On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

The main concern (other than messaging, for which, TBH, you've set a very high bar) is build diversity and design cohesion:

1) Power charges used to be useful for both spellcasters and melee characters relatively equally (now they favor spellcasters, potentially a lot - dual wielding Void Batteries on Assassin/Occultist now gives (3base+3tree+2VB+1ascendancy)*4 = 36 more spell damage on top of other goodies). OTOH, crit attack builds were seriously nerfed, between reduced PC effectiveness, gutted based crit increase and Toxic Delivery nerf.
Truth is, Assassin has been dramatically nerfed already, by gutting ES (upper-right side of tree is notoriously lacking in increased life nodes) and removing double-dipping (which I reckon)

2) Frenzy charges not affecting non-attack traps seems a bit confusing with new trap-oriented armor that generates frenzy charges (which was sort of niche already).

3) Main problem with shock/freeze is that other ailments are useful on both bosses and trash relatively equally, while shock/freeze will effectively only affect trash mobs, where they are not needed. It used to be the case, and expectation was that any fixes will somehow address this main problem
I think that problem can be mitigated relatively easily:
If Chill/Shock doesn't bypass minimal threshold, instead of ignoring it just assume it applies at a minimal threshold value. That would mean a marginal, but existing bonus against bosses, and also allow effects like hypothermia to apply.

Tl;dr: I have more problems with shock/chill on bosses not being addressed. Charges changes seems strange mostly because of inconsistency with some items, including the ones recently introduced + I don't think Assassin needed further nerfs with a combo of double-dipping removal and ES nerfs.

Also, thanks for addressing this in a public post, while defending your employees from outright insults.

a

Also look at trickster's Swift Killer
Now at occultist's Forbidden Power

now trickster.
now occultist.
now trickster.
now occultist.

Balance team, didn't you forget something?

"

Zynamo wrote:

I have 100% faith in you guys.

Edit: As long as you don't nerf my favourite build : Hideout Warrior

I laughed way too much about this.^^

no idea how ppl think the nerf to frenzy charges is hurting build diversity.

Using frenzy charges on every build ahs absolutly nothing to do with build diversity, in fact its the opposite.
It makes all builds feeel the same where you have to manage all of those stupid charges no matter what you are playing.
Sure at some point you were s strong that you didnt need them anymore,but they would still be good for your build and make it stronger.

Please don't arbitrarily divide charges to melee and caster themes. It's not a big deal in itself but the direction is worrying. Insane amount of uniques, skill gems and interactions are themed behind charge themes but changing thematic meaning of charges doesn't automatically change the rest. For example, the new tinkerskin, dozen other uniques and gems like power siphon.

Power - Critical, volatile - Critical builds, melee and casters and totems.

Frenzy - Performance - In simple way: Builds that sacrifice to generate these. (Blood rage has big downside and casters have to use tree nodes enabling these or item interactions. These all are investments.) Most of older FB totem builds didn't use these just because of that.

Endurance - Withstanding Same as frenzy, generating these tends to be such a issue that most people treat endurance charges like a bonus. For example popular and top tier build "EK" uses warlords mark often but for the leech, not for charges. Charges still effect greatly and help a lot - you really can feel them. (example. IC duration)

These are all global ideas that could apply to any build in theory but we make the choice to drop often 2 of those.
You brought up concept that builds feel forced to achieve charges but some builds like flame blast totems (very popular too!) didn't use frenzies, didn't always feel need to pick power charges on tree (looking at 100lv HC grinding profiles if you need evidence) but had option to use items to make such a interaction that you'd gain them. For example, this could've been achieved by using southbound to force dot kill blow which means kill is attributed to player (leads to usage of daresso's passion, blood rage etc).

This isn't a issue about nerf or buff or about power. This is a thematic change which makes it controversial.
After the post that revealed intentions I can easily sympathise with you GGG but there surely is a way to go about this that either A) requires less work or B) doesn't take a camel dung on these interactions and themes.

Dear Chris, why do you respond to the vocal minority? The majority is surely quiet and happy with the changes. I personally look forward to them. Keep up the good work.

"

ztormi wrote:

"

While we firmly stand behind the intention of this change, it's very clear that the community not only misunderstood a lot of the consequences, but also generally didn't like the direction of the change.

We make this game for you guys, so if you don't want the change, we aren't going to force it in purely to solve long-term problems. The short-term and build continuity do matter as well. We hope to get feedback from your playtesting in the next few days of the beta, so that we can make a decision this week about whether it remains in this form, is reverted, or is made in another form.

This is just pure bullshit. Attempting to shift the blame from incompetent devs to the loyal players who've been playing this game for years is just cheap.

"

Almost all of these changes are on Beta. Please playtest them and let us know the results of what you find. We'll post again after the weekend with our findings also.

Playtest what? What kind of testing is this where people barely know what's patched and how? How can you expect a reasonable feedback to changes where people only receive partial information on how things are going to work?

Sounds to me like you've already decided what you'd do but are only seeking for confirmation from the community to justify the pointless changes your so called balance team is coming up with.

Anyway, it's beta and I'm sure that 99% of all these changes will be reverted, because most of these just make no sense at all.

Loyal players? The vocal minority is complaining, the silent majority is not. That tells you that the majority is happy with the changes.

You are to test the charge changes, duh. What about it is unclear here?

"

ciel289 wrote:

no idea how ppl think the nerf to frenzy charges is hurting build diversity.

Using frenzy charges on every build ahs absolutly nothing to do with build diversity, in fact its the opposite.
It makes all builds feeel the same where you have to manage all of those stupid charges no matter what you are playing.
Sure at some point you were s strong that you didnt need them anymore,but they would still be good for your build and make it stronger.

When will people get this inside their thick heads? Each time something that is MANDATORY (because if you are not using it you are a fool) gets nerfed they cry.

Geeez get a clue people.

I love how this political BS post nearly saves face.

This change was not thought trough at all, and completely broke severall skill interactions, made no sense with others, literally broke items even ones made especially for the 3.0 launch. And reduced build diversity.

To everyone saying but muh everyone takes frenzy. Yes, everyone loves having frenzy charges now, but not everyone can afford running blood rage either. So you have to build around them.

The changes right now go straight against what this game used to be about, build diversity and everything interacting with everything.

GGGs team is clearly getting too large to handle or at least too large to make educated decisions on nerfs and design decisions, since apparently everyone is doing their own thing, and eventually they throw it together and see if it works.