Reddit Mods are being GGG shills about the Purposeful Harbinger Nerf

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This is an angry post because I am angry. You know I am angry because I am making a new post instead of commenting on Bex's post. I want everyone to know how angry I am.

It's one thing to completely gut my build. It's another to treat me like an idiot while doing so.

The former usually not done because changing the rules to destroy those people who were winning the game is generally reserved for trollish party games and communist dictatorships. A tournament which suddenly bans all Koreans half way through would be treated as a joke, not a needed balance change.

This is especially egregious when some of the players have invested a hundred hours of work into theory-crafting, farming, and making the build, and the said balance change involves destroying that work.

That said, the former can only destabilize the self-contained economy, demotivate being the best, and make a joke out of the notion of competition. How can players compete seriously when being the best is punished, when the rules can change at a moment's notice? It can only discourage theory crafting, punish build sharing, and encourage paranoia. After all, who knows whether my build will be nerfed next?

I don't feel the need to go in-depth why the former is a bad idea. If I can figure this out, I expect GGG, whom I've drawn inspirations from, to already know this. I expect GGG to know that the former sets a precedence and has consequences far more long-reaching and worse than having a supposedly overpowered "build" (quotation marks lifted from announcement) in a league with the most build diversity.

From now on, whenever I want to make a build that I intend to play for more than a day, I'll have to ask myself: should I really put in 2 weeks of work to get it online when it might randomly go poof?

I won't go into the former. But the latter? The latter offends me.

This change was made because some vocal amount of people who base all their information off of some 500 ex build in a video, who has never played the build, decided that it was OP and cried loud enough. And GGG caved. But because they are unable to actually put in the significant amount of work necessary to actually make a reasonable change - a completely understandable situation given the quarantine - they went with a band-aid fix after deciding that destroying people's efforts is fine if enough people cries out about public benefits.

Since this is the case, could GGG not also insult our intelligence and just admit this truthfully? None of these excuses about what was "intended" and what players "don't think as auras".

First of all, the game is never crystal clear about the mechanics. Nine tenth of the interactions are obtuse and undocumented, half of them by design! GGG has always hidden information from us and encouraged us to experiment to figure out the rules of the game.

Does anyone remember GGG's response when it was finally revealed that "prefixes cannot be changed" overrides scouring orbs after a year of misinformation, allowing select players to make 50 ex bows for 10 ex? "Working as intended. Keep experimenting to find new ways to exploit the game!" Why should we when what we figure out can be immediately destroyed?

Second of all, if the passive were originally supposed to only affect skills, it would have been implemented as such. All the aura buff effects on the normal tree explicitly say "auras from skills", and only affects aura from skills. This one doesn't. It clearly was meant to work with ALL auras.

Finally and most egregiously, "things [...] players don't think as auras". I'd like to believe that players are capable of understanding the notion of aura, and being able to associate it with the words "you and nearby allies". Many headhunter buffs are clearly aura. We can clearly see the rares having effects on nearby mobs. sNot to mention, the Summon Harbinger of Time skill literally says "create a slipstream AURA".

So now we have this unenviable situation for everyone involved. Builds are destroyed. People are demotivated. Trust is lost. And what has happened? GGG has changed one confusing system into another and expects us to figure out how things work now? Figuring out the rules of the game is only fun when it doesn't change at random intervals, unless we are playing the [glorious] game of Mao (I've been told that this is unclear. I'm referring to the card game, not person.).

What is a skill anyways? This doesn't say "skills from players". If my spectres give an aura. Does that count? Consecrated Path creates a consecrated ground. Does that count? The slipstream aura from Harbinger of Time seems like it is a skill cast by the Harbinger, so does that count? Unwavering faith is currently affected by "increased effect of Non-curse Auras from your skills". Does that count?

After completing ruining all out work at figuring out these kind of things, are we expected to try to figure out the rules of this new game?

I can accept Golems, or tailwind boots, being removed from the aura pool. GGG can justify them as bugs. But there are limits. GGG cannot obfuscate half the rules of the game, encourage us to figure them out, and then claim we are abusing unintended mechanics.

Thus ends my angry post, but not my anger. I've spent the last two weeks theory-crafting, farming, experimenting, and slowly putting together my Guardian build. It just got to 7k ES. Now, it's going to be a bad version of a Smite-Ball Lightning build.

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innervation wrote:

Shills, or you didn't read the rulebook?

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/wiki/rules

7. Refrain from Posting Duplicate Threads about the Same Topic Within a Short Period of Time

I know, I know, your angry post is special and different than the other ones already posted.

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demonstorm wrote:

You're pathetic. The build will still be extremely broken and by far the strongest build in this league and you cry over a BUG FIX. Holy s***, go play mario cart if this game is too hard for you even using aura stacking.