This post is addressed to the Gearbox devs. I don’t know how often they read these forums, but I figured I have to give this a chance.
In the latest hotfixes, on September 10th, they wrote this change:
Amara’s Ties that Bind augment now only passes gun and melee damages to enemies
It’s widely believed that this hotfix either didn’t change anything noticeable or didn’t get implemented correctly. I am going to assume that the devs plan on correcting this and actually implementing this change, such that only gun and melee damage pass through Ties that Bind.
We all know that this hotfix is targeting the interaction between Ties that Bind and Revelation, where Amara can grasp and instantly kill a group of enemies if she has enough Do Harm stacks. I can (kind of) understand why Gearbox would want to change this interaction so that it is less powerful. However, I believe that the fix they have in mind, that is, making only gun and melee damage pass through Ties that Bind, is a HUGE over-correction.
There are other useful damage sources that pass through Ties that Bind currently that aren’t gun or melee damage. Things like radiation explosions, grenades, barrel explosions, Catharsis, and Remnant. All of those things would be unable to pass through the TTB linkage if they made only gun and melee damage do so. Yes, you nerf a very poweful TTB + Revelation build, but what about a barely viable Nimbus build that relies a lot on other sources of damage passing through the linkage? Grenade damage is one that really stands out to me. It’s clear that Gearbox is trying to make grenades more viable at the highest difficulty, what with all of their recent buffs, so why eliminate grenade damage from passing through TTB?
Please don’t further limit Amara’s overall build diversity when targeting one specific interaction. Just fix the one thing you want to fix. Thank you.
I actually don’t understand why they’d want to change it at all. What difference will it make if players can’t instakill 15 mobs the moment they’re grasped? Players will just instakill them 2 seconds later with their gun, so I’m not sure I see the possible benefit in this change. All I can foresee is Gearbox getting a lot more grief from the community because it will be perceived as a nerf (which it is). And like you’ve noted here it would hurt builds that rely on those damage pathways which would be removed. I fail to see the benefit here.
Ties that Bind dose need some adjustment. Personally I think the skills should be re defined to better reflect what it actually dose. TTB causes enemies to take action skill element damage based on damage dealt to the griped target. In the past TTB has had several issues with double dipping with Action Skill damage. After that was finally sorted out they need to reassess how strong it is by comparison.
At the moment the team is focused on there next update. With that we will also welcome the potential of more issues. The forth skill trees will present new balancing challanges and the potential of more interation problems across all of Amara augments. Given that TTB isn’t absolutely breaking the game and the fact that skils like First over Matter or Phasecast are viable in higher difficulty I would surmise that a TTB nurf isn’t really a priority.
I will reiterate I believe TTB is a bit overwhelming in terms of power. But seeing as I can use other action skills and enjoy the game just as much I am ok with here current state.
