ssg will nerf Legen Strength of Arms in 3 month right when most players start to enjoy it and ppl will be mad

[Nickodeamous]

I will tell you by personal experience that fighting the Marilith rare in demogorgon wilderness is a true test for this. We tried on r6 with a tank and Melee (including myself) that ran these feats were getting 2 shot by her with our stacks completely, we'll, stacked. If they are doing 3k per swing and you get hit, it doesn't even matter if you have it or not. The point is that you have to stand within their hit box to get stacks (hit them), but if they do giant cleaves with high damage and you get hit, we'll, good luck.

The first thing I said to myself when I got these feats is "this is too much", but now it actually give me a tad more of a chance to not die before getting healed. Ssg will probably nerf this cause they hear "big numbers", but its all how you spin it

 

[Concavenator]

I believe all they did is look at the scaling of enemies and the scaling of DC gear and adjust the gear so it matched how scaling works with enemies.

That seems like a good change as casters aren't exactly top-tier these days. With that said, yeah it does help alot. In my case I went from not taking any of the spell focus feats on my warlock to taking all 4. This by no means bring casters to universal no-fail DCs though.

problem is nobody want or need insta-kill caster in their group these days especially in raids. casters need dps. the same type weird high reaper scaling that destroyed casters also destoryed self heal which is why we end up with these feat in the first place

 

[Skulz]

lol Seriously, lol

Yes.

• Ranged builds are top DPS from a safe distance; they need a nerf, and this would be easy to fix in my opinion. In older sagas like Ravenloft, a single ranged character can solo R10 quests easily because the mobs literally can't reach them.
• Melee are neglected right now, which is why I believe they released these feats. There are far fewer melees at cap. Usually, my R10 runs consist of 1 melee and 4–5 casters or ranged characters.
• Casters are currently very strong DC-wise and might get a DPS buff this autumn, meaning everyone will TR as a caster. Keep in mind that casters are still incredibly strong during heroic and epic R1 leveling, and can easily top the charts in R1-4 at cap -their only real issue is DPS in R8-10. We need a major rebalance across all levels and Reaper difficulties before we talk about damage buffs at the top end.

What I think will happen:

The devs can't nerf anything because every time they try, the forums get flooded with people complaining about losing power in a PvE game, so they can never rebalance things properly. I honestly feel bad for them.

What they will do instead is buff everyone one at a time. Ranged builds won't be touched, casters will get buffed, then it will be melee's turn, and they will just keep buffing whichever playstyle is least populated.


In my future I see sorcerers and alchemists.

 

[rabidfox]

I will tell you by personal experience that fighting the Marilith rare in demogorgon wilderness is a true test for this. We tried on r6 with a tank and Melee (including myself) that ran these feats were getting 2 shot by her with our stacks completely, we'll, stacked. If they are doing 3k per swing and you get hit, it doesn't even matter if you have it or not. The point is that you have to stand within their hit box to get stacks (hit them), but if they do giant cleaves with high damage and you get hit, we'll, good luck.

The first thing I said to myself when I got these feats is "this is too much", but now it actually give me a tad more of a chance to not die before getting healed. Ssg will probably nerf this cause they hear "big numbers", but its all how you spin it

She's a purple boss and tuned like one. I think the question of nerfs isn't going to come down to to mid-skulls or how the ability holds up in r10s; it's really funny seeing posts about how it's a meh ability for r10 raids. It'll be how it plays out in n/h/e/low skulls (in quests & raids). And it won't come down to people that regularly run harder content either. It'll be what can the average player do with it. On what difficulty does stuff stop hurting a player; where the damage is trivialized? EA's healing mantle got nuked from existance because SSG didn't want that level of easy to get passive healing and strength-in-arms effectively is the same passive gameplay.

 

[Lotoc]

She's a purple boss and tuned like one. I think the question of nerfs isn't going to come down to to mid-skulls or how the ability holds up in r10s; it's really funny seeing posts about how it's a meh ability for r10 raids. It'll be how it plays out in n/h/e/low skulls (in quests & raids). And it won't come down to people that regularly run harder content either. It'll be what can the average player do with it. On what difficulty does stuff stop hurting a player; where the damage is trivialized? EA's healing mantle got nuked from existance because SSG didn't want that level of easy to get passive healing and strength-in-arms effectively is the same passive gameplay.

to be fair a big reason for the EA mantle healing being removed was because the majority of melee you'd see in your pugs were in EA mantle with no spellpower investment because it was significantly better healing than anything melee trees actually offered.
It was totally passive, zero interaction and was actively gimping people's builds because "dps" builds were wasting their third tree on passive healing and no other benefits.

 

[mikarddo]

Yes.

• Ranged builds are top DPS from a safe distance; they need a nerf, and this would be easy to fix in my opinion. In older sagas like Ravenloft, a single ranged character can solo R10 quests easily because the mobs literally can't reach them.
• Melee are neglected right now, which is why I believe they released these feats. There are far fewer melees at cap. Usually, my R10 runs consist of 1 melee and 4–5 casters or ranged characters.
• Casters are currently very strong DC-wise and might get a DPS buff this autumn, meaning everyone will TR as a caster. Keep in mind that casters are still incredibly strong during heroic and epic R1 leveling, and can easily top the charts in R1-4 at cap -their only real issue is DPS in R8-10. We need a major rebalance across all levels and Reaper difficulties before we talk about damage buffs at the top end.

What I think will happen:

The devs can't nerf anything because every time they try, the forums get flooded with people complaining about losing power in a PvE game, so they can never rebalance things properly. I honestly feel bad for them.

What they will do instead is buff everyone one at a time. Ranged builds won't be touched, casters will get buffed, then it will be melee's turn, and they will just keep buffing whichever playstyle is least populated.


In my future I see sorcerers and alchemists.

Your evaluation does not match mine at all.

Casters are very poor at cap in R10. Able to kill the unimportant trash mobs if melee or ranged havent before the caster gets in range but unable to kill any of the mobs that matter. Killing the weakest half of the mobs in a quest is of near no value at all.

Well build melee is far stronger than casters at cap and fairly able to compete with ranged in quests but not high R raids. Less well build melee are much worse than less well build ranged at cap though so maybe thats what you are seeing. Less build casters are completely useless for comparison.

Well build melee also levels very very well in both heroics and epics.

I prefer to play a caster. I currently have a healer, a tank, a ranged dps and a melee dps...

 

[Lazuli]

Your evaluation does not match mine at all.

Casters are very poor at cap in R10. Able to kill the unimportant trash mobs if melee or ranged havent before the caster gets in range but unable to kill any of the mobs that matter. Killing the weakest half of the mobs in a quest is of near no value at all.

Well build melee is far stronger than casters at cap and fairly able to compete with ranged in quests but not high R raids. Less well build melee are much worse than less well build ranged at cap though so maybe thats what you are seeing. Less build casters are completely useless for comparison.

Well build melee also levels very very well in both heroics and epics.

I prefer to play a caster. I currently have a healer, a tank, a ranged dps and a melee dps...

This.

 

[Lazuli]

She's a purple boss and tuned like one. I think the question of nerfs isn't going to come down to to mid-skulls or how the ability holds up in r10s; it's really funny seeing posts about how it's a meh ability for r10 raids. It'll be how it plays out in n/h/e/low skulls (in quests & raids). And it won't come down to people that regularly run harder content either. It'll be what can the average player do with it. On what difficulty does stuff stop hurting a player; where the damage is trivialized? EA's healing mantle got nuked from existance because SSG didn't want that level of easy to get passive healing and strength-in-arms effectively is the same passive gameplay.

Exactly, these feats are the same as EA's mantle, and yet the mantle was annihilated for being considered overpowered. Time and again SSG changes its mind regarding the direction of its design. Can we now have EA's mantle back then?

to be fair a big reason for the EA mantle healing being removed was because the majority of melee you'd see in your pugs were in EA mantle with no spellpower investment because it was significantly better healing than anything melee trees actually offered.
It was totally passive, zero interaction and was actively gimping people's builds because "dps" builds were wasting their third tree on passive healing and no other benefits.

Same than these feats. They are passive. And according to your words, at least before there was a trade-off. Now it's just power creep.

 

[Darksteel]

Same than these feats. They are passive. And according to your words, at least before there was a trade-off. Now it's just power creep.

Getting 400-800 temporary HP (or even 2000 HP if your Melee power is maxxed out) for 6 seconds is power creep?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...sorry hold on a minute...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Love this, absolutely loving this discussion. BRB my inquis just hit a R10 mob for 1 million from 1000 feet away, need to go collect the loot.

 

[Skulz]

Your evaluation does not match mine at all.

Casters are very poor at cap in R10. Able to kill the unimportant trash mobs if melee or ranged havent before the caster gets in range but unable to kill any of the mobs that matter. Killing the weakest half of the mobs in a quest is of near no value at all.

Well build melee is far stronger than casters at cap and fairly able to compete with ranged in quests but not high R raids. Less well build melee are much worse than less well build ranged at cap though so maybe thats what you are seeing. Less build casters are completely useless for comparison.

Well build melee also levels very very well in both heroics and epics.

I prefer to play a caster. I currently have a healer, a tank, a ranged dps and a melee dps...

You can't expect them to be able to CC, Instantkill, Heal (i have already seen builds able to do all the previous 3 basically no fail at r10), and be a top dps as well.

If they get that buffed that much, I will play a sorcerer again ( i like both melee and casters), but it won't be fun to play in a team of casters like before the nerfs.

 

[Lotoc]

Exactly, these feats are the same as EA's mantle, and yet the mantle was annihilated for being considered overpowered. Time and again SSG changes its mind regarding the direction of its design. Can we now have EA's mantle back then?


Same than these feats. They are passive. And according to your words, at least before there was a trade-off. Now it's just power creep.

2 feats is a cost.
feats that work for a specific combat style and scale off of a stat relevant for that style.

It's not comparable unless we wind up with casters taking the feat and smacking bosses with scepters just to get temp HP.

 

[f1b041b3]

Strength of Arms by itself provides a 1-2 skull jump at most, but going up skulls is alot more than just self-healing.

This is what I've noticed. If you can comfortably solo r1-2, then you'll probably now be comfortable increasing the difficulty by two skulls; if r3-4 then by 1-2; if r5-7 then one. In r8+ there's really no solo benefit except on a tiny subset of builds with unusually high avoidance chances, as it's simply too difficult to build and maintain the stacks.

It'll be how it plays out in n/h/e/low skulls (in quests & raids).

I disagree. These feats were added for the same reason as the Living Shadow Dark Gift - because the melee play style, which actually requires being in harm's way, is at a huge disadvantage compared to ranged, which often does more damage and from relative safety. But hey, if you end up being correct then I'm going to argue for a nerf for everything that trivializes the lower difficulty settings regardless of whether it's necessary for difficult endgame content. Casters are far too good everywhere but endgame r8+s so let's start by cutting their dcs and elemental stripping... actually, I don't want to start picking on casters so let's put a maximum attack range on ranged attacks and then apply scaling reaper penalties to it. At r10, anyone with a crossbow or shuriken should have to be within 3m of the mobs they're attacking - it's only fair considering how advantageous it is to not have to worry about getting hit.

 

[mikarddo]

You can't expect them to be able to CC, Instantkill, Heal (i have already seen builds able to do all the previous 3 basically no fail at r10), and be a top dps as well.

If they get that buffed that much, I will play a sorcerer again ( i like both melee and casters), but it won't be fun to play in a team of casters like before the nerfs.

I dont expect anything of the sort.

Casters can instakill some mobs - most of them are of very little value. Most of the mobs that matter you cannot insta kill. Meanwhile dps kills both the unimportant and the important mobs very fast making the insta killing of near zero value.
Casters can CC some mobs but so can melee and ranged - and in the current state of the game there is no time for caster cc as mobs die so very fast.
Casters dont need to dominate dps - but caster dps need to be good enough compared to martial dps to not be completely useless - the way it is now.

At any rate - I hope they only buff casters a little but instead bring down martial dps. I think the game is rather boring right now from being too easy and buffing casters to the same OP level that both (some) melee and (some) ranged builds are at does not make the game overall more enjoyable - just a bit more fair.

 

[Skulz]

I dont expect anything of the sort.

Casters can instakill some mobs - must of them are of very little value. Most of the mobs that matter you cannot insta kill. Meanwhile dps kills both the unimportant and the important mobs very fast making the insta killing of near zero value.
Casters can CC some mobs but so can melee and ranged - and in the current state of the game there is no time for caster cc as mobs die so very fast.
Casters dont need to dominate dps - but caster dps need to be good enough compared to martial dps to not be completely usefull - the way it is now.

At any rate - I hope they only buff casters a little but instead bring down martial dps. I think the game is rather boring right now from being too easy and buffing casters to the same OP level that both (some) melee and (some) ranged builds are add does not make the game overall more enjoyable - just a bit more fair.

Glad you think like that, but most casters writing in this forum and in this thread have been complaining during the past year beacuse they want to Both have high R10 dps, high raid dps, and also be able to no fail at least 3-4 DC schools or more for cc, intantkill, etc. - just because they can take the spells they expect to be able to use them all. Even rangeds (that I really think require a nerf) can't do that much.

I hope the autumn update will be a rework and not just an overall buff.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

You can't expect them to be able to CC, Instantkill, Heal (i have already seen builds able to do all the previous 3 basically no fail at r10), and be a top dps as well.

If they get that buffed that much, I will play a sorcerer again ( i like both melee and casters), but it won't be fun to play in a team of casters like before the nerfs.

There is always a risk of over-buffing/over-nerfing when they do a pass.

What casters need the most is higher single-target damage - mainly in raids. They are already good at dungeon clearing and have an important role in raids, but there is usually only 1 and sometimes 2 spots in raids for that which is unfortunate if you need raid gear on a caster. Most of my raid gear on casters comes from runes.

Beyond single-target damage in raids and the R10 nerf being over the top - I don't really have any complaints about my casters. Others seem to struggle more than I do, but I don't fully understand their issues. It seems like alot of people don't want a balanced build or to min/max, but instead want to max/max which isn't possible in this game.

 

[Lotoc]

it is funny that ranged are outperforming melee on most metrics and with u81 got a feat to give them even more dps.
Melee has had gaps in good feat choices in epics since dire charge was turned into an ED strike and the majority of melee builds lack durability so they get 2 feats to help every melee simply exist in melee combat and that's the big problem everyone has.
Keep in mind that we have raid bosses like The Five Fangs that on a difficulty as low as Hard will eat right through this totally overpowered feat and launch you across the room if the tank so much as decides to turn the boss 10 degrees to the right for the sheer indignity of daring to raid while melee.
Nor does this feat mean you get to mindlessly DPS The Relentless Killer, that spin will still kill you and this feat at most gives you an extra second to run away and watch the ranged do the actual damage.

 

[f1b041b3]

2 feats is a cost.
feats that work for a specific combat style and scale off of a stat relevant for that style.

It's not comparable unless we wind up with casters taking the feat and smacking bosses with scepters just to get temp HP.

Exactly, casters and ranged don't need the help. When all of their attacks get limited to touch range, then we can talk about extending Strength of Arms to the other play styles.

Anyway, I don't even know why there's so much push back over this. Nearly everyone - melee, casters, and ranged - agreed prior that melee needed help defensively but the moment the devs throw us a bone these same people throw a fit. If the devs had instead added 25prr/mrr per melee combat style feat that doesn't show on health bars, would we be hearing such complaints?

Glad you think like that, but most casters writing in this forum and in this thread have been complaining during the past year beacuse they want to Both have high R10 dps, high raid dps, and also be able to no fail at least 3-4 DC schools or more for cc, intantkill, etc. - just because they can take the spells they expect to be able to use them all. Even rangeds (that I really think require a nerf) can't do that much.

I hope the autumn update will be a rework and not just an overall buff.

Don't forget passive elemental stripping for whatever they cast. I've brought this up before - they're always quick to say how hard it is for them in r8+ endgame but always ignore that they're at the top in nearly every other scenario. I get that endgame is the only thing that matters for some, but no caster has ever offered to trade some of his leveling power for more power at endgame.

 

[Skulz]

There is always a risk of over-buffing/over-nerfing when they do a pass.

What casters need the most is higher single-target damage - mainly in raids. They are already good at dungeon clearing and have an important role in raids, but there is usually only 1 and sometimes 2 spots in raids for that which is unfortunate if you need raid gear on a caster. Most of my raid gear on casters comes from runes.

Beyond single-target damage in raids and the R10 nerf being over the top - I don't really have any complaints about my casters. Others seem to struggle more than I do, but I don't fully understand their issues. It seems like alot of people don't want a balanced build or to min/max, but instead want to max/max which isn't possible in this game.

I Agree. Currently I am often playing r10s with 3 friends on bard, cleric, sorcerer.

Cleric: heal and instantkill (I believe he has 3 single target spells).
Sorcerer: mass hold, heal, and instantkill.
Bard: buff, heal, mass hold, and screams.

People need to focus on some aspects and be great at them. What I read on the forum is "if I can't have no fail dc in almost all schools why I play wizard?? Also give me competitive dps as well!"

I get that endgame is the only thing that matters for some, but no caster has ever offered to trade some of his leveling power for more power at endgame.

If they get more dps at the high range, I do expect a nerf during level up. Currently, I run heroics/epic at a sligthly higher reaper because it is no fun at r1 if a sorc joins and clears a room with a single AoE spell.

 

[Gimp]

There is a reason they stood there and it has nothing to do with the temp hp.

There is nothing Hard about a relentless hard. Without SoA i could stand there on my barb and just keep swinging. Lets see you do it with SoA on R1 with a non-tank. Bet you cant and live.

a nerf is coming not because me or anybody else calling for it, its because thats how ssg react to this type of meta shift every time. i dont want see ppl getting the rug pull from under their builds AGAIN so im giving them a heads up. guess we will find out in a few month

So you think suddenly there will be tons more melees vs ranged. You need a reality check buddy.

 

[rabidfox]

I disagree. These feats were added for the same reason as the Living Shadow Dark Gift - because the melee play style, which actually requires being in harm's way, is at a huge disadvantage compared to ranged, which often does more damage and from relative safety. But hey, if you end up being correct then I'm going to argue for a nerf for everything that trivializes the lower difficulty settings regardless of whether it's necessary for difficult endgame content. Casters are far too good everywhere but endgame r8+s so let's start by cutting their dcs and elemental stripping... actually, I don't want to start picking on casters so let's put a maximum attack range on ranged attacks and then apply scaling reaper penalties to it. At r10, anyone with a crossbow or shuriken should have to be within 3m of the mobs they're attacking - it's only fair considering how advantageous it is to not have to worry about getting hit.

I've seen plenty of stuff get nerf'd over the years because of average players being too strong for little effort. FvS's AoV tree having all their cores gutted wasn't because of high skull meta players. Ranged stuff has been hit before because it was too easy on the low end. Same with some melee stuff. EA's low hanging fruit for passive heals was similar. Heck, warlocks still feel the pain of having been hit like that. I wouldn't be surprised if some ranged stuff gets hit at some point again soon because of low gear/easy to setup builds, or Trickster, or other stuff. It's the nature of the nerf beast, I'm just pointing out that's what I think will be the reason for any nerf to strength-of-arms. It'll be the result of how it performs for average players & if it does or doesn't trivialize content for them.