US Torment-Bloodlines 1v1 Low Level

This thread is for discussion of this PvP Rating ladder. Note that the ratings are reset each PvP season.

Ratings now degrade. Degradation is applied daily, and is based on the certainty of a character's rating.

To enter this ladder, connect to the American gateway and press "B" to bring up the Events/PvP panel.

Does GGG even have any plans to integrate anyone else other than US and EU only for PvP?

How are you going to expand PvP through exclusion?

I'm referring predominantly towards Ping, and this absolutely insane disadvantage it leads to. This is not something that can be balance because while people can (Pay 2 win) for the gear, you can't actually increase the speed of light.

So, this leads to a severely incapacitated experience for non US and EU.

Here are a few of the issues that have been around since day 1 of PvP existance. Infact, I was hoping that you'd actually take some initiative to fix it in Season 1 but you decided AGAINST an Oceanic Server. I tried it out anyway and found it extremely hard to PvP in many cases. After Season 1 I was hoping for some kind of improvement for Season 2, but now that it's arrived it's the same crap as before.

1. Attacks/spells/whatever will not actually land on players when they are moving. You can use a variety of gap closers but when you reach next to them, you have a 250ms or 400ms ping to essentially delay your attack and thus giving the opponent time to move away from you and causing the attack/spell to miss entirely. This, in comparison to Local players, results in a 30ms response to move away vs 250 ms to command the attack. Guess which one goes through?

You have your typical trappers who lay traps and just keep fucking running. More importantly, Puncture trappers. Now in Season 1, I had a very very similar build to Killtacular. Now Lapiz, who is a renowned melee user, has stated that melee (sword+shield) is a direct counter to bowers and trappers. Killtacular proved this by beating the trappers in the invitational. I however find it pretty much IMPOSSIBLE to beat these players. Same setup, same skill usage and similar tactics. The difference? I can only avoid damage from external sources such as traps/bleed for so long but I will never kill them. Someone with local ping will be able to hit them while i can not. Fair game GGG.

2. Potions are probably 50% of PvP. What happens when you have 250ms or 400ms delay on Pots? The answer is you don't pot. Everyone uses Panicked Flasks because they are the best instant heals (though i did not say they were the only flask you used). This is when lowlife (<35% hp) it's instantaneous. But what's the problem? Are your reactions too slow? Get good at the game!

Unfortunately, the state of PvP atm is pretty much burst damage and burst damage only. Having a 0.25 or 0.4 second delay on your pots is absolutely rediculous. Note, in this scenario this excludes any human reaction times and that must be added on top. If i'm getting bursted and i see my HP fall below 35%, often I will just die even if i press my Panicked Flask. The only way for me to counter this issue is to preemptively flask, which often leads to the panicked not working at all.

What else about Flasks is impacted by severe latency? Anti Bleed. Lets say i step on a puncture trap (fuck those are OP). On the server, I'm registered as bleeding but it takes another 0.125 or 0.2 second delay for it to reach me. I must then use my human reaction times to stop moving and counter pot, taking another 0.125 and 0.2 seconds to send it back to the server. This basically results in me taking 0.25 seconds or 0.4 seconds of bleed WHILE MOVING ONLY BECAUSE OF LATENCY. With the rediculous trap multiplier, point blank multiplier and crit scaling It takes less than a second to instantly die.

Solutions? Use immune to bleed flasks prior to battle. But but but, any skilled player will know that their puncture no longer works for the duration and thus will run. This is my time to strike! No, refer to point 1. On top of that, i don't have enough anti bleed flasks to continuously be immune because for 1) Not enough Flasks and 2) I need different Immune flasks too.

What a Conundrum.

3. Desync is a massive Pain in the Ass and the Achilles Heel of PoE. It's also a double Achilles Heel for high latency players in PvP (and quite literally at that too).

I don't know how the system works, and I don't understand why it works. However, I get noticeably less Desync when playing on US compared to EU. That's 400 ping to 250 ping. Sometimes, I lose because i know it's Ping related and challenge them on an AU server. With 15 ping and them on 250/400 It's the opposite and I have a significantly better time.

Even though I don't know how it works, I can provide an example of it taking place.

Bear traps - Getting delayed on client side of being trapped often results in not being trapped while being trapped. You have already moved PAST the bear trap on client side but on Server side you're stuck. This results in 99% of bear traps for high latency players to simply NOT go off on client side. On your screen, you're walking around trying maneuver yourself. However you see your HP rapidly dropping despite seeing no attacks and no one around you. Okay! Lets use /oos! Nope, it's disabled. Lets attack them back when you are taking damage from an invisible player! How do i target them? 10/10 fix for Season 2 GGG.

Stun - You might stun an enemy player for them to simply disappear. You might get stunned (when i tried no stun immune) to just teleport around the map. Man this is fucking annoying for everyone, but with high latency it's delayed for so long it's abosolutely rediculous.

Getting out of desync is for some reason near impossible for me at 250 ping. I can see that I'm taking invisible damage, but there is no way for me to stop it. Often i have to walk back to the enemy player on my client side to start targetting them again. On server I was just standing next to him the whole time.

4. Gear swaps and gem swap. If you want to experience what it's like, PM me on any league and any character to experience what i experience. Impossible to do gem swaps on EU server, extremely slow on US. Gear swaps are near impossible because of gem reallocation i could do in less than second on 30 ping but too long on US/EU. Weapon swap is too slow and pretty much is 100% negligible because of the pointlessness of waiting so long to switch to and back.


@GGG You've been promoting PvP and attempting to expand it. So far you've pretty much put off the entire Path of Exile Population through a rediculous PvP system that the majority (including me disagree on).

I've sat through season 1, hoping for anything for Oceanic players (which ironically includes New Zealand.... where the game is created and based upon). Instead nothing has changed and you continue to push away potential players.

You don't acknowledge our feedback (vocally) and it's quite apparent that you don't act upon it either (1.3.1 patch). You have the PvP Discussion/Feedback will with some very biased opinions often resulting in unnecessary changes. Doesn't help that GGG Moderators are against Discussion and fair arguments (GGG_Kieran vs Midwest) and the community isn't very accepting towards opinions other than their own (See Alea vs PvPer as an example).

You have limited any real PvP to the wealthy, yet in 1.3 you balanced with regards to mid level PvP (which pretty much doesn't exist because wealthy makes it 100% obsolete). Infact, you can put me against a mid level puncture trapper and with my Ping disadvantage I would probably win. You have not incorporated nor impressed the large majority of the PoE population. Infact it's safe to say GGG's actions with regards to availability have alienated everyone.

I'm posting this here, because the Ratings threads have the highest response rating from GGG (a few compared to pretty much none) and because the PvP forums are pretty sad.

I could rant another essay like http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1150151, but I've pretty much lost hope in GGG for any real PvP.

There aren't the numbers to support Oceanic centred PVP.

We are aware of the issues latency presents to PVP, that is why we have separate EU and US PVP. I would like to note, despite those disadvantages many PVPers fight on both EU and the US, and often have good results on both.

It isn't efficient for us to answer every piece of feedback, and we would rather focus on implementation and changes.

"

Qarl wrote:

There aren't the numbers to support Oceanic centred PVP.

We are aware of the issues latency presents to PVP, that is why we have separate EU and US PVP. I would like to note, despite those disadvantages many PVPers fight on both EU and the US, and often have good results on both.

It isn't efficient for us to answer every piece of feedback, and we would rather focus on implementation and changes.

I know that people fight on US and EU but 150 ping differential (EU <-> US) compared to 220 ping differential ping is like day and night. 150 ping differential compared to 370 ping differential is like day and rabbit.

Any online PvP like League of Legends and Counterstrike:Global Offensive would say that anything like the ping Oceanic players is pretty much impossible to play on. I would like to note that, In a recent CS:GO event a match between a Russian team and an opposing team resulted in 1 having 30~ ping while the other with 100+. The odds would have been heavily in favour of the opposing team but they were swayed due to the latency.

First night of cross league PvP was awesome! Don't think I had to wait longer than 10 seconds for a que to fire. Aside from some skill balance issues Season 2 should be alot of fun.

"

B3ar wrote:

First night of cross league PvP was awesome! Don't think I had to wait longer than 10 seconds for a que to fire. Aside from some skill balance issues Season 2 should be alot of fun.

"Skill balance" hehe. All i saw was either, 1h sword+shield or trapper (caster, bower whatever). Why go something other than sword? Why not take a free multiplier that happens to apply damage even easier (or in puncture's case, stack with another 50% multiplier for the lols).

Season 2 is pretty much all blitz. Seems like GGG would rather "work on Act 4" of which I'm sure they are and not fix the most enjoyable event from season 1 (CTF).

"

Skyforth wrote:

"Skill balance" hehe. All i saw was either, 1h sword+shield or trapper (caster, bower whatever). Why go something other than sword? Why not take a free multiplier that happens to apply damage even easier (or in puncture's case, stack with another 50% multiplier for the lols).

Season 2 is pretty much all blitz. Seems like GGG would rather "work on Act 4" of which I'm sure they are and not fix the most enjoyable event from season 1 (CTF).

Yes after reading the 1.3.1 pvp "balance" notes it was clear there would be no meta change and probably push puncture/insert any spell here trappers harder. I would guess roughly 75% of the builds I played against tonight were deerstalker builds, 20% melee sword builds, and 5% templar EE builds. Everyone knew this was going to be the case going into season 2 yet most are still playing because they have fun regardless or were just lying to themselves. Even though I am highly disappointed with the state of LLD I still play because I'm still having fun for some reason. It would be nice to see more time invested into skill balance. I'm sure if there were more viable builds and not being forced to have a play style that involves fighting against trappers 75% of the time it would be much more appealing to many people.

Season 1 = failure but GGG were on holidays so excusable.
Season 2 = rehash of season 1 but GGG are working on Act 4.

Chris I know I'm not GreenDude, and it sucks to say that he seems to be the only person you and GGG ever respond to, but please if you're reading this, the current PvP meta and balance are TERRIBLE. I can honestly say anyone who spends one hour reading stuff in PvP feedback from CREDIBLE players, you would realize that the balance patch we had was close to useless and whatever changes happened changed absolutely nothing.

Melee is still the absolute king, and swords are still the absolute best weapon. Molten, Heavy, and Cyclone are still the best skills to build around as anything else would take more effort/money and have less results.

We, the PvPers of both LLD and HLD have constantly been giving feedback, tips, advice, QoL and much needed fixes, but out of all that's been said, nothing has been done to make PvP the least bit balanced. It's also evident that you would rather listen to the minority (flicker strike nerf) and you completely disregard what others have posted (Only responded when GreenDude posted the fix and not when others have given the suggestion before).

My two cents on LLD balance. This is just scratching the surface and these ideas aren't perfect of course, but would be a good place to start testing.

Heavy Strike:

Too powerful, using this skill is essentially an 8 link. Guaranteed knock back that carries such high dps (with little passive investment) and a 25% reduced stun threshold to boot.

My suggestion: 50% Chance to knock back in PvP. 15% reduced enemy stun threshold in PvP. It feels like melee is in a position now where if you are not using this skill you may as well not play melee.

Tornado Shot:

Too weak at 30% damage reduction in LLD. Bow users should not feel like they have to use traps to be competitive. Some variations still feel strong, like the elemental storm cloud build, but a character that requires such specific corrupted items should be powerful.

My suggestion: 25% damage reduction in PvP.

Deerstalker/Point Blank/Trap:

Too powerful. Build enabling uniques are great for PvP and I would like to see more of them but these boots allow too much damage, for far too little build investment.

My suggestion: I am not sure if deerstalker, trap, point blank, or just the combination are the real problem. There are too many variables at play to suggest a good solution without testing, but there has to be a sweet spot that allows traps, whether it be a spell or puncture, to still be good and force people to play around them without nerfing one or the other into the ground.

Molten Shell:

Molten Shell is one of my favorite skill designs and is a great way for casters to keep melee in check. However when its dealing 1000+ damage and igniting you most of the time in a 3 link it is probably too powerful.

My suggestion: Add a 5 second cool down time to the skill in PvP. Instead of reducing the damage this will force melee players to break it from a range and still be punished if they don't time their skills correctly.

Axes and Maces:

A tier 2 sword beats a tier 1 axe or mace by miles. There is 0 reason for melee builds to be using an axe or mace over a sword. Daggers can at least be built around to be fairly powerful.

My suggestion: This would be the perfect place for some build enabling uniques. Brutus' Lead Sceptre is a joke but a step in the right direction to give something cool for other melee builds to use. A rare sword would still probably remain supreme but melee should at least have some competitive options.

Let me know if you agree or disagree and add anything I overlooked.

You simply can't balance 1v1 matches in one or two paragraphs. I personally don't expect much from GGG regarding balancing 1v1.

You know their hands are tight with a fixed PvE tree. There are many keystones like RT and Ondar's guile , etc that cannot be balanced in anyway. A222 comes here complaining while he was beating my melee duelist with his bow build, more than anyone else, because I had neither of those two "keystone"s. And I was beating your melee build most of the time. You simply can't balance every skill and class at the same time with this many restrictions and bindings that comes from pve. And that should not be the goal for an pve focused arpg like poe.

Look at moba games, it's ridiculous if you try to balance every single 1v1 match ups between heroes. While if the focus was on team based matches 2v2, 3v3, most of these problems would instantly become insignificant.