Σ 2.1 Bugs&Feedback

niceice wrote:It's seem iike the shieldmaiden passive on javazon isn't working

It requires an Amazon class shield. You'll get a little white whirly overlay around your char when it triggers. There is not a buff icon for it.

if ya'll could make mana tide totem castable in town and not require a corpse that would be lovely

one character cannot enter the game，the others are OK. why???? In the same account.

Semigloss wrote:
niceice wrote:It's seem iike the shieldmaiden passive on javazon isn't working

It requires an Amazon class shield. You'll get a little white whirly overlay around your char when it triggers. There is not a buff icon for it.

My mistake. I did some tests and realize it works on unique athulua's hand, but doesn't on phoenix shield based runeword

These talon hold reanimates still solid/unwwalkable thru for some time after being reanimated (same for Walker reanimate)..

Upd: Reaper not carrying parasite targets count (having only 4-5 targets just like 0-1 point parasite). Not sure is it bug or intended.... but currently this "upgrade" is actually downgrade... huge disappointment.

Random feedback and suggestions thus far - S29

- The corruption system addition is great but the execution is flawed. Assuming Path of Exile is where it comes from, the process of obtaining goods (Vaal Orbs) to corrupt is rather easy - it's hitting the modifiers and the risk/reward that's difficult. On Median, with crystals coming out of boxes as target loot alongside Tenets as zone-exclusives (SSUs, orbs, etc. are all unreliable to target-farm), corruptions are kind of end-game. On the contrary, people corrupt shit as a YOLO or when they are about to quit in PoE, and it's easy to do so. Personally, I've hit most of my seasonal milestones and corruptions were cool at the start, but as more data releases, it's clear that the risk/reward as well as the time investment is just simply not worth it at current.

I've corrupted and bricked a lot of good items, with the successful corrupts mostly being a completely useless stat. This is expected, corruptions should be random. But it's currently placed like it's an endgame goal and I don't agree. The risk/reward ratio along with time-efficiency is simply too terrible and random for it to be any sort of desirable end-game goal. Either make corruptions more accessible (less arcane crystals, more crystal availability to enable more attempts on shitty SU's that can potentially become great), or increase the reward ratio (less brick/nothing percentages? More/better options?)

- Sigil of Tul Dulra also has a terrible ratio. The truth of the matter is, as more things like Scosglen and chase(?) items like sigil of tul dulra get introduced, it adds playtime and hopefully enjoyable replayability. That's how you extend ladders, with things like Deimoss/labs. But again, the bridge between content is too long. On the Sigil for example, there are all these tedious requirements about specific SU's and crystals and signets and all of this is the developers telling you, go play the game. But people don't want to be forced to play the game in some linear progression. This is not Final Fantasy 14 Main Story Questline. I feel that Median will continue to follow a similar-yet-different path to PoE and that's mostly a good thing, but I am sure I'm not the only one down with the whole forced linear progression thing. Regarding this point and the new charm (Sigil), I look at the charm and wonder why I would feel motivated to do all this work for this underwhelming charm. It's cool that it's customizable but for example, 2% max res to a single target element - who actually cares about this? Most people who push resist-demanding content need rainbow and 90% of max-res providing items in game are rainbow. Why's the hardest-to-obtain charm feel significantly weaker? Sure it's one of several stats but it doesn't motivate the investment.

I don't agree with this type of reward ratio, it's poorly done. It basically feels useless to be honest, and not something that excites me to grind for. The other lines are somewhat underwhelming too, and the idea seems to be that this 20-30% in every line comes together to create 150% of a regular charm or something like that and that's just wrong in my opinion. But we'll let the player-base speak. Maybe I'm the only one that thinks a charm that's 10x more demanding on effort/time should have a bit better rewards than a Sleep and ghost trance that's farmable in minutes. This jewel, for all the tedious and targeted work it requires, should be much closer to the power of Deimoss' charm than it is to a trophied sleep, and right now in my opinion it's the latter.

- On the topic of forced linear progression - I'm still not a fan of the current usage of "Rifts" (not labs, I mean fauzt/dunc/etc.). Diablo 2 Resurrected just announced they are going to add new alvl 85 zones. That's new endgame zones, extending the list of farmable zones to like 6. What do people on Median farm after 120? Duncraig. What do people farm after 125/130? Fauzt. 135? Scosglen. Endgame push content? Labs. Honestly every season I come back and I get to this point, I ask myself why am I stuck here. Progression should feel like you're constantly getting stronger, of course with some diminishing returns (can't exponentially grow forever). But the gates on this game are still awkward to me. When D2R hits with the new patch, people will cram the new alvl85 zones but more importantly, people will have the option to go back to baal runs or tunnel/pit runs or w.e. The truth on Median is that you might think that or feel that way, but it's not true. Nobody visits rifts before Duncraig after ~130 outside of charm purposes because they don't have potential to drop the best items. So what are the equivalents of alvl 85 on Median? Realistically in my head, the only two maps are Fauzt and now, Scosglen. Duncraig is good but alvl 85 from Diablo can drop SSSU equivalents or higher frequency of relics or smth like that, that's how I see it. I feel like I'm gated to basically doing Fauzt all my life because that's likely my best chance at the best items available in the game - Relics, UMOs, SSSU's - chase items. It gets boring really quick in my opinion, and people who play more than 2-3 weeks into a season are probably the most hardcore or most casual. I feel like even turning vizjun to alvl 130 is a good choice and I know I'm not alone in the feelings of this forced linear progression being wrong. It's an ARPG, let the people write their own story and choose where they want to maximize their gains. Don't just drop the ceiling, raise the floor.

- On chase/goal items - Relics, UMOs, SSSU's - so for SSSU's, they are rare and they should remain that way, I get that. But this season after however much farming, I've found about 4 UMOs and 2 Relics. Relics are often garbage and that's to be expected, sometimes their alternate statline will salvage that. UMO's are powerful and very end-game. My only complaints for these items are that they are simply too random. There's no way to target farm it other than "go higher alvl and just kill stuff lol". If it were some Tyraels' or Azurewrath levels of impact, I mean sure, people aren't really meant to have these items but for UMOs/Relics, they're common enough to be relied upon by the player-base. I don't think the game introduced like what, 300 Relics when it first came out? To have the server play with 300 by the end of the season. A lot of relics also remain completely useless unless you get multiples of them, or get very specific gear to make them powerful. So my only complaint here is that they still feel too uncommon. You cannot target farm them as no areas have any bias for them and as I understand, UMOs/Relics are not affected by Magic find. So the only conversion you get to these items is entirely by playtime/trading, and since you cannot target the ones you want in any way at all, I believe these items should become more accessible. I don't plan to farm Fauzt for another week to try finding another 2 relics that would give me fortress or bloodstar or some shit (my 2 this season).

- The bridge between farming Fauzt and creating a boss-killer build for Samael/Uldy or others was the former endgame and it had its' limits, but there was more freedom and options available. You don't use a farming spec to kill Sam. But Scosglen as a new map, with the addition of Druids it is now this farm/boss hybrid map and while it's wonderful, what's the bridge between the prior content (Fauzt)? Max resists. Labs? Max resists. Feels kind of bland that my solution to going from Fauzt to Scosglen is pulling out a couple jewels to add lvl18 pgems. The addition of Druids add complexity and it's great, but with this now the bridge is even bigger and most people will choose to simply stay in Fauzt. Or they will challenge Scosglen, corrupt a couple items, realize that the 1-2% actual chance of getting something good is not worth it, don't want to go back to farm 20 AC's to open more chests that give you nothing or farm all day for 1 or 2 enchanted runes above Phul that MIGHT give you something from a chest but turns out to be 2 dogshit SU's... See where I'm going with this? It's an extremely tedious cycle that doesn't have to be so tedious. It's forced gameplay and I don't enjoy being roped into content, I'd rather be motivated myself. Rewards motivate me. Risks demotivate me. I hope there can be a better balance overall.

- I'm playing mana sorc this season. The Arcane ultimate, the 10sec uptime 30sec cd buff which basically converts the damage blocked by Mana Shield to Absorb for 10 seconds is completely worthless and I have a major problem with that. It doesn't change Arcane Sorc at all. Cold sorc witchblood buff, Havoc for Fire, superposition for lightning clearly meant for farming. Then Arcane gives, 20% energy/mana buff is about a total of maybe ~4-6% increase to your damage for 10 seconds considering it's an additive to likely over 300%+ combined energy/mana bonuses on your gear already. My sorc naturally has 150% energy and 230% mana, it's not even optimized to have best sockets or MO's. From 32k idle mana she goes 34k. 1/16th % increase in damage for 10 seconds. Honestly, it's so insignificant that I forget to use it most of the time. Swap spells and animation lock yourself to 20+ frames. On a boss that takes 3 minutes to kill, with perfect usage of 6-8 (with set) times, this spell will have helped me do ~2-3% more damage. This is the Arcane tree ultimate.

So since the offense is underwhelming what's the defense? Mana shield damage block becomes absorb and less mana drained on hit. So basically for the 1/3 perfect uptime of this spell, your mana shield is supposed to heal you for most of the damage taken right? Well I have no proof I can showcase here, but all I can say is something doesn't feel right. I've tested with/without mana shield and with/without arcane ultimate vs scosglen mobs (spriggan) and the rate in which I die feels the exact same. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe this ultimate does heal me for whatever 95% of the 25% damage Mana Shield reduces, but with my regen and resists there should be a clear difference in my death time and it simply doesn't show. The 80% less drained from Mana Shield definitely works though, that is very clear as I basically don't lose any mana while taking with the buff.

- My last point about Mana/Arcane Sorc which I chalk up to as oversight due to there being many things, is Arcane Sorc's overall interaction with Mana Shield. What's Arcane's best damage. Without a doubt it's Immersion for single target and Mana Sweep for AoE. Arcane Torrent just sucks, scaling on this spell is bad and it's a single hit. Magic conversion isn't good either for endgame as you can't pierce with Chronofield. Mana Sweep is much better, which makes the runeword Knave or SSU Valthek's Command pretty much a necessity to get the most value of this build. But the interaction of the Arcane ultimate as well as Mana Shield seems very focused on maintaining high mana, while your best single-target dps and technically best AoE clear (your best damage spells really) both center around having low/no mana. Again, this shit just doesn't make sense. As a Mana Sorc, my innate spell being Mana Shield, should be even more powerful than that of other specs but as I play, all I find myself is recasting Mana Shield every ~30 seconds because I took hits that depleted my mana to 0. It's just really sad. Again, I put this one on oversight as not every build can be tested or whatever but even with the Arcane ultimate, I feel like I have no real innate spell. Sad. There's a lot of cool potentials that could work for a fix - involving Arcane Torrent, the Ultimate, Mana Shield and Immersion. I'd lean towards the Ultimate and Mana Shield interaction/reworks first, though Arcane Torrent buffs would be nice. Immersion is powerful as it is, just doesn't feel right with the innate skill and ultimate all that much.

That's the gist of my S29 thoughts thus far. Despite the complaints I thoroughly enjoyed this season thus far and the frequency of fixes/updates as we move along in this first week. With better execution on the cool things about Scosglen among other things listed above I think there's a lot to look forward to on MXL. The playerbase of this season is noticeably less than every season I've played thus far, and unfortunately competition (D2R, PoE, D4, FF14 exp, etc. Lost Ark soon) doesn't get any less. But with consistent updates and more focus on the appropriate opportunity cost and reward ratios for players, the game will continue to thrive in my opinion, possibly even grow.

Looking to brick some more items via corruptions before I bounce. Didnt plan to write an essay again but it happened. No TLDR

Thanks for your perusal.

Edit: I'd like to add that the gold sink for the new jewels is quite nice though maybe a bit too expensive. Very often I find myself crafting 2-3 good jewels for my build after going through ~3.5m gold. Either way, nice change overall. They should all cost more closer to each other (instead of 5k-50k range, maybe like 10k-30k range) But the thing that needs the most sink (near-endless) in my opinion are still Signets of Learning. This is basically the most common drop in Median endgame that too-quickly falls out of purpose. With the new Legion dungeon and as SU's quickly become more useless, the sig count keeps going up while uses for it remain the same. I'd feel much better with some of the content that requires ACs be replaced by things like Large signets of learning or Greater even. Perhaps a way to cube and gamble sigs into items. Options are endless, like the number of sigs in inventory after an hour of dunc/fauzt.

inori92 wrote:Random feedback and suggestions thus far - S29

- The corruption system addition is great but the execution is flawed. Assuming Path of Exile is where it comes from, the process of obtaining goods (Vaal Orbs) to corrupt is rather easy - it's hitting the modifiers and the risk/reward that's difficult. On Median, with crystals coming out of boxes as target loot alongside Tenets as zone-exclusives (SSUs, orbs, etc. are all unreliable to target-farm), corruptions are kind of end-game. On the contrary, people corrupt shit as a YOLO or when they are about to quit in PoE, and it's easy to do so. Personally, I've hit most of my seasonal milestones and corruptions were cool at the start, but as more data releases, it's clear that the risk/reward as well as the time investment is just simply not worth it at current.

I've corrupted and bricked a lot of good items, with the successful corrupts mostly being a completely useless stat. This is expected, corruptions should be random. But it's currently placed like it's an endgame goal and I don't agree. The risk/reward ratio along with time-efficiency is simply too terrible and random for it to be any sort of desirable end-game goal. Either make corruptions more accessible (less arcane crystals, more crystal availability to enable more attempts on shitty SU's that can potentially become great), or increase the reward ratio (less brick/nothing percentages? More/better options?)

- Sigil of Tul Dulra also has a terrible ratio. The truth of the matter is, as more things like Scosglen and chase(?) items like sigil of tul dulra get introduced, it adds playtime and hopefully enjoyable replayability. That's how you extend ladders, with things like Deimoss/labs. But again, the bridge between content is too long. On the Sigil for example, there are all these tedious requirements about specific SU's and crystals and signets and all of this is the developers telling you, go play the game. But people don't want to be forced to play the game in some linear progression. This is not Final Fantasy 14 Main Story Questline. I feel that Median will continue to follow a similar-yet-different path to PoE and that's mostly a good thing, but I am sure I'm not the only one down with the whole forced linear progression thing. Regarding this point and the new charm (Sigil), I look at the charm and wonder why I would feel motivated to do all this work for this underwhelming charm. It's cool that it's customizable but for example, 2% max res to a single target element - who actually cares about this? Most people who push resist-demanding content need rainbow and 90% of max-res providing items in game are rainbow. Why's the hardest-to-obtain charm feel significantly weaker? Sure it's one of several stats but it doesn't motivate the investment.

I don't agree with this type of reward ratio, it's poorly done. It basically feels useless to be honest, and not something that excites me to grind for. The other lines are somewhat underwhelming too, and the idea seems to be that this 20-30% in every line comes together to create 150% of a regular charm or something like that and that's just wrong in my opinion. But we'll let the player-base speak. Maybe I'm the only one that thinks a charm that's 10x more demanding on effort/time should have a bit better rewards than a Sleep and ghost trance that's farmable in minutes. This jewel, for all the tedious and targeted work it requires, should be much closer to the power of Deimoss' charm than it is to a trophied sleep, and right now in my opinion it's the latter.

- On the topic of forced linear progression - I'm still not a fan of the current usage of "Rifts" (not labs, I mean fauzt/dunc/etc.). Diablo 2 Resurrected just announced they are going to add new alvl 85 zones. That's new endgame zones, extending the list of farmable zones to like 6. What do people on Median farm after 120? Duncraig. What do people farm after 125/130? Fauzt. 135? Scosglen. Endgame push content? Labs. Honestly every season I come back and I get to this point, I ask myself why am I stuck here. Progression should feel like you're constantly getting stronger, of course with some diminishing returns (can't exponentially grow forever). But the gates on this game are still awkward to me. When D2R hits with the new patch, people will cram the new alvl85 zones but more importantly, people will have the option to go back to baal runs or tunnel/pit runs or w.e. The truth on Median is that you might think that or feel that way, but it's not true. Nobody visits rifts before Duncraig after ~130 outside of charm purposes because they don't have potential to drop the best items. So what are the equivalents of alvl 85 on Median? Realistically in my head, the only two maps are Fauzt and now, Scosglen. Duncraig is good but alvl 85 from Diablo can drop SSSU equivalents or higher frequency of relics or smth like that, that's how I see it. I feel like I'm gated to basically doing Fauzt all my life because that's likely my best chance at the best items available in the game - Relics, UMOs, SSSU's - chase items. It gets boring really quick in my opinion, and people who play more than 2-3 weeks into a season are probably the most hardcore or most casual. I feel like even turning vizjun to alvl 130 is a good choice and I know I'm not alone in the feelings of this forced linear progression being wrong. It's an ARPG, let the people write their own story and choose where they want to maximize their gains. Don't just drop the ceiling, raise the floor.

- On chase/goal items - Relics, UMOs, SSSU's - so for SSSU's, they are rare and they should remain that way, I get that. But this season after however much farming, I've found about 4 UMOs and 2 Relics. Relics are often garbage and that's to be expected, sometimes their alternate statline will salvage that. UMO's are powerful and very end-game. My only complaints for these items are that they are simply too random. There's no way to target farm it other than "go higher alvl and just kill stuff lol". If it were some Tyraels' or Azurewrath levels of impact, I mean sure, people aren't really meant to have these items but for UMOs/Relics, they're common enough to be relied upon by the player-base. I don't think the game introduced like what, 300 Relics when it first came out? To have the server play with 300 by the end of the season. A lot of relics also remain completely useless unless you get multiples of them, or get very specific gear to make them powerful. So my only complaint here is that they still feel too uncommon. You cannot target farm them as no areas have any bias for them and as I understand, UMOs/Relics are not affected by Magic find. So the only conversion you get to these items is entirely by playtime/trading, and since you cannot target the ones you want in any way at all, I believe these items should become more accessible. I don't plan to farm Fauzt for another week to try finding another 2 relics that would give me fortress or bloodstar or some shit (my 2 this season).

- The bridge between farming Fauzt and creating a boss-killer build for Samael/Uldy or others was the former endgame and it had its' limits, but there was more freedom and options available. You don't use a farming spec to kill Sam. But Scosglen as a new map, with the addition of Druids it is now this farm/boss hybrid map and while it's wonderful, what's the bridge between the prior content (Fauzt)? Max resists. Labs? Max resists. Feels kind of bland that my solution to going from Fauzt to Scosglen is pulling out a couple jewels to add lvl18 pgems. The addition of Druids add complexity and it's great, but with this now the bridge is even bigger and most people will choose to simply stay in Fauzt. Or they will challenge Scosglen, corrupt a couple items, realize that the 1-2% actual chance of getting something good is not worth it, don't want to go back to farm 20 AC's to open more chests that give you nothing or farm all day for 1 or 2 enchanted runes above Phul that MIGHT give you something from a chest but turns out to be 2 dogshit SU's... See where I'm going with this? It's an extremely tedious cycle that doesn't have to be so tedious. It's forced gameplay and I don't enjoy being roped into content, I'd rather be motivated myself. Rewards motivate me. Risks demotivate me. I hope there can be a better balance overall.

- I'm playing mana sorc this season. The Arcane ultimate, the 10sec uptime 30sec cd buff which basically converts the damage blocked by Mana Shield to Absorb for 10 seconds is completely worthless and I have a major problem with that. It doesn't change Arcane Sorc at all. Cold sorc witchblood buff, Havoc for Fire, superposition for lightning clearly meant for farming. Then Arcane gives, 20% energy/mana buff is about a total of maybe ~4-6% increase to your damage for 10 seconds considering it's an additive to likely over 300%+ combined energy/mana bonuses on your gear already. My sorc naturally has 150% energy and 230% mana, it's not even optimized to have best sockets or MO's. From 32k idle mana she goes 34k. 1/16th % increase in damage for 10 seconds. Honestly, it's so insignificant that I forget to use it most of the time. Swap spells and animation lock yourself to 20+ frames. On a boss that takes 3 minutes to kill, with perfect usage of 6-8 (with set) times, this spell will have helped me do ~2-3% more damage. This is the Arcane tree ultimate.

So since the offense is underwhelming what's the defense? Mana shield damage block becomes absorb and less mana drained on hit. So basically for the 1/3 perfect uptime of this spell, your mana shield is supposed to heal you for most of the damage taken right? Well I have no proof I can showcase here, but all I can say is something doesn't feel right. I've tested with/without mana shield and with/without arcane ultimate vs scosglen mobs (spriggan) and the rate in which I die feels the exact same. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe this ultimate does heal me for whatever 95% of the 25% damage Mana Shield reduces, but with my regen and resists there should be a clear difference in my death time and it simply doesn't show. The 80% less drained from Mana Shield definitely works though, that is very clear as I basically don't lose any mana while taking with the buff.

- My last point about Mana/Arcane Sorc which I chalk up to as oversight due to there being many things, is Arcane Sorc's overall interaction with Mana Shield. What's Arcane's best damage. Without a doubt it's Immersion for single target and Mana Sweep for AoE. Arcane Torrent just sucks, scaling on this spell is bad and it's a single hit. Magic conversion isn't good either for endgame as you can't pierce with Chronofield. Mana Sweep is much better, which makes the runeword Knave or SSU Valthek's Command pretty much a necessity to get the most value of this build. But the interaction of the Arcane ultimate as well as Mana Shield seems very focused on maintaining high mana, while your best single-target dps and technically best AoE clear (your best damage spells really) both center around having low/no mana. Again, this shit just doesn't make sense. As a Mana Sorc, my innate spell being Mana Shield, should be even more powerful than that of other specs but as I play, all I find myself is recasting Mana Shield every ~30 seconds because I took hits that depleted my mana to 0. It's just really sad. Again, I put this one on oversight as not every build can be tested or whatever but even with the Arcane ultimate, I feel like I have no real innate spell. Sad. There's a lot of cool potentials that could work for a fix - involving Arcane Torrent, the Ultimate, Mana Shield and Immersion. I'd lean towards the Ultimate and Mana Shield interaction/reworks first, though Arcane Torrent buffs would be nice. Immersion is powerful as it is, just doesn't feel right with the innate skill and ultimate all that much.

That's the gist of my S29 thoughts thus far. Despite the complaints I thoroughly enjoyed this season thus far and the frequency of fixes/updates as we move along in this first week. With better execution on the cool things about Scosglen among other things listed above I think there's a lot to look forward to on MXL. The playerbase of this season is noticeably less than every season I've played thus far, and unfortunately competition (D2R, PoE, D4, FF14 exp, etc. Lost Ark soon) doesn't get any less. But with consistent updates and more focus on the appropriate opportunity cost and reward ratios for players, the game will continue to thrive in my opinion, possibly even grow.

Looking to brick some more items via corruptions before I bounce. Didnt plan to write an essay again but it happened. No TLDR

Thanks for your perusal.

Edit: I'd like to add that the gold sink for the new jewels is quite nice though maybe a bit too expensive. Very often I find myself crafting 2-3 good jewels for my build after going through ~3.5m gold. Either way, nice change overall. They should all cost more closer to each other (instead of 5k-50k range, maybe like 10k-30k range) But the thing that needs the most sink (near-endless) in my opinion are still Signets of Learning. This is basically the most common drop in Median endgame that too-quickly falls out of purpose. With the new Legion dungeon and as SU's quickly become more useless, the sig count keeps going up while uses for it remain the same. I'd feel much better with some of the content that requires ACs be replaced by things like Large signets of learning or Greater even. Perhaps a way to cube and gamble sigs into items. Options are endless, like the number of sigs in inventory after an hour of dunc/fauzt.

this literally sums up my experience as well.

Just a tiny bug I found; Chain/Ring Mail can't be used to make an Iron Golem.

inori92 wrote:re mana shield

Well I have no proof I can showcase here, but all I can say is something doesn't feel right.

Arcane Fury makes you take more damage, it lowers your mana shield reduction from 25% to 0.95 x 25% = 23.75%.

The idea is to help maintain mana shield, especially when low on mana (eg. immersion). The duration is still awful tho and doesn't entice taking continuity as an option.

Inori92's feedback.

Love the bit about not having enough farming areas end game, kinda getting tired of fautz/dunc. Let do empowered rifts lvl 130 zones of past rifts (cows/k3k/TA etc.). I Think brining a map system for rolling end game rifts of previous zones would increase the longevity and diversity of the grind.