Dev Blog: The Life and Death of Charged Pig

[alleryn]

It's about the cancel culture that's seeped it's way into the forums.

I hope this doesn't come across as antagonistic; i certainly don't intend it that way, but i do feel a bit defensive about this remark.

I find it a mischaracterization to say that considering nerfs on something that may be overpowered is anything like cancel culture. If anything, i would argue, it's the opposite.

It seems we are currently on the road to eliminate ('cancel') the possibility of warden/druid because druid is too fitting (or perhaps too strong) a companion skill for warden, crowding out other possibilities in the ecosystem. There's nothing inherently wrong about that notion to eliminate, but suggesting that an investigation into ways to preserve the possibility of that combination is somehow 'cancel culture' feels off the mark to me.

It may be that there are good and interesting reasons to eliminate certain combinations of skills as possibilities, but all things being equal, i find that more strategic possibilities offer more to think about and more interesting choices to make. If the reason for eliminating one possible combination is that it is overshadowing smaller shrubs and stealing their light, then i think there may be a better solution that digging up the tree altogether.

Especially when one considers the irony that the archetype that is often synonymous with balance (the druid) may be the one that is causing that balance to be disrupted, i find it hard to fathom why the notion of attempting to preserve that balance could be seen as cancel culture. Rather preserving the balance ensures a diversity that allows everything to survive and indeed to thrive, so that nothing must be canceled.

Anyways, that's how i see it, sorry if this turned into a borderline rant or felt like an attack in any way. As i said, this remark made me feel a bit defensive and i wanted to try to explain how i felt it was a misrepresentation.

[Tandiril]

I think Druid + warden is so popular because people love thorns.

I agree with this and I think it's the core issue here. People love thorns and similar skills for a reason, they are simply too strong at the moment.

These responder skills:
- are long time active
- deal active skill level damage on a hit by hit basis for no cost after activation
- undermine the AoE restriction
- are considered indirect damage and therefore ->
- completely ignore armor

The only downside is that you have to get damaged, which is always the case when running solo, so you need some healing (hello Druid in this case). Therefore I think some points in this list need some tweaking. Personally I am fine with the first 3 points, it makes Thorns and companions worth using. Marking it as indirect enables various treasure mods to boost them as well, which is probably intended, but makes them borderline imo (makes no sense to me anyway, enemy has spikes, I hit it directly, spikes hurt me -> how is this not direct? not comparable to a dot for example, but w/e). The armor ignoring component then shoots it over the top. I had fights with my rather fresh warden (30-40) against enemies that I could have never ever even scratched due to their armor. But with decent healing you simply watch the enemy kill themselves, while you see all the "No Damage" messages from all your other skills.

Yes Warden and Druid have other nice synergies as well for each other, and personally I am not a fan of it lorewise anyway, but in the end maybe these skills should be revisited first before specific combat abilities are nerfed because of them.

tl;dr: check Thorns first, personal 2 cents: either direct damage or armor ignore but not both.