2.4 and the CoC nerf - what to expect ?

Yep, coc discharge is pretty good. There are many options, you can also go Occultist or Scion berserker/assassin or I guess Inquisitor. I used Mathil simply because I've watched most of his videos and I find them easier to find. Also they show the build before ascendancy classes.

And yet again, I think that's fine. This is a gear-dependent build which barely comes online after level 70 and requires careful planning and consideration, game knowledge and leveling as another build. Is it super good in endgame with proper gear? Hell yes. The game needs builds like this.

If someone is interested in the broader considerations, this is a wall of text I wrote in the feedback section almost a year ago when I thought the game wasn't in a good state (the Awakening had just appeared and it nerfed player power level hard):

you break the game, or the game breaks you

The TLDR version: it won't be a good ARPG if we can't break the game with knowledge, time and effort.

Also, nerfing player power level doesn't work as some players think it will. It doesn't promote build variety - it destroys it. The more difficult and unforgiving the game is, the more pigeonholed you are into just a few viable builds. There's simply no leeway to build the character you actually want to play. Case in point: The Awakening expansion where only incinerate, poison arrow (now caustic arrow) and cyclone were good for anything, with the exception of totem/summoners which have always been in a good spot but underplayed due to their sluggishness.

Just because there are things that are even more broken, it doesnt mean the usual broken things don't need adjustments.

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Bars wrote:

Also, nerfing player power level doesn't work as some players think it will. It doesn't promote build variety - it destroys it. The more difficult and unforgiving the game is, the more pigeonholed you are into just a few viable builds.

That depends on two other variables: how harsh is the penatly for playing sub-optimal builds, and what is the end game incentive of the league? Unfortunately for us, the penalty for dying after level 90, and especially beyond, is enormous. Slow clear speeds make you feel like you're a leech if you want to group. And we've only ever had one end game activity - grind to level 100. I wish GGG would take a crack at changing up the latter.

We get new leagues with new mechanics (well executed and good fun to interact with). We get new league achievements to hunt for (a bit gimmicky, but it's a gimmick that works for most players). 'End game' hasn't had any true novelty ever outside of Atziri. Slightly higher level zones, which, while nice for diversities sake, don't capitalize on what is an enormous opportunity to push build diversity.

Well, depends on the goals you're setting for yourself. I never had the patience to grind levels so I play my SC builds until they hit 90 and feel powerful. At that point I quickly get bored and reroll. Hitting 100 is my goal in HC but thus far I seem to lack the skill and patience to pull it off :) Will do my best next league.

IMO the difficulty of getting to 100 is fine since it makes it a worthy goal. Not to mention it was much, much slower years ago. You don't really need to play for 100 to build a powerful character, 90 is more than enough to deal with any content in the game if you also have the build and gear.

That's fine, but you see what I'm saying, yes? Achievements are more of a short-term goal imo, and where they are long term, it's usually because you don't want to use global chat, or it's super RNG gated. The league mechanics thusfar aren't end-game focused, they're whole-game focused (and rightfully so).

So long as the only end game goal is hit level 100, and so long as death penalties are what they are, maximum clear speed with maximum damage is the ultimate incentive.

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innervation wrote:

So long as the only end game goal is hit level 100, and so long as death penalties are what they are, maximum clear speed with maximum damage is the ultimate incentive.

Well, yes XD You only forgot to throw 'good survivability' in the mix :P

But that's what I said, 100 isn't the only endgame goal. You can make it a goal to be able to clear Uber, Core, maps with ridiculous mods, to speedfarm, to build a megatank and facetank everything, to do all achievements in a temp league and so on.

I don't see you should limit yourself to only one goal, especially if you aren't that fond of it.

PoE is essentially a sandbox game, or at least I view it this way.

Yes I should have just used the word 'efficiency' in the first place - that covers damage, speed, and survivability all in one.

I'm still frustrated by this concept though - that efficiency is king. I'm like you, I hit level 87-91 and reroll, or quit until there's a new league to play with. All other goals are superficial and have a hard capped end-point. Efficiency is asymptotic. You and I, we play to a point on the curve that becomes too onerous to climb and go find something else to do, but what else can GGG incentivize/reward, if not the king? The efficiency.

They could reward combo-based play. Everyone in PoE is trying to find a way to dump all of their power into one hotkey. A new kind of efficiency. Queen Efficiency. Elemental equilibrium addresses this on paper, but ask yourself, what is the best use case of EE? It's putting flat cold damage on your gloves so your Explosive Arrow hits harder. So your one button hits harder. So you can be fucking efficient.

It used to be you could stop and cast useful totems, warcries, curses, etc. That was the idea. You can almost imagine it on the whiteboard in the drawing room of years past. Where have we gone since then? CWDT and Blasphemy. Don't stop. Don't think. Press one button. Be efficient.

Going back to combos - consider what we can give players who use combos. Movement skill, then Active skill, then Movement skill - never using the same one twice in a row. A true dance of death. Or Skill A, Skill B, Skill C, same concept. If you give them stacking damage or bonus exp you're still just playing the efficiency game.

Maybe I'm asking for too much. If you stop incentivizing efficiency, you've probably forsaken 'progression' altogether - and at that point you've lost the genre. Or have you? I'll spend some time thinking about if an ARPG can incentivize something that MATTERS that isn't efficiency that still retains progression and still remains firmly in the genre.

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innervation wrote:

[...] ask yourself, what is the best use case of EE? It's putting flat cold damage on your gloves so your Explosive Arrow hits harder.

Id like to catch that statement and add: whats the most efficient use case and build for Elemental Equilibirium?

Its putting flat cold damage on your ring so your Cast on Critical Discharge hits harder.

:)

I'm afraid efficiency will always be king in a grindy ARPG. No way around it. Combo based play is for other genres. MOBAS, turn-based RPGs like HoMM, combat-oriented RPGs like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter.

Thinking in PoE is done mostly at the drawing board.

"

Bars wrote:

Yep, coc discharge is pretty good. There are many options, you can also go Occultist or Scion berserker/assassin or I guess Inquisitor. I used Mathil simply because I've watched most of his videos and I find them easier to find. Also they show the build before ascendancy classes.

And yet again, I think that's fine. This is a gear-dependent build which barely comes online after level 70 and requires careful planning and consideration, game knowledge and leveling as another build. Is it super good in endgame with proper gear? Hell yes. The game needs builds like this.

If someone is interested in the broader considerations, this is a wall of text I wrote in the feedback section almost a year ago when I thought the game wasn't in a good state (the Awakening had just appeared and it nerfed player power level hard):

you break the game, or the game breaks you

The TLDR version: it won't be a good ARPG if we can't break the game with knowledge, time and effort.

Also, nerfing player power level doesn't work as some players think it will. It doesn't promote build variety - it destroys it. The more difficult and unforgiving the game is, the more pigeonholed you are into just a few viable builds. There's simply no leeway to build the character you actually want to play. Case in point: The Awakening expansion where only incinerate, poison arrow (now caustic arrow) and cyclone were good for anything, with the exception of totem/summoners which have always been in a good spot but underplayed due to their sluggishness.

It isnt build diversity if everyone is using it.

As i said before, current COC has seen nerfs but the nerfs aside from the 50ms change hasnt really affected it all too much. The problem is the damage from the spells.

Current COC is no different than Elemental Buzzsaw with Wrath and Anger pre-nerf. They had to nerf Wrath, Anger and Spectral throw itself just to stabilize the absurdity of the scaling back then.

Theres a big difference between finding a mechanic and exploiting it and something just being overtuned, COC is overtuned, theres nothing mechanically being exploited in order to achieve anything. Its was the same thing with Ele Buzz Saw, anyone who could do simply math could tell how broken the scaling was, it wasnt a clever use of game mechanics.

Youre saying nerfing it kills build diversity when the actual fact is since its been introduced its killed build diversity because everyone plays it. Its one of the highest DPS builds with one of the smallest investments. All you need is a 15 chaos Tabula Rasa to play COC in maps, people do it all the time.