Power creep is through the roof if you ask me - serious ajustments have to be made with 2.4 to make the game challenging again.
Just a few things that come to my mind immediatly:
Curses:
Since the introduction of Blasphemy, the curse mechanic need to be looked at. Just a simple numerical nerf would disappoint many players and would do little to the actual state of curses. GGG has to takle multiple instances at the same time when it comes to curses:
- curse quality bonus
- curse effectiveness on the passive tree
- Blasphemy support gem effectivnes and quality bonus
- monsters/bosses curse resistance/effectiveness modifiers
Especially Temporal Chains and Enfeeble must be rebalanced/reworked - there boni are just too good for the current state of the game and together can completly nullify all endgame content which isn't tagged hexproof (...and there is even Cospri's Will for that now). 60% reduced curse effectiveness doesn't cut it anymore since it is additive with curse effectivness modifiers. 70% less curse effectiveness would have some impact but the combination of hinder and slow would still be too strong. GGG really has to think about this.
Cast on Crit:
Worst thing that happend to PoE if you think deeply about it. CoC generated a form of power creep never existed before in this ARPG - nothing comes even close (not even Ascendancy classes have granted so much dPS/clearspeed/survivability to the player than CoC has in the past).
By nerfing CoC in 2.4 many people will outrage for sure... and then a little while later they will rediscover Mojlner and move on.
Mjolner provides the same playstyle as CoC with roughly the same clearspeed and safty. A switch from CoC --> Mjolner can be expected if GGG destroys CoC support gem and leaves Mjolner untouched.
Hybrid gear/state of rares vs uniques:
The power level of Endgame uniques is insane currently - for most builds actually multiple uniques are BIS however GGG's original design says that a perfectly rolled rare will surpass a unique item - uniques are intended to enable builds but never ment to be BIS without any noticable downside.
The affix pool of rares should be ajusted and expanded, also master crafting benches should be updated with additional mods for rares to make rares competitive again. Hybrid gears falls short in every way over a pure armour, evasion or ES piece right now - maybe enable an additional prefix/suffix on those to make them competitive.
State of twohanders for spellcasters:
With the recent buff to wands and scepters, two handed spell caster staves now feel even more obsolete than they felt before. Sure, you can get a 6 link while wielding a staff but you sacrifice a lot for it. Dual wield or 1h/shield now can reach even higher damage numbers than staves for spellcasters (if you don't really on +3 gems or the sockets) while beeing more durable.
Melee vs ranged:
I know, beating an old horse here, but GGG seriously has to give this some thought. There is no reason to play melee (no, i am not talking about earthquake and reave which are hitting the while screen) at the moment. Melee needs some purpose in this game where it shines, can outclass ranged and be competitive in a new leagues economy.
State of movement skills
Movement skills need to be ajusted in general - we are moving way to fast for too little investment and gaining fortify, which was supposed to be melee only, for free on nearly every character.
Making fortify not work with movement skills would be a healthy change i feel.
Double Dipping:
This has been in the game for far too long; many players gave feedback and wanted it to be removed for month now. Poison and Bleeding DoTs need to be rebalanced accordingly when this change is made. Poison, Bleeding and Burning should not work with trap and mine modifiers and elemental modifiers - oneshotting the hardest endgame bosses in the game just isn't fun and healthy for Path of Exile.
Specific Ascendancy class notables:
There are some notables out there which are trivializing the game without much investment made. For the long term of the game and future content they have to be looked at:
- Inevitable Judgement (Inquisitor) trivializes every boss battle in the game right now and every future boss ever designed be GGG in the future which isn't completly immune to elemental damage. Dealing "true damage" nearly 100% of the time is just OP. It is not healthy for the game and a balancing nightmare for upcomming content.
- Shade Form (Trickster) - overall numbers of boni are way to high at the moment and should be reduced significantly
- Elemental Conflux (Elementalist) - no comment needed, in its current form it is OP and has to go.
- Unrelenting (Juggernaut) - this mechanic has proofen to be too OP, because of various possible interactions with other items, skills and mechanics (Voll's Devotion, Discharge, Immortal Call CWDT, King's Guard etc.) - rework this notable or take a carefull look at all its interactions
That was just a little input from my side, i am sure there is more. I hope GGG doesn't fuck it up this time like they did with 2.3 (player retention and long term playability of the challenge leagues reflecting on that i feel).
Let's wait and hope they get it right this time!
This is a very good post.
Maybe they will nerf things, or maybe they have have decided things are more fun if you are powerful. Points are still true, those things are broken compared to others. Very concise post, one of the best i have read in a long time..
I am the light of the morning and the shadow on the wall, I am nothing and I am all.
Last edited by Crackmonster on Jul 19, 2016, 6:04:31 AM
But you can just pick LA or whatever range skill (EQ is (semi)range skill) and faceroll everything in current state.
But that´s what Iam talking about - skills should be scaled with AOE (there are also things such as melee splash and proliferation that we need to care about)
EQ and Ground Slam both have very good AoE. But why no one use Ground Slam? Because its damage sucks!
On other hand, CoC cyclone is one of the strongest builds, despite being actualy a MELEE build (has to come in close contact with enemy = melee). I know, you can MOVE shile cycloning, but that's actually a brillian solution to make melee viable without turnint him into ranged or (with recent changes) totemist.
Melee is bad because some melee skills have shit Damage/(AoErange) ratio. That's the sad truth. Since high AoE or range turns melee into ranged, damage is that melee really need. Buff damae on melee skills like Double Strike by 200, 300, 400%, and they will became very useful and popular suddenly.
CoC should be solved separately (as CoC skill) and shouldn´t effect melee.
Btw if you buff damage even more you will have hard times killing reflects. So you can nerf other skills to be comparable with melee and damage/AoE philosophy or buff weak skills.
Iam not fun of reflect in its current form anyway. I would change it into DoT (damage over time) so you would react on it.
On the other hand instant leech would need rework too then.
Rolls eye, everything isn't fine but approaching it like the sky is falling never works and it alienates the player base to do massive changes instead of small and tactical changes that have a much better effect.
OK agreed but when is the last time you saw someone using sweep? Glacial hammer? Heavy strike? Dual strike? Viper strike? Double strike? And be honest when is the last time riposte served a useful purpose beyond what pretty much any other gem slotted there would have provided?
When's the last time you saw someone use puncture or frenzy as a melee skill? Or yeah, where did cleave go?
There is more needed with that bunch than small tactical changes. And be honest, people have been complaining about melee not being as good as caster/bow builds since beta. There has always been a couple melee builds at best that were good, usually one or zero, and caster and bow builds can pretty much work with just about anything.
Bottom line is it's not like GGG hasn't had plenty of time to work on this. People left this game YEARS ago because of melee being the way it was, and it's still like that today.
People used sweep until whenever it was nerfed the last time because it was too strong early apparently.
There is no place at all for single target skills really in this game, because the linking system doesn't really promote for most people the use of aoe skill and a separate single target skill. Threshold jewels could have likely solved this if they weren't completely garbage. Glacial hammer sucks and it has always sucked because the unique property of the gem doesn't work against bosses. Heavy strike sucks because knockback as a melee character is detrimental to the playstyle. Increase the stun it provides instead of having knockback and its an insane ability without a silly downside. Dual strike is a bit pointless, because similar to cleave it requires 2 good weapons, in addition this stresses an issue with sockets because either you have a 4 link dual strike or you have a weaker supported aoe, could you do dual strike with melee splash as your only links, I guess so but still has the same issue with requiring 2 good weapons. Viper strike hits hard, but these traditional melee skills that require splash simply have shit aoe and in a ARPG game aoe matters.
Counter strike gems are alright but there is no incentive to dual wield shit in this game, that is a completely separate issue though.
They reported melee would be fixed in 2.0 with fortify, my assumption is that had partly to do with the fact they were going to allow a jewel as well as the gem to provide the fortify effect, one never happened and the other one really only increases physical damage for some reason.
They made cyclone a good skill, even after reducing its AoE, but then gutted a good portion of its damage in 2.1, people want similar things to happen to EQ, despite the ability being fun to play, its what all melee skills should strive to be, not nerfed because its the "only" relevant melee skill. We saw that happen with sweep and cyclone before, no reason to follow the same path that was proven to be the wrong choice.
I guess shield charge is also melee so thats one more melee skill up there.
"
You get 20% more damage dealt and 6% less damage taken. Also you get bonuses to melee damage, if you're melee.
And fortify for bow/wand build itself is a HUGE bonus.
What are you even talking about?
There is no more damage provided by Champion, he has a generic increased damage, but that is not "more" damage.
That taunt can be more deadly to you, if you are a ranged character trying to take advantage of fortify, you don't want to draw aggro off of whatever it was going to attack, to attack you. Even if you do get a little bit more damage reduction.
You know whats huge for bow\wand builds, farshot, additional proj, pierce, easier crit chance, posion\bleed\maim, you know any other ascendancy class would provide far more then champion, its just left with fortify, if you wanted that so damn bad you can equip a bright beak and link fortify, faster attacks and leap slam.
Champion is basically shit now, if you are ranged, if you are melee you free up a link, but doesn't ultimately give you anything amazing.
https://youtu.be/T9kygXtkh10?t=285
FeelsBadMan
Remove MF from POE, make juiced map the new MF.
Last edited by goetzjam on Jul 19, 2016, 10:47:04 AM
There is no more damage provided by Champion, he has a generic increased damage, but that is not "more" damage.
That taunt can be more deadly to you, if you are a ranged character trying to take advantage of fortify, you don't want to draw aggro off of whatever it was going to attack, to attack you. Even if you do get a little bit more damage reduction.
You know whats huge for bow\wand builds, farshot, additional proj, pierce, easier crit chance, posion\bleed\maim, you know any other ascendancy class would provide far more then champion, its just left with fortify, if you wanted that so damn bad you can equip a bright beak and link fortify, faster attacks and leap slam.
Champion is basically shit now, if you are ranged, if you are melee you free up a link, but doesn't ultimately give you anything amazing.
This isn't true sorry; actually you can pick up 30% more damage from the Champion Ascendancy if you want to go for it: 10% from the "intimidate" debuff and 20% from "Worthy Foe" through taunt. It is all conditional, but not hard to fullfill the conditions - you just have to plan your build around it.
Taunting in solo play does nothing to monster behavior. In partys mobs die so quick that taunt doesn't really matter at all for a ranged charcter.
Ranged Champion is still a solid choice, so is melee champion - i would say it is a well balanced interesting to build around class to go for.
For mentioned comparison between Elementalist and Champion: Easy - Elementalist has 1 broken notable which provides Elemental Conflux; if conflux would be gone/reworked Elementalist would not be broken anymore and would be comparable to the power of other classes.
There is no more damage provided by Champion, he has a generic increased damage, but that is not "more" damage.
That taunt can be more deadly to you, if you are a ranged character trying to take advantage of fortify, you don't want to draw aggro off of whatever it was going to attack, to attack you. Even if you do get a little bit more damage reduction.
You know whats huge for bow\wand builds, farshot, additional proj, pierce, easier crit chance, posion\bleed\maim, you know any other ascendancy class would provide far more then champion, its just left with fortify, if you wanted that so damn bad you can equip a bright beak and link fortify, faster attacks and leap slam.
Champion is basically shit now, if you are ranged, if you are melee you free up a link, but doesn't ultimately give you anything amazing.
This isn't true sorry; actually you can pick up 30% more damage from the Champion Ascendancy if you want to go for it: 10% from the "intimidate" debuff and 20% from "Worthy Foe" through taunt. It is all conditional, but not hard to fullfill the conditions - you just have to plan your build around it.
Taunting in solo play does nothing to monster behavior. In partys mobs die so quick that taunt doesn't really matter at all for a ranged charcter.
Ranged Champion is still a solid choice, so is melee champion - i would say it is a well balanced interesting to build around class to go for.
For mentioned comparison between Elementalist and Champion: Easy - Elementalist has 1 broken notable which provides Elemental Conflux; if conflux would be gone/reworked Elementalist would not be broken anymore and would be comparable to the power of other classes.
I see you are reffering to the node that ranged characters wouldn't be taking in the first place. Why on earth would you take worthy foe as a ranged character, instead of inspirational. Hell I'd argue there isn't good 2 points for the last ones if you are a ranged character on that class anymore at all.
Melee champion obviously has some merits still but it is no longer the "tankiest" or the best route to go for really any build in particular. Like I said before you are giving up MASSIVE benefits by not going another AC class, whereas gaining fortify is literally the only reason to go champion and even then it no longer is this beast of a fortify, its just regular fortify.
There is no more damage provided by Champion, he has a generic increased damage, but that is not "more" damage.
That taunt can be more deadly to you, if you are a ranged character trying to take advantage of fortify, you don't want to draw aggro off of whatever it was going to attack, to attack you. Even if you do get a little bit more damage reduction.
You know whats huge for bow\wand builds, farshot, additional proj, pierce, easier crit chance, posion\bleed\maim, you know any other ascendancy class would provide far more then champion, its just left with fortify, if you wanted that so damn bad you can equip a bright beak and link fortify, faster attacks and leap slam.
Champion is basically shit now, if you are ranged, if you are melee you free up a link, but doesn't ultimately give you anything amazing.
Conqueror - 25% chance to taunt on hit.
Worthy Foe - Enemies you taunt take 20% increased damage.
Damage taken by enemy is MULTIPLICATIVE to all your damage increased. It is additive only with other effects, that increase damage taken by enemy (Shock, Assassin's Mark, etc). For me, it's almost as good as "more" damage, and with 25% chance per hit, it will be present on boss all the time from start of the fight.
If you play solo
About fortify - lol! If you cant see, how 20% reduced damage taken is benefitial for any ranged character, then.... well, sorry, we have nothing to talk about. For a general build, 20% reduced damage taken is equal to +80% increased maximum life, that's 16(!) passive nodes for 5% each.
There is no more damage provided by Champion, he has a generic increased damage, but that is not "more" damage.
That taunt can be more deadly to you, if you are a ranged character trying to take advantage of fortify, you don't want to draw aggro off of whatever it was going to attack, to attack you. Even if you do get a little bit more damage reduction.
You know whats huge for bow\wand builds, farshot, additional proj, pierce, easier crit chance, posion\bleed\maim, you know any other ascendancy class would provide far more then champion, its just left with fortify, if you wanted that so damn bad you can equip a bright beak and link fortify, faster attacks and leap slam.
Champion is basically shit now, if you are ranged, if you are melee you free up a link, but doesn't ultimately give you anything amazing.
Conqueror - 25% chance to taunt on hit.
Worthy Foe - Enemies you taunt take 20% increased damage.
Damage taken by enemy is MULTIPLICATIVE to all your damage increased. It is additive only with other effects, that increase damage taken by enemy (Shock, Assassin's Mark, etc). For me, it's almost as good as "more" damage, and with 25% chance per hit, it will be present on boss all the time from start of the fight.
If you play solo
About fortify - lol! If you cant see, how 20% reduced damage taken is benefitial for any ranged character, then.... well, sorry, we have nothing to talk about. For a general build, 20% reduced damage taken is equal to +80% increased maximum life, that's 16(!) passive nodes for 5% each.
So 1\4 of the time you get the more multiplier? I guess thats a thing. My point is aside from fortify, the class has nothing else for ranged characters. Literally nothing else.
I know fortify can be good, but in terms of it being better then things like farshot, easier crit chance or really any other of the ascendancy classes, I just dont agree it is. Neither do a good number of players, which is why you saw champion literally fall off the cliff after his nerfs.
So 1\4 of the time you get the more multiplier? I guess thats a thing. My point is aside from fortify, the class has nothing else for ranged characters. Literally nothing else.
After a successful roll the enemy is taunted for a while and takes increased damage, long enough to be procced again in the meantime.
I know fortify can be good, but in terms of it being better then things like farshot, easier crit chance or really any other of the ascendancy classes, I just dont agree it is. Neither do a good number of players, which is why you saw champion literally fall off the cliff after his nerfs.
Champ is still a strong option in HC, fortify is just so good. You just don't see as much champs anymore because it got nerfed a bit and people who want HC easymode roll a jug this league. Also Slayer is a strong alternative now for many builds and fun to play.
So 1\4 of the time you get the more multiplier? I guess thats a thing. My point is aside from fortify, the class has nothing else for ranged characters. Literally nothing else.
After a successful roll the enemy is taunted for a while and takes increased damage, long enough to be procced again in the meantime.
I know fortify can be good, but in terms of it being better then things like farshot, easier crit chance or really any other of the ascendancy classes, I just dont agree it is. Neither do a good number of players, which is why you saw champion literally fall off the cliff after his nerfs.
Champ is still a strong option in HC, fortify is just so good. You just don't see as much champs anymore because it got nerfed a bit and people who want HC easymode roll a jug this league. Also Slayer is a strong alternative now for many builds and fun to play.
Thats my point is that alteratives are simply better in almost all cases, yes in HC you could still go champ on a ranged character, it just feels like you will be missing out on even more after they nerfed champion and after you get access to 8 points now, instead of 6.
Would really like to hear how stats like Ancestral Warchief and Earthquake being the top 2 primary skills for exiles over level 60 factors into future balancing decisions. Do we see any significant shift away from these skills as exiles level higher?
How does this correlate with the content thats being run the most (easy maps like canyon, gorge, plateau, etc)?
I'm worried that looking "by the numbers" can paint a misleading picture. For example, let's take a skill - Elemental Hit, and arbitrarily assign it a rating of 2 (on a scale of 10 where 10 is the ideal state of balance) and let's also pretend it's an extremely popular skill that people want to love but just can't. If Elemental Hit were to suddenly be buffed to 8 what would we expect to see? I'd expect that if a second balance pass were to take place at this stage "the numbers" would probably suggest it was over-buffed and needs a nerf asap.
This is pretty much how I perceive the history of melee gameplay in PoE. Every time we get something remotely viable or competitive it gets shot down because the players have been starved of it and want to enjoy it when they can. I just don't see how nerfs get rationalised any other way, if melee had never been nerfed it would still get blown out of the water by contemporary t1 builds.
IGN: Victory_Or_Sovngarde
It's not a 13 week development cycle, it's a 13 week supporter-pack cycle.
You can play any build you want, as long as it's the current meta.
