Seasonal mechanic:
It is OK, not exciting but also not something to fuss about. The vampiric powers are cool.
New bosses:
Great addition to the game, but has problems.
- 2 of the entry material are time gated, would be better if there are other ways to focus farm them. (Exquisite blood and living steel)
- Price for living steel chest is too steep.
- Bosses are way too easy; the strange level difference also adds into this. They should all sit at least level 90, considering how fast levelling is nowdays. Boss mechanics can use more work but the main issue is the tuning. They do not feel like bosses when I can OHK them or the mechanics just don’t do any damage.
- Do not waste Lilith as a one and down boss, allow her to be farmed. Her tuning is also off, HP needs buff and damage needs rebalance.
End game:
Now a bit better thanks to the new bosses.
- NM is still very mid, no sense of progression since the sigils are always in abundance and you can craft high lvl ones as you like.
- Bosses like Beast in Ice could help with this, NM tied bosses at lvl 30/60/90/100 will at least provide some sense of progression.
- Levelling is too fast to my liking, but many would probably disagree with this one. If playing on a lv100 char is going to be the norm, there needs to be more endgame progression systems.
- Something is probably in the cooking for S3 leader board, I hope it is good.
- The new ilvl change is…ok? The new bosses pump out 925 and they are ridiculously easy, this certainly made the game much easier, could be a decent incentive for the bosses if the bosses were actually hard. At least I am not getting any more low ilvl ancestral with botched affixes values, which is a plus.
Balance:
The new multiplier change is a band aid fix at best.
- This leads to silly situations where my crit build does not want to build into crit damage because of how inefficient it is.
- The multiplier on some of the aspects are too high.
- Overpower now seems, overpowered.
- Either a more extensive rework is needed, or you need to at least do a 2nd pass on the affixes values to accommodate the new changes.
- Paragon board can use more work, right now it is way too offensive focused. Would like to see more defensive/other non-offensive options on there for more build diversity.
Itemization:
Resistance change is good, but overall itemization is still mid.
- Condition affixes should be consolidated. Conditional DR feels bad now because they need to compete against resistance, and conditional damage are always trash. No one is going to chase after these specific affixes just for 20% more additive damage.
- Unique buff is good, but the bigger problem is the underlying balance. e.g. Most Barb unique are going to stay dead until 3 shouts meta is changed.
- We need an avenue for alt gearing, right now I do not feel compelled to start a 2nd char because I am never getting anything cool to incentives me to do so.
- Please do not do set items.
Overall very good patch, Blizzard reacted much faster than I anticipated. We could have a solid game at S4 with a new expansion, if they keep up the pace.
Please keep up the pace.
And stop eating my post Blizzard!
