The recent build/ascendancy balance is hilarious

You´re right about balance. Ranged characters are not ideal boss killers here bcos of game design.
Arenas are too small and screen is full of clutter (many on death effects, DoTs, hostile environment) to dodge manually all the time while dealing enough damage.
You are rather challenged by environment not the boss itself.
Game has also become rather race simulator than Arpg game.
Delirium mechanic has showing that perfectly (time limited content is just awful idea).
They have also made many things overcomplicated (new atlas, jewel system, crafting, past league mechanics).

I haven´t played bow characters for a while but if I were you I would probably play physical based build (impale and new cluster jewels) or smth with chill / freeze and Raider ascendancy bcos of Avatar of the chase avoidance potential (you still need to deal with dots / on kill effect and random one shots though).
Or full dodge with high armour (iron reflex) + VMS build eventually.

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Rakiii wrote:

Game has also become rather race simulator than Arpg game.
Delirium mechanic has showing that perfectly (time limited content is just awful idea).
They have also made many things overcomplicated (new atlas, jewel system, crafting, past league mechanics).

The "game has become"? Last league we had no timers and no rushing. While I'm opposed to timers as a mechanic, I'm totally OK with a league here and there with timed mechanics. I don't let those leagues define the game.

Complexity is what draws a lot of players to this game.

That said, I find the current atlas A LOT simpler that the previous one. The sextant blocking, elder/shaper influence spawning/blocking were just a pain in the ass. The new atlas is VERY stright forward, and tells you anything you need to know.

Also, the jewel system isn't complicated at all. It's just "more" passive tree.

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demonstorm wrote:

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HeManNZ wrote:

A well built deadeye with barrage or barrage support should delete bosses. Build around aborix and voidfletcher, and its easy game.

Yea, in theory it is decent. How are you supposed to facetank bosses as a squishy class though? The fact that bow builds NEED to resort to barrage/point blank shenanigans to deal decent single target damage is retarded in the first place.

In practice, not only the damage sucks, but you die in 2 seconds. How many leagues since you played deadeye? Because I only see a slayer and an occultist on your account.

you mean you die in 0.002 sec.

4.2k hp - complaining that he dies to 2 hits. KEKW.

Something had to be done tho, the builds people put out were just destroying content with very little "time" invested in gearing the character. (Still true if you join the meta train)

Problem I have at the moment are the random 1-shots that are all over the place. I do enjoy a technically challenged encounters were you get punished for misstakes etc. But death in PoE comes a bit quickly for my taste even in "normal" encounters (not guardiands or T16 bosses etc). Sometimes I wonder why I even build defence at all when packs of blue mobs can kill me even with 75% chaos resistance and 7-9K EHP lol (talking about death in 0.5 seconds here, quicker than you humanly can respond to activate flasks or skills).

If a high tier boss happends to kill me when I load a map with insane mods, who cares, but theese 0,5 sec deaths.. grrr :)

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Aynix wrote:

4.2k hp - complaining that he dies to 2 hits. KEKW.

Who let you out of your twitch cage?

Right now the game is totally divided between following the meta and demolishing content, and everyone else bothering to try other things.

The vast complexity of gear and tree and skill interactions was always going to lead to extremely overpowered builds. To keep things challenging, they have to make 95% of builds underpowered, and people naturally funnel to the few remaining builds.

Its a lame model overall, makes most skills worthless, and trying anything other than the meta an exercise in futility, inefficiency and pointless.

Still, you are all still playing it and Im posting here so there is something to it.

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trixxar wrote:

Right now the game is totally divided between following the meta and demolishing content, and everyone else bothering to try other things.

The vast complexity of gear and tree and skill interactions was always going to lead to extremely overpowered builds. To keep things challenging, they have to make 95% of builds underpowered, and people naturally funnel to the few remaining builds.

Its a lame model overall, makes most skills worthless, and trying anything other than the meta an exercise in futility, inefficiency and pointless.

Still, you are all still playing it and Im posting here so there is something to it.

well, when you're starving you gotta choose the rotten bread over no bread at all, so there's that.

PoE has no competitors at all(comparing diablo,wolcen and other arpgs to poe's current complexity is like comparing earth and water, don't bother).

So it isn't like they are forced to invest time and money into balancing items/mechanics/class on a larger scale since ppl will keep returning until theres something remotely complex like poe, hopefully less of a clusterfuck, and more balanced overall.

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gabpla111 wrote:

well, when you're starving you gotta choose the rotten bread over no bread at all, so there's that.

PoE has no competitors at all(comparing diablo,wolcen and other arpgs to poe's current complexity is like comparing earth and water, don't bother).

So it isn't like they are forced to invest time and money into balancing items/mechanics/class on a larger scale since ppl will keep returning until theres something remotely complex like poe, hopefully less of a clusterfuck, and more balanced overall.

Agree mostly, but PoE is still a starvation diet. Forget who said it a couple leagues ago, but they basically pointed out that all builds feel the same. They feel weak till you overgear then you press a button and the screen dissappears. Whether spell, ranged, or melee, it all ends up the same.

Movement skill -> kill screen -> movement skill -> kill screen.

There is little feeling of difference.

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trixxar wrote:

Agree mostly, but PoE is still a starvation diet. Forget who said it a couple leagues ago, but they basically pointed out that all builds feel the same. They feel weak till you overgear then you press a button and the screen dissappears. Whether spell, ranged, or melee, it all ends up the same.

Movement skill -> kill screen -> movement skill -> kill screen.

There is little feeling of difference.

Been playing a d2 remaster mod in grim dawn and I can agree with this completely. They power creeped everything too much and it all started with ascendancies. When I first saw ascendancies, I said to myself those can't be the final iterations because they're too damn powerful. Turns out they were and they buffed them more than two fold since, in addition to all other power creep. I'm not sure if this is the resulting product they were hoping for (considering they buffed monsters health significantly to compensate, just a band aid really), but they can't turn back without losing like half of the established player base.