League of Explorers: Temple of Orsis Boss Guides - Zinaar, Sun Raider Phaerix, Temple Escape
Weekly Rotation and Sales, Preseason Leaderboards October 2015, WTF Moments #23
Legion - Gnome Hunters, Patch 6.2.3 Overview and Official Notes
Legacy of Nightmares Nerf
Wyatt Cheng took it to the forums to explain why the Legacy of Nightmares is being nerfed in the near future, with the bonus damage per ancient item dropping from 800% to 100%. Check his post and reasoning below, and feel free to visit the thread to leave your feedback!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Hi everyone,
I wanted to pop in and let everyone know that our next PTR patch is changing the bonus damage from Legacy of Nightmares (aka the new “no set” set) from the current 800% to 100%. Please form an orderly queue for pitchforks on the left.
One of the things that we use the Public Test Realm for is to test ideas out—sometimes even crazy ideas. In our original images and communication, we had listed the bonus at a decidedly not-crazy 75%. But in the spirit of crazy ideas, we went live with 800% to give us a chance to gather data at radically different values and, eventually, find the value that’s best for the greatest number of our players. We need a lot of creative players testing the limits and the best way we could accomplish this was to turn it way overboard. Of course, drastic changes like this are inherent to what a PTR is used for, and players need to be prepared for these outcomes.
So why 100%? Well consider the way greater rifts scale. Every greater rift tier the monsters have 17% more health than the previous. If we were to lower the amount from 800% to say, 700%, this is basically equivalent to dropping by a single greater rift tier. One look at Legacy of Nightmares on PTR will show that this isn't nearly enough. Even dropping from 800%=>400% only represents a change of 4-5 Greater Rift tiers – such is the nature of exponential growth (4.41 GR tiers to be exact because 1.17^4.41 = ~2). The reduction to 100% represents about 13 Greater Rift tiers in raw damage. Once you take into account further optimization and exploration that will happen this seems like the appropriate amount for LoN to come down.
We don’t want Legacy of Nightmares to become required for top-tier builds. We want it to be a viable option among many. We think Legacy of Nightmares is really going to shine in allowing lots of build variety for “fun” builds. The last few patch cycles have seen a massive number of builds emerge that are focused on activities other than pushing Greater Rifts. We've seen creative uses for In-Geom, a resurgence of builds that incorporate Sage’s set, the use of Manajuma’s to run around as an Angry Chicken and many others. It is becoming increasingly clear to everybody that items and builds are not just about what can clear the highest rift possible. What is good for speed runs? What’s good for public games? Or at the end of the day—what do YOU think is FUN? The hope for Legacy of Nightmares is that it will open up space to allow players to explore lots of Torment X-viable builds that play differently than the status quo. We hope to see you invent something of your own that you know might not be the best in the world, but rocks in public games or is a style of play you can call your own.
So, I want to call on you, the brave PTR tester, to continue to experiment alongside us and find the most fun, most powerful builds and help make the Legacy of Nightmares the best it can be. Thanks for your willingness to work alongside us in this whole crazy process.
Btw, hypothetically speaking, would you consider changing other items/skills, to allow Legacy of Nightmares to become better balanced across the board?Great question.
As it currently stands each class gets a different proportion of it's power from the 6-pc sets vs. complementary legendaries. The classes performing the best with LoN right now are the ones who draw the largest proportion of power from the orange items vs green. We have talked about shifting the damage for the "set-oriented builds" which, if done properly, would allow LoN benefit more classes and builds since it will always be tuned around the high water mark. Unfortunately these types of adjustments need to take a back seat to trying to get all 24 existing sets to a good place, which already has enormous complexity as it is so I can't imagine we will realistically be able to do much of this reallocation of power among the 6-pc sets.
Whirlwind Changes Explained
Nevalistis clarified on the forums why they made some changes to Whirlwind and Strafe in the PTR patch, and how the main focus on that is to improve server performance. There's no intention to hurt the skills' power level. Read it below.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Let's start with clearing some basics up:
The changes made to Whirlwind (and Strafe) were not made because of concerns with balance. The changes to Whirlwind and Strafe were made to improve server performance. Our server logs indicate that Whirlwind was a significant factor in server performance issues experienced by all players (even if there isn’t a Barbarian in your game). The intention is to improve server performance without affecting the power of Whirlwind.
We're currently discussing how we can get server performance gains without affecting the power level of Barbarians. This might mean reverting our optimizations, or it might mean providing alternative complementary options for Barbarians to compensate for the change. While we haven't made a decision yet, it's possible you'll see a couple iterations or different approaches throughout the PTR.
Seismic Slam on Might of the Earth
A user sent a tweet to John Yang about re-adding Seismic Slam into the list of skills that benefit from the Might of the Earth 6-piece bonus skills. He replied that they will re-add Seismic Slam back into the set in the future!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Twitter)
Just gonna leave this here sir Have a good one!I see positives and no real negatives with this idea. We'll add Seismic Slam into the Might of the Earth 6pc bonus.#SaveSS http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/19877177621#1 …
Dev Interview
Quin had the opportunity to interview Wyatt Cheng and Rob Foote at BlizzCon. They talked about the new Patch 2.4, and he asked quite a few doubts from the community like density lag, paragon cap, and more. Check it out!
so if you want to be remotely competitive you'll still have to use sets and ignore the new LoN?
actually, what "fun build" would even use LoN that wouldn't be better off with some other set bonuses?
I have no idea why they even thought that 800% per item was ok to ship. If this went live, everybody would have used it without question and all sets would have become useless.
It makes sense to have the nightmare rings nerfed so that once its all said and done its equal power to a well geared set with its legs which is what they want. If it stayed twice as power as full set + than there's no point in even looking for set pieces so thats why this needs to happen. Now it will make it so there's even more diversity on the top of the leaderboards. As for siesmic slam on the earth set. That's a dumb idea, you wont be able to use the SS braces with them and thats a solid build with the IK set, not with the earth set its meant to channel as the ancients are infront holding the line and tanking not leap, ground stomp, SS, boulder, repeat. Thats too much button sequencing. Leave SS alone to blend with the IK set well, having two sets to where thats shared seems silly.
ya once you find all ancients + the legs with affixes you want it will still be a bit better than sets i dont know why people are throwing a fit. It makes zero fucking sense to have tons of content in the game, new content and then one thing be 3 times better. Obviously everyone will use that one thing, and thats fucking stupid So ya this needs to happen and im glad it did.
This change was really needed, if you look on the solo leaderboards now on the PTR you can see that every single player use LoN.
Makes no sense to use any other set which should have ruined the game if stays like this. People are already doing 90+ solos crusaders are above 100.
I hope blizz will do a wipe on the PTR leaderboards after they implenent this change.
The Seismic Slam addition to the MOTE set is very stupid. The goal is to generate tons of fury with Earthen Might, and then dump everything at once with Boulder Toss. With Seismic Slam, it takes much longer to dump the fury, so the cooldowns are reduced slower, which means less fury, which means less damage, and it comes full circle. It's a strictly inferior choice, and Boulder is by far the best spender for this simply because it uses all your fury at once, regardless of how much you got. +max fury is gonna be very valuable for this build. Edit: And I also forgot that the SS weapon reduces its fury cost, which is a terrible synergy. Wyatt is wrong here. There are only negatives to using this skill.
Seismic Slam is terrible with IK to begin with. This skill needs more damage boost through the use of items or to the skill itself. Removing the "first target hit" limitation would greatly improve it. I hope they stop using this type of affix because the game heavily favours high density so this makes it pretty much worthless in that scenario.
the change to LoN is reassuring..
i was hoping the set would be more like 'oh hey I got all this ancient, maybe I should swap my sets out and try something with LoN' instead of 'YUS ONE ANCIENT LEMME FARM LON AND DO MAD DEEPS'
I wish they demonstrated the mathematics for how they generate set bonus damage for the 6-piece items, for it would be interesting to know the reasoning behind some of those bonuses as well.
I do agree that 800% was really high, but it would have been nice to see the bonus changed to something like +200% per ancient legendary up to +1000% for right now with the way I play I probably will never have enough ancient items to make use of this set.
is this active now ? item still say 800%
Not yet, afaik. Will be in a future patch.
@Euphytose and others who say that LoN is still a huge boost:
The way LoN multiplier is calculated is Your damage x (1 + 0.1 x Ancients), where Ancients is # of ancients you got. So if you are fully 12/12 ancient slotted, you will get a total of 1 + 12x0.1 = 1+1.2 = your damage x 2.2 increase.
Compare it to Focus and Restraint, which gives you Your Damage x 1.5 (focus) x 1.5 (restraint), resulting in Your damage x 2.25 increase.
Sure, LoN is passive, and F+R has to be maintained, but F+R also does not place a no-set requirement - and doesnt require 12 ancients- while still providing slightly more dps boost still. While i agree that 800% was way too high, as it is right now at 100% it will not be worth picking up. By the time you have enough ancients to make it worthwhile, you will already have a decent F+R to use instead.
I really love the idea behind LoN, but they need to change either the bonus multiplier, or the way the multipliers work.
But you don't need to use a generator or spender and frees up a ring slot which is very important
Im sorry, but how exactly does it free a ring slot? Both LoN and F+R require 2 ring slots.
And yes, LoH effect is passive - but F+S having access to class set bonuses is a massive advantage in terms of dps, as it is right now with numbers, LoH is simply not worth using over F+R, even at full BiS ancient gear - and it will take forever to even get to that point.
I disagree with the other thing though. New items may outclass sets, you cant know what future builds will be. Plus the new channelling builds will be using this