how the fuck did a skill like winter orb enter this game?

"

c0815h wrote:

And what about RF?
Its the same.
But who cares.
Let people play how they want.
i am lazy and i love automatic builds.

People can play how they want.

Builds that are approaching automation should not control the meta. There are winter orb builds at or near the top of the leaderboards for literally every ascendancy in the flashback league, aside from saboteur.

Comments regarding "other people's builds ruining my fun" are childish and asinine. At the most basic level, when a skill so heavily outperforms other builds it makes playing those builds feel like arbitrarily self-imposed difficulty.

On the other hand, at the top end of the spectrum, running less efficient skills means getting less xp, killing less stuff, and having less buying power parity.

I dont think anyone would have problems with winter orb if it had performance comparable with RF or with totem builds. As it stands it is a heavily broken skill mechanically and needs to have significantly less efficient clear to be unbroken. Changes in damage alone are unlikely to fix this issue without making the skill useless; it needs mechanical change.

Winter Orb is the only skill I can still play and not randomly dying on Syndicate freezes etc. Just Push the skill button and survive 10 sec freezes, no other Skill can do that.

The worst part is that the skill is actually fun to use. This shows that anything wuth automated targeting is superior to anything a human player manually uses.

Reminds me when vaal power siphon was a thing with the giant AoE autoshooting projectiles and then chaining even further with the support. All dat in 1 click.

Kinda de same with arc traps/totems before nerf. You could just drop your traps and since the spell chains like crazy it was awesome clearspeed.

Same with VD poet's pen, another automated playstyle which used to be MASSIVELY overpowered for PvP too because the balls would seek out targets automatically.

And the you have another automated skill which is flicker strike, which is automated but uncontrollable, can't see shit, leaves monsters unkilled, requires specific uniques to work, puts you in melee range for ice nova/slams/explosions/DD which instantly kill you.

With all the previous ones not doing as good anymore, winter orb clearly shines, specially because running around ranged builds are still 200% safer than anything melee.

The problem is not the skill doing everything by itself, the problem is it having no downsides for doing so.

Let's see winter orb tags for start: Aoe, projectile, spell, cold, channeling, duration, Hit. So it already works with pretty much all supports in the game making it a great versatile skill.

Now how the skill work: you channel it for 1-2 seconds and then it kills everything automatically for 10-20 seconds dealing damage comparable to most single target spells.

So it needs to have some drawback to be in par with the other spells in the game. How can it be done? (this counts for totems, minions and every lay and forget skill that might be implemented in the game).

1- Reduce overall damage by a lot (in the case of wo really a lot), make so you are exchanging damage for adaptability.

2- Higher Cd on these type of skills (don't work for wo).

3- Higher mana cost (like 600+ mana per cast when fully linked)

How could 1 be done? Make so wo has a huge -% damage multiplier at 7 or less charges that only goes +% at 8 or more charges. This means that you need to be actually channeling to be dealing huge amounts of damage.

Or they could just deal with the elephant in the room... targeting.

Winter orb, and all its op predecessors also highlight 2 problems unrelated to the skills themselves:

1 - there is so much grinding involved that targetting anything x the huge number of hours played = pain. I will pay any cost in dps to avoid using targetting skills. There is too much clutter on the screen to allow enjoyable targetting. Additionally, If you pick things up off the floor, targetting halves your clearspeed. Dodging is essential in this game: targetted skills halve your clearspeed again.

2 - there is no balance around defences. Invest all your resources in defence, and ground effects, traps or oneshots will still kill you. There are only 2 defensive options if you like staying alive. Abuse LGOH and hope, or be somewhere else.

All this leads to only one shining build option: having ridiculous screen clearing dps.

Which in turn makes most of the creative/strategic aspects of the game lose their appeal. Not just to players.... How can a developer create a subtle, nuanced monster encounter when it will either be too strong (syndicate) or too weak (acts)?. How can they make a balanced new item when the raw stats of some skills are so far removed from others?

The game is too complex to get every skill balance right first go, but POE won't/can't hotfix because players would complain.

Fortunately there are solutions:

1) reduce the grinding/gating so hotfixes become more acceptable. Instead of 'you ruined my months of hard work', it becomes 'oh well, my op skill is now just normal, but it's not so much hard work to try a new build/skill'.

2) put an exponential curve on damage increases for both player and monster damage. (Like a reverse of armour mitigation) Oneshots from nowhere will be less frequent, and investing in variety of defences more rewarding. Clearspeed remains very rewarding but it is harder to achieve gamebreaking dps, and the opportunity cost for defences given up is higher.

3) Have less surface area. Less running around means players are not forced into clearspeed. melee/tanky builds immediately gain appeal. Movement skills become less game defining. Party play becomes an option for builds with low movespeed.

Genius? Drunken ramblings?....both at once?

Time will tell.

"

IIPheXII wrote:

The worst part is that the skill is actually fun to use.

yep, i also like my char looks like it's farting every 5 seconds.

Well, I finally played Winter Orb in Flashback. It is effective, it is fun, it actually allows you to loot efficiently and it looks good.

I could say the same for my Shimmeron arc trap last year.

It's all good. Don't fight the meta - if you don't like the play style choose something else.

"

Shagsbeard wrote:

You can get zombies to the point where you don't even need to click.

Not true!

... I still have to click on the loot.

As the clear speed meta rises, so will the fun of anything non-automated drop.

Why have combat when it doesn't matter for anything that isn't an Uber boss?

Either you or the mob die in one hit, and that's 99% of the game.

It's not worb that's broken, its the game constant descent into brainlessness.

Every build is just a different lightning effect, blowing up the whole screen. I mean, i may as well not need to press buttons at all, it's pointless anyway.

Still love it though, hope my "burn't out" status will go away for 4.0.