Daggers and 2 H Weapons. How could be balanced.

The only crazy part of crit is high multi. Daggers are used only because they're the easiest to scale with both a high base crit chance and very fast attack speed. If daggers specifically are nerfed, people will use wands, as those scale second best with crit.

The problem with crit is purely that crit multi can lead to the average damage of a fast, small, often critting dagger to deal higher damage than the big, pure-offense 2handers. It goes against what you would expect and leaves 2handers in the dust.

Something needs to change about crits. They need to not just be super high base damage, that prize should go to 2handers. Crits ought to be about regularly applying their special effects, not simply stacking damage. Here's what I would do:

1. Base crit chance of everything increased by 25-30% (variance for rounding).
2. Crit multi bonuses changed to be additive to the base 150%, not multiplicative.
3. Introduce alternative ways to increase damage in a single hit through support gems.

And that would be it. Overall it could even end up not being a nerf at all, except to players who already crit close to 100% of the time. Daggers are not your enemy!

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Peterlerock wrote:

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Deredeo wrote:

The staff has the role of "shield" to 2handed, because has block chance. Ok, because is designed to be a more defensive/caster weapon, IMO.

It is also the most offensive weapon, because it has crit chance >5%.

There's already several clusters in the skilltree that provide "damage for weapon xy + life".
Also the strength weapon passives are located in the area with the highest density of life nodes.

Takes like 2-3 minutes to create a tree with massive 500% increased damage and +350 str, 96 life, +234% life (this will lead to 6-7k life even without belly/kaom):
click me
(probably not 100% optimized, but most certainly good enough)
Isn't that enough life and damage?

I agree on cutting dagger crit DpS, but buffing 2h? I don't think that's necessary.

The problem is that even if you made a character with that Level-90 tree you linked, your DPS would be laughable with a 2H. Add to that:

- You don't get the benefits of crit-effects (freeze,shock),
- You attack slower > less reliable leech
- You don't get to wear a shield > No block/armor/ev
- You don't get any primary defense (ondars, block, spell block, dodge, spell dodge, evasion) (armor doesn't count because it sucks)

You end up with a pretty lackluster build. Look, I've taken 2H Marauders pretty far, but the fact is that once you get to maps you start to feel pretty underpowered unless you have GG gear. This is not the case with crit/shield builds.

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MullaXul wrote:

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Autocthon wrote:

Realistically daggers should have a high critical damage multiplier, mediocre crit chance, and slow-medium attack speed.

2H weapons as a whole should have slow speed and high crit chance.

Problem solved.

Fuck criticals, that's not how you balance a game. Critical multiplier is the sole reason balance is garbage in any game that lets you stack beyond 2x damage.

In a ridiculously broad sense maybe.

In a world where every weapon has the same base DPS and every DPS stat exists in the same proportion it doesn't matter what crit multiplier ends up as. It could be 10000000000000000% and the game would end balanced.

The problem is not specifically crit multiplier. It;s the fact that a certain subset of weapons has

1) the best APS
2) the best crit chance
3) no appreciable penalty to base damage
4) the best access to crit damage

When one weapon type has the best in all 4 offensive stats it causes balance issues. Each weapon type should have one thing it's good at, and each stat should be roughly equally possible to increase. That sidesteps the whole "best weapon" and "best stat" issues entirely by making sure everything gets the same potential.

The problem with an actually balanced philosophy is the playerbase really. "Hardcore" players like clear best choices. They like obfuscation and illusory choice. It gives them something to feel elite about. And when your marketing strategy is "hardcore game"...

Yeah... but... You're not balancing the weapons with the other weapons, you're balancing the entire character with the other characters. Look at the main dagger nodes, the ones with adder's touch, and there is no life or life regen anywhere near them. And then look at the very start of the marauder tree and look at all the life and regen. I feel like i'm taking crazy pills, am I missing something?

But yeah, if anything a buff to 2h weapons would be cool.

"

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ZaruenKosai wrote:

Everyone who says crit needs no nerf... can i ask you something...

Does Diablo 3 Crit neead a nerf..

Cuz im about to blow your mind.

Diablo 3 and Path of Exile have one thing in common.

Critical is OP Gamebreaking.

Only difference is that in Diablo 3 .. there is no passive tree so crit is pretty much all there is to invest in.

While yes many other builds work and are very viable in both games.

you can not deny the vast amount of power that criticals bring.

I don't give a fuck I like killing things in 1 hit and you shouldn't give a fuck of what others do.

You should give a fuck about UPPING other shit.

The two have in common is that nerfing crit is retarded and both of them agree thankfully I hope.

I don't even know what Diablo 3 is, but amen to the second post.

It's a weird sort of mentality to want other people to not enjoy the game.

I personally think hardcore POE is silly, and that hardcore shouldn't be a contest of the tanks that never die but instead hardcore is where you're not even allowed to wear armor, and the duelist has to show his pretty face to the mobs and the ranger has to show her pretty figure... But hey, if people want to play a boring ARPG style where you're not allowed to die, more power to them. I'm not gonna make a thread about it.

I've got an 2H build that also uses crit when you nerf crit my build wont work anymore! Dont nerf crit just buff the survivability of 2H-weapon users.

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Shmez wrote:

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Takes like 2-3 minutes to create a tree with massive 500% increased damage and +350 str, 96 life, +234% life (this will lead to 6-7k life even without belly/kaom):
click me
(probably not 100% optimized, but most certainly good enough)
Isn't that enough life and damage?

I agree on cutting dagger crit DpS, but buffing 2h? I don't think that's necessary.

The problem is that even if you made a character with that Level-90 tree you linked, your DPS would be laughable with a 2H.

Laughable compared to... what?
If Daggers' Damage output was reduced, it maybe wouldn't be laughable any more. ;)

"

- You don't get the benefits of crit-effects (freeze,shock),
- You attack slower > less reliable leech
- You don't get to wear a shield > No block/armor/ev
- You don't get any primary defense (ondars, block, spell block, dodge, spell dodge, evasion) (armor doesn't count because it sucks)

My post/skilltree was an answer to the idea: "give 2h more damage, life and more armor".
I linked a tree that has a ton of damage, life and armor.

I'm fully aware that this is worse than crit, fast attacks, block, acro etc.

I just made this tree to show "damage, life and armor" are already there.
And adding more of it wouldn't actually benefit 2h builds.

When you can easily get 500% increased damage, adding nodes in the tree with another 100% doesn't do too much. What you really need is more more damage multipliers, like crit does provide.

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Peterlerock wrote:

My post/skilltree was an answer to the idea: "give 2h more damage, life and more armor".
I linked a tree that has a ton of damage, life and armor.

I'm fully aware that this is worse than crit, fast attacks, block, acro etc.

I just made this tree to show "damage, life and armor" are already there.
And adding more of it wouldn't actually benefit 2h builds.

When you can easily get 500% increased damage, adding nodes in the tree with another 100% doesn't do too much. What you really need is more more damage multipliers, like crit does provide.

Didn't realize you were replying to a certain post, sorry. I fully agree that 2H needs access to more more multipliers, or something to that effect.

I agree in most points given by Autocthon but more correct way to approach the topic is to strike at the core, meaning we should be discussing crit mechanics itself and what it brings to the game not daggers..

Broader, I would like to touch upon ranged vs two handers, rather than daggers.

First of high crits vs "classic" two hand damage. Lets take some base values to compare:
For crit build (any one) well take 35-40% chance with 200% miltiplier minimum.
For non crit build well take the upper value of 370% increased phys damage.

-Crit build is by far more damaging than raw physical.

-Crit build is very rewarding and as applies after elemental status, thus upping dps even more.

-Crit build is more fun, in flurry of repeating monotone attacks it means of one hears a "whack".

-Much more supported: CoC is viable for most crit builds because of nature of spells that benefit from crits as well.

-Crit build flexibility 1: Its easy enough to build "universal crit character", based on one hand crit or all crit giving us way more space to jiggle the skill points around.

-Crit build flexibility 2: To attain 370+% for increased one needs to be tied to a weapon group, lets say maces. If one found good axe, much better than mace that's being used... it will be a nice decoration in ones stash.

Its obvious enough where i'm going with this... If I would add ranged weapons vs two handeds, its would pretty much describe my gripe with PoE. Mostly its tied to boring perspective of 2 handed builds. Melee builds are designed to get in face, tank worst attacks an are least flexible than ranged ones. Skills that make ranged builds fun and diverse:

-Ranged attack totem.
-Trap skill gem.
-Remote mine skill gem.

So how to make 2 handers attractive? I would suggest:

-Receive %more damage from strength, 50% for example (held in 2 hands).

-Create additional piece of equipment, buckler. It would be equivalent to quiver for bows. In reality, quivers are unneeded given Rambo logic of arrows but we still huge benefits from it.

-Melee equivalent to totems. Lets call it a Totem spirit for discussion sake. It is in all ways identical to totems in terms of duration and damage output, has a radius of movement that is similar to totems range. It uses linked melee attacks.

@Peterlerock
Linked build goes far to describe just how much one sacrifice to get 2h to work. No aura nodes, no int little dex and no mana with 110 points. Armor is not impressive either. Again, im not critical of your build, but im rather pointing to the fact that you could be able to build much better character and be more flexible with eqipment and playstyle if you play safe and go crit.

Sorry for the wall of text,

regards,

Vlaad

its fine at it is, however 2h only gems would be nice to see, get over it, u can still get easy 200k dps with 2hs.