PVP Feedback

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Hilbert wrote:

Summons are utterly useless in PVP.

Clearly you've never seen a good summoner in pvp. Summoners I would argue are the best counter to melee in pvp.

Cleary those melees are noobs.

Decoy Totem and the summons are utterly useless.

Thats an interesting idea. Have to try that vs you FireBrand haha. Im also with Hilbert, same problems with pvp have persisted FOREVER.

I think summoners need buffed too. Maybe a better variety of mobs to reanimate in arena. Also I would like to post my thread here about ladders. We are suppose to reiterate things we feel are important. Instead of a double post I will just link it

just in case pvp gets this popular.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/511087

Hi,

I agree with many things that have already been said here.

So I give my feedback on lvl 28 PvP (and I only claim that my points apply to that; I have no experience with merciless pvp) in a loose summary, though I could write up a post worthy a master-thesis if you demand it. My points are not sorted by importance or anything.

1. Give us a "Surrender" button. Having to log-out is bad. Imagine you are participating in one of the new 1-hour pvp tournaments and you fight the same guy who has an auto-win build against you like 5 times in a row.

2. Evasion is worthless. The fact alone that Resolute Technique exists makes it a useless investion because you might face a char specced into RT, thus totally eliminating your defence. There should not be a way to completely eradicate a defensive concept. That is broken beyond belief. Note, I am not saying that most chars use RT or anything, but the fact of its existence alone makes Eva useless. Solution: Change Resolute Technique so the targets chance to evade becomes unlucky.

3. Armor from gear is way too low compared to the scaling of physical damage. Look at Geofri´s, a crazy rare 2hander or Facebreakers. You can hit for over 1k physical. There is no way to stack armor high enough to mitigate that damage in any reasonable way through gear-armor. Yes, there exist other ways, but armor IS the supposed defensive mechanism against physical damage. And it sucks at that job due to the low value. Granite Flasks are the way to go here, I know. But why have dedicated armor gear then if the better way is to pop a flask? Solution: Higher armor scaling or lower physical dmg scaling.

4. Onesided access to movement skills. These skills are pretty much mandatory for PvP. Means for strategic positioning, quick rushes or retreats, moving out of a nasty Bear Trap... there is no way around it. But which skills do we have? Lightning Warp, Whirling Blades, Leap Slam and Flicker Strike. First, three out of these are melee skills. That means their damage and effectiveness scales much better with any melee build than with caster-builds. Bow- and wand-builds don´t even have access to them. That leaves Lightning Warp. Which sucks. The delayed teleport means you have to react to your opponents actions before they do whatever they do, because once they do whatever they do it is too late to react due to the delay. It sucks, that´s it. It completely fails in any aspect. Additionally it scales with cast-speed and spell damage, which makes it suck even harder for bow- or wand-builds.

5. Trapcounters are too restricted/limited. There are 2 types of trapcounters: spells (Arc, Cold Snap, Firestorm...) and melee attacks (Cyclone, Leap Slam...). And there is RoA. Wand-attack builds have nothing. They are left with Spells they cannot scale or attacks they cannot use. Or they can counter traps with traps. Which sucks too...

6. Flicker Strike. Yeah, I am talking about that one now. The damage effectiveness is too high, the cooldown too short, the quality bonus too good and compatibility with multistrike is broken. The skill pretty much guarantees wins against ranged attack-based builds. Yes, I know you can lay traps at your feet. Look at number 5 for why this is not the way to go.

7. Block and Blockpenetration. That is another issue. Only 4 classes have reasonable access to effective blocknodes; those are Ranger, Duelist, Marauder and Templar. Shadow has to go through Powercharge-node which is useless at 28 PvP as there are no effective ways to obtain and/or sustain P-charges. Now as I already pointed out, Armor and Eva are pretty useless, which leaves Block as the only effective defence. Interestingly, the 4 classes that have access to block-nodes are also the ones that have access to block-penetration with sword-attacks. That means, as block is the defensive mechanism of a melee, only melees have the ability to counter their inherent defensive concept. Now sure, there is some logic behind that, as in reality a skilled shield-user knows the weaknesses of a shield. But should the same not apply to dexterous elusive fighters? So why is Resolute Technique in the strength area? Should it not be somewhere between shadow and ranger? As those chars are evasive and would know how to counter Evasion? My point: Have Blockchance nodes for every class. And remove Blockpenetration. Not to talk about bow-users who have no block at all.

8. Path of Lifenodes VS Path of Glascannon. As I pointed out Armor and Evasion are pretty useless and Block is borderline, due to penetration and restricted access. That means, the only reliable defence is Life. Now look at the access to lifenodes and life-regen. The melee archetypes have easiest access to most lifenodes, which is fine. But that leaves Shadows and witches with only one solution: go full damage (look at Hexaste for example). Now compare the scaling of melee-damage to ranged and spell-damage scaling. The most effective spellcasters are low-life PA casters. Why? Because spells do pathetic damage at low levels, which pretty much forces Casters to go for PA. But what do bow-users do? What do wand-users do? They can´t scale their damage similar to a melee. They can´t stack life. They don´t have blockchance nodes or blockpenetration. They can´t ountmanoeuvre other chars. Their defences suck and their offensive means are too low and to scarce. They are at a weak spot by design. A severe imbalance, which has nothing to do with gear, with build or skill, but just with design. And that sucks.

edit:

9. Gear progression is way too steep. The mod-pool of lvl28 rares is already pretty wide, as an item-level of 36 guarantees a maximum lvl-req of 28. As such items can only be obtained from normal Piety or mobs in Cruel, most PvE chars that just "check out" PvP in Act2 normal are faced with practically unbeatable opponents if those are geared for PvP.
On the one hand this is certainly a good thing, as it encourages dedicated 28-PvPers to constantly farm for better gear. On the other hand though, it pretty much removes any influence of player-skill and build if the combatants are not of an equal gear-lvl. I am pretty confident, that any decently geared character could beat any PvE char at lvl 28 by using only the default attack. I mean, you can obtain 1k life just from gear and lvl-ups, without any life-node taken. Throw in Perandus Crest and nearly every PvE char will struggle to beat such a character, if he could at all. But, once the chars are of equal gear-lvl suddenly only certain stats matter (res, life, mana, flat damage and sockets). The gear-balance changes from one extreme to the other - from broken-as-hell-state to not-a-big-deal-state. Really, as long as the sockets, links and the ilvl is fine it would not matter that much if you were using a Plate Vest or a Full Plate. You could still crush noobs without any struggle and would barely feel the difference of 190 Armor-Rating (of base item) in a decent match-up.


This is my feedback towards lvl28 PvP. Again, I am not saying that these points cover everything or apply to Merciless PvP. They are just my thoughts and observations. Make of that what you will.


best regards

So here were some of my concerns with PVP that I had.

The two major ones are-

Having to recast auras after every single match. This part is extremely annoying if you have a character who uses a lot of auras, the other opponent can just rush you down before you can even cast them. Kinda makes running many auras in pvp kinda worthless. Easy fix would just be to allow us to maintain auras that we put on in any random area and stay when you go into pvp/a new match.

Second one is pots not refreshing after every match. I think the potions in poe add so much depth to pvp, the ability to counter certain aspects like curses/shock/chill/burning/granites etc add just so much. But generally half the time you blow all your potions in the first match and then your basically out of them for the rest of the matches. I think potions should refresh, it would add a lot more strategy to pvp and be a really fun addition.

I won't complain about balance or anything like that as pvp in an action rpg will never be balanced. But I think if you can have it like d2 where certain classes are just counter picks to other classes, but if you're really good you can outplay them, then the pvp will be fine. Hell, d2 still has some competitive pvp going on right now with tons of viable specs for multiple different classes.

I'm really excited for pvp and I'm sure GGG will design it well, they haven't let me down yet.

Hi,

There is 3 things important for me in a good pvp experience in a game :

- A ladder or a kind of ranking, so that player can compete between themselve. Personnaly, I don't care what rank I have, although i will try to do my best. But this feature is essential to make balanced matchup, which is the key of a good gaming experience. The most complicated part here would be to find the good algorithm that can achieve enough randomness without generating too much frustrating battles. Of course, this will work better with a large player base, and as lots of PvPer are competitors, so I believe this feature is a must have to have a large enought player base.

With your league system, you have a lot of potential. And with new leagues, players that start the game lately can still compete with older players. There should be one rank per league, and these ranks should be account bound.


- Solo modes for when you want to start quickly, don't have a lot of time, cannot use voice ip or want to play solo. FFA death match arena could be fun, either with survival mode, or respawn and death kill / loss. A 'kill the leader' mode could be fun too : you put an item (for instance a crown) and player have to hold it for the longuest duration possible. They could still attack and everyone could damage everyone else. The player you last hit the leader become the leader.


- Team modes : there is so much potential builds in this game, you could imagine infinite combination for teams. CTF is a great step toward this direction, because there will be flager, defender, supports build. I saw you were experimenting 3 team CTF : you could make it like GW1 HoH : an altar at the center and you have to bring a maximum of flags to the center in a given duration.

Another mode that could be fun : shrine tagging. Each X second, you have 1 point for each shrine you have tagged. Each shrine would have some monsters (normal or champs) and you would have to deafeat all monsters to take the shrine. Monsters could be resilient or immune to damages type (ex fire shrine, all monsters that guard it are resilient to fire) so that you would need to have a team with players specialized with some kind of shrine.

You could combine these different team fight modes (with team fight in a field added) in a kind of tournament, so that you must have a team that can compete in various modes at the time. Again here my reference is GW1 HoH, because what I enjoyed the most was theorycrafting on team builds that could break the metagame.

I know there was no gear grind at all in this game, but I believe ranking with a good matchup algorithm can achieve a good balance, ever with grind gear. Like other people here, I'm very excited for PvP because you have one the most powerful build system I have ever seen.

"

Tartos wrote:

Hi,


- Solo modes for when you want to start quickly, don't have a lot of time, cannot use voice ip or want to play solo. FFA death match arena could be fun, either with survival mode, or respawn and death kill / loss. A 'kill the leader' mode could be fun too : you put an item (for instance a crown) and player have to hold it for the longuest duration possible. They could still attack and everyone could damage everyone else. The player you last hit the leader become the leader.


- Team modes : there is so much potential builds in this game, you could imagine infinite combination for teams. CTF is a great step toward this direction, because there will be flager, defender, supports build. I saw you were experimenting 3 team CTF : you could make it like GW1 HoH : an altar at the center and you have to bring a maximum of flags to the center in a given duration.

Another mode that could be fun : shrine tagging. Each X second, you have 1 point for each shrine you have tagged. Each shrine would have some monsters (normal or champs) and you would have to deafeat all monsters to take the shrine. Monsters could be resilient or immune to damages type (ex fire shrine, all monsters that guard it are resilient to fire) so that you would need to have a team with players specialized with some kind of shrine.

You could combine these different team fight modes (with team fight in a field added) in a kind of tournament, so that you must have a team that can compete in various modes at the time. Again here my reference is GW1 HoH, because what I enjoyed the most was theorycrafting on team builds that could break the metagame.

I really like your kill the leader idea, like a rabbit mode. who ever is in the lead runs from the wolfpack chasing them.

Many great ideas and suggestions in this thread.

I would echo the concern that fights end too quickly at the moment. There is not enough time for tactics once an engagement happens.

I think it'd be cool to have a 2nd version of your passive tree for pvp. You would have the same skill points as your normal tree but be able to reallocate as you wish. This would allow you to adapt and try to counter builds, all while playing around with one of the coolest features of PoE (the passive tree). This is such a good idea. Do it!