Set Gear Balance Changes...?

[WarriorSeven]

I agree, Ozy. Most of the trinkets that are never used only proc twice a minute, requiring careful timing. That's just BS ... I'll never use them until they're rebuffed to be active all the time. I'm also in the camp that would eliminate the shared cooldowns. Just so much more BS, IMO.

[WarriorSeven]

Warrior needs the most work without question. The devs should reconsider reversing the nerfs made several years ago in order to re-enhance Warrior as a POWERFUL tank build, since it cannot kite like Mage or Hunter -- its lot in life, presently, seems to be to just grin and bear it while inflicting only some offensive damage during the onslaughts from mobs and bosses ... too much time spent defending and not advancing. Cooldown and alacrity need buffed to reduce the defensive posture to allow faster proc'ing of offensive weapons. Any build for Warrior is far too one dimensional presently. Pick any. A battle tank is more than JUST armor ... it should have significant ("big gun"-like ) attack and devastate abilities to balance it's inherent defensiveness.

I do LOVE the Warrior 6F build since it is a sheer delight to play, but peters out in the TL160ish range and needs rebuffed for survivability since it can NEVER compete at higher TLs where Mage and Hunter dominate. Both the Crit and Fire Lily builds should be re-buffed (un-nerfed?) to give back some build VARIETY while allowing Warrior to progress through higher Trials. Crazy, but the Warrior has the most to offer in terms of ability and attribute selections, but unfortunately it seems there are absolutely NO combinations that give it an advantage to advance higher in Trials. Incredible, as if this is intentional. So, IMHO, there are PLENTY of options for the devs to re-buff gear and passive attributes mentioned by many others in posts over the past many months. And the buffs need to be SIGNIFICANT and not piddling or incremental adjustments.

I am also in the Shield Warrior camp, where, again, the build gets really tired at the TL160ish altitude. So close to advancing higher, but yet, so far far away. This very defensive build has a very loyal following, and it would be shear joy to many (including me) to build a set to compete. With a little more offense and improvements in cycle times to proc, this build has a chance to advance far into Trials. There is already evidence by several adherents the potential is there for this unusual, defensive class to compete!

Finally, regarding Mage and Hunter, I would suggest only incremental changes to allow build variety beyond the current metas. Stormcaller for Mage seems interesting, involving different attributes and gear, but it needs enhanced. Pure Demo and pure Havoc builds for Hunter could be alternate metas without big changes to the hybrid meta. And PLEASE ... buff and don't nerf. I think small changes to these two classes would be far easier to implement than the much larger effort needed to bring the Warrior class to a new and exciting competitive level.

Thanks, and good luck!

[Ozymandius]

+1 DFA build definitely plateaus way before the Beam does.

[Ozymandius]

I think that you would get the most bang for the buck by buffing the elemental damage on the talismans that no players ever use (e.g., North, Pyromaniac, Doom, Nature's Fury). Everyone is either using Fire Lily [power] or Talisman of the Storm [CD] as primary because those are so OP compared to anything else. I think that you could shake things up by making the other elemental damage options more competitive. Right now they only boost elemental damage by 100%, which is way underpowered compared to 3000% CD boost from ToS or 500% damage boost from FL. Not sure why this has been overlooked for so long, but there are primarily just two types of builds out there regardless of which class of hero: Power build with FireLily or Critical build with Talisman of Storms. You should also consider reclassifying them as "orbs" to eliminate the shared cooldown for all talismens.

I'll probably make a few posts as I work my way through testing various sets. I'll start with Elemental Lords Regalia...I think the current Frostbeam meta should remained untouched with no nerfs, however it would be nice to see Death from Above become an alternative build with this set. So with rough figures from a little Training Grounds testing (albeit with "Dual School" damage types (Frost and Fire bonuses):-

1. Double the damage from Death from Above, so at level 10 the Fireballs should do 1600% weapon damage (up from 800%)
2. The base number of charges of Death from Above should be increased from 6 to 10
3. Sash of the Igniter should have have the burn damage increased from 500% to 1000%
4. Sash of the Igniter should have the burn duration increased from 6 seconds to 8 seconds

My reasoning behind these changes are that Death from Above does about 25-26% of the damage of Frostbeam over an extended period of time. Points 1 and 2 should help redress the balance somewhat. In addition, the amount of Thermal Shock generated from a DfA build is around 37% that of a Frostbeam build, even when stacking Combust to wait for optimal Talisman procs. Increasing the burn damage and duration will make Combust stacking easier (it's a very tight window currently) whilst increasing the damage to allow for larger Thermal Shocks.

Finally, it would be great if the damage bonus from Bracer of Mastery could be changed so that the bonus amount is increased when a Celestial Transform is applied.

[Grand_Wazoo]

Resurrect our beloved shield warrior!!! Make him competitive again.Shouldn't be that hard he's not that far. TheExorcist ??
Fix Stormcaller atrocious lag in mob phase.
Make Arcanist and Apprentice sets great again.
Modify (or buff) bonuses on the least used trinkets so they are on par with the most commonly used. Same thing with most of the belts.
And while your at it, fix the unclickable PORTALS.

[Tin Man]

Fix the exploit that allows multi-elemental damage.

Will not completely balance things out but will definitely shake things up. Would not know the full impact until after the change is in place.

EDIT: I recognize that this would have most impact on the experience farming phase.

EDIT 2: Fixing some known issues would not necessarily broaden the number of METAs but would provide more balance to the game. I am looking at you not being able to Vortex while a Frost Beam is active when using a touchscreen. Another one is having the Fire Lily do what it says that it does. it does not increase damage by 200, 300, 400 or 500% but by 100, 200, 300 or 400% or in terms of multipliers: 2x, 3x, 4x or 5x. This would mix things up a bit even though the sets themselves do not change and the Frost Beam issue in particular would help balance out the disparity between touchscreen and keyboard/mouse players.

[Travis | Support Mgr.]

Sticking with the theme of listening to the community, we'd like to know what balance changes you would make to set items. Looking at the LBs, it's obvious that a lot of players are using the same meta and we'd like to shake that up a bit. So...what would you change in terms of balancing set gear?