Why nerf dual wielding? Whats the point of it now?

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Rekt_that wrote:

Attacking the person isn't a counter argument

What argument am I supposed to counter? The entire post is just a bloated version of "lol melee, fuck GGG". The only part of the post that isn't just sarcastic condescending bullshit is listing the 4 nerfs which on it's own doesn't qualify as an argument. For that he would have had to show why those nerfs made melee unplayable. But obviously he couldn't do that because they didn't.
People were whining about that 2 handed crafting nerf back then when it affected like 100 players in the world and now we got an entire league with massive buffs to two handed play styles and powerful crafting on top of it. GGG gives, GGG takes. So much for that "history lesson".

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VolcanoElixir wrote:

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Again, this game was designed with trade as a major design pillar. The added SSF as sort of a medal for those who didn't trade either but the game is not balanced
around it and never will be.

I always felt that it wasn't entirely accurate that the game is designed 100% for trade. I mean, we're playing an SSF-focused league now (to the point where one of its major design flaws is that it has no compatibility with party play). One of the things that set PoE apart from D3 so many years ago was that it was more friendly towards actually playing the game as opposed to D3's much greater focus on making the AH necessary.

Despite that I would say Melee tends to receive very anti-SSF changes for some reason, like the Dual Strike jewel change this league or the removal of flat on gems that makes Melee more gear dependent.

POE was never really party friend, I've seen a statistic posted here some time ago which showed that the average party size is like 1,1 or something like that. So it's basically a single player game with trade.
Yes, having to remove the flat damage from some skills hurts SSF but as I said, it's not balanced around SSF. There also are a couple of skills left with flat damage on them so if you want to play melee in SSF, just start out with one of them and switch later. Double Strike for example still gets good amounts of flat damage and tribal fury is no longer locked behind a golden oil.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

That being said, i'd be hard pressed to find a melee skill that isn't viable. You can literally beat the game up to AL8 Sirus and Uber Elder with 10C unique weapons and any skill gem you like. It's just a matter of knowing how to build properly. A skill not showing on POE Ninja doesn't define viability. It just shows the popularity for the 0,0001% of players the feel the urge to do that mindless grind. And since that grind is mindless (and takes a hell of a lot of time) it's fairly easy to see why they gravitate towards certain type of skills which is usually braind dead, overpowered one button gameplay type of skills. Right now it's VD Necro, next league after it got massacred there will be something else.

I would say that's a bit of exaggeration - viability is more about practicality than popularity. Is it possible to kill A8 sirus with unpopular skills? Sure.

I just looked up a8 sirus slam kill - the first video was HC and made purely for the sake of doing it just to do it. Not only was it slow as hell, it was also an older iteration where the fight was more reasonable in difficulty. It wasn't a matter of it being a worthwhile alternative, but simply to show that despite the DISADVANTAGE of using a skill poorly suited to do it, it could still be done IF someone really wanted to.

VD popularity isn't new, as poet's pen vd was probably the one build that escaped the nerf beating for the longest time. Spellslinger helped give it new life post poet's pen nerf, but even then its popularity has more to do with the lack of options available that scale up well enough to deal with bosses. Given their health has been buffed several times and have since gotten a more multiplier to that health through A8, it's not practical to spend an extensive amount of time fighting one target. You'll need to do it several hundred times as a typical player.

I revised my delirium born hollow palm a second time with fresh eyes. In delirium he was about 200k shy of 4mil dps - and that was practical damage not every potential buff possible. Updated for Harvest, he lost almost 1 million, practically a third of his output because of a combination of nerfs. Now mind you, his gearing wasn't cheap, but a reasonable cost.

Now, take into account the defensive nerfs that also accompanied that, it's not that I can't kill a8 sirus with him, but that he's lost so much power there's no fun in it. He struggled enough with top end content like 100% delirium, even ran out of portals just reaching the door in 100% delirium guardian maps, he wasn't overpowered considering the content.

On the other hand, the herald stacker I built afterward had gear that valued more than double. She was far better suited to fighting omni and kosis but still died when the spawning packs lagged so much that player input froze. But overall, she was the first character I could run through t14-16 and not be worried of a sudden spike damage death as long as I paid enough attention to the map mods.

Everyone knew the herald stacks were getting nerfed, and its unplayable now, at least by design. My hollow palm was nothing more than a workhorse, only built out of necessity to deal with increasing monster health.

If scaling damage up for bosses wasn't so difficult, we'd see a lot more variety in builds.

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

That being said, i'd be hard pressed to find a melee skill that isn't viable. You can literally beat the game up to AL8 Sirus and Uber Elder with 10C unique weapons and any skill gem you like. It's just a matter of knowing how to build properly. A skill not showing on POE Ninja doesn't define viability. It just shows the popularity for the 0,0001% of players the feel the urge to do that mindless grind. And since that grind is mindless (and takes a hell of a lot of time) it's fairly easy to see why they gravitate towards certain type of skills which is usually braind dead, overpowered one button gameplay type of skills. Right now it's VD Necro, next league after it got massacred there will be something else.

I would say that's a bit of exaggeration - viability is more about practicality than popularity. Is it possible to kill A8 sirus with unpopular skills? Sure.

I just looked up a8 sirus slam kill - the first video was HC and made purely for the sake of doing it just to do it. Not only was it slow as hell, it was also an older iteration where the fight was more reasonable in difficulty. It wasn't a matter of it being a worthwhile alternative, but simply to show that despite the DISADVANTAGE of using a skill poorly suited to do it, it could still be done IF someone really wanted to.

VD popularity isn't new, as poet's pen vd was probably the one build that escaped the nerf beating for the longest time. Spellslinger helped give it new life post poet's pen nerf, but even then its popularity has more to do with the lack of options available that scale up well enough to deal with bosses. Given their health has been buffed several times and have since gotten a more multiplier to that health through A8, it's not practical to spend an extensive amount of time fighting one target. You'll need to do it several hundred times as a typical player.

I revised my delirium born hollow palm a second time with fresh eyes. In delirium he was about 200k shy of 4mil dps - and that was practical damage not every potential buff possible. Updated for Harvest, he lost almost 1 million, practically a third of his output because of a combination of nerfs. Now mind you, his gearing wasn't cheap, but a reasonable cost.

Now, take into account the defensive nerfs that also accompanied that, it's not that I can't kill a8 sirus with him, but that he's lost so much power there's no fun in it. He struggled enough with top end content like 100% delirium, even ran out of portals just reaching the door in 100% delirium guardian maps, he wasn't overpowered considering the content.

On the other hand, the herald stacker I built afterward had gear that valued more than double. She was far better suited to fighting omni and kosis but still died when the spawning packs lagged so much that player input froze. But overall, she was the first character I could run through t14-16 and not be worried of a sudden spike damage death as long as I paid enough attention to the map mods.

Everyone knew the herald stacks were getting nerfed, and its unplayable now, at least by design. My hollow palm was nothing more than a workhorse, only built out of necessity to deal with increasing monster health.

If scaling damage up for bosses wasn't so difficult, we'd see a lot more variety in builds.

Tbh, I believe all those complaints about build diversity and difficulty are mostly a matter of expectations. The question is, how do you expect a boss fight to be? Do you think it's good and healthy for the game if end game bosses get phased/killed in <5 seconds? Or do you think it's good for the game if End Game bosses actually require practice and skill and take 5+ minutes to finish. I definitely favor the latter and from that perspective I can't see anything wrong with GGGs balance decisions. Yes they have a long way ahead but they are on the right track. If you favor the former, then I expect this game won't be very fun for you in the future because it seems to me that GGG want's to get away from that.

You say you no longer have fun because your cycloner now has "only" 3 million dps and that it's too much of a drag now. Most of my builds have 50-30% of that and I can still do bosses comfortably by my standards.

People are used to being at a certain power level and losing that feels bad, even though everything but delirium and deep delve is perfectly easy with around 1 million sustained DPS.

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lolbreeze wrote:

People are used to being at a certain power level and losing that feels bad, even though everything but delirium and deep delve is perfectly easy with around 1 million sustained DPS.

Which is most likely the reason why GGG doesn't just go and turn all more multipliers in the game into increased modifiers. Just imagine the outcry. Hence the small and slow steps, nerfing everything one after another league for league. VD Spellslingers and BL Miners are probably the next.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

Tbh, I believe all those complaints about build diversity and difficulty are mostly a matter of expectations. The question is, how do you expect a boss fight to be? Do you think it's good and healthy for the game if end game bosses get phased/killed in <5 seconds? Or do you think it's good for the game if End Game bosses actually require practice and skill and take 5+ minutes to finish. I definitely favor the latter and from that perspective I can't see anything wrong with GGGs balance decisions. Yes they have a long way ahead but they are on the right track. If you favor the former, then I expect this game won't be very fun for you in the future because it seems to me that GGG want's to get away from that.

You say you no longer have fun because your cycloner now has "only" 3 million dps and that it's too much of a drag now. Most of my builds have 50-30% of that and I can still do bosses comfortably by my standards.

100 Conquerors defeated - That was the VERY LAST task I needed to complete 40/40 last league.

I played more PoE than I ever have, and I originally expected to stop as soon as I hit 24.

I think you're not looking at the bigger picture here. How many bosses do you think a single player kills as they pursue the league challenges. How many maps do you think players have to complete just for a single cycle of conquerors?

When you're looking at over 50 maps for just a single cycle of all the conquerors, does anyone want to spend over 5 minutes fighting one boss?

The reality is even with his delirium level of damage boss fights weren't instantly over, and sirus has time sinks built in. And at damage threshold, I still failed 2 A8 sirus fights - it would take far more damage to hit a guaranteed win threshold. Now mind you I did that same fight deathless with the same character in the same league, as well as in the previous league on a different character with a completely different playstyle (also deathless).

Also, 100 conqueror's later, and only 1 hunter and 1 awakener orb dropped. 3 awakened gems dropped, but none were the high value type. Now remember, for each conqueror that's also maps to spawn conqueror, as well as several maps afterward just to face the conqueror.

And like I mentioned before, it's not like he even did enough damage for the highest content 100% delirium was extremely likely to end in failure and did more than once. So how could he be "too strong" if he couldn't even do all the content reliably?

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

Tbh, I believe all those complaints about build diversity and difficulty are mostly a matter of expectations. The question is, how do you expect a boss fight to be? Do you think it's good and healthy for the game if end game bosses get phased/killed in <5 seconds? Or do you think it's good for the game if End Game bosses actually require practice and skill and take 5+ minutes to finish. I definitely favor the latter and from that perspective I can't see anything wrong with GGGs balance decisions. Yes they have a long way ahead but they are on the right track. If you favor the former, then I expect this game won't be very fun for you in the future because it seems to me that GGG want's to get away from that.

You say you no longer have fun because your cycloner now has "only" 3 million dps and that it's too much of a drag now. Most of my builds have 50-30% of that and I can still do bosses comfortably by my standards.

100 Conquerors defeated - That was the VERY LAST task I needed to complete 40/40 last league.

I played more PoE than I ever have, and I originally expected to stop as soon as I hit 24.

I think you're not looking at the bigger picture here. How many bosses do you think a single player kills as they pursue the league challenges. How many maps do you think players have to complete just for a single cycle of conquerors?

When you're looking at over 50 maps for just a single cycle of all the conquerors, does anyone want to spend over 5 minutes fighting one boss?

The reality is even with his delirium level of damage boss fights weren't instantly over, and sirus has time sinks built in. And at damage threshold, I still failed 2 A8 sirus fights - it would take far more damage to hit a guaranteed win threshold. Now mind you I did that same fight deathless with the same character in the same league, as well as in the previous league on a different character with a completely different playstyle (also deathless).

Also, 100 conqueror's later, and only 1 hunter and 1 awakener orb dropped. 3 awakened gems dropped, but none were the high value type. Now remember, for each conqueror that's also maps to spawn conqueror, as well as several maps afterward just to face the conqueror.

And like I mentioned before, it's not like he even did enough damage for the highest content 100% delirium was extremely likely to end in failure and did more than once. So how could he be "too strong" if he couldn't even do all the content reliably?

I don't think that's the bigger picture. It's just the perspective of one player type. The type that want's to grind out all the content there is as easy and quickly as possible.

How about seeing it from GGGs perspective for example? 40/40, level 100 und 100% delirium Guardian maps are the end of endgame, there is nothing afterwards. Do you think GGG is happy with the fact that lot's of players actually accomplish all of that after like 2 weeks when a league is supposed to take 3 months?

Then there is also other types of players, for example the type who isn't playing the game dead set on reaching a specific goal and considers everything on the way there to be "work" i.e. something you just want to get over with asap. But the type who runs maps because he enjoys doing that and who fights endgame bosses because he enjoys doing that too, not just because of the rewards. GGG could put Conqueror, Uber Elder, Sirus, Atziri fights etc into the game without any rewards at all and I would happily fight them over and over again, because it's fun doing that.

There are so many different people involved with this game, all with different expectations and favors you can't possibly satisfy them all. The current game tries that and it doesn't really work. Most skills are at a powerlevel that's good for players like me who want a challenge and play for fun, while a handful of skills are so overpowered that they can satisfy the "easy one button gameplay" faction.

But now the "easy one button gameplay" faction is complaining about limited build diversity. So what's GGG supposed to do here? The way I see it there are 3 ways. Leave things as they are so we have 2 parties, both of which aren't perfectly happy. Or cater the game towards one side and repel the other. It's a lose lose scenario imo, no matter what they do, someone will be unhappy about it.

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

When you're looking at over 50 maps for just a single cycle of all the conquerors, does anyone want to spend over 5 minutes fighting one boss?

Sorry to jump in as i'm somewhat lost in you guys's discussion here but just to cherry pick this line, personally I don't like major gates on content but I absolutely like 5 minutes fighting a boss with the right mechanics.

Getting to a boss you worked hard to spawn then instantly deleting it feels very anticlimactic to me, the fight itself is supposed to be part of the reward and I can't help but feel the PoE players at large have lost that over the years with the boss just being seen as a means to an end.

Also 3s boss kills is pretty much why boss drops are weighted to be absolute garbage :/

GGG detects fun and nerfs it. They do it all the time

It took me till a day or two before league end to finish that 40/40, and I doubt I'll ever do it again -- the sheer grind between 36 and 40 is extensive.

Of course players have different expectations, but most players can't push 40/40 in the first month period, and most don't enjoy the game to a point where they can level multiple level 100s.

The reason I've been using myself as an example is because despite that 40/40 there's still a massive gap between me and the few that do push the outer limits in the first month or two. Most of the player base doesn't even make it to the first 12 challenges as is.

So when nerfs get rolled out, the lower you go down, the more dramatic the effect.

But I find it ironic you have this impression there are these handful of skills "overpowered" - especially as I gave an example of nerfing something that was (herald stack) vs one that was not (physical impale cyclone).

People hit 100 in the first week, but most won't even hit 95 by league's end. A few folks are over a mirror in the first month but most will barely see an exalt or few by leagues end.

Physical Impale hollow palm cyclone wasn't overpowered - it was popular because it performed well enough to "attempt" the higher tiers of content.

Herald stack was overpowered because it was feasible to make it nearly unkillable and still achieve damage levels that typical setups could not. It wasn't even a "skill" but specific combinations of notables, jewels and gems that synergized insanely well.

By the time I had found most of the pieces to build my herald stack most of the player base had already played it and finished their league. I built it specifically to understand the experience instead of playing the echo chamber and complaining about it without ever experiencing it first hand, especially knowing it wouldn't be the same if I built in standard after the changes hit.

The game has pushed players into higher damage when they buffed monster health. It's been buffed at least a few times since I started, and takes a lot more damage as you climb the tiers. I mean when running a8 throws a hefty multiplier to monster life AND increases map modifiers people want to do more damage to compensate not less.

In simplest terms, making fights last longer doesn't equate to fun when one is expected to repeat those fights hundreds of times in pursuit of league challenges.

Take Siris critiques - plenty of folks who can complete it say it's not an enjoyable experience, especially in comparison to the fight it replaced, uber elder. When people learned how to reliably do it successfully, they made it dramatically harder but even less enjoyable than it already was.

Take this hardcore default attack a8 sirus kill :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKEePpBlXQ4

That's over 40 minutes to just get some gloves and a watchstone. That wasn't "fun" but simply showing it can be done. If anything its a sarcastic take on nerfs. Just because the fight is longer doesn't make it exciting or more enjoyable.

Now, going back to that hollow palm - how am I going to enjoy doing the same content in a much weaker state when he died plenty when he had better damage and more reliable defenses?

My original legion starforge is in an ok state, but I also finally gave him a headhunter since I finally got one after multiple leagues pursuing it. Running that same headhunter on the hollow palm had dismal results, and I couldn't even finish one round of all 5 bosses in the emblem encounter.

Point is, you can't write it off as just making fights longer when so much of the content revolves around timers. Incursion, breachstones, breaches, delirium, abyss, zana missions,legion, even blight maps place focus on time.