As of 6-22-17 softcore Legacy has 852 level 100 builds out of 11.5 million accounts

So if I view half of them as inactive from kids trying out every free-to-play game that they can get that still is only 0.01549% of the player base. If I include level 99 builds that's 1101 which is still only .02% of all players. So that means the ES nerfs based on GGG seeing 20K+ ES builds that trivialize all content is about 2/100ths of 1% of the player base that are dictating such a drastic ES nerf action. There's something very wrong with their thinking on this. Other than Jonathon that was GGG's on camera spokesperson for the Xbox version of PoE at E3 (starts at 1h:23m) (magma balls???... maybe his virtue gems are implanted in his nether region?) do we have recent photos of the other PoE founders to verify that they haven't infused themselves with virtue gems and have gone insane for nerfing the fun out of PoE? There has to be a better way to nerf BiS ES builds than global base nerf to all ES gear.

The nerfs were a result of the vocal minority, reddit and streamers warping reality.

Look at this guy clearing shaped pools maps for 100000000 exp per hour with 20 headhunter buffs on his ES build. This is clearly ruining my personal game enjoyment.

You don't see the problem. The problem is that people get to about 93 and get so bored with the game that they quit.

Like it or not, PoE is their game. They make the rules. If there's something they don't like, THEY change it. YOU are not important. Your 1% or 2% or even 57%... is unimportant. They want to make a game that they're proud of, and they're not proud of the shenanigans people are playing with. So they change it.

What you can do is adapt. You can play their game (for free!). You can find what pleasures you can within it. But it's not your call what they do with it.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

You don't see the problem. The problem is that people get to about 93 and get so bored with the game that they quit.

Like it or not, PoE is their game. They make the rules. If there's something they don't like, THEY change it. YOU are not important. Your 1% or 2% or even 57%... is unimportant. They want to make a game that they're proud of, and they're not proud of the shenanigans people are playing with. So they change it.

What you can do is adapt. You can play their game (for free!). You can find what pleasures you can within it. But it's not your call what they do with it.

That's pretty much a "DUH!" statement to say "it's their game and they can do whatever they want to do with it". But the saying "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" most definitely applies to gaining more arpg market share and keeping it (thus increasing revenues).

Ok, so they kill ES builds and push us all to make life builds in PoE 3.0 or push many right out of PoE completely. Or make us go MoM to get both life + mana to play red maps. So in the end GGG is proud of this change but in doing pushes PoE into a tiny niche arpg market with dwindling player base and revenue. Sure GGG founders can go down that path but why throw away fame and fortune?

Most beta players/streamers are saying the "adapting" is working a build around MoM (or needing to drink some MoM with this stomach upsetting ES nerf).

Why do you have to reach level 100 to trivialize content? I really don't get the thread title and subsequent conclusion derived from it.

They've been doing this for longer than most gaming companies last. You act like this is the first time they've turned the dial to the left.

Stuff like this is the reason I don't play PoE anymore. I'm still hoping that the game settles down, leagues start lasting 6 months instead of 3, and "balancing changes" are extremely few and far between. Then I might decide to play this again. After it's already gotten nearly all the content it's ever going to get.

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Namcap wrote:

Why do you have to reach level 100 to trivialize content? I really don't get the thread title and subsequent conclusion derived from it.

I wasn't trying to make a case for the 99+ level builds being the only uber builds with 20K+ ES (and I'm not going to sit there forever to count how many of the 1101 builds are actually ES builds). My only point in the title is that with so few players out of the total player base actually willing to grind to level 99 and 100 that I just don't see that over 20K ES on a handful of builds is any kind of a problem that warrants such drastic action that GGG is taking. That's all.

If you can site more accurate statistics that show just how many 20K+ es builds actually exist out of millions of players playing millions of builds (and millions of non-ES builds) to clarify and justify GGG's nerf of ES then please enlighten me.

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MrSmiley21 wrote:

Stuff like this is the reason I don't play PoE anymore. I'm still hoping that the game settles down, leagues start lasting 6 months instead of 3, and "balancing changes" are extremely few and far between. Then I might decide to play this again. After it's already gotten nearly all the content it's ever going to get.

It is extremely frustrating for us "filthy casuals". It's difficult enough just to get in the playing time to get to level 90 in a 3 month league with current gear stats (and it's near perfect right now) so nerfing ES just exacerbates the problem. I was able to push my SSF Legacy build to level 90 in 77 days averaging 2.9 hrs/day becausue I got lucky and a Jack The Axe dropped that made my phys/crit FB Champion work very well to power grind through the 80s levels.

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鬼殺し wrote:

edit: re this idea that only level 100s stomp content as ES: please. Even I tried an ES/caster build in SSF Legacy and was crushing crap by early 80s. It was boring. On top of that, CI trivialised a lot of what Maps were throwing at me. So the combination of chaos immunity and inordinately high ES/ES regen on a fully ranged character is a too obvious easy mode, even for a sickly casual like me.

There you go again, warping reality. :P