Comprehensive feedback

I find your point about EHP to be the strongest and the most telling about the current state of the game. The strongest builds in the current meta (outside of CI) all follow the same blueprint of health stacking to be able to survive large hits and critical strikes in maps that have notable (and often stacking) damage mods. Armor essentially comes up way shorter than it should in mitigating burst damage from monsters. What you see as a result is the use of two build tracks that circumvent this problem:

1) Mara start with mass life (and life regen when applicable) that gets koams and a 6L staff for the AOE attack (taryns for FP or a custom rolled staff for EK). They almost always revolve around using the overpowered iron will gem since they are dumping points into strength traveling between life nodes anyway.

2) Ranger start with a focus on life that stretches in the direction of the templar tree. Can use LA, ROA, or split with the ideal bow being a 6L lioneye or thicket and an ideal BP being koams again. The single target attack doesn't need more than a 4L to be highly effective (ele hit, bear trap, frenzy).

Because armor is so incredibly weak in the situations you need it to matter, koam's comes off as having little to no drawback for these two builds arcs while having a gamebreaking benefit. The socket loss is somewhere between negligible and irrelevant when you use a 2 handed weapon (rangers would already be doing this anyway) and the armor and resist loss amounts to very little when you weigh it against the gain of 3-4 thousand life. If GGG isn't going to do anything to nerf koam's outright, they need to make it much more appealing to play a build that doesn't lend itself to using it. Buffing the effect armor has on mitigating large hits would be a good step in the right direction.

Yeah, your awesome thread crashed the forum (shameless free bump for the greater good) :p

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thepmrc wrote:

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coli wrote:

If you don't use currency items (money) to upgrade the maps, you'll fall off and run out. That is the same feeling as pay to play.

Actually, even if you do, you still run out of map and have to either start grinding endlessly, or pay 1 alch for a lvl 66 map.

No other ARPG requires you to pay to be able to "maybe" level your character!

lol, ok. If you use currency wisely and full clear the maps you will be just fine in the long run. Using currency items in the game is not pay to play, that is just stupid. You need to invest currency into the endgame to sustain the endgame. Considering this is where you gain access to the best items in the game, I don't see a problem with that.

sorry but spending quite a lot of currency and chisels to level my character is a poor end game solution especially since I run said maps and I can easily get 66 maps out of say 75 maps or no maps at all drop, RNG is not a good idea or the money sink maps are. even in a group chisels and chaos are wasted so quickly only for a very strong chance of getting no maps at all

I agree with melee support gems there are too few and melee definetely for softcore and i believe u can solo level max 83-84 if your stuff is good.

And for the map system it has to change, bring back to maelstörm of chaos or zones with D3 monster level system. I dont care about currency nor drops i just want to play and progress...

I'm backed out too for now waiting for the changes if that not gonna happen i think i'll wait the TES online, i know GGG works hard but sometimes u have stop and listen even to the QQ's.

Moosifer – thank you for the feedback. It was a very nice read.

As much as I would like to hold a fiery speech about how we must bring PoE back on its course ('wth is its course btw?') and attach a personal wishlist... I think I'll refrain from that.

GGG is setting the sails.
I just wish they have an accurate map ;)

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relidar wrote:

I'm not a big fan of "feedback" posts on these forums any more. It's usually the same group of people with one perspective or point of view gathering with one purpose only. And if you even try sharing your own experience and solution you get yelled at and told to never come back. I personally have not been affected by this, i mostly hang around in the class forums helping people with their builds, but I've seen it be done to others.

With that being said, I'm not a big fan of Moosifer. He has always seemed like one of those people who doesn't want "outsiders" to come ruin 'his' game. But he did provide a lot of good feedback with this post, and it shows that he does care for the game's well being.

I'm a cunt, I have no problem with it and I'm surprised when I find out people like me. I do spend most of my time in the feedback forums fighting people who want to change the game, IMO, for the worse. Do things like make it easier to achieve things that should take a large time investment. Do things that clearly make certain things much more powerful than others (even though the OP or people replying don't see it). Also I lose my mind whenever someone suggests something that would restrict options. I probably should back more people's ideas, I try to when I like them, but lately it's just been everyone crying for their build to be easier so I've been running around with a hammer trying to bash them down.

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* I don't agree with the "nerf everything and build up from the ground" concept. There are definitely some big nodes on the passive tree that need to be remodeled, but completely ruining them isn't gonna help any one in the long run. For the devs to be able to gather as much data as possible they need people to actually play with these nodes active.

I agree. The only OP thing I've seen in my time here, like clearly OP, was dual totem sporker. Get a 4-6l, run the totems and watch the game play. Otherwise everything was just slightly easier than other things. With the heavy nerfs that came in I felt they needed to buff something else related so it's still possible to reach the power you once had it just requires more. Mana nerfs being the biggest example I can think of. They make costs go up and up but give no way to cover it. If I invest more points in mana, my DPS goes down, so give me more mana to invest in.

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* Melee is in a bad spot for sure. But it can easily get too powerful as well. I think VictorDoom said it best, the mobs leave very little time for skill and reaction to play a part in the game play. Something that ranged classes usually get a lot of time for. I'm not suggesting that they need to dumb the game down, but if melee don't have time to react, then the game becomes russian roulette.

yup, vic is a friend (and a psychotic Romanian) so I agree with everything he says (don't hurt my family)

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* On that same note, i think we need to be patient, especially now when so many new skills are being introduced. I never played CB when you had the 4-way option, i really like the sound of that however, and i hope this is something they still consider an option.

I've had growing concerns on everything I brought up. Most are topics I've had long discussions on, had threads on or said in a reply to a subject. Also many of the problems have been getting worse with incoming changes. While I have tried to be patient and wait it out, boredom sets it and my interest starts fading. It's either call for change or walk away in silence. I honestly care that it works out for GGG so I rather try to be constructive instead of just say fuck it.

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* Life and Auras is something i have been talking about (mostly with my friends on voice coms) for a very long time now. These two things NEED to change to promote diversity in builds. You'll never see more and creative/fun builds on the forums when it's mandatory to have at least 3 auras and 250-300% increased life %. Inner Force is way too strong still and some auras are becoming so invaluable to almost all the specs out there, it's getting boring.

The solutions we've gotten for the problem blows too. We need more EHP, they throw more 8% nodes all over the tree. Everyone is stacking auras, they make them cost more. We all have a shit load of mana, if we even bother to use it, because we need the regen to be outrageous, of course we are going to use alot of auras. If regen is higher people wouldn't have these large mana pools that could take free auras without issue. Also if they added in things that rewarded players for no using auras you would see more options opened. How many BM users have anger, wrath and grace running but are pure physical builds. The wrath and anger give almost nothing to their builds, but they are there so people use them. Not saying auras need a drawback but something should come from a lack thereof, but I have no good ideas so I'll stop rambling.

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* The progression curve definitely changed in OB. Leveling during CB felt right, all the way to end game. While now, you constantly hit walls where you are forced to spend time either grinding or paying for certain gear to get around. Again, i don't want them to dumb things down, i just want that fluidity back in the game.

Same. I'm not sure how clear I was in my OP but I don't want it easier to level I just want the, as you said, fluidity back. I feel I stall out a bunch, especially in the later areas.

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* There definitely needs to be some equality between mana and blood magic. There's a reason almost ALL my characters are blood magic, it's just easier and a LOT more fun to play when you don't have to constantly juggle your mana pool. EB is a good option, but it still feels inferior to BM. Granted EB gives you even more auras, but that doesn't always help.

Ya, I don't build mana toons without EB or BM anymore. Just seems pointless as I hate mana leech.

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What i find hard, from a player's point of view, is knowing where the line between "Our Vision for the game" and "We just need to shut this group of people up for a while" is. Is this game open to be molded by it's community, or are things set in stone?

I think it is open to change I've seen a bunch of community lead change. Problem is that since OB there's been a sea of noise so it's hard to pick out the gems. When every thread starts with "FIX IT!!!" even if there's an amazing suggestion in the thread, who wants to read through someone saying their baby sucks?

Great thread. I'm really glad to see this stuff mentioned.

Just wanted to say that I agree that a lot of the problems stem from build diversity, EHP, and end game mapping. Constantly having to worry about whether the RNG will allow you to progress in end game content or send you right back to where you started is never enjoyable.

Regarding build diversity, I'd have to agree that a general lack of choice from starting positions and too few build defining keystones are the source of the problem.

The problem with effective HP is very straight forward and I'm honestly kind of shocked that GGG hasnt even begun to address it yet. You can double your EHP just by equipping items with decent HP mods. Armor and evasion would require extremely good stats in order to accomplish that, and it would only double EHP against certain kinds of attacks. Furthermore, your doubled base life can be doubled or tripled once again with life passives, making investment in armor or evasion even worse.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Evasion is designated for a portion of the tree that has FAR less access to HP passives, and yet the core mechanics of evasion require MORE HP than armor in order to be viable.

How is this not a blatant design flaw?

Normally, I read these and they completely ignore balance and other larger game issues. This one takes all of that into consideration, and I like/love a number of your suggestion. The developers really need to pay attention and comment in this thread.

Back for more on the

Progression and Map.

Agree on more feasible farm areas. It doesnt have to be an easy zone with zombie and skeleton like ledge and fellshrine, but areas one can easily go from one end to another, reset and do it again.

Give both Lunaris and Solaris temples one linear level, One of the sewer linear. Add another level to catacomb, level one would be linear and smaller, but keep level two mazed and bigger.

Do same thing to some act 1 and act 2 zones.

Right now. The leveling process is extremely dull and boring. rush to ledge, farm then jump on some quest group and skip as many zones as possible. Then farm fellshrine, jump zone for quest again. Act 3, dock farm and jump zone for questing.

I really like the +2 map idea. As long as the highest level map stays 78/80. So its still a struggle to leveling after 85+.

You make some good points here, but your comments about ES show extreme ignorance about ES/CI builds. Especially things like changing Ghost Reaver to only work off elemental damage. You've clearly never played an ES character before, let alone CI.

The fact is that GGG made a mistake in nerfing CI in the first place. The large amount of ES was never the problem--ES users relied on it because of all the other downsides of ES (requiring 2-3 other keystones to survive with CI; minimal protection against status ailments; no flasks; etc. etc.).

Now GGG is indeed basically reworking ES to become more like HP, except without flask use.

The lack of flasks is a HUGE downside. Even if GGG fixes the status ailment problem, ES users can't recover ES without leech or combat avoidance.

Sorry, but you're totally off the mark with your ES/CI comments. Try playing a melee CI Shadow and get back to me.