Nerf or nothing?

[roundtree]

Has anyone noticed that a LOT of things have been nerfed? Kali is down to 15% proc, and Shockwave is down to 50%? Is all the nerfing really necessary? I used to make some really awesome characters, and now they are NOT so awesome. I like the new UI. It looks very nice! Automatic gold pickup is a GREAT feature, but the skills are getting deflated, and the characters are slower now. I have personally played through a lot of versions since before Ultimative was out. Still the best overhual mod ever made for Diablo 2.

[Marco]

it was part of a broader overhaul which was explained in changelog.

Something people often forget is - we have to continuously make sacrifices in order to keep the game as performant as we can. Changes such as proc reduction, lower movement speed, reducing incentives for group-play, reanimate reduction, and more, are hugely motivated by improving performance. Its easy to join the "devs just want to remove all fun stuff" trend, but we loved these things just as much as players did.

This is still a 1999 engine after all. For sigma launch we expected over 1500 people (ended up twice as much). Ultimative could barely hold 300 people up. We've definetly come a long way and have tried to make these "nerfs" as little impact as we could. Anyway, hope that clears it up.

[Jampula]

Its easy to join the "devs just want to remove all fun stuff" trend, but we loved these things just as much as players did.

Did you enjoy trapsin? Nerf that thing and remove cooldown?

[Marco]

Its easy to join the "devs just want to remove all fun stuff" trend, but we loved these things just as much as players did.

Did you enjoy trapsin? Nerf that thing and remove cooldown?

I haven't played it yet myself, but from my understanding, situation with cata trap is that it was intended as a boss skill and became too good for clear. It can be true that it doesn't work well in certain encounters due to ai/tele (i.e. jday) but this is issue should be solved by improving these encounters/AI rather than changing catalyst trap, as it would benefit other builds as well. That aside it's still a high tier char for many reasons.

[Aari_]

Its easy to join the "devs just want to remove all fun stuff" trend, but we loved these things just as much as players did.

Did you enjoy trapsin? Nerf that thing and remove cooldown?

I haven't played it yet myself, but from my understanding, situation with cata trap is that it was intended as a boss skill and became too good for clear. It can be true that it doesn't work well in certain encounters due to ai/tele (i.e. jday) but this is issue should be solved by improving these encounters/AI rather than changing catalyst trap, as it would benefit other builds as well. That aside it's still a high tier char for many reasons.

The problem is, I for one was building a trapsin that just used the traps, stacking spell damage etc. Before the cata trap nerf, it felt just fine for clearing. After the nerf, it made a pure trap build clunky once I hit 120 ubers, as most of my time was spent waiting around for the cata trap CD to come off CD to do things.

The only time the build felt remotely high tier was when the stars aligned and stuff stayed in your cata trap, and your beacon hit it along with your other traps, and with the clunky ai and other factors, this wasn't often.

The nerf punished pure trap builds at the expense of people that were running hybrid melee trap builds that might of made cata trap high tier or too good. As a pure trapsin, myself and the friend I played with that both played trapsins thought even the 10 sec cd was too much, and needed to be lowered, or the range increased.

Heavy handed nerfs because of one version of a build that punish other versions of the build inadvertently are unfortunate and unacceptable, especially in a game where TG was spent on certain gear that is now useless as i stopped playing the build a few play sessions after the nerf, because it was no longer worth the time investment.

The overall situation has left me with a dirty taste in my mouth, after putting TG into a build, and will make me extremely wary about investing into this game if this how it's handled. Just my 2 cents.

[roundtree]

it was part of a broader overhaul which was explained in changelog.

Something people often forget is - we have to continuously make sacrifices in order to keep the game as performant as we can. Changes such as proc reduction, lower movement speed, reducing incentives for group-play, reanimate reduction, and more, are hugely motivated by improving performance. Its easy to join the "devs just want to remove all fun stuff" trend, but we loved these things just as much as players did.

This is still a 1999 engine after all. For sigma launch we expected over 1500 people (ended up twice as much). Ultimative could barely hold 300 people up. We've definetly come a long way and have tried to make these "nerfs" as little impact as we could. Anyway, hope that clears it up.

I do understand that. And I personally get very cheaty with any game until I get GOOD at it. (single-player of course) And I did the same thing with Median XL, using my shared stash file as an "unlimited stash". I will admit it is MUCH more challenging to try to play the right way instead of using shortcuts all the time.

I want to say something else. THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for making Median XL. I have been playing for a long time, but it feels good to say thank you to someone finally. My favorite thing about it has always been how much you can customize your characters. Adds a lot of playability to the game. I personally love games from the 90's, even though I do love more modern games too. If you consider Diablo 2 is actually that old, it's mind-blowing how they even got the game that good. It's got my favorite music of all time from any video game ever.

I'm not really into Diablo 3, but I love 2. I have always wondered if it might be possible to retexture it one day. I still do like the original textures, but I would be very excited if it were possible.

[Ywinel]

Its easy to join the "devs just want to remove all fun stuff" trend, but we loved these things just as much as players did.

Did you enjoy trapsin? Nerf that thing and remove cooldown?

I haven't played it yet myself, but from my understanding, situation with cata trap is that it was intended as a boss skill and became too good for clear. It can be true that it doesn't work well in certain encounters due to ai/tele (i.e. jday) but this is issue should be solved by improving these encounters/AI rather than changing catalyst trap, as it would benefit other builds as well. That aside it's still a high tier char for many reasons.

Sure clear speed was a bit to crazy and needed nerf but the problem with ai was almost same before the patch(10 sec cd was just forgiving mistakes and ai stupidity a bit). What patch changed was play style. That's why players were so upset, they have already learned to play this char in some way which changed.

Also new play style is really uneven, for 10 sec you have crazy damage and clear and then for next 10 sec things get 3 times slower. Even if it keeps balance it's clunky af

[drasch21]

trapsin nerf was lazy . no thought put into how it was nerfed IMO

[Crash]

Also new play style is really uneven, for 10 sec you have crazy damage and clear and then for next 10 sec things get 3 times slower. Even if it keeps balance it's clunky af

I'd disagree with this bit since the new bloodzon is similar in mechanic, as blood fury lasts 20 seconds with 30 second cooldown. the only big difference is that bloodzon has a way to activate the buff outside of the 20 second duration by keeping HP below 66%, and new bloodzon is really good because of this change. just with trapsin, y ou can't copy paste that because it doesnt make sense and its copy paste.

[Conquest]

I play median since the earliest Median XL release versions (official was 1.70) and I do agree about nerfing screen clutter, less chance but more strength on the procs etc.

Playing Laz's median version was quite proc heavy, you had stuff like 50% ctc arrow on striking + sots procs + path of flames etc, stuff flying everywhere. But most of these procs were screen clutter rather than something effective. There was an axe with 100% ctc level 7 bloodstar on striking. Well, it was a lot of bloodstars with a skill like wyrd or sth, but they were doing fuck all damage (low skill level, no spell damage), all you had is sprite limit on screen and no damage. It would be much better if it was 10% ctc level 60 bloodstar or whatever.

Sigma is much more advanced than Laz's median ever was anyway.

Trap sin nerf was kinda bad, as cata trap was apparently REQUIRED to achieve any decent farming speed with this spec. If you could easily farm stuff without utilizing this cd it would be okay, you wanted to be a boss battle skill so you haven't expected people to use it to clear trash mob packs. But trap damage is severely lacking without this skill and prospects of improving your raw trap damage are slim.

What are your objectives in this game anyway?
It's either to build an ultimate character than can defeat everything including shit like samaeal, or become rich through farming and buying those obnoxious charms and trophies on trade, so you don't have to bother with those fights. The former usually requires being rich anyway (for BIS gear) so you need a solid farmer. Players are fooled into this trap spec as this is fresh, it's not like throw barb tree which hasn't seen changes since 2012. And later in the game they are met with a brick wall of being unable to kill packs without cata trap, they wait 20s between trash packs. This sucks.