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AstralCodex -> Why Ice Scythe was okay, really - on Ice Scythe adjustments and the "dominance" of Ice (2/14/2021 15:37:08)
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I've seen a lot of takes on the two recent ice scythe adjustments on discord, and I'd like to first give some history and talk about how large an effect the two adjustments actually were. Then, I'll lay out why I think the original ice scythe (and the 2/13 version) were fine, balance-wise, and why the recent 2/13 nerf was unnecessary and probably leads to less interesting gameplay overall.
Pre 2/5 Ice Scythe and the "dominance" of ice
From its release until the recent slate of balance changes, Ice Scythe (+ SF ice) was the premier "offensive" weapon special. The ability to increase the damage of your attacks by ~30% for 5 turns on a 5% proc was a bigger damage boost than basically anything else. If you were playing a decent hit-count class, were fighting an Inn boss that wasn't a Dragon, Human, or resisted ice or had an elemental weakness to anything else, you were probably better off using Ice Scythe if you wanted to maximize your average damage. This was made doubly true because of a slate of enemies that resisted good/evil, rendering Apotheosis (and Verraad/Uragiri switching) less useful.
That being said, there were still downsides to using ice. Chief among them is that Ice had no +10 -20 weapon from the Inn, meaning the best weapon you could use was Soulforged Scythe (colloquially known as SF Ice), which has markedly worse stats than the +10 -20 weapons. For example, compared to Exalted Apotheosis, the best non rare "neutral" weapon, using SF Ice means you give up 2 MPM, 5 crit, 8 of each mainstat, 5 bonus, 9 LUK, 9 CHA, -20 health, and 5 average base damage. (You do gain 4 more BPD, but this isn't worth very much.) These are not small sacrifices, especially not the base damage and -health. A 100% attack button with SF Ice deals 183.17 damage with 200 STR + standard BiS Gear, an attack button with Apotheosis did 195.26 average - this represents a 6.6% increase in damage if you use Apotheosis over SF Ice. Similarly, Ultimate Destiny and Jade Cleaver (the next best offensive +10 inn weapons) also dealt around 4% more damage than SF Ice.
This presented a trade-off to players using medium hit-count classes - where you willing to give up a consistent damage increase and better stats of Apotheosis as well as other slotted specials, to get SF Ice + Ice scythe and gamble for a small chance of higher damage? Obviously, super low hit count classes like Cryptic or were better off using, and low damage low-hitcount classes like Pirate or Ninja were better off with 4oJ dot weapons. And super high hitcount classes like Archivist are going to use ice scythe regardless. But if you were playing, say, Necromancer or DoomKnight or Technomancer or even Ranger, this posed an interesting trade-off that had answers greatly depending on the mechanics of the boss in question. That being said, a solution that many people eventually came up with was to use the Corrupted Seven to get 5 or 6 turns of -30 ice, and burst one boss, and then swap back to Apotheosis or another weapon with better stats for the second boss.
The 2/5 Adjustment
Last Friday, on 2/5, Ice Scythe received an adjustment that reduced its duration to 3, but increased the proc chance to 10%. While many people thought this was a nerf, the truth is more complicated.
First, the *average* uptime of Ice Scythe was not actually impacted by very much - if anything, it was *slightly* increased:
[image]https://i.imgur.com/hzDNSmT.png[/image]
This is because the duration was decreased by slightly less than the proc chance was increased.
Similarly, the damage of ice scythe + SF ice was slightly increased as well as a result.
[image]https://i.imgur.com/kcUHTMx.png[/image]
Note that the increase of either damage or uptime is incredibly slight - permanently slotting ice scythe with a 4 hit-count class leads to a 1.6% damage increase, for example.
So clearly, the average damage wasn't significantly impacted, but the adjustment did impact how ice scythe was used in practice. First, the "proc ice scythe once with a high hitcount skill, then swap slotted specials" strat ate a well deserved nerf. Ice scythe now required more of a commitment, and couldn't be as easily incorporated into broken 3 show special rotations. (Except on Archivist or Epochs, of course, but extra-turn high hitcount classes are their own can of worms.) This also acted as a very slight nerf to high hitcount classes like Chaosweaver or AExo, which is honestly fine.
Second, however, the consistency of the weapon was increased, in terms of getting the effect at all. With a 5% proc, the chances of getting the effect at all on low hit-count classes was not particularly good:
[image]https://i.imgur.com/DxjSsrX.png[/image]
This led to some high variance fights - either you proc'ed it early, and got -30 ice for 5 turns, then swapped away to Hammer or an on-hit heal, or you didn't proc it at all and never got the benefit.
After the proc rate increase, however, the chances of not proc'ing it early were basically halved:
[image]https://i.imgur.com/R4gDFAD.png[/image]
From a player perspective, this a very welcome change, as now it's easier to plan around getting a proc on lower hitcount classes (even though the overall uptime is about the same in long fights).
The 2/13 nerf
Yesterday, on the 2/13 release, Ice Scythe's proc rate was reverted back to 5% (while still keeping a 3 turn duration). This was actually a massive nerf to ice scythe's uptime, compared with either the 5% 5 turn or 10% 3 turn versions:
[image]https://i.imgur.com/uHHiZJ2.png[/image]
This also translates to a substantial average damage nerf:
[image]https://i.imgur.com/ZhhPSls.png[/image]
While before, the majority of meta classes faced the choice between higher average damage and better stats/more consistency, it's basically just the super high hitcount classes that face this choice now. (As a side effect, this also ended up being a substantial damage nerf to basically every class, which is probably unintended. For example, 4 hit classes that were using ice scythe lost ~7.7% of their damage.)
Was the "Dominance" of Ice really a problem?
I think I'm not alone among players (let alone endgame players) when I say that I thought the 2/5 ice scythe was fairly balanced. Of the things that people complained about in terms of balance, people were mainly upset about 1) Hamsters, 2) Guests, 3) Epochs, 4) rares, and 5) whatever their pet class was that was unbalanced, in that order.
That being said, before the 2/5 adjustment, Verly had expressed concerns about the "dominance" of ice on Discord, probably based on data on the prevalence of ice scythe's usage. And I think that these concerns were not unfounded - after all, the choices on "neutral" bosses were basically Ice Scythe + SF Ice and whatever the best stat stick is (these days it's Apotheosis, for many people it's Gloom Glaive) + generic show specials.
That being said, I'll say that I really don't think the fact that SF + Ice Scythe is competitive with Apotheosis is really a problem. Except for when bosses have resistances, which particular element you use is basically just flavor. Ice Scythe was particularly cool because it presented a compelling reason to use Ice over other elements, even despite SF Ice being worse stat-wise than many alternatives. Similarly, nerfing Ice Scythe doesn't do much to break up the dominance of SF Ice and Apotheosis/Gloom Glaive - if anything, it would further cement the dominance of Apotheosis and Gloom Glaive! Instead of its stated goal of increasing the variety of elements, the ice scythe nerf brings the elements closer together and makes them less unique.
As an endgame player, I really like DragonFable's endgame challenges because it presents impactful choices. Should I try to aggressive, or should I turtle? Should I try to stack MPM for this boss, or should I use the ordinary all res gear? Which of these mechanically unique and interesting classes should I play? Should I use SF Ice + Ice Scythe, and give up on stats and hand part of my fate to the rng gods, or should I use Apotheosis for better stats and more freedom of slotted specials? This nerf greatly simplifies the last choice, and makes DragonFable *slightly* less interesting in my opinion.
A better fix in my opinion would be to introduce other show specials that differentiate elements. For example, perhaps energy could get an -res slotted special with higher proc chance but smaller effect, and water could get a better on-hit heal than BoA that only proc's if you have a water weapon equipped. Similarly, Light and Wind got -res on-attack specials that help differentiate them from other elements. There's a lot of space here for unique designs, and I have a lot of confidence that Verly will come up with interesting mechanics in this space!
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If anyone wants to reproduce my results, feel free to run this Colab Notebook.
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