SPOILER Wynn 2.0 Combat Changes Discussion (+ spin cube poll)

I feel like 200 health might be a little weak if they take damage, and if they don’t take damage it’s a little weird that they have health at all, instead of just having charges that can be restored with heal. Other than that pretty cool

 

I personally really doubt either Ophanim or Puppet Master summons will be able to be harmed. The light orbs from Ophanim would just simply too weak and be one shot by every mob at endgame, but I am curious as to how exactly heal will work with them. If heal applies its normal amount to the orbs, then it would always restore them to full HP every pulse (at endgame), which is why I think it might interact with them with certain flat values. There may be summons from abilities we see in the future that could act as guard mobs, but this isn't one of them.

Super fast caps at 4.3 hits per second, and if we assume that the 120% DPS multiplier in the ability description applies to both light orbs (I assume so because Puppet Master has 30% DPS listed and would be astronomically low damage if divided among all 3 puppets), then that means Ophanim is effectively a 1032% spell multiplier with super fast attack speed. You would need at least fast attack speed (would be a 600% multiplier) for it to be a higher multiplier than meteor (500%). The added +30 mana cost would potentially make it less useful to utilize in pure melee builds as they often have poor mana sustain, so hybrid builds would likely be optimal for running. I think weapons such as Quetzalcoatl and Fatal could potentially find great use out of this ability, but it's important to note that you'd need good mana sustain to keep the orbs from dying at super fast attack speed, or else spend a lot of mana recasting them due to the additional cost.

Overall I think this is probably the most unique and complex ability we've been shown so far, and it's nice to see that melee/hybrid builds have gotten something for them to use. It will be interesting how people build for it.

 

IT’S MORBIN’ TIME

 

Sounds like shaman
Dps archetype maybe? Or healing

Sounds fun

 

I personally think that when you get below 0 mana your spells will cost a part of your HP instead of mana. While I think that it would make rage builds way to overpowered, I think that the amount of health the spell cost is far too high to be some sort of an upgrade.

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Maybe you can sacrifice some of your health to buff yourself and teamates? Also yeah it's def for shaman

 

90% sure this means Slykaar is just a level 70 acolyte

 

@Sky~
exposed.

 

Archetypes revealed so far and the class they belong to:

Paladin - Warrior
Fallen - Warrior
Light Bender - Mage
Arcane Mage - Mage
Trapper - Archer
Sharpshooter - Archer
Acrobat - Assassin
Trickster - Assassin
Summoner - Shaman
Acolyte - Most Likely Shaman

I believe this is what we have so far, only 5 archetypes left to be revealed.

 

Some initial impressions of the dev livestream & changelog:

The two things I dislike the most are the changes to Uproot and Arrow Bomb. Uproot now no longer needs to directly hit a mob to control it, but instead of pulling by default, now pushes. Why? Uproot was always one of the more questionably designed spells in game but still had a nice synergy in combination with its kit that often went overlooked. Uproot was quite nice and useful for bringing mobs just barely outside your totem's AOE inside of it, whereas pushing mobs was rarely ever useful. Shaman gameplay revolved around your totem entirely, and keeping mobs out isn't particularly useful. You could sometimes use it to just barely inch your totem to a more favorable position, but this is a rare circumstance. Shaman does have low base defense and with the change to not needing a direct hit to pull/push mobs will likely turn it into a nice "get off me" button, but could also be counterintuitive if you already cycled uproot with aura and could potentially knock mobs away from your totem, especially with the removal of enclosure (we all know it used to be overpowered, but since CCI seems to be receiving no meaningful changes this update, it feels like beating a dead horse). I don't think the overall changes to the class justify the inversion.

The swap of arrow bomb and arrow storm is odd but by far the change that stands out to me the most in the entire update is the addition of self-damage to arrow bomb. Spells naturally have their own strengths and weaknesses and specific niches, but this is the first time a base spell gets a pure genuine downside. I really, really hate people trying to defend this change because it's either "logical" (seriously? a fictional game where you can take meteor strikes is allowed but not arrow bomb?) or is a "necessary downside" when archer getting in close to enemies is already a downside enough, when you have such low base defense like shaman. There's a lot of situations where you're forced into close quarter environments and need the AOE of arrow bomb to deal with large groups of enemies, and the seemingly small amount of self damage would add up really quickly. I also personally feel that the base class spells themselves shouldn't have such downsides, whereas the more gimmicky abilities from the new archetypes can.

Pretty much everything else regarding base class changes I do agree with though, especially the changes to war scream, meteor, aura, and teleport. I am confused about the change to charge however, as was nerfing its verticality really necessary? And the change to warrior's base defense at first glance seems really bad but I understand the fear it would be too strong in combination with its archetypes, albeit seeing it be equal to assassin is a bit weird. It still feels a bit too early on talk about how the archetypes will be balanced and play out since you can only really grasp that in actual gameplay and in conjunction with the overall change to mana, but at first glance I'm really digging Battle Monk/Boltslinger/Riftwalker & Arcanist/Shadestepper & Trickster/every shaman archetype.

Not much needs to be said about the mana and life-steal changes, as it's a pretty objectively good change. I've said what I wanted regarding Intelligence and mana overall, but the changes to defensive SP seems promising. One of my main criticisms about raids was the questionable stat balancing that felt inflated due to the existence of hypertank builds, and this change could potentially help with that issue if they actually rebalance things accordingly (including the future, not just release).

I hate to sound overly negative in all my posts on the forums, as I do believe this update looks pretty incredible and Salted/the entire CT deserve a lot of credit for what they've done, and I'm looking forward to both hero beta and the release.

 

holy shit I got that right

 

I mean you can still just shift to get it to pull.

 

I'm excited for Fallen Warrior (quadruple bash!), but since being Corrupted cancels healing, I'm worried about the future state of tanking. Defense and agility are both going to be nerfed (it auto-corrected to needed for some reason), plus warrior's base armor.

A lot of the new abilities seem to focus on damage too, and not so much healing.

- What kind of healing does being Corrupted block? All? Mage heals on you + potions + regen + steal? It might be a good idea to not be in the mode all the time, to regen and steal . . . I'm concerned about potions though, because Corrupted, depending on the healing blocked, and the time spent out of it, healing potions might be more of a necessity for sustain (it will probably be ideal to stay in Corrupted as much as possible, to maximize damage?) Corrupted might end up making some weird and potentially interesting playstyles.

- Other classes might have had similar things too that block healing. Like mage's Arcane class or whatever it was turning heal into mana.

Maybe I'll just focus on the Paladin archetype or something, but this update seems to be crippling tanks and sustain in favor of damage.

I'll have to reread some of the abilities to find some more tank upgrades, but that's just what I've noticed. I might be mistaking some things or what-not, or missing something.

Mixing archetypes might be insane, since it might provide opportunities to get out or away from things that you might not like, and instead create crazy combos. Sharpshooter's homing arrows on something like Boltslinger (unless they can't mix, like some of the abilities).

I guess I'll just have to wait and see how everything turns out, I'm both excited and concerned for the result. Balance might be a challenge for the devs, and some playstyles may be pounded into dust by the new abilities. (Seems heavily spell focused.)
Like melee playstyles, which will still be able to exist of course, but they may be overshadowed by all these new shiny spell abilities.

 

I think battle monk paladin will be meta so you get a helluva lot of tanking while still getting good damage

I think you’re right about fallen and pots. I don’t foresee fallen being played as much though. It’s just too risky. The people who like gma and stuff will play it though

Fallen will be a class where you heal to full before each fight then live or die by your dps

 

really excited for sharpshooter, just wish there was a perk where your arrows shot would turn into beams or something
would that cause insane lag?
yes
would that be cool with hmelee exploding?
Y E S

 

I mean that’s basically what Twain’s arc and Phantom Ray do

 

yeah but
its not for every melee :(

 

One of the revealed abilities was a mage spell that buffs melee, so I'm hoping melee will now be based around using spells for utility rather than just spamming left-click, especially with the intelligence changes.

 

From the looks of it they TECHNICALLY don't take damage, it's just you attacking something causes them to take damage that you can heal away. Basically kinda like a use amount that you can refresh.