(My introductory statement has been redacted as I have received new information about the state of proposed changes (most importantly that they are cancelled), but I still believe this talk about the game is one of value which is why I am leaving the thread up and being active in replies).
My immediate concern is group play. Due to the massive nerfs of buffs, group dps will be on a major decline. In addition, enemy debuffs will now no longer be able to be constantly or even reliably applied, making group dps and coordination, and confusion worse as well (resulting in much more death and perilous runs). A long time ago I had made a post about creating stasis indicators to deal with the problem of stasis timers screwing players, and seeing as how that to this day has not been fixed I am hard pressed to believe that the above will not be even more catastrophic than this.
Furthermore, I also think that removing immunities from bosses removes a lot of their identity, what makes them them. If you are able to stun the marble colossus on a tentacle phase or even in survival, has he not lost his identity? What makes the colossus different from say, Archdemon Malphas? The 3 seconds that he is unstunned and shoots out a few shots with the rocks? Of course this could be tinkered with, but it would be a very difficult balancing act that I could not see being healthy for boss fights on the whole, which I guess is one of the main bases of my complaints. With this rework, Deca is suggesting that fights are not only much longer, but operate mostly to entirely debuff timers which are impossible to know without extensive calling, if you knew when the ability was cast, or an indicator (which based on what I have said would be unlikely). This not only takes away a lot of the charm of these fights and the identity of these phases as previously stated (at least in my thinking), but it makes it even more tedious as they will now be less flavorful and longer. It is interesting to me that deca reworked the nest to fix the exact problem I am speaking about, but now have a goal of pushing the same nest that most people hated or at the least refused to do except on a global scale. If you disagree with this or believe it is false, feel free to respond in the comments (as with all of my points of contention in this post) and I will try to be as active on the thread as possible so that we have a productive discussion which hopefully makes a positive change towards the pending changes. I could potentially go into more detail with bosses, but I will spare that for potential future discussion in this thread. Next, I would like to take a look at the melee targeting here. Let’s face it, this update is a direct melee nerf with little to no compensation, and I am genuinely confused as to why. Were melees some of the best classes in the game? Absolutely, but why does this require a nerfing? The addition of wismod as well as buffs to suffering classes was something that helped them catch up from their previously obsolete nature and were unanimously well received, so I do not understand why a similar approach is not being taken again. If other classes were buffed, it would go another long way towards balancing and also not ruin the feel or actual gameplay of group / other classes like I feel this nerf does. I have no understanding as to why they felt mitigation had to receive a 10% decrease, or why they had to ruin the power of basically every enemy debuff (which is a global nerf, not just one to melees, making these classes worse as well), as they will have very fringe use or be a shell of what they used to be with these changes (with little to no compensation) Paladin is basically its former self before the rework that made it good, warrior is being significantly nerfed, and knight I would argue is now an unviable class.
In regards to Vitmod, most of the time that immunity will not be useful as you will only be hit by that shot enough for it to apply between immunities, but on the whole I am glad to see vitality becoming a useful stat that is beneficial (although I do take issue in how weak it is, why do enemies get a 100% immunity while players require 75 to even get half of that (especially when only 3 classes meet 75 naturally and only 2 more are realistically eligible to get to 75)?
I apologize for my thoughts not being well collected, I am running dungeons as I am posting this and cannot pay full attention to it. I will do my best to remain active on the thread and I encourage all of you realmers to as well.
TL;DR
- Basing bosses around debuff timers makes many bosses lose integrity
- Massively nerfing group DPS makes many bosses lose integrity (see The Nest 1.0 as this is literally no different than if it was a small nest group then, as you are effectively cutting down the player size with this change)
- Basing bosses around debuff timers allows for trolling to not only be very easy but potentially very impactful with the dps nerfs, especially in important locations like The Void
- Classes should be buffed to compete with other classes, this has been done once and worked wonderfully. Now we are nerfing two out of viability (the paladin and knight) with the warrior seeing a fairly strong hit to it as well? Unless deca is just intending for the game to be pushed to WizardOTMG, I do not see how this is productive to any goal. (Please don’t nerf wizard just because I said that)
P.S: I do not consider “It is still in testing” or “It is part of a bigger class rework” as talking points and will not be responding to them, as it is very clear to see what direction this is being taken in and I have already produced alternative ideas for full class changes or etc.
And one final note I forgot to add, I do not see how a class being important to a group is a bad thing, and it is certainly not just the melees who fill this role. I am about done talking for my initial post, reply and discuss.