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.
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.
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
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.
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.
@@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...
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.
@@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 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.
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
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
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 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!
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.
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 🤷♀
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.
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
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.
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!!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
One big thing I have noticed is apparently the legendary variants of the witcher sets that you get in new game plus seem to give you the grandmaster set bonus on all tiers. I'm not positive if this is new but I don't remember it being in the old gen version and none of the wikis mention it either. Can anyone confirm or am I going insane?
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.
The manticore gear lost its purpose all together and not because of the rework of its abilities, but rather because of the rework of the abilities of 2 major skills in the alchemy section Acquired Tolerance used to raise maximum toxicity by 1 and now it only does so by 0.5 Heightened Tolerance used to have an overdose threshold from 75% to 100% but now it only does so from 50% to 80% In conclusion, before this lame update, combining the manticore armor (which adds 25 toxicity points) with the 2 mentioned green skills (Acquired Tolerance + Heightened Tolerance) and the general/brown skill called metabolic control, used to allow us to use 4 decoctions at a time without losing vitality this used to be unique for the manticore set as it would not be possible without its added 25 points of max toxicity. so now I cannot really see any use to it what so ever and that is downright a needless change
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
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:
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.
Congrats on the growth of your channel, not sure how It all works but im pretty sure getting a sponsor means its going in the right direction. Love the videos and good luck on the youtube grind
The quen shield (Where you absorb hits to health) seems heavily nerfed to a point where I took it out my load out. However once I'd completely upgraded the quen tree it seemed decent enough to use again!
That's a shame, I really liked the Quen Shield - probably mostly precisely for the healing. Although fact is I also saw it as the best "upgraded" sign ability, so maybe devs viewed it as such as well so nerfed it, effectively making alternatives more viable.
Run the perk video if you would, some changes like Acquired Tolerance are very substantial and I know that I really had to review my builds. True bummer is I was running a bomber build in a new Death March save file before converting to some Euphoria shenanigans. Now my old build is buffed and I'm needing to adjust my play with my toxicity working different. That said, some decoction buffs are nuts, so that may be a nifty note to add somewhere.
the abilities and armors got nerfed but the toxicity costs got nerfed too, so it's more balanced out than it may seem, the old builds aren't entirely irrelevant
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.
Didn't even know most of these builds. In my playthrough I used griffin set, and didn't even hear much about it, although it carried me through death march with ease, since the burn damage from igni is percentage based, meaning even higher level enemies were easily killed (since spell intensity increase worked to apply the burn into them).
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.
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?
Please make a video (or two or three) on the new changes. It saves me time so I don't have to keep trying to figure out what's wrong and why the game isn't playing like it used to.
I think you can get 90% resistance now with protective oil, mutated skin and ursine gear. It doesn't bother me as much because I use flood of anger to access all signs and alternatives.
Good. The Game was way too easy before. But even after the Patch I had to get a Mod to make the Game harder. I remember starting the Game on Release-Day on Deathmarch and the Bear and Drowners in White Orchard fucking butt-raped me hard. In the Patch I didn't even die once.
interesting as always. just got the Grandmaster Feline and Dyed it black. apparently theres a glitch where the armor switched back and forth to the original dark blue and the dye color
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.
Lmao I really need to try an alchemy build my next playthrough. See if that fucking toad stops being such a piece of shit.
I’ve been doing this also with delayed recovery for infinite potion uptime too, unlimited cat just makes you feel like neo every fight
The HP buff is a bit of a waste because with the Ekimara and Ekidna decoction you’ll be continuously regenerating health
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.
@@ownage11445 If he means Max HP it could be nice for when you screw up and do get hit, but idk if 6300 is considered a good number
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.
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
Does whirl apply bleed? With the runewright increased whirl range that could be pretty badass.
@@sortedevaras you bet it does
@@Mcboogler How do you even get increased whirl range
@@Xakaion Severance runes from the amazing heart of stone dlc
@@kevinzki21 where do I find them
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.
Even worse in NG+. I have so many unused skill points!
It means you can experiment more with builds. Just get a potion of clearance and you have more room.
@N7 Andy Almost, depends how much you spend on mutations.
@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.
I wondered about that because in videos I saw people having skills upgraded 5 times but I can only do 3
I would love a video going over all the perk changes. Keep up the good work.
agreed
Same. Have tried a few builds but I usually gravitated to manticore soon as i got to BW in the past. This looks like an attempt to flatten OP builds
would love a video that goes over all the perks and not just the changes
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.
I agree lol he’s not even the hardest boss and he should be
Felt like I had been running from him for far too long for the fight to be as quick as it was.
Honestly the only nerf that really bothers me is the food nerf that basically made Gourmet useless.
Swallow potion
@@ExtremeMan10 nothing wrong with people liking convenience. Let people play however they want, stop judging sandcastles.
But there is a perk that generates hp out of combat, so...
@@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...
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.
this is why they need to give runewright a transmog option ;)
@@hayleyberry3437 really way too op to enjoy new game plus :(
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
@@benhaney9629 i ban myself from quen, and op potions & decoctions
What? Of course you need to wear Cat armour in Toussaint to protect pale Geralt from the Sun 😄
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
RIP? Euphoria is still the best mutation by far, and manticore set is still good for crit/euphoria builds
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
@@qzemii3653 for sure. It's just not as strong as it was. Which was pretty op to begin with
@@hayleyberry3437 that would force you to play a broken op build. other builds weren't that viable so they would become unplayable.
Rip indeed, going to miss the days spamming rend doing 20k a swing
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 never liked things getting nerfed in single player games, it makes the game less interesting
These nerfs are small and improve the overall experience to try other things.
@@exysa2798 what they should have done was buff other builds and not screw over the others, I'd rather have more op builds than all mediocre
@@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.
@@exysa2798 "Even more easier" Grammar 100
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 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
Agree by the time you get to the blood and wine you are pretty much done with the game.
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.
Would definitely love a video going over the full combat changes!!
Never understood nerfing stuff in a SINGLE player game.
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
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
Makes total sense, but can't help feel bad for the lost op-ness. Why tweek so much gameplay mechanics for a single player game released in 2015?
Why couldn't they fix that stupid looking hood on the G.M cat school armor or add an option to remove the stupid annoying story narration.
you can equip headwear to remove the hood like glasses or that mask of the vampire set or the bunny ears but i guess that isn't much better lol
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.
Honestly I never looked at the additional perks on certain armour sets, I always just go with what armour looks the coolest
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)
It's a single player game, so if a player wants to be OP as fuck let them I say.
@@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!
@@nascentdnb7657 That's exactly what I did for Cyberpunk 2077! Super fun, I couldn't believe I nerfed myself to have fun on hard mode lol.
I will never understand nerfing these kind of things in a single player game
I honestly don't understand the mindset of patching single player games with nerfs that almost nobody asked for.
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 would love to see a breakdown of the skill changes!
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'm somewhat disappointed that they didn't give set bonuses to the Viper gear from HoS.
By the way, did they make Gwent harder with the next gen update? To me it feels like it, but I might be just imagining things as well
You can change the difficulty of Gwent players separate from the game difficulty.
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.
@@conformistbastard9842 Yes but I always have it on hard. Now it actually feels harder.
@@ExtremeMan10 That makes a lot of sense lol. Good update
Why do you INTENTIONALLY NERF fun armors and builds IN A SINGLEPLAYER GAME? Like...I dont get why developers do this.
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
Oh piss off! the grind for that stuff is no joke. Goddamn hours wasted for that goodies and suddenly them pricks decided to weaken it is bullshite
@@Its._.n0bodythen just don't use op skills, no one is forcing them to use those, wanna have more fun? You have a whole skill tree to experiment...
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?
@@alittlecreepywhenyou right I was gonna type leviathan but knew that's from something else 🤣 thanks
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.
If they gonna integrate mods that nobody necessarily asked for why not just let us have access to them on console like Skyrim an fallout does
I hope someone makes a mod and brings Protective Coating back up to 25% especially as the resistance has been lowered across the board.
@Richard Brice - most likley.
Witcher 3 is quite modable, and lists of mods on Nexus is quite large (and still growing for the enhanced version).
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!!
Probly nerfed to give the new armor the light of day. It’s a single player game so kind of a lame call
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 was worried that they might have nerfed the Griffen sets sign intensity. Pure sign build is fun and crazy strong.
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+
Why do this? The game’s been out for 8 years, if these outfits and abilities were such a problem, why nerf them after all this time?
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.
Yes, please do a FULL list of all the changes. I really want to know everything that changed.
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.
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.
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.
Very helpful! Would appreciate a video going over all/additional things that weren’t directly mentioned in the changes that were advertised.
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
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.
I hate developers that feel like they need to nerf items in single player games.
Please do the perk changes! Also it seems some of my 3x decotions combos actually do a little bit of damage, when they once did not?
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
Why are you playing normal difficulty? Game was always a caje be walk unless you played on DM
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.
The bleed build can be fun if you stack some other DoTs on top of it, like poison and burn. And maybe a couple of Yrden turrets too. Watch them melt
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
That's kinda bull crap I considered the armor in the Witcher underpowered in the first place.
Why are they needing to nerf single player game gear? We ain’t competing with anyone! 😢
with all those changes, could you make a video/recommend what is the best armor and build for death march NG+?
One big thing I have noticed is apparently the legendary variants of the witcher sets that you get in new game plus seem to give you the grandmaster set bonus on all tiers. I'm not positive if this is new but I don't remember it being in the old gen version and none of the wikis mention it either. Can anyone confirm or am I going insane?
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.
The manticore gear lost its purpose all together and not because of the rework of its abilities, but rather because of the rework of the abilities of 2 major skills in the alchemy section
Acquired Tolerance used to raise maximum toxicity by 1 and now it only does so by 0.5
Heightened Tolerance used to have an overdose threshold from 75% to 100% but now it only does so from 50% to 80%
In conclusion, before this lame update, combining the manticore armor (which adds 25 toxicity points) with the 2 mentioned green skills (Acquired Tolerance + Heightened Tolerance) and the general/brown skill called metabolic control, used to allow us to use 4 decoctions at a time without losing vitality this used to be unique for the manticore set as it would not be possible without its added 25 points of max toxicity. so now I cannot really see any use to it what so ever and that is downright a needless change
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 don’t really mind that they moved the Wolf school gear set perks to perk tree, what bugs me is they just replaced them with boring bleed 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:
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.
a video about the perk changes would be cool, and maybe which legendary weapons now scale with the player lvl
How do you get the feather your geralt use in the videos ?
Please do a video on the perks and combat changes.
New subscriber - thank you for putting chapters in the video
Yea, do perk overhaul too please. Flood of anger not bugged anymore, with 300% sign bonus instead of merely 125 is good to know for example
Congrats on the growth of your channel, not sure how It all works but im pretty sure getting a sponsor means its going in the right direction. Love the videos and good luck on the youtube grind
Good. Making equipment choices might actually matter now. Same with combat tactics. Death March was a cake march after armor.
Question: is the Grandmaster Wolven gear still a separate craft from the upgrade path of the Vanilla game's Wolf School gear?
You have to craft the vanilla version now too since it's now a part of the game normally, crafted it yesterday
@@IamHere027 Really? Nice.
The quen shield (Where you absorb hits to health) seems heavily nerfed to a point where I took it out my load out.
However once I'd completely upgraded the quen tree it seemed decent enough to use again!
i never liked quen shield, it's literally a stalling perk, quick quen is best
That's a shame, I really liked the Quen Shield - probably mostly precisely for the healing. Although fact is I also saw it as the best "upgraded" sign ability, so maybe devs viewed it as such as well so nerfed it, effectively making alternatives more viable.
Run the perk video if you would, some changes like Acquired Tolerance are very substantial and I know that I really had to review my builds.
True bummer is I was running a bomber build in a new Death March save file before converting to some Euphoria shenanigans. Now my old build is buffed and I'm needing to adjust my play with my toxicity working different.
That said, some decoction buffs are nuts, so that may be a nifty note to add somewhere.
the abilities and armors got nerfed but the toxicity costs got nerfed too, so it's more balanced out than it may seem, the old builds aren't entirely irrelevant
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.
I love how people treat this old single player game as if it were pvp game that needs balance updates to make it "playable"
2:29 where is that tunnel? Kaer trolde?
*Great Video would love to see more of the perk changes and the current Perks which can be OP for Deathmarch!*
Thank you sooooooo much for this! I was looking for answers for my wolven gear bonuses being changed since the update. Much appreciated!
All this confusion is why I only play on the “Just The Story!” difficulty.
Didn't even know most of these builds. In my playthrough I used griffin set, and didn't even hear much about it, although it carried me through death march with ease, since the burn damage from igni is percentage based, meaning even higher level enemies were easily killed (since spell intensity increase worked to apply the burn into them).
I am loving how they are rolling nerfs out simultaneously as I am starting a new game+ death march 💀
:0 on one hand, more videos from you. but sad to hear abt the nerf...
Have they fixed the bug in the quest "from ofier's distant shores" where the bandit hideout was empty and you couldn't progress?
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.
So Full wolf Gear with the 3 greater Bleed Runestones with the Bleed combat perk = OP Elden ring bleed build
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?
Please make a video (or two or three) on the new changes. It saves me time so I don't have to keep trying to figure out what's wrong and why the game isn't playing like it used to.
I think you can get 90% resistance now with protective oil, mutated skin and ursine gear. It doesn't bother me as much because I use flood of anger to access all signs and alternatives.
At the 5:03 mark why is your sword leaving a trail like a lightsaber what skill is that from
Good. The Game was way too easy before. But even after the Patch I had to get a Mod to make the Game harder. I remember starting the Game on Release-Day on Deathmarch and the Bear and Drowners in White Orchard fucking butt-raped me hard. In the Patch I didn't even die once.
interesting as always. just got the Grandmaster Feline and Dyed it black. apparently theres a glitch where the armor switched back and forth to the original dark blue and the dye color
actually while on ng+ on normal (sue me) i did find myself dying a lot more than before, this might explain part of it.
Odd, before next-gen upgrade it massive bleed mainly applied to Grandmaster Cat gear
Siemano chłopaki, miłego dnia
Uhhhh 74% reduction in monster damage is way too high… prolly good change to 50 lol
Very much interested in the other combat changes!