Updates to mosaic - implementation?

Hi all,

that there are changes coming to Mosaic is semi-confirmed with no further details about when/what.
New mosaics are easy to change, but how about the existing ones? I'm wondering how blizzard has changed items in the past.
Have they "re-rolled" items based on new stats before?

The patches I remember that changed old items kept the existing items as they were before (you had to drop/crete a new item to get the new stats).
But they might do something different in new patches...

Aye, they used to keep old items as legacy gear back in the day.
So...stock up on mosaics now for infinite Wealth post-change I guess.

Thing is..it might end up more of an assassin change than a Mosaic change in which case that won't do anything.
Mosaics themselves are inherently rather impossible to balance. They're either insanely OP (i.e. what we have now) because they give infinite finishers to a class built around needing to

Charge up finishers and hence be unable to spam them. Or they're basically useless (as they were on the PTR, before they got buffed to a combined 100%) because they can't be relied upon, meaning you need to keep your original rotation anyways as hits and all are too quick to actually "respond as things happen". And even if you remove literally every single other stat from mosaics, keeping only the auto-refresh, they'd still be just as OP as they are now.
So really, the only way to balance Mosaic sins is to balance the sin itself, working around the assumption of finishers being spammed, rather than actual finishers.

That could (but really shouldn't be) nerfing the damage output of finishers to bring Mosaic in line which in turn would make non-Mosaic sins even more useless than they were before.
Or it could (far better solution imo) be simply adding a cooldown to each finishing move, limiting how often it can actually trigger. That'd allow for (hard) nerfing of mosaics as the spam goes away while still keeping the benefit of not needing to deal with

Charge up skills and it wouldn't affect non-Mosaic sins too much (if at all) as they need

Charge-up time in between anyways and hence won't hit a timer limit all too often.

Then again, all of that "we'll rebalance Mosaic" talk is brought to you by the same people who claim they're always actively watching and continuously balancing things while having touched hardly anything since release and literally nothing but a EULA wording change in what now? Over 2 years? Equally good chance that Mosaic rebalancing will simply be "nothing at all".

There are so many Mosaics in the wild, I can't see them nerfing it in a way that doesn't effect existing ones. Changing only newly rolled ones will leave untold numbers out there continuing to break the game.

I believe they will make some type of server side change that will either effect the math and calculations or how the charges are gained/ consumed.

Then again, Mosaics are different. Previous game breaking items were just one item. However Mosaic becomes broken once you equip two of them. The easiest way to nerf these would be to make it so you can only equip one at a time. It would still be GG, but not so game breaking.

But then again, as Schnorki said - if you nerf it in any real meaningful way, it would probably become another trash runeword...

look at

Arkaine's Valor and several other ex-legendary item, it change the past. (even if

Eth full status, it still lost to chain of Honor/popular runewords)
if they want to nerf weapon, it will change the past timeline.
on the contrast, if they want to buff some item, like barbarian set sword, it will only change the future!

Schnorki wrote: 4 months ago

Then again, all of that "we'll rebalance Mosaic" talk is brought to you by the same people who claim they're always actively watching and continuously balancing things while having touched hardly anything since release and literally nothing but a EULA wording change in what now? Over 2 years? Equally good chance that Mosaic rebalancing will simply be "nothing at all".

Well, there was the official Q&A for the impending official D2R release in China, and one of the two people answering questions said straight up that Mosaic will be rebalanced. No details were of course provided. But I guess that's the people you were referring to

I have read many ideas what to do about Mosaic and martial art skill tree.

As Mosaic player myself. I dont think nerfing dmg to even 20% would change anything.

They should totally redesign entire martial art tree.

Fist of Fire,

Blades of Ice,

Claws of Thunder and

Tiger Strike should work in same way as

Phoenix Strike does. You get 2charges, you get one attack bonus. With all those you get all 3. - I dont think this would still fix a problem, but its a good start.

Problem is that assa can have every single

Charge active at same time.

Dumb solution: allow only one

Charge at one time - you use

Phoenix Strike and when add charges of

Tiger Strike, you will drop those

Phoenix Strike charges. Then whats good amount of charges you can have at same time? 1? 2? 3? 4? All would change nothing.

I do use tiger,

Blades of Ice,

Claws of Thunder,

Phoenix Strike and

Cobra Strike. If it was reduced to 4 I would drop

Cobra Strike and I would use draculs. If it would be reduce to 3 I would drop

Tiger Strike. And my dmg would be basicly same as it is now.

Other way I think better way is to make maximum level of Martial Art skills to 40 with half dmg. So new 40 would be as strong as current 20. With this you would have to balance how u spent skill points. But here is one problem. After my last respec. I didnt know what to do with last 33skill points. So with 33unspent skill points I cleared easily p8 TZ96 CS and did p2 ubers. Honestly I didnt see much of a difference in kill speed.

If they would change Mosaic (I really hope they will), they should remove "charges will be dropped after 15sec of not attacking" and add that 50% chance not to drop charges to all

Claws, keep Mosaic RW as it is with +elemental dmg, but it would give us options to use other

Claws, which are pretty much useless, and to have +6skills from dual claw, it would still be competitive to +30% elemental dmg.

I know you will hate me for saying it, but it would also has to come with fixing current dmg. Doing one change without the other will end up in martial art unusable.

Because current Mosaic sin is super stupid:
If you havent seen this video, pause video and check what skills MrLlamma is using and which one he has skill points in. Check his gear, yes he has some skillers with life, but because of wrongly invested skills and not ideal gear he is missing a lot. And she still kills.


Look at all casters and compare it to every single non caster build:
1) bowazon: she needs to buy

Arrows/

Bolts, which wont give anything. Imagine those would be blue, rare and legandary and even RW. How game would be changed if bowazon could use

Arrows with 20IAS and +100ED?
2) Fury druid and

Frenzy barb and Mosaic. All of those needs to attack every X second in order not to lose charges

I am not even talking about AoE dmg which has only casters + Mosaic.

Mosaic has been here for almost 2 years (if I am not mistaken), it is heavily discussed topic within community, so all Blizzard has to do is implement those ideas. We do have PTR right?

But as I know blizzard, they will do everything they can to force you to uninstall D2r and pay for D4 instead...

I am afraid that this China version will be "new game" totally different one, even chinese government has rule: no skeletons, no blood. And they dont care about skills and stuff...

I really think Blizzard will see milions of Chinese players buying game and they will update their version of D2r, leaving entire world in rear mirror without anything.

I think blizzard wont do anything regarding nerfing and fixing Mosaic sin. After all what is being whispered within D2r community are just rumours that Blizzard would actually do something...

For the information we collect and possibility of nerf. I recommend to sell very expensive one in hand and buy another several okay 3-5 mosaics back in hand.

If nerf happen, you just

Dodge silver bullet with cost 5 mosaics. If it doesnt happen, you can sell back those 5 at original price and pay a little bit to get back godly two.

With okay mosaics, you still able to play with similar performance, just not perfect.

===About chinese version,

As for what I understand , there are many chinese already play here. They will buy it and blizzard sales will be just ok.
Likely the thing , if chinese version open to us, will you buy new account and play there just to experience balance mosiae and new set?
I think it is likely 10% of us will do that. For chinese, if they know this game and not play here, maybe. It is likely 30% of player come back from afk.
Then 1 week later, half gone. Chinese have no patience to play old game like this. Like they do to many other game, massive come , quickly leave and botting auto play.

Chinese AI is very advance now, I see they build something without need human to play this game. Mostly , on a4 diablo, unique and essence run.
That might the reason runes is worthless in chinese local market.

leox wrote: 4 months ago

look at

Arkaine's Valor and several other ex-legendary item, it change the past. (even if

Eth full status, it still lost to chain of Honor/popular runewords)
if they want to nerf weapon, it will change the past timeline.
on the contrast, if they want to buff some item, like barbarian set sword, it will only change the future!

It wholly depends on how the change would be implemented. Both buffs and nerfs can be either applied to new items only (all LD and only newly found/created NLD, assuming they are available in NLD), or retroactively with a data fix, affecting existing NLD items as well.

Omg, it's about time

If it really goes through ma6be I will hop back on for ladder.

Seriously would like to know the thought process from the person / team who came up with Mosaic. One runeword boosted assas to top tier from bottom..

ShadowHeart wrote: 4 months ago

[..]
But I guess that's the people you were referring to

Indeed they are.

Semirotta wrote: 4 months ago

Seriously would like to know the thought process from the person / team who came up with Mosaic. One runeword boosted assas to top tier from bottom..

IIrc, the initial version on the PTR had a ~40% chance to retain charges. Lllama called this useless as it wouldn't change much (and possibly correctly so) and said they'd have to turn it up to 100% in total in order to make an impact.
We don't know for sure if that was the reason to bump it to 50%, but if it was, the reason for it being the way it is was them listening to the feedback from the community.

SuperIllu wrote: 4 months ago

Semirotta wrote: 4 months ago

Seriously would like to know the thought process from the person / team who came up with Mosaic. One runeword boosted assas to top tier from bottom..

IIrc, the initial version on the PTR had a ~40% chance to retain charges. Lllama called this useless as it wouldn't change much (and possibly correctly so) and said they'd have to turn it up to 100% in total in order to make an impact.
We don't know for sure if that was the reason to bump it to 50%, but if it was, the reason for it being the way it is was them listening to the feedback from the community.

Most likely the so called "nerf" or "balance" is nothing or very little change and eventually makes no difference and keeps it being broken OP. They just like to pretend that something is done to keep the players quiet for a short while

Semirotta wrote: 4 months ago

Most likely the so called "nerf" or "balance" is nothing or very little change and eventually makes no difference and keeps it being broken OP. They just like to pretend that something is done to keep the players quiet for a short while

It resembles me 1.13 "balance" patch:

Blizzard wrote:

Blessed Hammer - No longer ignores resistances of undead and demons.

The most OP build ever before Mosaic became unable to kill... 3 monsters in the entire game.

The difficult part for this nerf, if they build this nerf in new china server, people may come back to play paladin/bar/amzn as melee fighter. It looks to me that they will build this in new china server and get feedback to change it in our server.

worest case is that people dump claw, like

Blessed Hammer, my brother quit because he play

Blessed Hammer and have only that. And back to trap style, LS blue claw.

I mean they could just reduce the amount of splashy sparkles on the combos and lower the dmg / rate of which they trigger. That would be a huge thing already. It just deals so much dmg in so short time and is so easily maintained at maximum potential. Its just so overpowered, at least with hammerdin you can still die to enemies while fighting and its quite slow to cast around. Assa just kicks like no tomorrow or ligaments in the legs.
Perhaps make the runeword more expensive instead of being so cheap for being so op. No other OP runewords are that cheap.

Semirotta wrote: 4 months ago

I mean they could just reduce the amount of splashy sparkles on the combos and lower the dmg / rate of which they trigger. That would be a huge thing already. It just deals so much dmg in so short time and is so easily maintained at maximum potential. Its just so overpowered, at least with hammerdin you can still die to enemies while fighting and its quite slow to cast around. Assa just kicks like no tomorrow or ligaments in the legs.
Perhaps make the runeword more expensive instead of being so cheap for being so op. No other OP runewords are that cheap.

The price change doesnt work, even if it is 6

Jah or 6

Zod.
The other thing I think you can recommend it to blizzard, but even if things work as you expected, many assassain player doesnt agree.
Include me, I havent get one but thinks assassin should play like now.
Anyway, the change is unstoppable. Luckily, I am just about to pay big thing to buy a good two.

leox wrote: 4 months ago

Semirotta wrote: 4 months ago

I mean they could just reduce the amount of splashy sparkles on the combos and lower the dmg / rate of which they trigger. That would be a huge thing already. It just deals so much dmg in so short time and is so easily maintained at maximum potential. Its just so overpowered, at least with hammerdin you can still die to enemies while fighting and its quite slow to cast around. Assa just kicks like no tomorrow or ligaments in the legs.
Perhaps make the runeword more expensive instead of being so cheap for being so op. No other OP runewords are that cheap.

The price change doesnt work, even if it is 6

Jah or 6

Zod.
The other thing I think you can recommend it to blizzard, but even if things work as you expected, many assassain player doesnt agree.
Include me, I havent get one but thinks assassin should play like now.
Anyway, the change is unstoppable. Luckily, I am just about to pay big thing to buy a good two.

Cost of it COULD work in a way that it slows down how quickly people have it. Right now season begins and it takes 1 hour and people are running with the Mosaic already... Thats just insane.
Blizzard doesnt care recommendations unless its coming from some whale streamers.

I dont plan to play this kind of build, never was into melee assassin to begin with but this just made it so stupid I dont even want to try it anymore. Trapsin ftw :3

Semirotta wrote: 4 months ago

leox wrote: 4 months ago

Semirotta wrote: 4 months ago

I mean they could just reduce the amount of splashy sparkles on the combos and lower the dmg / rate of which they trigger. That would be a huge thing already. It just deals so much dmg in so short time and is so easily maintained at maximum potential. Its just so overpowered, at least with hammerdin you can still die to enemies while fighting and its quite slow to cast around. Assa just kicks like no tomorrow or ligaments in the legs.
Perhaps make the runeword more expensive instead of being so cheap for being so op. No other OP runewords are that cheap.

The price change doesnt work, even if it is 6

Jah or 6

Zod.
The other thing I think you can recommend it to blizzard, but even if things work as you expected, many assassain player doesnt agree.
Include me, I havent get one but thinks assassin should play like now.
Anyway, the change is unstoppable. Luckily, I am just about to pay big thing to buy a good two.

Cost of it COULD work in a way that it slows down how quickly people have it. Right now season begins and it takes 1 hour and people are running with the Mosaic already... Thats just insane.
Blizzard doesnt care recommendations unless its coming from some whale streamers.

I dont plan to play this kind of build, never was into melee assassin to begin with but this just made it so stupid I dont even want to try it anymore. Trapsin ftw :3

From past experience, even whale streamers, not work. Probably if there is USD lure, something good for money, or big shareholder recommendation.
Currently blizzard is owned by china. The share change to china/some not speakable china holder looks like neutral institution.

Anyway, trap is like old days, people here , if wana to continue play assassin, should start looking for light-S trap claw.
I havent check the price, it should be much cheaper compare the world that I came from, no Mosaic exist world.