Venom Gyre - completelly uncalled for serious nerf

most of skill changes are rather bland +/- 5% so they dont require any feedback (still.. Strike Skills could have received +30% buff and hardly anyone would notice) but few stand out and - surprisingly - in a bad way

lets look at:

"

Venom Gyre

Added

40% chance to keep caught Projectiles when firing them by using Whirling Blades


Removed

141 to 211 Added Chaos Damage


Modified

Effectiveness of Added Damage 165%
Deals 165% of Base Damage
60% of Physical Damage Converted to Chaos Damage

as a proud member of 5-man strong group of people who gave a f.. about this skill (because Cobra Lash is better in every way imaginable) i have to ask:

WHY?

Venom Gyre became the ONLY chaos-melee-attack skill without flat chaos added.

Situation is simple:
for endgame YOU HAVE TO use elder 60% more poison damage mod. there is no other way. you HAVE to use it. this mod is a prefix. getting high-dps claw that has this prefix is very, very difficult.

these are the more realistic claws:


or you can get Wasp's Nest.. that deals quarter(?) of the damage.

sure, you can get a decent weapon, it even might be bit to easy on chaos-attack builds.

but - why just one skill? why take the WORST chaos-attack skill and just kill it?

for people who didnt play it:
- whirling blades use releases 'stored' blades greatly improving the clear.. that is already pretty good (invest into pierce and proj speed)
- you pretty much swim in blades so that new 40% chance is 100% meaningless
- increase in base added damage compensates stuff IF you have a weapon with good phys/chaos rolls (see above) but even if you have, you just lost 20-40% damage

again: why kill the bottom feeder? nobody played it (alternatives are just 100% better, with TR being like skill from another game) and this change wont make anyone try it

you might ask: but what if someone has a great claw? maybe then it shall work?
yep, work. Cobra Lash shall work better.. simple as that

Sorry for the nekro, I've been running Venom Gyre after running Cobra Lash for some time, I really enjoy it (much more than CL), and I've been comparing builds against mine like crazy and wondering why on earth I wasn't dealing as much damage as the builds I saw, even tho I have the 60% for +100% poison damage claws,and now I come across this post.... so the chaos damage was removed and now we only have the 60% conversion from physical to chaos....

Pretty f'ed up....

This is an excellent example of the kind of patch note GGG has become infamous for. It makes no sense and is utterly indefensible.

In what way did this change make the game more fun, increase player retention, or earn GGG revenue? Massive nerfs to already underpowered skills are a total waste of dev time. What conversation occurred that led to this change? How many work hours did it take to conceive and implement?

There have been many strange nerfs like this over the years. The replacement of pain reaver with defy pain was 3.14’s example. It’s not a good sign when the community’s reaction to a patch note is just to scratch their heads in confusion.

75% of GGG’s balance decisions make sense. The other 25% do damage to the game’s quality, to be blunt. Less choices = less fun.

And yes, strike skills need help.

P.S. I’ll gladly recant my harsh words above if someone has found some OP interaction with whirling blades I’m not aware of, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t one.

this post has been made in January, two patches ago. one big thing happened since then:

Elder mod is no longer AS mandatory as it used to be. this in one way nerfed this type of builds - they surely were just tad too easy to build for - and opened a build space

sadly, Venom Gyre remains junk skill. it is balanced around people with 500pdps claws. when you have one like that, the damage effectiveness starts to play a bigger role. VG has much higher DE than Cobra Lash

the thing is - most players dont have 500pdps+ claws with poison mods. they have much worse items, maybe even Wasp's Nests. and for this group lack of that flat added chaos is a serious issue

i havent bothered checking chaos skills this patch. maybe the new mods smooth things out but one is for sure: mechanicaly Cobra Lash is just superiour in all ways imaginable so noone gives AF about Venom Gyre anyway. the novelty of 'vomit blades when you use a subpar movement skill' wears quickly

Yep, unfortunately CL is now even more superior and faster in both map clearing and bossing.

I've been testing both CL and VG (including with helmet enchants CL Chains 3 Additional Times/VG deals 40% increased damage/VG has 35% chance to keep caught(...)) and this change just killed VG.

Also been redoing my skill tree back and forth, but so far, I haven't be able to find a good damage boost, if anyone knows any good build, I'd be glad to keep on testing.

Best of course would be to revert this....

Best would be to give claws and Daggers an optional identity. I hate poison and i find it hard to believe with 800 pdps claws that poison is the visioned way to play claws its saddening really.

Then there is Night Blade support which i dont understand at All.

There is Close Combat support for up to 59% MORE DAMAGE and then there is Nightblade support with Elusive from Crit that one get via Boots mod nowadays and 1% crit chance with crit multiplier that fades away with the Elsuvie Buffs and whoping 0% more damage.

If i had to do some analysis on the intentions behind the given balancing its either a forced setup where option A is simply superior in any way than option B or complete incompetence.

I guess the balancing director is not a complete noob so i guess its intended for skills to be extremely bad so the other 5-10% skills can shine.

"

zzang wrote:

I guess the balancing director is not a complete noob so i guess its intended for skills to be extremely bad so the other 5-10% skills can shine.

I wouldn't be surprised if the testing for skills/balance changes is done with top grade gear, ignoring the large population of the game who do not have access to such items.

"

Ydoum wrote:

I wouldn't be surprised if the testing for skills/balance changes is done with top grade gear, ignoring the large population of the game who do not have access to such items.

Even then the majority of skills would turn out inferior in comparison to top contender supports and active skill gems i dont think that is the reason.

This is why patch notes always give me anxiety.

Rather than relief that OP stuff is getting reined in, I feel fear that something totally inexplicable, bizarre, and uncalled for will happen. Like nerfs to bad skills, or merely popular skills that aren’t that good, or to QoL. Or that seemingly reasonable nerfs will go WAY too far in a way that removes options from the game.

All while many unused skills, items, and mechanics don’t even get any numerical buffs which would barely take any dev time to implement.

I really try not to get legitimately angry at GGG because they’re mostly well-intentioned people and this is just a videogame, but the balance stuff really triggers me (and, as I’ve said before, not merely because it’s nerfs). I mean, wouldn’t advertising a big Dual Strike overhaul or something have nothing but a positive, if minor, impact on league hype and retention? It seems like such low-hanging fruit, but maybe there are all kinds of internal barriers that we don’t know about.

We’ll see what the 3.15 manifesto brings, I guess. Then the sudden, out-of-nowhere patch notes that the manifesto didn’t mention.

"

demon9675 wrote:

This is why patch notes always give me anxiety.

There is no need for anxiety. Patch 3.14 was one of the worst patches in poe history (I'm around since 2011).
It can only get better in 3.15 with a hopefully completely different meta other than CoC or Cast on <insert trigger>, Spells, Manatanks & Summoners.