GGG Hypocrisy

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The point Natharias is trying to put forward is that, while before you could access any node with any character, thus allowing you to make a very similar build with another class if it is close enough to any point in your tree, now there are major nodes that you cannot access if you don't have the right starting class, making every build focused on a single class.

For example, with my current RF build, there are 3 classes that can access it with a single different node (the starting life node), and 1 class that has to change a few nodes to access it.
With the incoming changes, the choice of the ascendancy may have a huge impact on the build, thus making a specific class a lot less optimal than another one despite both of them having access to all the other nodes they need.

This makes no sense.

You indicate yourself that you can make the build from 4 different starting positions.(allowing multiple ascendancy classes to be picked)

Can i ask, what makes you confident that RF character will not be vastly more interesting if composed from any of the 4 starting positions?

what makes you think 1 particular sub-class will be BiS for RF, instead of multiple variants giving a specific identity to the play-style based on class alliance.

Peace,

-Boem-

Guess I'll put this here:

Passive Skill Tree

All of Path of Exile's character classes share its vast passive skill tree. Starting at one of seven distinct locations dictated by their chosen class, players can focus on the core specialities of their class or travel across the tree to build complex combinations of skills from various disciplines.

This is from the main website, and, starting with 2.1, it will no longer be accurate. I'm wondering if it will get changed to something like.

"All of Path of Exile's characters share the main part of the Skill tree. However, your starting class determines what builds you are and aren't able to play. Although you could potentially choose to travel far from your starting position, you would miss out on many of the most powerful class-specific bonuses that you have to know about before you choose your class, which are much more valuable and powerful than basically all of the rest of your passive tree."

I'm hoping it will stay the same though, and then I can point out how the main website is lying about how the class and passive tree system works.

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Boem, do you really think you are going to take class A when class B can clearly do the same thing 50% better? That's the main worry.

The current system in place, provides character defining attributes in the sense that it allows certain perks without their usual downsides.

That doesn't imply the perks are removed from the core game, they will simply still be attached to their down-side.

the question then becomes, what perk do i want to specifically abuse with my character without being limited by it's downside.

To answer your question, a build can utilize (in most if not all cases) different perks and as such can take advantage of different perks-without-downsides. What will define a character will be how much power he gains by picking a perk-without-downside. How much additional gains he can leverage out of this no down-side part.

The power-gap between different sub-classes will be minimal on this front since every perk is still available in one form or another.

What will be different, is the character composition and play-style.

If you look at it like

Character = 50% defense/50% offense

Then this system allows you to enhance either one of those allowing more freedom in the other field, or going balls to the walls on one field.
note : this is already the case, but very generalist without "identity".

GGG is trying to implement a system that allows you to enhance a particular field in a "defining" manner.(play-style / character development oriented)

A character can take the 100% spell block for example, or he can take the rathpith/lazwar route, opening up another specialization.

It's just a character development defining orientation, it doesn't imply the old route is no longer optional. The old-route (item based spell block) simply allows you to take another sub-class and defy the classes identity in another mater.

Ha, if that makes sense.

Peace,

-Boem-

Best addition in the game since it's inception. Get over it. Classes were meaningless. They only mattered if you did not intend to level too much. Beyond that it was just a min maxing issue. And news flash, it worked most times against diversity. When i stopped playing, for istance, the witch was the best character in the game if you wanted to go CI, no matter what kind of build you were after.

And to me it's amazing that people complain that a certain class might be significantly better AT WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO DO than the other. Yeah the dedicated critical damage assasin character will be able to be a much better full on damage critter than a character that is intended to be a 2 handed Arnold Type beast. Is is this seriously something to complain about? And still, if you wanna play a crit character that also has high defenses, like block, then maybe a duelist will be better. Or if you wanna play a high crit character that uses bows, ranger will be better etc.

I was a strong advocate of making classes matter more and being more tied to their lore, from day one. I was proposing some starting bonuses for each class, closely related to their lore. This is just so much better though. I never thought they would add something like this, and i was sure that even if they did, it would be something completely meaning less and stupid, like 10% increased physical damage or something. I am really glad i was wrong.

After that they only thing i would still like to be implemented for further customization, are roleplaying keystones, where you would get certain bonuses as long as you choose to wear a full set of armour related to your characters lore. EG. If you play a shadow, a full eva/ES set.

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Poutsos wrote:

I was a strong advocate of making classes matter more and being more tied to their lore, from day one. I was proposing some starting bonuses for each class, closely related to their lore. This is just so much better though. I never thought they would add something like this, and i was sure that even if they did, it would be something completely meaning less and stupid, like 10% increased physical damage or something. I am really glad i was wrong.

After that they only thing i would still like to be implemented for further customization, are roleplaying keystones, where you would get certain bonuses as long as you choose to wear a full set of armour related to your characters lore. EG. If you play a shadow, a full eva/ES set.

Hey, you know, there are these other games where your starting class and item sets matter. In those games, there are no generic skills and talent trees though. Each class has its own. Why don't you go and play one of them? These things don't belong in PoE. Not saying they are bad (Dungeon Siege 2 is like, one of my favourite games EVER), but class-locked specs are contrary to what PoE has stood for since its release. What's next? Class-locked skills? Class-locked items? Class-locked areas or other content?

I wonder if you would still think it's good for lore and stuff if GGG were to come out and say "There's this insane new boss that drops uber items, but you can only access the area if you're a Ranger. The rest of you also get access to unique bosses for your class, but they only drop total shit that's not even worth cluttering your screen."

This is exactly how I see class-specific content.

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PrimordialDarkness wrote:

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Poutsos wrote:

I was a strong advocate of making classes matter more and being more tied to their lore, from day one. I was proposing some starting bonuses for each class, closely related to their lore. This is just so much better though. I never thought they would add something like this, and i was sure that even if they did, it would be something completely meaning less and stupid, like 10% increased physical damage or something. I am really glad i was wrong.

After that they only thing i would still like to be implemented for further customization, are roleplaying keystones, where you would get certain bonuses as long as you choose to wear a full set of armour related to your characters lore. EG. If you play a shadow, a full eva/ES set.

Hey, you know, there are these other games where your starting class and item sets matter. In those games, there are no generic skills and talent trees though. Each class has its own. Why don't you go and play one of them? These things don't belong in PoE. Not saying they are bad (Dungeon Siege 2 is like, one of my favourite games EVER), but class-locked specs are contrary to what PoE has stood for since its release. What's next? Class-locked skills? Class-locked items? Class-locked areas or other content?

I wonder if you would still think it's good for lore and stuff if GGG were to come out and say "There's this insane new boss that drops uber items, but you can only access the area if you're a Ranger. The rest of you also get access to unique bosses for your class, but they only drop total shit that's not even worth cluttering your screen."

This is exactly how I see class-specific content.

1) Precisely what i have been doing the past 1.5 year.

2) How do you know? The changes they did over time prove the exact opposite. Not locked, but class distinctions is something they worked towards. In closed beta people reached mainly level 60-70 at best, so at these levels class choice was very important. Then they introduced the scion class that blocked they easy travelling through the middle that was happening before. People bitched about it at the time, and Chris went out and said it clearly that it was intentional, and if you wanna be a jack of all trades that travells easily anywhere, you have to be a scion. Then they progressively made starting areas bigger, and they moved keystones around, to where they make more sense from role-playing/lore point of view. Notably mind over matter, Iron reflexes and of course vaal pact. And now we have the subclasses. So making classes matter more is something that GGG has been working since the release of the game, after realising in Open Beta how much faster people are leveling now compared to closed beta, when this was not an issue.

It's clear that the faster the leveling proscess is, the more GGG wants to introduce radical ways to make classes unique. Besides ultimately what PoE's strongest point is supposed to be, is variety and rerolling. This time around this would be a more joyfull proscess, even if you use identical gear, since from now on, say an HP based crit Shadow, will develop completely different than an HP based Duelist, and so on.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

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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...

That's the point. A Champion will play significantly different from a Raider but they both would be using the same skill sets. But now you wouldn't have a Scion who would just go all over the tree picking up defensive nodes and then using OP flavor of the month skill to blast her way through the game.

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The point Natharias is trying to put forward is that, while before you could access any node with any character, thus allowing you to make a very similar build with another class if it is close enough to any point in your tree, now there are major nodes that you cannot access if you don't have the right starting class, making every build focused on a single class.

For example, with my current RF build, there are 3 classes that can access it with a single different node (the starting life node), and 1 class that has to change a few nodes to access it.
With the incoming changes, the choice of the ascendancy may have a huge impact on the build, thus making a specific class a lot less optimal than another one despite both of them having access to all the other nodes they need.

Even when things are almost equal, a ton of people will play the slightly better path. For example, marauder and duelist have very very similar starts right now and yet most people will go marauder.

Also, flexibility is more important than some think. I didnt want to focus on particulars but since you mentioned RF which I have a soft spot for, I'll digress a bit. I've made 3 different pure RF toons. Right now there are two variants on this build - either duelist tree for defenses/regen/charges or witch tree for curses/aoe/flasks. I think the latter is better, but it's preference. Any way, you can do a marauder, you can do a duelist, you can do scion and you can do Templar even. Yet all my RF toons are marauders. Why? Not because of optimization. But because of flexibility. Marauder core nodes are required, duelist core nodes are not.

In short, yeah people will choose a subclass that fits them first. But it's not much different than it is right now.

And I predict the most popular subclasses will be the ones that are more general than specialized.