On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

I just wanna chime in as a long term player (Closed Beta represent!) and also say that the new charge changes are pretty baffling. The WORST is the change to frenzy charges only supporting attack damage. This should be reverted to the old system. It seems like things are getting dumbed down where blue = spells, green = attacks, red = melee. XBOX players might grok this but I don't care for it. I like hybrid / dual 'class' builds.

<3 you GGG.

I'd rather you make them more generic that more specific. Reduce the more damage per charge to 2% for both power and frenzy but keep it generic. This way you have power for crit + dmg and frenzy for attack/cast speed + dmg.

I know this seem like "simple solution" but why not make frenzy charges work like "frenzy" - to me it means that you do thing more rapidly - exactly how Avatar of Slaughter works on raider = give like 2 movement speed per Frenzy charge + 4 increased attack & speed. This wont be "useless" but for sure not so overpowered as it is now.

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Chris wrote:

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.

*cough* LAB *cough*

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NessOnett8 wrote:

Also now instead of power charges being the "Crit charge for crit characters"(which is a valid and unique identity), now it's just "generic caster charge of meh-ness." Did you want to make charges less mandatory or more? Because making them super generic for casters just makes them MORE necessary for casters and less relevant for everyone else.

I totally Agree. I mean you could build non crit Spell casters with power charges cause all you need is the spell damage per power charge and then you can build with non crit spells and have lots of damage.

Why don't you rework the shock mechanic completely?
Here's one idea: shock makes your next damage instance against the shocked target do X% more dmg, critical hits now have double your shock chance (= crits no longer guarantee shock). X could be a fixed value or a variable depended on how hard you hit, either way it would leave shock mostly useless on trash, but make it do something against bosses.

Anyways if I, someone who doesn't have game balancing experience) could come up with one possible solution after 5 minutes, your paid balance team should be able to do at least similar.

Chris,
Thank you for responding to the communities (gut) reaction to the changes so quickly. It is a complicated game you have built and so the big picture effect of changes is not immediately obvious to everyone (anyone). Moreso there is even more information that we DON'T have to make evaluations off of. This was my biggest concern. When you make changes to any aspect of the game people have two options, withhold judgement until complete patch notes come out, or judge the changes based on the current state of the game. When you release a beta and ask for feedback you are asking players to do the second. So that is what I will do below.

From a non-balance perspective I enjoyed the fact that charges where not skill specific. To keep that in place I would be more in favor of a large overhaul. Make frenzy charges give something akin to the Berserker x more damage, y more damage taken, or give leech, or movement speed, something players would associate with someone in a frenzy. Make frenzy charges give x LESS damage and y MORE attack speed. Something that any build COULD take (even if it is terrible for them at least it effects the skill). For Power charges: give players some power. Crit, knockback, base damage, chance for double damage, chance to be lucky when damaging, just crit multi, AoE, less attack/cast speed and more damage. Personally, I don't care if you change the identity of existing facets of the game, just try to keep the game's infinite flexibility alive.

From a balance perspective: To me much needs to change for theses changes to go live with 3.0 at launch. Here are the three I care about personally.
- Caustic Arrow already hit a soft cap on damage scaling and now frenzy charges will not work for them (although you did add more DoT support in the beta) so I would take a look at that skill
- Power Siphon had problems before, but it has lost it's identity now. Perhaps tag any attack from a wand as a spell (oh boy the problems that would cause)?
- Whispering Ice/ Icestorm is now worse from a theory crafting standpoint than firestorm. The defensive benefits are much reduced with the changes to chilled ground. Maybe make the effect of chilled ground scale with int as well? or just add "chill effect" to the staff?
- Any unique that utilizes charges will need to be looked at to make sure the identity of the unique is intact.

From a communication perspective: It might be more beneficial to communicate LESS before the full patch notes (do the same thing with those, you do a great job). For chill/shock you could have just said: "Instead of the damage of the hit scaling the duration of the ailment it now scales the magnitude. The duration is constant. We are working on bringing this new system online in order to address player concern about boss immunities" I understand that you like to be transparent as a company (which is great) but when you announce specific numbers changes without announcing specific ways to scale those numbers people will judge based on their current information (and you are asking them to). And the result of that is that players realize that bosses are still effectively immune to those ailments. If that is not your design intention that just mention that this will change in the future.

TLDR: You guys know what you are doing, but everyone makes mistakes or overlooks things. Players trust in you to balance the numbers. To avoid a reaction like this again just say "we are aware this has broad reaching effects and will look at all instances of charge use before this change goes live." and add a line about how you envision the changes when they are done: "We hope to not trivialize bosses by having chill or shock apply to them at full effectiveness, but we also have items in the game that rely upon conditional checks on a boss checking for those ailments. To make these items useful in a broader context we are removing boss immunites and creating a way for players to apply these ailments at a reduced effectiveness for a set time. Instead of applying a general reduced effectiveness modifier to bosses, like we have done with curses, we want to reward players who build around ailments with a scaling effectiveness up to the old values (which could not be applied to bosses [kinda]).

TLDR the TLDR: You guys know what you are doing, but this was a communication fiasco.

This is a bluff !....?

Long time player. And I have beta access to 3.0.
The changes to charges are not so dramatic as reddit makes it sound. Go ahead, try it.
And the uniques, guys please. They can be fixed.

@GGG please have trust in your employees, they are at least as important as the community.

A less obvious thing these Changes would ruin are CwC builds with channeling attacks. These builds generally have troubles with scaling both portions of their CwC setup (the attack part and the spell part) and Frenzy Charges are a really good way for them to do that and fit very well into those builds. With the new Charges, these builds need to decide which part of their setup they want to enhance with charges, making them a lot less versatile and optimal.

More obvious problems include:
Tulfall and Tinkerskin now grant Frenzy Charges that are next to useless.
Raiders are now pigeon-holed into attack-based builds.
If Power Charges are supposed to be better for non-crit casters now, then how are they supposed to generate them? With the exception of the Assassin Ascendancy (a class that is wholly designed around dealing critical strikes), all sources of PCs are through crits. The effect would be quite the opposite: with the new PCs, spellcasters will be forced to go down the crit path even more than before.