For me, Archmage kills caster- and Warcries kill melee-diversity.

@raics: YES! I remember those days where you could and almost always had multiple ACTIVE skills in builds rather than a single main skill.

Starting a chain like poison, then fire, then melee to finish off big bosses. Back when f-in PIETY was the final boss of the game.

God I miss the days of the old CoC set ups where you could have 5-6 different spells all launching at the same time from out of your ass

"

raics wrote:

Sure, I agree there are more skills that can be used if you really want to, but I don't think it's good they're being carried by some go-to broken setups, because the moment you take away the training wheels they will crash and burn. So, if the gap between skills is high you have a longterm problem, you can't nerf strong tools that affect skills globally when top tier ones get too powerful, because you'll render the weaker ones unusable.

Near-perfect balance is hard, but nobody's really asking for that, in most cases we aren't talking about exotic interactions that make some skills powerful and others weak. It's simple numbers - damage, coverage and speed, anyone can play with those until they hit something that feels good.

I think people generally underestimate how difficult balance must be given those 'exotic interactions'. There are a lot of them now. And the game keeps growing with no end in sight.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

@sidtherat: you made me a believer in certain respects when it comes to the numbers of certain skills being strictly unacceptable when compared to similar skills. I just always make a build until it reaches 20+ million dps so I never really cared if a skill was dealing 1/4 of the damage a different skill might produce.

However, the tradeoff of ground slam vs heavy strike is that you have to play ground slam along with call of steel...which to me is a complete pain in the ass and feels terrible. Personal opinion, not a statement of fact.

well.. i compared the 'base damage' numbers only. the damage you get from gems + mandatory investment into Strike skill (+strike source so you hit things AND splash source)

Ground Slam was better already. then you can ofc add the warcry stuff, call of steel stuff and suddenly Ground Slam deals like 5 times the damage

but the numbers ive quoted are for BASE damage only.

note: shockwave support changes these calcs a bit, because it is AOE + single target support in one. but.. noone uses shockwave (no idea why) and it doesnt work with sword/axes (this might be the reason)

"

innervation wrote:

I think people generally underestimate how difficult balance must be given those 'exotic interactions'. There are a lot of them now. And the game keeps growing with no end in sight.

yes.. and no.

there are not that many of these. take any 'busted' build of previous year or two, and there are just a few mechanics that stand out:

- %effect. curse effect, aura effect, effect effect. why? because these effects are strong enough on their own to warrant their use. if you suddenly can make them twice as strong.. no wonder they are used

- -%reservation. you have strong 'effects'? now you can have 20 of them. just like that. these two multiply with eachother.

- invulnerable/very strong minions/proxy damage dealers. not only it is bonkers damage it is also a damage soaking wall of meat

- archmage and mana scaling in general. GGG tried to make people use mana for something else than aura reservation.. they tried REAL HARD. so here we are. it takes pretty much no investment to get 3k+ mana

- various stupid 'replica' items: Replica Alberon's is outrageously stupid. like WTF? pair of boots providing 90% damage of a build? like seriously WTF? you can make any attack build with these and youll be hard pressed to fail. same with Transcendence.

then there are the usual 'they deserve to be strong on no investment and mechanicaly sound' builds/mechanics like damage over time. these scale from bread crumbs, multiply on sun rays and get defences via positive thinking. there is a reason why most starters are DoTs. and why BV poison is so strong. because you take something that is strong with no investment and actually invest into it..


in all: nuke -%mana reserved and %effect from orbit and.. you have a much healthier game. these two make for MOST stupid shit we see in a game nowadays

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

@torstein: thanks for that. It's been a while since my HS build. I never really had a problem with the knockback but at the same time I have already mentioned I am not a zoom zoom player most of the time so the lag from the knockback never bothered me.

It can also be said that HS deficiencies have only really been highlighted now after the introduction of the Call of Steel abuse. And the problem is still "new". Historically GGG doesn't do what they consider "major" tweaks until the next league. But they do regularly TRY to update skills, just a few need love and haven't seen the love in a long long time.

All of the arguments that have been made comparing HS to ground slam could have been made about all the slams before their massive rework recently. It's just a pattern of buffing and changing, while highlighting other unexpected discrepancies.

It's shame that skills get neglected this bad over the years. Heavy Strike has good single target potential, can be used with swords (Ground Slam can't), but the knockback just has no sense. Ranged chars benefit from knockback defensively but not melee.

It's been said many times and I agree, major problem of Strike skills is targeting. My Poison Pathfinder would have the same range issue without Tribal Fury anointment (haven't used it with HS though, and it gives range for some reason).
Splash and Ancestral Call should be baked in Strike gems. I really can't understand why it's such a problem to do it and balance accordingly so we don't have to use crutches. Skills would feel much more polished and usable.

To get back on the topic. Melee (strikes) is no more dead than self casting is or bows or anything that has to be stationary to deal damage. It's not meta but it's very much viable.
Some skills are subpar in every archetype but it is what it is. Should be better.

Diversity is there and what PoE ninja shows is not diversity but players preference and crowd mentality, which is the easy way and popular way.

"

TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

It's shame that skills get neglected this bad over the years. Heavy Strike has good single target potential, can be used with swords (Ground Slam can't), but the knockback just has no sense. Ranged chars benefit from knockback defensively but not melee.

here we go again:

Heavy Strike
220% base, 0.85 attack speed multiplier, 1.2 (double damage)

224% effective BASE damage

Ground Slam
150% base, 0.9 aspd, 1.49 (close distance)

201% effective

exactly 10% difference. still higher, but..

Ground Slam has more gem tags. it sounds trivial but when you play Heavy Strike you have to resort to rather meh supports. Ground Slam can use the same supports AND Conc Effect/Pulverise/Fist of War on top of that. that IS NOT trivial. same with Blood and Sand - it isnt the greatest aura in the world but.. it does its job, yet another multiplier.

Heavy Strike does barely 10% more base damage but then all that advantage is lost due to less options and more mandatory expenditures. 40% more damage from thresholds is kinda cool but 2 jewels is at least 60%+ crit multi + life nowadays. hard to pick whats better.

and the knockback - my HS build used Disfavour and the attack speed was rather meh. it worked OK for clear, safety was there. for bosses.. kinda annoying

all that BEFORE we even touch the call of steel and exert scaling. in short - Heavy Strike has shit single target potential

I killed A8 Veritania rather quickly, that's why I said it has good potential. Has more dps than Cyclone on the same setup...

I'm not contradicting, just saying it's not that bad damage wise. Mechanics on the other hand are terrible and boring to the point it's a more powerful basic attack with knockback, so why bother with it.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

kid

Kid you know you are just embarrassing yourself more...

The more you personal attack me the more I know you can't prove me wrong. Lol you can't even quote me in fear I receive a notification and come prove you know nothing Jon Snow.

Anyway delusional trolls flooded this thread. No more reason to come here.