Breach Refined Feedback #X

Wicked Feedback
1

Hello there.

I played the new Patch for the last 2 days on 3 of my chars quite extensively, 2 of them being max level with one being my main. I have 300+ hours in the game at the moment, don’t need to mention I love the game a lot with those hours :stuck_out_tongue:

Now for the Update:
In general I gotta say it’s an amazing patch, the game feels smoother to me, it even looks better and most of the changes like the shops being accessible without loading and there being more bounties and challenges plus what certain shops offer is amazing. Very good changes. Also the utility runes, great idea, very good qol change.
The enchantment changes seem reasonable to me as well, but like others mentioned there could be more explanation like how the diminishing returns actually work.
Which brings me to a point which I don’t know is intended or is a bug.

My main char is a kind of battle mage, or let’s say it used to be.
The fact that the stamina runes now scale with char level if i understood that correctly ( the patch notes only say the ones from ilaria that’s why I’m not sure) and not with item lvl kinda makes these runes super weak, i mean I’m max lvl and those do like half the dmg or 70% maybe, I don’t have exact numbers but it’s way less. Now this also means the status doesn’t get applied as much as before so now I have to attack again or use the rune again to get the same results, which in turn results in me spending basically double or even more stamina.
Which does change the whole playstyle, you basically removed battle mage chars in favor of normal mages. Idk if that’s what you wanted, because this means nothing rly got added, just one got taken out and another is now in.
Now I feel I have to skill way more into stamina because these abilities use so much stamina I don’t have lots left for dodging, which isn’t the main problem, I don’t need 4 or 5 dodges, but I can’t even get one full combo of attacks off after without draining more stamina than I have. Kinda useless when I play freeze for example. I don’t even play the shatter build, cause I think that was way too overpowered anyway and I think nerfing the armor debuff enchantment is also a good idea, but I did attack frozen enemies to refill some focus, but of course they take less dmg when I attack with cold dmg, which was fine cause I wanted the focus for my next rune attack.. Which now gets hindered a lot.
Now I do have lots of focus enchantments on my gear, for example get 15 focus on kill plus get 15 focus on inflicting status.

Now when i for example use a shock jump rune on 3 enemies, all of them die. The ability costs 100 focus without focus cost reduce. So I should get 45 focus for the kills plus 45 for inflicting the status on all 3 of them should I not?
But I feel like I only get the ones from the kills. Is that intended? ( idk if the name change of the elemental types could be responsible for this? It’s a wild guess cause I feel one some it works, for example the frost stream )
This is also counted without all my +focus gain enchants, which I don’t know if those should be working on there or if there’s also diminishing returns cause I have them multiple times as well, but that’s not even the issue.
The issue is i get way less focus then before which is kinda strange. Not only does it change the playstyle a lot but I can’t even attack a lot for focus gains cause the stamina gets used for the stamina runes, which costs way too much stamina btw for the fact they also do way less dmg than before. Granted this is all on a max lvl char. And i still have some valid points spent in stamina, it’s not like I’m running around with 10. I’m around 25+ most times, which is still a lot considering you need to have lots in your weapon class, like int or faith or whatever you use.
Also a question I have, how much focus do the stamina runes generate? Is it the normal value the staff or wand gives you? Kinda weird when i use 35 stamina compared to the 10 or 14 the attack costs and get the same like 9 focus out of it ?

So now for most of the time after every little fight and in longer fights even in between I come out with basically half the focus I did before, which makes it feel all “stuttery” cause I can’t get into any kind of flow being forced to pause all the time.
I get that some stuff probably needed some nerfs, but it feels like especially my main char, which wasn’t even one of those RoD builds that are way too imba imo, and still are btw, just gets punished for basically being a “normal” endgame build.

Another thing I noticed now cause I started also a new char with the new patch, what does it mean that plague status reduces fire resistance? Does it reduce it when the plague bar is full or in general? Cause I felt that was a cool idea, so I wanted my new char to do plague and fire dmg, now I tried both with full bar and not filled up and it doesn’t seem so affect the fire dmg the enemy takes at all.

Also how come that when I get the plague debuff I lose life and enemy doesn’t ? Like enemies are at 1% health full on plagued and I have to hit them again so they die. It’s either a bug or it doesn’t make sense.

I will add more stuff I notice here as well while i continue to explore the new patch.

Also I want to add that this is not a huge complain post, I get that with lots of changes and lots of modifications there’s always gonna be issues in such a complex system.

Finally I want to say I highly appreciate the soul and work you put into this game, it’s rly already one of the best of its kind, in my eyes one of the most fun games I ever played in general. So thanks for that :slight_smile:

Kind regards,
jolly

1 Like
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Actually what i also noticed, on this char you kind of force me to play the freeze and shatter build now with those changes.
The fact that it takes double the amount to freeze an enemy means i need double the stamina, the enemy gets more attacks off, which means i have to dodge more as well, which also uses stamina and if i use only focus runes my focus generation goes in the drain also.

I cant freeze an enemy with frostbolt, dash to him and refill my focus with attacks, cause if i freeze with frostbolt → -35stamina ( need 2 of those now, cause way less dmg and way less status ), then dash to him → minus stamina → have maybe stamina for one or 2 attacks left. also the fact stamina needs a bit longer to start regen now i think even amplifies this effect.

2 frostbolts freeze one enemy. 2 frostbolts cost 70 stamina. 70 is way too much considering i get basically no focus out of these 2 attacks and i use, depending on how much stamina you skilled, 70-80% of my stamina.
Theres literally no reason to use the frostbolt if i get the same result with 2 normal attacks, which cost not even 25% of the stamina and i get the exact same amount of focus out of it. seems unreasonable especially if the reason behind that supposedly was to implement a more “mage” style play, when it actually does the opposite.

Basically my main is now my least favourite character because it feels so much slower and every hour i pumped into this char to get it the way it was is now useless.

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Imo you should revert the stamina runes for wands and staffs. Or make them way more powerful.

For Bows i get it, you dont want to be a focus orientated character if you play bows maybe. But if youre a mage and you use focus constantly, im sure you spend some points in focus and are not running around with max 100 focus still. so spending like 50 on an opening attack is not even that bad, instead now i spend an insanely higher percentage of my stamina just for those attacks, which also do way less dmg and therefore also apply way less status.
What you did is, now you drain all of your stamina. FIghting without stamina in a stamina based game with parries and dodges is just bad, it really is a bad idea.

For me at least it looks like using any of those stamina based attacks on mages is an absolute no-go now.
Theres literally no reward for using them, they cost more of an important resource and they do way less dmg/effect.

4

Just played my new char and its even more evident there.
This char is lvl 10, i have around 70 stamina already, which isnt even that little.
Now i can spend 35 stamina, which is 50% of all my stamina, for one plague dart doing 24 dmg. or i just attack for 9 stamina and do the exact same amount of dmg. Plus i get the exact same amount of focus out of it.
And on top of it, the dart takes way longer to execute.
Plus with the aiming thing being off atm , usually the first dart shoots nowhere near the enemy.

Again, you literally removed any reason to go for those stamina attacks ever again and i dont think that was the intended effect.
If it was, all good.

But it feels like, im just not gonna play mages at all anymore, which is sad, cause its my favourite way of playing, but now ill just get the clerics mace and rage through the game only using normal attacks aka easy mode.

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The Filleter btw was a great weapon imo with a unique look, but if ppl had a problem with its attacks being more rapier-like, okay then thats fine, but why would you remove the charged attack from it? It had one before and you said you just changed it so its more sword like now, but it also has no charged attack anymore. I dont see the reasoning in that tbh.

6

After more extensive playing i have to conclude this is really the worst update gameplay wise you have done so far.
The game looks and runs better, yes, but everything else, except most of the QoL changes, is worse than before.

Stamina usage is the first and worst part of it. It didnt need changing and now somehow im constantly out of stamina, even though you supposedly made the stamina skill points give you more stamina. I feel absolutely nothing like that, its the complete opposite, idk if you dont test it yourself but its bad.

Calling the stamina rune attacks useless is even an understatement, cause they do nothing compared to the resources you invest, and one of the worst parts of it is whether youre a lvl 1 char or a lvl 30 char, the rune attacks cost 35 stamina. Makes no sense.
If you want to make them do ranged focus generation, make the normal attacks ranged and not some long windup abilities that cost way too much and give you the same amount of focus like a normal attack, which obviously executes 10 times faster than even a elemental dart, not even speaking of the bolts, which need even longer time, for the exact same amount of stamina used and focus generated.

Also ranged fights are never rly a thing, its not like you can choose to stay in range all the time, its literally decided by the mob youre fighting, cause most of them are melee and will close the gap anyway, so i need to run away all the time or dodge away which also drains my stamina, which i then dont have for the stamina runes or either already dont have BECAUSE of the stamina runes. Its an insane change tbh and renders these rune attacks absolute garbage.

All my abilities also feel like they do way less dmg than before - maybe it just feels like that cause combat feels so bad now - without anything like that being in the patchnotes, but granted, half of them are flatout missing the target. Which brings me to the next point.

Aiming is literally off the charts bad, missing 100 or 150 focus abilities is really not fun, especially when all the generation works with stamina, which is horrendous atm, like i mentioned above.

New abilities on some mobs are overpowered like crazy, losing 70% health on a stunlock ability of ONE small wolfdude that is not even a big enemy is beyond my understanding. Fighting the wolf daily bounties where 3 or 4 of them are in a pack is suddenly even for my not-OP build max lvl 30 char a real pain, not even speaking of chars on low lvl getting these dailies. I had to cheese the pack in front of sacrament at the gates which they dont enter so they dont instakill me the 3rd time in a row on my new char.

All this while hitboxes on the big bear for example havent been fixed at all, and this guy just hits you no matter what if youre not 20m away from him, dodging is useless 90% of the time here. Dont even know if you can parry this dude, cause if i try and miss im basically dead or almost dead.

Freeze does nothing anymore cause every mob seems to be +50% on ice resistance than before, also didnt see anything in the notes, but i could have missed that tbh, but playing ice now is zero fun compared to before, also cause you dont have any real AoE abilities, the only one i know so far comes in the legendary staff, which is not extractable and the rest of the staff is kind of meh.

Mobs spawn ultra fast in some areas, this has to be a bug, but its bad.

The utility runes are not usable in a series after another while holding RT, it always does a normal attack or dodge or whatever button youre pressing for the ability in between.
I either have to repress RT or just do an attack again first, which doesnt make sense when holding RT should enable the utility rune selection. Result is i cant use them in a flow either, and even using them as preparation for a fight feels clunky as.

Also, why cant i slot utility runes in weapons anymore, whats the reasoning behind that? Not that its a super bad thing, but i wonder why you would limit that.

Reducing the amount of enemies you have to defeat on plagued areas is reasonable, but it said before it was 65% ? i literally had to kill EVERY mob before or 95% in some areas to get the boss to spawn. Shallows for example i had to kill every single enemy for the boss to spawn. Granted this is now way less, but i dont get why you would do this, when you had the effigy to spawn the boss faster if you wanted to anyway. And still have.
The only result now is i cant farm torn materials as well as before because the boss gets spawned way earlier and i cant kill a lot of mobs for them to drop these, especially in places like the shallows where the boss spawns where mobs where before.

Also sometimes mobs just disappear when the boss spawns, others just stay there. Chests disappear when the boss spawns, also kind of weird, but this was like that before.

Then you removed the “gain health once per rune attack” enchant, but items that already have them still have them, do they work or dont they work? Cause i also gain way less health, it seems i only get the lifesteal now? idk if i should reroll it or not, would be great if that was mentioned in the patchnotes.

Making wand and staff runes applicable to both weapon types is also a bad change, it renders staffs totally inferior compared to 1h plus shield or bow combo, which is weird cause staffs are THE iconic mage weapon.

Farming resources is not fun anymore, it takes way longer if youre not hitting a perfect hit and it seems to be totally random if you get more resources or not out of it, sometimes you get more in one drop, sometimes you get 2 drops and have to look around where the other dropped and sometimes you still get just one even after hitting all perfectly.

So after 340hours of having tons of fun in the game now everytime i play i get the urge to close it after 20min of playing cause the whole flow of the game is gone. The combat, that was one of the big plus sides of the game before, feels clunky as hell if youre not only using X all the time, which is not fun either, at least for me.

The Breach Update was the best you did so far imo, but the Refined one is plain bad, other than most of the QoL changes, which again, are quite good indeed.

I also get that this is only my personal opinion and others may see it totally different and im willing to accept that im just on the losing side of the progression of the game, thats fine, but its also a little sad ( again: for me ) .

Im sorry if this sounds a bit too much like a rant, but im just super disappointed right now cause my favourite game atm lost most of the fun i had playing it with those changes, which basically boils down to the imo totally bottled new stamina management system.