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

Every Ascendancy Class is OP as hell in the current version of the game. Even though Deadeye is very uncommon just take a look at the Ascendancy passives it grants. It is a massive damage buff. The reason people avoid is they don't even need any more damage. They got all the damage they would ever need.

The power creep in this game is a huge problem in PoE :(
The game is quickly becoming less and less challenging and thus less and less interesting :(

OP's data is consistent with es/vp being over powered. I'm not sure I understand the point of the title.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

"

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.

Statistical analysis is lazy, inefficient, and why games have gotten less and less objectively balanced (i.e. Quake vs Overwatch). The only reason it thrives is because it keeps people playing longer due to their inability to form a proper opinion from lack of skill or consideration. Basically, if you cannot mathematically (logically) determine why something is strong or weak, any tweak is a blindfolded one.

It is good for seeing where to look, but not full proof. Especially in a game like POE where there is so much to keep track of.

"

sidtherat wrote:

Crit is the problem.

yeah people said crit was going to be dead because of the nerf from multiplicative to additive crit multi... lol....

they need to follow through with that multi nerf a bit more imo. The only went half way, they nerfed the gear and the gem, they didnt nerf the tree, the buffed the tree nodes so that they escaped the loss. I think they need to go back and bring down the tree multi a bit too. Honestly, if it were me Id bring the starting multiplier down to 130% too rather than 150%.

You can do stuff with supports too though. A gem that gives a 50% chance to deal 100% more melee damage on non critical strike, stuff like this.




Thing is with crit and gslam etc, staves dont exist, not in leagues where balance matters. Heges is it, thats all there is. I dont feel like giving heges gslam 50% more damage is game breaking, quite honestly Im not even sure if its enough to even get a significant amount of people playing it. Crit sceptres? You ever seen one? Doeboy crafted one, Ive never seen a copy of it floating around. I think ud be lucky to get a 300pdps one, which would do about as much damage as a 300pdps crit staff, so a little over half the damage of a heges staff, aka fuck all. The thing with axe/mace/staff restricted skills is that heges is the only way ur gonna go crit with them in a league and have a 450pdps+ weapon, they can easily make heges a very rare t1 unique and let them jump to 30ex a pop, outside of that theres nothing to really fear imo.



heres a search for 450+ pdps rare crit staves in breach right now...

http://poe.trade/search/aranimogahauoh

1 result, its 525pdps, a high rolled hege is around 500pdps... 1 result. These things dont exist, they literally do not exist.

there isnt a single crit sceptre over 350pdps for sale, if u take it down to 300pdps...

http://poe.trade/search/ikisahekodatog

5 results over 300, and these are not online searches, no one is online, this is deeeeeep into a league doing offline searching. A 300pdps sceptre does the same damage as a 300pdps staff, its nothing, you wouldnt humor making an endgame build with a 300pdps staff (not that youd even find one of those tbh).

axe/mace/staff restricted skills essentially have 0 serious crit options outside of heges which can be controlled in terms of drop rates. We need some expensive uniques in the game, buff the skills imo, let heges be an expensive item, if anyone even notices the buff. I honestly wouldnt be surprised if they buffed all those skills by 50% and still no one played them because they could still get more damage out of a lvl19 spell gem.

"

Legatus1982 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-

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.

theres a reason D3 made changes? Ok, lets look at D3, if you wanted to be on a leaderboard for cleqaring grifts in the game there would be exactly 1 build you could use, and you would have to be using the exact same gear, every single item the same, as all the other people on the board. If you want to be in the leader board for your class there is exactly 1 build you can make and all your gear is the same as everyone else on that board. Small handfull of builds? Everywhere there is a leaderboard in D3 there is only 1 build with 1 gear and skill set on it. So what exactly was the reason D3 made changes?

PoE on the other hand, theres probably over 100 different builds HvR could start as next league and be first lvl100 in hc... so... yeah.


Theyre buffing 1h melee weapons with the next patch with the exception of daggers, so they are aware that the melee area needs work to be competitive, theyre not ignoring imbalance. But if you think chris is the one being short sighted and D3 get it then I think you are being pretty blind when it comes to evaluating how balanced and diverse your options in the 2 games are from a competitive standpoint.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

Thing is with crit and gslam etc, staves dont exist, not in leagues where balance matters. Heges is it, thats all there is. I dont feel like giving heges gslam 50% more damage is game breaking, quite honestly Im not even sure if its enough to even get a significant amount of people playing it. Crit sceptres? You ever seen one? Doeboy crafted one, Ive never seen a copy of it floating around. I think ud be lucky to get a 300pdps one, which would do about as much damage as a 300pdps crit staff, so a little over half the damage of a heges staff, aka fuck all. The thing with axe/mace/staff restricted skills is that heges is the only way ur gonna go crit with them in a league and have a 450pdps+ weapon, they can easily make heges a very rare t1 unique and let them jump to 30ex a pop, outside of that theres nothing to really fear imo.



heres a search for 450+ pdps rare crit staves in breach right now...

http://poe.trade/search/aranimogahauoh

1 result, its 525pdps, a high rolled hege is around 500pdps... 1 result. These things dont exist, they literally do not exist.

there isnt a single crit sceptre over 350pdps for sale, if u take it down to 300pdps...

http://poe.trade/search/ikisahekodatog

5 results over 300, and these are not online searches, no one is online, this is deeeeeep into a league doing offline searching. A 300pdps sceptre does the same damage as a 300pdps staff, its nothing, you wouldnt humor making an endgame build with a 300pdps staff (not that youd even find one of those tbh).

i think you only see a result of an underlying problem. problem is 'people no longer pick stuff up'

half of the population run a loot filter they did not create nor understand. these filters (esp the 'rainbow' ones) pretty much hide everything their creator does not value. this includes most melee-related items.

you cannot buy stuff that people left to rot and ran past it. same applies to stuff like AR/EV shields, good AR/EV or ES/EV chests, paua (or in general - mana) items etc. these are filtered out.

and to find a mace comparable to Catalyst or staff comparable to Era you need to a) run high level content to unlock the T1/T2 affixes AND pick this stuff up. most high-level players play the run fast game and they leave picking items to low-paid pleb players. sadly - these players do not run T1/T2..

"

sidtherat wrote:

RT is not the problem

Crit is the problem. it is too easy to reach the cap. the crit multi can still be scaled very highly. the crit gets all the perks for no reason. everything 'good' is coupled with crit because someone though it a good idea

as long as going crit is easy, cheap and the ceiling is so high (95% crit chance? there are games where it is as low as 50% FOR A REASON!) no changes to RT will do.

first - because making entire game 'pick RT (ONE NODE)' or 'pick crit' is stupid and we could as well ditch the entire passive tree idea

second - most changes people propose (buff heavy strike etc) cannot be done because crit can benefit from them just as well.

it is the crit that should get HEAVILY nerfed. decouple status aliments, set the crit cap at 75% or even 50%. current situation is deplorable. go check passive tree heat maps - noone picks the bottom left part of the tree if one doesnt have to. for a reason. it sucks. you CAN build around there - but why? for flavour? how many exalts i can get from playing that? i can make it work - if i opt to abuse broken stuff (poison/blade flurry or any other bull..) OR i happen to have 500pdps weapon. but everything goes if one has such items. with normal gear? good luck (but is perfectly doable as right-side of the tree CI/crit build because reasons)

not to mention that current (and it seems - forever) life/CI situation just does not make it easier.

Well GGG had a balance threshold that got skewed when they started focusing on the Crit as a constant boost to damage, instead of one that was severely limited to a controled enviroment - you could get a multiplier north of 400%, and with a high crit chance of up to 95%, the last impediment - Accuracy - got handed to us like candy - they'll even boost the value of swords to a set amount instead of %...

If Accuracy requested serious investments, those >400 multiplier and capped crit chance shouldn't have a hit rate of more than 50%, as you would have to choose between a higher hit rate, the capped crit chance and stacking the multiplier...

It is what it is, but they could still balance these aspects a lot better...

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

theres a reason D3 made changes? Ok, lets look at D3, if you wanted to be on a leaderboard for cleqaring grifts in the game there would be exactly 1 build you could use, and you would have to be using the exact same gear, every single item the same, as all the other people on the board. If you want to be in the leader board for your class there is exactly 1 build you can make and all your gear is the same as everyone else on that board. Small handfull of builds? Everywhere there is a leaderboard in D3 there is only 1 build with 1 gear and skill set on it. So what exactly was the reason D3 made changes?

PoE on the other hand, theres probably over 100 different builds HvR could start as next league and be first lvl100 in hc... so... yeah.

Theyre buffing 1h melee weapons with the next patch with the exception of daggers, so they are aware that the melee area needs work to be competitive, theyre not ignoring imbalance. But if you think chris is the one being short sighted and D3 get it then I think you are being pretty blind when it comes to evaluating how balanced and diverse your options in the 2 games are from a competitive standpoint.

HvC I'm sure could make lots of builds look viable, yeah. We've seen streamers do stuff like that before. But it's pretty well known that there are only a few builds that will perform as well as a top performing build, and the difference between this and D3 is that D3 at least balances the major classes VERY closely in each major update. The whole "2 deadeyes" thing is exactly what I'm talking about here. You'd never see a class being represented twice at the top of a ladder in D3 while another class has 300+ up there. It's fucking absurd.

It's not like there aren't underperforming classes in blizzard games, I know. But take a look at how well a glacial hammer build works compared to discharger, or blade vortex, or EQ or whatever is broken right now in POE, and the difference in clear speed and currency acquisition between those is far beyond anything you'd ever see there.

My reference to Chris was his comment before about how "gems don't need to be balanced", all due respect to Chris but it's a dumb comment imo. They need to be making an effort to balance these skills. And you're vastly overestimating the number of viable skills in POE. I'd REALLY like to see you come up with 100 viable skills, lol does the game even have 100 skills? There are a lot of gems but 100 is pushing it, and the vast majority of those are NOT viable skills.

"

sidtherat wrote:

5 results over 300, and these are not online searches, no one is online, this is deeeeeep into a league doing offline searching. A 300pdps sceptre does the same damage as a 300pdps staff, its nothing, you wouldnt humor making an endgame build with a 300pdps staff (not that youd even find one of those tbh).

i think you only see a result of an underlying problem. problem is 'people no longer pick stuff up'

half of the population run a loot filter they did not create nor understand. these filters (esp the 'rainbow' ones) pretty much hide everything their creator does not value. this includes most melee-related items.

you cannot buy stuff that people left to rot and ran past it. same applies to stuff like AR/EV shields, good AR/EV or ES/EV chests, paua (or in general - mana) items etc. these are filtered out.

and to find a mace comparable to Catalyst or staff comparable to Era you need to a) run high level content to unlock the T1/T2 affixes AND pick this stuff up. most high-level players play the run fast game and they leave picking items to low-paid pleb players. sadly - these players do not run T1/T2..[/quote]

Yeah, you dont know which of 10000 rare staves will have 500+ DPS. And picking rare loot (except jewelry and best ES bases) in PoE is inefficient, cause you kill enemies in 0.5 seconds and run at supersonic speeds. Picking up rares will increase your clearing time by 2-5 times, meansning you'll get 2-5 times less currency and experience.

This is the FUNDAMENTAL flaw in PoE. And it needs to be fixed, and quickly. GGG should either:

1. Vastly reduce player's damage, and reduce their movespeed by fair amount as well, while also increasing drop rates and XP gains accordingly. With that, players wont be so penaltized picking up rares.

2. Make all items drop identified, and allow item filter to show/hide them depending on rolls. With well-build item filter, player will see (and pick up) best of the best rares, while leaving trash rares rot on the ground.

3. Introduce new "tier" of gear quality above rare, so rares will be junk that new tier will have good chances to be great items (that's how D3 did - legendaries are actually new gear tier above rares).

4. Make the 25% of lowest tiers of mods impossible to spawn on gear above ilvl 82 (arbitrary number), so that you get better chance for higher rolls.
Example: Daggers have 9 tiers of "Adds # to # Physical Damage to Attacks". 25% of that is 2.25, round it down, and suddenly only 7 highest tiers can be available on high ilevel weapon.
1/2-3
4-5/8-9
can no longer spawn, so the lowest roll is 6-8/12-14.

Then, make this only apply to items on drop, so crafting isn't affected.

This will make people stop and actually pick stuff up.

I picked up every single rare staff in poe for over 3 years and never found a single physical crit staff that was even good enough for entry level mapping. I dont pick them up any more either, theres literally no point. In those 3 years I never found a usable spell staff either, youre talking something like 8000 hours played picking up every rare staff and not finding 1 single staff you would ever use on a build. Its not a case of decent rare staves drop quite a bit but no one picks them up, people dont pick them up because its quite clear theres no point.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

theres a reason D3 made changes? Ok, lets look at D3, if you wanted to be on a leaderboard for cleqaring grifts in the game there would be exactly 1 build you could use, and you would have to be using the exact same gear, every single item the same, as all the other people on the board. If you want to be in the leader board for your class there is exactly 1 build you can make and all your gear is the same as everyone else on that board. Small handfull of builds? Everywhere there is a leaderboard in D3 there is only 1 build with 1 gear and skill set on it. So what exactly was the reason D3 made changes?

PoE on the other hand, theres probably over 100 different builds HvR could start as next league and be first lvl100 in hc... so... yeah.

Theyre buffing 1h melee weapons with the next patch with the exception of daggers, so they are aware that the melee area needs work to be competitive, theyre not ignoring imbalance. But if you think chris is the one being short sighted and D3 get it then I think you are being pretty blind when it comes to evaluating how balanced and diverse your options in the 2 games are from a competitive standpoint.

HvC I'm sure could make lots of builds look viable, yeah. We've seen streamers do stuff like that before. But it's pretty well known that there are only a few builds that will perform as well as a top performing build, and the difference between this and D3 is that D3 at least balances the major classes VERY closely in each major update. The whole "2 deadeyes" thing is exactly what I'm talking about here. You'd never see a class being represented twice at the top of a ladder in D3 while another class has 300+ up there. It's fucking absurd.

It's not like there aren't underperforming classes in blizzard games, I know. But take a look at how well a glacial hammer build works compared to discharger, or blade vortex, or EQ or whatever is broken right now in POE, and the difference in clear speed and currency acquisition between those is far beyond anything you'd ever see there.

My reference to Chris was his comment before about how "gems don't need to be balanced", all due respect to Chris but it's a dumb comment imo. They need to be making an effort to balance these skills. And you're vastly overestimating the number of viable skills in POE. I'd REALLY like to see you come up with 100 viable skills, lol does the game even have 100 skills? There are a lot of gems but 100 is pushing it, and the vast majority of those are NOT viable skills.

deadeye is not a class. Ranger is a class, deadeye is something you can do with that class. What you can do with the classes in D3 is in no way balanced, at all. If this was D3 the top 1000 rangers would all be Raiders and there wouldnt be 1 single deadeye or pathfinder on the list. Thats how bad the balance in D3 is.

Last season quin was the only monk who managed to clear a t96 rift, to get on the top 1000 monk board you needed to clear a t77 rift. The top wizard on the other hand cleared a t106 rift, and to get on the wizard top 1000 board you had to clear a t90 rift. Only 29 monks in the entire season cleared a t90+ rift, where as the top 1000 wizards starts at t90, and you are telling me there is class balance in that game?

I think the top players in this game could use any class, any sub class and make a build that got them in the top 5 lvl100 ladder slots in a hc league. You cannot do that in D3. Quinn played a monk, t96 rift in 14:25, that would have put him in position 291 on the wizard leaderboard. 99 people made it to lvl100 in hc breach and every main class is represented in there.