I strongly agree, especially with the second paragraph of your first post.
If I were to attempt an argument against nerfs, I’d begin with where to draw the line for degenerate gameplay. Being overpowered is fine for brief intervals during progression, as the world will get harder in a stepwise fashion to compensate. One might argue, and indeed Thomas has argued, that the current outliers are there simply because the next difficulty tier is not in the game yet.
In my opinion your second paragraph explains why this argument is flawed; players have gotten used to this power level.
But Battlecry/Determination go further: They are degenerate because they permanently break the arms-race logic. Focus cost is static while damage (and therefore health restoration) increases. The devs have repeatedly adjusted lifesteal, but introducing a scalar just raises the minimum damage such that you restore the full focus cost of a spell. Your fix works nicely. I’ve considered alternatives:
- Lifesteal could be independent of damage, for instance by being a percentage of focus generated from weapon attacks.
- If damage/health numbers remained even across levels (e. g. if higher-level enemies had higher DR instead of larger health pools), health restoration from lifesteal would remain bounded.
A second counter-argument can be attempted from the observation that builds are currently able to oneshot nearly every enemy in the game, and if a single cast won’t do the trick players can just roll up with 900 max focus and try five more times. No Battlecry required!
The argument, then, is that Battlecry just removes the tedium of preparing for such an overpowering rune barrage (nuke an enemy, teleport home, alternate Channel and bed rest to fill focus, nuke the next enemy from orbit).
… to which I’d respond that oneshots from orbit and completely safe out-of-fight focus generation are hopefully not the intended experience either. The tedium exists to tell players they’re doing something abusive. Removing the tedium tells players they’re doing it right.
I’m not suggesting safe, out-of-combat focus generation is inherently wrong; just that it should be limited, as a reward for good preparation or as a tactic to attempt against individual tough enemies, not as the default approach.
Since you’re collecting the extreme outliers:
Infinite-stamina builds, trivially achieved with jade ring. A speed-focused shortbow using stutter-step-cancelled attacks is basically shooting an infinite, stronger Multi Shot rune. Spamming the dodge attack gives infinite mobility. Both generate focus (to be used, for instance, on knockdowns).
Demon’s Key or Tucked Falcon: A single seven-hit attack generates at minimum 56 focus, with gentle optimisation over 100, allowing use of an AoE knockdown rune. This creates an opening for the next seven-hit combo (or two). Almost completely risk-free against everything short of bosses. Simply fixed by adding a focus generation penalty to the attack.
Do you think these two fit your criteria for removal?