Feedback/Opinion on the new maim mechanic

My feelings about the new maim and an expression of my disapointment:

I just want to express my feelings about the recently updated new maim mechanic in Ascendancy.
I was really excited at first for maim beeing available for players as a "have to invest/hard to get" mechanic (only available by taking a specific 4 points ascendancy noteable or maybe on niche unique items)

The ability was used by Talisman bosses before which was considered a slow effect (attack speed/cast speed and movement speed reduction - all in one) which felt really impactfull and awsome.

Today i looked at the ascendancy page on the official GGG website and noticed that the mechanic was "nerfed" to only affect movement speed but to a slightly higher degree.


Movementspeed reduction on monsters is only a marginal benefit for players (for most encounters it is useless) compared to a power slow effect which can be considered as a defensive mechanic.


At first i really thought that maim could be a new tool for melee characters (but not exclusivly which is fine) to reward those playstyle a little bit more by getting up close, maiming there foes and slowing them down to take less damage while in melee range. That would have been an rewarding and mechanical awsome tool for melee in general.
I understand that there might be balance issues with other slow effects like Temporal Chains etc. but nothing that can't be balanced out i feel personaly when you make the effort.



What is the maim now and what broken stuff will it bring to the game:

Now in it's current state as maim it is presented to us now it is nearly useless for melee and an awsome nearly broken tool for ranged attack based characters especially bow users. Why is that so?

just try to combine stuff like:
- Temporal Chains (through CoH support gem or glove corruption)
- a chill effect (through skills like ice shot, cold elemental scaling or simply the Hatred Aura)
- Maim on hit (through ascendancy passives or maybe some new unique item)
- a fast attacking ranged skill with huge AoE (like Split Arrow paired with chain, GMP Bow skills)

- (optional) pair those above mechanics with a wither totem which can also act as a decoy for you


With the stacking of those simple mechanics which you can get without any huge effort or cost you get:

- ~70% movement speed reduction (without Wither totem)
- ~85% movement speed reduction (with Wither totem) ~72% (because wither and maim doesn't stack)



on top of that you will get 38% reduced attack/cast speed debuff on your enemies for basically free. Notice that that is without investing any points in curse effectiveness.


Ranged bow characters utilizing this mechanic basically can't get touched anymore by any melee or mid ranged based monsters at all while kiting which is absolutly broken and trivializes game content - evasion, dodge and arrow dancing will handle most of the other threats.


personal conclusion:

It is so sad to see that the GGG balancing team never seem to consider or take a chance to do something little for melee and instead creating (maybe unintentionly) extremly broken stuff for ranged characters which don't need that much help at all. Honestly I am a bit disapointed in GGG's balancing team recently and i am losing faith in them when stuff like this continuously happens from time to time.



GGG i love your game and i think overall you are doing an excellent job but regarding some balancing issues i think you are a bit out of touch of the current game. Making the maim mechanic a 30% movement speed reduction is a failed decision in my opinion which doesn't do the game any good.

If i had to do it i would make maim a purly attack/cast speed reduction (a less multiplier) without affecting movement speed in any shape or form. Such a mechanic could benefit all typs of players regardless if the are ranged/melee/casters/summoners etc. if they decide to build around it.



EDIT:
Marc clarified that Maim never was a slow effect in any stage of development - players just interpreted it wrong and wrong information was spread out regarding this issue

Marc clarified that Maim and wither don't stack because they are both considerd a debuff effects of the same category - only the highest debuff will apply

+1

all 'broken' ascendancy classes are ranged/crit. no wonder when their balancing guru seems to be preferring this very playstyle (i still hope for balancing pass on pathfinder and assassin. berserker is beyond hope)

http://i.imgur.com/hapVckg.jpg heat map of nodes taken by top 15k talisman (SC) players. it is clearly visible what 'works' and what is neglected.

do not count on anything being taken away from ranged/crit, expect nothing good for melee. it has been the theme for last few years


one note tho: ranged wont use 'maim' mechanic. they do not have to. instead of maiming with split/chain theyll simply kill with split/chain. ranged does not have to give a hoot about 'fluff' mechanics like maim or whatnot

second note: it is on assassin. is there any reason not to take: Ambush and Deadly Infusion? in this game damage>fluff and this combo deals tremendous damage

Nah crit is going to get fucking annihilated in order to accommodate for Assassins bonkers Ascendancy nodes. Fun is outlawed in Wraelcast. Balance is frowned upon.

d

"

Jennik wrote:

"

sidtherat wrote:

all 'broken' ascendancy classes are ranged/crit.

Don't forget the Duelist. Permanent 20% boosted Fortify is absolutely ridiculous. Even the casters I'm building are best as a Duelist, simply because taking 25% less damage from hits is an incredibly powerful survivability boost.

Like he said, the broken classes are ranged/crit. The perma-fortify is only useful for ranged, you'd be a fool to take that on a melee when you can easily maintain fortify without wasting 4 of your 6 ascendancy points for it.


The only respectable-ish melee ascendancy class is the Gladiator, because passive charge generation and block/spellblock chance are pretty nice, albeit not the level of gamechanging power that deadeye or assassin have, and the exploding bleeding enemies could be fun to build around.

Berzerker is beyond terrible, pretty much all conditional buffs that are either outright suicidal or are useless versus bosses without adds and completely unnecessary while clearing. The only remotely useful thing there is the warcry node, and that's nothing to write home about.

Juggernaut is just pointless, basically just a tree that just locks you into doing everything at a snail's pace so that you get a little extra armor to be rendered useless by immortal call or heavy hits.

Slayer is pathetically unsynchronized and underwhelming. Leech off overkill is pretty pointless since leech while clearing isn't much of a problem with the 2.0 leech mechanics and the 2.1 leech buffs, and the main reason it could have been useful (the Endless Hunger node that makes leech not stop at full health and grants stun immunity while leeching) is mutually exclusive with it due to both needing a separate 4 points to reach. 40% increased damage against rares and uniques is like 7% more damage due to how much focus duelists have on raw %increased damage as opposed to crit. The stun branch is only useful for a very small niche of characters, and getting level 1 melee splash added to single-target attacks isn't about to make much of a difference when it's still better to use any number of AoE attacks to clear.

Champion is just ranged. I mean, there's the warcry stuff that's kinda alright (but would look way better with berzerker's warcry node in the mix instead of that lame Conquerer node), but that's not fooling anyone. The selling point of the class is perma-fortify, and that's only useful if you can't get fortify easily otherwise, i.e. if you're ranged.


As for Raider and Trickster and Pathfinder? Well, there's nothing 'melee' about any of them, really. Sure, they can be used by melees, but they'd offer no more benefit to them than they do to ranged, so why bother?




There's a really simple way to see how badly GGG favors range in this game: Just look at Deadeye's "Far Shot" compared to Berzerker's "Aspect of Carnage".

-Far Shot: up to 30% more damage with projectile attacks, based on how far away you are. 30% MORE damage for offscreening, basically the safest thing you can do in this game. And it only takes 2 points to reach, so it doesn't prevent you from getting any of the other notables while still getting that damage boost.

-Aspect of Carnage: 100% increased attack damage, 10% increased damage taken. 100% INCREASED attack damage, basically the equivalent of about 20-25% MORE damage *at best* for a non-crit type, and in addition you put yourself even more at-risk than melees already are by taking 10% increased damage. AND it costs 4 points to reach, so you're very limited on what else you can take in the tree, and you outright can't get 'Cloaked in Savagery' with it (which is the only node in the tree that would even make Aspect reasonable to use)

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

Wiesl_1404 wrote:

I was really excited at first for maim beeing available for players as a "have to invest/hard to get" mechanic (only available by taking a specific 4 points ascendancy noteable or maybe on niche unique items)

The ability was used by Talisman bosses before which was considered a slow effect (attack speed/cast speed and movement speed reduction - all in one) which felt really impactfull and awsome.

Today i looked at the ascendancy page on the official GGG website and noticed that the mechanic was "nerfed" to only affect movement speed but to a slightly higher degree.

This is not true. Maim is not, and never has been, a "slow" effect. It's always only affected movement speed since it was first added.

It was developed and implemented for the ascendancy classes as a movement speed reduction for attacks (equivalent to hinder for spells). It was only after that point that it was added to Rigwald, who ended up in the game first as part of talisman league.

Thanks for clarifying this Mark - i appriciate your response!

Even if it has never been a slow effect the point of my argument holds true - Maim in it's current form doesn't benefit the playstyle which would really need it (and for that it was intended at the first time i feel when i look at the classes) and it is nearly broken for ranged attackers when combined with other similar effects.

You also have to admit that there was alot of false information and confusion around about maim up to this there where you put out official information about the mechanic - thank you for doing so.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

...(equivalent to hinder for spells)...

Was this a little spoiler right there? Can hinder to be considered a new mechanic for spells in Ascendancy?

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

Wiesl_1404 wrote:

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

...(equivalent to hinder for spells)...

Was this a little spoiler right there? Can hinder to be considered a new mechanic for spells in Ascendancy?

Hinder is applied by Wither (See http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Wither), but is implemented as a generic debuff so we can use it on future spells that need to debuff movement speed, and they'll inherently not stack with other hinders, as like most debuffs, only the strongest one is in effect. This allows us to make such movement speed debuffs more impactful, since if they all stacked we'd have to avoid the total you could get reaching 100%, so each individual one can't be very strong. Maim is the equivalent for attacks, used for similar reasons.

Thank you Mark for devoting your time to answering this!

Now everything is clear to me: maim will be the equivalent to hinder in the expansion.

sadly the underlying issue of maim helping the build type that does not need any further help and not doing much good to melee guys remains.. melee guys really need help as they are simply 'entry level' builds for new players.
is it intended that advanced players play ranged crit only? is that an intended progression? it surely looks like so, sadly