Chris Wilson: "Many spells are too weak for players to want to use"

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joachimbond wrote:

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By your logic, balance doesn't matter because some people are okay with sucking?

By that logic, we may as well not bother with new content since some people are ostensibly a-ok with just sitting in Act 1 Lioneye's Watch and never going any further in the entire game?

Path of Exile is an ARPG: the "A" stands for action. We can't have this weird contradictory dichotomy of "it's okay for some choices to be flat-out far better than others, because some players don't know the difference, therefore there's no difference."

If you wanna sit in Lioneye's Watch and role-play/spam ads for MTX sites all day, I can't judge, but this (or any other "just not doing as well") is NOT an excuse for the balance situation.

This violates a VERY core concept of game balance: if a choice doesn't have a compelling reason to take it, it adds nothing real to the game, and hence shouldn't be there in the first place. The term often for these things are "noob traps," and are the mark of a poorly-made game. PoE isn't a poorly-made game, so it shouldn't be expected to have these in the first place.

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ACGIFT wrote:

It's hilarious that you use two different examples of SKILL LEVEL to justify a segregation and ranked system for BUILD CHOICES.

In any BALANCED game, there should be no hard-and-fast "tier lists" for choice on basic gameplay decisions. A player should not be punished for not automatically knowing "oh yeah, this is the OP choice." A real game is balanced around SKILL, not an arbitrary choice.

The better comparison would be if we had otherwise-identical shoes for each basketball player to try, with no indication that one pair made you so much better, that a high-schooler could out-shoot LeBron James while wearing them.

would you mind, make a game where who make better decisions are better? how GGG dares?

and the shoes stuff is bullshit, there is no such thing on this game, storm brand or any other spell are not strong on this level, if you watch races, you will see that a lot of those very skilled players, some of the best PoE have, in fact, died, storm brand does not makes you immune to damage and clears everything in the game if one hit while you put your shoes on the table and watch, dont get brainwashed by what people say, go to the game and make a storm brand character and you will see that it is really strong, but nowhere near this power level.

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Mlvado wrote:

would you mind, make a game where who make better decisions are better? how GGG dares?

Oh, I guess you feel you deserve a round of applause for being so SMART and GREAT at decision-making that you picked some super-meta builds to run like Blade Vortex and Cyclone! Deciding to pick those two skills repeatedly are TOTALLY because you must be so smart and great at decision-making, and the only product to identify how great you are at the game.

Hopefully you saw how silly that was... (this includes feeling a little offended, too)

The "Shoes" thing is an exact analogy; some people like Nikes, some people like Adidas. You can sink a LOT of money into either, and generally the nicer (more expensive) the shoe, the better they perform. But in the real world, the same holds true for either brand: the exact brand doesn't matter, so long as you invest well in them.

PoE right now is like deciding that even though LeBron prefers Nikes, even cheap Adidas shoes are WAY better than the best Nikes.

It's also one thing to say that "players who do well in races are skilled" and another entirely to say "skill matters everything." The game is still VERY RNG-reliant, be it in-game or IRL luck. Hence why no one consistently wins races back-to-back, which is the sign of actual skill dominance.

Instead, we have a game where >90% of success is simply dictated by being "Smart enough" to opt to pick a super-meta build.

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ACGIFT wrote:

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Mlvado wrote:

would you mind, make a game where who make better decisions are better? how GGG dares?

Oh, I guess you feel you deserve a round of applause for being so SMART and GREAT at decision-making that you picked some super-meta builds to run like Blade Vortex and Cyclone! Deciding to pick those two skills repeatedly are TOTALLY because you must be so smart and great at decision-making, and the only product to identify how great you are at the game.

thats the exactly point here, of this entire topic, this is a mostly, solo player game and besides of 100 races at the beggining of the league and some other races, you have ZERO incentive to compete with anyone, it DOES NOT MATTER, if you play molten strike, blade vortex or viper strike, if you want, play storm burst, WHO CARES? you like bloobing balls all over the screen, go clear tier 5 maps with Cast while channeling storm burst and ball lightning, you like cleve? cleave evertything on tier 7 maps! have fun, nobody will get upset with you.

in fact, i'm inviting you once again to actually log in to game and play, with what the fuck ever skill you want to play, you can play for hours and have fun with it, if YOU ARE CHOOSING a skill that dont do tons of damage, just set your goals a little lower and you ll be fine, trust me.

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ACGIFT wrote:

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ciel289 wrote:

ya right.... and how do you get these 1mil dmg numbers from ingame information ?
the game itself is horrible at calculating the dps for you in a reasonable way.
it doesnt factor in enemy resistances or curses applied to them

you are talking about functional dps,but how do you get these numbers without using some kind of calculator for it. the game itself isnt providing these numbers.

when you use a calculator for these numbers you cant factor in the gameplay they need unless you can facetank the stuff you are fighting.

Well, I apparently have to take this slow for you.

As it appears you have not realized, PoE.ninja lets you see all the "top" characters in a league; 20,000 is a hell of a lot. (It's enough to cover everyone in STANDARD Betrayal level 92+; for SSF/HC, it just covers everyone from level 80+ as that number doesn't even approach 20k)

And with this listing, you also get a complete breakdown of their builds: level, class, passives, gem setups, gear...

And to top it all off? This does calculate and let you preview their Shaper DPS. Yes, because you can ALSO just quickly import these characters into PoB, I've confirmed: the numbers it uses are Shaper DPS, which is considered an actually reliable figure.

But here you are spinning your wheels, apparently asserting that "well, stuff that's not your tooltip DPS isn't in-game and hence useless, but tooltip DPS is also useless" as a pathetic means to try to dismiss actual statistics.

Simple put: you've been hilariously wrong. We have an objective means of measuring the offensive capability of REAL builds being made, and it shows that spells are in a FAR better spot than melee.

are you really that dumb?

the numbers in these calculators might be objective,but they are only indicators of the dps you would really get out of a gear/skill setup.

skills that work differently speed/range/coverage/targeting will reach different % of the calculated numbers,because you have to dodge skillshots are chase/redirect your attacks after a boss changes its location.

to make it more simple for you:

cyclone can reposition while attacking,vortex enables you to deal dmg even when you are running around but only when the enemy stays in your dot area,traps dont trigger when the enemy moves before they are rdy,projectiles miss if the target moves out of the way or you aim poorly

all these things mean that it is impossible to reach the calculated dps,only when you can truely facetank an enemy without moveing at all you get the full dps

your attempt with the 20.000 in betrayal is laughable at best. there are more factors to build choices than the strenght of the skill gems. reworked new or buffed things are overrepresented

whats even more funny are the most used skills listed:
first 5 places
it says winter orb 11%,molten strike 11%,arc 9%,Cyclone 8% and ice nova 6%.

This is a really ignorant and short sighted topic.

Obviously 3.7 or even 4.0 will include a massive overhaul and rebalance of all melee skills.

GGG isn't stupid. They know melee is in a bad spot but if you want good content that is well balanced it makes sense they would split up balance passes over multiple patches.

3.6 = spell rebalance, 3.7 = ranged attack rebalance, 3.8 = melee rebalance

Obviously this is just speculation but I think it would makes the most sense and allow for the most polish.

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ciel289 wrote:

are you really that dumb?

So... You're repeatedly being proven wrong, so you're dropping to just insulting me? Got it: you've run out of ideas.

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ciel289 wrote:

the numbers in these calculators might be objective,but they are only indicators of the dps you would really get out of a gear/skill setup.

Gear and skill that is being used, because I'm copying an existing character. No, the moment you got to "might be objective" (it -is- objective, not might be) you are in fact conceding that it is a proper way to measure things.

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ciel289 wrote:

your attempt with the 20.000 in betrayal is laughable at best. there are more factors to build choices than the strenght of the skill gems. reworked new or buffed things are overrepresented

You mean to say, players might be more likely to use more powerful stuff? That's kinda the entire point here. So no crap that a newly-buffed skill is going to get used more, because it was buffed.

And yeah, it's still representative, because these are the actual characters that made it into the endgame for Betrayal. 92 is a really low level for a cutoff point, which means that if something COULD be built well, it was going to by someone.

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ciel289 wrote:

whats even more funny are the most used skills listed:

Yeah, if you read, there are two popular melee skills. You gotta go a LONG ways down to see any more: the THIRD Melee skill, Blade Flurry, lands at #20 overall. (behind TEN spell skills!)

And if you paid any attention at all, you'd also notice that Around 83% of cycloners are CoC, which means they're still spell skills. So you have a great melee skill... IF You attach a spell skill to deal damage with it anyway.

That means we have just one melee skill that actually deals melee damage in the top 10; Molten Strike.

melee has 1c unique weapons? oh gee.. casters have them too!

difference is - casters dont need it and have 6 chances at lvl21 gem once they all ping. you say 1ex for lvl21 gem? let me ask a question: who will farm it faster? caster or melee attacker? (you can pick STRONGEST melee skill out there, it is junk for clear anyway)

the advantage your character gets by not being forced to 'be there' is ENORMOUS. player with a bit of common sense can farm maps (not bosses ofc) with 2k life. how? by not being on the same screen where all the enemy throngs die. and this is NOT an exaggeration. ive done that on pretty much every ranged character. speed rush to kitava, zerg it and then power level in t1-t5 maps till i can wear my endgame gear. it is faster, cheaper, more effective than melee will ever be, no matter what they do. because they actually DIE to things from time to time


storm brand is busted and we all know it. but i did the same with 'obsolete' fireball. fireball that i bet will get a f.. pointless 30% more damage buff for no f.. reason in two weeks


melee right now is a noob trap OR a one trick pony (MS/BF for single target, tectonic/frost blades for clear) that a) forces 2 skill setup b) forces gem swaps c) relies on casting lots of junk for strong targets (VDS, VAW, curse..) and as a biggest nail in already pretty heavy coffin: you actually have to move away from 1kho halving - or worse - your 'paper' dps

you HAVE to move with melee. people pretending they do not have to and can tank sh.. 'because melee is tanky'. lollll.. yeah right. unless you mean melee == one build?


melee sucks, spells were buffed repeatedly several patches in a row. why? because spells are popular. and these are popular because strong. so GGG cares about popular.. self fulfilling circle of suckiness for melee. you cannot sell MTX for melee anyway so who cares?

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Relationship wrote:

You want to make it fair, make spells require the same amount of investment as melee.

Or make spells stronger with poor gear, and melee stronger with good gear. ATM, that isnt the case, spell are ALWAYS better.

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joachimbond wrote:

Dear Bish OP,

I read your initial post, and have this to say in return,

If you haven't played molten strike, give it a try and stop your whining about melee.

If you want to walk up to a mob and whack it with a stick and only have that one mob affected by that whack, then by all means.

But there are supports for melee... You should look into support gems for melee skills.

If it isn't obvious to you that Frenzy is a utility skill, then you're probably trying to play the wrong game.

If it isn't obvious to you that Vigilant Strike is a utility skill, same thing goes.

Play MS, be happy!

I play 85-90% of the time as a summoner. This league I wanted to do a melee character so I played Molten Strike. It was such a roaring success, and I was so nearly-immortal, that I got bored with it and went back to summoning minions.

What does that tell you?

Dear Bish responder,

It takes you literally 10 seconds to observe my characters to see that I have an ms jugg

It also takes very little effort to understand that the overwhelming majority of melee skills aren't like ms

You're too ignorant to be posting here.