How should incinerate be rebalanced? Vote now

^^ I also think its using rf without any obvious ways to sustain.

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TheAnuhart wrote:

Incinerate and very few other skills can accomplish what others should be able to. Should,

...annnnd once again we arrive at the subjective view what a skill 'should' be. some people, me and GGG included, think skills like incinerate, cyclone, SRS, PA etc are the outlier, not the other way around.

this turns into strictly a meta discussion, since everyone agrees skills like incinerate stand out far above other skills and it isn't particularly close

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Vhlad wrote:

You realize that 200k picture is with max buffs, right?

I have a freeze pulser that can screenshot 600k tooltip.

In the same gear, with the same tree, with a different gem set up and not TTshwiiinging, she shows 50k tooltip stood in HO.

Guess which one I actually use, clue, it's the one with the highest clear speed.

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grepman wrote:

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TheAnuhart wrote:

Incinerate and very few other skills can accomplish what others should be able to. Should,

...annnnd once again we arrive at the subjective view what a skill 'should' be. some people, me and GGG included, think skills like incinerate, cyclone, SRS, PA etc are the outlier, not the other way around.

this turns into strictly a meta discussion, since everyone agrees skills like incinerate stand out far above other skills and it isn't particularly close

Assuming they nerf incinerate what would you play instead actually?

The question is if incinerate pushing everything else out of the meta or is there very few meta options to begin with.

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RagnarokChu wrote:

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grepman wrote:

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TheAnuhart wrote:

Incinerate and very few other skills can accomplish what others should be able to. Should,

...annnnd once again we arrive at the subjective view what a skill 'should' be. some people, me and GGG included, think skills like incinerate, cyclone, SRS, PA etc are the outlier, not the other way around.

this turns into strictly a meta discussion, since everyone agrees skills like incinerate stand out far above other skills and it isn't particularly close

Assuming they nerf incinerate what would you play instead actually?

what would I personally play ? anything. I dont understand the question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYSrjnjpzz0

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The question is if incinerate pushing everything else out of the meta or is there very few meta options to begin with.

the question is neither- the question is, is incinerate, along with few other options, a superior skill compared to others ? and the answer is a resounding 'YES' and also 'DUH' and 'NO SHIT WATSON'

this isnt a discussion of the meta. its not rocket science to understand those who dislike the current ultradefensive meta will play the most op skills so it feels less like the current meta and more like the previous meta. but this isnt a discussion of the meta. the meta is largely irrelevant to the power of incinerate. all the meta's doing is pushing people unhappy with the meta to play op builds. it doesnt inherently make incinerate ab op build. if incinerate wasnt op, people wouldnt flock to it.

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what would I personally play ? anything. I dont understand the question.

What wouldn't you understand? If incinerate isn't stopping you from not playing incinerate I don't understand why would nerfing it stop you from playing whatever you wanted to begin with. This isn't 2013 with spectral throw or snap-shot summoners/righteous fire. Now stuff like that are so overpowered that you had to play them.

This isn't a meta nuke where whatever was nerfed was unplayable (Path of melee, path of ranged, path of spell casters ect)

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the question is neither- the question is, is incinerate, along with few other options, a superior skill compared to others ? and the answer is a resounding 'YES' and also 'DUH' and 'NO SHIT WATSON'

this isnt a discussion of the meta. its not rocket science to understand those who dislike the current ultradefensive meta will play the most op skills so it feels less like the current meta and more like the previous meta. but this isnt a discussion of the meta. the meta is largely irrelevant to the power of incinerate. all the meta's doing is pushing people unhappy with the meta to play op builds. it doesnt inherently make incinerate ab op build. if incinerate wasnt op, people wouldnt flock to it.

Okay if incinerate was OP what are the balanced abilities then? Anything that isn't incinerate? What spell should be nerf incinerate to the level of.

I mean I'm fine with them nerfing incinerate but people here seem want to completely gut it because it's the most "op thing ever." As oppose to having an actual talk of "re-balancing it." There is a couple of other builds that people play that isn't incinerate at the moment? They are OP? Should we nerf them too because of "diversity?"

Diversity isn't people playing a equal amount of all builds, it would be the greatest amount of builds being viable at the time.

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RagnarokChu wrote:

What wouldn't you understand? If incinerate isn't stopping you from not playing incinerate I don't understand why would nerfing it stop you from playing whatever you wanted to begin with. This isn't 2013 with spectral throw or snap-shot summoners/righteous fire. Now stuff like that are so overpowered that you had to play them.

This isn't a meta nuke where whatever was nerfed was unplayable (Path of melee, path of ranged, path of spell casters ect)

I still don't get it. nothing is stopping me from playing other builds. I want balance in a game that had thousands of balance tweaks over last 2+ years. if the game wasnt about balanced builds, and more of a torchlight thing, I woudlnt care- but it's not.

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Okay if incinerate was OP what are the balanced abilities then? Anything that isn't incinerate? What spell should be nerf incinerate to the level of.

I mean I'm fine with them nerfing incinerate but people here seem want to completely gut it because it's the most "op thing ever." As oppose to having an actual talk of "re-balancing it." There is a couple of other builds that people play that isn't incinerate at the moment? They are OP? Should we nerf them too because of "diversity?"

Diversity isn't people playing a equal amount of all builds, it would be the greatest amount of builds being viable at the time.

something like glacial cascade is fairly balanced nowadays. it did lose some of its power against reflect once thornflesh was introduced (but now its removed lol), but its still in a fairly good spot right now Id say

ice shot is fairly balanced.

now diversity is a tricky thing. if no one plays build X, it does not necessarily follow that build X isnt good (its possible but not necessary), it might be that build Y is much better or that build X is niche. that's ok. but if everyone plays build Z, then it USUALLY means that build Z is overpowered.

just like passive tree heat maps dont lie. keystone might not be underpowered if not too many people take it- it can be a niche keystone. on other hand keystones that are very commonly taken are usually culprits of op mechanics, usually making some aspect of character/build development very easy.

and lets make something clear- theres a clear difference between 'viable' build and a 'most efficient' build. clearly, theres a difference.

if you are saying people who are playing incinerate because its very efficient/powerful, will just move on to another op skill, you are probably correct. but this is why its important to bring op skills in line with most skills.

you dont have to go far to find an example of op skill that was nerfed heavily, that resulted in more diversity. flameblast nerf was entirely warranted and entirely positive.

all I'm asking is to separate people's subjective view towards the meta and the skill itself in relation to others.
if one says 'fuck this meta I will be playing most op builds because thats how I think the game SHOULD be', thats ok. not that anyone should care about that imo, but thats ones opinion and right. GGG has their own opinion and so do others, and thats their right.

but please dont say 'there is nothing wrong with the skill compared to others'. because its clearly not true. that's just intellectually dishonest.

Why noone beside me says that they nerfed other spells ONLY bcoz of retarded CoC ?

Come fucking on... Every buff to fp/gc/ab/fb/ etc means that demn CoC will do tens of milions and not milions of dps.

Every endgame CoC build takes a huge shit on the face of game content, and thats the ONLY reason why other spells were not adjusted to Act 4 and 2.0...

Till autocast shit will be 10 time as powerful as selfcast there is no way thay can buff ANY CoC friendly spell. Incinerate is not one of these spells so it was buffed. Same for fire storm and starm call.

Who no FP?

Bcoz some dude will posts a guide with fucking 1c wand raping Uber Atziri... Thats why...

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I still don't get it. nothing is stopping me from playing other builds. I want balance in a game that had thousands of balance tweaks over last 2+ years. if the game wasnt about balanced builds, and more of a torchlight thing, I woudlnt care- but it's not.

The point was incinerate isn't that imbalanced to begin with, it's not as bad as people are making it out to be when you look at the times in PoE history when shit was actually really broken and OP. So if it does a need a nerf it needs brought down a little instead of being gutted and never used again.

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The problem I have with your reasoning that the most popular is always "OP" but less played cannot be UP or nobody plays it because of the fault of the "OP" skills. Thus you have the endless nerf cycle PoE has that push the previously "OP" skills until they are never played anymore. Or abilities kept shitty because we don't buff them because of "powercreep."

People label stuff as "OP" way too easily, it means "overpowered." Not "slightly stronger" or "needs a small nerf here" or "has some benefits over other skills". Overpowered mean completely outclasses everything where you need to smack it hard with the nerfbat.

If we where to say something is "op" why not CoC, that skill alone insures that every single ability that would work with CoC, will always be mediocre or weak because it would completely break the game for CoC.

Nobody uses glacial cascade other then to spam it with CoC, nobody uses ice shot because you can perma freeze stuff with normal arrow attacks anyway. Should we nerf everything above those skills to?

Incinerate itself was always around top tier, did it suddenly become "OP" because they removed shotgunning and made all of the other skills too weak? Or did the buffs to incinerate to compensate for shotgun nerf too high?

We could do a little better then "because it's very popular."

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RagnarokChu wrote:

The point was incinerate isn't that imbalanced to begin with, it's not as bad as people are making it out to be when you look at the times in PoE history when shit was actually really broken and OP. So if it does a need a nerf it needs brought down a little instead of being gutted and never used again.

again, I dont propose outright gutting it, unless bringing it in line with other viable but not op skills is gutting

incinerate was either op or on border of op pre-2.0. it was buffed a great amount by the buff that was supposed to balance a change that removed shotgunning

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The problem I have with your reasoning that the most popular is always "OP"

well I hate the concept as well, but it is true. you and I both know it. this game has op builds as a function of clear speed and survivability (adjust as needed for hardcore setting) as well as cost. if a build has a million dps but it cant clear well or dies every 10 maps, its not an op build. if a build costs 500 exalts and has a million dps, while if you have 15 exalts and its much less powerful to the point youre dying every 50 maps, its not op

racers are guinea pigs who always strive for most efficient builds. thus popularity is almost always a sign of a cheap, great clear speed and great survavibility. sure, sometimes there are obscure builds which buck the trend, but thats why PoE is PoE.

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but less played cannot be UP or nobody plays it because of the fault of the "OP" skills.

of course you can have UP skills- Ive never said otherwise. fireball is underpowered right now as a self-cast skill. why its underpowered is another story (coc) and a complex one, but there are definitely skills out there that could be buffed without nerfing the op skills.

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People label stuff as "OP" way too easily, it means "overpowered." Not "slightly stronger" or "needs a small nerf here" or "has some benefits over other skills". Overpowered mean completely outclasses everything where you need to smack it hard with the nerfbat.

flameblast was op- was it not ? you could take lameblast, put it into a 2/3 link and cruise from the time you get it to maps, and the only thing that you cared about was ele reflect

incinerate is not *as* op, but its still insane compared to *balanced* skills like glacial cascade. I would get rekt if I played with GC this weekend with all mods on like I played with incinerate.

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If we where to say something is "op" why not CoC, that skill alone insures that every single ability that would work with CoC, will always be mediocre or weak because it would completely break the game for CoC.

of course, coc is op. its op-ness (word to chris) is quite complex though. its not a skill like incinerate that is self-sufficient. its a complex mechanic that is a clusterfuck to balance.

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Nobody uses glacial cascade other then to spam it with CoC, nobody uses ice shot because you can perma freeze stuff with normal arrow attacks anyway. Should we nerf everything above those skills to?

glacial cascade was used quite a lot before 2.0 and considered a quite good, but not op skill. nothing changed about it, the meta changed. like Ive said, the fact that no one plays these builds does not mean the build is under powered. its just in poe a ton of people will play the most efficient build possible. couple it with meta where a lot of people think their build should behave differently from
what GGG intended, and you have the present situation.

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Incinerate itself was always around top tier, did it suddenly become "OP" because they removed shotgunning and made all of the other skills too weak? Or did the buffs to incinerate to compensate for shotgun nerf too high?

the latter. like Ive (and you've) said incinerate was always on border of op (top tier) if not op. most people thought it would be nerfed in 2.0, and were surprised it got buffed substantially.