GGG Hypocrisy

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Hemmingfish wrote:

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grepman wrote:

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Hemmingfish wrote:

I've posted this before, but it's a total 180 from how they've been doing the classes where it affects nothing except quest rewards and starting location. Not only does it go against their ideals, but it's also a gigantic "screw you" to people who made (for example) a trapper witch and spent months building that one character. Their tree might otherwise be identical to a Shadow, but they'll never be able to get that 20% trap CDR which is a very big deal to any trapper, let alone the other passives on that tree.

This is literally only going to kill customisation and build diversity.

If one already made a suboptimal toon before (let say a trapper marauder), how will not getting some cool things in the saboteur subtree affect him ? I mean hes already verys suboptimal so clearly he wasnt minmaxing things, and it will still be suboptimal after.

except in this case he can choose some other cool perks that dont relate to traps but maybe to his own survivability and find some interesting synergies. for example if youre a trapping templar, that keystone that ignores elemental resists on crit should go well with fire trap if you arent cursing a lot. just an example really.

Daily reminder Witch isn't a suboptimal class for a trapper, but after the patch it will be.

my question wasnt specifically about your build - Im talking about marauder and traps, ie direct opposite of the tree

if ones build is pretty suboptimal, what exactly does it lose by not getting specific cool things in subtree ? some optimal things ? but its already suboptimal

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grepman wrote:

my question wasnt specifically about your build - Im talking about marauder and traps, ie direct opposite of the tree

if ones build is pretty suboptimal, what exactly does it lose by not getting specific cool things in subtree ? some optimal things ? but its already suboptimal

Nobody brought up marauder and traps but you.

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grepman wrote:

my question wasnt specifically about your build - Im talking about marauder and traps, ie direct opposite of the tree

if ones build is pretty suboptimal, what exactly does it lose by not getting specific cool things in subtree ? some optimal things ? but its already suboptimal

Whenever more power gets added to the characters, GGG must balance around the maximum potential. If they don't rebalance the game then the game becomes trivially easy in the face of how much raw power a certain build can bring forth. PoE was created specifically to be hard, so if it becomes easy then the game basically falls apart due to the audience not having what they wanted from the game in the first place.

So if the suboptimal, but still playable, build gets no boosts but the optimal build does get boosted, the optimal build will now be the balance point and thus the balance point is increased. The gap widens between the suboptimal build and the optimal one. There is a very real possibility that the suboptimal build then becomes unplayable due to how weak it is in comparison to the harder content.

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Jackinthegreen wrote:

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grepman wrote:

my question wasnt specifically about your build - Im talking about marauder and traps, ie direct opposite of the tree

if ones build is pretty suboptimal, what exactly does it lose by not getting specific cool things in subtree ? some optimal things ? but its already suboptimal

Whenever more power gets added to the characters, GGG must balance around the maximum potential. If they don't rebalance the game then the game becomes trivially easy in the face of how much raw power a certain build can bring forth. PoE was created specifically to be hard, so if it becomes easy then the game basically falls apart due to the audience not having what they wanted from the game in the first place.

So if the suboptimal, but still playable, build gets no boosts but the optimal build does get boosted, the optimal build will now be the balance point and thus the balance point is increased. The gap widens between the suboptimal build and the optimal one. There is a very real possibility that the suboptimal build then becomes unplayable due to how weak it is in comparison to the harder content.

Only that there are no "suboptimal builds", there are suboptimial classes for certain builds. Serioulsy, these foruns are drowning in misconceptions. It seems that every QQ is caused by people jumping into conlcusions. Just because Saboteur's passives has "Traps" related bonuses, it doesn't automatically locks every "Trap" tagged skill gem onto the class.
If it happens that a player is using a suboptimal class and he's feeling OP as hell (because thats the only thing that matters, apparently), then he can simply change class to get a little more power. However, it is questionable why said player would be willing to level a whole char again just to gain a little more bonuses. That would be entirely his choice, and a result of a min/max mentality that is innefective in the long term.

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Hemmingfish wrote:

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grepman wrote:

my question wasnt specifically about your build - Im talking about marauder and traps, ie direct opposite of the tree

if ones build is pretty suboptimal, what exactly does it lose by not getting specific cool things in subtree ? some optimal things ? but its already suboptimal

Nobody brought up marauder and traps but you.

I brought up marauder and traps for an example of a character that is already suboptimal simply because of the position on the tree. Im talking about builds that are defacto subotimal due to the distance of the nodes required and the starting class.

The main concern is losing 'every toon can do anything' but many combinations are already too suboptimal to even contend with 'good' builds, much less 'opie' builds.

You are talking random builds and your point is about existing builds ? Yeah some builds will become a bit less optimal. So ?

A witch trapper is pretty suboptimal in many cases too. A bow witch trapper for example is suboptimal right now too.

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Jackinthegreen wrote:

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grepman wrote:

my question wasnt specifically about your build - Im talking about marauder and traps, ie direct opposite of the tree

if ones build is pretty suboptimal, what exactly does it lose by not getting specific cool things in subtree ? some optimal things ? but its already suboptimal

Whenever more power gets added to the characters, GGG must balance around the maximum potential. If they don't rebalance the game then the game becomes trivially easy in the face of how much raw power a certain build can bring forth. PoE was created specifically to be hard, so if it becomes easy then the game basically falls apart due to the audience not having what they wanted from the game in the first place.

I agree

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So if the suboptimal, but still playable, build gets no boosts but the optimal build does get boosted, the optimal build will now be the balance point and thus the balance point is increased. The gap widens between the suboptimal build and the optimal one. There is a very real possibility that the suboptimal build then becomes unplayable due to how weak it is in comparison to the harder content.

but here's something to understand,
it would be even worse if these subclasses were available to everyone. by limiting which class can use these powerful passives, GGG can actually balance not between the worst case scenario between the sum of them, but only between the individual ones inside a class, knowing a marauder won't get the ranger's subclass.

this way, we can have powerful and interesting passives without being needed to balance by the absolute best/worst case.
this was a problem with fortify and things like health regen balancing because of RF. by locking some things away from archetypes that usually would break these things, there will be more possibilities.

ie, Rangers are very suboptimal for a RF build, so because of that there could be a subclass of ranger that has huge bonuses to health regen without disturbing the RF balance. If this subclass was available in a tree for everyone, people would just make a marauder pathing to those nodes to enjoy these RF bonuses.

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grepman wrote:

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Jackinthegreen wrote:

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grepman wrote:

my question wasnt specifically about your build - Im talking about marauder and traps, ie direct opposite of the tree

if ones build is pretty suboptimal, what exactly does it lose by not getting specific cool things in subtree ? some optimal things ? but its already suboptimal

Whenever more power gets added to the characters, GGG must balance around the maximum potential. If they don't rebalance the game then the game becomes trivially easy in the face of how much raw power a certain build can bring forth. PoE was created specifically to be hard, so if it becomes easy then the game basically falls apart due to the audience not having what they wanted from the game in the first place.

I agree

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So if the suboptimal, but still playable, build gets no boosts but the optimal build does get boosted, the optimal build will now be the balance point and thus the balance point is increased. The gap widens between the suboptimal build and the optimal one. There is a very real possibility that the suboptimal build then becomes unplayable due to how weak it is in comparison to the harder content.

but here's something to understand,
it would be even worse if these subclasses were available to everyone. by limiting which class can use these powerful passives, GGG can actually balance not between the worst case scenario between the sum of them, but only between the individual ones inside a class, knowing a marauder won't get the ranger's subclass.

this way, we can have powerful and interesting passives without being needed to balance by the absolute best/worst case.
this was a problem with fortify and things like health regen balancing because of RF. by locking some things away from archetypes that usually would break these things, there will be more possibilities.

ie, Rangers are very suboptimal for a RF build, so because of that there could be a subclass of ranger that has huge bonuses to health regen without disturbing the RF balance. If this subclass was available in a tree for everyone, people would just make a marauder pathing to those nodes to enjoy these RF bonuses.

It's been a major problem for balancing for GGG for quite sometime. Some nodes were just so good that you basically had to take them no matter what class you were, which made certain classes far better than others (for example when IR was king of stupidity, Duelists and Rangers pretty much shit on the other classes hard, or when Life stacking was the best, Mara became top class, etc).

With the introduction of subclasses, now you have different flavors and diversity. Duelists will feel significantly different from a Marauder for once, rather than a shittier version of them.

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allbusiness wrote:

It's been a major problem for balancing for GGG for quite sometime. Some nodes were just so good that you basically had to take them no matter what class you were, which made certain classes far better than others (for example when IR was king of stupidity, Duelists and Rangers pretty much shit on the other classes hard, or when Life stacking was the best, Mara became top class, etc).

With the introduction of subclasses, now you have different flavors and diversity. Duelists will feel significantly different from a Marauder for once, rather than a shittier version of them.

agreed. the whole 'everyone can do everything' mantra is nice in theory and there are a lot of builds that did benefit from it, but for a lot of build combinations, it simply doesn't work. people just cherry pick the tree, so to speak.

it also was made worse when GGG decided people cant just pick up free auras/traps etc and had to specialize in them (around the release). it was the right move, but what it did is to further pigeonhole that with trap/curse/etc clusters in specific areas. once that happened, I knew the whole class 'flexibility' would actually be detrimental to the game in terms of balancing. it provided little benefit as most 'non-archetype' builds were suboptimal and the drawback was that balancing became a nightmare.


the chief counter-argument to this is that people will just choose the best subclass available. and that is true, however some builds will just not work, and in general- its the same situation it is now, except they can introduce more powerful mechanics with a lot less worrying about balance.

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grepman wrote:

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allbusiness wrote:

It's been a major problem for balancing for GGG for quite sometime. Some nodes were just so good that you basically had to take them no matter what class you were, which made certain classes far better than others (for example when IR was king of stupidity, Duelists and Rangers pretty much shit on the other classes hard, or when Life stacking was the best, Mara became top class, etc).

With the introduction of subclasses, now you have different flavors and diversity. Duelists will feel significantly different from a Marauder for once, rather than a shittier version of them.

agreed. the whole 'everyone can do everything' mantra is nice in theory and there are a lot of builds that did benefit from it, but for a lot of build combinations, it simply doesn't work. people just cherry pick the tree, so to speak.

it also was made worse when GGG decided people cant just pick up free auras/traps etc and had to specialize in them (around the release). it was the right move, but what it did is to further pigeonhole that with trap/curse/etc clusters in specific areas. once that happened, I knew the whole class 'flexibility' would actually be detrimental to the game in terms of balancing. it provided little benefit as most 'non-archetype' builds were suboptimal and the drawback was that balancing became a nightmare.


the chief counter-argument to this is that people will just choose the best subclass available. and that is true, however some builds will just not work, and in general- its the same situation it is now, except they can introduce more powerful mechanics with a lot less worrying about balance.

And that's key here, after the introduction of the Scion you couldn't just throw in more powerful keystones onto the tree to make a class better (say put a crazy good Keystone on the Marauder side) because it just makes the Scion that much better, or it makes the Marauder better and the Duelist shittier because his tree sucks so badly (and to an extent still does).

I think GGG has finally realized that it's not about 'number of choices' that matter, but 'meaningful' choice that matters. It only took them this long to understand it, but better late than never. Each class will play significantly different from the other, but that's a good thing because you're encouraging multiple styles of play now, and it makes balancing melee/ranged so much easier (for example you can ensure that the melee style classes like Duelist/Templar/Marauder are able to get certain subclass keystones that other ranged classes can't).


People seriously don't understand how much of a pain in the ass it was to balance on the current tree. By class locking, you are now able to make melee much stronger defensively without buffing ranged characters defense. An example would be Fortify, which now you can lock behind a subclass (let's say only Champion's get it instead of everyone that has access to a melee skill). Now GGG doesn't have to totally balance the whole game around the existence of Fortify, can tone down overall burst damage. It means that the same skill for a certain class will play dramatically different on another one. A point blank Raider for example will certainly play far different from say a Champion Duelist that uses point blank and a bow. There are shit tons of possibilities and for once I am actually genuinely excited because it seems like GGG has finally started to realize the error of their ways.

I also forgot to mention that these subclasses will also heavily affect itemization and the balancing of uniques too. GGG has alot more freedom to do crazy wacky unique modifiers that are crazy powerful without having to worry about extreme balance issues (example : they can make 2H uniques that aren't god awful anymore).

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allbusiness wrote:

People seriously don't understand how much of a pain in the ass it was to balance on the current tree. By class locking, you are now able to make melee much stronger defensively without buffing ranged characters defense. An example would be Fortify, which now you can lock behind a subclass (let's say only Champion's get it instead of everyone that has access to a melee skill). Now GGG doesn't have to totally balance the whole game around the existence of Fortify, can tone down overall burst damage. It means that the same skill for a certain class will play dramatically different on another one. A point blank Raider for example will certainly play far different from say a Champion Duelist that uses point blank and a bow. There are shit tons of possibilities and for once I am actually genuinely excited because it seems like GGG has finally started to realize the error of their ways.

What makes you think ranged characters wont abuse "defensive" subclasses dedicated for melee? For example, what prevents Champion from going archer/casterm still retaining his uber-tankiness?

And from my perspective, bonuses for ranged character are even more fearsome, just look at Deadeye/Assassin trees, and what crazy DPS boost they provide...