Bettlecry ring is pretty good in terms of fun, spamming different runes on top of a base moveset is a playstyle changing thing, but the rune attacks are too powerful to spam them like that. I suggest to lower the rune attack damage on this ring to the point when these attacks are slightly better than basic attacks (so pretty significant nerf I would say) but add “Heal efficiency %” on top of that so the lifesteal oriented builds will be viable with this ring. In those terms you still will be able to spam rune attacks, but the ring will not be as OP as it is now. I mean this ring has a unique rarity, so it should still be good.
Ring of determination is quite similar. Maybe they both reduce rune attack damage, but one increases healing and the other increases non rune attack damage for a time, so one would be for spamming rune attacks and the other for buffing normal attacks.
2 Likes
Yeah, and it solves a problem with 2 pretty much identical unique rings
At that point the ring would be a reborn a purple ring since it has positives and negatives.
I believe that there is plenty of Unique rarity items with negative side effects (I can’t name them, because I play on different localization, but a Legendary greatsword and legendary “Katana” have negatives)
Yeah the rings wouldn’t need to be plagued rather than unique. Just one unique with a negative would be enough to support that. I think there are only 3 uniques though with negatives: Wind of Death, Cinder & Stone, and Corpse Smeared Blade.
The Dawn Never Comes, but only temporarily.
Oh yeah that fist weapon where every 3rd time you take damage you lose damage resistance.
I just want them gone. They warp focus economy and end up causing collateral nerfs to runes that are otherwise fine.
Even if you reduce the damage, some of those runes provide freezing, iframes, or high poise damage and gap closing, and those don’t get adjusted.
So eventually the runes themselves catch nerfs instead of looking at the root issue, which is the ring and how trivial it is to stack focus gen affixes.
The ideal cadence is one 50 focus rune cast per full attack sequence completion, so it takes 2-3 full attack sequences for a 100-150 focus rune. Right now that is warped by both the rings and affix stacking.
Then instead of fixing these focus economy root problems, the rune themselves catch damage nerfs, or mobs are made more health spongy or with higher poise/resistances.
1 Like
Would rarity help at all? Feels like rod and battle cry rings are so easy to get. I have tons. Compared to tarnished wand which hardly ever drops. Is there a place for these rings or do they just need to go, no matter how rare?
There is a case for ‘chase uniques’ in ARPGs that care about loot. I want Wicked as a Soulslike over ARPG. I feel that the excitement of an extremely rare, powerful drop fades quickly once it is revealed to be a Trojan horse which hides within the destruction of challenge-based fun.
A bit too poetic for me to personally know exactly what you mean. We know that currently strong builds essentially negate challenge based fun. Is that why rarity is meaningless? Or does rarity become meaningless within a system where challenge is above all else, meaning that a strong item is really not that strong because the challenge still exists regardless?
If the reward for a very rare item is that it trivialises the game, I don’t want it.
If an item is very rare and very strong, the game is either too easy once you have the item or too hard without it.
ARPGs want players to chase very rare items because the game scales infinitely to numbers-based power. I want my power to be skill-based, and the numbers game to be relatively flat, so I can beat challenges slightly beyond my numbers and make up the difference in skill (or persistence; difficulty, in short).
2 Likes
The effect needs to be revamped into something that is not degenerate.
I also say this of the Jade Ring because honestly Jade Ring and RoD/BC and to a lesser extent but still problematic Band of Calmness seem to patch up serious holes in the baseline stamina and focus systems.
You gas out in two 2H attacks without Jade+Crow/Agility or some heavy combinations of jade/claw gems, and similarly focus economy feels extremely austere without some focus gen investment, so in early game you’re just constantly gathering just to have reasonable focus gain, and then by lv20+ due to more optimized gear you’re rolling in focus.
We need to not have swings like this.
And honestly seeing the latest livestream Q&A did not fill me with hope because they said these power creeps will be balanced against future content.
NO. I don’t want outlier super metagamey extreme builds being the benchmark for designing encounters and balancing enemy health pools and power levels.
Don’t do this crap Expedition 33 did where the streamet/sweatlord builds were so degenerate and runaway in power, and instead of balancing Maelle/Sciel/Lune outliers, they just designed bosses upwards with these degenerate builds.
Creating massive health sponges, introducing arbitrary stun/CC immunities and autorevive ignore mechanics, completely neutering the single niche Verso or Monoco had while both were significantly worse characters than the rest without those niches.
And people running normal non-sweat builds ended up smashing their face in the wall of Endless Tower runaway boss power creep (40+ minute encounters for regular damage builds) to keep up with these obnoxious streamers. Game design for the 1-2% of the playerbase.
Tints became useless as everything became a parry or get one shot fest, so all the tincture upgrades and slot expansions became obsolete and were never used again, especially since Simon deleted characters off the group when they got downed, and the way luminas granted boons and shields made skills that granted these useless, so all the skill loadouts on endgame cycled out heals and utility in favor of just the max damage skill loadouts.
I don’t want that in this game. I want any reasonable build anyone could assemble with a bit of thought and playstyle preference to work without making encounters a massive slog if you’re not running a hyper-optimized meta build.
My thoughts also around the damage being relatively flat as I have seen too much stat or damage creep in the game that lowers the diversity of builds. This game is a refresher from me who have played a bunch of arpgs and this game should not be just another arpg and things can get stale quick if the mind gets numbed not needing to thing about strategizing the engagement and that would lose game retention.
I agree with your finding (battlecry is currently too strong), but I come to a different suggestion.
I think the spammy zoomy gameplay needs to be addressed, not the damage. Otherwise you still have the zoomy gameplay, but you just shoot your rune attacks a few times instead of once.
To address the infinite rune attacks, I think it should have:
rune attacks can no longer steal life
This means that you now need to regain life between rune attacks.
Additional to this, but it’s a separate topic, a number of rune attacks need to be nerfed.
Totally agree that both battle-cry and determination rings do need rework.
and i totally agree with Zenith that eventually the runes end up getting nerfed.
my idea of the rework would be that the player doesn’t need two rings that do the same thing, so i would consider removing one of them.
for the other one i would link the rune cost to stamina e.g. (instead or in addition to the hp cost of it i would add stamina cost to it + it would deal 20% less damage) this would somewhat force your gameplay into managing another economy and maybe make you rethink your choices.
I personally don’t enjoy spamming runes 24/7, what I do like is to invest in my focus pool and farm focus (darts, parry, melee attack) until the pool fills up then go crazy with it, kinda like enrage
hope this helps 