On Playing Overpowered Builds in Path of Exile

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gibbousmoon wrote:

So, I recently decided to do something I've never done before in this game: Play a meta-build. I've never felt the need to do so before, since as a self-found player, I've never felt the pressure of playing alongside builds significantly more powerful than my own.

And I have a confession to make. I used to look down on you guys. "Stop complaining, dude. If you want the game to be more challenging, just play a non-meta build and shut up already." Well, no more.

I built a wand-based barrage cast-on-crit bladefall Shadow for the Prophecy League, just to see what all the fuss was about re: CoC, and to see what all the fuss was about re: bladefall. So much fun to just plow through content, not worrying about anything, right? Glass-cannon, sure, but I clear maps so fast, who cares, right? And then I tried playing one of my other characters. And I was reminded of an unpleasant experience I had about 10 years ago.

Anyone here remember Median XL? It was a mod for Diablo 2 that was popular about 10 years ago (its famously misanthropic yet brilliant developer ended up helping GGG design a few uniques in PoE, no less). And I played it to death, after the D2 multiplayer scene had more or less died. It included exceptionally difficult unique bosses, who gave out proportionately exceptional rewards. And somewhere along the line I realized that, since it was a single-player game, it would be trivially easy to dupe one of those really hard-to-get jewels. And so I did just that. And then, upon my next gameplay session, my only thought was "what's the point?" Once I had broken the game completely, it lost all its appeal thereafter. And upon that thought, despite having played it for hundreds of hours, I never played it again. It was an exceptionally valuable lesson for me. Don't cheat while playing single-player loot-based games, if you don't want to instantly ruin all your fun.

Though the experiences aren't perfectly analogous, I felt similarly upon playing one of my (relatively) underpowered characters (which was nonetheless my strongest non-League character!) for the first time in a long time today. I felt like perhaps I was wasting my time when I could rack up rewards (loot) much more quickly playing my CoC Prophecy character.

In other words, since I figured out how to "cheat" at the game (play a CoC character), playing a non-"cheating" build stopped being as rewarding.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Make no mistake, this post is not a condemnation of meta-builds in PoE per se. But it seems to me that tactical gameplay in PoE has continued to decline in importance as the years have gone by (alongside activity in hardcore leagues, not coincidentally). Power-creep is one half of that coin, and non-viable defenses seem to be the other half. But the issue may be more complex than I am recognizing.

Please share your thoughts, if you find this topic interesting.

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sidtherat wrote:

tornado shot, lightning arrow, kinetic blast - these are WAY ABOVE anything else since they were introduced.

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sidtherat wrote:

you do not even need to play 'meta'. just forget about anything non-ranged.

there are skills that are CLEARLY better than others and build types that are CLEARLY better than others. combine any two of these two groups and youll have hard time playing anything but.

tornado shot, lightning arrow, kinetic blast - these are WAY ABOVE anything else since they were introduced. all three made all other comparable skills look like garbage

im not mentioning melee - juggernaut is cool and all that but unless played by experienced player it is a noob trap. false sense of security (pretty much permanent phys immunity) leads to funny situation when complacency strikes in form of Izaro + Essences or any high map with 'added %X as everything' where all that phys immunity means NOTHING vs ele damage. if players knows what he is doing he should be fine (but still afraid of these mods) but new copy-pasta warriors die horribly

so play ranged, pick skills that GGG refuses to balance and youll breeze trough everything. it doesnt take long to lie oneself into an illusion that playing these builds requires skill, brain-muscle and/or is fair in any way.

how much better this game could have been if ggg had the will power to sort some things out.

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666lol666 wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

So, I recently decided to do something I've never done before in this game: Play a meta-build. I've never felt the need to do so before, since as a self-found player, I've never felt the pressure of playing alongside builds significantly more powerful than my own.

And I have a confession to make. I used to look down on you guys. "Stop complaining, dude. If you want the game to be more challenging, just play a non-meta build and shut up already." Well, no more.

I built a wand-based barrage cast-on-crit bladefall Shadow for the Prophecy League, just to see what all the fuss was about re: CoC, and to see what all the fuss was about re: bladefall. So much fun to just plow through content, not worrying about anything, right? Glass-cannon, sure, but I clear maps so fast, who cares, right? And then I tried playing one of my other characters. And I was reminded of an unpleasant experience I had about 10 years ago.

Anyone here remember Median XL? It was a mod for Diablo 2 that was popular about 10 years ago (its famously misanthropic yet brilliant developer ended up helping GGG design a few uniques in PoE, no less). And I played it to death, after the D2 multiplayer scene had more or less died. It included exceptionally difficult unique bosses, who gave out proportionately exceptional rewards. And somewhere along the line I realized that, since it was a single-player game, it would be trivially easy to dupe one of those really hard-to-get jewels. And so I did just that. And then, upon my next gameplay session, my only thought was "what's the point?" Once I had broken the game completely, it lost all its appeal thereafter. And upon that thought, despite having played it for hundreds of hours, I never played it again. It was an exceptionally valuable lesson for me. Don't cheat while playing single-player loot-based games, if you don't want to instantly ruin all your fun.

Though the experiences aren't perfectly analogous, I felt similarly upon playing one of my (relatively) underpowered characters (which was nonetheless my strongest non-League character!) for the first time in a long time today. I felt like perhaps I was wasting my time when I could rack up rewards (loot) much more quickly playing my CoC Prophecy character.

In other words, since I figured out how to "cheat" at the game (play a CoC character), playing a non-"cheating" build stopped being as rewarding.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Make no mistake, this post is not a condemnation of meta-builds in PoE per se. But it seems to me that tactical gameplay in PoE has continued to decline in importance as the years have gone by (alongside activity in hardcore leagues, not coincidentally). Power-creep is one half of that coin, and non-viable defenses seem to be the other half. But the issue may be more complex than I am recognizing.

Please share your thoughts, if you find this topic interesting.

I have played poe for about 3 years almost only using max. def melee builds that I made myself. Then I made an op ranged char (still my own build) and that was a real wtf-moment. Since that days I can not play any defensive build anymore because they are soo slow. Today I only want movementspeed, dps, more movementspeed, more dps and so on....