How’s The Nerf?
In build 28175, facets were adjusted as follows:
- crit chance down from 10% to 5%
- crit damage down from 40% to 30%
- all damage adjustments from facets decreased by 75%; this is not represented in my calculations, which incorrectly assume a 20% overall damage boost
Enchantments were adjusted as follows:
- mottled black pearl adjusted down to 50%
- crit chance halved to 5%
- crit damage halved to 10%
- armour penetration down to 10%
- physical damage unchanged at 10%, other elements down to 5%
Crit facets are worth even less and physical is the ‘best’ damage type now.
Before exalting, the optimal number of crit chance enchantments for weapons with a 20% damage facet has changed as follows (calculated with 120% base; multiply by 1.6 for physical damage boosts):
10% chance to deal 200% damage: 5 (out of 5), 177% total
20% chance to deal 150% damage: 3, for 160.8% total
25% chance to deal 140% damage: 2, for 160.8% total
40% chance to deal 125% damage: 1 (or 0), for 168.45% (or 168.0%) total
Exalting is hard to evaluate. Since armour penetration no longer passively hits 100% (it is 60% instead), to evaluate it I would need to know average enemy DR by damage type. In addition, there is a bug which makes exalting triple rather than double crit enchantments. This means they are worth more than physical damage.
I’ll ignore the option to exalt armour penetration for now. A good chunk of previously optimal builds should not have exalted armour penetration.
On 10% crit chance weapons, optimal damage is 477.6% base when exalting crit chance and damage to maintain a 1:2 ratio (compared to 389.4% if exalting physical damage exclusively).
Against enemies with 50% DR, expected damage has changed as follows:
- without exalting: from 10× base to 2.3× base
- optimal exalting: from 20× base to 3.8× base
Rune damage multipliers, cake, damage surge and some multiplicative enchantments (vs Large, rune damage) appear unchanged. A handful of specific lightning runes do less damage due to fixes to multi-hits (notably Stormpiercer). This is before enemy health adjustments. We’ll do maybe one fifth of our previous engame damage.
My expectations match yours. I need to play more before I can give a subjective opinion as well (too busy PvPing), but T4 Pestilence sure has grown a little chest hair. This might be the patch for us.