Improve Acrobatics

All comments about low dodge chance, no mention about absurd offensive values on the right side? I just can't understand why anybody need to dodge/evade anything while you can one shot everything.

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Ceryneian wrote:

As Rashek was using the power of the Well, he changed many aspects of life in order to save the world from the Deepness of the mists.

Many of his changes, however, created even more problems that needed to addressed.

He pushed the planet closer to the sun, in an attempt to burn the mists away.

However, he pushed too hard and the new orbit was too close to the sun.

The world began to burn.

So he created active volcanoes to produce large amounts of ash and smoke to partially blot the sun, and cool the world.

Yet the climate of ceaseless ashfalls required some mechanism to break down the ash, less the world suffocate on the accumulation of ashfall.

And so Rashek altered the plant life - to be able to survive the ash, and he created microbes to break it down.

However, that was still not enough to save humanity.

The biological change in the plants left them less nutritious to mankind. And indeed, the falling ash made men sick, causing them to cough like those who spent too long mining beneath the earth.

And so Rashek changed mankind itself as well, altering them so that they could survive.

I read Mistborn too.

I've used Acro as a melee character in 2-3 builds. Some people are saying you have a shield and have some block chance putting you at a greater advantage than if you were a range character. This is technically true, but fails to take one thing into account. If you're melee, you're fighting at point blank range which means you will need to be very close to your enemies. At a range that close, you have to be very skilled or you will dying anyway b/c it's much harder to manually dodge.

As a melee, one of the worst things that could happen is you're facing a ranged exile or Boss that blasts you with spells, projectiles or AOE or long range attacks. Melee characters cannot retaliate back because they are too far away while ranged characters can continue to fight while manually dodging the attacks or skills.

That reduction to block chance is not small, it's 30%. Supposing you have a shield, you probably achieve 20-25% block max after reduction. That still only covers hits, not spells.

I've looked at some shields in beta and it seems like what I said is no longer quite true.

*sips drink*

Dodge, block, EV, life, etc. will NEVER be balanced without first fixing ranged vs. melee defense AND damage disparities.

You can add or subtract as much Acro or Block or life or whatever - but without balancing ranged vs. melee - it won't solve anything. In fact, all it does is just spread more problems into other builds and other parts of the tree.

This is what has happened for 4 years; and an esoteric comparison to Rashek in Mistborn exemplifies the futility in trying to fix an ecosystem without first solving the underlying problems.


1. As Rashek was using the power of the Well,....


2. Many of his changes, however, created even more problems that needed to addressed.
He pushed the planet nearer the sun, in an attempt to burn the mists away. However, he pushed too hard and the new orbit was too close to the sun.
The world began to burn.


3. So he created active volcanoes ...
And then Rashek altered the plant life ...
However, that was still not enough to save humanity.
And so Rashek changed mankind itself as well...


Yet here we are 4 years later and the underlying melee vs ranged disparity has still not been fixed - all these changes have just created a big clusterfuck of balance problems affecting other builds and other parts of the tree.

You see the mess that is being created? There are many examples ranging from block items, flask effect, Immortal Call, Vaal Pact. Yes, moving Vaal Pact to help buff EV side, made a big issue because by moving it to ranger it became too close to CI. But instead of moving it BACK away from CI - what happens? Grinding nerfs ES instead.

What did that do? Not much really - only created another problem by killing off CI melee.

*sips drink*

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Ceryneian wrote:

The nerf on Acro with a block penalty created a situation in the right side of the tree where the melee guys now had the same defense as ranged guys. Yes melee guys, who are being exposed to more enemy damage than ranged guys, were being forced to use the same defenses as the ranged player (bow / wander) (i.e. only dodge or only block) - the ranged player who, by being ranged, is already reducing his damage exposure to a fraction of the melee guy's.

this is your fantasy interpretation.
how is that possible that 'melee' and 'ranged' have the same defences? who made up this 'or/or' situation? who stops melee player from picking Block AND Dodge? who? who stops him from using Block/Dodge AND AR?

napkin math wielders? people who try to max everything because 'each percent is worth more than the previous one so it is obviouououous that it should be maxed'? this kind of math is worthless as is any model half-done.

or maybe it is just belief - something that no ammount of data and information can alter?

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This of course was not viable, and what happened overnight is that nearly all melee EV builds that did not have range damage became obsolete.

the magic word - 'viable'..

the only thing that changed was the ability to ignore attack damage 99% of the time to 75% of the time. it never protected from one-shots (even without penalty) and doesnt protect right now. if current situation is not viable (who says that? what are the proofs of this claim?) then the previous one wasnt as well - because in previous and current situation you WILL get hit at some point. in current one it just happens more frequently

if you say 'it is not viable because noone plays it' ill just say - millions of flies cannot be wrong..


key to players problems is trying to make 'one dimensional' builds in a game that screams 'mix stuff together'. so EV-only character is doomed from the start BY DESIGN. same with AR-only. and - hopefully in 3.0 - ES-only (unlikely, ES will remain the king of absorbing huge spikes)

ps. ES nerfs were very mild (yea yea yea, DESTROOOOYED the ES, sure) and once the knee jerks are over people will play ES builds just as they did before. beta builds with junk gear are proof enough that no harm has been done to ES builds. it was the 'pick 5 ES passives and 900ES regalia and be done' builds that suffer and it is a pretty damn good thing

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sidtherat wrote:

who stops melee player from picking Block AND Dodge? who? who stops him from using Block/Dodge AND AR?

Common sense does, Sidth. In a game about min-maxing and squeezing the last point off the skill tree is crucial. Mediocrity fails in this game.

Good points, Ceryneian.

IMO they tried to counter the melee vs ranged disparity and the nature of the open system PoE skill tree is, by the ascendancy classes. These provide "fixed" abilities, tight to certain mechanics, nodes and paths on the skill tree. Hence esier to balance.
Still work in progress, though.

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torturo wrote:

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sidtherat wrote:

who stops melee player from picking Block AND Dodge? who? who stops him from using Block/Dodge AND AR?

Common sense does, Sidth. In a game about min-maxing and squeezing the last point off the skill tree is crucial. Mediocrity fails in this game.

But then, one could also see as common sense, that if picking accro + couple of block nodes if just more effective than going bollcoks on evasion + acro, it should ideally be taken instead.

There is not much room for common sense here imo, there is what works, and what works better, and PoE encourages its player by learning through experimentation, which is become a rare thing I think, and I'm glad that PoE is doing it this way, somehow.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

well, Im not sure they actually are at a disadvantage.

Ranged cant block so the block penalty doesnt hurt them... ok, but thats because an evasion melee has the option of...

evasion + block

evasion + dodge + reduced block but still some block

and an evasion ranged has the option of....

evasion + dodge

how are they at a disadvantage? They can take the same option as the ranged build, except they still have an extra layer of low level block on top, and they get an extra option the ranged build dont get. Ranged dont get the penalty because they are already at a disadvantage, and even after the penalty the option still leaves them worse off than the melee.

Well, I would say that being a melee, is a disadvantage already, melee do need ways to get tankier than range of course, imho.

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Fruz wrote:

But then, one could also see as common sense, that if picking accro + couple of block nodes if just more effective than going bollcoks on evasion + acro, it should ideally be taken instead.

There is not much room for common sense here imo, there is what works, and what works better

Fruz, I can't get your logic, as usual.

Getting acro with a couple of block/armor nodes doesn't work. In practice. It's empyrically tested. It's a fact, but not a statement. And many other options work better.
It's greatly ineffective, a waste of resources, brings only the illusion of viable defense and proper character management.

Once again, what's your point?

Having accro and a certain amount of block can be optimized, of course investing a high amount of points in block nodes in this case isn't the way to do it, but if you optimize your build around it, it can work, it does work.

And probably better than pure evasion + accrobatics as a melee.
Have you done extensive testing with both kind of setups ? at high level ?



Of course armour + EC + block + higher life ( =bottom left part of the tree ) is tankier, likely on purpose

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Fruz wrote:

Have you done extensive testing with both kind of setups ? at high level ?

Yup, even recently. Had the brilliant idea of making the impossible to work. It was gladiator with hybrid gear, good gear. At the end his armor was insufficient and I'd better switch to pure EVA instead, high block + acro in practice performed worse than pure 75/78 block build.
And yes, it died at high levels due to it's inefficient defenses.

If you take the other approach - just a shield with no investments in nodes + acro + some armor from gear, it's even worse. You got tiny block chance you can't rely on even as a backup, low armor which doesn't matter at all. And it's onece again the evasion and acro what define your build, but not the supplements.

The worst case is the scenario above but trying to improve the build by investing points in block and AR just here and there. Now that's a complete waste.

But if they rework the penalty from 50 to 30 and from 30 to 20, I bet it will drastically change the viability of such type of hybrid builds.
Also can't see how such a rework is gonna bring any significant advantage to ranged.

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torturo wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

Have you done extensive testing with both kind of setups ? at high level ?

Yup, even recently. Had the brilliant idea of making the impossible to work. It was gladiator with hybrid gear, good gear. At the end his armor was insufficient and I'd better switch to pure EVA instead, high block + acro in practice performed worse than pure 75/78 block build.

There is your problem, there you end up wasting points of course.
And obviously, on a gladiator, what you want is to maximise block ...

Getting 40~50% block + accro however (50% might be a bit high, 40% should not be anything difficult, neither points consuming to reach) is a different story, you can add a bit of armour and just go for a somewhat high buffer after.


What I don't like about Accro is the 50% ES penalty, which is silly.
Having this one down to 30% or even 25% would open accro + ES builds imho, but it would require quite a bit of testing to balance it.

But it's not the block part.

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torturo wrote:

Also can't see how such a rework is gonna bring any significant advantage to ranged.

I don't know to whom you are answering here, but I didn't imply that it would.