Maybe u should look at OP Ascendacy Classes instead of declaring war on Phys dmg/VP/ES, GGG...

^Those numbers mean nothing at all.

1) they are derived from top competitors
2) not all ascendancy's where made with top meta play in mind(on the contrary, some are entirely designed around the opposite)

Ascendancy's just enhance a build or nullify a deficit most of the times.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Boem wrote:

^Those numbers mean nothing at all.

1) they are derived from top competitors
2) not all ascendancy's where made with top meta play in mind(on the contrary, some are entirely designed around the opposite)

Ascendancy's just enhance a build or nullify a deficit most of the times.

Peace,

-Boem-

Generally a game should balance the major class or in this case ascendancy options against each other at all levels of play. This is a pretty basic requirement if GGG wants their product to be a competitive gaming product, which based on every indication is in fact what they want and really is what the players want anyways.

Chris wilson's quote saying "not every skill or build etc needs to be great" is extremely short sighted. There's a reason D3 made so many changes from their old system. Players are being funneled into a small handful of build options if they want to compete on the ladder or in races or really anywhere, and there is a lot of content that isn't even viable for many non-specific builds. In addition, party play is a joke right now unless you're using one of those builds, because the guys who can't keep up with the fastest party members are just slowing those people down.

If POE was a single player, non-trading, non-competitive, non-online-only game where you could just load it up, kill some monsters, and log off, then sure it wouldn't matter how good a build is. Even then, you'd play a really good build and know your other ones are slow crap after playing both.

This idea that builds/classes/ascendancies don't need to be balanced is honestly just absurd, especially in a game like POE.

The CI/VP imbalance and the clearspeed meta getting more and more dominant explains these numbers just as well as imbalances in ascendancy power.

It's not the ascendancies of Marauder and Duelist that are weak, it's life builds.

"

Boem wrote:

^Those numbers mean nothing at all.

1) they are derived from top competitors
2) not all ascendancy's where made with top meta play in mind(on the contrary, some are entirely designed around the opposite)

Ascendancy's just enhance a build or nullify a deficit most of the times.

Peace,

-Boem-

Agreed.
You'd need to look at the entire ladder to have a better picture, and that's a lot more work intensive process.
You'd also need to look at the BHC ladder to have a complete picture. (The top ascendancies in their top 2k are Necromancer followed by Elementalist, Raider, and Occultist. 3/4 top 4 are witch classes. A lot of those necros are probably supports, btw).

While looking at the top 2k gives you an idea of what people used to get to 100 and the high 90's, it's an incomplete picture of the meta and balance.

TL;DR Sample Size too small.

You guys saying Marauder, Duelist and their subs are fine/great/strong and that such a massive imbalance in Asc classes don't really mean anything are totally blind.

This is a large sample of the TOP 2k players on BSC... they will choose what's the best and likely, what is most OP in the game. They will choose the best clear speed and OFFENSE because pretty much all defense in this game is a joke, so best offense = best defense.

Such a small # of duelist and marauders is just laughable and shows they are not as strong as you think, relative to ranger and witch. You may think each individual Asc class has its own strong points and advantages, means absolute dick overall cause ranger and witch are so much better and faster and stronger meta, whatever you want to call it.

People keep missing the big picture, ES/CI is nothing you can have 15k pools with no other defense and you'll still get RIP easily, what's truly imbalanced is combo of leech mechanic (instant much > pathetic, miniscule non-instant leech) + Pathfinder/Raider & Witch + truly OP flasks Vinktar & Dying Sun. That's what the problem.

ES actually sucks as much as life if you can't abuse leech, pots and have < 10k pool because of stun and not being able to heal with flasks.

"

zSavage wrote:

"

Boem wrote:

^Those numbers mean nothing at all.

1) they are derived from top competitors
2) not all ascendancy's where made with top meta play in mind(on the contrary, some are entirely designed around the opposite)

Ascendancy's just enhance a build or nullify a deficit most of the times.

Peace,

-Boem-

Agreed.
You'd need to look at the entire ladder to have a better picture, and that's a lot more work intensive process.
You'd also need to look at the BHC ladder to have a complete picture. (The top ascendancies in their top 2k are Necromancer followed by Elementalist, Raider, and Occultist. 3/4 top 4 are witch classes. A lot of those necros are probably supports, btw).

While looking at the top 2k gives you an idea of what people used to get to 100 and the high 90's, it's an incomplete picture of the meta and balance.

TL;DR Sample Size too small.

I've decided in the upcoming league I will probably not play HC anymore because of all the bullshit random unpredictable oneshots that come with it, but even still I believe HC temp top # ladder is the best measure of class performance.

Sure, you could look at what builds are "popular" which is basically what you're suggesting, but popularity and performance are different things, and performance I think is the thing that should be looked at.

"

Dark_Chicken wrote:

Look at these stats, the distribution is so uneven it shows how terrible your balancing is when Duelist and Marauder which has sucked for so long, continue to suck EVEN MORE, it's laughable how few of the best players in league want to take the melee/armor/life classes and yet all you guys do is continue to buff anything-to-do with ranger/bow/elemental/spell casters.

See, this is the "muti quoque te scire" fallacy. What you are looking at is not what you think you're looking at.

That's not a list of builds used by the "best players in league". It's the build used by most people who were at the top of a ladder that basically tracks killing speed.

To actually consider how successful a given build is, it would be smarter to see the total number of players of a given ascendancy and then see, of those, how many managed to reach the top.

For example, because I'm sure this is more than some people here can understand - if 1.000.000.000.000.000 people play as an Assassin and yet only 10 make it to the top 200 of the ladder, and 4 people play as Champion and all those 4 reach the top of the ladder, it doesn't mean the Assassin is better than the Champion; rather, that the Assassin is more popular, but not necessarily better.

You could, of course, think that what the majority supports is always better. To which I would like to ask you to see who's the president of the USA right now.

"

JohnNamikaze wrote:

Pretty much popularity and the best builds are not mutually exclusive.

Neither mutually inclusive.

"

Erasculio wrote:

"

Dark_Chicken wrote:

Look at these stats, the distribution is so uneven it shows how terrible your balancing is when Duelist and Marauder which has sucked for so long, continue to suck EVEN MORE, it's laughable how few of the best players in league want to take the melee/armor/life classes and yet all you guys do is continue to buff anything-to-do with ranger/bow/elemental/spell casters.

See, this is the "muti quoque te scire" fallacy. What you are looking at is not what you think you're looking at.

That's not a list of builds used by the "best players in league". It's the build used by most people who were at the top of a ladder that basically tracks killing speed.

To actually consider how successful a given build is, it would be smarter to see the total number of players of a given ascendancy and then see, of those, how many managed to reach the top.

For example, because I'm sure this is more than some people here can understand - if 1.000.000.000.000.000 people play as an Assassin and yet only 10 make it to the top 200 of the ladder, and 4 people play as Champion and all those 4 reach the top of the ladder, it doesn't mean the Assassin is better than the Champion; rather, that the Assassin is more popular, but not necessarily better.

You could, of course, think that what the majority supports is always better. To which I would like to ask you to see who's the president of the USA right now.

Yeah that's the thing I keep trying to tell people, you have to take the total selection vs top appearance percentages for each ascendancy and compare them. If 80% of the population is playing marauder but there are only 2 marauders in the top 100, it's underperforming.