Berserkers make other builds impractical :(

Fairly healthy regarding what? Build diversity - really not.

Destroying hardest content "effortlessly" in terms of low budget i have a problem with too. If we are talking about 300 ex+ builds then those absolutley have the right to do so.

"

I'd vote for buffing X(, Y and Z) instead of nerfing A. All the time before ES nerfs Berserker seemed to be fine for most people. Since the ES nerf people hop on the "nerf the 'next best thing'" wagon.

So they buffed X, and then Y and Z. And W, so it could compete.
Then content became too easy on average, so they buffed content.
Which in effect means they nerfed A - along with all the other letters in the alphabet that aren't X,Y,Z.

I really don't understand the argument here.

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zzang wrote:

Fairly healthy regarding what? Build diversity - really not.

What's the problem then? I mean, how much worse can it get? If the number of OP builds is reducing, they just have to make absolutely sure they aren't left with just one or two and the game will be fine.

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raics wrote:

What's the problem then? I mean, how much worse can it get? If the number of OP viable builds is reducing, they just have to make absolutely sure they aren't left with just one or two and the game will be fine.

I guess its not worth discussing at this point we have fundamental difference how we want the game to be. You seem to want to nerf everything into shit and expect stuff to become viable by some miracle. When there is nothing left to play you achieved your goal to ruin the game.

Gz bro, i just wonder if you getting paid for trying to ruin this game?

"

You don't understand the argument because you assume "content would become too easy and then they would buff content". If you wouldn't assume that, you would be able to understand it.

Was that not EXACTLY what they did though?

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zzang wrote:

You seem to want to nerf everything into shit and expect stuff to become viable by some miracle.

Well, if developers working on their game falls under divine intervention (which might be one way to look at it), then yes. If all strong builds happen to fall into mid tier I'm fully expecting them to adjust the content until the mid tier is capable of all content. I don't think that would be unrealistic if we assume their goal isn't making the top endgame accessible to ten players with motor skills so superior they can play it with mid tier, and another 50 that can hit 300ex to make a mid tier build strong.

What would actually be happening there is gap shrinking, which is something I'd personally like to see in PoE. Not because I'm some equilibrium freak but because two orders of magnitude we can see sometimes is a tad bit much, one is somewhat tolerable, two is ridiculous.

The main problem with the game the last ~3.5 years have been the INSANE damage tha players can deal. Not berseker, not CI, not even Vaal Pact. It basically started in 1.1 with low life spectral throw and low life wanding. Before that these levels of damage were basically restricted to over 100exalt flicker strikers (which was OK since flicker is an unreliable -definetely not hardcore viable- skill) and dischargers.

The thing is that back then:

1) These levels of damage required hundreds of exalts in gear. Nowdays millions of DPS is accessible with less than 5 ex investment.

2) Tanks were viable. Most people with limited currency played either Armour/Block builds, with a weapon or unarmed, usually -but not only- with Aegis Aurora, or evasion builds with block and acrobatics and of course bows were always good, with high or low currency investment. Then GGG nerfed Block, nerfed shields, nerfed acrobatics, and kept releasing skills and mechanics (ascedancy classes, mastercrafting etc.) that made insane damage widely accessible. And of course they inevitably started creating content with that damage in mind. In 2013-2014 a 20K DPS melee tank build could clear all content. Try taking down Shaper or Guardians with 20K nowdays.... No matter how tanky you are you will fail.

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astraph wrote:

In 2013-2014 a 20K DPS melee tank build could clear all content. Try taking down Shaper or Guardians with 20K nowdays.... No matter how tanky you are you will fail.

And now the same tanks have 100-200k DPS... However, you cant call them "tanks" in full meaning of thatword, because they still cant facetank many things, and still can be insta-gibbed.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

"

astraph wrote:

In 2013-2014 a 20K DPS melee tank build could clear all content. Try taking down Shaper or Guardians with 20K nowdays.... No matter how tanky you are you will fail.

And now the same tanks have 100-200k DPS... However, you cant call them "tanks" in full meaning of thatword, because they still cant facetank many things, and still can be insta-gibbed.

Well the same tanks are not really possible any more. Shields were giving far more block chance, the block passives were far more powerfull and acrobatics did not lower your block chance. So they basically capped block with far less investment and they were going ham on other defenses after that (hp, armour, eva etc.). Plus these guys literally invested less than 10 passives on offense which nowdays is imposible.

But yeah you are definetely right. Shaper does not care about your block, or your armour, or your evasion, or your dodge, or your physical damage reduction. The only thing effective against him is high HP and high DPS. And it gets worse since the longer it takes to kill him the harder it becomes. For me he is the worst designed boss in the game. SUre he is easy with high damage and good mobility, but you get the idea.

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astraph wrote:

2) Tanks were viable. Most people with limited currency played either Armour/Block builds, with a weapon or unarmed, usually -but not only- with Aegis Aurora, or evasion builds with block and acrobatics and of course bows were always good, with high or low currency investment. Then GGG nerfed Block, nerfed shields, nerfed acrobatics, and kept releasing skills and mechanics (ascedancy classes, mastercrafting etc.) that made insane damage widely accessible. And of course they inevitably started creating content with that damage in mind. In 2013-2014 a 20K DPS melee tank build could clear all content. Try taking down Shaper or Guardians with 20K nowdays.... No matter how tanky you are you will fail.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers this. I recently found screenshots from the first (and last) guide I ever made, which was probably around 3 years ago I think. I remember the character being able to clear all content, and it had slightly more than 20k dps while being at over 15k armor and over 50% block when fully buffed (which meant very little back then as there were few temp buffs). Looking at the images made me wonder - did I really remember correctly, was such a shitty character really able to clear all content?

But I did remember right. Back then, you could do all content on a random rare 5L, and 6Ls were prohibitively expensive for most people. Back then, defenses did actually matter, and you could feasibly invest in both life and other defenses, while still getting damage. And back then, the numbers were much lower. In fact, I remember 20k being so high for a cheap character that it was unreal - a couple years even before that, getting 5digit dps was considered insane.

Problem is players need numbers. Most players want to see big numbers to feel good about themselves. If all mob and boss HP was cut in half, and dps was also cut in half (so the content was exactly as difficult as it is now), players would complain about nerfs and quit, because to them, the number is more important than what that number actually means. There is no going back. IMO the only solution is for the content to be buffed by ridiculous amounts (and by that I mostly mean mobs, bosses are fine-ish), and all defenses to be reworked. But that is too much work for a company that's pushing an Xbox product, and even if they tried they would fuck it up just like they fucked up with Aura reservation, EB-MoM, CI, and all those other things over the years.