State of the Bang - Post patch
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Hi; I'm Foreskin, rank 17 on the leaderboard, playing mostly solo and red. We need to talk about the patch and how it affected build diversity.
Melee was completely neutered. Swords/maces were not competitive builds prepatch but dagger and axes were. Rapier was borderline pre-patch and now it is the only viable melee build. Strength is now the weakest stat in the game.
The patch had 3 objectives: Slow inflation, Balance PVP, Give incentive to be in Aehren. The patch failed at 2/3 of these objectives and as far as PVP balance the build/stat layouts are far less diverse/competitive then pre-patch.
Life drain needed a big nerf. axes needed a very small nerf, daggers a very small nerf, and swords/maces needed a large buff to their t1s to make them competitive with dagger/axe. PER was in a decent spot because they do insane single target damage to people without shield talent(2h melee users) of now there are none. INT was in a good spot and needed no changes, maybe a slight buff to poison as it was very out of flavor with everyone having 1000 fortitude. WIS was too strong but mostly because of life steal. Nerfing mindstrike crit was a good change but the scaling was ok.
In the future you should reach out to players who are experienced in the meta before making such large changes. Its very hard to get a grasp on the state of the meta unless you put in several hours of fighting each day. It's going to be very hard to put in the hours necessary if you are also developing a game.
Still looking forward to what you have planned next.