What ever happened to the OP HF? (in General)

Used to be quite a lot of people were using the "overpowered" HF.

Now the highest is barely under 9M level and is the 21st or so highest familiar.

Why such the radical drop in usage?

Some theories I have that I would like input on:

1) http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002vwR, a 20% drop in str/dex nerfed it too much?

2) It was not as overpowered as people stated but powered just enough so that (1) nerfed it too much?

3) It is too easy to hit with the exbow, making it do little damage after a couple hits.

4) Its ELB damage equivalent is too low?

Or any other reason?

I'd like to open door number 2 please.

I was in the boat saying that the + was too large, but the nerf leveled it out.

And before we start trying to increase it back up, ::cough:: let's boost the IF and FF first.

We can chat about that in another thread. I would like to chat about the HF and its decline in mid to upper level usage in this one.

It could be that people are no longer using it because it is no longer overpowered.
Though perhaps 20% decrease was a bit much.

Tough to really judge on this part but 20% less ST is only 10% less damage. 20% less DX is 1/5th, at 9 mil level, one now has 4.5 mil DX. Is that too low?

I don't think it was ever overpowered. I think the community just wanted blood.

Don't think the nerf even was a huge contributer in the drop of usage.

i was always of the mind, and still am, that 100bth is overpowered.

as for why people quit using it, i have come to the conclusion that many items are used because the top dogs use them. in effect, there is a direct correlation between the items and strategies being used throughout the game and those used by the top ten scores.

in mmorpg's i believe this is referred to as the fotm (flavor of the month) builds.

i wish i had more data to back it up rather than my tat distributions, but i have only two of those and they show that the hal was pretty dominant before ranger and some others dropped it and now the robf is, but toa's are gaining.

it is likely not enough data to make conclusions from, but i have suspected it in the past and have at least some data.

5) Everyone realised how OP the RoBF is and dropped the nerfed HF for one in a heatbeat?

;)

Exactly how radically has it's usage dropped? And has anyone inked away from a Hal?

http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002zlE

there's the data for the drop-off.

the other most likely correlation is that the overpowered threads that are so popular here actually drive people to use the items.

it could very well be a chicken-egg type of interaction and deciding which came first would be difficult.

so three people out of seventy stopped using the hal. i do believe ranger was one of them! ; )

Ah. OK.

maybe ranger remembers when he quit using the hal, i can't really say for sure. the change to the hal happened about 3 weeks before my first tat distribution post though in december so we could have lost a few more in that 3 week period.

I changed from the HF about 2 months before the last nerf to it.

in december it was the most popular tat, now it is in third place and quite a bit more popular than those below it. i would say that some of the other tats may be needing to be looked at more critically than the hal, one for being too good and the others for being too poor.

From my own experience with my Hal from both before and after the change, it has actually take a major hit in the low levels where its + to hit isn't particularly high.
Thats more due to the dex reduction, making it easier for other tanks to simply avoid getting hit.
I quite agreed with the reduction in strength, I am still out damaging my mage most days, but the dex reduction has caused a large variation with my fighting against tanks. Some days I get all wins, some wins some draws or more draws then wins.
I don't really care if it gets changed back, but it is definitely affecting the lower levels of play. Remember, not everything happens at 3mil MPR.

i truly think it would have been better to slightly reduce the 100 bth and change the upper end of the hal pth curve as that is where it got really crazy.

at my level it still seems to be the preferred familiar tattoo.

Still OP, still has more virtual NW and XP than any other tat.