On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

I could write a thesis on all the problems with these changes. But most of them have already been repeated to death so it seems pointless. You already admit the numbers on ailments were way off. Beyond that the super egregious problem is frenzy charges.


But the biggest problem I saw with these changes(other than communication issues) is TIME. These are MASSIVE changes to some of the very core mechanics of the game. Beta has been going on for over a month already. And you release these changes a week out from possibly the biggest update you've ever done(so presumably, you'll all be very busy this week). That doesn't leave a lot of time for testing, implementing feedback, making changes, reviewing data, etc.

It seems like you just kinda threw these changes in as an afterthought with the hope that they'd fly under the radar in the short span of time to release(As evidenced by the "oh by the way" announcement). People are up in arms because there's so little time to correct these problems, they need to be VERY loud to get your attention this close to release, and if these go live it could very likely just ruin Harbinger league(Except for those planning on playing no-crit VP Zerker or SupportNecro, which were already the HEAVY favorites and completely untouched by these changes).

Whatever you do, don't listen to the reddit sheeples.

I'm not a regular poster and I'm a fairly casual player of PoE but as a professional in the games industry what I can read between the lines seem a lot more troubling than the actual changes themselves. The OP seems weird to me. I doubt that many actually believe that the dev-team does not play PoE or have an excellent understanding of the mechanics and how they interact. I'll try to outline what it is that disturbs me with the post although I'm not 100% sure I can put my finger on it.

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Chris wrote:

They put substantial work into each change, planning out not only what it affects now, but what it affects in the future. These changes are all considered in the big picture of the other planned changes.

Is this really true all of the time? I understand that time before release is very, very hectic and it's easy to fail in communication between teams when everyone is so focused on their own tasks. What happened with the changes to the charges in combination with the recently announced trapper chest points to an internal failure to communicate between teams rather than failure to communicate to the community. Which makes this harder to swallow:

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Chris wrote:

We communicated poorly about the changes and their motivation. While we may lament the community misunderstanding the consequences of the change, it is clearly our fault for confusing the community. While it has been crazily hectic recently, we do need to stop and take the time to more clearly explain what we are testing, and why.

What you are apologizing for here is failing to communicate the changes to the community (which might be a problem in and of itself) but it feels like this is not addressing the actual issue. The mistake was not in communicating this to the community but that internal communication has failed which allowed these changes to slip in without really preparing anyone else for them. Again, something that is very easy to do once overtime starts piling up and tunnel vision sets in.

The fact that this was also posted makes this more evident in my eyes:

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neon wrote:

We will re-evaluate the Power and Frenzy charges situation over the weekend. It would be very useful to hear your explanation of why certain builds or items have been damaged (or improved too much) by the change, with specifics and explanations. Many of the posts so far have just said "X is ruined". While the initial feedback has been somewhat helpful, proper discussion and analysis from the community will really help us fine-tune (or abandon) this change.

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Chris wrote:

Almost all of these changes are on Beta. Please playtest them and let us know the results of what you find. We'll post again after the weekend with our findings also.

This change hits pretty hard across the board and while not necessarily nerfing everything it does create big changes in how certain skills or classes will be built, as well as affecting a lot of unique items as well. Giving the player base a weekend to provide input for "fine-tuning" these changes seem kind of absurd (and would be impossible without third-party software like Path of Building (which has already been updated with the new changes somehow)). The fact that while you say you "stand by your changes" you also seem to be planning a lot of playtesting makes this feel a little two-faced. If you're happy with the changes then there shouldn't be anything else to test right? If the community still are unhappy after the weekend then either revert them or tweak them.

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Chris wrote:

While processing player feedback in preparation for 3.0.0, we found four requests that we could address simultaneously with our proposed charge changes:

• Nerf total crit chance available. It was getting too close to cap, too easily.
• Nerf the Assassin. This was frequently requested.
• Provide more uses for power charges on spellcasters (especially non-crit ones).
• Make it less mandatory for general damage dealers to invest in frenzy charges.

We recently made these charge changes in the beta, and received an immediate negative reaction from a vocal portion of the community. While we firmly stand behind the intention of this change, it's very clear that the community not only misunderstood a lot of the consequences, but also generally didn't like the direction of the change.

Why wait until the last week to make these changes if you had them planned since the start of 3.0 development? Charges is not the be-all-end-all to most builds but they are a big part of scaling your build towards endgame and maps. You must have realized that making changes to how they interact with skills and builds would be something the community would feel strongly about.

Something feels off with all of this and to me this post seems like an attempt to hide behind "communication issues". I understand and agree with the policy that internal issues should not be aired in public but this just feels disingenuous to me.

Sorry if this comes off as overly critical or if I'm putting my nose where it doesn't belong. The need to write this came from the agitation caused by loss of trust that you have been great at building up and maintaining so far. Please keep doing that in the future.

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Vivre wrote:

since GGG does not want to ruin casual 3 hours a week players journey in std league to build he chose to play) leading into handful of cookie cutter builds that will be played in every race, 1 week, 2 week, 3 month ladder starts.

Which is exactly why %ES was not touched on the tree. That way SC builds based on ES are not affected.

Edit: Ah well they're fked anyway if VP lol.

It would be very useful to hear your explanation of why certain builds or items have been damaged (or improved too much) by the [power/frenzy charges] change, with specifics and explanations.

Certain items have been negatively affected. Hegemony's Era provides a way for melee staff builds, a criminially neglected subset of melee builds, to generate power charges on knockback, which can be on any crit with the Blunt Trauma notable. These builds lost crit chance going into 3.0 anyways with the bandits change, but will lose at least another 80% crit chance (3 base charges, 1 from staff). I don't think Hegemony's Era, nor the build it supports, is too strong or dominating the meta.

Surgebinders, already a very niche item, are pushed further into obscurity. This item saw very little play to begin with and now with Frenzy charges providing less benefit to casters it's further pushed aside. Specifically, with double dipping gone and frenzy charges not providing a more multiplier, the main reason to equip them is gone.

Tinkerskin, an item you just teased as a way to generate Frenzy charges for Trappers, loses a lot of allure when you'd have to be a attack-based trapper (a niche within already niche trapping) to benefit from it. The unique has other problems already, like the life/ES recovery not being terribly high and hinging on traps being triggered, so losing an edge on already flawed item makes it much less exciting of a prospect to build around.

Victario's Acuity was a decent, if niche, amulet that was only used by builds that needed projectile speed. Due to the more multiplier from Frenzy being split to Spells on Power and Attacks on Frenzy, the more multiplier effectively stays the same if you could kill fast enough to generate both charges, so it just loses 20% crit chance per power charge. Unneeded nerf.

There are others that are negatively affected like Tulfall, The Red Trail, Essence of Horror weapon crafts, etc. that were bad before, and will now be even more garbage now that Frenzy/Power charges are less globally useful.

The one item that might possibly become too good (unlikely) is The Aylardex for noncrit builds, which now would provide powerful defensive bonuses along with the 4% more spell damage multiplier. This is unlikely to break the game, just raise the cap on how high you can bring your mana:life ratio in MoM builds. Considering this item saw almost no use previously, this is very minor.

Builds that have been negatively affected by these changes are ones that have easy access to Frenzy or Power Charges but don't do an overbearing amount of damage even with them. Caustic Arrow and Explosive Arrow both don't have fantastic ways to scale their base damage, but can easily find the time to occasionally shoot a GMP+Frenzy to stay capped on frenzy charges. Losing at least 16% of their damage (because even the new more spell damage from Power charges doesn't apply to their damage sources) from 4 base frenzy charges in 2.6 is a big blow to builds that aren't so hot to begin with.

DoT ailment builds lost the 4% more damage on frenzy charges, which is not made up by either of the new Power/Frenzy charge bonuses. DoT ailment builds are not in a great place in 3.0, with nerfs raining down every single beta patch. This is further accentuated by the one ascendancy that could make one DoT ailment work, Assassin with Poison, getting heavy nerfs from multiple sources at the same time. The power charge changes to crit nerfs Assassin as well, where spellcasters are certainly going to migrate to different ascendancies now (Inquisitor, Trickster, Elementalist, Berserker, etc.)

On the topic of nerfing Assassin being too easy to crit cap, it's really the only thing the ascendancy had going for it along with Poison (also being heavily nerfed). Inquisitor enjoys relatively easy crit capping and doesn't rely as much on Power Charges, while mostly using spells, and still having some minor (or major if you can get your hands on a Gifts from Above) defensive bonuses. What is the Assassin meant to be good at if he can't focus on high, reliable crit damage w/ a side or focus on poison? That's all he had going for him in 2.6.

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Nephalim wrote:

I find it remarkable changes to charges and ailments would cause such a unified protest from the community but the 2.6 aoe changes which once and for all made sure melee and some spell builds would never be able to compete in end game clear speed scenarios.

How has the community turned a blind eye to far worse offenses but will take arms against something arguably far less damaging to build diversity?

This thread is proof that GGG will listen to community but only if there is unified disapproval and their income is at stake.

The community didn't just "turn a blind eye to it". We just accepted it because we know we can't do anything to change it. Give it a few months and nobody will be talking about these changes either. It sucks but that is how it is. Personally, i'm not a masochist so i will only take so much before i quit. I only really play this game passively. I get on for about a week, more or less, through a league then quit till the next one but if the game continues to work against me and becomes either a chore to play or i can't live the "power fantasy" then that is when i finally uninstall. Atm there are still really strong builds but GGG seems to really be pushing to turn that around.

For what it's worth I thought the charge changes looked fun and interesting and overall a good direction.

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There's a common misconception in the community that our balance team doesn't play Path of Exile.

No there is not, there is just a small bunch of noisy idiots who don't even read about the changes, they just see a topic on reddit or on forums and start posting sh*it.

I bet the majority us think you are doing a good job, and we actually have the patience to wait until all the changes are in place.

It really pisses me off that you have to post things like this because people are such *****.

I love the game, and I love what you are doing with it, and I believe everyone in your team is talented as hell.

And I'll keep putting my money where my mouth is in the future as well.

-- Wilde

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Chris wrote:

There's a common misconception in the community that our balance team doesn't play Path of Exile. They actually do play it, a whole lot. We have people with level 100 hardcore characters, multiple famous community members who have come to work for us and you may not even know it. The minimum requirement to join our QA team is 1000 hours of PoE experience, and we still turn people with that prerequisite away if they're not good enough at the game. Our design, balance and QA team are experts at Path of Exile. I would not accept any less. They put substantial work into each change, planning out not only what it affects now, but what it affects in the future. These changes are all considered in the big picture of the other planned changes.

While processing player feedback in preparation for 3.0.0, we found four requests that we could address simultaneously with our proposed charge changes:

• Nerf total crit chance available. It was getting too close to cap, too easily.
• Nerf the Assassin. This was frequently requested.
• Provide more uses for power charges on spellcasters (especially non-crit ones).
• Make it less mandatory for general damage dealers to invest in frenzy charges.

We recently made these charge changes in the beta, and received an immediate negative reaction from a vocal portion of the community. While we firmly stand behind the intention of this change, it's very clear that the community not only misunderstood a lot of the consequences, but also generally didn't like the direction of the change.

We make this game for you guys, so if you don't want the change, we aren't going to force it in purely to solve long-term problems. The short-term and build continuity do matter as well. We hope to get feedback from your playtesting in the next few days of the beta, so that we can make a decision this week about whether it remains in this form, is reverted, or is made in another form.

We communicated poorly about the changes and their motivation. While we may lament the community misunderstanding the consequences of the change, it is clearly our fault for confusing the community. While it has been crazily hectic recently, we do need to stop and take the time to more clearly explain what we are testing, and why.

Almost all of these changes are on Beta. Please playtest them and let us know the results of what you find. We'll post again after the weekend with our findings also.

Thank you for your time, support and occasional overreactions. We expect nothing less <3

you shouldn't apologize to the vocal knee jerk portion of the community, nerf what you need to if it makes the game over all better, those vocal about it will get over it once people smarter than them come up with the next meta must build.

So nerf to assassin even after the poison nerf and still the pathfinder is the better choice for all ppl . In this rate will become PATH OF PATHFINDER. I 'm ok with this as long u nerf even more the Pathfinder. Let justice be fair with all ascendancy.