The recent socket exploit gave me an idea for the future.

I got to thinking, while this recent socket exploit is clearly overpowered, it could be a very fun idea for a future league.

I'm imagining a league mechanic that could add a explicit modifier to a rare item that states "This item can have 1-3 more sockets that can be linked, but only contain Red Aura Gems" or variants of that idea.

Something that would enable a whole ton of new builds, while also being balanced enough that things don't get too crazy.

It would also be easy to curate outside of the league, since the explicit can just be removed from items when they go to standard.

Curious what everyone else thinks, at the very least, it'd be fun to come up with potentially build changing items!

Mostly just sounds like a league where you get another 60 to 100% more damage and skill costs. Most builds aren't particularly socket starved and adding more links to the main damage skills most of the time is just a bunch of extra more multipliers, occasionally with some additional secondary boni like crowd control from chance to freeze. Adding more links to your main aura set up increases the value of the helmet corruption and enlighten further, maybe it would enable running more auras for aura stacking builds and its certainly an interesting form of borrowed power but its not enough to make a league on its own.

I agree, I wouldn't want it to be the main feature of the league. I didn't play crucible, but I understand that system was meaty enough to warrant having the whole league kind of revolve around it.

Probably be closer to something like the Affliction trees, where it's just part of a bigger league.

I also wouldn't limit it to auras, that was just the first example I could think of. I do think a lot of melee builds could appreciate a few more sockets though. 2 handed would probably suffer because of this "mechanic", but honestly melee has a lot of problems right now in general. At least this would be something new to shake up their meta.

Fair points though!

Melee would sort of benefit, they have a ton of supports that are all super close together in damage boost but you never have enough room for all of them. However its already a struggle for a lot of melee builds to get enough mana leech or recovery to sustain their skills properly and it doesn't really address the biggest issue that melee has, wherein getting enough survivability to not die horribly either requires sacrificing most of your achievable damage or an outrageous amount of currency. That would be best dealt with via a revamp to melee mechanics rather than a leagues borrowed power though. It would be kind of interesting to see how stupid someone could make an 18 link (shaper/elder 1h + squire with both of them upped to 6l).

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CarbotZergling123 wrote:

Melee would sort of benefit, they have a ton of supports that are all super close together in damage boost but you never have enough room for all of them. However its already a struggle for a lot of melee builds to get enough mana leech or recovery to sustain their skills properly and it doesn't really address the biggest issue that melee has, wherein getting enough survivability to not die horribly either requires sacrificing most of your achievable damage or an outrageous amount of currency. That would be best dealt with via a revamp to melee mechanics rather than a leagues borrowed power though. It would be kind of interesting to see how stupid someone could make an 18 link (shaper/elder 1h + squire with both of them upped to 6l).

I don't really think Melee could ever be 'fixed' in Poe 1.

It's not about the damage of the skill, its always the mechanics. Something that is very hard to overcome because of the design of Poe 1. Mostly stopping to attack. When you do that in melee range, it sucks.

Most melee skills that overcome this, are not truly melee and are pseudo ranged builds with melee weapons.

It'd definitely be crazy. The impetus for this idea mainly came from thinking "How could we get the fun, interesting part of this exploit into the game, without it being unintentional and out of control."

Just an idea though. I know other devs in games get inspired when seeing crazy, wacky bugs take on a life of their own, and I'm sure GGG do too. Maybe one day they'll think of a even better way to implement it than I could, and really get something build defining.

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gryphon79 wrote:

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CarbotZergling123 wrote:

Melee would sort of benefit, they have a ton of supports that are all super close together in damage boost but you never have enough room for all of them. However its already a struggle for a lot of melee builds to get enough mana leech or recovery to sustain their skills properly and it doesn't really address the biggest issue that melee has, wherein getting enough survivability to not die horribly either requires sacrificing most of your achievable damage or an outrageous amount of currency. That would be best dealt with via a revamp to melee mechanics rather than a leagues borrowed power though. It would be kind of interesting to see how stupid someone could make an 18 link (shaper/elder 1h + squire with both of them upped to 6l).

I don't really think Melee could ever be 'fixed' in Poe 1.

It's not about the damage of the skill, its always the mechanics. Something that is very hard to overcome because of the design of Poe 1. Mostly stopping to attack. When you do that in melee range, it sucks.

Most melee skills that overcome this, are not truly melee and are pseudo ranged builds with melee weapons.

A game that has/had this issue is, funnily enough, Terraria. By the end of the game, "Melee" builds end up being ranged builds but with no mana or ammo cost.

They'd probably have to give melee some sort of mechanic/Gem that allows them to mitigate or defend against auto and medium hitting attacks while actively hitting a target themselves.

They'd also have to make sure it's not something that other types of builds could take advantage of.

Also designing new bosses where Melee have an advantage over ranged would help too. Give them a niche they can carve out in the meta.

IMO the easiest way to bandaid melee is to bake fortify into all actually melee skills, raise the default fortify cap to 70 and hard limit it to 95 (you can currently break 60 fortify with a ton of ridiculous legacy gear and replica badge but most builds will hit 26 at absolute most) and delete the ancestor totems while baking their multipliers into all melee skills.

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CarbotZergling123 wrote:

IMO the easiest way to bandaid melee is to bake fortify into all actually melee skills, raise the default fortify cap to 70 and hard limit it to 95 (you can currently break 60 fortify with a ton of ridiculous legacy gear and replica badge but most builds will hit 26 at absolute most) and delete the ancestor totems while baking their multipliers into all melee skills.

This is why people think those crying about melee sound ridiculous. By default, give all melee skills fortify with a soft cap of 70? We already have so many ways to get fortify, there's no need to give us that.

The totem suggestion is along the right path but too much. Make totems give 33-45% of their benefit to all skills without the need for them to be up, if you invest in 2-3 gem slots or 4-6 passive points. Totems die to a single hit from almost any end-game content anyway, so although your paper dps may be lower, your actual, in-game, not imaginary and based in reality dps will be higher.

I agree without other limits, it would just be 75% more dps.

I think crucible trees handled it well by giving new build options but with certain limits.

I would build on that, not just more sockets, but more additions to skills like

Socketed Gems are supported by
-Each time you use this skill you are teleported to the nearest enemy within X range (add flicker to other skills)
-Modifiers to increased projectiles in this item instead increase damage by 30% and aoe by 50%, only one projectile per skill.
-Elemental damage socketed in this item can cause bleed, but physical cannot
-all gems socketed in this item benefit from physical damage to weapon modifiers but not spell modifiers (so you could increase ice spear damage with "incr phys damage with 2handers" but get no benefit from spell damage)
-all gems socketed in this item are used by your spectres not you with 60% less damage

and so on.