While I agree Avalanche needed a nerf, I was wanting to see if the recent bug with Shattered heavens was used when looking at the overall damage reduction.
When 0.7.4 hit I had about a 50-60 % decrease in overall avalanche damage. When I look at other builds and their damage in 0.7.4 perhaps this was too heavy handed, perhaps not. I do see other class mastery’s spells and abilities doing double the damage of avalanche now. What I noticed after 0.7.4b hit and this bug was fixed…
“Fixed a bug where the Shaman’s Shattered Heavens node granted 200% increased spell cold damage per point rather than 2 added cold spell damage per point.”
… I calculated Avalanche now had an overall damage reduction nerf of 70-75% from 0.7.3 levels. Is this about what you had in mind because it does feel a little over the top, much like the initial nerf to Black Hole for the mage.
And I am not even mentioning the huge nerf on the Avalanche tree for the node that grants you an increase to the amount of boulders that fall. I dont have the game up to tell me the exact node but it is now is a 4 point node at 5% per point which is quite low and now not worth the investment.
No one likes the nerf bat but I did want to point out just how drastic this nerf was and wanted to ask if during your internal testing if the Shattered Heavens bug was used in your initial calculations.
I just started playing primalist->Shaman(currently level 41) while i am having a lot of fun with avalanche the damage for now seems decent compared to my lvl 81 sorcerer.
More and more i see that anything fun/good is getting nerfed to the ground instead of actually buffing the bad spells so they can stay competitive to the good stuff. I really do not understand the idea of destroying anything good/fun to play to the point that classes start feeling weak overall.
This really looks like Blizzard old mentality in world of warcraft. I will say it again… Nerfing everything good/fun and making the classes meh overall. When i started playing a few patches ago there were more fun and interesting builds to try out and test. With every consecutive patch i feel like things are starting to get worse in the direction of class design/philosophy/gameplay/skills/passive nodes. While every patch brings something new and something good/fun it also takes away at least as much or even more in terms of passive nodes/skill nodes and nerfs overall.
I am looking forward for an official reply from the staff and some explanation why is this happening and what is the idea behind it.
Avalanche was too powerful because shatter heaven gives 200% cold spell damage before the latest hotfix. Now this bug was fixed. But Avalanche still very powerful , compare with other spells. I have a druid BD using physical avalanche & melee attacks, very high critical chance. Also super fun.
The Avalanche nerf was a step in the right direction and absolutely deserved. Just buffing all other skills when one skill is overtuned and overused is not the right balancing approach. It speeds up the occurence of power creep a lot. (which sadly is going to happen over time no matter what)
I actually think Avalanches base damage is still too high. When you get the skill while leveling you one shot packs and melt rare mobs and bosses without any points invested into the skill (of course gear and passives should match a spellcaster playstyle). It´s still absolutely overtuned compared to other spells/skills! It´s also not balanced around mana, because you can reduce its cost and Shaman has enough access to mana + mana reg.
It should be changed so that it isn´t inherently super powerful from the get go, but grows stronger and stronger with points invested (as is the core design idea of skill trees).
I´m running a Maelstrom + Tornado built while dropping storm totem here and there. It´s super fun. I didn´t plan on using Avalanche, but it is just too strong to pass on. I use it as a targetable burst damage skill with 10 sec cd and Monolith and Arena bosses just die in one cast.
Avalanche is still too strong and still needs some adjustment. It shouldn´t be that good right away and it´s power should come at a higher prize (e.g. higher mana cost, more gear needed).
Just buffing everything that isnt as good as “Broken” things is called “Power Creep” and its never good for long term balance of an ARPG. Just look at POE or even D3 for great examples of what unchecked power creep can do to a game.
In the case of POE its now kill it before it can even touch you and speed clear as fast as you can move while D3 everyone runs the exact same gear on each build because how can you possibly come up with an original build when sets gives 10K+% damage increases? The answer is you cant.
Balance is always best done by nerfing the standout powerhouses FIRST. Then come back through and buff the things still falling behind. Just mindlessly buffing weak skills that isn’t as good as the most powerful skill will eventually lead to out of control numbers.
And its funny how WOW was mentioned when its had to have it numbers squished what… 3? 4 times now? Because endless buffs made them so out of control… Regardless of their mentality to nerf everything as you put it they still had out of control numbers. I understand better than most that it can feel bad to login to a weaker build than you previously had but you also always have to keep in mind the bigger picture which is the overall long term health of the game and not just your one build effected. Thats where you need to learn to adapt and adjust.
Thank you for inputting some sense, The power creep is one of the things that has kept me away from POE after 7k hours. I really hope EHG keeps a lid on the creep in this game be it move speed/movement skill cds/AOE etc
I haven’t touched Blizzard’s games, but I have been a part of other games where the balancing mentality was “nerf to the ground first, then don’t talk about it later;” it really ruins the immersion of the characters you’re playing and leaves a bad taste in nearly everyone’s mouth. Even if the players point out again and again that the nerfs are too severe, the devs simply shrug and don’t bother listening to further suggestions. It’s madness.
I don’t have a build with the Avalanche skill, but in general terms, the proper way to apply balance is to nerf the powerful stuff incrementally (slowly and cautiously) and see how the changes synergize with the other balancing that’s going on. If that skill is still too strong, then it can be fine-tuned further, but at least the players get to see how the changes affect their build. Far too often, devs just tweak a few numbers in one skill and consider it balanced, when in reality, the flurry of changes cause the skill to be drastically weaker than they envisioned, then doubling down on the change when people point this out to them. I really hope that doesn’t end up being the case in this game; there’s really no harm in letting people play an OP, but less than broken OP skill for a few more months just to make sure the balancing didn’t go right out the window.
Avalanch is still viable as it seems so I don’t get all the concerns about the nerf mentality. Mages could brag about a bad patch cycle but avalanch is only weak compared to it’s overtuned and bugged former self.
