I want the old, tougher Rogues back

OP can speak on his behalf, I absolutely love the new, 'wussified' Rogues. If the drops they give are still white and blue junk, I believe their current strength level is in accordance to the reward they give.

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Avramovic wrote:

OP can speak on his behalf,

This applies to every single post in this section, so why is this a point worth bringing up?

On the long-term I actually think this may be something that needs to happen. Or at least one of the ways to, eventually, improve overall balance.

Challenge shouldn't be a random spawn or a random affix. I think the contrast earlier mentioned is very much a problem, it's way too much contrast between exiles and most other content. All content should require some degree of tactical and positional play unless you're seriously overleveled or overgeared.

If first wussifying most content to be closer to each other and then, hopefully, cracking down on some of the player defenses that exactly allow that "tank everything" gameplay style then I'm all for it.

Obviously there's other ways to get to that point, but considering that when you get down to it the vast majority of enemies don't require any tactical positional play at all it might just be easier to nerf those that do as well as those that just do way too much damage and then nerf some of the most effective player defenses from there.

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Gobla wrote:

All content should require some degree of tactical and positional play unless you're seriously overleveled or overgeared.

To be fair, when it comes to maps almost all players ARE seriously overlevelled. When was the last time you saw a level 75 in a level 75 map (unless they can afford ridiculous gear)?

The engine limitations of this game make tactical and positoinal play super prone to desync, and with Alt-F4 existing the only way to make positional play dangerous is by killing the player essentially instantly. This means when they try to implement positional play, we end up with things like desyncing into vaal smashes.

It's a lose lose situation. It's really unfortunate, because i REALLY enjoy Vaal Oversoul's mechanical design compared to the other bosses. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the idea of desyncing into a vaal attack that makes players afraid of vaal, rather than the boss itself.

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Gobla wrote:

On the long-term I actually think this may be something that needs to happen. Or at least one of the ways to, eventually, improve overall balance.

Challenge shouldn't be a random spawn or a random affix. I think the contrast earlier mentioned is very much a problem, it's way too much contrast between exiles and most other content. All content should require some degree of tactical and positional play unless you're seriously overleveled or overgeared.

If first wussifying most content to be closer to each other and then, hopefully, cracking down on some of the player defenses that exactly allow that "tank everything" gameplay style then I'm all for it.

Obviously there's other ways to get to that point, but considering that when you get down to it the vast majority of enemies don't require any tactical positional play at all it might just be easier to nerf those that do as well as those that just do way too much damage and then nerf some of the most effective player defenses from there.

The thing about normal mobs is that they need to be rather easy the vast majority of the time. You can't have a viable map build if white mobs are much of an issue at all, and the threat actually occurs when the planets align: you're running a couple difficult map affixes, you run across a monster type you have a problem with, the monster type appears as a blue/rare pack, the blues/rare gets a couple more affixes which you also have a problem with. Stack it all up and suddenly you've gone from tank-everything to extreme wariness, with tactical/position play becoming much more important. There's actually a lot of middle ground in between, but the core concept is the same; it's a continuum ranging from easy-kill loot fodder to serious threats. It's like finding a really good rare item — most of the time, a good build isn't going to be threatened, but it does happen eventually.

The important thing is that this threat, while not constant, appears randomly. This differentiates it from map bosses, which are very predictable (and thus mainly dictated by map affixes).

Rogues represent the unique-item equivalent in terms of randomly appearing monster threat. Even in an Anarchic map, you're not sure which two rogues you'll run into, or precisely where you'll run into them. This is part of what makes them great.

By the way, two ideas for map mods:
1. "Wandering" prefix: "Unique boss appears in a random location"
2. "Unique boss replaced with a Vaal Vessel and its Guardian" as a corrupted implicit

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Xendran wrote:

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Gobla wrote:

All content should require some degree of tactical and positional play unless you're seriously overleveled or overgeared.

To be fair, when it comes to maps almost all players ARE seriously overlevelled. When was the last time you saw a level 75 in a level 75 map (unless they can afford ridiculous gear)?

The engine limitations of this game make tactical and positoinal play super prone to desync, and with Alt-F4 existing the only way to make positional play dangerous is by killing the player essentially instantly. This means when they try to implement positional play, we end up with things like desyncing into vaal smashes.

It's a lose lose situation. It's really unfortunate, because i REALLY enjoy Vaal Oversoul's mechanical design compared to the other bosses. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the idea of desyncing into a vaal attack that makes players afraid of vaal, rather than the boss itself.

When I levelled my thrower, I had the chance to 'ride the accumulated orbs', with a few mid tier maps and lady luck saw me doing some 77 maps at lvl 75, not ridiculously geared and ofc not overlevelled.

It was fun, challenging, and felt good, a rare event in my PoE time.
I then was relegated to a lvl 74 Maze map, where I was 1 shot by a desynced Vaal Oversoul. That was the character's 2nd death, the first was to a desynced Vaal Oversoul A3Merciliess.

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Xendran wrote:

"

Gobla wrote:

All content should require some degree of tactical and positional play unless you're seriously overleveled or overgeared.

To be fair, when it comes to maps almost all players ARE seriously overlevelled. When was the last time you saw a level 75 in a level 75 map (unless they can afford ridiculous gear)?

The engine limitations of this game make tactical and positoinal play super prone to desync, and with Alt-F4 existing the only way to make positional play dangerous is by killing the player essentially instantly. This means when they try to implement positional play, we end up with things like desyncing into vaal smashes.

It's a lose lose situation. It's really unfortunate, because i REALLY enjoy Vaal Oversoul's mechanical design compared to the other bosses. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the idea of desyncing into a vaal attack that makes players afraid of vaal, rather than the boss itself.

True,

but consider that since most enemies are currently basically a non-threat any rebalance doesn't immediately have to put them into seriously dangerous territory.

I don't think it's impossible to have enemies that aren't dangerous enough to kill players during a desync but are dangerous enough to threaten players if they consistently just try to tank everything.

I intentionally say threaten since they don't have to actually kill players to force some small amount of tactical play. Alt-f4 costs time, running out of potions and using a portal costs time, retreating to regen costs time. That's punishment enough I'd say for a majority of enemies to stimulate some amount of tactical play.

I think there's a middle ground to be found that leaves room for the flaws of PoE's engine whilst still moving away from the tank everything style.

The reason that style exists, in my opinion, is that in order to survive desync and FPS drops against the most dangerous things you have to render yourself basically impervious to most other things.

I'm not saying make the most dangerous things even more dangerous to promote tactical play. I am saying make everything else a tad more dangerous by reducing the massive contrast that currently exists between these two. And one of the ways to get there is to first nerf the most dangerous things so they're closer to the rest and then nerfing player defenses.

I don't know if this is what's intended. Maybe it not, easily possible. But at the same time I could see how rebalancing some 50 or so very dangerous encounters and then rebalancing some of the more effective encounters could be easier than basically rebalancing every single other encounter in the game.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

<snip>

I think you're confusing difficulties with playstyle.

I'm not saying white mobs need to be hard. I'm saying they need to be tactical.

There's a difference. You can have easy tactical mobs, these are even in the game right now like say Necromancers who don't post a massive threat but do require a modicum of strategy. There's also hard facetank mobs, like some of the failed Invasion bosses where either you've the defenses to tank them or you die.

In order for more mobs to be tactical, to require some thought even if they don't pose a massive threat, they need to be closer to the hard stuff then they are now. Because right now players being forced to gear and build to withstand some desync or FPS drops against the biggest threats, which currently with the huge contrast between the big stuff and the small stuff means the small stuff requires not a single thought in many cases.

If you reduce that contrast the small stuff will still be easy, it still won't measure up to the threat of the big stuff. But it will require at least a passing thought if you want to efficiently kill them quickly.

... but almost all of the new monsters promote tactical type of play rather heavily. Evangelists, Alchemists, Porcupines, Soulless Watchers, Avian Wretches, any monster with a chilled ground mechanic. All promote tactical play.

The ones which are the most gear-check are the ones which cause unavoidable hits — mostly Flicker-Strikers and Leap-Slammers. (It's funny how Croaking Chimerals straddle both categories at once.)

Yeah i also didnt mind the old exiles, there was a OSHIT factor there i really liked when people saw one, i could kill any exile in the game but now thats not really an achievement is it when they have as much life as a player char...


but yeah, imagine GGG thinking about this.. first they see people complain that exiles are too hard for half a year, they nerf them to player values (because it does make sense since they are not monsters) and now they see threads that theyre too easy... id be pulling my fucking hair out haha