1.2.0 Patch Notes - Forsaken Masters

nice

I loved it when people bitch about a new patch, throwing around arguments like "my characters are fucked", "you ruined the game" etc. when they haven't actually tried to for at least a week.

I'm actually quite happy they gave a full reset, now I can try different builds on my character without the need to grind for XP.

Gotta love those chickens - it's what I live for.

Now if only they could incorporate a little private bar in those personal hideouts, so that your character can come back from a hard day's fighting against the likes of Atziri, toss off all the armour and weaponry, and sit back with a tankard of beer and relax. And on the weekends you could invite all your friends around and party, with everybody rocking to 'Greensleeves'.

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NiNcsszaM wrote:

I loved it when people bitch about a new patch, throwing around arguments like "my characters are fucked", "you ruined the game" etc. when they haven't actually tried to for at least a week.

I'm actually quite happy they gave a full reset, now I can try different builds on my character without the need to grind for XP.

That's nice. I kind of like not to have my characters (which = time, effort, hopes & dreams) nerfed into worthlessness. Guess we are just different that way: you are a hippie, I am not. I like to build... and you don't care (period - unless your welfare stops, of course) - highly typical difference, by the way.

Also, my char walked into a low-level map... and almost died. How is a week of looking at things going to change the fact that my armor, which is to say physical damage reduction, is now worthless? Shall I load up a row of granites, then? How would that be, in any way, FUN?

And you did miss my central point - what seems to be the case here is that GGG has decided that late-game content shall not be accessible to solo players. In that case, since I PLAY solo, this game becomes, to me, shit.

Oh, and the "...I loved it when people bitch about...", BUT, "...now I can try different..." is so text-book hippie... it should be in a text-book on the subject.

Twit.

Yeah, I have to admit I can fully appreciate how some people might feel on the matter. While I agree that things like snapshotting needed to be addressed because people were taking advantage of a flaw to create unintended OP builds, others put in long hours and invested heavily to create and fine tune their builds for end game content, only to see the patch either ruin or downgrade all that effort. I do seriously wonder if GGG went a little too far with this 'rebalance' and didn't appreciate how much it might hit a lot of decent and legitimate builds that people had worked long and hard on. So I can sympathize, and I certainly don't consider their concerns 'bitching'.

No snapshot ok other changes ok im pretty fine with adopting but the frenzy nerf was hard, loved my frenzy builds. What really gives me a headache is the non mentioned changes, like flame sentinells can´t be created with desecrate on solaris 2 anymore. Thats just another little sting to annoy players.

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CoronaBunny wrote:

....

Don't worry dude, there wasn't a single patch so far where there weren't a bunch of angry players blaming the system like you.
As with all patch threads people vent out the rage, the frustration and after a week or two everything goes back to normal.

Luckily it seems that the majority of the people are happy about the new patch and is going to play it with great anticipation.

I apologize for the long post, but I would like to share some considerations after having played a few hours with the new patch.
I hope this can prove useful for both other players and the developers!

(I premise that I am not a very experienced player that can spend a lot of hours on PoE, but I like it very much and I prefer to play skills that I like rather than deadly combos.
I also play solo most of the time and rarely with my friends, mainly because of our jobs and provate lives. Last but not least, I am not very rich, I cannot afford to spend a lot of time trading and so I rely mainly on what I find)

I must admit that after having read the patch notes I was a little startled about all of my most important builds:
- the arc-summoner (now level 83) was once un-playable... I was giving up right when Arc was buffed by 60% and it finally became a viable build, not too powerful or resistant but at least enjoyable (I can solo map up to level ~72) -> now Arc is nerfed by 15%
- the unarmed marauder (facebreaker build, now level 83) is quite amusing, but he heavily relies on life pool and regeneration -> decreased life nodes
- the searing bond templar (~ level 64) was the last build I started just some days ago -> Searing Bond nerfed too and totem life halved!!
- the flicker strike/reave/frenzy shadow (~ level 54) is a very fragile glasscannon that requires a lot of play concentration but can prove very satisfaying; in addition I loved Frenzy so much that I was planning to start a new build based on Frenzy and attack speed alone -> but Frenzy was nerfed too

I was worried, but I wanted to wait until the release hoping and trusting GGG that the passive tree would have balanced what I could perceive as disadvantages.

So last night I spent some hours in redistributing the passive skill points according to the flavour of the characters and aiming at getting similar builds to what I had.

Now that I can do a serious comparison between pre- and post- patch builds, I recognize that most of my hopes were indeed met:
- the arc-summoner has similar life+ES pool, similar resistances and a bit smaller dps (4.4k against 4.7k), but the shock chance increased from 17% to 42%... also considering the shock modification, I think they are comparable; as a matter of facts I played a little with it and I did not note considerable differences
- even the unarmed marauder managed to get a similar life pool (to be honest a little higher, from 3.8k to 4.3k), but its dps with infernal blow surprisingly fell from 13.1k to 8.6k (although I managed to get quite the same increased damage nodes)
- the searing bond templar had its life increase (from 1.9k to 2.3k) while its dps decreased from 6.0k to 5.8k... not a huge decrease thanks to the higher burning nodes, but I can consider it a fair trade for the life increase
- apparently the flicker shadow had the major improvements in its dps (flicker strike 830/use -> 980/use, reave 2.8k -> 3.9k, frenzy 3.2k -> 4.4k... although the nerf)

So, after all, my fears were soothed, apart from the fact that the dps of my marauder fell so consistently (I lost 34% of it!!) and I cannot understand why... is there anything in the patch notes that I overlooked?

As far as the expansion is concerned, I appreciate the masters very much, although I was able to find just three of them so far.
What I did not appreciate is the fact that I was forced to give up in completing the templar mission :(
Maybe my fault derives from having searched the masters in merciless and in having underestimated their missions (at least the first), but for instance, when I met the templar and I had to bring back the karui spirit, there was no way I could run through the corridors without being killed by the falling ceiling each time... so I wonder how one is supposed to complete the mission unless it has a huge life pool or there is a 'trick' that I was not aware of.

I also appreciate the mission summary on the right of the screen, although I would find more useful some sort of indication that helps in finding the direction where the mission of the master can be completed (if I clear a map, it is a bit annoying to run it again searching for the mission target)... maybe GGG can get this as a little suggestion?

Another suggestion I thought about yesterday, while reading so many discordant comments: GGG may think about conducting a survey in order to understand what should be addressed primarily according to the desires (and testing) of the players (e.g. I think about Ice Nova... a lot of players would like to see it as a viable skill at high levels, it was buffed by 15% in this patch but apparently it is not enough yet... or maybe it will be... it is a hot topic nonetheless).

Hoping these considerations may be of some value.

PS: in case some of the numbers are wrong (I wrote a lot of them :), please correct me!

Beyond League Problems:

I played the beyond league up to lvl 14 and had a lot of spawns from mobs (portals) but NOT A SINGLE UNIQUE MONSTER coming from the portal (only rares and magics). Or do I have to combine those blood releasing things too? Cause if rare monsters is all these portals spawn I am not really interested in playing this league anymore. And that's really bad for this league. You have to add sth more to it - Unique mosnters or sth else. It's not that interesting the way it is now.

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Their inventory refreshes after you start each daily mission with them.

Oh no please not these Daily-Quests here in a Hack'n Slay game. It's more of an annoying feature and very simplified to what it should achieve.

I don't want to be urged to log in every day. I want to play when I like and then as much as I like without penalties.