Raekor, Marauder, and Sunwuko Sets To Receive Changes In Next 2.1.2 PTR Patch

by JR Cook - 9 years ago     show comments

In what can only be accurately described as an onslaught of news, Community Representative Nevalistis took to the forums just moments ago to discuss several facets of coming changes to the popular Raekor, Marauder, and Sunwuko sets. The most shocking and likely pleasing change is set for The Legacy of Raekor.

The Legacy of Raekor

In the current game, The Legacy of Raekor is the most popular Barbarian set, known for its devastating ability to clear trash mobs with superior area-of-effect (AOE) capabilities granted through the unlocking of every rune of Furious Charge. Here’s how the set looks if you log in right now:

The major complaint regarding this set is one that nearly everyone should be familiar with. While, yes, the set provides for amazing AOE, it does nothing for Barbarians’ woeful single-target damage output. As a result, some of the “scandal” regarding Conduit Pylons in Greater Rifts can be attributed directly to Barbs and the use of this set. Rather than focus on that, however, the developers have instead looked to provide additional ways to increase potential damage in the set. Here’s the proposed change that will be live after the next patch to the 2.1.2 Patch Test Realm (PTR):

• The Legacy of Raekor
  • 2-piece bonus: The first enemy hit by Furious Charge takes 100% additional damage.
  • 4-piece bonus: Furious Charge gains the effect of every rune.
  • 5-piece bonus: Enemies hit by Furious Charge take 3000% weapon damage over 3 seconds.

This represents a huge buff not only to the damage done to that monster that takes the first Furious Charge hit, but also with the addition of the damage-over-time (DOT) mechanic. Before we analyze this change, we have to discuss another change coming to Barbarians, which represents the second, perhaps lesser known problem with this set. It sucks in groups. Literally, the Barbarian currently charges ahead of the group, sucking all of the mobs up in his/her wake due to the rune effect of Dreadnought. Here are the runes of Furious Charge as they exist in the live environment:

While Dreadnought represents amazing clear speed for the Barbarian, it leaves the other party members feeling useless, never able to catch up and deal damage and as much was being expressed by the community on the official forums. This is where Nevalistis jumped in to note a coming change to Dreadnought:

Posted by Starbird

Sets should provide synergy within a party, not troll the party.

This is actually pretty offensive to us as well, but we don’t think the problem is with the concept of Raekor’s. When you observe the gameplay as a teammate, it kind of reminds you of that kid on the playground who would take the ball and run with it rather than passing it around and letting the other kids play with him.

That’s not a great feeling, especially for the rest of the party. It doesn’t live up to the spirit of multiplayer or create good teamwork opportunities. We’re looking to fix this by redesigning the Dreadnought rune and the Raekor’s set. Here’s the current plan:

• Furious Charge
  • Dreadnought
    • Has been redesigned. Now grants Furious Charge two charges.

The gameplay of zipping back and forth across the screen and dealing huge amounts of damage is a lot of fun, and we want to preserve that. What we want to combat is how this gameplay was downright incompatible with multiplayer. Rather than charging forever forward, it should feel good to charge through existing groups before moving on to the next pack, and it’ll be even better if your buddies line ’em up for you to knock back down. This change should be in the next PTR patch, which we’re hoping to get to you shortly. We look forward to seeing your feedback!

What does this all mean for the Barbarian? I perceive it to be all upside. With the pull being taken away from Dreadnought, it’s true that their clear times with trash mobs might be hurt. However, because of the new 5-piece bonus in Raekor, it’s possible that Barbarians will simply adopt a new playstyle where they leave baddies in their wake to die off screen to the DOT, almost similar to Vanilla Diablo III where Barbarians ran through areas leaving Rend and tornadoes from Sprint – Run Like the Wind to clean up the mobs behind them.

What’s undeniably a major upside is the boost to single-target damage. The 2-piece redesign makes it so that when the Barbarian is down to just one enemy (read as Greater Rift Guardians), their damage output won’t become instantly pitiful as they will always be dealing double damage with their Furious Charges. Combining this with the fact that Barbarians would also be gimped in single target scenarios since they couldn’t utilize the Merciless Assault rune effectively anymore, the change to Dreadnought offsets that issue. Providing an extra charge should allow Barbarians to do more active and effective DPS in those one-on-one situations.

I think Barbs have much to celebrate here.

Monkey King’s Garb

Monks have been in an odd spot for quite some time. Relegated to zero DPS builds during early Reaper of Souls days, they searched high and low for a way to compete with the other classes and deal some damage. Enter Monkey King’s Garb. The set as it exists on the live servers right now is as follows:

While the 4-piece bonus is clearly quite powerful and provides for good damage, its activation made for an unbelievably awful gameplay experience. Seasoned Monks would speak of hand cramps from having to spam their keys for hours on end as they tried to fight the evils of Sanctuary. As a result, the set was redesigned to the following, which is currently available for testing on the PTR as you read this:

• Changes to the Monkey King’s Garb set
  • Philosophy Note: With only some minor adjustments to supporting gear, build, and playstyle, Monks with four pieces of the updated Monkey King’s Garb should be able to match or even exceed their previous best Greater Rift time and level. With a complete optimization of the new Set bonuses, Monks should easily (or at least reliably) exceed their previous best Greater Rift time and level.
  • Has been redesigned:
    • (2) Set Bonus
      • Casting Cyclone Strike, Exploding Palm, Lashing Tail Kick, Tempest Rush, or Wave of Light causes a decoy to spawn that taunts nearby enemies and then explodes for 1000% weapon damage
      • Decoy explosion now deals the damage type of your highest +% Elemental Damage

• (4) Set Bonus
  • Enemies hit by the decoy explosion take 500% more damage from your Cyclone Strike, Exploding Palm, Lashing Tail Kick, Tempest Rush, and Wave of Light abilities for 3 seconds

Suddenly, Monks are much happier. The mind-numbing, pain-inducing habits of the original design were replaced for a more fluid combat style, one where Monks feel like they have control of their characters again and are more predictably (and increasingly) dictating the damage output. To continue in this vein, Nevalistis noted a new change for the 4-piece bonus today. This won’t go into effect until the next PTR patch launches:

We’ve got another update coming regarding the Sunwuko set. A slight change will be coming to the 4-piece bonus in the next PTR patch:

• Monkey King’s Garb
  • 4-piece set bonus has been slightly redesigned
    • When your decoys explode, you gain a buff that increases the damage of Cyclone Strike, Exploding Palm, Lashing Tail Kick, Tempest Rush, and Wave of Light by 500% for 3 seconds.

This should help make this damage boost feel a little less clunky and more reliable to use in practice. As always, thank you so much for your feedback and we look forward to hearing your thoughts as we move on to the next phase of PTR testing!

While this change shouldn’t effect the way that the redesign plays, it stays in line with giving control back to the players. Under the old 4-piece bonus, it could be hard to predict which enemies would be hit by the decoy and therefore some would be taking the extra 500% while some would not. This new change shifts the power directly to the Monk so that you can be certain whichever monster you target is being hit extra hard after that decoy goes off.

Good news for Monks.

Embodiment of the Marauder

The infamous Marauder’s set. In its current state on the live servers, this set is arguably the most powerful one in the game. Why? It allows the Demon Hunter to do exorbitant amounts of damage while putting his or herself completely out of harm’s way. The ability to drop Sentries that fire your most powerful attacks for free while these same Sentries were unable to be targeted/killed by monsters allowed Demon Hunters to run to close-by corners or adjacent rooms and observe the carnage from afar. Blizzard takes issue with unengaging combat and addressed this problem at BlizzCon last month.

Let’s trace the evolution. Here is the set as it currently exists on live:

A short summary? Assemble pieces of Marauder’s set except for gloves. Get Tasker and Theo. Get Ring of Royal Grandeur. Sentries make everything go boom. Win. Other classes look on in jealous rage as Demon Hunters soar to the top of the Leaderboards with ease (exempting the Barbarian outliers). Proceeding logically, the set gets redesigned for testing on the Patch 2.1.2 PTR. Here’s how it looks if you were to log in over there right now:

• Changes to the Embodiment of the Marauder set
  • Philosophy Note: The following changes are not intended to be a nerf to Demon Hunters or the Embodiment of the Marauder set and additional tuning may be necessary
  • Has been redesigned:
    • (2) Set Bonus
      • Now increases the damage of your Hatred generators by 40% for every Sentry you have active

• (6) Set Bonus
  • Sentries now cast your Hatred spenders every time you do and deal 100% increased damage

Note that the 4-piece bonus was unchanged, so it was left off of the list, not erased entirely.

This is a major shift in the Demon Hunter meta. Now their most powerful set begins to put the power back in the hands of the Demon Hunter his or herself while still allowing the Sentries to supply support damage, as they were originally intended to do. The community became split on this change, however. Many felt it was a nerf to the set, while others argued that it actually provided for better damage than before, if not simply in a more bursty format. Our own Neinball continues to sing the praises of the redesign and it seems that perhaps slowly but surely, the community is coming around to it as they do more testing. I would be remiss to not mention the fact that the Sentry skill as well as Custom Engineering passive both received changes at the same time the set did. Here are their current versions on the PTR:

• Sentry
  • Has been redesigned
    • Cooldown has been removed
    • Now has 2 charges, with a recharge time of 8 seconds
      • Recharge time is affected by cooldown reduction
  • Hatred cost reduced from 30 to 20

• Custom Engineering
  • Has been redesigned
    • Now increases the maximum number of charges and active Sentries from 2 to 3

These changes are what brought people to that new burst playstyle in the redesigned Marauder’s set. Sentry moving to a charge-based system allows for a Demon Hunter to spawn a Greater Rift Guardian and instantly drop multiple Sentries, which then starts the fight with massive damage as the Sentries start mirroring your Hatred spending. This did feel good, but the development team decided to take things another step further, pushing the true intent of the power being in the hand of the Demon Hunter with the Sentries there to lend their support:

Finally, we’ve already got some additional changes pending for the Embodiment of the Marauder. It’s great to see that players are enjoying the more active gameplay of this redesign, and we want to further shift the source of damage from your Sentries to your Demon Hunter. To accomplish this, the set bonus order is being shifted around and retuned. Bear in mind that tuning on the exact number values will likely continue through the PTR and are not yet final.

Here’s our latest anticipated changes, which will be coming to the next PTR patch:

• 2 Piece Bonus
  • Companion calls all companions to your side.
• 4 Piece Bonus
  • Sentries cast your Hatred spender when you do.
• 6 Piece Bonus
  • Your generators, Elemental Arrow, Chakram, Impale, Multishot, and Cluster Arrow deal 100% increased damage for every active Sentry.

This should bring the set’s damage potential closer to what it currently provides on live, if not a bit better. Once again, thank you for your ongoing diligence in PTR testing!

As you can see, this restructured the bonuses entirely so that the most powerful part of the set was once again reserved for the 6-piece bonus. While the last iteration of the redesign was a nice boost to Hatred generators, having Sentries increase your Hatred spenders is a much much better tie-in to what Demon Hunters will want out of Marauder’s. Players will surely be anxious to test out this next version of the redesign, as community opinion still seems to be swaying on just exactly where Embodiment of the Marauder will fall in terms of power when all is said and done.

Retroactive Set Change Philosophy

Lastly, but arguably most importantly, Nevalistis clarifies why all of these changes that they’re making to sets will be retroactive. As noted earlier today in Ars Arcanum, there are redesigned items coming in the next patch that we will have to re-find in order to benefit from their new powers, but it’s clear that the development team finds that to be less of a burden than re-finding a whole new set:

We’re very careful about retroactive changes. We try our utmost to avoid them, especially because we know some folks get attached to their build. However, in cases where the gameplay can be genuinely improved, there are exceptions we’re willing to make.

Set items are one of those exceptions, particularly because of their “sticking power.” Once you get a full set, you’re very reluctant to move away from it, because it did take time to acquire and put together. On the flip side of that is putting in a new version of the set, which then requires players to reacquire it all over again. It also doesn’t solve issues that are created by sets with unhealthy gameplay. When defining unhealthy gameplay as something that’s either unengaging or legitimately painful (emotionally or physically) to play, it’s something we need to address.

Both the Sunwuko and Marauder’s changes fall under that category of unhealthiness, though for different reasons. We want gameplay to be engaging (which Marauder’s wasn’t accomplishing) and enjoyable to play (which Sunwuko’s offered, but in a way that was physically painful to execute).

These changes are both quality of life fixes, though it may be hard to discern that at a glance. Marauder’s still revolves around Sentries, but now in how they make you better and more powerful. Sunwuko’s is still the set where you generate clones, but now they make your spenders more powerful. The path on how we accomplish those goals has changed, but the intent is to make sure that the level of power is the same (or better), even if the journey there is a little different.

All in all, quite a bit of excitement to digest here. I think the entirety of the changes seems positive. It’s highly evident that sets are integral to the power of your character and how well you’ll do in Greater Rifts and, subsequently, the Leaderboards, so it is therefore incredibly important that the development team gets them right across the board. All classes need to have viable options that provide fun gameplay and excellent damage/utility. Are you on board? Skeptical? Indifferent? We want to know.