A couple of things I've noticed post patch: Buying a crafted copy of the Blade From The Bits doesn't seem to give a sword that levels with you, there's no mention of it having that ability. Likewise, other swords that are now meant to level with you that you've kept from a previous save, also don't seem to level. In combat Geralt seems to suddenly become unresponsive as if he's been stunned even though he's not taken any hits, he won't even move! Tends to happen a lot more in the fist fights tourneys. Newly spawned swords and armour seem to have far greater base hit points compared to even Grandmaster level Witcher Gear.
I started playing Wolf Armor with the Metamorphosis mutation which was buffed from 3 decoctions maximum up to 5, combine that with Troll and Ekimma decoction and with the perk that grants Geralt 900 hp every decoction he drinks and you can get +6300 hp every fight.
Metamorphosis is the new hotness. Honestly, with limitless Blizzard potion, I feel like I'm cheating. Combat was never hard, but with that, feels like I'm using cheat codes.
@@HaruHoneybun thank you. I love the Witcher 3 and have spent hundreds of hours in it. Sure I could focus on a better build but as a quality of life perk Gourmet was nice to have and it got me through Death March.
Regenerating health outside of combat is annoying as hell in this game. I use my quick slots for potions and don't like buying tons of food so I just use the troll decoction. Would like to use another instead...
The changes to the perks were more extensive than I realized. No longer having skills that you can put up to 5 ability points into has made seeking out places of power to get extra ability points somewhat superfluous for me so far into my new playthrough.
@N7 Andy I have a skill load out full save for one of the middle ones. And at level 71, halfway through the Novigrad quests I think I have 25 unused points. So I'd say you could probably upgrade em all. No real point, as you'll likely set yourself up for your chosen build and barely need to pull things in and out, but I suppose it's an option.
The bleeding isn't actually for strong enemies - it's rather for a groups. Like fighting with bandits - you hit one, dash, hit another, dash. They does not allows you to focus on a single enemy - but when you keep switching, they bleed and it produces nice damage bonus
Exactly. It's amazing for large groups on Death March. Time you would normally spend just dodging until you get an opening, you are still doing damage.
Honestly, the only Witcher 3 Change i would want is that they make Eredin an actually hard boss. Eredin is a joke even on higher difficulties. He has lots of HP and that is it.
Pretty cool changes, luckily I've never really felt the need to optimize that hard in TW3, even on Death March. I just like wearing certain witcher sets for aesthetics depending on where I am in the world more than anything. Like Bear armor when in Skellige cuz its chilly, Manticore when in Blood and Wine areas, then just wear Wolven or Viper everywhere else.
Yeah they need a diffoculty setting that’s harder than Death March imo. I find myself purposefully not optimizing armor and weapons and most of all upgrades to make the game harder
It's a bummer that the armor and subsequent builds got nerfed, but honestly, they were pretty op anyway... RIP manticore/euphoria. I'd love to see more like this one. Awesome analysis
Good that they were nerfed most were so op and made you godlike late game, completely removing most of the fun in the game i still think that giving more HP to monsters and giving them more numbers of enemies would be great
Please do a video about the perks. Absolutely love your videos and am so glad I found you just as you released your first witcher video. You bought new life to the details missed in the witcher that were so unique and original I can only praise where you've got to now.
I wish they added set bonuses to every tier of witcher gear. It's a bit disappointing that you only get to use set bonuses and mutations in blood and wine
I just went to Beauclair early to get the mutations before I finished the base game then dipped out early. But yeah nothing you can do for grandmaster sets. You just gotta do new game+ to retain the gear.
@@thedarksoul6655 If they buff other builds, then the game will be even easier on death march. Its already easy. Now all builds are not mediocre. They are not OP like before.
Playing on death march and I haven’t even used any of the OP stuff and it still feels way too easy, I’m lvl 29 and died more to fall damage than combat deaths. The game definitely needs buffs for enemies, the witcher gear though takes a lot of effort to get so I’m not sure if that was necessary
I hate nerfing to counter specific broken builds, 1) its utterly pointless, the guys who break games will find another exploit in no time, probably one even more broken and 2) it unduly effects the vast bulk of players who don't min-max and just mash together adhoc builds, when oh when will game design figure out the vast bulk of players are not represented by the hard-core mini-max crowd vocal on the forums, I've seen this pattern in so many games now (and not just PC tabletop as well)
@@SteVen-eg4sq Players who do this usually get bored by being op. There is nothing to get their blood boiling, only uninspring fights that only take time to get to the next point. Everyone knows the op sneakarcher build in skyrim and most agree, it is the most boring build. Players naturally want to get the strongest, but often it is not the way with the most fun. So their own desires ruin the game for them. Seen it often enough
The game really isn't difficult. You can manage with any build, and if still no skill, there are difficulties for a reason. You don't need to onehit everything on death march, this is the difficulty where there should be a challenge without a cheezy build to make the hardest difficulty obsolete.
@@DundG You can make it difficult for yourself by doing builds that are not perfectly meta, and that's a whole different way of having fun with the game, IMO!
For the challenge...can't have players walking around with the ability to one shot everything because then the game would be boring and players would likely go back to play new playthrough if they knew it would be easy to breeze through majority of enemies that are supposed to be difficult...long story short OP skills and buffs=less challenge=less players
Thank mate I needed that video. After the update, I loaded an old ng+ death march playthrough, and I think died in 1h more than I died in the whole playthrough before. I gotta learn few things again because my go-to potions and strategy feelweak now
Fuck this next gen neutering honestly the previous version was perfect. Yeah Euphoria was OP but you had to wait till you were level 19-21 to even attempt to get mutations on death march. I did it at level 19 and it was such a fucking chore it was barely worth it. I had to respec my character twice, once to invest in the instant death perk, and once again to go back to my previous build. And I also found out after getting aerondight at level 21 that it’s minimum level requirement is 35. Anyway, I’m going back to 1.32.
I sincerely objectively don't understand why the devs nerf stuff. It is a singleplayer game. If the players wants to use exploits, what harm does it do? It is fully optional, if players want the extra challenge there is plenty of ways to get it. I feel like the devs center around the hardcore players and youtube streamers. Most casual players don't go in that much into the details of alchemy och signs. Most players just want to enjoy the game in various configurations in several playthrough. I think it is a weird attitude and a weird priority to put money and resources on 7 years later, to nerf stuff and remove exploits - in a single player game mind you.
Just found your channel not long ago and I've basically watched everything already. Definitely needed a Witcher channel to watch seeing as how it's such a good series. Videos are really well done too
Hopefully a Mod comes out and undoes this change. There is absolutely no need to nerf gear in a single player game... Also grandmaster witcher gear was pretty average if you ask me. It got outclassed by non witcher armour and weapons pretty quickly. The two best swords in the game aren't even witcher swords anyway 🤷♀
I already ran Fixative and Protective Coating together, so moving the triple blade oil perk to Fixative and giving the Wolf School set a new perk is a net bonus for me. I find it handy for exploring, having a few blade oils on for common enemy types, so I don't have to constantly go into my inventory and micromanage my blade oils. For me it's more fun to just slap on a general-purpose set of oils (usually Necrophage, Ogroid, and the third one determined by what I expect to find in the region) and just focus on the combat itself. Also, are the Bomb Damage and Potion Duration bonuses additive or multiplicative? Because Getting two +15% bonuses on both for a +30% bonus sounds better than a single +25% bonus.
I don’t understand, why nerf armors in a 7 year old game? Who cares at that point? If they were going to nerf them, it should have been during the beginning of the game’s lifespan. Nerfing anything now just feels like change for the sake of change; pointless.
I really never understood the point of the Grandmaster sets anyway. Sure the bonuses are cool but you only have them for a few hours of gameplay in NG+ before you have to replace it with better, leveled gear, and then the legendary witcher sets lose the bonus. Grandmaster gear should scale with level imo
This is why I wish there was a NG++ upscale all enemies to the max level and just leave Witcher sets alone so we can replay the whole game with the sets we get at the end of NG+
usually by the time i have gotten the full set of witcher gear i am overpowered enough not to care about damage reduction. the only difference between walking around naked vs wearing armor is just for the look with the perks of the armor being an added bonus to the op-ness of my character.
Just wanted to let you know I saw the first video on this channel back when it was released, and I was hyped on a very polished and experienced channel about the Witcher 3. Then I realised that was the first video! Your writing, directing, editing and gameplay is pure bliss, it's worth every number you ball out of the park in this channel! Congratulations, it's amazing!!
Yes, they increased the AI to respond now to actions you do instead of using set patterns. For instance if you activate Emphyr leader card that shows 3 random cards, your opponent might take their top cards out from the field or use weak ones.
If they nerfed that they should nerf many things, for example crazy 20m vitality regeneration of just one food or drink, there's really no need for quen to give you vitality in any upgrade.
They said "we give players options, option for camera, option for sign quick cast... hell, even option to play od DRX11 or 12", but they didn't give us an option to play old balance. NEVER incorporate mods as a new way of playing the game! NEVER force players to play your "new" meta! I saw a lot of mods that if implemented would be a disaster, I mean FFS, why nerf things in a SINGLE PLAYER GAME?! Game is too easy? Add a new difficulty setting, or something like "enemies are always 10+ level above you and regenerate and do stuff" instead of nerfing mr. Geralt.
well, you see nerfing things in single-player games, especially weapons, and armor is made in order to make the game feel stable and not make the player overly strong.
@@bizarreV I don't care if 100 dps sword is nerfed into a 95 dps sword. I care if stuff like food that was useful early on as it was a well thought mechanic is now useless (that's what happens when people try to patch the game they last played 7 years ago or so). And it's a SP game, if someone wants to feel OP they have all the rights to do so.
@kesiazezebajki1982 I agree a player should have all the freedom to be op. I only started playing the witcher a month ago and finished the main story recently. Like you said, the food tab becomes inferior when you compare them to superior potions in middle-end game
I don’t understand why they nerfed these things. I think having them be so good was part of the fun because: 1. It took an insane amount of time and recourses to get the grandmaster sets 2. Some people just enjoy finding ways to exploit games. It’s fun. 3. If players are looking for a challenge, they shouldn’t be looking for OP builds. 4. It’s a single player game, so there’s no reason to make it fair or anything Do you agree?
I don't know if its just NG+ runs but Witcher bonuses now seem to work on all Legendary Witcher sets, not just the Grandmaster sets. Both my Griffin and Cat had the gear bonuses straight from the base Legendary armor as well as on Enhanced, Superior and Mastercrafted.
I have the legendary grandmaster bear and cat gear, wearing 3 pieces of each set in order to get the first bonus of each. And the bear armor is enchanted to be considered a light armor (forgot the name). Do you think hybrid builds are now less effective and better to focus on one full set?
Nah, I use a hybrid build built around adrenaline. I use the perks that generate more adrenaline points per sword swing and give you 1 at start of combat, as well as the one that makes it so you don't lose any when you get hit. With the perk to cast signs with adrenaline points, you get to use them a ton. You can even use things like firestream before your stamina has refilled completely. Griffin school perk for extra sign damage and stamina regen, whirl and rend, acquired tolerance for more toxicity, the one that makes blade oils permanent, and the one that makes blade oils poison targets. Before the blood and wine mutations I'd make heavy use of Petri's filter potion so that igni would always cause burning, aard would always stagger, etc regardless of my bonuses. But now with the conductors of magic mutation, I can deal like 2k damage per igni and 700 minimum with aard, but aard scales to current enemy health, so it can hit 10k on certain monsters at full hp. Wolf armor and sword set work great for this because they add sign damage and boost adrenaline points. But I often use bear chest piece because it looks better and offers the same special bonuses as the wolf - only adrenaline point gain.
All these reworks and as far as I know you still can't get the Wolf School Gear before you travel to Kaer Morhen. Which by the time you do you're high enough level that the armor needs at least 2 upgrades. Which means you can't enjoy the process of using beginning gear and watching it change as you gain in level. For the armor for the school that Geralt technically belongs to! I do not understand how CDPR allowed this to happen. Why won't they just let us travel to Kaer Morhen early?
highest toxicity u can get in game is 294 in new game (not new game plus, in new game plus u can reach even higher though i havent started one yet so i dont know the exact numbers), with the safe thereshold now reduced from 100 % to 80 %, and also the reduction of decoctions cost from 70 to 50 that translate to 4 decoctions. even with all these nerfs, manticore euphoria is still the best build in the game, only followed by griffin builds whether its aard focused or igni focused (the yrden bonus is OP af as usual) and yes, griffin have the best gear set bonuses.
Glad to see someone mention this, the abilities and armors got nerfed but the toxicity costs got nerfed too, so it's more balanced out than it may seem
Did not notice any nerf in protection against monster on armor. Boots gauntlets still give from 5 to 6 7 maybe, pants a bit more, and for example elementa protection on grandmaster feline is 38% (unless it was something like 40+ before next gen patch), though i did not install hot fixes because game crashes with them.
That FC3 update was a really good one. If that was fully integrated into W3, that is a great thing. The guy was a former W3 dev, and half of the mod is just him bug fixing or adding things he new the team wanted to originally or just made more sense.
They undid the clothing crafting in Cyberpunk too. I poured a bunch of points into crafting hoping to get to legendary and found out there was only a handful of clothing options to craft at that level. What a waste, and I don't understand why
I’m at the end of the game and my igni leveled up all the way just completely burned through the giant at the beginning of blood and wine. Two igni shots and he was done. It felt very wrong and unbalanced. But they took the sign build skills from having 5 tiers to three but igni is soooo OP for me now lol. On normal difficulty
Interesting. I never bothered building up my armour in this game. This time around I might focus on that a little more. Would be interesting to see what they’ve done with the perks.
Most important question: Have they fixed the game crashing from mass freezing and instakilling large groups of enemies with piercing cold? :/ all that frozen meat rolling around and clipping into each other caused the game to crash for me pretty often. But its the most fun thing to do agains the Hanse bandits D:
There have been a ton of fixes and restorations from the Brothers in Arms mod integrated also. Most of those are undocumented in any changelog as well. It would also be interesting if they fixed the damage formula, something that Ghost Mode used to do, because in Vanilla Armor became completely useless endgame, since the formula removed the armor before applying the attack value bonuses, rendering most armor, including armor penetration upgrades, completely pointless. Was that fixed? This update is really weird. It included apparently a random list of mods that appear if you sort nexus by most downloaded (instead of most endorsed which would make much more sense, considering there's newer better mods), and none of that is properly documented anywhere. Modders are scrambling and digging through the files to figure out what on earth was changed to try and upgrade old mods and figure out which ones are now redundant. It's really frustrating for anybody that was running a lot of mods because nobody knows what even works anymore. Thanks to XML changes to the menu stuff, not even the Mod Manager tools are working properly anymore at the moment. I really wish CDPR had worked more with the modding community. As great as some of these changes are for console and vanilla players, for the modding community and lots of PC players this update was a massive headache so far, since nobody has any clue what they actually changed.
They might want to nerf sign build in the game. With griffin set, runes and mutagens you can literally never use your sword and just igni your way through the whole game.
The decoctions themselves had the toxicity levels changed from 70 to 50, so the Manticore set change doesn't all that much. What does matter is the talent for overdosing being nerfed to 85% instead of 100%.
Yep, the abilities and armors got nerfed but the toxicity costs got nerfed too, so it's the old builds aren't entirely irrelevant, the potion overdose change can be dealt with by potions/decoctions that regens hp
My favorite part of this gaming in 2022 is people put put videos "use this build or skill or armor it's OP!!!!! Makes Death March a JOKE!!" Then we get "fans are mad that developer nerfs items to balance experience" However, I don't see the point in nerfing a single player experience when it has zero effect on anything. You choose to use a cheat or you don't lol pretty simple.
As a Griffin school fan I didn't see the big difference. Most Sign perks were max 3 point already. Didn't realize the damage reduction was nerfed, you don't get hit much with a Sign build in the first place. If anything, I'd say the game is easier now, the threshold of "overleveled" enemies is higher now, from 6 to 10 (if I'm not mistaken), and overall bonus hp and dmg they get for being overleveled is drastically reduced. I went to Toussaint at 21 lvl to unlock mutagens as quickly as possible, ended up clearing the whole map and being 44 lvl before going to Skellige for the first time. All I needed is level 2 Griffin armor and maxed Petri. Pretty much everybody is either roasted with Igni, either knocked down with Aard for the instant kill. Sign build is just as op as it was, or maybe even more, since shockwave from Aard is now scaling.
Even more reasons to stay on 1.32, if you are on PC and have the self control to not mini-max the enjoyment and challenge out of the game the update simply does not offer much of any value.
I second a perk video or even a more detailed breakdown of the combat changes in the next gen version. Witcher 3 combat was never really that hard, just that red skull monsters used to deal outrageous damage but that seems to have been toned down in the next gen version.
Bleed needs to add some kind of damage resistance reduction to swords on enemies. I always find it silly how bleed and poison in games are usually just a 'wait and watch the enemy die' build.
8:40 the damage you get from multi-stack bleed is strong through for those opponents that force you to back off for a bit. I got a cyclops down to half health with a few hits, then it did its long charge at me. During the time I was making a few rolls to evade, it lost the second half of its health and died. The other place where it's nice is against enemies that dart about annoyingly to avoid continuous sword dps - like panthers or arachnomorphs etc. The DoT will add up against them while you are frequently trying to get in range.
Interesting. My main build was a 99% pure swordsman with Ursine gear. Had quen but otherwise nothing else. No Alchemy, no other signs, heck not even crossbow perks. Overall I think the rework is good so far and also that explains why I had over 40 perk points.
Perks might be a game breaker for me. Not saying it’ll make it unplayable. But upgrading Signs was the majority of what I was looking forward to as I progressed in the game.
Tbh, I rarely used potions, because I used cat armor, quen, gourmet and my combat abilities were upgraded. But since the update players like me are forced to use potions which kind of makes sense as a Witcher.
Tbh with a build mixed with combat skills and alchemy + euphoria you still absolutely destroy everything even on death march. It is stupid to nerf items in a fame that came out over 6 years ago though.
The show and the update are introducing new players. It is an opportunity to rebalance things that have legitimately been an issue for long time players, allowing a fresh experience, perhaps a new challenge (realistically, just a little more micromanaging, if that. It isn't even that drastic of a change), while allowing new players to experience the game with a more balanced combat system.
@@James_Bee what? The legitimate issue of players having too much fun breaking the game? There's no "balancing" to speak of. This is just nerfing anything considered good in order to make every build feel more or less the same. You WILL take the damage You WILL kill enemies in x hits You WILL play every build practically the same.
