Development Manifesto: Game Balance in Path of Exile: Harvest

I just love the way GGG makes CoC with spells more and more OP every league. Love you GGG!

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Glacial Hammer's "Shattered Chains" threshold jewel will no longer drop

Thanks for killing Glacial Hammer too

Terrible balance philosophy by GGG, as always. Killing any hype for the league. If brands are totems by gameplay now, then its time to quit.

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NikushimiZanshin wrote:

We've made some changes to the Hierophant, Chieftain and Berserker.
Why the fk ain't scion mentioned here, they better buff the fk out of that useless ascendancy the only fking reason she was played last league was heralds, there is NO build for scion that is equal or better than a proper ascendancy. You are literally shooting yourself in the foot if u chose to play scion.
BUFF SCION PLEASE.

Ranger is the worst and least popular class lol

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Ascendancy Changes
We've made some changes to the Hierophant, Chieftain and Berserker that we'll be revealing soon. These are changes to one major notable on each tree, focusing on creating powerful individual mechanics that greatly influence how you play rather than overloading Ascendancies with a plethora of related stats.

Thank you for the welcome change in nerfing Berserker so that the only strong melee isn't only berserkers!

My feedback:

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Two handed vs. dual wielding

Attempting to make two handed weapons more competitive with dual wielding is a right call, and I do like associating twohanders with range and dual wielding with quickness. This won't be popular but I agree with removing the damage multiplier for dual wielding. However your solution is not enough since dual wielding has an advantage over 2H that is simply not possible to nullify: better attack speed. And attack speed is everything in a game where you're able to kill whole groups of monsters with one attack. Who would want to kill a pack in 0.5s when they can do it in 0.2s?
Higher attack speed also means higher character responsiveness which translates to safer mapping/boss fights since you can start dodging a bit sooner without having to cancel your attack. Lastly, having a shorter attack animation just feels better.

At the current state of the game dual wielding will always be superior to 2H due to the reasons above, so what can you do to address this? A few ideas from the top of my head (not necessarily good ones):

• Introduce skills that can be used exclusively with two handed melee weapons
• Establish twohanders' rightful place as the highest DPS dealers in the game - melee characters with low range and sluggish attack animation are the highest risk group and thus should be rewarded accordingly. Normally I would say with better defenses but with how the game is designed and most of the time that is oneshot or be oneshot (especially for close range builds!) there's no other choice but damage (this is coming from a person that despises playing melee builds so there's no bias here).
• Increase the baseline leech rate of a single leech instance for twohanded attacks. At least by 50-100%. You should not have to waste passive points just to make your recovery as good as the one of a fast attacking build (and again it won't ever be as good since worse attack speed means worse response to life lost that you want to start recovering as quickly as possible - the common denominator here once again is that Path of Exile is a game where you can expect taking a lethal blow at any moment).
• Reward scaling area of effect (which at all times should be way higher with two handed weapons than with one handed weapons) with more damage (maybe make some/all slam skills deal most damage close to the center of the impact so that getting more AoE increases the damage bonus in the center). Also give any explosion effects that improve clearspeed an AoE multiplier if it's been triggered in any way by a two-handed weapon.
• Introduce an AoE melee skill that has reverse AoE and damage scaling with attack speed - in order for this to work you'd have be able to achieve some ridiculous AoE values otherwise it'd end up being another never used skill
• Reduce the movement speed penalty for Cyclone while using a two-handed weapon.
• Scale Flicker Strike teleport range with weapon range/AoE.
• Scale some of the travel skills' movement distance with weapon range/AoE.
• Last but definitely not least, cancel the upcoming stun rework (more on that later).

Also to make melee skills more competitive in general (no matter how many hands) I feel like melee characters should run faster instead of having to rely on travel skills so much - this could be achieved by baking in a scalable (aka not #% increased, but instead something like +# to base movement speed) bonus to movement speed into rare weapon damage mods/typical melee unique weapons. Nothing compensates lower range like moving faster between packs.

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Stun changes

Reading this section made me actually angry. This has got to be the single worst change I've witnessed since I started playing. Let's break down a few random defense layers you can have and compare them to stun:

Dodge

• Passive defense, you don't need to do anything for it to be there (you can use a Quartz Flask if you need it to cap/improve your dodge chance)
• Inherently better for life builds due to how some keystones work
• Affects every single enemy
• Useless against damage over time
• Requires little investment (if you're a life build) for moderate results (Acrobatics & Phase Acrobatics)
• Requires moderate to heavy investment to become permanently dodge capped, especially for spells (passives and/or dodge mods on gear, weapon choice is pretty much unaffected though)
• Best case scenario - attack and spell hits against you deal no damage 75% of the time
• There are map mods that reduce its effect but don't completely nullify it

% Physical damage reduction

• Passive defense, you don't need to do anything for it to be there (if you rely on endurance charges you might have to use a warcry from a safe distance or kill an enemy but there's a lot of ways to generate them passively)
• Affects every single enemy and non-killable entry hazards that deal physical damage (like Lab traps)
• Also reduces physical damage over time
• Requires moderate investment for moderate results (Endurance charges nodes and/or ascendancy class, for example Jugg if you go with endurance charges or Elementalist for Chaos Golem which grants about 10-30%+ phys reduction depending the amount of Golems you have). This level of investment is often enough to prevent getting killed by some of the bosses' oneshot attacks (like Shaper slam) for many builds
• Monsters deal #% of phys as ele damage map mod reduces, but does not nullify its effect

Stun

• Active defense, in order for it to be effective the following has to happen:

1. The enemy must be targettable (which is becoming more and more of a popular solution to artificially make the fight harder)
2. (melee only) You have to come close to the enemy
3. You have to click the correct enemy
4. The enemy must not run away from your attack range or stun/kill you during your attack animation
4. You must pass the accuracy check
5. You must pass the stun threshold check
6. The stun must be long enough for the enemy to be unable to run away/retaliate before you repeat the previous steps

• Affects only the enemies in your range
• Requires no investment against the weakest enemies (you instantly kill the enemies that would have been stunned rendering stun completely useless in this scenario)
• Requires heavy investment against any meaningful enemy (passives, gear, having to use a particular skill, having to use a slow, heavy hitting weapon)
• Some bosses are completely immune to stuns - Unwavering (Atziri, Minotaur etc.)
• There's a common map mod ranging from white to red tier that makes all monsters immune to stun

Giving bosses and even RARES an unbeatable mechanic that renders your (already very flawed) defense mechanic your survival depends on and how much you have to specifically build around worthless makes you question how much thought was put into this decision. This is actually what the "monsters cannot be stunned" mod should be working like, not a baseline mechanic for every single enemy! Again I would never even consider playing a stun-based build before the new league much less now. RIP meme stun videos.

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Purposeful Harbinger nerf

An understandable decision with poor execution. Herald stacking playstyle, while horribly overpowered, was a breath of fresh air in the game. The sort of change you went with effectively deletes this playstyle and what I believe should have been done was simply reducing the magnitude of Purposeful Harbinger (even by up to 75%) which would result in Harold builds becoming significantly weaker, but still playable and very much viable. Or instead nerf the node by a lesser amount, but make Purposeful Harbinger not apply to auras gained from allies.
Unfortunately the easiest approach has been chosen.


Of course I'm aware my final judgement might change with patch notes but so far it doesn't look very good.

TLDR please don't make the bosses rely on fixed invulnerability mechanics.

Ehhh... I'm unhappy. I just created plan for Witch Storm Brand with Archmage... There goes a lot from my dps... It was only 600k at lvl 100 so I will not be able to do hardes bosses just bcs I'm not that good... wohoo...

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SaiyanZ wrote:

You have to compare Herald of Purity to the other Heralds/Auras. 12% more phys damage is massive for 25% reservation. It will add more damage for 25% reservation than any other aura on a phys based or phys to ele conversion build.

12 % more Phys Damage is massive ? In which world ?

- War Banner makes it so the Enemy TAKES 11% increased Phys Dmg THAT is massive and that is for only 10% Mana Reservation ...

- Flesh and Stone makes it so the Enemy TAKES 16% increased Phys Dmg THAT is massive and that is 25% Mana Reservation as well.

- Skitterbots basicly give you a 18% Shock Effect and that is for admittily a bit more 35% Mana Reservation but still stronger.

Now on to ... 'compare it to other Heralds'

Except for the Herald of Ash, and the Herald of Agony which serves a compltly diffrent Use then all the other Heralds, all the Heralds give you Flat Damage of the Dmg Type they are used for. BUT Herald of Ash gets a 'gain X% of your Phys Dmg as Fire Dmg'.

I KNOW that this might not be the final State of Herald of Purity, but if it is, it is completly useless! Evene Skitterbots are better!

All you idiots saying people should git gud and adapt are basically saying people should just follow the meta more and more, and reduce build diversity.

That is what gitting gud is in this game, copy paste the new meta, and there will be one.