Buff Malacath to 25%

StaticWave

Malacath was overperforming and deserved the nerf from 25% to 16%. However, with the introduction of stronger mythics like Markyn/Sea Serpent, combined with easy access to crit damage modifiers and the nerf to impenetrable trait, Malacath fell out of meta and is no longer useful for the vast majority of builds.

Even if you have 30% crit chance, Malacath still cannot compete because a class without any crit damage passives can still easily get up to 89% crit damage (10% medium armor, 10% minor brittle, 8% CP, 11% shadow mundus). Some classes like NB, Sorc, or Templar can get close to 100% crit damage before making actual investments in gear sets. Even if Rallying Cry is popular, you aren't going to mitigate all of that damage, as Rallying Cry + base impen + 7 impen trait only give you 58% crit damage resistance. You're still taking 31% extra crit damage from a standard build and up to 50% extra crit damage from a build with investment into crit damage.

Of course RNG is going to be a huge factor in this equation, but the point is, burst damage is how you kill players, and you cannot get that burst from Malacath. It would be fine and all if Malacath was good for pressure builds, but Sea Serpent Coil is taking its spot.

I think given the meta we currently have, it makes logical sense to buff Malacath so that non-crit builds can still compete.

Vanionator

Here-here!

JerBearESO

It would be fine at 20% even. Just don't want to see it get too strong, stronger than serpents, since it is mainly used by DK at that point and they are OP enough.

Panderbander

Malacath is such a funny mythic. Since being changed to allow you to crit while wearing it, unless you have sources of crit damage it actually makes your "crits" hit for less than your normal hits in pvp.

Lalothen

Make it 40% while not affected by Battle Spirit, and 25% while affected by it. That way it will be useful for both PvE & PvP without necessarily becoming a new meta in either scenario.

JerBearESO

Panderbander wrote: »

Malacath is such a funny mythic. Since being changed to allow you to crit while wearing it, unless you have sources of crit damage it actually makes your "crits" hit for less than your normal hits in pvp.

Is this accurate. I thought it reduced crits bonus damage not the full amount. I haven't used it in awhile though. I wonder if it plus enemies having plenty of impen is what reduced below reg values

Dagoth_Rac

JerBearESO wrote: »

Panderbander wrote: »

Malacath is such a funny mythic. Since being changed to allow you to crit while wearing it, unless you have sources of crit damage it actually makes your "crits" hit for less than your normal hits in pvp.

Is this accurate. I thought it reduced crits bonus damage not the full amount. I haven't used it in awhile though. I wonder if it plus enemies having plenty of impen is what reduced below reg values

I believe it leads to situations where your non-crits get boosted by 16% after the Malacath buff, while your crits get boosted by less than 16% after the Malacath penalty.

Panderbander

JerBearESO wrote: »

Panderbander wrote: »

Malacath is such a funny mythic. Since being changed to allow you to crit while wearing it, unless you have sources of crit damage it actually makes your "crits" hit for less than your normal hits in pvp.

Is this accurate. I thought it reduced crits bonus damage not the full amount. I haven't used it in awhile though. I wonder if it plus enemies having plenty of impen is what reduced below reg values

I thought it would just reduce the crits damage to do no more than base but I found while testing it that when I got the ! indicating a crit the damage was LESS than the damage of a normal hit by a substantial amount. This was on a build without any crit damage modifiers save for a single piece of medium against a pvp target.

OBJnoob

I agree. 20 or 25%, I'll let you smarter folks decide which, but it really should be buffed. Sea serpent really does outshine it in basically every way. It gives major berserk which is in direct competition with the unnamed 16%, and it gives 500 some odd weapon damage as well.

Sea serpent has a curse with it's kiss, but so does malacath.

And I kinda disagree that DKs would suddenly jump on malacath again. They could-- sure, and I'm sure it would be strong, but malacath hasn't been good since before FoO got major savagery. I think things might be different now.

Honestly I haven't bought a DLC in a while, for financial reasons, and I'm fine with the fact that I won't have the most meta setups anymore. I understand the way the game, and more pointedly, the business has to operate. But making malacath an option again wouldn't be a bad thing. I don't believe it's been good at all in quite a while, and I've got a lot of builds I'd like to try it with. I'm tired of passing my Markyn Ring between characters, lol.

These days it's kinda hard to build a character with less than 30% crit. Malacath deserves to be stronger.

Twohothardware

Malacath definitely needs to be buffed back to 25% or thereabouts. Sea-serpent’s Coil gives major berserk and major courage with no drawback besides a snare that can be mitigated with medium armor, Celerity CP, major expedition, Orc passive.