistance reduced from 50% to 20%.
Leap - Iron Impact: We’re adjusting the design of this skill. Rather than providing 300% armor for 4 seconds, it’s going to provide 100% armor per target hit for 3 seconds. So if you don't hit any targets, you won't get any armor. If you hit 5 targets, you'll actually get 500% armor. We are making this change because the intended fantasy of Iron Impact is a barbarian who leaps into the thick of battle and is super tough. The way the skill plays out on live it is essentially an Ignore Pain that can also move you. For the most part it is better than Ignore Pain, making not only Ignore Pain unattractive, but also the other Leap Attack runes. In 1.0.5, if you want a defensive cooldown - grab Ignore Pain. If you want to leap into the thick of battle and be super tough, take Iron Impact.
Demon Hunter:
In the case of the demon hunter, the class is a bit too binary. If you're playing a glass cannon Smoke Screen build, then you're invulnerable most of the time, and when you make a mistake, you die instantly. If you're using Shadow Power - Gloom with a legacy Natalya's set, then you have near constant uptime of 65% damage reduction, but if you're not using the legacy Natalya's set, Shadow Power - Gloom is a luxury.
Independent of the general defensive skill nerf, we had already decided to buff Shadow Power to last longer. The primary purpose of Shadow Power is to give you a short window of time during which you can unload some damage to recoup some Life. Unfortunately the 3-second duration makes this awkward to use. We are changing Shadow Power from 20% Life Steal for 3 seconds to 15% Life Steal for 5 seconds. This should be a modest buff to the skill as well as making it a lot more pleasant to use. All of the runes are scheduled to see similar changes, such as Blood Moon going from 30% Life Steal for 3 seconds to 25% Life Steal for 5 seconds. Each rune effect is slightly smaller, but for 5 seconds instead of 3 seconds, resulting in an overall buff over the duration of the effect.
Taking into account the across-the-board nerf to defensive skills, Gloom will become 35% damage reduction for 5 seconds.
This developer journal is focused primarily on defensive skill changes, but because the change to Gloom is significant, I want to mention that we are looking at concrete mechanics changes to the demon hunter to introduce new play styles. Many players have mentioned that outside of Gloom, demon hunters seem to lack defensive options. More importantly, demon hunters would like some different play styles, and we agree! Here are a few changes we are adding for demon hunters in 1.0.5 to open up new ways to play:
We are adjusting some runes and passives to provide ways to increase survivability that scales with your Life, Armor, and resistances.
We are changing the Spider, Boar, and Wolf companion pets to be actual pets that can tank for you like a Gargantuan or Zombie Dog.
We are putting a short cooldown on Sentry, but you can have two out simultaneously. On top of that, the Custom Engineering passive will let you have a third Sentry turret! This opens up a whole new play style for the Demon Hunter of establishing a "nest" that you can draw enemies into.
Monk:
The strongest monk defensive skill is One With Everything. We've mentioned it before and it bears repeating - this is something we would like to fix someday, but we're going to take our time. Changes to One With Everything heavily impact existing monk gear. We still plan on addressing this in the future but will do so in a way that does not invalidate the gear monks have invested in.
Resolve: Damage reduction reduced from 25% to 20%.
Seize the Initiative: Changed to grant 50% of your Dexterity as Armor. This will result in anywhere from 750 to 1250 armor for most monks (depending on your Dex) which is comparable to the mitigation lost by other classes. The reduction to Resolve and Seize the Initiative should mean if you want to be a “super-tanky monk” you can still take all three defensive skills, but it should be a lot easier to pick some other passives without feeling like you’re going to blow up at the first Elite pack you encounter.
Witch Doctor:
Jungle Fortitude is being reduced from 20% to 15% damage reduction.
Wizard:
Energy Armor: Armor increase reduced from 65% to 35%.
Energy Armor - Prismatic Armor: Resistance increase reduced from 40% to 25%.
It’s worth noting that we’re going to provide additional alternative defensive options for the wizard such as adding flat melee damage reduction to Ice Armor and creating a Familiar variant that provides passive Life regeneration.
Why You Nerf Inferno?
Alright, so let's recap. Defensive skills are taking a hit in 1.0.5, but incoming damage from monsters is also being reduced. Taken together, the changes mean Inferno is going to be easier. For some of you this is totally cool; you welcome an easier Inferno because it’s about efficiency and not difficulty. For others, you may be skeptical but you're at least intrigued at the possibility that you'll be able to drop some defensive skills and discover some new builds. However, for others, Inferno is currently already too easy. Maybe you don't use any defensive skills; maybe your gear is so good you dropped War Cry - Impunity weeks ago. For this last group you may be wondering "Another Inferno nerf? But I crave more of a challenge, not less!"
For people in this last group, 1.0.5 is bringing the "Monster Power" system. The details of this system will be outlined as we get closer to 1.0.5, but in short this is a callback to the Diablo II ”players X” option, allowing you to increase the level of challenge for increased rewards. Our hope is that we can make Inferno easier while simultaneously providing new ways for top-end players to gauge their increasing power in tangible ways.
We’re going to lock comments here, and ask that you instead head to this forum thread to let us know what you think.
Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III, and he’s annoyingly excited about Netrunner being re-released as a Living Card Game. It’s really starting to get on everyone’s nerves.
If I take the same damage now with War Cry: Impunity as I do in 1.0.5 without that buff, then I'll be happy. Sure in public games they wont like me since I won't provide the buff but I'll get to pick something else to help out.
Looks like I need to invest in more resist all now before prices go up again.
And I don't use Leap in my current WW build... but when I did use leap, I mainly used it as another shield cooldown like they mentioned they dont want us to use it as. It's the only good reason to take Leap besides jumping for shortcuts. They should lower the cooldown to 6 seconds if they lower the armor buff to 3 seconds.
I'm not sure how I feel about the drop to Seize the Initiative. I'll believe that I'll still be able to tank when I see it, because at this point, I'm in act 2 Hell with my monk, bought 200k worth of AH items, and can destroy 2 Elite packs+ at once without any risk of dying(minus certain affixes, such as Molten, Plauge, Desecrator). I'm just hoping I can still do that. :/
Well if they do nerf OWE one day, they better make our other passives more worth using. My play style didn't chance at all because of 1.04 on my monk. Let us hope they get it right this time.
Every class has some sort of resistance buff right? Barb it's war cry and it's being nerfed. OWE is the monk one and it has to be nerfed as well. Only problem is it ties into gear choices where as war cry doesn't.
So it's gotta be nerfed to be fair. My guess it that they will make it not double stack anymore. Meaning if you have a single resist and a resist all, you wont be able to add them together. It will pick the larger of the two and ignore the smaller value. That's the only way I can see it nerfed without hurting current gear choices.
I find it funny that a barbs Active Skill aka Warcry with Impunity rune only gets a 30% reduction yet a monks Passive skill gets a 50% reduction?
LOL... As if monks need less survivability. Bleh waste of time, it made me laugh at how silly some of the balance changes are, some are decent and in the right direction whereas others are not.
The only problem I see here is with the players8 additions (well, I don't exactly love the leap change either, but meh, I'll be fine).
If monster damage goes up with players8 (as it should)... then no, we just got nerfed. Most of us will be upping the difficulty because inferno is even more of a joke than it was... but now we have less mitigation. I'll reserve judgement until I get my hands on the patch to play around with, but I'm skeptical.
However, if I can still play in a higher difficulty (perhaps not the highest, but around the middle) and get better rewards then I would have in normal inferno, I'm ok with that.
I'd like to see those "not mandatory defensive stats" on items also, because if you want to survive right now you almost must have a high AR in every piece of armor you can along with high main stat and high vit. Otherwhise you won't survive or do any damage.
I'd like to see those "not mandatory defensive stats" on items also, because if you want to survive right now you almost must have a high AR in every piece of armor you can along with high main stat and high vit. Otherwhise you won't survive or do any damage.
That was true many patches ago, but not anymore. I've been backing down AR on my barb every chance I get because you just don't need a lot of it anymore after all of the nerfs.
I would still like to know how they are looking at future nerfing OWE.
I bet they have no clue whatsoever on how to approach this skill. xD
Lets be honest, no one know how to do this, because it is impossible to do, without forcing players to switch items.
Change OWE to give you 50% all resist for ANY other elemental resist not just your highest. It would result in an effective 50% nerf to the passive, but not make our double reset gear worthless, while also making gearing as a monk easier (any double resist works)
If the goal is to not make Monk's current double resist gear worth less, than they have already indirectly done that with all the nerfs to inferno. 25% less damage means our double resist gear is 25% less necessary, so its less valuable.
I think the goal is to just not make us have to change gear - the above would do that, while also nerfing the passive, but sorta/kinda buffing Monk's gearing in general since any resist on an item would take advantage of the passive.
It will be interesting to see how this affects items on the AH. Maybe it won't change all that much, or maybe it will. Though even with the reduction in base damage, the Monster Power would probably up the need for good defensive gear even more. /shrug
This is ridiculous. I gear for glass cannon DH, they nerfed dh like mad so I geared magic find for looting. Added paragon so mf gear became worthless, i gear a monk for tank, they nerf it. Whats the fucking point.
It's upsetting that the patches aren't all about you.
They can make it easier and easier to obtain loot; but until the loot is interesting to obtain, what's the point?
The easier loot is to get, the more useless the AH becomes. Soon instead of vendoring 95% of all drops, you will vendor 99.9% of all drops meaning have fun trying to make gold. The people will billions of gold right now will be the 1% and have all the power in this game.
Quit babying the player base. We don't need the nerfs to monster damage to be so aggresive that in the long run we're taking "less damage than before". That is something that I DO NOT WANT. Blizzard is trying too hard to appease whiners and they're starting to cross the line into making D3 a boring game. Please stop now....
I find it funny that a barbs Active Skill aka Warcry with Impunity rune only gets a 30% reduction yet a monks Passive skill gets a 50% reduction?
LOL... As if monks need less survivability. Bleh waste of time, it made me laugh at how silly some of the balance changes are, some are decent and in the right direction whereas others are not.
You are bad at math. Going from 50% to 20% is actually a 60% reduction in the amount of resistance that Impunity will give.
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Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Why We're Making This Change
Why are we doing this? The reason is not complicated. High incoming monster damage combined with extremely powerful defensive skills make those skills and runes feel mandatory. Our goal is that by simultaneously nerfing defensive skills and reducing incoming damage, players who choose to continue using these defensive skills will take less damage overall, and players who choose to forego these "mandatory" skills will find themselves more survivable than what you would currently experience on live. Overall, these changes result in a huge buff in the player’s favor. Just how mandatory are these skills?
As it is now, Energy Armor is used by 83% of level 60 wizards. Also, take a look at the distribution of the War Cry skill on level 60 barbarians:
In developing Diablo III, defensive skills were made potent because we wanted to ensure they would be attractive. In some regards, we were too successful. Many players feel compelled to grab every defensive skill available to them, which can take away from some flexibility in using different build options.
This also creates problems for a class that may have less defensive skills. When one class has massive defensive buffs, abilities like Mortar, Arcane Enchanted, and Plagued can feel pretty modest, and at the same time feel overly punishing to a class without them. We’re all in favor of people being able to build their character for survivability, but there needs to be a balance.
How Much is Enough?
So the stated goal is to make sure the combination of the defensive skill nerf combined with the reduced damage from monsters still results in an overall buff to players. Let's bust out some math! As previously mentioned, Energy Armor is one of the skills being impacted. The exact change is the base armor provided by Energy Armor is being reduced from 65% to 35%, and the resistance increase provided by Prismatic Armor is being reduced from 40% to 25%.
The benefit of these skills is greater at higher levels of Armor and Resistance, so let’s assume very high numbers of each. Suppose a wizard has 6000 Armor and 800 Resist before Prismatic Armor. Assuming a level 63 enemy:
Let’s do another example with the barbarian. War Cry Impunity is being reduced from 50% resistances to 20%.
Class by Class
Here's a quick rundown of what's changing in terms of defensive skills in 1.0.5.
Barbarian:
Alright, so let's recap. Defensive skills are taking a hit in 1.0.5, but incoming damage from monsters is also being reduced. Taken together, the changes mean Inferno is going to be easier. For some of you this is totally cool; you welcome an easier Inferno because it’s about efficiency and not difficulty. For others, you may be skeptical but you're at least intrigued at the possibility that you'll be able to drop some defensive skills and discover some new builds. However, for others, Inferno is currently already too easy. Maybe you don't use any defensive skills; maybe your gear is so good you dropped War Cry - Impunity weeks ago. For this last group you may be wondering "Another Inferno nerf? But I crave more of a challenge, not less!"
For people in this last group, 1.0.5 is bringing the "Monster Power" system. The details of this system will be outlined as we get closer to 1.0.5, but in short this is a callback to the Diablo II ”players X” option, allowing you to increase the level of challenge for increased rewards. Our hope is that we can make Inferno easier while simultaneously providing new ways for top-end players to gauge their increasing power in tangible ways.
We’re going to lock comments here, and ask that you instead head to this forum thread to let us know what you think.
Wyatt Cheng is a Senior Technical Game Designer for Diablo III, and he’s annoyingly excited about Netrunner being re-released as a Living Card Game. It’s really starting to get on everyone’s nerves.
Looks like I need to invest in more resist all now before prices go up again.
And I don't use Leap in my current WW build... but when I did use leap, I mainly used it as another shield cooldown like they mentioned they dont want us to use it as. It's the only good reason to take Leap besides jumping for shortcuts. They should lower the cooldown to 6 seconds if they lower the armor buff to 3 seconds.
I would still like to know how they are looking at future nerfing OWE.
So it's gotta be nerfed to be fair. My guess it that they will make it not double stack anymore. Meaning if you have a single resist and a resist all, you wont be able to add them together. It will pick the larger of the two and ignore the smaller value. That's the only way I can see it nerfed without hurting current gear choices.
LOL... As if monks need less survivability. Bleh waste of time, it made me laugh at how silly some of the balance changes are, some are decent and in the right direction whereas others are not.
If monster damage goes up with players8 (as it should)... then no, we just got nerfed. Most of us will be upping the difficulty because inferno is even more of a joke than it was... but now we have less mitigation. I'll reserve judgement until I get my hands on the patch to play around with, but I'm skeptical.
However, if I can still play in a higher difficulty (perhaps not the highest, but around the middle) and get better rewards then I would have in normal inferno, I'm ok with that.
That was true many patches ago, but not anymore. I've been backing down AR on my barb every chance I get because you just don't need a lot of it anymore after all of the nerfs.
Change OWE to give you 50% all resist for ANY other elemental resist not just your highest. It would result in an effective 50% nerf to the passive, but not make our double reset gear worthless, while also making gearing as a monk easier (any double resist works)
If the goal is to not make Monk's current double resist gear worth less, than they have already indirectly done that with all the nerfs to inferno. 25% less damage means our double resist gear is 25% less necessary, so its less valuable.
I think the goal is to just not make us have to change gear - the above would do that, while also nerfing the passive, but sorta/kinda buffing Monk's gearing in general since any resist on an item would take advantage of the passive.
They can make it easier and easier to obtain loot; but until the loot is interesting to obtain, what's the point?
The easier loot is to get, the more useless the AH becomes. Soon instead of vendoring 95% of all drops, you will vendor 99.9% of all drops meaning have fun trying to make gold. The people will billions of gold right now will be the 1% and have all the power in this game.
also, i don't see how anyone can complain about the game being too easy when they'll be giving you a way to make it more difficult
do you complain that people can choose to play normal instead of nightmare?