How about creating more reasons not to go crit?

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

Force everyone to have RT damage levels -> everything above ROFL STOMPS it.

Force everyone to have Crit damage levels -> everything below doesn't get to be viable.

Force everyone to have double dip damage levels -> it's either this or get ready to die like a @#%^&.

It's common sense, if you remove the double dip level, and then close the gap between RT and Crit you could then tune the content for a median value.

Just so.

Fixing balance isn't about being "fair" or some other weird notion of justice. It's about diversifying options, and thereby making the entire game more interesting and fun.

I argue that the most fun thing about RPGs in general is CHOICES. Any dynamic that removes choice will remove fun from the game in equal proportion.

In a nutshell, the current crit/non-crit dynamic discourages choice to a high degree. That makes PoE more boring. No one wants that.

I think elemental overload was a great incentive to go non-crit without taking RT. Unfortunately it's only for elemental damage - and if you want to play elemental melee you're probably on the opposite side of the tree. I don't think playing melee elemental overload is really viable unless you are CI because of how far it is.

But yeah! Crit is so damn boring. In addition it's very frustrating to build around and there are far too many item affixes to boost crit in comparison to other styles of play - which makes crit too good for lategame scaling.

Edit:

In addition, I would like to see some changes to EO to encourage usage by attack builds in addition to spell builds. Perhaps adding a bunch of flat accuracy to the node so that EO users don't have to deal with accuracy issues whilst also not gaining the insane damage potential of crit.

For RT, they could do it CI/BM style and add some hyper powered nodes behind it.

Or they could just make bleed a valuable aspect to help balance crit, the main problem is the double dipping which isn't about bleed / poison but about doing crit damage that then does insane bleed / poison cause the base hit was nearly 3x as strong. We know that is going away, which for those starforge haters should just make it more valuable when double dipping clears away. not the other way around.

But back to point bleed is a pretty useless addition if you aren't crit aka double dipping. While it can be forced into working sort of. your just better off skipping it completely and shoving a poison gem in. Cause it can stack. Yes bleed does stack but not it's damage so your concurrent output is just junk at best.

If they added more bleed nodes and ramped up it's ability maybe allow "gushing" hits were the bleed damage is allowed to happen over 1 second instead of 5, you could balance things out a bit by giving melee phys builds the ability to balance their damage a bit. Could also help with the one shotting if you could dash in lay some decent bleed down, then dance away for a moment while still having the damage occur.

I'm fine where crit is once the double dip issue is balanced / taken care off aka not applying the crit multiplier damage to the value used for poison or even bleed.

But also agree that having to take RT or use a huge ton of accuracy is just annoying. another option is make accuracy impact non-melee more than melee. aka shotting a guy from 50 meters is much harder than hitting him with a sword at 2 feet. If the accuracy wasn't such a drain to build / deal with then there would be wiggle room to diverisfy.

I've actually asked that myself of why not adding more options like Trigger Gems...

Cast on Block,Cast on Evade,Cast on Enemy Stun.

This would also require them to balance out Stun though on enemies or mods making them instead something like Reduced Stun Effect... though to be honest other mods are in need of rebalancing.

Crit is a 2-axis modifier (crit chance and crit multi), which is attained through 3 systems of character customization: gear, gems, and skill points. For something to be an alternative to crit, it needs to fill all those same roles.

Since nothing seems to exist as an alternative yet, creating it from scratch would be an undertaking which permeates all aspects of the game. I'm not sure that anyone even knows what that alternative might be. If you do put all that investment into something other than crit, what benefit is a suitable alternative to killing monsters instantly? I don't see a way that any modifier could be made an equitable alternative to crit going down this road. Supposing you had such a mod, why would you switch from your crit build to it- what does it offer that's better than what crit offers?

If you want to have a reason to go non-crit, the only 2 possibilities I see are nerfing crit or buffing monsters. The 3rd road of making another modifier won't work unless you can come up with something that's better than crit in some situations, and that means it has to be better than killing monsters quickly and with ease.

RT was fine in the past, as a poor man's solution:
"I need to worry neither about accuracy nor about crit chance on my gear."

It was just way more cheap to buy a ring with 70 life, 70% resists (that's just a blue resist implicit ring) than a diamond ring with 70 life, 70% resists (that's at least a lucky regal).
First one was ~1 chaos, second one was ~1 Ex. Same for accuracy gear.

But since then, a couple things have happened:
*the increased crit chance support gem gained flat crit (read as "anything can be played as crit now")
*mastercrafts can turn any weapon with an open suffix into a "crit weapon"
*essences made gear in general more accessible
*accuracy is also a bit easier to get today (I don't care at all on my gladiator, no flat acc anywhere, still have 87% cth)

We just don't need this "poor man's solution" any more.


So, what to do with it?

More damage, like "40% more damage"?
How would you deserve this? You're investing in nothing. No acc, no crit.
More survivability, like "15% life nodes or perma fortify behind it"?
Still, why? You're investing in nothing.

If anything, I'd turn RT into "hits can't be evaded, 30% less global crit chance".
Just reduce the drawback a bit.

...or adress the real issue, which is crit scaling:
Give crit chance and/or multi a hard or soft cap.

"

Peterlerock wrote:

RT was fine in the past, as a poor man's solution:
"I need to worry neither about accuracy nor about crit chance on my gear."

It was just way more cheap to buy a ring with 70 life, 70% resists (that's just a blue resist implicit ring) than a diamond ring with 70 life, 70% resists (that's at least a lucky regal).
First one was ~1 chaos, second one was ~1 Ex. Same for accuracy gear.

But since then, a couple things have happened:
*the increased crit chance support gem gained flat crit (read as "anything can be played as crit now")
*mastercrafts can turn any weapon with an open suffix into a "crit weapon"
*essences made gear in general more accessible
*accuracy is also a bit easier to get today (I don't care at all on my gladiator, no flat acc anywhere, still have 87% cth)

We just don't need this "poor man's solution" any more.


So, what to do with it?

More damage, like "40% more damage"?
How would you deserve this? You're investing in nothing. No acc, no crit.
More survivability, like "15% life nodes or perma fortify behind it"?
Still, why? You're investing in nothing.

If anything, I'd turn RT into "hits can't be evaded, 30% less global crit chance".
Just reduce the drawback a bit.

...or adress the real issue, which is crit scaling:
Give crit chance and/or multi a hard or soft cap.

Or give like 15% more damage as you "always" hit, a 15% reduced stun threshold as you "always" hit and even a 5-10% chance to gain Unholy Might for 2/3 sec per hit as you "always" hit.

That would add some focus on "always" hit your enemies and gain some further benefits, and keeping it different from EO.

Crit got nerfed recently and it could use only a small tone down + removal of always applying ailments and it would be in a perfect spot - you do want to make it rewarding by still having the biggest damage output and also require a fair investment.

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

Or give like 15% more damage as you "always" hit, a 15% reduced stun threshold as you "always" hit and even a 5-10% chance to gain Unholy Might for 2/3 sec per hit as you "always" hit.

...still don't see how a one point investment deserves this.

If I play two dudes with the exact same tree, but one wears two gear pieces with +400 accuracy and the other one has one point in RT, I don't see how the second one deserved free "30% of physical as chaos".

"

Peterlerock wrote:

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

Or give like 15% more damage as you "always" hit, a 15% reduced stun threshold as you "always" hit and even a 5-10% chance to gain Unholy Might for 2/3 sec per hit as you "always" hit.

...still don't see how a one point investment deserves this.

If I play two dudes with the exact same tree, but one wears two gear pieces with +400 accuracy and the other one has one point in RT, I don't see how the second one deserved free "30% of physical as chaos".

It would be a 4 point investment. Those are additional notable nodes after a keystone.

And that way you would have a similar opportunity cost as to CI or BM - use 3 further points to grab a damage multiplier, a circumstantial ailment and a chance to gain an important bonus (5% chance for 2 seconds is nothing to write home about, but it might give an "Omph" that is worthwhile)...

For no further investment, RT might give only an "Enemies are intimidated when hit => 10% increased damage taken by intimidate enemies => 10% more damage multiplier".

Ok, for 4 points, this really wouldn't be overpowered.

But, maybe a bit off topic:

"

sofocle10000 wrote:

(5% chance for 2 seconds is nothing to write home about, but it might give an "Omph" that is worthwhile)...

Low numbers like this tend to be deceiving in PoE. With enough attack speed, "5% chance to gain x for y seconds" quickly turn into "100% uptime on x".

i.E.:

You'll rarely have no onslaught up building around that thing (it has 4 seconds, but it's also quite slow).