A Few Concerns About the Amazing New Update 8
I have been playing VH S3 since the release, starting my current SP world about a month or so after launch. I'm not spectacular at the game, but I'm getting better and having a blast, currently at level 56. The new update has so many cool new features that I've been wanting to start over although my plan is to wait for development to end before starting a Sky Vault playthrough.
Update 8 looks amazing. From craftable inscriptions to choosing a prefix or suffix on a gear piece to jewel buffs to elixir vaults to modifier buffs, the list goes on and on. Nevertheless, I have a few concerns about the difficulty of the new update.
- The removal of AOE knockback from chaining and cleave before adding the new shocking modifier means vaults sound extra scary. Without a good crowd control ability, I worry about getting killed and am seriously considering waiting to Update 9 and the introduction of shocking before upgrading my world, even though I can't wait to use a lot of the other features of Update 8. Edit: Shocking has now been added to Update 8. While not as powerful as the current knockback from chaining and cleave, I'm happy to see that it was added in the same update as the chaining/cleave nerf.
- The new spawner and mob scaling at L70+ makes me worried that I won't be able to progress well once getting there. Watching iskall struggle to stay alive when the mobs have a couple of buffs is worrying as, while there are better players than he, iskall is certainly a far better player than I am. As I level and reach these new difficulties, will I be able to run modified vaults and take advantage of all of the new features? Will I die a lot just trying to run an unmodified crystal?
- The increased difficulty and weapon nerfs accentuate a concern I've had for a while about mana. As I've leveled my abilities, I've found it more and more necessary to build mana regen onto more and more pieces of my gear. This has a similar effect to giving chaining/cleave one function (AOE damage) instead of two (AOE damage and knockback): that is, potentially "remove" another prefix/suffix from my gear. While the individual stats for each attribute increase as I increase in level, the number of available slots on gear pieces does not. If I have to add and level up more abilities to deal with mobs, I feel like I will eventually need mana regen on every piece of gear as well as a Phylactery (which I haven't yet discovered) to be able to run vaults and deal with the increased difficulty.
These concerns all lead me to worry that, as I level up, in order to keep running vaults, I will have to loot more and more slowly, dealing with mobs, waiting for mana regen, using potions to heal, and/or losing out on other things like item quantity, item rarity, and trap disarm. This is all conjecture, but I fear that instead of feeling more and more powerful as I level (the way I understand the game is intended to work), I will struggle more and more to stay alive and quickly loot. I'm looking forward to Update 8 and hoping that my concerns are either unwarranted or balance changes are made in order to address them.