Too much AOE in POE?!

With the power creep that hit the game in the recent years skills that don't hit the entire screen (thanks to AoE, Chain or whatever) do feel sluggish - because white/blue monsters usually die in one hit even from these coverage-augmented attacks with lesser damage.

This kind of build style is optimal for the vast majority of the game content with a few exceptions where concentrated single target damage is better (Atziri and a few high level map bosses). And it's not even very expensive, if you use one of the top skills with the best synergies of the actual balance patch.

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Zed_ wrote:

With the power creep that hit the game in the recent years skills that don't hit the entire screen (thanks to AoE, Chain or whatever) do feel sluggish - because white/blue monsters usually die in one hit even from these coverage-augmented attacks with lesser damage.

This kind of build style is optimal for the vast majority of the game content with a few exceptions where concentrated single target damage is better (Atziri and a few high level map bosses). And it's not even very expensive, if you use one of the top skills with the best synergies of the actual balance patch.

Yeah thats what I mean - you explained it a lot better than me and have probably been around POE longer to see this happen.

My year or so playing has been awesome but the builds are feeling samier as time goes on due to the fullscreening. I played a spark witch to maps - cone shape screen of death. I looked at a fireball build guide using the threshold jewel - cone shape screen of death. A magma orb build guide - cone shape screen of death. Reave, incin totem, etc. 80% are cone shaped screens of death. Then theres a few round shape screens of death. The few skills that arent like this no one plays because you're so far behind the curve.

I feel like without chain, GMP, CoC etc, a lot of skills would have had more different personalities.

Its sorta killed my desire to re roll for now. My next build will probably be blade vortex as this at least has a different paradigm to the majority.

I guess D2 just lasted far longer in that respect for me. POE is without doubt the next best thing and has other things it has hugely improved upon - the itemisation in this game is second to none, but for me different feeling skills are paramount to the re roll factor.

I have to agree. The thing is, the amount of mobs in this game (and most other arpgs) your character encounters is too big for AoE skill not to come out on top. The only exception might be single target skills that then proliferate their damage somehow. I think the only cure for the problem lies is dramatically reducing the amount of monsters per screen. Which would be a whole different game then.

AOE is king in POE because it is not worth to sarcifice socket slots in gear for single target skill to kill rares/bosses faster.

It is better to use some support skills to buff aoe instead of single target becasue it save more time overal.


Solution could be buffing rare and unique monters life and single target skill. To make AOE skills much slower than single target in 1v1 situation. Side effect could lead for some builds to skip rares/bosses if they want fast XP/h.

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dommomo wrote:

My year or so playing has been awesome but the builds are feeling samier as time goes on due to the fullscreening. I played a spark witch to maps - cone shape screen of death. I looked at a fireball build guide using the threshold jewel - cone shape screen of death. A magma orb build guide - cone shape screen of death. Reave, incin totem, etc. 80% are cone shaped screens of death. Then theres a few round shape screens of death. The few skills that arent like this no one plays because you're so far behind the curve.

There are still a few skills that play out differently, like summoners / Essence Drain+Contagion for example.
There's the option of only playing the most difficult map mod combinations where you need to invest so much into your defenses you can't instagib everything anymore so the fights can actually play out differently with certain skills.
There's also the option of going self found to limit your character power for the same effect.

I don't really see a solution other than going the D3 route and implementing infinite difficulty scaling with proper rewards - which would create more space for diversifying strategies, but would also require much more agressive balancing to keep build variety.

I feel a large contributor to this is how build design in this game is funneled toward one-button gameplay. Almost all of your resources in build design is spent toward being able to only have to utilize a single AoE skill, by making sure the damage is sufficient, being able to indefinitely sustain it, and by improving its screen clear capability to the point where it can be used to clear weak packs as well.


Compare to most other ARPGs, where resource management is an impactful and relevant limiter to using your most powerful skills, you have dedicated skills that restore resources under certain conditions, you have dedicated skills that heal you or allies under certain conditions, you have short-term defensive and offensive buff skills that aren't a pain to use because they generally have zero animation time and can be used in the middle of other animations (contrast to PoE where flasks are the only action you can take while you're performing another action). Build diversity may not be as interesting or deep as in PoE, but when I play other ARPGs, I feel a whole lot more engaged, in terms of gameplay at least.

Sure, PoE does have skills that function as above, but they generally fall under two categories if they're used at all: 1) They can be automated by using triggers or other supports (Molten Shell, curses in general) or generally last a really long time (Tempest Shield), or 2) their function is so central to doing damage or not dying that players are willing to deal with the clunky controls involved in juggling skills in PoE (Enduring Cry).

Thanks for the interesting responses everyone. I feel that its possibly too late to turn back the clock on all this anyway. POE has some incredibly complex systems in place that are all balanced against each other pretty delicately...including monster density and player and monster ttk.

When I look back to D2 there is lower monster density, longer player ttk and longer monster ttk (especially as far as packs/screens worth go) which to me give the fights against rares (and larger packs/combinations of monsters when they do happen) a bit more personality - time for their modifiers to kick in before they are all melted, and time for the player to use strategic repositioning and non damage skill use. The majority being reluctant to self curse in POE speaks volumes on this.

I love that GGG provide so many options in this game but ultimately I think being able to use the aforementioned AOE supports/mechanisms on all the skills actually takes away from the flavour of individual skills.

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kamil1210 wrote:

Solution could be buffing rare and unique monters life and single target skill. To make AOE skills much slower than single target in 1v1 situation. Side effect could lead for some builds to skip rares/bosses if they want fast XP/h.

I'd definitely like to see something along the lines of this that somewhat forces people into using both an AOE and a single target skill. Just having two seperate damage skills (and a heavier damage penalty for the AoE increase supports) could make builds more interesting to play and somewhat bring back some personality to the skills chosen for single target. But then there is the problem of only having one 5/6L - i guess that could raise some interesting player choices in itself.

I think its probably ok to have builds that only want to do AoE trash clearing for fast xp - just means a decision between loot and XP.

As the numerous balance shifts have shown, the game is always changing. However, I hope that they never make it into a d2 click-on-each-and-every-one-monster fest. That shit gave me wrist pain that I can't heal to this day...

The current state of the game is pretty good. What we need are more meaningful additions to the core game, just like lockboxes, shrines, exiles and master missions.

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ivkoto77777 wrote:

I hope that they never make it into a d2 click-on-each-and-every-one-monster fest. That shit gave me wrist pain that I can't heal to this day...

Haha! Yeah i certainly dont feel the need for namelocking with skills at all. Even melee skills should all be shift clickable and given a small AoE to connect with things.

What I'm talking about is smaller AOE, a bit less monster density to fullscreen/offscreen, and perhaps slightly longer and more strategic battles where each monster and combination matters a bit more and the skills can be used in different ways to take on these combinations.

I think that would just make me feel that my build got nerfed hard, since I'll just be comparing it to how it performed before this hypothetical change. I don't like that feeling and already almost quit the game after they nerfed the super expensive weapon I bought before they last "rebalanced" base types... Those kinds of things make me not want to play the game, that's why I'm against such a change.