Reasoning behind the overwhelming negative response to the latest developer update from supporters.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1202920/page/1
Concerning the above thread.

After you get past the first page you see many responses by people with multiple support packs being distrustful of the changes shown. The developers should take it as a warning that they are going in the wrong direction. The game has been unbalanced for quite some time with no real progress shown towards addressing those issues. Instead we have gotten PVP, Trigger gems (which most builds replace by merc). Now they are shown to be spending their time on warcrys which mimic existing curses, and reducing QoL changes to EC and IC they made in the past to give melee a need boost. These last couple of changes would not be bad in and of itself, if there was visibility that they are also addressing the balance issues.

We need fixes not more gimmick skills no one uses. We need them to post that they know that there are issues, examples of what they think the main issues are so that we can see we are all on the same page. Then they need to comment on how they plan to address these issues. They talked about increased communication but we haven't seen that. We only see the fluff and nothing of substance for quite some time. It would be nice to know they are focusing their time on what the player base feels is most important and changes are in the works.

Some of the main issues as I seem them are:
Melee clear speed and survivability.
Lack of flexibility in skill selection or build for melee
Over power of crit builds
Lack of benefit of 2h weapons.
Unbalanced selection of skills (too many skills are just not good enough to use)
Damage mitigation mechanics

These are not easy to fix but visibility that they are being looked into and addressed would go a long way. I for one would prefer to see the leagues go on a rotation of existing content (ie invasion, beyond) and more time spent on balance adjustments. It doesn't mean new skills and items couldn't be introduced into each league, but we already have so many skills that aren't being used. At least this way more time could be spent where it is needed.

-BB

To me it looks like every dev is sailing in his own direction, 0 cordination

Am i the only who think that i will never use any war cry?

what is up with so much focus on completly useless stuff for this game?

by that i mean this war crys, pvp, new uniques introduced that are all vendor trash

Why is this game going not even into mediocre but shit direction?

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Breakbeat wrote:

overwhelming negative response

Not sure where you see this, I see a lot of positive response, some mixed/wary ones and a few QQ responses. Also nobody can predict how the warcries will work with all the other changes that are inevitably coming with 1.4 so I would calm my tits until we have more info :)

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Xavderion wrote:

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Breakbeat wrote:

overwhelming negative response

Not sure where you see this, I see a lot of positive response, some mixed/wary ones and a few QQ responses. Also nobody can predict how the warcries will work with all the other changes that are inevitably coming with 1.4 so I would calm my tits until we have more info :)

not that i disagree, well reasoned response and sounds familiar.. said the same about those counter gems that turned out to be amazing and overwhelming

best course of action is to withhold all judgement until we have the full picture a.k.a. the 1.4.0 patch notes posted on the forum

As a mostly melee player I could tell you that the news gems do absolutely nothing for melee at the moment. But that would be a stupid uninformed opinion because I have no way of knowing what the situation would be after the expansion hits. For all we know the warcries will become staples of every build.

I'm quite intrigued by this direction. It actually could work as the basis for rebalancing Melee/Ranged - without the CWDT-IDDQD, ranged will lose a lot of defense against Leapers, Poppers and Droppers. If the cry system provides decent buffing for melee only characters, and there is some work done on how armor mitigates damage - we could see a pretty strong renaissance for melee builds.

Not having to balance mobs around invulnerable ranged characters would give a lot more freedom to offensive and defensive scaling.

Mind you, it's all moot until we see more info. And don't worry about the negativity, it was surprisingly mild compared to some of the other threads.

wouldn't it be silly to scrap a staple and TRY and replace it with a bunch of staples that fit the same need with increased risk of failure? why not leave that original staple alone and offer possible staples as replacement and choice, risk avoided?

it would be like Toyota scrapping the corolla in early 2000s and introduce a line of different priuses as its replacement

These warcries aren't fixing the core problems. Everyone uses EC? Well that's because armour sucks, evasion isn't enough, decent energy shield gear is expensive or hard to find/craft, and it's typically inefficient to make hybrid builds. Remove the ability to use EC with CwDT? That kinda sucks unless enemy physical damage is lowered. No one wants to keep casting an ability for such basic survivability, and what do you do if casting EC interrupts what you're doing (Incinerate comes to mind)?

-Lack of benefit of 2h weapons.
This kills me. Outside of staves, you don't get block chance, which is a huge downside, and going crit is unlikely, so you get plenty of 1h builds that have better dps. Where's the benefit? Why not give 2h builds a form of Elemental Adaptation on the tree?

Why would most people replace the new counter attack gems at merc? You can now blind, leech, curse when you are hit or when you block. Every block build gets aegis in a 4l essentially.

Also I'm glad GGG has decided to stop treating warcrys the same as curses. Melee needs abilities that ranged/casters can't use...or can't use without heavy investment.

All these changes are making melee better. It might not seem like it when you first look at the block/acro nerf but with all the new utilities melee has gotten and with new utilities being added by GGG melee would have been incredibly OP had the block/dodge nerfs not happened.

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wouldn't it be silly to scrap a staple and TRY and replace it with a bunch of staples that fit the same need with increased risk of failure? why not leave that original staple alone and offer possible staples as replacement and choice, risk avoided?

it would be like Toyota scrapping the corolla in early 2000s and introduce a line of different priuses as its replacement

That analogy is flawed because Toyota lacks the ability to rewrite the laws of economics, universal physics, time, space, and probability, the way that a game dev can within the game world that they have created.

In other words, game devs got swag in the virtual world so they can do what they want! And they should if that's what it takes. Do it!