About Acuity gloves and vaal pact

^ the only point of contention I'd raise about that, is that gating high level content behind low level farming actually encourages wealth to distribute back downward. If this is truly "Path of Economy" then it was a smart move, as "Path of Economy" can not be healthy so long as wealth only moves up the pyramid.


The VP and leech nerfs themselves, I rather appreciate in a vacuum. They seemed a bit heavy but balanced, assuming the MO was to bring other recovery strategies in line and breath healthy competition into build design. Along side the release of Acuity, however, it certainly does leave a sour taste.

If they ever cap CC/CD like they should Acuities get rather mundane. Maybe thats where they will go next patch and why they left it.

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CanHasPants wrote:

^ the only point of contention I'd raise about that, is that gating high level content behind low level farming actually encourages wealth to distribute back downward. If this is truly "Path of Economy" then it was a smart move, as "Path of Economy" can not be healthy so long as wealth only moves up the pyramid.

Yeah, I can see it looking good on paper initially. However, the end result in practice has been that a few chaos trickle down the pyramid while booster rockets get attached to stacks of exalts so that they fly up the pyramid even faster.

It didn't work IMO.

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CanHasPants wrote:

The VP and leech nerfs themselves, I rather appreciate in a vacuum. They seemed a bit heavy but balanced, assuming the MO was to bring other recovery strategies in line and breath healthy competition into build design. Along side the release of Acuity, however, it certainly does leave a sour taste.

I agree with this. I cannot believe that the changes to leech were about game balance when Acuity was released at the same time. The changes to leech and Vaal Pact were to make Acuity more BiS than it already would have been, and I refuse to believe otherwise.

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tackle70 wrote:

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CanHasPants wrote:

^ the only point of contention I'd raise about that, is that gating high level content behind low level farming actually encourages wealth to distribute back downward. If this is truly "Path of Economy" then it was a smart move, as "Path of Economy" can not be healthy so long as wealth only moves up the pyramid.

Yeah, I can see it looking good on paper initially. However, the end result in practice has been that a few chaos trickle down the pyramid while booster rockets get attached to stacks of exalts so that they fly up the pyramid even faster.

It didn't work IMO.

It's not about where the distribution of orbs winds up, because let's face it, low level / low wealth players have no business rolling with orbs in the first place. Unless they really just want to (e.g. ssf players), which is totally fine, but we are talking about "Path of Economy" here. There is an excessive amount of wealth lost per orb spent on a non max iLvl, non good base item, especially when cheaper and better alternatives are available in abundance for trade.

It's about the continual distribution of resources which can lead to more valuable immediate and long-term returns--mobility to climb the gear ladder. Without cause for orbs to filter back down to the base, the only mobility is to sell to those yet further below you are. In that regard, I have no practical experience farming for fragments so I cannot say whether or not it was a success; however, I suspect it was indeed.

Edit: And unfortunately, there is no good way to encourage the distribution of wealth back down the pyramid. The nature of orbs, by their design, simply does not allow it to any meaningful degree. Short of completely redesigning orbs, the alternative is to sort of brute force it--i.e. offer disproportionately greater rewards (Acuity) for something only a low level farmer can provide (fragments).

What I'm getting at, is that the entire dynamic was (while frustrating for Atziri farmers) very healthy for "Path of Economy." Then again, "Path of Economy" has historically done nothing but shit all over the truly great things about PoE... so.. that and $0.75 will get you a cup of coffee.

I agree they should nerf the the Gloves.

It would be better to undo the nerf to VP. The gloves will then still be good, but not game breakingly so.

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CanHasPants wrote:

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I_NO wrote:

Yeahhhhhhhhh they technically did nerf it but you know making it rarer lol

which isn't really a nerf but hahah

Rarity and exclusivity don't make good metrics for balance though.

It does if your focus are temporary leagues that reset the economy every X months... which happens to be exactly what GGG focuses on.

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mazul wrote:

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CanHasPants wrote:

Rarity and exclusivity don't make good metrics for balance though.

It does if your focus are temporary leagues that reset the economy every X months... which happens to be exactly what GGG focuses on.

If so, then GGG is ignoring what actually goes on after the start of a new league. For the first couple of weeks everyone's starting from scratch, and rarity limits the number of OP Uniques available to the lucky few. But once the bots and rmt sites build their stocks back up, rarity becomes merely an overhead farming cost that's factored into the retail price. By this time the greediest players have already sold off their old gear (from the previous temp league) for Fools Gold, and are prepared to pay the inflated prices as soon as the goods hit the market.