Astrogha

[ParticuLarry]

So, it seems like all of the angst towards Astroga has to do with multihutting skills, is this correct? I wonder if teleport when struck can be tweaked for multihitting skills? All in all, and interesting debate you two are having.

At least when it comes to me, yes I can't speak for the other people.

But not only astrogah has that problem. Baal, Creature of the Flame, Island of Skartara, Quov Tsin and a couple of other bosses/boss fights have the teleport on struck mechanic from what I've seen so far.

If teleport on struck could be tweaked for multihitting skills only, that change alone would have a huge impact on the status of the game! Nice thinking of you. I do believe it's hard to realize though, since you would have to add an "if... then... else..." part at the right part of the code. In the worst case you might have to divide the skills into 2 (or more) categories and set the % chance depending on what group that skill belongs to. I'm merely an amateur when it comes to programming, so I really don't know if this is possible, even more so as Blizzard hasn't released the source code of Diablo 2 and such changes would be rather difficult.

And of course, you're welcome to join in on the debate

[hugh4nthide]

But not only astrogah has that problem. Baal, Creature of the Flame, Island of Skartara, Quov Tsin and a couple of other bosses/boss fights have the teleport on struck mechanic from what I've seen so far.

So that's why abyss sucks against some bosses, and others it just melts, finally figured it out.

I don't think, that every skill should be good against every kind of monster or Boss. I find it fun and challenging, if I have to tweak gear/skills against bosses. This is one of many things, Poe does good, you have a huge amount of possibilities to modify your skills, if you have orbs.
This is one argument against valthek, as you have to use a special set of gear + skill against him. He is like a (dull) skill check for every player. But also an argument for him, honestly. If you can do him, you have matured in a sense, phrasing.
I think it would be fun to have a low level fight, Like level 5 or 20 against valthek, so you have to overcome this challenge early on, and don't waste to much time doing it.

[HeaT_]

It doesn't actually matter whether you think it's fine the way it is because teleport on being struck is something that throws the balance out of the window. And that can never be fine.

you speak as if what you are saying is objectively true, but to me these are opinions.

-HeaT

[ParticuLarry]

But not only astrogah has that problem. Baal, Creature of the Flame, Island of Skartara, Quov Tsin and a couple of other bosses/boss fights have the teleport on struck mechanic from what I've seen so far.

So that's why abyss sucks against some bosses, and others it just melts, finally figured it out.

I don't think, that every skill should be good against every kind of monster or Boss. I find it fun and challenging, if I have to tweak gear/skills against bosses. This is one of many things, Poe does good, you have a huge amount of possibilities to modify your skills, if you have orbs.
This is one argument against valthek, as you have to use a special set of gear + skill against him. He is like a (dull) skill check for every player. But also an argument for him, honestly. If you can do him, you have matured in a sense, phrasing.
I think it would be fun to have a low level fight, Like level 5 or 20 against valthek, so you have to overcome this challenge early on, and don't waste to much time doing it.

Tbh, I think the same. I, too think that not every skill should be good against every monster/boss. That's however usually the case when it comes to builds without multihitting abilities. For example poison sorceress seems to have a pretty easy time against most bosses. Hit them once or twice and they're dead. There's no denying that those single-hit abilities have simply more potential because of the teleport on struck.

Anyway, I don't think it would be smart to have a low level fight. I think people would probably either look at this challenge as necessary for progression, which would in turn make people quit the game before they even got to the early ubers, because they don't want to put up with a skill check this early on in the game, or just do it with high-level characters and cheese the hell out of it. That's why I think Val'thek is in a pretty good spot progression-wise. But that's just my opinion.

It doesn't actually matter whether you think it's fine the way it is because teleport on being struck is something that throws the balance out of the window. And that can never be fine.

you speak as if what you are saying is objectively true, but to me these are opinions.

-HeaT

So you're trying to say that the fact that teleport on struck, which has a fixed %activation chance on every single hit, is activated a lot more often when the bosses are hit a lot more often, which in turn makes multihit abilities gradually worse the more often the ability hits, is merely an opinion?

Do you even math?

What you are trying to achieve by denying undeniable facts? That's an honest question. I don't understand the logic behind calling anything you don't want to admit merely an opinion when it's not. This is like me saying "the sky is blue." and you're responding with "That's just your opinion. The sky is green". You're acting like it's hurting your pride if you were to admit that you have been in the wrong once. But let me tell you something. It's not shameful to be in the wrong. It's only shameful to not admit you were wrong. Because if every human would have that kind of behaviour of denying the worth of facts, we would still live in caves. Logic is what seperates us from animals. Logic is what allows us to even have this discussion. So let me ask again. What are you trying to achieve by denying undeniable facts?

And sorry, I'm probably a lot more emotional about this than I should be. But there's a reason for that. That attitude of calling facts merely opinions when they are not, that's undermining 10.000 years of human history. That's undermining the very existence of smartphones, TV's, freezers, even something as basic as soap and every little other thing you can't live without... It's even undermining your very own existence. And shitting on literally all of humankinds achievements is just... it's so wrong, so self-destructive, so stupid I would have to invent a new word to define just how wrong/self-destructive/stupid this is.

[Siosilvar]

So you're trying to say that the fact that teleport on struck, which has a fixed %activation chance on every single hit, is activated a lot more often when the bosses are hit a lot more often, which in turn makes multihit abilities gradually worse the more often the ability hits, is merely an opinion?

They're clearly saying that "teleport on being struck is something that throws the balance out of the window" is an opinion. Obviously multi-hitting skills have a hard time with teleport when struck bosses, but whether or not that means the balance is bad is an opinion.

Personally, I think it's only really a problem with QT, because his chance to teleport is so ridiculously high that even my stormcall zon can only get ~6 blasts off before he starts jumping around. Astrogha teleports right about the time you wanted to back off to reset statues anyway so I'm not conerned there.

I do think that there being only a single % chance to teleport makes balancing the game more difficult, and you can see that in how many skills get reworked to hit less, but that's not my job as a player so meh. And back in Ultimative/2017 days, the devs said that they don't think it's a big problem if not every build can do all the content as long as every class can. I'd prefer to stick to one build but with belladonnas and the offline tools it's not a huge deal. (And since Sigma, they've definitely been making more of the ubers doable on more classes, giving out single-target abilities to stormcall zon and neutraldin, reworking frostclaw, reducing hits of balefire, etc.)

[ParticuLarry]

So you're trying to say that the fact that teleport on struck, which has a fixed %activation chance on every single hit, is activated a lot more often when the bosses are hit a lot more often, which in turn makes multihit abilities gradually worse the more often the ability hits, is merely an opinion?

They're clearly saying that "teleport on being struck is something that throws the balance out of the window" is an opinion. Obviously multi-hitting skills have a hard time with teleport when struck bosses, but whether or not that means the balance is bad is an opinion.

Alright look we can make this really simple. Give me 1 example, 1 argument or 1 proof that teleport on struck is not affecting balance.

This will be very hard to do, since even the team has already changed things like frostclaw totem, balefire and so on in order to improve balance.

If this can be disproven with a counterargument, I'll shut up and agree that this is indeed only an opinion of mine and not a fact.

However if this can't be disproven with a counterargument, then it is indeed a fact. In the very worst case scenario it is a theory. But calling this an opinion is just false as long as no counter argument can be given. And so far no counterargument has been given.

Personally, I think it's only really a problem with QT, because his chance to teleport is so ridiculously high that even my stormcall zon can only get ~6 blasts off before he starts jumping around. Astrogha teleports right about the time you wanted to back off to reset statues anyway so I'm not conerned there.

I do think that there being only a single % chance to teleport makes balancing the game more difficult, and you can see that in how many skills get reworked to hit less, but that's not my job as a player so meh. And back in Ultimative/2017 days, the devs said that they don't think it's a big problem if not every build can do all the content as long as every class can. I'd prefer to stick to one build but with belladonnas and the offline tools it's not a huge deal. (And since Sigma, they've definitely been making more of the ubers doable on more classes, giving out single-target abilities to stormcall zon and neutraldin, reworking frostclaw, reducing hits of balefire, etc.)

Imho, QT has 2 problems, 1 the teleport on struck and 2 the map layout. Since it can be very difficult to not die when he gets stuck in one of the corners where the portals are. That's not really a difficulty though, since there's no lockdown.

And the question remains whether the opinion has changed since 2017 or not. It does look that way to me, since oskills have been rebalanced, relics have been introduced to further enhance new build possibilities and to complement existing builds, and on top of that patreon supporters can vote each patch which build the team shall rework.

It all looks like this is outdated info and that the team wants to bring builds closer to each other when it comes to viability and balance. That can be a wrong interpretation of mine though.

[Siosilvar]

That's not how facts or proof or theories work. It's literally *impossible* to provide proof of a negative. But, since you asked...

The dev team has clearly been making it easier to play more of the game on more builds without respecs. Immunities are gone, skills and bosses have been reworked, new skills added. That's not a balance issue, that's a design philosophy issue. "Some builds struggle in some content" can still be balanced if they're damn good at other things (see poison throw barbarian, which was nerfed back into balance because it was too good at the content it can be used in). I'll give you that, if their new design philosophy is that every build can do everything, that teleport-when-struck is working against that goal. But "viability and balance" doesn't mean "everything can do everything just as easily as any other build", it means "there's good reasons to pick anything".

And so I think it's fine for some mechanics to be bad in some ubers. Multihitting skills are bad against QT, Xaxaz, Astrogha, and Uldy. Snake Bite can't be used to farm so you need some kind of backup attack. Hailstorm is garbage against most of the 120+ bosses because they don't sit still or namelock the player. None of these are problems, just differences. And every single class has options to do all of the content, even if you have to respec out of melee sorc into poison sorc to make your life easy. Though even at a build level, melee sorc has Spiral Dance and Charged Strike available.

[ParticuLarry]

That's not how facts or proof or theories work. It's literally *impossible* to provide proof of a negative. But, since you asked...

Alright, I can see where I'm at fault. In that case, why don't we just go with the definitions of fact and opinion? I just searched on Duckduckgo and these are the first things that appeared:

► Show Spoiler

The first definition falls flat, because I gave positive knowledge of it.
I'm also neither an expert nor have I any special knowledge. It's simply things I deduced from existing circumstances.
Since I wasn't talking about a merit either, I honestly don't know how much of that definition can be applied to my statement.

► Show Spoiler

It's definitely something I demonstrated to exist. And it is based on real occurences. So it seems very likely that what I said is indeed a fact and not an opinion.

The dev team has clearly been making it easier to play more of the game on more builds without respecs. Immunities are gone, skills and bosses have been reworked, new skills added. That's not a balance issue, that's a design philosophy issue. "Some builds struggle in some content" can still be balanced if they're damn good at other things (see poison throw barbarian, which was nerfed back into balance because it was too good at the content it can be used in). I'll give you that, if their new design philosophy is that every build can do everything, that teleport-when-struck is working against that goal. But "viability and balance" doesn't mean "everything can do everything just as easily as any other build", it means "there's good reasons to pick anything".

I agree very much with this. This also wasn't about "everything can do everything just as easily as any other build." As stated for example in the Val'thek discussion in this thread, I'm very well for character differences and character identity for example. This leads of course to not every build being able to do everything just as easily as any other build, because the differences are way too hard to put in the right position. And I'm totally fine with that. Especially when it comes to the mechanics of the skills, this is completely fine with me.

What I'm really not fine with is what I said in my mega post, where I took Balefirezon at nightmare Baal as an example. When about 90% of the damage per cast can simply be avoided at any given moment because you have only a 1 in 25 chance for the full damage of a single cast to actually hit the enemy, then that is of course a broken imbalance.

So this isn't about a +-20% killing time or damage output. It is about most of the damage that's supposed to hit the enemy not actually hitting the enemy, which leads to 1) damage per mana point ratio sinking to abyssmal values 2) killing time excessively increasing and 3) Difficulty increasing as the boss constantly repositions itself, which in itself can also be a big factor.

And so I think it's fine for some mechanics to be bad in some ubers. Multihitting skills are bad against QT, Xaxaz, Astrogha, and Uldy. Snake Bite can't be used to farm so you need some kind of backup attack. Hailstorm is garbage against most of the 120+ bosses because they don't sit still or namelock the player. None of these are problems, just differences. And every single class has options to do all of the content, even if you have to respec out of melee sorc into poison sorc to make your life easy. Though even at a build level, melee sorc has Spiral Dance and Charged Strike available.

There are couple of other boss fights where multihitting abilities are bad because of the teleport on struck mechanic. And yes, I agree that neither snake bite nor Hailstorm are problematic. Hailstorm is an oskill after all. It's there to complement your build. Since it's not your main attack, that's completely fine. Throw barb has of course other skills to use, which are good even if you don't spend 20+ points in a single skill, so a significant portion of your skillpoints, which is why snakebite is fine, too.

Teleport on struck however is a problem. There are a couple of multihitting abilities that get completely countered and take away most of their damage.
Balefire is one of them. Wychwind is another one of them, which not only takes time to build up, but then doesn't even reward you for waiting and kiting the boss that long because the boss just teleports away after 3 hits. Frostclaw totem used to be on the same level, but was changed swiftly because they couldn't balance it otherwise.

As for me, I think it's sad to see these abilities go. I do very much enjoy wychwind as an ability for example. Especially paired with chance to cast on striking items. Seeing arrows come out of your character like a machine gun because mephisto is just tanking all of the wychwind hits is fun. That's also something that I read a couple of months ago. In a thread that asked about what the builds from earlier versions you had the most fun with a lot people replied: procc chains. But at some point it's just not viable anymore and you're forced to switch from your fun build to a build you enjoy less. This is not about build X just being easier. It's about the build you want to play not being viable at all at some point because you hit a brick wall in progression.

[Boban]

I don't know Larry, first you say that you are ok with the fact that some skills are not good in some situations, then you are not because you couldn't kill Baal with Balefire. Like, make up your mind man.

I get it, your point is that those skills are not just less useful but rather utter useless there. But honestly, what is wrong with that? I'm sure balefire build excels somewhere else. And you could always use magic missles or some oskill, I'm sure there were options that didn't require total overhaul of your build and equipment. I played hammerzon last patch, and could do shit to Creature of Flame until I was heavily overleveled. Xazax? Forget it, maybe once in 100 tries. Literally anything that runs away? What a pain. But it is great build anyways, for I could farm Duncraig, Vizjun, Fauzt or Bremmtown in T4 MF-oriented gear while beating the meat with my other hand.

Besides, what is wrong in tweaking your build a bit in order to do some content? You can always back off to your desired playstyle later. Have you never respecced to full vita because you wanted to do Nymyr's Light?

[Istaryu]

This thread is still going? Jesus...