Holy HELL dat 3.2 rework

SO LET’S HAVE SOME FUN.

First of all: Bestiary League Specifically, the two revealed Ascendancy ‘rebalances’. Or, to use more proper terminology, rebuilds. Chieftain and Berserker have both been pretty much completely redone, to the point where builds with the old ones may not work at all anymore, or require some substantial re-engineering. Personally? I’m fuckin’ stoked. The theorycrafting will be real this league, I don’t know as the meta’s been table-flipped this hard since Ascendancy first landed. The Berserker is especially interesting, with its class-specific ‘Rage’ mechanic and rejiggering its nodes to make Aspect of Carnage easier to get. Even then, Berserker is no longer a do-everything Crazy Class, given that its Rage mechanic is unavoidable unless you skip the Uberlab and increasing Rage levels cause almost Righteous Fire-level degen. Will be super interesting to see what people can do with NuBerserker though, given how crazyballs that buff can get.

Because work is slower than usual today, I decided to post up and see what people thought, invite speculation on where they’re going with this, and basically just spitball on how cool some of this new stuff might be.

Me? I figure the Berserker rebuild especially is telling, since Berserker is a super popular class that’s arguably overperforming in its current state, as well as stupidly easy to use. You can still get the Berserker’s nutballs damage, but the Rage mechanic requires you to build around it and gates some of the Berserker’s functionality behind stacking Rage (and in turn sucking down degen). Blood Rage, ironically, becomes a super dicey, somewhat questionable choice unless you’ve got some ridiculous regen levels, and just overall the whole class feels like it’ll be riskier and twitchier to play.

Conversely, the Chieftain rebuild takes a funky class with somewhat limited utility and turns it into the Undisputed King of Fire Damage. 50% Fire conversion so no need for Avatar of Fire shenanery anymore (or able to turn ANY physical skill into 100% fire with Avatar of Fire), Covered in Ash debuff without the massively expensive Xoph’s Blood amulet, fire leech, fire penetration, periodic massive fire damage boost for converted skills, massive fire resistance (excellent for combination with The Formless Inferno!), physical-taken-as-fire, regen…the totem nodes are unchanged, but literally everything else about Chieftain has been rebaked to make it an incredible damage conversion class. This thing used to be a weird niche pick for weird niche people; now I’m looking at it as one of the dominant build options for things like the newly ridicu-popular Molten Strike or EK/Lightpoacher Double Nova builds.

If this is what we can expect, I very much want more.

Some things I’m expecting, for funsies:

-Inquisitor is going to lose its ‘resistance is ignored on crit’ functionality. Too stronk, too overused, overshadows the rest of the Ascendancy too much even though the rest of Inquisitor is still ridiculously potent. Instead, Inquisitor gets a sort of ‘Righteous Ire’ mechanic, similar to Rage, which it needs to build to disregard/pierce resistances and which amplifies the effects of Instruments of Virtue and Augury of Penitence. Sanctify/Pious Path likely allow easier building of this resource on Cons. Ground, while the other four make use of it.

-Saboteur will gain power as it lays/triggers traps. This class has been fucking useless since inception; I don’t expect it to have a rising-rage mechanic like the Berserker, but I could easily see them introducing a resource or buff the Saboteur can build to amplify trap usage. Perhaps even a counter-type thing, where maxing out the buff would remove it and grant the Saboteur the ability to temporarily ignore trap throwing cooldown and limits and spam as many traps as his animation speed allows until Gadget Overlord wears off. …that’s admittedly a total flight of fancy on my part but come on. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t play an Unlimited Blade Works build with Cluster Bladefall Traps if you could build up to spamming them infinitely for ten seconds or such.

-Total Pathfinder rework. GGG’s never really been happy with the ol’ Magic Alcoholic class; thing’s been nerfed more often than any other Ascendancy and it’s also gotten the entirety of the game’s unique flask selection nerfed. If anything prompted their new ‘Ascendancy-specific resource/functionality/mechanic to build around’ decision, I’m betting it’s the Pathfinder.

-I’m imagining the Elementalist could be reworked so that its elemental hits inflict a debuff on enemies that stacks with each hit of the same element, then is consumed to increase damage of the other elements. Sort of a proactive Elemental Equilibrium, save more controllable and useful for things like Firestorm. Use Firestorm, Incinerate, Glacial Cascade or the like to quickly build the debuff, then whack ‘em with Frost Nova or Storm Call or something to deal a big honkin’ whack of damage. Elementalist has always been built with an eye towards people who use multiple skills and mix elements, I’m hoping they retain that flavor but with a more worthwhile payoff.

-My poor Raider’s gonna die T_T

-ITEMS! Go ahead and tell me they can’t introduce something like a set of gloves that offers Rage stacking on non-Berserkers, same as Haemophilia lets anything that likes be Gladiator Lite. These new Ascendancy mechanics will not necessarily be limited to their native Ascendancies, and combined with the inevitable ground-up redesign of the Ascendant, we’re going to be seeing some crazy combo builds. - confirmed by the media storm: new Ascendancy mechanics are strongly intended to remain exclusive to each class. Rage is supposed to be for Berserkers only and will not show up on items in the foreseeable future. Too bad. Oh well.

What do you guys figure we’ll be seeing?

I think it's stupid how they made the rage mechanic unavoidable for an 8-point berserker. For non-rage berserkers, "take damage whenever you use a warcry" is stupid. I also think it's stupid that the rage mechanic is just a shitty version of onslaught.

Taking damage should increase the buff from rage; not the other way around.

the quote from chris...

"

“We did two things. The first was a full balance pass to make sure that all of these were equivalently powerful and they feel good when you get them, and they’d increase the power levels of the bad ones without disturbing the power levels of the good ones. From the players’ point of view, we’ve buffed the ascendancies and they’ll be pleased with that.

so hopefully things like inquis and raider wont die, they will just get stiff competition from other classes?

Could I get the source on that quote? DSon't disbelieve you, just want to do me own research.

Also I actually think Rage is a nice change of pace for Berserkers. Yeah, it's a little simple, but for one it stacks with, rather than replacing, Onslaught, and for two it's thematically appropriate for the class. Berserker isn't supposed to be complex; he's an Angry Man with an Angry Way, and Rage lets him get angrier. For me it makes sense for the Berserker to have riskier elements in play like that, it was explicitly touted as the 'high risk high reward' class.

Maybe other damage Ascendancies beyond Berserker and Inquisitor can have some playtime now.

Also, taking damage (or specifically getting hit) does increase, or at least refresh, your Rage buff. And if you really, really hate it? Take both minors for Uberlab instead of a Rage node..

"

dudiobugtron wrote:

I think it's stupid how they made the rage mechanic unavoidable for an 8-point berserker. For non-rage berserkers, "take damage whenever you use a warcry" is stupid. I also think it's stupid that the rage mechanic is just a shitty version of onslaught.

Taking damage should increase the buff from rage; not the other way around.

I think it's stupid to judge a mechanic so quickly and without having actually seen it in action.

The hp degen with rage stacks is total fail, it would be better if Rage was slightly less powerfull, lets say, 20 stacks max, but no downside like hp degen.

This way I'll just avoid it in HC and I'd definately love to try it.

"

1453R wrote:

Could I get the source on that quote? DSon't disbelieve you, just want to do me own research.

Also I actually think Rage is a nice change of pace for Berserkers. Yeah, it's a little simple, but for one it stacks with, rather than replacing, Onslaught, and for two it's thematically appropriate for the class. Berserker isn't supposed to be complex; he's an Angry Man with an Angry Way, and Rage lets him get angrier. For me it makes sense for the Berserker to have riskier elements in play like that, it was explicitly touted as the 'high risk high reward' class.

Maybe other damage Ascendancies beyond Berserker and Inquisitor can have some playtime now.

Also, taking damage (or specifically getting hit) does increase, or at least refresh, your Rage buff. And if you really, really hate it? Take both minors for Uberlab instead of a Rage node..

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2018/02/15/path-of-exile-s-next-league-adds-monster-hunting-ascendancy-overhaul-insane-challenges.aspx

"

“Some of the classes became much better than the others, and some became worse. When you draw a line of acceptability through the middle, it meant that some of the classes just weren’t being played; 19 choices became 17 became 15 became 12, you get the idea. There were a few right answers for ascendancy, then a few that were just a little bit off the mark and people felt bad when they picked them.

“We did two things. The first was a full balance pass to make sure that all of these were equivalently powerful and they feel good when you get them, and they’d increase the power levels of the bad ones without disturbing the power levels of the good ones. From the players’ point of view, we’ve buffed the ascendancies and they’ll be pleased with that. We’ve basically revamped and retrofitted all of the ascendancy classes to do new stuff, and it’s going to feel like a big difference to the players.

the way he says theyre retrofitting all the classes to do new stuff does suggest changes to all, and in his head he might think well its still as powerful as it was... it might break what were currently doing, and be a definite nerf from our perspective. Even a sideways shift can be a nerf if it fucks up what we were doing and gives us nothing of benefit to replace it. Even if the other thing has a different benefit for another build that in theory is good to us it could be dogshit because they just added a buff for like crit 2h axes and were all sitting here saying fk play ur game no ones gonna use that garbage.

So who knows?

EDIT: @Razzik
So...the 'Berserker' part of Berserker means nothing?

Rage being just a free bonus doesn't make sense to me, but I suppose I could see why folks would be annoyed. I feel like the class could do with some sort of Rage dump mechanic or some other means of shedding accumulated Rage quickly...but then again, adrenaline doesn't fade instantly after a fight. Personally I could see the system being really flavorful to play with, and I especially like that it adds (more) value to War Bringer. Always thought War Bringer was a super underappreciated node for Berserkers.

That said? Just ignore Rite of Ruin/War Bringer if you really hate Rage. You get ninety percent of the class's current functionality in six points now instead of eight. That's a buff in and of itself, ne?

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

...
the way he says theyre retrofitting all the classes to do new stuff does suggest changes to all, and in his head he might think well its still as powerful as it was... it might break what were currently doing, and be a definite nerf from our perspective. Even a sideways shift can be a nerf if it fucks up what we were doing and gives us nothing of benefit to replace it. Even if the other thing has a different benefit for another build that in theory is good to us it could be dogshit because they just added a buff for like crit 2h axes and were all sitting here saying fk play ur game no ones gonna use that garbage.

So who knows?

I don't see breaking what we're currently doing as a disaster. Sure, it means my older characters are going to need rework, but that's true at least one or two times a year, ne? Standard players (which I am, half the time) need to be at least minimally adaptable, and if they never break old stuff then we wouldn't get new stuff that could be even better.

They're doing this specifically because we don't have as much right now as we could/should. Let's maybe see what comes up before we all cry disaster, ne?

what chris said sounds positive, so im sticking with that mindset until proven otherwise.