Still no balance a year later - with facts

Objective:
Basically this post is going to demonstrate that GGG does a terrible job balancing its game, and it has been this way for far too long. There is no anger/hate here towards GGG, I want this company to succeed and I want to pay for an enjoyable game made by this company. Merely a simple "I told you so" and some hope that this company will see what it is doing and fix it is the goal.

THIS DOES NOT APPLY ONLY TO SHADOWS. Shadows are simply my area of expertise and my focus in that regard. There are unquestionably other classes and builds that are also getting the shaft. At the time of my last posts (listed below), there were less rangers in the top 100 than shadows, albeit a much lower mortality rate (AKA it performed well, just wasn't popular or fotm).

Short Version History and THE FACTS - IN MARCH:
A long time ago I was a POE player. Shadow was my favorite class, really the only one I liked, but it sucked (in objective terms, it had the highest mortality rate in HC leagues, lowest number of positions at the top of the HC ladders, and mediocre showing in even the SC ladders).
A few gimmicky builds involving items that no longer existed in the actual game (Read: legacy builds) were the only reason this class had any showing in the SC ladder at all. Those builds that did exist were abandoned (three of the top 5 SC shadow builds were from players no longer playing POE) and the two that weren't abandoned simply existed due to pure stubbornness of those players to not reroll something obviously more efficient (IE, totem builds that weren't rerolled warrior).

The case then:
http://web-grindinggear.netdna-ssl.com/forum/view-thread/898165/page/1 Dated April 22.
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/816113 Dated March 7.
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/811205 Dated March 4, my birthday coincidentally :)

At some point, GGG staff apparently got tired of my fact-spewing and support started removing my posts, which led to me quitting POE for a long time (8 months now?):
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/930453/page/6
due to "mentioning botting" (note that I never supported botting, never ran a bot myself, never was given any infractions for running a bot myself, still have none of those to this day).
It seems GGG doesn't like it when you expose their obvious monetary gain from botters and RMTers and they will send their support after you to silence you. Yeah, I'm holding that grudge.

That aside, the game is still very good (probably, at least it was then) so I'll let this slide.

So where are we today?
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/999015
Here is the current state of shadows in the new HC league:
Top 40 - 2 shadows, both dead
Top 100 - 10 shadows, 5 dead
Pretty big HC league mortality rate, pretty terrible showing at high levels, exact same as it was back in March, and probably before that (I didn't start doing this until last March, who knows how long this went on before that).

Also, here's a post from March 1 about desync that still sits on the front page (I'll link it anyways for convenience):
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/808653/page/1

So I decided to check POE out again, and as you can see, not much has changed in the last 8 months. How long are we going to have to wait for shadow to be good in HC? Is this game ever going to be based on something other than rolling the new fotm and leveling it as fast as you can? Will botting and RMT ever be brought under control in this game? Will desync still plague POE in the year 2025?

Don't get me wrong, POE is still a fun game. But if you want to enjoy the game on any basis besides rolling the newest GGG-created fotm, well, I hope you haven't spent any of your money on this one yet, because it still needs work. POE has the potential to be the best ARPG out there, but a lack of real balancing and any real mechanics aside from "hey, new gem is OP, lets reroll a build based on it" is holding the game back.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

...At some point, GGG staff apparently got tired of my fact-spewing and support started removing my posts, which led to me quitting POE for a long time (8 months now?)...

...It seems GGG doesn't like it when you expose their obvious monetary gain from botters and RMTers and they will send their support after you to silence you...

...Will botting and RMT ever be brought under control in this game?

There is spewing here, alright.

Wasn't Shadow the second most popular class in Beyond?

And isn't Shadow the class with the most overpowered starting zone one can imagine?

If you read through the post he linked, you can see the OP has a huuuuuuge deficit of understanding when it comes to game mechanics, farming, and trading.

He claims that you can't make even a single ex off a week of Dom farming.

So, you know, take what you will from that.

I tried to understand your point, but I failed.

What? Shadows suck? You serious? Where are the facts you state in the title?

Also, why is there so much irrelevant information in the post about yourself in general?

Shadows are currently one of the best start areas in the game. I'm confused.

And last I checked there were painfully popular. Still confused.

On the other hand... Yah balance in this game is pretty trashy.

I'm not sure what part of 2 dead shadows out of the top 40 characters is confusing for you people. Maybe I should highlight and bold and size = 75 that part for people with reading issues.

I mean really, is the entire community that separated from reality that nobody knew shadows were performing badly in hc? You're all really that clueless? This is a big surprise for everyone? Not buying it. Looks like the same forum obfuscation that was going on before.

Somebody on Reddit posted a graphic showing what classes and levels achieved for the 15,000 people in the ladders for Rampage and Beyond:

http://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/2n1by6/end_of_league_ladder_breakdown_classes_levels/

The graphic is in the first post but here is a direct link: http://i.imgur.com/4c9QAum.jpg

Proof positive that the OP in this topic is full of crap. Shadows were the third most popular class in both leagues, only behind Ranger and Witch. If you would have been arguing that Templar and Duelist were the crappy classes, you might have had a point. But probably only for a few more weeks since we already know both those classes are getting reworked in the 1.3.0 tree.

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mark1030 wrote:

Somebody on Reddit posted a graphic showing what classes and levels achieved for the 15,000 people in the ladders for Rampage and Beyond:

http://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/2n1by6/end_of_league_ladder_breakdown_classes_levels/

The graphic is in the first post but here is a direct link: http://i.imgur.com/4c9QAum.jpg

Proof positive that the OP in this topic is full of crap. Shadows were the third most popular class in both leagues, only behind Ranger and Witch. If you would have been arguing that Templar and Duelist were the crappy classes, you might have had a point. But probably only for a few more weeks since we already know both those classes are getting reworked in the 1.3.0 tree.

That's a cumulative total and indicates nothing guy. I could roll 10000 level 2 anything and make it top that list. This is about performance and you contributed nothing to that.