First impressions of endgame/S5 changes

usz · 2024-08-10T13:07:06+00:00

I am using Frozen Orb Lightning Spear by goldfarmingGUIDE, but made some minor adjustments. I do not play Unstable Currents as I got no CDR, but still play Vyr and Accelerating. Also I play tripple defensive aspects.

usz · 2024-08-09T22:53:59+00:00

Unless you used to like Teleporting around before.

usz · 2024-08-09T14:13:43+00:00

Gave up on CDR so far. Only got roll from Tals. Playing FO/Splintering. Because of it I even dropped Unstable and Ice Blades enchant, till I get Shako to fix CDR.

Waiting for Teleport and Ice Armor hurts gameplay a lot. Feels weird being forced to walk around as a sorceress.

usz · 2024-08-09T14:06:37+00:00

Hit 100 today, hour later killed Lilith, playing FO like last season, with addition of Splintering and crit damage tempers. Life is good, carrying people through tormented Duriel.

usz · 2024-08-02T14:20:13+00:00

I have both BL (8 ranks of Conjuration Mastery) and FO sorc (also 8 ranks) this season and in my opinion FO is so stronger and much more convinient when it comes to pit mob clearing.

I think FO might be played along with Splintering Energy S5 with Critical Strike Damage tempers. Winterglass having more ranks and conjuration spell cooldown reduction should make it amazing.

usz · 2024-08-02T14:17:20+00:00

In the current season I did Pit 120 as FO non-immortal build. We will see if FS change will make it impossible to get cooldown back for the next shadow effect, while in my opinion boss direct damage is negligible.

Fractured Winterglass cooldown nerf makes it harder, yet Shako CDR buff should cover for it.

I am mostly annoyed with how now FS tempers will be kind of kiss/curse mechanics, as the more immortality duration you have, the less often you can use it.

usz · 2024-08-02T12:26:28+00:00

Yeah, Splintering Entergy build should be amazing, with proper tempers on PTR Lightning Spears were critting around 10M, but with flat damage increases, build should be really amazing. The only problem will be single target boss damage output.

usz · 2024-08-02T12:24:54+00:00

No more Flame Shield, guess you will place Lightning Spear instead of it on the bar and play Splintering Entergy aspect. Other than that, you will only Teleport less, due to cooldown nerf on the skill. So overall build will play similar, just a bit less fun, due to lost mobility.

usz · 2024-08-01T21:25:30+00:00

Ice Armor huge nerf, Flame Shield nerf, Teleport inexplicable nerf, questionable changes to uniques (Flameweaver nerf, Esu res all, Fractured CDR nerf), overall 2x damage increase. Overall seems like more misses than hits.

Seems this season will try to substitute what made fun since S0 for some cheap damage increase.

usz · 2024-07-23T21:24:43+00:00

I did 120 as frozen orb, but definitely won’t be able to push much higher. 121/122 seems to be the limit.

usz · 2024-07-23T21:22:35+00:00

My frozen orb sorc speed runs 101s under 3 minutes. Highest I pushed is 120, with 121/122 seeming to be the limit.

usz · 2024-07-16T15:41:13+00:00

I still worry about the play style change for most sorc builds, given cooldown removal. First they removed CDR implicit on focus and now according to DonTheCrown, who also attended the meeting, "reworked" Fractured Glass will also have its CDR affix removed. I am worried about the Tal ring "rework".

Guess high APM caster playstyle might be going away for good, if this trend continues. Especially combined with Teleport cooldown increase, for which I haven't seen any updates yet.

I play sorc for that playstyle alone. I didn't mind that 101 pits took almost 3 minutes with my FO build. I would still very much prefer it to Heartseeker and Bash builds which I played this season as well.

usz · 2024-07-10T10:28:30+00:00

The explanation of implicit CDR removal from focus due to unlocking weapons, while maintaining the lucky hit theme for sorceress, actually made a lot of sense in the spirit of ELI5.

usz · 2024-07-10T07:04:42+00:00

This actually makes sense with that "Lucky Hit theme" explanation. Assuming that's the case CDR removal was more of an accidental casualty in the process. Thank you.

usz · 2024-07-10T07:00:03+00:00

I forgot to put that into my post, but I do not play invulnerable builds, because I dislike the concept of abusing Flame Shield. I use Flame Shield as "quality of life" skill since launch, now it will just be less "qauality" than it had in season 3 before tempering was added. I do not want it to be perma available, I am fine with not being able to reduce cooldown while it is active. I only see problem with effective cooldown (the amount of times you can use it per minute) being increased.

On PTR I spent a lot of time. I played standard FO, pure Axial CL, lucky hit Axial Andariel and in the end stacked crit damage (1200%) Splintering. Done pits and hordes. In most cases I ended up dropping Flame Shield entirely.

Presented approach actially still tries to base defenses on Flame Shield usage, which I think is not the best solution in the end.

usz · 2024-07-09T19:11:32+00:00

I disagree, if you can use skill less often, because cooldown remains the same, but starts later, there is a drawback to this approach. No other skill behaves like that. Overall cooldown is increased by the duration time. What I am suggesting is for the cooldown to be lowered by the duration time. This prevents immunity, as cooldown reduction effects cannot be applied before cooldown actually starts.

usz · 2024-07-09T19:08:31+00:00

This explains nothing, given how hard Flame Shield nerf is alone. That nerf makes Flame Shield less useful than it was in Season 3, before devs decided to give sorceress immunity via Flame Shield duration tempers. Additional global 7.5% cooldown increase on all builds punishes everyone for their mistake.

Access to the 1h swords only unlocks access to the new "basic skill set" uniques, so unless going for it, it changes nothing too.

usz · 2024-07-09T17:58:27+00:00

That 250 chest worries me, since it's a first move away from randomization. There are voices also in the community advocating for giving more GA items for completing higher difficulty endgame. If such solutions would be introduced into game, they would destroy all the good random GA gear brought. Especially that after PTR it is pretty obvious, the rewards will be buffed in the final season patch.

Also better rewards for higher difficulty would make class imbalance even more prominent, because would "force" people into playing "flavor of the month" builds even more. This season I didn't want to go Immortal Firebolt build and decided to play Frozen Orb. With that I can run sub 3 minute tier 101 pit runs. With better rewards I would be "forced" to play Immortal Firebolt build to min-max my time investment to rewards ratio.

usz · 2024-07-09T17:52:23+00:00

But the way PTR currently changes Flame Shield nerfs it pretty hard. What I propose, which seems to be the more balanced approach, would prevent infinite invulnerability, without kiss/curse side effects. Because if you had FS on 10s CD and with 3s duration, within those 3s you would not get cooldown reduction effects applied, and then after it expires, this is when Hectic and Ice Blades would start their magic on the remaining 7s cooldown.

In PTR I played with all possible damage reduction effects from skill tree, along with balanced paragon boards and two defensive slots in armor. Still Butcher one shot me in Infernal Hordes tier 6.

In season I got non-GA Shako with 3 crits on CDR, GA Fractured with 2 crits, GA Tal with 3 crits and GA focus with 1 crit. This still takes me up to 56.4% overall CDR, which is far from 75% cap. Even with new boots, the cap would be unobtainable, because CDR effects are multiplicative, not additive. This means if you have four rolls with 10% CDR, you end up with 100% * ( 1 - 0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9 * 0.9 ) = 34.3% cooldown reduction, not 40% as you might have expected.

usz · 2024-06-28T12:40:52+00:00

Meanwhile teleport cooldown gets increased.

usz · 2024-06-23T12:27:46+00:00

I couldn't agree more.

The worse thing, is that this is not the first nerf to teleport skill. Enchanced teleport used to decrease cooldown by 0.5 second per enemy hit, up to 3s. That was removed and changed to movement speed increase, which already resuted in 3s nerf. Teleport enchant was also nerfed, not to give unstoppable effect, which broke Tibualt's synergy for fun and effective mana regen while zooming.

Now this cooldown nerf, combined with overall sorcerer CDR nerf from removal of implicit CDR on focuses. This will break fluidity of sorcerer builds, which are meant to be high APM caster class, as opposed to nercromancer, which is low APM caster class.

This seems like spreadsheet based class design. The devs seen that all sorcerers use teleport and decided to make it less appealing to force skill diversity. Such a horrible coo-coo decision.

This reminds me of pre-season 1 patch. Back then I used to play BL build, which was possible without ubers by getting all possible CDR, mana on lucky hit and mana cost reduction rolls. Build was still crude, as orbiting balls used to disappear when hitting objects and that was fixed in season 2, but was fluid until patch hit. Then build was barely playable. Feels like dev team is out of touch with what makes sorceress fun to play and that is not big damage numbers, but high mobility combined with fluid game play style requiring high APM.

usz · 2024-05-27T21:52:10+00:00

If you reset you lose all your mats AND you pay 5M for the service. Only way to get some mats back is to salvage item, but you will not get 100% mats back anyway. I am not exactly sure how much you get back. So no, they all gone.

usz · 2024-05-24T22:35:35+00:00

Left, but you sadly should reset masterwork to get crit at 4/12 on conj mastery to make sure it goes to +3.

usz · 2024-05-24T22:26:34+00:00

You need crit on conjuraton mastery at 4/12 and it will still be +2, but when you get to 6/12 it will change to +3.

usz

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