Ice Gauntlet QoL:
- Swap Frozen Touch and Empowered Frost in the IG Builder Tree. Often you want to take Entombed with 2 abilities from the Ice Tempest Tree, but are forced to take Empowered Frost along the way even though you will not have the frost fields to trigger it, Frozen touch would be more generic here are better fit the defensive theme of dipping into tree to get Entombed.
- Swap the 2nd and 3rd abilities in the Entomb tree, due to the negative interaction with Healing Entomb. So basically if you break out (2nd Perk) it costs you mana, and therefore you can never trigger Healing Entomb. But as a Healing Entomb user you do want the cleanse (3rd Perk). If the cleanse was changed to the 2nd perk, then a Healing Entomb user can do 2 points deep to get what they need without wasting points on an ability they can never benefit from. Similarly a Break out (Strengthening Entomb) user who is obviously not using Healing Entomb can take all 3 perks and not be punished either.
Void Gauntlet QoL Feedback:
- Extending Suffering is very unreliable, as you have to land a Heavy auto attack and the target has to have been affected by a non-CC debuff that you have applied. With that situational unreliability, the payoff is not even much. 10% is nothing, you can even see this as Burning/Bleeding duration perks in the March PTR are being buffed to 30%. Extending Suffering needs to affect all non-CC debuff (not just ones you own), and it needs to have the percentage increased to at least 20-30%.
- Similarly Fervent Thirst, needs to trigger on any debuff, not just those you own. It is not like the Void Gauntlet creates that many debuffs, many are situational and close range. No other weapon that triggers off debuffs specifies that they need to be the owners debuffs, so why apply the unnecessary restriction on the Void Gauntlet (it is part of what is killing this whole tree).
- Essence Rupture needs to do proper damage when it connects, it cannot be a utility with little to no damage ability as the utility is very situational (your allies have to target that player) if no-one is targeting that player then this ability literally does nothing, because it does not even apply DoT dmg. If your opponent just dodges away then this ability has zero effect.
- Similarly Baleful Tether needs to do more damage (it has a 10% damage, which is useless can can also be dodged away). Both of these abilities do not make up for their lack of damage. The utility of these two don’t even come close to the utility of Gravity Well (pull, root, heal, fortify, 2 burst) or Shockwave (rend/weaken/stun), and those abilities do amazing damage as well.
- Slowing Tether is a terrible perk, and does not make sense. Why does it only apply for a few seconds, and not for the duration the tether is held. Everything other object based debuff/buff abilities e.g. Ice Storm, Ice Shower, Sacred Ground, Gravity Well, etc last for the object/field is maintained. So the Slowing Tether needs to be maintained as long as the Tether is mained… The slow also needs a massive buff, compare it to the slow of Gravity Well (that also roots and pulls) or just the majority of the slows in the game. As it is now the current Slowing Tether ability has no impact in game, if you land it on an opponent they are basically ignoring the slow due to duration and weak effect.
- Empowering Rupture is just as terrible, on Kill triggering perks on a support weapon and a support ability that does almost no damage is a joke. It should at the very least trigger on the end of ability, the same as its heal trigger. Or trigger on an assist, because you don’t have the damage to kill with the VG because it is now a support weapon.
- You cannot keep nerfing this weapon without buffing other aspects of it, it is already falling in popularity to Fire Staff / Ice Gauntlet (and FIre Staff is getting another buff in PTR).
- The Scream nerf to 1 sec, is too much… is has basically no effect… people can move before you recover to do you next attack. It is also useless as a disengage tool now, because Melee can just lunge to get close again. As a support weapon the VG now has no disengage or escape tool.
- The only usable build for VG now is to use Void Blade. You keep saying you want to push it to become a range support weapon, and utilize the second tree but there is no design changes to support it. The ranged build was more affected by the nerfs to Scream and Orb, than any other build was.
Broken “DoT” vs “Dot” code references:
The Bow Passive - Battle Precision:
“AbilityID”: “Passive_Bow_Skirmish_DebuffDur”
“TargetStatusEffectDurationCats”: “Debilitate,DoT”
This references “StatusEffectCategoriesList”: “DoT” where all the actual debuffs use “Dot” so this needs to be fixed.
Here is are examples of working abilities, where you can clearly see the use of “Dot”:
Vigor i.e. “AbilityID”: “Global_Armor_DurDot”,
“StatusEffectCategories”: “Dot”
250 INT Passive i.e. “AbilityID”: “Int_Bonus_250_1”
“TargetStatusEffectDurationCats”: “Dot”
Vigor vs Bloodletting/Bleeding
With the buffs to Bloodletting/Bleeding to 10-30% (which I think is good btw), you need to buff Vigor as well to maintain it as an option for counterplay.
Before it would take 2 pieces of Vigor to counteract 1 Ring perk (i.e. Bloodletting/Bleeding), now it will take 4 pieces of Vigor to counteract 1 ring perk. Vigor is already one of the weakest (most underused) debuff duration perks, so it needs to maintain it’s 2:1 counterplay.
Perks need to feel like they have impact, both offensively and defensively. This is why I think the changes to BLoodletting/bleeding is good, but the same philosophy needs to be applied to VIgor.
Fix: Double the current bonus of VIgor.
