Balancing issues in PoE

I've been playing PoE for a good amount of time, am sad because I cannot support GGG as much as I want to. Would give them the heavens if I could for making such a complicated and rewarding game. But the truth is the game needs some finishing touches in this regard.

I do not care about desync it's a technical restraint which exists in every online game. I've come to know it and live with it for the longest of time, have no problems whatsoever. My gripe is with the balancing of melee and ranged classes. Nobody can deny that PoE's mechanics are far more harsh on the characters who are up and close, melee play style individuals such as myself. I enjoy playing a caster, bow-user here and there but my heart has always lied with in your face avatar.

I've recently died due to my own mistake (and I am not mad in any way, full responsibility is mine) to a vaal spark rogue exile. The enemy melted me so fast, if I had 50.000 HP I wouldn't have reacted fast enough. It was a sum of wrong place and a wrong time, but still I am not mad. Nobody would live through that. Recently I have watched ZiggyD's Death and Taxes map. During that playthrough I saw he was having massive problems with the Ice-form boss. Then I started thinking, if he's playing a Tornado Shot critical build, what would happen to me, a melee user? I would die instantly.

Let me get this straight, I love the fact there are mechanics that should be avoided always, but check this. I used many points into tankiness to live through the crap a squishy person would not, sacrificing clear speed. I had almost 20.000 Armour and 10.000 Evasion with Ondar's Guile, and add 60% block into that I was a pretty tanky, evasive character to crush the mobs. My DPS was not the greatest (10.000) but still it was fun. Then it all turns around when I saw Summon Raging Spirit bullshit people play. Killing Dominus in under 1 second, yes 1 second means this game needs some big changes in few specific points in the game.

There is too much emphasis on damage and literally none on survivability. I do not want to see characters who are built purely into damage have actually more statistical defence than me who has to take all the shit up front (pardon my French).

Last words, I love the game, I will keep playing and the first chance I get will reward GGG for giving the world such an awesome experience, but I would beg of you to consider some drastic changes in these few problems the game has. Thanks in advance for the read!

We know ...

I am grateful you take my opinion in consideration.

I would gladly give you some direct opinions on how to improve the game, I have come to understand most of the mechanics. Like I said, I do not mind having different builds working coherently side-by-side, but in a standalone example, an SRS end-game build has more chances of survival than a character built mostly into defensive stats. It is not a game-breaking problem, but the economy starts to value these builds more, items supporting these builds are skyrocketing.

PoE is too much of a complex game to make 1 thing and make it better. I am not saying there are no melee builds working great, but I'd give my right hand if he did not have quadruple the clear speed than myself, and much less "number defences" (i.e. Armour, Evasion, Block etc...)

My suggestion is for you to make an opinion on some general ideas you get from the players, take let's say 10 of those into consideration. Some new melee nodes (with a massive drawback i.e. "You cannot cast ranged spells or use ranged attacks"), but severely buff survivability of your character. Then do some math on individual ideas and their combinations.

I wonder what made balance respond to this one and not the rest =O

Anyone can appreciate constructive criticism instead of jacking all the shit you hate in two sentences. If you can understand where they're coming from it's much easier to communicate on the same "weave-length" than usual.

I encourage anyone who has some ideas to freely speak their mind and suggest things that will improve the game for more people to enjoy.

I think it's mostly a reaction to the very, very limited toolset enemies employ against players.

There's big numbers of enemies.
There's big hits, usually elemental.

And that's pretty much it.

With such a limited repertoire there's equally limited options for players to respond, leading to the current meta primarily focusing on crit, with an alternative cheaper build in spamming Raging Spirits. And with balance changes that meta shifts but never truly becomes broader, just different.

Now there's definitely been some improvement in this regard. The masters occasionally force different responses and there's a few things like the Proximity Shield mod that give enemies a few new tools (Soul Eater would also be worth mentioning).

But by and large PoE's enemies are incredibly simplistic with improvements kept solely to a very, very limited subset of enemies and thus never being capable of really influencing builds.

And therein lies the issue you're encountering. You seem to be building a more balanced character, theoretically capable of dealing with a wide array of possible situations. And none of those situations will ever occur. So a large portion of your build is essentially wasted. Those other builds you see focus on only two things, melting large amounts of enemies as fast as possible and surviving huge spikes of usually elemental damage. And that's all they need to do, no point there is wasted.

Exactly right sir, I feel the dangers of PoE's mobs are going to extremes, both ways. Some of the threats are nothing if you are built against it, some threats are harder, some easier to counter. But then there are things where the passive stats compliment each other so well you are unable to proceed further.

Rolling additional 4 projectiles to a Vaal Spark rogue is insane, your PC will probably lag enough for you to have no chance of survival. I know things will get much better and more balanced but I just wish them to be sooner rather than later.

I'm actually bumping the topic, but I would appreciate any criticism or suggestions on how to improve the game.

"

Chundadragon wrote:

I wonder what made balance respond to this one and not the rest =O

This