Responses to the 3.1.0 Patch Notes

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Chris wrote:

The Baron nerf
This item should never have gone out in its original state. A single item granting a ~200% bonus to melee physical damage for minions is not acceptable. We are very sorry for this, and that we had to later nerf it. It's still a great item.

From what I overhear in the office, the new Abyss Jewels are "outrageously powerful for summoners" and can roll "so much crazy shit".

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jdance25 wrote:

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Chris wrote:

From what I overhear in the office, the new Abyss Jewels are "outrageously powerful for summoners" and can roll "so much crazy shit".

Honestly I feel like you are putting way too much faith in your subordinates. And why would you say "We have a decent list of buffs coming tomorrow", if you actually don't? That doesn't make any sense. You are setting yourself up for failure and disappointment.

I'm assuming Rory told you to say 'We have a decent list of buffs coming'. I'm assuming you didn't actually read the patch notes yourself. This circles back to the first point. You are putting way too much faith in your subordinates.

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Zvim wrote:

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Chris wrote:

The Baron nerf
This item should never have gone out in its original state. A single item granting a ~200% bonus to melee physical damage for minions is not acceptable. We are very sorry for this, and that we had to later nerf it. It's still a great item.

From what I overhear in the office, the new Abyss Jewels are "outrageously powerful for summoners" and can roll "so much crazy shit".

Have you taken opportunity cost into consideration?

It isn't the one item that gives ~200% bonus, it facilitates getting a ~200% bonus if you can scale your strength high enough, to get 1000 strength as a witch isn't trivial. It is a very big investment to get 800ish strength and requires a significant portion of your gear dedicated to rolling high strength and you need speciality gear like Astramentis, Brawn and Efficient training jewels.

You can get 40% minion damage with a bone helmet
You can replace Astramentis for a 15% minion damage Sidhebreath with a minimum roll 15% minion damage corruption.

You can path less gathering strength and get more Jewel nodes, looking at UberElite's L100 SRS/Baron he could only get to 5 jewel nodes (2 of them he used brawn and efficient training), taking fewer strength nodes I was able to get 10 jewel nodes, which is what I plan for with a stock SRS build. Each jewel node used or sacrifices is at minimum 14-16 minion damage, you can just make magic ones quite cheaply.

Even at minimum rolls, the 7 jewel nodes equate to 98% minion damage as an opportunity cost.

For an 800ish strength investment to get 160ish physical damage scaling, you are going to sacrifice a minimum of 168% minion damage in opportunity cost.

So why do it? Stacking strength gives you a bit more survivability, I don't even use zombies in my srs build so i get nothing defensively from the zombie bonuses.

To scale your strength to 1000 and beyond require massive sacrifices, I don't really mind too much about the nerf because I'd only use a baron for an SRS build (which i am tired of playing now) and only if I managed to get an SRS enchant on it.

Saying you are nerfing the Baron because you can get ~200% melee physical damage is like saying you are going to nerf Iron Commander because it can generate 10 siege ballistae, it can't... it doesn't give you 2000 agility, what is the opportunity cost of scrounging up that much agility? Realistically, it isn't worth pushing it to that extreme and the same goes for The Baron.

I don't see a scenario where the Baron would be better than not getting a baron in it's proposed form.

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Chris wrote:

Not enough buffs for unpopular Ascendancy Classes
3.2.0 is planned to have a rebalance of all Ascendancies (notably including the Scion and Elementalist).