How to address the growing problem of power creep of items, and builds in PoE.

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LowBudget780 wrote:

Those items are edge-cases, no one but a select few players will craft everything remotely close to those items this league.

...umm, it's the implicits that make most of them OP.

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Dudebag wrote:

uber elder etc is old content, should be accessible. heck it is part of the quest.

maybe after the quest, uber elders or guardians should be able to add mods to make them stronger but then again reward is hard to balance.

the real players would find themselves some challenge. some go super deep in delve, some play ssf league.

I like that your idea is to keep uber elder in the game as it is, as it is part of the quest and a challenge for new players.

I LOVE your idea of creating a version of uber elder that also includes 8 mods or more.

The game needs something like this to keep it challenging for the 1%, but also catering to the casuals.

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LowBudget780 wrote:

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Head_Less wrote:

Those items are edge-cases, no one but a select few players will craft everything remotely close to those items this league.

3 of my friends have those and the amount of money it took to craft them is stupid hell I have a few like if someone is able to afford X items and the knowledge to craft it they deserve it in everyday possible.

Who the fuck are you people to say they don't? lmao entire point of this game is to be more powerful that's it like this entire thread is the minority thank fucking god including the OP.

Please.

Edge-cases isn't even cutting it, the shield for example is a mirror... as a base. Reproducing that one is nearly impossible with the system as is. Which is good, it should be hard to get powerful items after all. The same goes for double corrupts in temple or 30% bases via delve.

Also the availability of elder/shaper bases and fractured T1 mods makes crafting definitely easier along the line, this counts especially for E/S weapons as those can roll ridiculously powerfil explicits, as well as for fractured jewels, having fairly often a good mod locked in it.

So let's take an overview of how commonly you'll drop something good when target-farming the respective things:

E/S bases: Run T16 maps with beyond, roll every sinlge armor/weapon/jewel strongbox for + lvl to increase the chance (not in the least mandatory) to get them. Also E/S scarabs are very useful, so this is a fairly expensive thing to do steadily.
Though, this way you'll get a T1 base every ~10 maps, and every ~150 I would say you'll get a T1 ilvl 86+ base. So, definitely profitable if you're out to craft on those, also depending on target-crafting specific mods some people will gladly buy lower ilvl bases to stop some mods from rolling. The last part mostly counts for standard, demi is a good example for such behavior, but it's rare.

Abyss jewels: Well... those are simple, get some ilvl 83+ Jewel, alt it until 2 good T1 mods are on it, regal, exa slam, done. You'll usually make profit and those are very expensive when finished crafting. Along the way you'll get a lot of useless combinations to reroll, still, this is also a quite profitable and far less currency-intensive way to scale your character higher since that league.

Temple: 1 single temple takes 15-20 minutes with a decent build set up for it, just target-farm quarry. You'll also get syndicate spawns now for extra rewards. The chance to get some double corrupt is around... 1 in 10 or so? I don't know exactly if I've had bad luck simply or it takes that long, nonetheless you can attempt several corrupts in a week easily while doing that, the other drops aren't as noteworthy, but some nice div-cards and maybe an expensive vial might come out of it.

Syndicate: Same, quarry, you'll have around 1-2 safehouses per hours probably, those are expensive on their own, though you should have items prepared for the respective crafting stations, otherwise most of it will be a fair bit of waste.

Nexus: The reward nodes are nice, the modifiers seem fairly hard to obtain now though. Bosses are a bit rare still - as they should be - and fractured items in good bases drop in masses. The issue is storing those items, quite the profitable thing though if you're target-farming it together with mapping E/S bases. You'll get a fair amount of synthesized tries along the line, most of them will be utter crap for you personally but quite expensive along the line.


So yes, while most people won't ever see those items, they aren't 'that' hard to obtain, and even within those the variance is quite big. During a league a half-way decent player (so above the 'common' one) will get overpowered easily, taking away the challenge the game is supposed to give with the provided content.

As for the uber-elder example: No... he shouldn't be easily accessible, at least not before the next major expansion comes along, which is supposed to be 4.0.0 once again. He's the end of the game, Cortex is easier, mastermind is easier, most delve-bosses are easier as well. He's the non-plus-ultra of gearing towards a goals. If you're done with that in a week... well.. what comes afterwards in the name of progression? Nothing, it's were most people will stop. Well, actually most people stop playing either before shaper or right afterwards, he doesn't offer a powerful unlock as the other parts of the storyline before.

All in all the sheer amount of different options to empower a character by now is an issue, simply because while the level of equipment has gone up steadily, the main-content hasn't followed along yet, and we'll feel that for a while longer most likely. The big issue there is if GGG will handle it in a way to give us enough new content to make up for this AND take the time-frame until the big update into consideration, or if they'll just repeat those issues right after 4.0.0, making their own content too easy before having new one in store to present to us.

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Stormy_Fairweather wrote:

Remove multipliers. Rebalance the game around the new math. You can't mix exponents and integers and expect to beable to balance the system. The whole of it would have tp be recalculated, and a decision for more deliberate paced gameplay would have to be made... but I think that is the only thing that could actually solve the issue.

I agree fully. At this point, if they want to have a healthy game that has a long life, the game needs a full rework on balance. From top to bottom values need to be reworked for life, es, mana, regens, damage sources, etc... I fear the new GGG are too lazy to fix their game though. GGG has not been the way it was back in beta days for a long time.

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Br4wn3 wrote:

The Problem:
Lately, I've noticed to many insane items and to many builds that are absolutely obliterating end game content.

Items are scaling out of control compared to the relative ease of defeating enemies.

Shaper and Uber Elder encounters are way to easy, and this is the solution I'd like to see in the game.

The Solution:

Shaper fight: Double his HP pool. Make the slow anomalies deal pure damage that explode on impact, dealing 7,000-9,000 regardless of your build defenses.

Uber Elder: Double both of their HP, implement the anomolies explosion into this fight at perhaps a slower rate, but include them.

The reason I believe changes like this and others would be good additions to the game is because these are end game, final bosses. I want to fight impossible battles. This content should be beyond difficult for most players. You should have to be playing an extremely powerful build with the best items to do end game content.

Leave the insane items in the game. Boost the difficulty of all the creatures, particularly end game bosses.

This will boost the longevity of a league because players will play longer. This will also increase your sales for MTX, because players playing are more likely to buy your overpriced MTX's.

White, and yellow maps can remain the same difficulty, but red maps should have at least 100% increased difficulty (HP,damage, etc)

I think your perspective is completely F'd.

Those items have their place. Have you taken on a multimod cortex boss? No? Then you wouldn't know what endgame is.

Those bosses can hit for like 7k... those items exist to give you a chance in that level of content.

Your perspective is messed up because you think uber elder is still the toughest content, and it's not.

Le sigh.

Well, I won't argue that those items are fun, but uber-elder still is by far a stronger opponent then the Cortex. I tried him out today for the first time, made it to Phase 4 in a breeze, on a character which is set-up purely for map-clear and not bossing, struggling lightly to take down T16 bosses in a speedy manner.

So, absolutely not uber-elder viable. I had -max res and ele pen on it, which isn't any difference for my build anyway, I lack in defenses, Warlord's Mark is my sustain in maps and enough to do that.

So, given that, the fight is very easy as soon as you've picked better equipment then I have, mine is... 5 ex or so? Nothing special. A better helmet, properly crafted gloves and 35% movement boots for better mobility in the fight and he's a free-kill. Choose Scourge Arrow or Molten Strike and you'll phase him through the whole fight anyway. Pick any other high DPS build and it's a breeze as well.

Cortex is child's play compared to deep-delving bosses, and as soon as you know the mechanics also compared to uber-elder. He got a lot more dangerous mechanics and combinations available during the fight, able to one-hit most builds commonly.


So the point about a major rework stands still. I don't think removing any mods though is a good choice. Adjusting the scaling issue presented to reach end-game though is more affordable and intuitive if done right.
So my suggestion is to fully re-do the level requirement for crafting, which mods can roll at which level as well as ignoring the ilvl of the base, making crafting fully depend on character lvl and up to 100.
The strongest combinations are only able to be rolled starting at 95, forcing otherwise to have at max a T1 and T2 in combination, 100 unlocking the 'full T1 mirror item' possibility. Also the amount of mods being able to be rolled would need to be adjusted. This provides a far more smooth progression with steady upgrades compared to now. At the moment every single build ends at lvl 86 at most, uber-elder viability is easily achieved at 80 already if you're building towards him.

Another option would be to adjust damage-output and received damage based on character level, bosses getting an 'optimum' level barrier you've got to reach, otherwise getting penalized for running him this way. This could be done in a myriad of ways, the simple 'less damage' one being the easiest.
Other solutions would be to loose the stat-boosts of jewels or very strong effects instead, making the respective boss immune to those, being not powerful enough to affect this other-worldly creatures in the untrained state of your character.

Upon reaching the respective level though those fights would be comparatively easy though, allowing to get in 'early kills' which are very profitable for the loot, as well as target-farming them later without any penalty. Another upside of this would be to have them accessible for more players along the way.

To keep a proper challenge for those people who want to have it: Allowing to run shaper/elder/uber-elder and side-content in an 'empowered' state, boosting the drop-rate boss-specific items quite a bit while pushing them beyond what we have now, actual 'hard' content which keeps even the best builds occupied for a few minutes by buffing their health-pool while also introducing new mechanics in the fight.

Those solutions would probably please a lot more people then a 'simple' re-work which has a high tendency to break stuff along the way.

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Br4wn3 wrote:

The Problem:
Lately, I've noticed to many insane items and to many builds that are absolutely obliterating end game content.

Items are scaling out of control compared to the relative ease of defeating enemies.

Shaper and Uber Elder encounters are way to easy, and this is the solution I'd like to see in the game.

The Solution:

Shaper fight: Double his HP pool. Make the slow anomalies deal pure damage that explode on impact, dealing 7,000-9,000 regardless of your build defenses.

Uber Elder: Double both of their HP, implement the anomolies explosion into this fight at perhaps a slower rate, but include them.

The reason I believe changes like this and others would be good additions to the game is because these are end game, final bosses. I want to fight impossible battles. This content should be beyond difficult for most players. You should have to be playing an extremely powerful build with the best items to do end game content.

Leave the insane items in the game. Boost the difficulty of all the creatures, particularly end game bosses.

This will boost the longevity of a league because players will play longer. This will also increase your sales for MTX, because players playing are more likely to buy your overpriced MTX's.

White, and yellow maps can remain the same difficulty, but red maps should have at least 100% increased difficulty (HP,damage, etc)

First of all, you do not give examples of these "OP items that crush the game" please don't just ramble things and think you make a point. Try killing uber elder with explosive arrow for instance and then tell me how it goes. Just because some builds are good in this meta does not mean uber elder is trivialized. Wasting people's time reading this post.

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robmafia wrote:

also, the game is SUPPOSED TO BE competitive

lolmao

this is a singleplayer action rpg. you hack and slay your way through hordes of monster ai. how in the holy world of fuggggg is this game supposed to be competitive? who can farm more currency in the shortest amount of time or who can reach lvl 100 faster? wow, insane competitiveness.

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grogzor wrote:

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robmafia wrote:

also, the game is SUPPOSED TO BE competitive

lolmao

this is a singleplayer action rpg. you hack and slay your way through hordes of monster ai. how in the holy world of fuggggg is this game supposed to be competitive? who can farm more currency in the shortest amount of time or who can reach lvl 100 faster? wow, insane competitiveness.

lolwut?

1. it's not single player
2. you even mentioned ladders
3. hey, remember races?
4. pvp