The death of the single target builds

[Kobal]

Before the latest path there was a nice balance within the game between builds with better AoE damage that finished their mob phase quickly but took longer on the boss (SW Warrior, Stalker BH) and specs that took longer during the mob phase but made up for that with better single target damage on the boss (Arcanist Mage, but mostly DW Warrior). This was a good thing, as it catered to multiple different play styles. Want to quickly move down small mob groups one after the other? Like to pull large swathes of enemies and watch them wither away under your mighty area effects? There was something for everyone.

That is no longer the case.

The top builds for each class now have in common that they are all great at slaying large numbers of trash mobs in short order and that way buy enough time for a prolonged boss fight with lackluster tools.

What changed? The short (and long) answer is the Osmosis head enchant. That Stalker BHs got a second Osmosis on steroids in form of the Molten Belt only exacerbates the issue for them. The top build for each class makes heavy use of it.

Yes, Osmosis takes a while to get going, but once it does it almost does not matter what you hit the boss with, it will go down in time. (Unless your build was completely gimped by the Alacrity nerf, like SW Warrior). By the very nature of that enchant investing in single target damage is a losing proposition. A simple example:

Assume a build that takes 5 Minutes to down a boss.
Without Osmosis, doubling the dps of that build will cut the time for the boss fight in half.
With Osmosis, doubling the dps of that build will merely shave one third of the time for the same boss fight.
(If requested, I can provide the math to back up that last statement.)

So investing in single target DPS has very lackluster returns. It is far more profitable to further ramp up the AoE damage and let Osmosis take care of the boss. To compound this, the Slayer weapon enchant has been introduced. Most likely the strongest weapon enchant there is at the moment, but of course at its best if the boss fight takes longer.

.

The cited reason for the introduction of the Osmosis enchant was to help out SW Warrior, and other specs who take a long time to down the boss. My question then is: WHY? SW Warrior was perfectly balanced with its DW counterpart, why did it need such a boost. (Also, why did it need to get ruined by the Alacrity nerf? But that is another discussion).

The simple solution to bring back more playstyle variety would be to get rid of the culprit. The Slayer weapon enchant alone should help out those AoE specs, I do not think we really need Osmosis. I am also aware this is not likely to happen.

Personally I would like it if single target builds were viable again.

[bojck]

I agree with you that it would be great to have both an AoE build and a more single-target oriented build, but I'm not convinced that scrapping osmosis is the way to go.

For context, currently a 10 minute push with ELR takes around 5-6 minutes mob phase and 4-5 minutes boss fight, with Slayer on weapon and Osmosis on helm. It is pretty well-balanced. Without osmosis, it would be something like 2:30 mob phase and 7:30 boss...

It is true that after 5-6 minutes osmosis bonus gets huge, but on higher trials you rarely have that long even with the good AoE damage that ELR has.

A balancing solution for mages would be to up Arcanist damage to allow mob clears in 6:30-7, so it can catch up during the boss fight, but I don't think it's a great idea to do such a heavy rebalance now that the season is already on.

[Kobal]

A balancing solution for mages would be to up Arcanist damage to allow mob clears in 6:30-7, so it can catch up during the boss fight.

I am all for reinstating Arcanist Mage as a competitive option.

but I don't think it's a great idea to do such a heavy rebalance now that the season is already on.

They can't do any rebalance - at least not any form of nerf - in the upcoming balance patch without resetting the leaderboard anyways. At least not without severely contorting the competition since those who reached their top ranking pre-nerf might be uncatchable afterwards. And with over two months to go still a leaderboard reset right now is acceptable to me.

[bojck]

A leaderboard reset isn't a big deal - two months is plenty of time to push to the current levels again and further.

Doing major rebalancing is undesirable though, because we'd need to recraft and relearn for the second time in one month.

After the patch when arcanist got uncompetitive, I had to stash all my gear, craft an xp and push ELR set from scratch (also reforged/recrafted xp gear to fit Fire lily once I got one), and had to learn how to play a totally new build. It was a bit frustrating in the beginning, but soon started to like it. Now a month in I've spent a lot of time to develop ELR skills and upgrade gear (certainly 1000+ trial runs), so I don't welcome another big change. I'm sure a lot of people are in the same boat, since Arcanist was pretty much the only good push build last season.

I mean clean starts are healthy for the game, but mb once every 6 months, not once a month At this point balancing changes should be subtle...

[Kobal]

I mean clean starts are healthy for the game,

I'd say it depends. A clean start that invalidates all your work can be frustrating especially for those players that can not put in a thousedn TL runs or more over a few weeks. For me stashing my Arcanist gear was very frustrating, mainly because I just had gotten it to near completion.

Ideally clean starts introduce more competitive options without invalidating the existing ones. If they can pull off that one, I am all for it.

But seeing how even bigger staffed games like Path of Exile struggle to prevent dominating FotM builds ... Making Fun Games would at least need to completely rethink their testing strategy.