Alacrity nerfed

[Kungpaogao]

It seems like alacrity was not only nerfed from 2 to 1 second but the chance to proc was also halved. Used to be able to comfortably run 6.1 a/s and 67% AR and get permanent shards. Now I’m at 6.4 a/s and 75% AR and can’t maintain shards. The addition of 4 new slots doesn’t counteract this alacrity nerf. It seems like arc mage is unplayable in anb and definitely a step behind elr in season. To put that into perspective thats 4500 AR and 2800 haste. That type of stat investment leaves little room for error and also cannot be achieved in anb. Arc might truly be dead class for ANB if that is the case.

The other issue that nerf arc mages hard with this update is no more stormblade proc or LoH proc off singularity. I get the stormblade since I had complained about fps vs stormblade damage but this LoH nerf severely hampers the survivability of an arc mage.

[Guest]

I've noticed this as well. Think Warrior is the way forward now.

[Romme]

Warrior has always been the way!

[Argon]

Sorry to have to say this, but as a mobile only player this is exactly what I was hoping for. I used to play mages as much as warriors (current main is 8 CTed pieces of Warlord which is massively hampered by alacrity nerf too , so I do feel for you too), but reduced playing mages bc of the huge gap to pc players.
We never had perma soft nor huge stormblade procs and even though blink doesn't work properly on mobile Arcanist was still the most competitive option. In silver 4 I reached tl115 with arc on mobile without stormblade enchant on my almost free from medals and gems second account, while my medals and gems loaded main account bronze 4 elr mage with 300 cls more only reached tl114.

[mahara]

And that's why we will nerf everything good and not buff everything bad. BHs did 140+ prepatch and everyone was like oh, BHs. But if you played arc you were like devil incarnate itself. Weren't you behind that 30s punishment in ANB?

[Anjaeka]

The way you’re playing it now is pretty much the way mobile players have always played it. It sucks doesn't it? Now imagine you were competing against a lot of players who didn’t get the same alacrity nerf you did and we’re still able to spam cast and achieve insanely high proc rates. That’s how it is to play mobile vs PC.

[Kungpaogao]

I started on mobile with arcanist. Reached Tl142 In season 1 with it so I’m well aware of the mechanics of mobile Arcanist. On mobile permanent soft was still viable with 70% AR and 6.2 haste. The whole point was that the alacrity nerf had a stated effect 2 to 1 second but also an unstated nerf of less procs. You can easily test this in TG. Alacrity proccing less was never even mentioned so by all intents and purposes it seems to be a bug, not the 30% chance it used to be. If they’re going to nerf the chance aspect of alacrity, it should have been clearly stated. If not, then we can only assume it to be a bug.

And another thing that will affect PC and mobile players is the nerf to LoH while using singularity which limits an arc mage survival even while soft is up. For all intents and purposes, the arc mage is a dead class for ANB. I don’t know why mobile players are happy. It will not reduce the gap for Arcanist because no one will have the necessary AR/haste in anb to make the build viable. The top mages will simply move to ELR and there is still a gap between PC and mobile there too. It just makes the meta shift from 1 build to another.

[Argon]

Agreed on alacrity chance if what you say is true. But as I described above arc WAS still more competitive despite all that "unplayable" on mobile (don't know how it is now) and especially in AnBs the gap should get reduced now. What you described on mobile in season 1 was never achievable in AnBs. And if ELR now gets to be better, even better for mobile, bc that pc/mobile gap was so much smaller than for arc...
Edit: Of course a gap will remain, but a 5 to 10 tl gap and a 1 to 3 tl gap make a huge difference.

[Kungpaogao]

I think you’re underestimating the PC mobile gap for ELR. With the current push ELR build you will need to aim your frost beam very precisely. A mobile touch screen is going to be at a huge disadvantage vs a PC with a cursor. If you miss on the frost beam, then it’s either lose the damage from that cast altogether or stand there like a sitting duck while you’re channeling the beam.

[Montresor]

The top mages will simply move to ELR and there is still a gap between PC and mobile there too. It just makes the meta shift from 1 build to another.

This. I don't see how we're better off. people have complained all along that there's no variety in builds; that each class only has one viable build. well killing arcanist doesn't fix that. i'm all for having a viable ELR and viable mobile build, but you don't have to kill arcanist for that to happen. what's the problem with having two different builds?

i do agree that the stormblade proc gave a massive advantage to high FPS PC players, but killing alacrity kills the build for everyone. i did the same tests as Kungpaogao and with my 60 fps, with > 4000 AR and 5.96 a/s and the QOL trinket still could not keep soft. that is a huge commitment of resources that could be used for damage, vitality, LOH, etc.

[Argon]

As a comparison, Kungpaogao and are better mages than I am, both play pc. In Bronze 4 i lagged 3 trials behind Wispy, in Silver 4 I was 13 trials short of Kungpaogao.
I absolutely understand the frustration of getting the main toon nerfed as it has happened to me too, but the huge arc/stalker pc/mobile gaps were bejond comparison to any other sets!

Yeah, I played full exp for the Bronze push for an experiment. For pre-patch ELR could clear TL120 but anything beyond ELR lacked single target DPS. The alacrity nerf hits Arcanist a lot more than ELR since ELR didn't need to max AR. Although I believe Arcanist is still the strongest in both ANB and Season play (it's too early to be certain though) the Alacrity nerf makes Arcanist a very tough choice for ANB unless you have very deep pockets.

[Montresor]

it will be interesting to see i suppose, if anyone tries to rank with Arcanist in Gold. Even if you have the gems / money to spend to get optimal arcanist equipment, it still requires so many resources dedicated to haste / AR that you end up sacrificing vit, loh, dps, or the new elemental damages that it might still struggle against someone applying the same resources to the new ELR variants.

After further playing around tonight, tweaking playstyle, build, companions and new items (all terrible but the bonuses are better than the stats) for actual Trials cleared ELR is seriously outclassing Arcanist. There's still a lot to to unlock and discover for both sets. I'm of the opinion that if you are as heavily invested into AR and Haste as top players like Kungpaogao are, then SOFT should still be as maintainable as it was pre-patch. If playing Mage in ANB gold, I can only recommend ELR, for the overwhelming majority of Mages it'll be a much better experience. It makes me sad though, I wanted to see good competition between the two armour sets and unless something changes that isn't going to happen

[Romme]

Coming from a mobile only player I agree with Kungpaogao and do not like the alacrity nerf. That's the first thing I noticed in the patch notes and thought it would be a good thing for mobile players but i was wrong. Things just play out too slow now in my opinion. Cooldowns feel like they take forever to come up which is a bad thing.

I hope the devs think about maybe rebalancing this a bit. Either seeing how 2s works again or maybe reduce cooldowns by 1.5 seconds would be a good inbetween? Also I think the proc rate for alacrity needs to go back to where it was since it has been lowered.

Another option which might be better since it won't rely as much on getting alacrity procs would be to keep it at 1s but reduce the k value of ability rate to 1000.

Currently the k value is 1500. The formula is:
cooldown reduction = ability rate / (ability rate + 1500)

1000 = 40%
1500 = 50%
2500 = 62.5%
3500 = 70%

When k value is 1000:
Cooldown reduction = ability rate / (ability rate + 1000)

1000 = 50%
1500 = 60%
2500 = 71.4%
3500 = 77.8%

[LodWig]

Told ya!

[Romme]

You told us so! This is what you also had in mind for ar k value, right?

[LodWig]

Yes, without thinking much about the particular value, 1000 seemed good. Also a question is whether the lower proc chance observed is intentional, that is did the previous 30% chance at 1500 AR got reduced to 20%?

[Argon]

Obviously getting perma shards or not makes a huge difference, exactly this fact means it's supposed to either be available for both pc AND mobile players or not available for either.
At first i fully disapproved with this nerf too, again: I main a DW warrior. And like those switching to pc I've switched to what was needed to compete as well, only difference is I chose an iPad. But now the iPad advantage of devastate performing in 2s instead of 3 to 4s is obsolete bc dev ain't needed no more. Plus the 70% damage coming from multiple crits within 6 s is also gone.
Perma shards, dev/SW, snipe were all advantages for just some of the players, while the others couldn't compete. Loosing those also means that many others loose part of their disadvantage. PC/gaming tablets will still be favoured, but the gap should be a lot smaller. Everyone can choose an own point of view. Personally I half gladly and half sadly give up these unfair advantages.

[Romme]

Given the new ppm mechanic the fps gap between mobile and pc isn't really there to make a difference. It will still affect skills like devastate but my android is now getting 60fps and was getting 30 before

[Argon]

Hehheh, that sounds great. If this really evens the playing field. And as I would love to see a far bigger variety of builds in the upcoming events. Would be great seeing all possible competitions between builds and devices in all 3 classes.
With this alacrity nerf maybe the low end players will be at an advantage in the upcoming gold event, because they are used to low ability casting frequencies. Too bad i switched to the spoiled ones just in time to not profit from that

[Kobal]

The way I see it:

The developers clearly stated that their goal was to have different competitive armor sets/specs for each class, just as it was the case for Warrior pre-patch.
For Mage they failed, now ELR replaces Arcanist which was nerfed into the ground. Don't take my word for it, ask Wispy and Kungpaogao. They know what they are talking about.

Yes, for a spec like Arcanist that relies on very rapid ability spam PC will always have a (bigger) edge, but wouldn't it be better to have ELR(mobile), ELR(PC) and Arcanist(PC) as competitive specs rather than just ELR?

[Montresor]

interestingly enough, the new ELR builds are already pushing higher than the old arcanist builds. I believe wispy has cleared TL 140, with time to spare, while i'm pretty sure the last season's top arcanist only got to 139.

now while you can argue that with the new enchants and new items arcanist will also push further, none of the new items really buff arcanist that much, so i think it's fair to reason that the old arcanist and the new ELR are really quite even. unfortunately, old arcanist really is dead with the alacrity nerf, so now instead of two competitive builds, we're back to just one.

i totally get that the old PC vs mobile advantage for arcanist was crazy. even within PC the fps advantage of RoTS was crazy. but it seems like, since there is now a competitive ELR build that is very effective on mobile, that the nerf to arcanist wasn't necessary, and really only resulted in a shift to a new single meta.

Yep, 140 down with almost 3 mins left on the clock. ELR certainly isn't lacking in dps, survivability is going to be it's biggest limiting factor. Garm is going to be a great big roadblock for many - I've got him mostly figured out and he's currently my favourite fight (especially with the current healing pool bug and frostfire) with so much dancing around needed. I think there are at least two viable ELR push builds and will be using the next series of ANB to create a second ELR set because the stats distribution is completely different. There seems to be a lot of variety in builds for ELR exp farming, and Stormcaller set could also be viable for that. I do hope something can be done for Arcanist though, a well mixed leaderboard is a healthy leaderboard.

[Argon]

Okay, I agree. I`ve just started playing mage and these belt options, a blink belt dealing fire damage? And 2 deflect options? That's a little bit insulting for arcanists after getting hit worst by the alacrity nerf.

Then again maybe it's best to just move on if you've mained arc. I remember how long I tried to hold on to my original main with 2jugg/4adventurer hoping for a buff. Or those with apprentice! That got trashed too.

When new toys are presented, the old toys a put aside. But then the stormcaller build should be competitive. Is it not? The new items seem to fit for that build. I don't have a full set yet, nor the good new uniques, but running 4 has been fun so far. Can do similar tactics as with ELR. Pull em in, kite and blizzard/singularity/arc seems promising. Then with singularity bracer/stormcaller brooch and full nature buff...

[Kobal]

Yes, it is likely that we will just have to move on and stow away our Arcanist pyjamas for a happier day in the far future.

But there is still hope that the gals and guys at Making Fun meant what they said when they talked about having multiple viable sets and just overshot this nerf unintentionally. In that case they need to know they did, and that is what we try to do here.