Lowering monster damage would help many problems in this game.

I didn't read but I must agree to the global idea. Increasing monster damage is not the right way to make the game harder. It's cheap and somewhat effective, so I can understand why it happened. But I'd rather see a better AI, more mob abilities and several obviously needed nerf to some skills in order to achieve the same goal.
Also, if desync happens to be fixed some day, the game will become so easy that they'll have to make it much harder again, I just hope it won't be by increasing monster damage...

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tryhardgg wrote:

Let's make it faceroll like D3 on monster power 0 :D

Please, do us all a favour, and never post again.

If we want to be technically correct, its not so much that moster damage was increased, per say

Its more that mob density was increased (which indirectly increases mob pack damage, and makes AoE more "required" than it should be) and that negative resistances where added as some sought of ridiculous gear check

I mean act3 in design was always going to deal substantially more damage than act2, the whole point of acts after all is that the difficulty does increase a lot more in later acts

Honestly the negative resistances is probably whats breaking the whole damage thing a lot more than is considered sane

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deteego wrote:

If we want to be technically correct, its not so much that moster damage was increased, per say

Its more that mob density was increased (which indirectly increases mob pack damage, and makes AoE more "required" than it should be) and that negative resistances where added as some sought of ridiculous gear check

I mean act3 in design was always going to deal substantially more damage than act2, the whole point of acts after all is that the difficulty does increase a lot more in later acts

Honestly the negative resistances is probably whats breaking the whole damage thing a lot more than is considered sane

No, this is flat out untrue. Mob damage is drastically higher per hit. I walk around with 80+ to all res from act 2 normal. Mob density is not significantly higher, or higher at all.
This is true for all difficulties and all areas, and is likely multiplied by maps because not only are monsters in maps a higher level now, theyre ALSO dealing more damage than monsters of their level back in CB. Level 66 maps in OB are vastly harder than level 69 maps were in CB (69 was the max).

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Xendran wrote:

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deteego wrote:

If we want to be technically correct, its not so much that moster damage was increased, per say

Its more that mob density was increased (which indirectly increases mob pack damage, and makes AoE more "required" than it should be) and that negative resistances where added as some sought of ridiculous gear check

I mean act3 in design was always going to deal substantially more damage than act2, the whole point of acts after all is that the difficulty does increase a lot more in later acts

Honestly the negative resistances is probably whats breaking the whole damage thing a lot more than is considered sane

No, this is flat out untrue. Mob damage is drastically higher per hit. I walk around with 80+ to all res from act 2 normal. Mob density is not significantly higher, or higher at all.
This is true for all difficulties and all areas, and is likely multiplied by maps because not only are monsters in maps a higher level now, theyre ALSO dealing more damage than monsters of their level back in CB. Level 66 maps in OB are vastly harder than level 69 maps were in CB (69 was the max).

I can concur with this, soloed a level 68 map in CB with a melee duelist and it wasn't even really that hard, didnt roll hard mods just pack size, and it was still way easier than me trying to do docks which is level 63 with my current melee duelist.

Whoever thought giving voidbearers the ability to wipe out an entire six man team in 2 seconds is nuts.

Honestly, the game is suffering from 'feat tax' syndrome.

A 'feat tax' is a term coined by the post mortem of the TTRPG 4th Edition D+D. Feats are abilities gained every so many levels (ie, think like passive skills). A feat tax is having a feat which is basically required just to keep up with monster scaling.

The problem with feat taxes is that they're mostly indistinguishable from *not giving the player a choice in the first place* and just giving them the bonus, except feat taxes create the possibility that they don't take the necessary feat and fall behind. Feat taxes are widely regarded as bad in the TTRPG industry now, because they *absolutely destroy build diversity*.

So in CB you didn't need to load up on hp nodes (or take any at all!), and you could play the entire game. We had lots of build diversity. At some point they cranked damage such that you needed to load up on hp nodes and now those nodes become a requirement. They're *assuming* you're going to take them in their balance decisions. And now there is very little build diversity. These facts are not unrelated, and hp nodes have become a 'feat tax' (passive skill tax?).

Now, if you want to both 'have build diversity' and 'challenge all players', you *can't have hp nodes at all*. It's really that simple. You can't give players a false choice and expect build diversity, because there's only one correct choice. And if hps are a primary factor in how much players are challenged, then you can't actually make hp nodes a choice and still challenge all players. (If you make hp nodes unnecessary, players who do stack hp nodes won't be challenged).

I'm okay with some builds not being particularly challenged. It's virtually inevitable in an ARPG that some characters won't be challenged particularly much anyway, because eventually you find gear that just dominates the content, so it isn't like you *can* challenge all players.

And let's be honest, some people in D2 wanted to play Hammerdins and some wanted to play melee sorceresses, Bonemasons, and Fearazons (look them up, they're ugly). The Hammerdin players enjoyed just destroying everything, and that was okay. The Bonemasons and Fearazons liked a challenge and playing a unique build, and they found unique builds which were challenging despite the existence of overpowered builds. PoE's current design philosophy makes the Fearazons and Bonemasons unplayable, and that's really disappointing.

I never understood why, if people had a problem with having to stack life, they didn't just play Softcore. The aim of the Hardcore league is long term survival. Therefore it ought not be surprising that you need a lot of life in order to keep a character in that league.

EDIT: before anyone points it out, I realise there are death penalties in Softcore. My point still stands, regardless.

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Seeley wrote:

I never understood why, if people had a problem with having to stack life, they didn't just play Softcore. The aim of the Hardcore league is long term survival. Therefore it ought not be surprising that you need a lot of life in order to keep a character in that league.

EDIT: before anyone points it out, I realise there are death penalties in Softcore. My point still stands, regardless.

Because you need to build the same in both leagues. If you don't get enough HP nodes, your character will literally hit a wall at which you will die often enough that you can't get past that level.

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Seeley wrote:

I never understood why, if people had a problem with having to stack life, they didn't just play Softcore. The aim of the Hardcore league is long term survival. Therefore it ought not be surprising that you need a lot of life in order to keep a character in that league.

EDIT: before anyone points it out, I realise there are death penalties in Softcore. My point still stands, regardless.

Who said this was a hardcore problem? Path of life nodes is required in Softcore too.

^ kinda why I'm upset with the damage being the way it is. If you wanted to build tank and never die you could go HC but with damage being so high now even in default you need to build this way. 15% exp loss in the high 70s is losing an hour of work, by mid/high 80s you are losing upwards of days of work. So around lvl 75 there's no difference between the two league besides level of frustration. Losing a week of work is more than an hour but you end up the same place, annoyed.