Don't expect to get any money from me anymore for this 'balancing'.

Sooo let's see..


- CI & lowlife nerfed to ground because of leech changes in addition to existing problems it had

- Spellcasters fucked up with the leech changes

- Monster damage totally absurd, which is why everyone goes armor and ECs, or plays Summoner/Flame Totem

- Tree balance hardly existent when you look at ladder

- Multiple nerfs totally out of line, AGAIN


GGG really, what do you do for balancing? Do you have a 5-year old rolling a D100 and the result is the % nerf? This is embarassing math in balancing. I bought a supporter pack for The Awakening, and I really regret that now. While some ideas of the balancing were fine, the numbers are completely messed up.

I would have thought better of you guys.

Truth is that this has become path of totems, especially flame totem. I also hated the ailment changes, killed many builds making them useless at the only thing they needed to be useful - bosses. Most of these builds weren't OP but they paid the price for a few which were.

I'm still on the ship

''For now''

Disagree. A lot more melee builds are viable.

Caster builds are still good if you know how to build them. If you played in beyond you just had to take one look at how ridiculous tornadoshot rangers were 1 shotting back to back every room. The leech was out of control now it is much better and it prevents mana flasks from becoming obsolete it is something to work around and consider. You no longer can run 3 auras easily or have it super easy just because you have call of the immortal, +% max resistance and spell block.

Some new caster uniques do promote some different playstyles. Dual flame totem is not that good, flame totem as just a single spell is very strong for leveling until you get something like Flameblast. It isn't path of flame totem or cyclone, it's just that both these builds are low budget and easy to pull off that you see them often. Ice crash, static strike, infernal blow can all work as well. I'm sure there are some dual wield melee builds that are viable as well. I haven't looked much at ranger and shadow but they might possibly be gutted a lil and some of the skillgems might need some tuning (I don't play these characters I base this just on how prevalent these characters are).

"

Disagree. A lot more melee builds are viable.

Caster builds are still good if you know how to build them. If you played in beyond you just had to take one look at how ridiculous tornadoshot rangers were 1 shotting back to back every room. The leech was out of control now it is much better and it prevents mana flasks from becoming obsolete it is something to work around and consider. You no longer can run 3 auras easily or have it super easy just because you have call of the immortal, +% max resistance and spell block.

Some new caster uniques do promote some different playstyles. Dual flame totem is not that good, flame totem as just a single spell is very strong for leveling until you get something like Flameblast. It isn't path of flame totem or cyclone, it's just that both these builds are low budget and easy to pull off that you see them often. Ice crash, static strike, infernal blow can all work as well. I'm sure there are some dual wield melee builds that are viable as well. I haven't looked much at ranger and shadow but they might possibly be gutted a lil and some of the skillgems might need some tuning (I don't play these characters I base this just on how prevalent these characters are).

Oh and btw Beyond and Bloodlines were full of only Flameblast and Tornado shot being 80% or so of the top places on the ladder. You will always have people opt for the fastest thing in these kind of leagues, but for regular standard and even for hardcore play there are a lot more builds viable that might be a little slower but have the same, if not more survivability or damage.

While I agree that the balance is not as it should be, I'll most likely still support the game...

I find that:
- Act 4 (last half) is boring as heck
- One-shotting too common
- New maps horribly unbalanced
- Leech is probably nerfed a little too hard
- Map drops are probably too low

On the other hand:
- Lock-step is great!
- Item filters are great!
- Divination cards are great!
- Jewels makes for nice options in the skill tree
- The game is still mostly enjoyable (apart from last half of Act 4)

HOWEVER!... I haven't yet had to level up a character through A4... I've done the last half once (maybe twice, can't recall) on an existing character (not Merciless), and I find the last 8 cage fights boring as hell! There are some slightly different mechanics, but essentially all those fights are the same, and all of them in a too-small area without obstacles, ie. very limited options for builds to go through them.
It is as if they had created the bosses for 2-3 complete acts, then ran out of time to actually produce the rest of the content, and jammed them all together at the end of A4.

I have plenty of already levelled characters (I mainly play Standard), so may not have to go there with new ones, but if I had to, I'd probably stop playing (and paying). It is too painful...

I can understand the hate towards the devs, but there are better, less childish ways of actually hanging on on to the game than just saying "fuck you ggg" (more or less).

I am also quite dissapointed by the extremely poor changes to balance in the game, and as such, haven't really enjoyed act 4 all that much (especially since I bruteforced my way into act 1 merciless by dying around 50 times to malachai + the organs, before the patches to nerf them).

However I've made a thread explaining the issues, and even tho it is quite dissapointing to not see a response from the devs, there are some working on this and they do read it.
So if you're gonna critisize, do it like a proper player.

This is like saying on youtube "disliked and unsubbed", no one cares.

But yes, the reasons you've listed are quite true. I'd like to add to those the huge indirect nerf to evasion since you need an INSANE life pool to sustain it, and in the evasion side of the tree life is hard to get. So evasion + melee is shit.

Oh and also auras, but I've already had a rant about all of this in this thread so meh

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1361855

You guys know how GGG will fix the "path of totems" right ?

Nerfing them too. So they'll say:

"We don't want that builds become this mandatory, we want to increase the build diversity."


This is what they've been doing since i play this game. But i truly don't know what will happen from now on.

I must agree that some balance changes were needed but like 90% of them were totally full retarded mode that i can't see no reason behind. Well, maybe it's because i'm not a dev, but as a player, i felt a lot uncomfortable with them.

"

RestInPieces wrote:

Truth is that this has become path of totems, especially flame totem.

I'll be laughing all the way to the next ass-whooping by Malachai if/when GGG nerfs flame totem.

What disappoints me so much is also the lost opportunity to get back old players and gain new ones. People usually just vote with their feet. And the game idea itself is really great, and Act 4 is also very nice. It's really just some balancing issues.