[Balance] What issues the design/balance team has to take a look at/keep an eye on it (constructive)

Often just refered as "life vs CI" which doesn't describe the issue that well since it isn't only the CI keystone - it is just a small part of the problem.
Energy Shield scaling has gotten easier every patch since the introduction of jewels. Rare jewels und the unique jewel Energy from Within made it much easier to create a efficient passive tree for ES builds than it was ever before. With the addition of Elreons master mod 5-20% ES on rings and amulets ES buids recieved further scaling.
New with Essence league a new base item named Crystal belt and Essence crafting brought ES builds to a whole new level of power. The big flask rework and the new flask typs brought in last year also were an indirect buff to ES builds. Also some powerfull new ES uniques came out.
Also the change to energy shield recharge mechanics was a big deal.

Life got nothing specific at all in the meantime - just for the record - since the nerf/changes to MoM/Eldrith Battery and Arcitc Armour there was nothing implemented that benefited only life builds.


Current state of ES:
ES builds can reach a ES treshhold (>10-12k ES typically) where they can take almost all big hits. ES recharge is efficiantly and easily scaleable to a point where ES recharge kicks in - players ES pool is full again before the next big hit can connect. Another point is which absurd flat ES regen levels can be achieved by scaling % regen sources on the passive tree and gear.
Status ailments can be handled by using flasks without much problems.

Current state of Life:
Since 2.0 was released damage has gone up and up in all departments. Life was always better dealing with physical damage sources due to easier access to evasion and armour scaling. Armour and Evasion are working great while leveling and early maping - even yellow maps are mostly no problem at all but when you start running red maps you start to feel the damage is ramping up. Scaling 10k more armour won't do much despite the effort, scaling evasion further doesn't help when you actually get hit. Getting a higher life pool isn't that easy to do when you have reached 6k-7k life which is already not that easy to do.
Against Elemental damage there is nothing you can do besides scaling your life pool higher. Fortify alone isn't even closly enough to deal with high elemental damage on a life build. MoM is still an option but it is mostly too inefficiant to go for it compared to just going full ES. Hybrid builds are an option but there are too many draw backs in sustainability currently to go for it for most builds.
Life isn't really better in dealing with status ailments either those days since incomming damage from high level rares and bosses is so high that you can get stunned/shocked/chilled/frozen even with 8k-10k life and fortify up; so you still have to run a flask for that occasion like CI builds (life builds usually have to take life flasks so they have less space for utility)
Life also hasn't a compareable ability to recharge there life like ES builds have after taking no damage for a while. %regen mechanics are way less effective on life builds than on ES buids due to their much lower HP pool.


As we can see clearly; ES builds have a big advantage currently in all circumstances and situations you face in the game. Going ES has no drawback you can't deal with in some way or form while providing a a much higher effective HP pool. The problem is: for making content actually difficult for ES builds the damage has to go up where it currently is - but GGG can't do that because that is not really fair for life builds.

Status ailments are a cool element in ARPG's which can add a lot of depth to a game like PoE. When status ailments where initially designed for PoE they where actually balanced around the current content in the game. Player damage scaling and monster damage scaling wasn't nearly that absurd than it is nowadays - so real immunity mechanics wern't needed. With more damage scaling and skills beeing added GGG realised that status aliments inflicted by players are becoming a problem (remember the good old freeze mine support builds back then!)
When Sacrifice of the Vaal came out the dev's decided that they have to implement immunities to the new bosses to make the content actually difficult! (since then it should be clear that status ailments needed a rework, badly - nothing significant has been done really since today) When Poison got reworked and bleed actually recieved some scaling potential we also realised quickly that degen effects/damage over time mechanics needed to be reworked since they are doing way too much damage currently.

Burn/Ignite:
The problem with burn/ignite is that it double dips with elemental damage and fire damage while also beeing able to scale multiplicativly with more elemental damage and more general damage sources, also more area damage if you are using an AoE skill to apply the ignite status. Those mechanics allow ignite to go to insane levels. For skills where spell damage modifiers are also able to scale DoT applied by this skill (aka Vortex) the support gem controlled destruction is also a problem to consider.

Poison/Bleed:
Has the same problems as ignite. it double dips and scales with multiple more modifiers which can result in insane damage. Poison is specificly broken since it scales/stacks infinitly per hits recieved.

Chill/Freeze:
Chill is a very powerfull mechanic on bosses when you combine it with temporal chains - the combo can trivialize encounters. Freeze is even more insane if you do it right since it disables the monsters ability to do anything.

Shock:
Shock is imho the most balanced status ailment in PoE - it scales all damage which makes DoT effects even more rediculous.

Stun:
Damage is getting so high in PoE right now that players almost always stun withe and blue mobs constantly without any further investment into stun passives or gear which is insane if you ask me. Most endgame bosses can stun you with every hit that connects so that stun avoidance/immunity is needed to not get stun locked in some cases.


Status ailments need to be reworked and ajusted before you can look into removing immunities from bosses. Punishing the player for using ailments, curses is a nice interactive way to amke encounters difficult. Immunities by themselfs arn't fun at all on both sides of the spectrum. If a boss is immune to chill/freeze while playing a cold build isn't engaging - on the other hand fighting a cold boss while the player is immune to chill and freeze isn't challenging and fun either; think about it.

Leech is a stat that is very hard to balance in every ARPG i have ever played. It grants sustainability against damage sources as long as you are dealing damage. Leech in PoE is a rather complicated stat if you want to invest into to it - except you take Vaal Pact which makes your leech instant.
Instant leech is a really big design issue when it comes to boss fights - beeing able to leech to full within a split second on a boss makes the encounter boring and easy because you can ignore all the mechanics if you are able to tank a single big hit. This is one reason GGG is forced to create so called "oneshots" in their game for the players to look out for.
Instant leech wasn't really a problem in PoE before initially because player damage was lower and leech sources wern't that big and plentifull as they are now. While some sources of leech clearly need some ajustment (aka Vessel of Vinktar), instant leech should be carefully looked at.

Another problem is the mechanics of some multihitting and there interaction of leech. While 2% leech for one slow hitting skill isn't much, for a very fast hitting skill it is huge. The current leech system favours fast small hits rather than big slow hits to be effective - the penalty for slow hits on bosses is even greater - this should be looked at.

There could the question be rised if instant leech even has a place in the version of PoE right now. If GGG decides to make changes to instant leech or leech generaly they definitly have to look at the reflect mechanic at the same time for sure before making any big changes.

Path of Exile has become a game about clear speed. Who can clear the most monsters/h the most efficiant way with the least risk has mastered this game. This wasn't always the case in the past. Content was much more difficult and player damage and survivability wasn't that high either - you could not play as fast as we play PoE now. Magic find had a legit place in the game back then. There were different farming spots like Piety and Dominus for MF runs and maps where there for mostly for EXP runs.
Slower clearing builds have a big disadvantage in this game right now and by slower i mean if you can't oneshot everything at movementspeed basically - those playstyle limited build diversity greatly which is sad. The economy is a huge part in PoE for many players out there - if a player can't keep up and can't buy/get the items he want for his build with adequat amounts of effort taken he will quit the game faster since he is feeling he can't compete.
This is a really big problem since there are also people who play many more hours than an average player - for those kind of people it also must be somewhat hard to get what they want for their build to feel compelled to keep on playing and not be done within 3 days.
The need to namelock and the lack of AoE is a big problem for almost all melee builds so far in the game.


Melee builds are mostly slower than any ranged build in ARPG's. Normaly they do less damage and clear slower but are much more tanky than any ranged build can ever be. Ranged has lots of AoE and DPS but is squishy at the same time. In PoE this isn't the case - no such "balance" between the two archtyps exists currently. Melee has no single advantage over ranged due to how most forms damage mitigation work in PoE. Also - almost all boss encounters and mechanics are not melee friendly designed (aka volatile blood, bearers and most big hit boss mechanics)

Melee needs further improvements to compare somewhat with ranged to create a more even playing field.

Currently it is much easier to craft a caster weapon than any melee weapon or ranged attack based weapon in the game which lead to casters being a lot more popular. The reason for this is mostly that casters only need spell damage. All other affixes doesn't have such a big impact on the build. Cast speed and crit is nice ans somewhat easy to get since spell damage is a prefix and crit and cast speed are suffixes. Also master mods can provide more decent stats numberwise for casters than for attackers currently.

When we break it down: Casters need 1 prefix (spell damage) and 1-2 suffixes (crit and cast speed) for a weapon to really be good. Attackers on the other hand need 2-3 prefixes (%phys,flat phys and hybrid) and 1-2 suffixes (attack speed, crit) for a weapon to be useable. The chance to get a decent attack based weapon is significantly lower than getting a spell caster weapon.
Another aspect to this: without a good weapon to scale of an attack build is mostly not doing that well especially when getting to higher lvl content while a spellcaster with a 50% spell damage wand can easily clear high end content due to the scaling potential through the passive tree, other gear, support gems and - most important - gem level of the main skill itself.

Some ajustments to weapon crafting and attack damage scaling which is comparable to getting spell caster weapons and spell damage scaling should be looked at.

I wanted to make this point because i was listening to the latest podcast with Nick_GGG as i guest. While i enjoyed the insight into the design process of new uniques greatly i also was very worried about some other comments Nick made.
Every dedicated long term player could clearly recognize that Nick isn't really in touch with the current balance of the game currently and some major game mechanics it seems. He doesn't know/isn't aware of some crucial mechanics (AoE overlap shotgunning due to his comment about Dying Sun) and the current state of life vs ES regarding the design of uniques specificaly to only call out two of the points he made - there was more, trust me, but this isn't about calling out Nick.
Nick is for sure not the only designer on PoE right now who isn't aware of all aspects of the game and has lack of crucial PoE knowledge; this is unacceptable - he is just the most recent example i use here to make a point.

This is a serious problem a PoE Designer should be aware of. A Developer doesn't have to be good at the game he makes and he has not to play a character to lvl 90 every league, kill Atziri and/or Shaper to proof he understands the game in and out - i think nobody expects that despite it would be helpfull, especially for such a complex game as Path of Exile has become today - but a Unique Designer has to understand the current meta, current balance problems and problematic mechanics in the game to design a well rounded unique i feel.

When we look at the recent past we can see that the balance of a single unique (or two) can make or break even a whole league! Reach of the Council and Voidheart were dominating Prophecy league because nothing was even comparable to them - the bow made rare bows absolete and the ring was found on every melee build out there. Both could be called "best in slot" at this point.


Creating unbalanced and BIS uniques is harmfull to a game like PoE. Also by creating uniques which technically arn't BIS but creating the feeling that it isn't even worth crafting a rare instead regarding time/effort/currency spent are a huge problem for challenge leagues at the moment (Starforge would be an example of the current uniques - it is not worth crafting a two handed sword currently since Starforge exists)
While it can be hard to design an interesting unique while not making it more powerfull than any rare could be it is possible but the design process is getting harder for sure if the designer doesn't understand multiple aspects of the game itself.

Balancing uniques is a whole other aspect - to create a balanced item multiple people have to look at it - sometimes something slips through and will be broken (this is unavoidable) but latly it is happening a little bit too often that it just isn't right.


GGG really should put more effort into unique design and unique balance regarding problematic game mechanics, BIS issues and unincentivizing crafting rare weapons, armour and jewelery in the future, regardless if it is a GGG unique or a supporter unique.

I want to make it short here since it is rather obvious for almost 6 challenge leagues now: Map affixes need to be looked at and the have to be rebalanced.

There is a big problem: While map mods should make maps harder and grant better rewards in return they also should not hurt build diversity. Currently people are only looking for builds which can do almost everything to run maps because it is the most efficiant thing to do. Rerolling maps too often cuts into currency retruns to buy gear and more maps and progressing through the game - people don't like that so they mostly play highly efficiant builds and then complain about "build viability". Also the modifier "pack size" provides some controversity.
Every player wants map returns and more EXP on his maps - so you roll pack size which is only provided on curse mods, -max and regen mods currently. Other mods which are much harder to deal with for most builds like 100% added elemental damage or crit mulit etc. don't grant any pack size currently or any other significant reward justifying to run them over a pack size mod.

This is a serious problem which limits PoE's longevity of leagues and build diversity by a huge margin.

Curses are a very powerfull conditional extra action you could do in PoE to enhance your damage and your survivability. They were actually balanced at some point while most of them always were strong support abilities to augment a party. Remember the days where you run a support character in your party which was only there to curse enemys?

Since the introduction of the Blasphemy support gem curses got a little bit out of hand due to there unconditional permanent uptime when you are in range of monsters - since the "curse aura" covers the whole screen with some AoE investment this isn't really a big problem those days.

Over the years players got access to more and more curse effectivness too, on the tree, on items, through support gem quality and through lab enchantments which are pushing some curses over the top.

Temporal Chains and Enfeeble are currently very problematic ones - with sufficiant scaling and Blasphemy you can render 90% of the content "easy" since no white or blue mob is ever going to actually hit or damage you. The recent change to curse effectivness on bosses helped a bit but still - curses like Temoral chains and Enfeeble have absurd impact on those fights, trivializing even some encounters.

On the other hand there are curses which see very little use since their introduction - for example Projectile Weakness and Punishment (Punishment even got a rework back then which did not help much at all it feels)


Curses and quality on curse gems could use a rework and some serious balance ajustments - curses must feel usefull and benefiting gameplay but they should not trivialize huge portions of the gameplay by doing that. The Blasphemy Support gem is also a big issue regarding the impact of curses in the current iteration of the game.

The skill- and support gem design drasticly changed over time in Path of Exiles development. At the start of Beta there where very few gems available to augment your skills - of course there were way fewer ways to get "more" multipliers to scale your damage.
Skills were also able to "shotgun" back then and some of them were particularly designed to shotgun to show there full damage potential (for example: Freezing Pulse). Other skills which wern't able to shotgun usually had an AoE tag given to them - so those had access to concentrated effect support which was one of the most powerfull and one of the few "more" multiplier support gems back then.
The game was balanced in a way that some skills could shotgun and others who can't could scale damage through more multipliers.

After the removal of shotgunning from projectile skills from players and monsters due to balance reasons while shotgunning through AoE overlapping still possible the meta shifted quickly. Popular projectile skills (lets take Freezing Pulse again as an example) suddenly fall short in damage and felt not fun to play - skills purly designed with shotgunning in mind didn't recieve any mechanic changes at all to compensate for the loss and felt boring.
After some time experienced players recognized that builds which are able to stack as many more multipliers as possible were so far above in power, the meta shifted twoards skills with an AoE tag (because conc effect was the best multiplier available back then)

At that time AoE skills began to shine more and more after each patch. Almost all new skills released got an AoE tag or where designed around AoE - single target skills were left unchanged in the meanwhile. Due to gam socket and link limitations people started using their AoE skills for single target as well - since they were so strong, noboday cared about single target skills anymore.

This trend is holding on since today. Single target skills don't have a real place in PoE right now for most builds. While there are implicit problems for having an AoE skills and a seperat single target skill on a character at the same time (limited amount of sockets/links, power of a 4 link single target vs a 6l single target vs a 6l AoE skill) - this is a difficult design and balance problem.



The removal of shotgunning killed so many interesting player skill mechanics, which was very bad for the complexity of the game. AoE overlap shotgunning is still in the game up until today which causes 2 things: on one hand absurd player damage and on the other hand unpredictable oneshot mechanics for monsters. The shotgunning nerf hasn't fully achieved the goal what it was meant to aim at (it did improve the situation back then greatly, don't get me wrong, but it didn't cover the whole spectrum of shotgunning)

Anonther big problem is skill gem design. Most of the skill gems released over the last 2 years are mostly strictly better mechanical versions of already existing skills. New skills practicaly "replacing" old skills because they are just "better" isn't a desired effect in a game like PoE making the old skill gem obsolete.
A prominent example for this is Groundslam --> Icecrash --> Earthquake. While Groundslam is a vaible strong skill which can be scaled into endgame, Icecrash will always be superior in damage - but why even use Icecrash when Earthquake exists? Earthquake is by far the strongest melee skill right now with no real competition. Some goes for Cleave --> Reave/Lacerate.

To make a point: Skills should always be able to scale to endgame and should be comparable to their alternatives. Beginner skills are fine in a game like PoE but their should be a way experienced players are able to scale even beginner skills to endgame (treshhold jewels come to mind as one way to do it - but for that they need some serious rework to get to that)

If essential mechanics of a skill or the game get changed - skill gems affected by those changes should be reworked immediately within the same patch cycle to not make them obsolete.

New skill gems released should feel unique, should have drawbacks and advantages over other skill gems in various situations and should be scaleable in a efficient way.


Spell skill gem vs attack skill gem scaling is also a hot topic currently. While it is very interesting that spells scale differently then attack gems (and their should be a different scaling system) the system doesn't hold up.
Attack gems basically get a "implicit" more multiplier on the active skill gem which is usually around 20%-30% at lvl 20 while spell gems get more base damage when they level up. Attack skills don't benefit that much from additional gem levels than spell gems do which leads to less variety in crafting weapons and other gear in general and makes affixes like "+x to socketed melee gems" obsolete.

Back in beta this system was balanced and fine due to the reason that not that many more multipliers and support gems existed back then. More multipliers were much more important than getting base damage.

Nowadays with penty of more multipliers in existance, getting base more damage is much more impactfull. Spells get base damage easily while leveling while attack gems rely on a good weapon. Gettign a good weapon isn't mostly that easy due to RNG and/or economy restrictions.


When we come to support gem design over the past years we can see a trend. "More" is the name of the game. Recently added support gems, compared to previous ones, are way less interesting and most of them are just powercreep achieved through numbers which lead to absurd player damage scaling.

The whole "more" stuff created another artificial problem. While there are many different support gems in the game now to choose from soem of them are never even taken into account because "stacking as many more multipliers as possible" is always the best way to do it. This situation created a boring system of artificial choice: active skills which can stack the most more multipliers and can cover a decent area are automatically the best ones to choose for a build - other possivle interesting mechanics and choices fall short.

Adding more multipliers to all support gems won't do the trick either and would be lazy design - it would only lead to more power creep.

Once a Rory_GGG said in a podcast:"The perfect szenario would be when non of the support gems had any more multiplier attached to it and just would be sufficiant on their own, through the mechanic/benefit they provide for the active skill they are linked to"

This would indeed be the perfect szenario - but to get to the "more multiplier system" needs to be looked into and reworked to fit the current status of the game. Support gems should be defined be granting interesting mechanics to a skill and not only raw damage.