Build diversity is an illusion, exile

Here's an idea: let's gather all the major issues with PoE today that adversely affect build diversity!

I'll go first, roughly in order of significance.


1. The deplorable state of melee

Everyone already knows this one, but it's still the most important because it's such a huge subset of builds. The problems are too numerous to list here, and the level of care on GGG's part is demonstrably low, so let's move on.


2. The clearspeed meta

One-shotting entire packs from range sure is fun, but then you realize that not many builds can do that. So if you care about your cleaspeed at all (and you probably do, since drop rates are adjusted to match the fastest clearers), then you won't build multi-totem, or self-cast multi-curse, or just about anything else that takes more than 2 button presses to wipe the screen. Even if you come up with a combo of 3-4 skills that in the end deal massive damage, the cast/attack time is wasted on the hordes of pushover white mobs that would go down in one hit from much weaker skills.


3. Too many DPS support gems

Also pretty obvious, since it links directly into the clearspeed meta. Supports with "more damage" are pretty universally hated, but I would also like to include supports like Faster Attacks and Faster Casting. Apart from maybe the singular exception of Faster Attacks and Earthquake, there's no reason why you wouldn't want to link these over something like Stun, Blind and Knockback. Such effects can't compete with "everything's dead and I can move on".


4. Oneshot mechanics

These are bad because they make evasion(/block/dodge) second-class citizens compared to eHP (and mitigation). All the evasion in the world won't save you from a 5k hit if you only have 4k HP, so your first priority is always to get enough eHP/mitigation to survive those. Obviously it's better to have both than just one, but if you have to choose, then eHP without evasion is always better than evasion without eHP.


5. Skill gem power creep

Adding new skills sounds like it would be great for build diversity, except when new skills completely outdo and displace old ones. Why use Cleave when Lacerate exists? Why use Rain of Arrows when Bladefall exists? Why use Heavy Strike when Earthquake exists? The list goes on.


6. Very little diversity on the passive tree

Apart from keystones and ascendancies, the overwhelming majority of the passive tree boils down to life, defenses or DPS. There's very little you can do with this. Also, the prevalence of life nodes creates a vicious circle with oneshots. The easiest way to combat oneshots is to stack more life, to which GGG reacts by making oneshots stronger, to which players react by stacking more life, to which GGG reacts by making oneshots stronger, and so on. Even now, a build can easily spend between a half to two-thirds of its skill points just pathing to life nodes to hit the magical 160-180% mark.


7. Too many ways to gain physical damage as extra elemental damage

Want to use a physical skill? Great, don't forget to add Hatred, Herald of Ash, Added Fire Damage, Phys to Lightning, and WED if it's an attack.


8. Individual broken items/mechanics

Voidheart, RotC, Voltaxic, CoC, the lot. The only reason I'm putting these at the bottom is because I realize that in a game with so much content, there's always going to be some broken FotM build. GGG can only do so much testing before releasing new content, and unless they nerf stuff mid-league, said content will remain broken for some time. That said, when broken content remains broken for extended periods of time, you start having a problem as more and more people pick it up and it becomes the "normal" state of the game.



I used to love theorycrafting various builds. But the more I learn about the game, the more I realize just how limited my options are.

Well, build diversity is still there, as long as you don't care about being optimal. Build diversity is like inversely proportional to the top % of players that you want to be part of. If you wanna play up there with the 0,1% best players, be prepared to choose from a couple of builds. If you don't care, and are just here to have fun and get 24 challenges done for free weapon mtx, your possibilities are nearly limitless. It's all about what your goal is.

That said, I think your points are valid, especially about clearspeed meta and DPS supports. I have no doubt that GGG is aware though.

I actually don't think build diversity is that bad right now, except for melee. Which has always been one or two builds.

I agree with everything you listed though.

Oh, and I'm sure you are aware but the one shot mechanic is a part of the game on purpose, it is here because of the immediate logout function that GGG allows for us to use. So as long as that is in the game, one shot mechanics will exist.

Something that you, understandably, overlooked is the state of pvp. I, along with the rest of the pvp community (all ten of us) are suffering from all the stuff you just posted. Endgame should be something besides just endlessly grinding maps, as it does get monotonous. pvp would be a simple fix to that if everyone's damage wasn't so absurdly high.

Totally agree with the OP's analysis, and four out of five of my mid-80's legacy characters are melee fighters, with a melee Shadow leveling in Cruel as well. While they each use a different mix of melee skills, along with class-centric passive skill trees, they all follow the same defensive build pattern, making them variations on the same theme:

1. Take every increased life node available in your skill tree path.
2. Take every life regen node available in your skill tree path.
3. Max elemental resists, ignore chaos resist.
4. On right side of tree, take Dodge nodes (unless pumping armour).
5. On left side of tree, take Block nodes (unless no shield).
6. Get at least 4, preferably 5+, Endurance Charges.
7. Use Endurance Charge on Melee Stun or Enduring Cry.
8. If going crit, increase Power Charges, use Power Charge on Crit or Voll's.
9. If going RT, increase Frenzy Charges, use Poacher's Mark or Frenzy boots.
10. Use Arctic Armour, add Hatred, Anger, and/or Heralds.
11. Link Fortify to movement skill, optionally along with Curse on Hit.
12. Link CwDT to Enfeeble, Ice Wall, and/or Immortal Call.
13. Pump increased physical damage and/or crit, convert to elemental damage.

Depending on which character class you start with, there are only a few paths that will take you through the most vital increased life and life regen nodes. Choosing a non-optimal skill tree path will force you to compensate for the lack of life boost with something like Lightning Coil or Belly of the Beast. And of course you need at least a 5-socket chest for your main attack skill. The rest of your socketed gear will be occupied with automated CwDT, charge generation, curse casting, and movement skills. Once you're up and running, you can drive through the whole game with main attack on LMB and movement skill on RMB, and use the keyboard solely for stash maintenance.

POE since 2012?

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laycast wrote:

I actually don't think build diversity is that bad right now, except for melee. Which has always been one or two builds.

I agree with everything you listed though.

Oh, and I'm sure you are aware but the one shot mechanic is a part of the game on purpose, it is here because of the immediate logout function that GGG allows for us to use. So as long as that is in the game, one shot mechanics will exist.

Well Shieldcharge FB is decent and Earthquake Poison is also pretty viable. I assume the standard Reavestuff works too. So there are a few decent melee builds, there might be more. Considering that Cyclone CoC is technically melee as well, there might as many viable melee builds as other games have classes.

If you look at the top players you will notice that D3 for most of the time had basically one single setup. That is not because the balance is that bad but because being 1% worse than something else is totally inacceptable. So if you look at the top performers it is pretty ususal to see a very small build variety here. But PoE has a very decent amount of builds that can clear any content and some of them are even melee.

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So as long as that is in the game, one shot mechanics will exist.

Well it isn't so much oneshot, it hardly ever is. I prefer calling it surprising damage. A lot of players would take those situations more lightly if they would get a death recap. Because often you run into a very bad situation and the most obvious result of those is dying. A death recap would also allow players to see immidiatly what they lacked defense for or if something was actually wrong.

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1. Take every increased life node available in your skill tree path.
2. Take every life regen node available in your skill tree path.
3. Max elemental resists, ignore chaos resist.
4. On right side of tree, take Dodge nodes (unless pumping armour).
5. On left side of tree, take Block nodes (unless no shield).
6. Get at least 4, preferably 5+, Endurance Charges.
7. Use Endurance Charge on Melee Stun or Enduring Cry.
8. If going crit, increase Power Charges, use Power Charge on Crit or Voll's.
9. If going RT, increase Frenzy Charges, use Poacher's Mark or Frenzy boots.
10. Use Arctic Armour.
11. Link Fortify to movement skill, optionally along with Curse on Hit.
12. Link CwDT to Enfeeble, Ice Wall, and/or Immortal Call.
13. Pump increased physical damage and/or crit, convert to elemental damage.

That is already quite a bit of consideration, although you shouldn't ignore chaos res unless you have incredible lifereg (something above 10%) since poison can entirely screw you other, because it double dips on enemies two. Most common builds invest about 50-66% of their nodes in HP and the way to get their. This still leaves a lot of freedom. Of course offensive flexibility is a lot higher than defensive, but in the end its multiplicative and to make a product of 3 numbers which share a the same sum as high as possible you need to average them. 5 x 5 x 5 is simply bigger than 1 x 1 x 13, and that is true for a build as well. So the decision between increased damage or increased attackspeed is merely mathematical, with the slight benefit of attackspeed increasing mobility.

So at the end most of what you name is optimizing, and if you want to optimize there are of course limits in diversity, but that is already a lot more freedom than usual.

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Emphasy wrote:

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laycast wrote:

So at the end most of what you name is optimizing, and if you want to optimize there are of course limits in diversity, but that is already a lot more freedom than usual.

Nope, just basic melee buildcraft. In practice, diversity is capped by must-have defenses and the number of linked gem-sets your gear can support. So one main attack, optional secondary attack, CwDT defense, auto-charge generator, and movement skill.

Also, life regen takes care of both traps and poison.

Build diversity sucks because nearly all build options have been exhausted.

PoE players are not retards, no one really has the time or effort to play weak builds.


Let's just be fucking real, at the end of the day we all know what the strong skills are and what the strongest defensive mechanics are.

There are no new interesting mechanics, old gems have become useless and are collecting dust in our stashes, and the new skill-gems we get are not even balanced correctly and 90% of the time just seem like gimmicks of already-existing skills.

I haven't even bothered playing Earthquake ONCE - didn't excite me at all - just seemed like a boring gimmick of Ice Crash with some different brown graphics.

If build diversity was better this game would have a larger, more sustainable, growing player base.

- re-balance the old gems - this will give players tons of viable skills
- give us innovative new skill gems that are balanced correctly - not gimmicks like EQ, and not OP retarded shit like Blade Vortex
- give us new defense mechanisms and damage scalers
- expand the passive tree

A big part of the lack of build diversity is ironically how free and open all the builds are to one another. This prevents them from balancing builds independently from one another meaning there will always be a hierarchy. A different class system like marvel heroes or D3 means they can tweak an individual class and bring it more in balance to the others without tweaks to a given class directly impacting the balance of the other classes.



tl;dr - Ironically builds being so free and open in PoE actually limits build diversity.