2.4 and the CoC nerf - what to expect ?

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Bars wrote:

A decrease of CoC's internal cooldown would have a profoundly negative effect.

A build's strength isn't measured simply in damage output. It's also measured in clear speed, survivability, utility. If you just want to deal a lot of damage, there are a ton of ways to go about it, especially with the ascendancy classes. The trick is getting a good balance between defense and offense and the HC ladders in the temp leagues are an excellent indicator. Players at the top of these ladders have truly optimised and min-maxed builds because they can't have any weaknesses. There only one CoC build which is doing well in these ladders and this is cyclone CoC discharge. That's it. What's more, it isn't dominating the ladders - it's just there along with other solid builds.

Nerfing CoC's internal cooldown would do nothing for CoC discharge. It doesn't generate that many hits, it's just that the hits are powerful. It would, however, severely impact barrage, kinetic blast and ground slam CoC builds - which aren't in the same ballpark as power level simply because they have weaknesses.

So, the main effect would be to pigeonhole CoC into a single cookie cutter and kill build variance. The throne would remain unchallenged, the lesser contenders would just die.

This isn't good design by any means.

All this is purely hypothetical as GGG base their balance decisions mostly on the prevalence of certain skills and builds and there's no way they're going to nerf builds which aren't too popular and aren't doing too well in HC.

As for CoC discharge itself, yep - it's good. Also expensive. There are other builds which achieve a comparable power level without needing that much of an investment. I think the game needs builds like this - if players couldn't invest hard work and time into becoming powerful and being able to confidently tackle all content in the game, they wouldn't have an incentive to play. And there is a world of difference between a high-end and solid endgame build and builds which achieve tremendous damage output with no drawbacks at a lesser cost, which is the situation with some chaos and poison builds right now.

To summarise, although some other complaints are legitimate, I believe most of the CoC complaining is done mostly by players who are essentially clueless about PoE's true endgame and deeper balance considerations and just like to complain about anything they perceive as powerful since they, for whatever reason, can't or won't have it.

I have a strong suspicion it is done predominantly by players who go for slow and tanky builds and feel offended other players are exploding the entire screen. The same players who would go up in arms if someone even mentioned a nerf of some ridiculously good defensive ascendancy options like the Champion's perma fortify or the Gladiator's massive bonuses to block + 100% spell block. The funny part is, they use exactly the same arguments which negate most of the CoC QQing: 'But I've invested in it!' 'It's a trade-off, I don't deal that much damage!' and so on.