Early access balancing changes - August 2021

[LodWig]

• Demolitionist 2 pieces set bonus - Stick Bombs now deal 3000% weapon damage, up from 2000%. In addition, the PPM of Stick Bombs has been increased to 45, up from 30.
• Demolitionist 6 pieces set bonus - Lethal Shot now deals 100% more damage per stack of Stick Bomb, up from 50%.

• Demolitionist 2 set bonus: chance to proc the sticky bombs has been increased to 75/minute.
• Demolitionist 6 set bonus: now also increases the damage of Explosive Shot.

The number of Sticky Bombs explosion reported in the training grounds is always zero. This makes testing more difficult than it should be.

Sticky Bombs still deal only 2000% Weapon Damage. However, it seems the ppm is indeed (close to) 75/m.

As per the Demolitionist 6 pieces set bonus in-game description, any basic attack is enhanced by Sticky Bomb, with a 200% damage increase per stack, additive. So a factor of 11 with 5 stacks. This factor is independent (that is multiplicative with) the 1.2 factor from Pathfinder, or the factor from Rapid Fire or Smoke Screen etc. Note that the Explosion part of Explosive Shot is not enhanced.


About the Demolitionist 6 set bonus I wrote:

Also, the effect is still granted by Demo-2, or the Assassin's Belt. So nothing changed in fact.

This is no longer true.

Despite the changed in-game description of the Assassin's Belt, its Sticky Bombs still deal only 2000% Weapon Damage. However, it seems the ppm is indeed 15/m.

Wearing 2 Demolitionist pieces and the Assassin's Belt seem to boost the Sticky Bombs ppm to the sum: 90/m. I didn't notice any other benefit.

[Romme]

Shockwave changes -

The point of this review is to highlight the problem of mob phase with this build. Especially at higher TL. Boss phase is much better than it's cleave counterpart, it's just that you can't quite even get to the boss with shockwave.

I have to say the 20x bleed nearly brought this build to life. I think the build needs a buff in any one of these areas if it is to compete with cleave:

Make shockwave always crit like snipe - you get about 4 shockwaves every 30s. You want to save 3 of them for tos proc..if you crit 0 or 1 times on the 3 shockwaves you do no damage and now need to wait 30s to try to do damage again.

Reduce cooldown of shockwave - in order to have 3 charges of shockwave for tos you will need to drop the huge regen/damage reduction buff of shockwave for about 10 seconds during your 30s cycle.
Just to walk you through whats going on the shockwave buff can stack up to 2 times and lasts 10s. It will refresh to 10s if casted again before the buff expires. After your last shockwave during tos it is best to use another shockwave 10s later to keep the buff. You will get 10 more seconds with the buff, meaning 10s leading up to tos you won't have it, but with current cooldown time is necessary for maximizing the build and having 3 charges for tos. So decreasing the cooldown a little bit would allow 5 shockwave cast per 30s cycle so you can keep your defense buff up all the time and have 3 charges for tos.

Incorporate skills to give you shockwave charges - the build would flow so much better if you would gain a charge of shockwave everytime your storm of swords goes off. Even if it was gain a charge everytime you leap or charge instead of both. This would make the build flow and synergize much better. I got this idea after talking to Cereblon who suggested devastate should recharge all missing charges of shockwave. Only problem I have with this is devastate animation is much shorter the higher your fps. It can take 2-3 seconds for the animation on my phone with 30-60 fps. Even longer for those who can't get 30+fps. Can't imagine how fast it would take for 244+fps, 1s? Why is this a problem? Because if you spend half your tos proc in devastate animation you lose out on too much precious time in the small window you have to do damage. This would widen the PC vs mobile gap even more...
Also sos does 3x the damage as devastate and doesn't have the long animation. It's just so much better of an option right now for your shockwave fuel.

Make shockwave physical damage - it would synergize much better this way. Your bleeds, aka your shockwave fuel will just be better and allow shockwave to preform better because of it.

Make rending and leap bleeds more damage per second - Shockwave damage is based off bleed damage in the next second.
Right now rending does 1000% damage over 15 seconds. Stacking 10 times. With 10 stacks you are doing 667% damage per second. Which is a very very small amount and doesn't fuel shockwave almost at all. My suggestion is to increase damage per second by either increasing 1000% damage to something much higher, or decreasing the time it takes to do that damage.
If say you changed 1000% to 3000% and kept it over 15 seconds, you would do 2000% damage per second.
If say you changed it to do the same 1000% damage but over 5 seconds you're also doing 2,000% damage per second.
I think this number has to be well over 2000% damage per second to make any difference, maybe around 10,000% per second. You can achieve this with many ways taking a combination of higher damage and decreased time.
But the thought is if all mobs could have bigger bleeds they can actually have a decent amount of damage done to them during tos shockwaves. Right now the main thing is coming from grevious wounds from your sos damage.. the problem is sos isnt splash damage and each sword hits just 1 enemy. Meaning your dps doesn't actually go up much if you pull more enemies because it's the same amount of swords hitting and thats where most the "fuel" is.

Buff viscera bonus - 50% more rending bleed is nothing. You would need this to probably be 1000% rending bleed.

Videos - equal gear in these videos:

Cleave has max physical damage with 77-193 cleave bracers.

Shockwave has max fire damage with 77-100 shockwave bracers.

TL 158 cleave - https://youtu.be/TuOwqnLwLmk


TL 158 shockwave - https://youtu.be/ffDxk0BqytE

[Chen89]

I thought shockwave is better since I found I survive better with it because of the healing.

[Romme]

I guess it's all relative to your stats and playstyle. But as you can see in those videos I can pull a lot more with itz.
More parry is also more regen since you get so much life steal with more ww procs.

[Jose Sarmento]

A small addition to Romme's suggestions is to revamp Blade Flurry. This was rendered useless when we stopped using Devastate, but it could play a role again, for example:
- each stack additionally gives you +500 CR for the next Devastate or Shockwave you cast
- each stack additionally boosts your Parry rating by 200 (shoring up the loss of ITZ)
- casting a special ability when stack count is 10 makes it autocrit
etc etc.

[Hegemony]

What if DT bleed was changed, so it doesnt have stack limitation of 5, it would stack infinitely and it would also apply with a shield?

That's actually wonderful idea.

[MrNoob]

I just wanted to say thank you to Hegemony, Romme, Kinnu, and Lodwig for providing valuable help to improve this game. I've been testing but don't have the in-depth game knowledge like you all do.

[Phương Nguyễn]

Obviously =))) we're just their followers kkkk

[Heikki Gross]

An Idea for Arcanist

I have been ranting about the Belt of Arcane shielding and Belt of Whispered secrets so long, that I got an idea today.

All the old belts of Arcane shielding and Whispered secrets would be tunred into a new version of Whispered secrets belt like I suggested - 200% damage increase with lighting struck when deflected an attack and 8000 deflect rating, no armor reduction.

And the new Belt of Arcane shileding would be this - Each time you finish a cooldown on TimeWarp, Singularity, Paradox or Blink, your arcane damage is increased by 5% and received damage reduced by 0.1% - lasts 60 seconds. (The DR should stack with DR from SOFT itself)

Probably this belt alone would revive Arcanist set. I tested in TG, with about 2500AR and was able to get nearly 150 ripple casts in 5 minutes. This means, that in ideal conditions, you can reach to 1500% increased arcane damage and 30% damage reduction in 10 minutes.

[Jose Sarmento]

Great idea - but swap the names. The +deflect and Lightning Stuck belt feels more like "Arcane Shielding", whereas this new one is more in line with "Whispered Secrets" (i.e., Arcane Spells that you murmur and which grant you more and more power).

Just IMHO, of course.

[Heikki Gross]

I got exactly the oposite feeling about it.
The arcane shielding belt increases arcane damage and shields you from damage while the other belt has a secret, hit me and you will get stung from deflect and get debuffed for lightning.

[LodWig]

• Havoc 2 pieces set bonus - Missiles fired as a result now deal 5000% weapon damage, up from 500%.
• Havoc 4 pieces set bonus - The damage of traps, missiles and explosives is now increased by 100%, up from 45%.

• Havoc 4 set bonus: damage increased to 200%, up from 100%
• Havoc 6 set bonus: number of missiles increased to 9

Indeed, a missile from 2-Havoc deal 5000% Weapon Damage now. The chances for firing seem to be the advertised 20%. Note that the rate is increased when wearing a Charm of Qol, meaning the secondary attack triggered by this trinket can also fire a missile. Note also that Rapid Fire attacks can fire a missile, whose damage is enhanced as expected, with probably the same 20% rate on each shot, so an average of 1.6 missile per Rapid Fire level 10. (I have witnessed a single Rapid Fire resulting in two Havoc missiles.)

Damage of 2-Havoc missiles, Magnetic Traps, Heatseeker rockets, and Explosive Shot explosion are all tripled by 4-Havoc: the increase is indeed 200%. But the damage of Sticky Bombs is not enhanced at all.

With 6-Havoc, Heatseeker indeed launches 15 rockets.

Aside:
With 2000 AR, one can be able to do one Heatseeker attack every about 8s, Alacrity included. That's 7.5 Heatseeker attack per minute, so about 68 rockets from 6-Havoc. Each rocket is 2500% WD, tripled with 4-Havoc, that's a total of 510K% WD per minute. Sticky Bombs from 2-Demo are only 2000% damage (not 3000% as advertised), and not tripled by 4-Havoc, at 75ppm that's about 150K% WD per minute. If the damage was 3000%, tripled, that would be 675K% WD per minute. Meaning, 4H2D could be better than 6H. Of course other factors would intervene, such as the Bracer of Mastery used, or the fact that the death of a healthy foe can make a big Sticky Bomb explosion, also the respective Area of Effect of Heatseeker rockets and Sticky Bombs... This would need testing in Trials.

PS:
Latest test on 1.5.74 shows that the damage of Magnetic Trap is not increased by 4-Havoc.

[CarnivorousDeathParrot.2]

I've just done some group dmg testing with my main account Havoc (attack speed above 7 and molten belt).
Attacking all out until RF/Heatseekers were used 10 times.

- BoM : explosive shot > heatseekers (this also appeared to come up in regular play)
- Belt : molten > heatseekers (no change)

. . .which raises the question of whether the best Havoc would not be a 4-Set with Charm of Qol to take advantage of the primary attack. Heatseekers still do a lot of dmg.

[VnHoan]

@carni moltal belt > heatseeker belt can be undertstood, but BoM esplo > heatseeker is not sure, it depend on your build. If you build with AR, heatseeker will be better, if only build with power, explo maybe better.

[CarnivorousDeathParrot.2]

Well, the build I'm using for this already has AR at 39% (so not much room to grow) and *was* doing more dmg with heatseekers before the update.
It's now sitting at TL 148 and will probably be there until I upgrade the defense. There is a lily build at the same level using the heatseekers BoM; maybe trading speed for power. Also Pathfinder might be making the difference here.

The top 100 BH leaderboards currently have a few different "explosive" builds; it seems like the chips are yet to fall into place on what's strictly the most damaging build, if a meaningful difference materializes.

[Adrian (Developer)]

Thanks again for the detailed feedback.
We'll compile a list of improvements from your suggestions and include them in a new build.
Until then we are going to release this version live to allow alpha testing players to join the new season and the upcoming ANB gold.

[Heikki Gross]

Moved the damage reduction effect from the Event Horizon to the Lightning Struck debuff Very good change, but there is a bug now. When lightning struck is procced from the belt of whispered secrets, then the damage reduction debuff does not apply. So when a mob damage gets deflected, this is the debuff what will be on the mob and that one will also be refreshed with blizzard or another deflect, the only way to remove it is to let that run out and add the one from blizzard. Also shown in the video.

It is not listed in your .73 notes, but I hope you fixed this bug as well. Otherwise it will break the set, cant use the belt and thats a significant dps loss.

[secgei]

Cant find the logistics quartermaster. Bug? Points to the red circle...

[davidz]

Yes, that’s the most infamous bug now. I have two of the task now, one from daily and one from story line.

[Heikki Gross]

Adrian (Developer) While considering ideas from this section of the forum, please don't forget the ones thrown into the feedback section, here is something what is also long overdue in this game.

https://forum.makingfun.com/forum/et...mpanion-revamp

And I personally would like to see old and useless stuff remade and balanced, to fit into the game, than some new inventions. Make every item matter, like Rylocke's or deflect for example.

[Ozymandius]

+1 Still feels like the special damage (e.g., fire, frost, nature, physical, arcanist) trinkets are too underpowered against ToS or ToP (lily builds). Let's give those a boost in the next update.

Totally applaud the "buffs not nerfs" approach you guys are using on this balancing upgrade!

[Kristoff]

Heikki Gross Yes, I agree! It's better and more fun if multiple item and gear combos can be just as good as whatever is the currently popular META.

Ozymandius Never really got the point of nerfs, given that the number of TLs is effectively unlimited.

[Schmutzus]

Apprentice Vestments BUGGY!!


The Apprentice Vestments set is buggy. The 6 pieces Set bonus says: "10% chance to cast RANK 50 Immolate on enemies" This is NOT the case. The Immolate still is the EXACT SAME RANK as your normal immolate. And it does litereally no damage. I tried it on the recent ANB gold and actually wanted to climb as high as possible with the Apprentice Vestments Set,when I realized, that the summoned Immolate was rank 2! Same as my standard immolate. It even had small size and no DoT nor Damage buff. The damage was not even listed in the fight history menu. It was too little!
I tested it on my main mage and surprise: it had the exact same damage there as my rank 10 immolate.
Even the shield summoning (4 pieces set bonus) against boss monsters felt much less than 50%. It was more like 5-10% instead of 50%. Vs Mobs it was higher, but vs boss monsters it barely proced!

[Travis | Support Mgr.]

What game version?

[Schmutzus]

It is Version 1.5.73. I updated it from the Appstore, IOS.

[Schmutzus]

And the same problem on my PC version. There is version 1.5.73 aswell

[Schmutzus]

Mage: Fireball buggy?

Another point i recognized: Fireballs description does still say: Ignites enemies for 30% weapon damage (instead of 150%, as it should be after buffs). I am not sure, if this is just a tooltip error, and if the values are buffed, or if the buffs didnt come throught here. Version 1.5.73

[Schmutzus]

Edit to Apprentice Vestments:

The Set bonus for 4 pieces: Get a shield by 50% is still its old value of 25% against monsters. Against Bossmonsters it is significantly lower, arround ~5%

The 2 pieces Set bonus +840 crit really works as I should do! You get your +840 crit.

In its current state this set is still a meme equippment set. In ANB Gold it took me arround 8 min to clear Tl 86 with this set. Whith same item stats on a regalia equipment set it would have taken me ~ 2 min to clear the same trial.

In my opinion this set does need more as just a bugfix on setboni 4 & 6 to be viable. Much more buffs! One option of indirct buffing would be really simple: Just swap the bonus 4 (shield) and bonus 6 (immolate)! This way you could play 4x Apprentice Vestments and 2x Regalia. This set does desperately need the 2 pice setbonus of the Regalia set (500% dmg on Immolate and Fireball Meteor). Maybe with this dmg buff AND the Rank 50 Immolate it COULD be viable. 500% Fireball Meteor would be a great bonus on top too. This way a pure firemage with death from above, Sash of Igniter, Fireball and Summoned Immolate really could be a thing!

[Souloist]

Are we gonna see any futher update? I still believe the assault set needs some love.
plus i would love to see an option to trade with friends. My sister has come back to the game aftet 4 years and shes really behind. I wish i could give her a hand to speed things up a bit. I feel like the gap between the new starters and old players is massive and can throw some people away from the game.

[davidz]

I think it’s so much fun to gain gold, xp and some 77 gears by playing anb and seasons. I think one thing is to up the craft level to master first, everything else is pure fun.

[Nhat]

Teebs Feels I should "qualify" the "can provide" list... pushing past TL100 is still a tricky thing for most, yeah I know I'm bad, but hopefully I'm not that completely helpless and hope to still be within the "mid-range" of players out there... So that last CT and 35 Glory per ANB can be "tricky"... just saying...

I do agree that there is a clear "perceived" gap between a new player and the existing "veterans" - as is in almost all games, no one expects to start out on par with someone who have been playing for 2+ years, and it would also be unfair to expect such "equality". What I have seen in Eternium is that, with enough knowledge and planning, new players can quickly catch up and get close to those long-term players and I've seen my share of new players completely flying past me too, haha. Once you reach the "upper-level" of the game, the gains get significantly slower...

A conservative approach is needed, you're looking at working out your game-plan, what works for you and then follow through... gear wise, conservative aim of 4 ANB cycles (gaining 1 CT each), to fully fit out your Push gear, doing your exp farming and crafting during those ANB and Gems farming with main...

[Teebs]

Nhat

Your assessment is far more accurate and realistic than mine, I probably should have put in "theoretically can provide ..."

And I agree with the "conservative game plan" - though I think both your conclusion and mine are the same - that playing the game is the way that you learn how to play the game.

... KTB

[Heikki Gross]

Stormcaller Regalia feedback after .73 version.

First off, I want to say that this set is in a much better position now. Just today I did TL159 with it and probably TL160 is also doable. So, improving event horizon performance and giving the DR debuff made a big difference. 5TL's so far to be exact. But there are still a few things what needs attention.

1. If you would switch off the "Immune" floating texts while being immune to damage, then that would improve the performance a lot and would fix, what we call a "bubblecrash", once you get the bubble from FK set and those texts start to float, the game is prone to crash, due to the critical FPS plummet. Just make that text also be switched off when floating text it off and it will most likely fix the situation.

2. We suggested to put the damage reduction debuff from event horizon to Lightning struck. That was mainly, because having it on event horizon made the FPS issue even worse than it was and Lightning struck seemed a better option. It has turned out that it isn't. The issue is the 30% chance to proc from blizzard. On a bossfight, especially on those who move a lot, it is hard to proc it and even on static ones there are situations where it does not come on for the whole blizzard cast. The idea of the RNG, for lightning struck, isnt the issue, that part is fine, but the damage reduction debuff not proccing is a big issue because you still cant rely on it nor keep it up 100% if needed. Additionally it is also currently broken, because the lighting struck procced from belt, does not give damage reduction. My proposal is to put the damage reduction part to casting blizzard and have it proc every time when blizzard is doing damage. This would also fix the issue with the belt giving the LS without the DR debuff.

So the new 2 piece bonus would look like this:
When a target receives damage from your blizzard, it reduces the damage dealt by 50% for 5 seconds and there is a 30% chance to be hit by lightning for 3000% weapon damage. Targets hit become lightning struck, increasing all damage taken by 100% for 5 seconds.

[Heikki Gross]

Adrian (Developer) After giving some more thought to this I have started to question my proposal. It all depends in what direction you want to push it. Yes, adding LS to the blizzard would fix the current situation, but it would also lock out any other alternatives to the build and make the belt of whispered secrets completely worthless in its current state and that is bad imo.

If you are open to having alternative versions of the build, then fixing the DR debuff from the belt LS proc and joining the Belt of Whispered Secrets with Arcane belt of Shielding would be a perfect fix. If you would alternatively do my suggestion to Paradox (increasing the immune bubble to 5sec and giving 15K deflect for the duration) then that would keep the alternative build option open as well while changing DR proc to blizzard would kill this completely.

Even If you dont do the paradox change, fixing the belts and the proc would increase the value of deflect stat, which is a good thing to the game imo. So either way you go, would fix the situation but i would prefer leaving the options open.

Additionally, I have finished TL161 with a really lucky mobphase and if I'm as lucky with the mobphase then 162 would be doable, but 163 is never going to happen. There just isnt enough DPS for that in the build. Doing those changes for mitigation would let us shift some stats from defence to damage but for Elban at that level we need about 25% more damage, it is just not there. So in terms of SCR catching up with ELR, we are getting near, but to get to 166, the damage increase has to be about 30%.

Given that we run nearly 93% NaD and get 100% more from Lightning struck, then I would say, that pushing Lightning Struck to 200% is exactly 30% damage increase to the build.

Additionally, boosting LS, would help the build also lot in XP grind. Currently we have to dual class or switch the build for pushing, its just that bad.

Pushing it to 200% would also