New Mage Passives - Utterly broken currently (in a ridiculous way)

I got the staff drop. Yay! 22% Frost Fire, so 22% of my DP (my mage is in 849 atm) which at the time was 3422. 

My LSA had 12k dps, jumped to 35k and .86 attack. Traps maxxed at .75 and went from 4k to 12k dps.

Awesome! I got a blue boot drop with 0 dp, but 11% Frosty Power. Sweet!  I dropped to 3100 DP. Oh, a legendary chest (I never check loot till its in item box but with new passives I did) with 0 dp but 32%!! Frosty Power.

20k LSA -> 67k 1.00 spd since i lost DP.

But wait, maybe frostbite stack?... hmm

2 frostbite. 20k lsa -> 167k. I had dropped to 2700 DP but, wow.

They are incredibly strong as is, but stacking just breaks the bank.

I'll post more as i try more things but..

Edit: 

2 frostbite

Tier 1 LSA 8021 -> 53371 .62 atk

Tier 1 trap 2185 -> 7255 .75 atk

Yea, that sounds about how it should work. though there are a lot of things wonky currently in the patch. Dropping DP/dmg/attack/etc to add passives to increase overall DPS is a standard mechanic in many games. 

Not to say there aren't some things wonky in this patch, however this particular 'discovery' was something I'd thought should be expected.

put a boost aura next to your LSA

That's next level OP

This was all tested doing NM4 Liferoot Inc

Tier 5 LSA 2 frostbite

24061 -> 191777

3 frostbite

T5 LSA24061 -> 222k (approx, things were dying fast... hard to see) .62 seems to be LSA's cap.

T3 6555 -> 32k trap

7 frostbite

T5 LSA 24061 -> 284k

@MaximumRico quote:

I got the staff drop. Yay! 22% Frost Fire, so 22% of my DP (my mage is in 849 atm) which at the time was 3422. 

My LSA had 12k dps, jumped to 35k and .86 attack. Traps maxxed at .75 and went from 4k to 12k dps.

Awesome! I got a blue boot drop with 0 dp, but 11% Frosty Power. Sweet!  I dropped to 3100 DP. Oh, a legendary chest (I never check loot till its in item box but with new passives I did) with 0 dp but 32%!! Frosty Power.

20k LSA -> 67k 1.00 spd since i lost DP.

But wait, maybe frostbite stack?... hmm

2 frostbite. 20k lsa -> 167k. I had dropped to 2700 DP but, wow.

They are incredibly strong as is, but stacking just breaks the bank.

I'll post more as i try more things but..

Edit: 

2 frostbite

Tier 1 LSA 8021 -> 53371 .62 atk

Tier 1 trap 2185 -> 7255 .75 atk

I thought they'd just let it cap at 1. More than 1 boosts things in a ridiculous way.

Also there is boostception since my frostbite boosts the boost which boosts the towers boosted by the frostbite

my tiny LSA with boost aura went from 849 DPS to 1289 DSP with frost.

ok stupid question what is lsa?

Lightning Strikes Aura. It's the monk uber.

Also, yeeaahh, if those stack I don't think they're supposed to.

ok yeh i understand now . i have just been trying to gear my apprentice since i just hit 30 yesterday. i still can just barely play free play normal mode on the first 2 maps. is there a secret place to get good gear ? i have tried onslaught but i get my arse handed to me. i am getting tired of wyvern den grinding free play easy mode so i stepped up to try a normal free play and slowly getting some stuff but man this is taking for ever

Yes their stacking is intended. (im pretty damn sure just based off the description he was giving in this past weeks dev stream)

*edit - some values certainly need to be tweaked cause /balance/ but frost increases atk speed and boost aura boosts power - if your build can sustain both boosts in the lane then there are other inherent design issues.

If they are supposed to stack then the % needs to be cut down. A lot. Like 50-75% a lot. If not and they shouldn't stack, it is probably fine.

Highest we saw was a LSA at 291k dps, but it was hard to tell because things died instantly.

Yes, I agree, if the stacking is indeed intentional then they need to do some massive fixes. But lets not forget where huntress traps are atm BEFORE you factor in any aura/boost buffs. Clearly they aren't testing things as they go out, but from what I can tell that's what we're here for.

Just did Liferoot where mid rolled double PR. Other than walls total DU count for damaging DU was 8 explosive traps total, 1 blaze 2 LSA, 2 AA. Rest  frostbites. My group was utterly dumbfounded at the destruction occurring, and between 6 walls total in wave 1, a total of 1932 damage was taken by them.

Does the passives not work in tavern? I can't seem to get my towers to attack faster and/or do more damage there...

@Kyrn quote:

Does the passives not work in tavern? I can't seem to get my towers to attack faster and/or do more damage there...

Dummies are not a good test environment. I haven't bothered trying, but reading 2 other posts (don't remember which ones had tangents about it and they both said that dummies dont work well outside of raw dps (they dont account for the auras/etc)

The buff requires a chilled target to be in a certain range of towers in order to buff it. Since dummies are immune to most status effects, chilled including, you cannot test for the new Apprentice buff in the tavern.

@Alabama quote:

Yes, I agree, if the stacking is indeed intentional then they need to do some massive fixes. But lets not forget where huntress traps are atm BEFORE you factor in any aura/boost buffs. Clearly they aren't testing things as they go out, but from what I can tell that's what we're here for.

Wouldn't frostbite not work well for blaze balloon though, since it would increase the balloon regen rate, not the tick rate... or can balloons double-stack their dots?

@Kyrn quote:

@Alabama quote:

Yes, I agree, if the stacking is indeed intentional then they need to do some massive fixes. But lets not forget where huntress traps are atm BEFORE you factor in any aura/boost buffs. Clearly they aren't testing things as they go out, but from what I can tell that's what we're here for.

Wouldn't frostbite not work well for blaze balloon though, since it would increase the balloon regen rate, not the tick rate... or can balloons double-stack their dots?

from what i've seen and done, it seems like the dot stacks

@Alzais quote:

from what i've seen and done, it seems like the dot stacks

this. for some reason every effect and it's mother seems to stack currently. Likely intended. Might be not so overpowering when minion/boss mobs get a balance pass.

There is technically the other issue of larger traps/auras not synergising all that well with frostbite because you have to place them close to your barriers to get their benefit for mobs on said barriers (hence reducing their effective range). If anything, they synergise best with the other 3 traps and lightning aura because of that. (For that note, lightning aura+geyser is fun again, and synergises perfectly)

@Alabama quote:

Yea, that sounds about how it should work. though there are a lot of things wonky currently in the patch. Dropping DP/dmg/attack/etc to add passives to increase overall DPS is a standard mechanic in many games. 

Sacrificing some stats for special attributes?  Sure.  In this case it seems like stats don't matter at all though - you can entirely replace them with the passive.  That doesn't sound right.

(Note: Haven't tried it myself, so I'm going by numbers others have posted on the forums.)

@tdb quote:

@Alabama quote:

Yea, that sounds about how it should work. though there are a lot of things wonky currently in the patch. Dropping DP/dmg/attack/etc to add passives to increase overall DPS is a standard mechanic in many games. 

Sacrificing some stats for special attributes?  Sure.  In this case it seems like stats don't matter at all though - you can entirely replace them with the passive.  That doesn't sound right.

(Note: Haven't tried it myself, so I'm going by numbers others have posted on the forums.)

You go on out there and go with just passives and lackluster stats and tell me how you do ;) 

The passives are only stupidly over powering once you're able to snowball your stats.

@Kyrn quote:

There is technically the other issue of larger traps/auras not synergising all that well with frostbite because you have to place them close to your barriers to get their benefit for mobs on said barriers (hence reducing their effective range). If anything, they synergise best with the other 3 traps and lightning aura because of that. (For that note, lightning aura+geyser is fun again, and synergises perfectly)

This is like the 3rd time you've made this comment. It's simply not true. You can gear your frost towers at max rank (which you've previously stated isn't smart and I disagreed) to reach about 5600 range currently. You effectively do not even need any walls currently unless you get a CC resist lane in which case you can just shuffle the heros to the lane to murder it... if you had all cc resist lanes spawn, now that would be a fun challenge as it is a real weakness of the build.

If you stack snowstorm with this, you can increase the amount of slow that is applied. You can outright cripple lanes. You always could.. just now with the frost spheres and the other frost passives it is a seriously deadly combination.

@Alabama quote:

@Kyrn quote:

There is technically the other issue of larger traps/auras not synergising all that well with frostbite because you have to place them close to your barriers to get their benefit for mobs on said barriers (hence reducing their effective range). If anything, they synergise best with the other 3 traps and lightning aura because of that. (For that note, lightning aura+geyser is fun again, and synergises perfectly)

This is like the 3rd time you've made this comment. It's simply not true. You can gear your frost towers at max rank (which you've previously stated isn't smart and I disagreed) to reach about 5600 range currently. You effectively do not even need any walls currently unless you get a CC resist lane in which case you can just shuffle the heros to the lane to murder it... if you had all cc resist lanes spawn, now that would be a fun challenge as it is a real weakness of the build.

What? I mean the AoE around the enemy you hit, not the tower range. Also, I don't recall making a similar comment..

You did(im 99.9999% sure unless there is another active poster with a K name) and it was in response to me discussing ranking up frostbite towers before the new passives were added. The post is buried somewhere and I'm not even sure which one it was in any more. It was a post or two from last week.

Also, the towers stack so you can spend the DU to cover both sides of a lane if you feel the AoE is too small but ime I've never had an issue there...