Fogotten and Forlorn: Chapter 1: Keystones

Hey all

Warning line: this is going to be a wall of text. Read fully only if you want to have a constructive discussion, otherwise, please move to another thread.

For a while now, I've been preparing to write up a series of threads where I will try to analyse why I feel like PoE, being the ever-evolving and very complex game that it is, often feels like it has "forgotten" some parts of it behind. I feel that this has affected a few areas of the game. In this, the first thread, I will try to touch on Keystones, most of which (i feel) have kind of lost touch with what used to be their design goal: To be "unique and powerful" and to "significantly impact the way a character is played". In my own words, the way I would describe my feeling is that allocating most keystones lacks that "oomph", that "click" feeling when your build suddenly falls into place, the feeling you get when you equip a unique with a Keystone-esque modifier such as Shavroonies, Cloak of Defiance or Lightning Coil. I do not claim to be a balancing expert (just like GGG *COUGH*), which is why I wish to facilitate discussion.

Let's try and look at the most successful keystone... Eldritch battery.

Although I have no access to stats, I'm pretty sure that Eldritch battery is the most often allocated keystone in the game (it was for the weekly races, for which stats were available), and rightfully so. It's objective is to offer a way for characters to fuel their skills, provided they gear up appropriately, which is the tradeoff - gear needs to have ES/mana regen on it for this Keystone to be effective, so other stats are sacrificed for it. The existence of Mind over Matter makes this keystone even better, although they are rarely allocated on the tree together due to the extreme point cost to travel the tree for both. Even without MoM though, Eldritch battery is a keystone worth traveling to, because the benefit it offers ranges from too good to absolutely crucial for builds that use a lot of mana - Example: Budget Arc.

Close to EB we can see a similarly successful keystone: Chaos Inoculation. CI also grants you a great boon but forces you to gear appropriately. Not as popular because of the high cost associated with it, but still serves its purpose perfectly... almost. It serves its purpose perfectly when combined with other nodes (such as the Infused Shield notable and Ghost Reaver), which make the effort worth your time and currency, since you can eventually get to a build that is strictly better in all ways than a life version - Example: Melee (Flicker?) Crit dagger.

This paradigm of combining keystones with other nodes, especially nodes behind them (Acrobatics/Phase Acrobatics cluster) is something that could be used to augment some of the less potent keystones. Keystones often require a point investment to travel to them, and sometimes aren't close to any nodes that make their effect worth taking. A prime example of this is Zealot's Oath. Zealot's oath requires %Life regen to be worth it, but most of %Life regen is tied to life/str, which are useless to a character who wants to use ES as his primary defense. In 1.3, the Sanctity notable was introduced to the Templar starting area, but they are situated all the way around each other, making the point investment not worth it once again. %Life regen is also impossible to get on gear outside of uniques, making it even harder to effectively use ZO. My suggestion: introduce two mechanics to ZO on top of the existing or as a new keystone behind ZO. 1) Energy shield recharge rate is converted to ES regen at some efficiency penalty, but 2) the character cannot leech Energy Shield. This would work like this: let's say we have 200 ES recharge per second, that gets converted to life Regen per second but at a (random number) 25% efficiency, so he loses the recharge and gains a 50 ES/sec regen.

I'm going to surprise a few people with this, but I also consider Iron Reflexes a forgotten keystone. If not taken together with Unwavering stance, it's actually WORSE for your defenses than keeping your evasion, as Armor is bad and the dex bonus, (which would be quite high for most EVA chars) is lost. Iron Reflexes could use some nodes close to it that increase it's efficiency, such as maybe a node with a "more" armor multiplier. Unfortunately, most of the nodes close to it are actually the Non-double dipping evasion and armor nodes, which are actually BAD for Iron Reflexes characters rather than good.

Ondar's guile: Bias: I really dislike this keystone. It really doesn't "change" the way your character is played. It's basically a get our of the reflect jail free card for any character that's close to it. Most builds that would use it are close anyway, so it's just free survivability with no downsides. IMO needs a rework.

Iron Grip, Resolute Technique: victims of the metagame build viability. Most builds that would use these are just terrible. Facebreakers (for RT) and Pillar are good builds for those, but that should be about it. Build viability has also victimised Ancestral Bond and Point Blank to an extent. Those are also rarely allocated because there's simply very few good builds to use with them. However, they are not bad in and of themselves, just not good enough to create that "boy, I really want to make a Point Blank build..." feeling.

Avatar of Fire: Boy oh boy. For most builds, AoF is a damage REDUCTION rather than an increase. AoF requires an investment just in order for it to be OK. There NEEDS to be something behind AoF to make this investment worthwhile, similarly to how CI has the Infused Shield MORE ES multiplier. A great idea would be to put Fire damage leech (which is item/gem restricted otherwise) on the tree behind it, along with some MORE fire damage or increased burn chance. Also, chaos damage + AoF doesn't work, removing combos that could otherwise be potent, such as AoF+Infernal mantle. In general, AoF needs ANOTHER rework.

I don't play minion builds, so I won't comment on Minion Instability and Aegis. I also play Solo, so I can't comment on Conduit.

Mind over Matter: pretty horrible positioning. It would fit better somewhere closer to the Templar and Scion, maybe in the place where Vaal Pact is. In fact, I would do MoM -> Vaal Pact, Vaal Pact -> Iron Grip, Iron Grip -> Mind over Matter. (after all, the Karui men like our Mara don't use bows ;)). The node itself feels fine. Similarly for Vaal Pact. I'd argue that this is also more balanced, since Vaal pact really should be harder to get for crit builds, too many people use Uber deeps + Vaal Pact to trivialise the game.

As for Pain attunement/Ghost Reaver/Acro+PhaseAcro/Unwavering, they seem fine IMO.

Blood Magic is one I don't want to bring up. It's definitely not fine, but there are plenty of discussions about that one.

I think that's everything. This has been a pain to make, so I'm not sure how long it will be before I make the others. Probably will depend on how many people will actually care as well.

Keystones are a failure in the same vein that support gems are a failure: they're not about variety, they're about adding power.

Which is fine and all, it's one way to design a thing; you start to hit significant diminishing returns on damage and attack speed pretty quickly. Might as well have something to dump stat points into.

I guess I'll put down my thoughts on some of them you've brought up.

Iron Reflexes
This one is fantastic. Armour is strictly better than evasion in that it also defends against Bear Traps and Ethereal Knives. The power value on Evasion% nodes have been risen to a pretty high level, so it's a wonderful keystone for Rangers.

Ancestral Bond
Perhaps a victim of the Spell Totem support gem nerf. Sure, Flame Totem is great. I guess there's some functional difference between it and say Ice Nova totems, in that you have to position Flame Totems closer to enemies to maximize damage. But is the skill really different if the only real difference is what color the damage its causing is?

Avatar of Fire
Not being able to leech, enemies having elemental resistance, and the skills it affects don't have a "charge up" component to them to increase the power of ignites like Flameblast and Explosive Arrow do.

Avatar of Fire is a victim of power creep. Back in the old days, there were not a lot of support gems to increase damage. (Now that we're approaching the point where most skills have 5 of them, it's really showing the strain of that design.) Weapon Elemental Damage used to grant a 1.8x damage multiplier, and that got nerfed down to 1.6x. Getting 80% more damage because you converted all your damage to elemental, which you could not otherwise get, was huge.

The huge base damage multipliers on Static and Molten Strike acknowledge the intrinsic inferiority of elemental damage... which I guess is more responsible than re-boofing WED back up to 1.8x.

I think it's fine though, I prefer fringe keystones. Split Arrow + Blackgleam + Avatar of Fire? Is it really any better than Split Arrow + Amulet With Life Leech + Ranger Crit Net Damage Multiplier + Mr.Magic Hat That Makes Me Never Run Out of Mana And Makes Me Zoom Around Faster, Increasing My Effective Magic Find

?

No of course not. But it's not always about maximization.

Zealot's Oath is realy tricky one. On one side you have suficient number of Uniques that worck well especialy if you go for CI becouse reg. worck in most cases depending on your max ES but you never gona get it to levels of life leach (20% +).
Now thats all well and good but you cant make it worck if you dont use Uniques which make item slots bound for good.
I wot go to far to say its not wort it but looking on machanic part i presume you need to make sinergy and binde it as adition to Zelot. Many of uniques alredy have thos indirect sinergy, for example Zahndethus' Cassock Sage's Robe, Blood Dance boots, and even Aegis Aurora make sense.

Iron Reflex, well it just make sense to place it as morror image of Vaal Pact under Command of Steel, becouse it have mor sense then to be private property. I think whay not, both of them are game breking and OP as f..

Minde Over Matter, you know what, just swap its pleace whit Avatar of Fire and then we may live to see some build of week soon after.

To me keystones are 'build defining'. That is they should fundamentaly alter your character, the way it plays and how you gear.

to comment on a few:

avatar of fire:
its for niche builds, for those builds it works well, theres plenty of fire and ele damage nodes near by. Leach is the biggest dificulty with avatar of fire, but you can build/support gem around that. Id love to see avatar of lightning (near shadow) and avatar of ice (near dualist) too.

necormantic aegis:
Fine, the trade off is totaly fine. If your making a summoner and want highly surviveable minions then this node with a sheild with good ele resists is one way to do it, the personal penalty seems about right to me. The only shame with this node is that shield nodes YOU take arent transfered, and neither are other effects that effect your sheild - eg tempest shield.

minion instability:
could use bigger aoe and should do more damage in my opinion, its workable but underwhelming.

mind over matter:
is fine, but its in a stupid location on the tree, it should be up near witch or near scion. Its current location makes no sense to me.

Elderich battery:
While this node is sometimes build defining, it is also possibly the most useful 'general help' node. It is very useful for a life based templar, shadow, scion that needs gear with 'a few blues' on it to pick up this node so the ES on the gear is not essentialy wasted. It can be a big help to low geared players and self found.

Zealots oath:
Would love to see this being made more viable for hybrid builds, eg life regen applies to energy sheild as well as life but does so at 75% effectiveness. For CI builds perhaps, perhaps some strait up ES regen nodes.