My Problem with the community as a Theorycrafter/Guide maker

Mostly I think that's because we've gone from talking about motivations for making builds to talking about the builds themselves to talking about his ability to take criticism.

His builds, as I said before...I suppose they work for him, but that's all I can say for them. You know, I think a lot of Charan's builds are (by his own admission) like that too, but you don't see anyone giving him shit for it, because he's not trying to display himself as some paragon of knowledge and creativity the way OP is.* Fact is, OP isn't actually writing good enough guides to do that. Hey, if Peter's still up for drinks, I'll buy round 3.

The ability to take criticism usefully, now that one I can't actually talk about because I don't have sufficient information to do so and I'm not interested in looking for it. We'll see his responses in a bit.

*A lot of people give Charan shit for a lot of things. But this isn't one of the things.

The fact is, writing a build guide takes a certain amount of pomposity. Writing a build guide for a build that is objectively terrible takes outright narcissism.

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RichMoney wrote:

Well to be fair, your last guide was https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1415549 which utilized my unique, but from reading the guild it was clear that you didn't quite understand a few things like Ice Crash only using the Main hand weapon and how local weapon stats (from Cameria's) affect your damage based on that fact. While the reddit thread (which led me to your guide) did have some vitriol, many of the comments were actually constructive in that they pointed out actual flaws in your build.

From your guide

170% Increased Physical Damage

Physical Damage is important with this build, because Ice Crash converts 50% of all physical damage to cold... so, the more physical damage, the more cold damage, the more damage damage!

11-32 Cold Damage

This isnt a major thing with this weapon... but, you know, damage is damage!

39% Increased Critical Strike Chance

Crit chance is a huge deal in this build, it is a crit build after all... its also vital for freezing, since crit with cold damage/skills = freeze, which then = shatter.. WHICH THEN = LOOTZ!

None of these things actually get used by Ice Crash if Cameria's is in your offhand.


I actually used Cameria's as the mainhand damage source for a crit ice crash build that I made into a video guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jha8AwfPIw , so it has some potential but at endgame is far surpassed by a few other uniques or a well rolled sceptre.

While the game is open ended and allows people to do what they want, by labeling your post a 'guide' you are implying an expertise that seemed to be lacking.

I wrote a little note under that spoiler saying that i was using Cameria's as a stat-hand, the main reason i mentioned Cameria's Maul as a main item was to showcase what it can do, ill re-edit it so it doesnt seem like im saying that it has much damage effect on Ice Crash.

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Hey Slayertip1!

I'm sorry to hear that you're having a rough time with this. It's amazing that you're so passionate about the game and so keen to help other players! You should be proud of that fact regardless of the perceived success of the guides you create. Please don't be disheartened. I'll be sure to have a look through your builds and please let me know if there's anything else that I can help with :)

Thank you so much for the reply Bex, took me by surprise! :D

I've always been passionate about this game, its the only game ive gotten over 4.5k hours on steam on! :D

You don't have look at my builds if you don't want to :) they're not top notch or anything :) I just enjoy making them... not only for my own benefits, but for others, because i love helping others, its what makes me happy :D

Thanks again for the reply :) Made me smile :D

Hey dude if there's anything I've learned from the online community is that it's filled with trolls and insecure people. You can spot them when they make a criticism of a build but offer no actual useful advise other than "it sucks". The problem is, Trolls, constructive critics and praisers all have the same volume online since they all have the same opportunity to type out a response to you. Unfortunately you have to filter out the garbage.

Also...Don't put so much care in to the opinions of others in terms of liking your ideas or not. Theorycrafting has nothing to do with making a build people will like or not...it's about exploring a possibility and a strategy that has potential to be functional. I've made plenty of builds out of pure curiosity and to see if they'd work which I ended up hating. But I didn't care that I hated it because I learned it works or it doesn't. Theorycrafting is about appreciation of game mechanics.

Whether or not they like your build is really none of your business if you want to think of it that way. It's a personal thing for them that they felt the need to voice on the internet with absolutely no usefulness to anyone else. If there's criticisms of your build, look for the suggestions that are thematic to the build itself. Ignore things like "OMG you put way too much in dps and not enough in hp!", but rather pay attention to things like "Hmmm I don't think you're optimizing the use of that skill. Maybe if you try switching out the support gem for 'x' to 'y' and see if it's any more effective or not". Something like that.

Keep going dude, you honestly should never allow a passion that's lasted 2+ years to be destroyed by the likes of reddit keyboard warriors.

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

The fact is, writing a build guide takes a certain amount of pomposity. Writing a build guide for a build that is objectively terrible takes outright narcissism.

I don't see how trying to be helpful is pompous; I'd say people deriding this player for actually putting effort and time into creating a guide, whether its one that matches the reader's personal opinions on what they want in a build or not, are being significantly more pompous.

More people creating guides is a good thing assuming they are willing to listen to constructive non-negative criticism and ensure they make corrections to any accidental mis-information they included. If suggestions presented don't meet what they want from their build, however, then there's nothing wrong with ignoring or arguing against it. I also cannot fault someone for having some mis-information in their guides: no one is perfect. As long as people are willing to correct objective inaccuracies and learn from their mistakes (thereby avoiding the same ones in the future) it's really a non-issue. Everyone putting OP under an unreasonable amount of harsh scrutiny should assess their own inaccuracies that they have made outside of the public's eye.

Oh hey. Radjehuty is one of those other people I was talking about. Should post some of those builds sometime, or at least I'd love to hear about them. Y'know, when I get back online in game.

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Charan - I never knew you got any shit at all for your builds. TIL.

I think there's a place for the Wright Brothers, in this game. And if anyone thinks feedback on non-map parts of the game is worthless, here's what I think of that: Flame Totems. Screw everything that that stands for, but you know what, I'll keep doing it anyway because my favourite part of the game is when everything comes together in merciless, and this is the fastest way to get there. For something that's part of the game for every single character whether or not they manage to hit maps, the story line and leveling bit doesn't get enough attention at all.

And for the record, I love drop bears. They're so cute and cuddly and easy to kill once you activate them.

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I won't deny that there's a bit of "look at me I'm awesome" behind my published builds, but I also don't post anything that isn't novel in at least some fairly significant way. It's my place to put in written form information and ideas where there were none before.

To me, making a build involves many experimentation and to keep polishing the build until it is feasible. New players like me depends a lot on guides to learn what work and what don't work. If the guides we followed are just theorycrafted, it will do more harm than good. So please try out the build first before posting and labelling it as a guide.

I think when most of us talk about theory crafting, we're including the play test stage.

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Nuro wrote:

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JahIthBer89 wrote:

The fact is, writing a build guide takes a certain amount of pomposity. Writing a build guide for a build that is objectively terrible takes outright narcissism.

I don't see how trying to be helpful is pompous; I'd say people deriding this player for actually putting effort and time into creating a guide, whether its one that matches the reader's personal opinions on what they want in a build or not, are being significantly more pompous.

More people creating guides is a good thing assuming they are willing to listen to constructive non-negative criticism and ensure they make corrections to any accidental mis-information they included. If suggestions presented don't meet what they want from their build, however, then there's nothing wrong with ignoring or arguing against it. I also cannot fault someone for having some mis-information in their guides: no one is perfect. As long as people are willing to correct objective inaccuracies and learn from their mistakes (thereby avoiding the same ones in the future) it's really a non-issue. Everyone putting OP under an unreasonable amount of harsh scrutiny should assess their own inaccuracies that they have made outside of the public's eye.

Because for someone well-versed enough in PoE to really qualify as a guiding force to anyone, writing up a build guide ought to take multitudes more effort than actually putting together an optimized and logical build.

People looking for funny, silly builds aren't the same people looking at build guides, by and large. You don't usually see people going to the library to research volleyball, but you'll often find people at the library studying microbiology, if you know what I mean.

I'd really hate to research microbiology, only to find great volleyball serve techniques instead.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

I like this insistence that play guides are good for new players. It's absolutely true, much as how when you're first learning a musical instrument, you play others' work. You do scales. You don't rush in and start composing without even knowing what's gone before or what's yet to be done. Art may be subjective but there are still plenty of rules and standards.

Is making a build for PoE an artform? Probably not that highbrow but it's certainly an elevated experience compared to most other games. The number of elements we have to pull together and coordinate and fine-tune is worthy of the term 'palette' in the way we mix and blend them like paints to create new colours.

BUT as with painting, if you don't understand how things blend, most of the time you'll just get brown! :)

This one really resonated with me. Well said.