Arena scaling not working as intended in 7.9

Hello devs,

Making this bug report after I documented enough information to make it as relevant as possible.

The arena scaling is currently doing really weird stuff.
We believe is related to the new Multipliers added on 7.9.

  • Increased overall scaling speed by 9%.

This seems to be working as intended, makes the first waves scale faster, and its great for everyone, its a subtle ramp up.

  • Enemies deal more damage than before based on wave number. The increase is 22% at wave 100, 46% at wave 200, and 76% at wave 300.
  • Enemies have more health than before based on wave number. The increase is 17% at wave 100, 34% at wave 200, and 56% at wave 300.

Now this is where strange things start happening.

  1. At wave 100, you can feel the first multiplier is in place and the monsters feel harder and tankier than in 7.8. I would say that wave 100 in 7.9 feels like wave 200 in 7.8, again, its a nice ramp up that allows the lower tier arena players to face their first challenging encounters. By this point, the top builds are having no issues at all to push.

  2. At wave 200, something strange happens.:
    The arena turns into the hell of scaling, with numbers comparable to wave 1200+ on patch 7.8. There is no ramp, when you reach 200 you feel it, like a switch. We believe the 46% multiplier at wave 200 is multiplying the previous 22% damage multiplier, creating a huge gap in damage output by mobs that no build or gear can survive.

Only a few players have managed to experience this scaling as 99% of the players die at 200, so its been quite hard and frustrating to gather information for this post, as you can only push further with RNG on your side.

EXAMPLES:

To represent the numbers that im talking about, I will use numerous clips from 7.8 and 7.9 vs the infamous mob type “Necrotic Wisp”. I apologize in advance for my visceral reactions when I die!

The character in this videos is the same Forgue Guard with the same overall 80% damage reduction vs necrotic damage, 100% Glancign Blow and 100% Crit Avoidance.
He also uses the base 30/40% Damage Reduction from Vengance and the added 30/36% from Bolster (7.8/7.9 values).

*In this first example, we can see the damage disparity from patch 7.8 to 7.9:

CLIP 1:
WISPS 1
Patch 7.8
Wave 461 - Maximum Wisp damage: 120 (no mob modifiers)

CLIP 2:
WISPS 2
Patch 7.9
Wave 251 - Maximum Wisp damage: 525 (no mob modifiers)

In this particualar case you can see that a single wisp in patch 7.9 at 250 waves hits as hard as 5 wisps on 7.8 460 waves.
This numbers is what seemed odd to me, and started to wonder if this was intended.
A 9% ramp scaling wiht just a 46% damage multiplier, should not be in any case 5 times the damage, specially while beeing 210 waves lower.

*In this second example, I got lucky enought to compare the damage between wisps with the “increased damage” mob modifer in 7.9:

CLIP 3:
WISPS 3
Patch 7.9
Wave 168 - Maximum Wisp damage: 449 (Increased Damage mob modifier)

CLIP 4:
WISPS 4
Patch 7.9
Wave 255 - Maximum Wisp damage: 936 (Increased Damage mob modifier)

With just a 80 wave difference, the Wisps doubled their damage.
Again if the difference of scaling between wave 100 and 200 is only this 24% extra damage multiplier and the 9% faster ramp scaling, this numbers don’t add up.

This is affecting every mob in arena, but the mobs with higher base values are the ones that are getting their damage skyrocket to this ridiculous numbers.
There is no gear, skill or progression that can allow you to fight this things. If you get hit, you die.

Now I understand that this point of damage will be eventually reached on an infinite scaling mode, but the problem is you are reaching this point 20 times faster than in 7.8 where you would normaly die to a player mistake that you could learn from.

Looking forward for this to get fixed, its affecting the community alot.

The fact that you can reach 200 waves with ease, and then at 200 you get obliterated has turned arena into a “fishing” meta where you just play until you dont spawn X mobs.

You can see what the current experience feels like in one of my runs:
251 Arena Run 7.9
I pushed to 200 in less than 1 hour without any issues.
As soon as I reach 200, the game transforms into a different experience, where you have to run around in circles for minutes to avoid certain death. Took me 40 minutes to clear from 200 to 250.
Range builds are not having fun either, my friend Foe has dropped all his protection gear (as its useless past 200) to gear full dodge and run in circles for minutes with his Sorcerer waiting for Black Hole cooldown to be able to engage on mobs while they are CCd. If he gets hit by anything, he dies. This makes the pushes slow, boring and frustrating.

Once again, I hope this gets fixed soon!
Thanks alot for looking into this.

3 Likes

Hopefully this has sorted it.

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