Spectre hood now has -40% magic damage.

[Ruke (Soreasan)]

So the new patch came and rebalanced item stats, the spectre hood now does -40% magic damage. (On the bright side, there's now a new Spectre dps mask with a inverted set effect that lets you damage extra enemies..)

Now spectre armour is a healer set instead of a nukertank.
It punishes your damage output, no longer letting you stand in a boss and spam spells without your health ever dropping. But with a -40% damage penalty, and losing the damage boosts that it used to have, it's become significantly weaker that you actually do LESS damage then if you were casting in melee gear.

My inferno fork spell went down from 129 damage down to 69, i figured it'd still be plenty of damage. But then when mob defense comes in, it goes down even lower.
I used to hit rusty armoured bones for 80-90 damage and heal 7-8 at a time, but now it hits for 30 damage and heals me for 1-3 damage.

So, what are other people's opinions on the change?

[Tealtyr]

Wayyyyyyyyyy overnerfed. It may have needed a nerf, but this was just ridiclious.

[Ruke (Soreasan)]

Yeah, it's a overnerf that made it useless where you would need it most, spectre armour is endgame content, but it lowers your damage, and the healing you get isn't so impressive when it's relient on the damage you do as well.

I think a better balancing nerf would have been either to lower the casting rate by 40%, but keep the old positive stats it had as well, or to cap the healing rate at a reasonable amount (Like 20 hp/sec) to keep people from outhealing all the damage they take.

[Biosim]

They are trying to make the game mor teamplayed, forcing you to play with 4 or more players.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Biosim:

They are trying to make the game mor teamplayed, forcing you to play with 4 or more players.

I certainly hope that's not the true intent. That would be exceedingly idiotic.

[Aroband]

As a mage, I don't like it. I think there were better ways to nerf the healing.

[Lucien Lachance]

Most retarded nerf ever, the mana cost was enough, this was too far. It's end game gear for christ sake, I'm going to make a mod that gets rid of that damage reducer, or edit game files, this is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. There's no way I'll get to round 15+ of Frost Moon AND pumpkin moon now. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, please fix.

[Pixel Peeper]

Anyone tested the AoE effect to see how good it is, though?

And while Defense is kind of a ♥♥♥♥ stat, 42 Defense on a Sorcerer armor set is pretty impressive, it may help with survivability somewhat.

I'm done doing basic tests on the Beetle Armor, I'm gonna test the new Spectre head later.

[Ruke (Soreasan)]

The aoe effect on the other new spectre mask actually seems like a great addition though. Everytime you hurt something it summons a bolt of magic that deals about 50% of your spell's damage.

Im really liking the effect so far on it at least. :)

(Actually cross that, it seems to vary quite a bit. I can't figure it out, but the set effect seems to do the full damage as the spell on weak creatures like gels, but on higher level creatures it varies quite a bit from 33-50% damage. It's still a very useful effect though.)

[BROLY 32]

The healing set is still very strong imo.

[KFDan]

The nerf seems like way too much, -40% damage?!
Isn't it supposed to be the endgame mage armor?

[Lucien Lachance]

Is there anway to force update my game back to 1.2.2?

[Ruke (Soreasan)]

Originally posted by BROLY 32:

The healing set is still very strong imo.

Yeah, it seems like that even with the damage nerf, it's still useful for healing yourself on junk mobs and can help you regen hp during a boss fight. But you can easily get overwhelmed if you don't try to dodge, and run out of mana eventually even with mana cuffs.

Still, i guess it's quite useful in the right situations, but i think most of the other sets are more useful overall and flexible, esspecially if you use campfires, potions, or honeypools to boost your hp regen.

[Lord Motav]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Originally posted by Biosim:

They are trying to make the game mor teamplayed, forcing you to play with 4 or more players.

I certainly hope that's not the true intent. That would be exceedingly idiotic.

Especially at this point in the game, it's not like they unveiled a brand new tier of obtainable equipment you can go get now. It only punishes players trying to get Pumpkin/Frost Moon gear and pvprs. I haven't tested it yet since my group isn't online either, but the reduced damage (meaning reduced healing) might be such a liability that I might make our "healer" just become a dps as well. But we'll see.

[Celator]

For singleplayer, the Spectre Hood is now junk, you can do more damage and get more healing by just running a Melee set and switching to Vamp Knives whenever you get low on health. Or even running the Mask set and switching to Vamp Knives when you get low on health. It might be okay in multiplayer though, although I don't see it providing all that much healing there either considering how little damage it does. It does seem, though, that they at least increased the strength of its healing; I've heard that the healing is now up to 15%. Not that that makes that much of a difference.

As for the Mask, it's not as abysmally terrible as the Hood is, but it's not anything to write home about, either. It can do pretty decent amounts of damage thanks to its set bonus, but nowhere near what the new Beetle Armor or even Shroomite can do, and despite the increased armor its survivability is basically zilch.

[Pixel Peeper]

I just had a thought and compared the new offensive Spectre with Hallowed.

Spectre/Hallowed

Defense: 40 / 31 (Spectre reduces damage by 20, Hallowed by 16; Spectre a bit better)
Damage: +20% / +19% (Spectre is a tiny bit better)
Crit chance: +12% / +19% (solid win for Hallowed)
Movement: same (+8%)
Mana: +60 / +100 (solid win for Hallowed)
Mana use: -13% / -20% (solid win for Hallowed)
AoE: Yes / No (solid win for Spectre)

They nerfed Spectre so bad it's now comparable with Hallowed, a much lower-tier set that's much more easy to craft.

Brilliant.