Info Item Team Update Thread - Latest Updates, Rebalance Changelogs & More - Update 28/6

thank you brothers

 

Simply put, I think the -walkspeed is a bigger drawback than we might think.

Many Alka builds suffer from being either too slow or too glassy.

A slow Alkatraz build can be really tanky and have excellent damage output. This sort of build is usually through a hard-hitting Alkatraz melee tank (earth-fire comes to mind). Without any mobility, or with your movement hindered drastically, it makes it extremely difficult to fight certain mobs. While you can crush simply melee fighters, mobs with push spells and evasive opponents are hard to hit. Being harder to hit means that the user will have a hard time being able to deal damage, offsetting that excellent damage output.

A glassy Alkatraz build has excellent damage output and much better mobility. Tier-stacking Alkatraz builds or specific spellspam builds are examples of this. In short, the issue is survivability. While Warrior's natural 120% defense offsets this a bit, warrior is incapable of stunlocking, making them prone to taking hits far more frequently. You will take damage with warrior, and while you might be mobile enough to dodge many attacks, melee attacks and spell warrior don't output enough to slay many bosses before taking one too many hits.

If you can find a way to balance both issues and make something with decent mobility and survivability, you will probably end up sacrificing damage. The lack of a powder special ensures that a balanced Alkatraz build might not perform as well as another build with similar capabilities and balance. For example:
-In terms of melee/hybrid, Collapse takes to spotlight. With access to items like Leictreach, Nephilim, and Accelerator, Collapse can do excellent melee damage while obtaining much better mobility. While this raw melee damage could be outdone by Alkatraz, Collapse has access to curse and courage, allowing it to rival Alka in terms of DPS. Collapse's rainbow nature allows it to have a balanced setup, and even though Collapse has horrible -elem defense negatives, items like Leictreach and Prism help offset that, allowing Collapse to have fair survivability.
-In terms of spells, I'd rather use Hero. Hero automatically gains mobility and survivability thanks to it being heavily centralized around agility and walkspeed. This gives players the ability to focus on damage when building Hero. From what I learned, Hero builds also gain a much better mobility than Alkatraz with better survivability (thanks to agility). While Alkatraz could do more damage, it's not enough to justify the significant loss in mobility and survivability compared to when using Hero.

I know I'm comparing three completely different weapons to each other, but all I am trying to point out is that I think Alkatraz's damage is not enough to make up for its lack of mobility in most cases. When making an Alkatraz build, people often sacrifice damage in order to solve the mobility problem. If they don't, they will end up losing damage or DPS output in usage, where players will struggle to land hits on highly evasive or ranged opponents.

I wrote way too much, and my thoughts are really scattered. To keep it short, the mobility lost when using Alkatraz is pretty rough, and Alkatraz's higher-than-average damage isn't doing enough to compensate for this.

 

Why was the walkspeed on cataclysm removed in the first place?

 

Thanks, now I finally understand the meaning of Alkatraz's name.

 

Speaking of feedback, is Guardian going to get some changes or buffs soon?

I am kinda having difficulty in doing damage and surviving, especially guild wars and LI.

The amount of damage I do in wars is just so insignificant, it takes ages to kill a mob, even the mobs without fire resistance... It takes like over a minute to kill a level 100 Archer, which i feel something is wrong...

And the fact that health regen doesn't work when you are constantly getting hit by mobs, which is what I feel is wrong with Guardian, like it doesn't fit the theme. Guardian is supposed to protect you, not treating it like an out of fight healing timeout. The bonus HP is nothing much when the mobs are swarming you and/or being dealt massive damage (such as Wybel fights)

I feel the damage nerf many patches ago, and the more recent raw health regen nerf killed it.

 

Cataclysm is a damage mythic, the extra speed boost gave it extra passive power on top of what it already has. 25% speed is not little, while it is not what makes or breaks it, it is extra power on top of an already powerful mythic.

________________________________

Thanks for your feedback!

The health regen doesn't work when getting hit is some mechanical problem that, well, can only hope to see a change. But beside that, guardian's damage alines with what a defensive tank item should do for its level and tier (level 93 mythic in this case).

In terms of the "damage" issue you suggested, the "damage nerf many patches ago" fixed Guardian from accidentally being one of the most damaging spears in the entire game back to a level that is suitable for a "tank mythic". There is no perfect weapon and there is no perfect mythic, well, maybe you can craft a "perfect" item for your own taste with the crafting system coming with the economy update, but items, more specifically mythics, aren't supposed to excel at everything. Guardian is a prime example of "exceptional defense" mixed with "good damage"; for even more defense, you can look at praesidium, which does no damage. For more damage, you can look at other mythics, which gives less or no defenses.

The health regen change did not nerf Guardian, the health regen change is a system-wide change that makes raw health regen affected by health regen % (this has been explained for a lot of times in a lot of occasions by a lot of IMs). Which means if you have health regen % in your build, the massive raw health regen you get from guardian will be massively boosted, where as previously, this wasn't the case. Prior to the change, if you have 50% health regen + a max Guardian with 910 hpr raw, you will have 910 health regen, as hpr% did not affect hpr raw. After the change, if you have 50% health regen + a max Guardian with 715 hpr raw, you will have 715 x 1+50% = 1072.5 hpr. While Guardian itself does not give health regen%, this opens up build options for people that want to go for high health regen, as if you have high hpr% and hpr raw, you will get a lot more health regen than you previously can. Therefore, by saying the health regen change nerfed it you were imply the change makes it worse, but the health regen change is merely, a change, and not a nerf.

Going back to not weapons are good for everything, the performance issues you are experiencing with guardian in guild war may be due to a lot of factors. First of all, it might have something to do with your build, build is a very important factor in shaping what weapon is good at what scenario, if you take a tanky boss build to a guild war it might suck very much as it is not optimised for wars. I would advise asking guild war veterans and class builders for some advice. Secondly, guardian being a health tank mythics may simply not be good for wars, as wars often facilitate high damage output with decent survivability builds/weapons more than pure tank. However this may also be something that can be solved by optimising your build for wars, by sacrificing some health or tankiness in exchange for massive damage which is easy to do as Guardian comes with 4k+ health. Thirdly, it may even come down to personal playstyle differences, some people prefer spell spaming and some people would do hybrid and charge up powder specials for extra damage.

 

rule of thumb is dont use spell warrior lmao. the only good warrior builds for wars are melee apoc style builds, or insane dps thrunda builds

 

I'm not sure but seems like 15k upper cuts, 10k HP, slight negative air and fire defense, good Mana and high Intel from existing armor is more than enough for a good spell warrior

 

its not that the actual build, or items are bad, its that the way the spells work is bad

both spells knock mobs so far back that for some builds its borderline impossible to either solo in the first place, or solo in a reasonable amount of time

 

if you have a good playstyle and use spells to corner bosses (regular mobs will usually die to 1-2 uppers), lots of spell warrior builds work really well.

 

except when you realize im not talking about bosses or a regular mob situation

 

saw that after I posted, guild wars is just clicking nonsense with no real purpose or entertainment. You wont really get any advice with that because barely anyone cares about guilds, they really are pointless. and guild communites have exuded toxicity on multiple occasions and its annoying to get shittalked just for taking territories. that's my opinion, though.

 

you'd be surprised how big the guild community is now, its for sure bigger and more balanced than it was when i joined, and just because its a part of wynn you dont prefer, it doesnt mean you should call it pointless and say no one cares about it.

 

I feel like its more of a systematic issue with Wynn's combat system. In wars, where there are a ton of mobs dealing damage to you constantly, the massive HP regen you get from guardian has no impact because as you get hit, the HP regen won't activate. This issue is less prominent when fighting bosses or just exploring in the world, but still is relevant and deserves some looking into. As for the damage, I think the damage is fine when you utilize powder specials and passives.

 

Yeh I have to agree, to be frankly honest, the amount of mechanic difficulties like this and more that the IMs wanted to change can be a mini update in itself, but the admins are and have been fully devoted into pushing eco out as soon as possible for a very long time. Mechanic changes like these are unfortunately, relatively insignificant, for the devs to put additional resources and focuses on, but you know and we know they matter. Hence we can only hope that after all the big stuff has gone by, these collections of “small” changes can get fixed/tweaked. :<

 

Luckily I’m mage

 

Can you just nerf Apoc's dmg already?

 

fun fact, the braker change puts its melee dps equivalent to a standard apoc build

 

with -2250 HP and 0 LS
Also its 20 Levels higher

 

https://wynndata.tk/s/Ucgd5F

480ls, 9k hp and upto 86 def isnt something to brush off