PTR findings and first impressions

oOKIWIOo wrote: 4 months ago

Schnorki wrote: 4 months ago

7 minutes.
Over 7 f'in minutes.
Multiple belts worth of full rejuvs and over 7 f'in minutes of constant channeling.

That's how long it took to bind Heph just now...
In a summoner build with full Death Mark to max out bind chance...
F these Bind Demon channel changes, srsly!
Honestly one of the dumbest things ever.

Was this one try in a game? I thought I have read that if you fail to bind the demon you have to make a new game and try again. Is this really the case?

Same game. 7+ minute channel.
It just feels like you need to make a new game and start from scratch because that's how dumb it is now.
Did the same thing on a different lock shortly thereafter, took 5+ minutes that time.
Dumbest. Mechanic. Ever.

And yes, target was injured the entire time...no change in health bar, just mindless idiotic channeling after being forced to kill your merc and defiler/terrain abuse to even be able to channel for that long uninterrupted and without accidentally killing the stupid demon.

Flyhorse wrote: 4 months ago

There are more bad news besides taking so long to bind Hephasto the Armorer. Although the health cap of the bound demon is unknown, but one thing is for sure. He doesn't stand a chance to tank Uber Mephisto and Colossal Ancients on PTR. This means Blood Oath is also garbage now as well, the + x % to life to demon is nerfed due to the health cap.

Note: This is tested on P1 offline. 10 hard point in Blood Oath, max on Bind Demon.

Well, that part I wouldn't consider bad news.
Bind Demon tanking and esp. Hephasto tanking was insane and absurdly OP. That absolutely deserved a significant nerf. Now, at least against uber-types, you actually need to babysit him a bit but you can absolutely still keep him alive through the fight. And that'll become easier again if/when they unbreak sigil:lethargy so the slow works again.

In normal play, against basically everything else (including most heralds) they're still insanely tanky to the point of largely not even needing to have a keybind for Engorge as you never need to heal him back up anyways.

I hate to sound like a whiner, but here goes. Need to whine is now fully charged at 100%.

On multiple tries I just can not bind Hephasto, period. A few times it was taking so long he eventually dies by summon & merc. Rinse & repeat over and over. I could get a Baal wave 5 minion, but....

Absolutely annoyed that the 2 auras I wanted and need are now removed. Firelock uses Conviction & ES uses Might. The ES will be easier to change up, but my Firelock enjoyed Conviction from Baal minion. It was simply fun for me

sbn wrote: 4 months ago

[..] ES uses Might. [..]

You're replacing lvl 14 might with lvl 12 conc now assuming non-TZ, 16 with 14 if TZ96. In both cases, you get >30% more ED out of the new conc than the old might. That's a straight up buff, even ignoring the fact that you can just snag might off of your A2 merc on top and don't need to Sacrifice his weapon dmg for a Pride to get conc anymore.

Builds differed slightly and it was more of a random side impression so take with grain of salt but it seemed like the health Cap thing actually somehow made (some) super uniques worse than other options.

Specifically, a random normal mob dark lancer seemed to actually survive more than hephasto now. Some variation in skill points, yes, which might have an impact, but neither was on a full summoner so it shouldn't have been all that significant. Will take a closer look at the comparison whenever I get around to it though at the same time, it might not be worth actively comparing until we get the actual patch (with presumably further tweaking/changes).