Venom Gyre - completelly uncalled for serious nerf

anxiety.. it is all random by now.

Toxic Rain 'destruction' was a minor inconvenience in the end. Lots of noise and anticipation and it - yet again - is a braindead choice. Still requires no gear, still is dumb easy to scale, still WRECKS everything

At this point i simply refuse to believe then can make informed decisions. Venom Gyre is one example - this change makes sense (it really does) once you get your hands on a 500pdps poison claw. The Damage Effectiveness boost it got easily makes up for that lost flat chaos. Sadly.. pretty much noone has stuff like this

My recent build - Impending Doom - is an example of something in reverse.

This builds plays itself, costs nothing to do, is very safe to play and if you cheap out on body armour costs like whatever youve paid for you 6L. I know it is not a meta build but for a casual or casual+ it is perfectly enough for ANY content.

how it is a good idea to have a build that more or less trivializes end-game bosses (by quad cursing them with good effect+chill) and deals solid damage (1mil DOT) that costs ZERO? there are several build archetypes that seriously cannot match it even if they try (looking at you 'some' melee or selfcast)

killing these 'gear free' builds should be a priority as they are truly dumb and make playing gear dependant build a weird sensation. ACC stacking - cool if you have 1 mir for Shroud+bonkers jewels, garbage if you dont. im trying 'budget ACC stacking' right now - it is hopeless.

it is all over the place now. and out of all bad things they 'fix' molten strike's and dual strike's threshold jewels making them worse

Ah yes Toxic Rain i can only agree its nobrainer roflstomp skill. Pretty much one of the prime examples of the designed huge power gab between skills. I would add Bladefall/Bladeblast to the list of nobrainer choices.

I had to scratch my head when i saw the reworked Molten Strike Threshold jewel and a bit later the rework for Defy Pain Berserker skill node happend which made me scratch my head some more. Its hard to understand why they make certain choices not only bad but strictly unusable.

I've never found an answer for that Zzang, not one that i'm satisfied with.

The only way i could make it work is that they do it deliberately so power players have something to follow so they can feel powerful.

The only other option is they are too pressed for time and/or incompetent to do it properly which I personally don't really believe. Many major imbalances could be fixed in seconds and things like the new berserker node shouldn't have even made it past being written in a document if anyone who plays the game actually read it.

So yeah it has to be deliberate or that they simple don't have the time

Edit: Like just going back to that berserker node a second the truth is that while that node is really bad and i don't understand why anybody would even consider taking it Zerker itself is actually pretty good right now.. You just take the other stuff.

Most ascendancies have a couple of nodes people are unlikely to take.

Out of curiosity. Would anyone here consider defy pain if it was 1 or 2% less damage taken per charge instead of the increased armor?

As for skill balance, they probably should start balancing damage vs Qol. 1 button skills with huge qol like cyclone should have lower damage than skills that require 2 buttons or are bad from qol perspective. Then again, it's probably still not going to work out because some skills just have more/easier to reach scaling options available that will just overcompensate the lower base damage.

they do balance damage vs QoL its why warcries are so high, and ostensibly why all the combo skills outperform (usually), chances are if it requires setup or an extra button it does extra damage.

However some skills are just too poor to use even with damage to compensate, the thing that makes a grid on the ground then explodes has absolutely incredible damage but its borderline unplayable for example (runebind?? Something like that)

cyclone is a weird one because its largely not used as an attack anymore, its essentially a vehicle for other skills, alot of cyclones are CoC.

Moving into to defy pain no I wouldn't take it even if it was less damage taken, I think if the downside was completely removed it would be occasionally taken by people that wanted the leech rate specifically... But the downside is absolutely enormous, the downside on defy pain is more likely to kill you than aspect of carnage and thats a straight 40% more multiplier node, one of the best available for any ascendancy.

I don't understand why they added an ascendancy notable with a drawback so severe its mandatory to negate it before you even take the node. However I will say GGG's idea of downside tradeoffs is frequently incorrect, almost every item they make with a drawback doesn't have the power to match the drawback so in that regard its identical to their itemization.

https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/Qotra%27s_Regulator

like just to cherry pick, look at this item its unbelievably bad, i'm sure it enables some specific interaction thats OK but by itself i've rarely seen such a poorly designed item.

You can get the multiplier off any offhand suitable for your spell type, it doesn't have recovery on block, good block or any defensive stats so it hardly even counts as a shield for comparison purposes. Just dual wield and do more damage while having access to other stats. Like they've failed the classic test when creating this item if you make the item without any drawback would anybody use it?

so 60% dot multiplier and 2.5% regen but no other stats, a wand can have 40% as one mod, or as a suffix with crafted prefix so already it won't compete with a wand.

Then they added a conditional to that mod, admitably a lenient one as well as a very significant drawback. It just doesn't pass even a rudimentary scan and its their design for a vast majority of items with a drawback.

Stormbind - leave this skill alone. I think people have tested it for 10 secs tops and deemed it thrash after that. it is not. it is EXTREMELY strong AND smooth once you ease into it. totem to spread squares, 0.1 sec channel to blast them (like TWO screens of them). scale AOE so you get ~20 squares overlap on bosses. win.

it was one of my fav builds ever. and it is NOT slow (in the realm of normal builds)


Defy Pain is garbage. just that: GARBAGE. cyclical (every 10th hit something bad happens), upside is rather irrelevant (leech rate, armour% is 100% worthless), downside is MASSIVE.

less damage taken you cannot rely on? do i have to count incoming hits to know if i have it or not? seriously? no thanks.


then there is the skills balance. just count tags skills have. cyclone - by sheer virtue of having tiny phys damage added that noone asked for - has one of the best selection of support gems ever. you can easily pick all 5 40%+ more gems that give relevant perks

compare that to dual strike with its short list of 'attack, strike'. cool..

same with spells. phys-converted spells simply have better access to better supports, better nodes and better clusters.

QoL - or rather 'ability to deal damage on the move' because this is THE most important factor is yet another story. that feeling when after two molten strike builds you can actually place few totems and have them kill and die for you.. it is honestly soul crushing

"

sidtherat wrote:

Stormbind - leave this skill alone. I think people have tested it for 10 secs tops and deemed it thrash after that. it is not. it is EXTREMELY strong AND smooth once you ease into it. totem to spread squares, 0.1 sec channel to blast them (like TWO screens of them). scale AOE so you get ~20 squares overlap on bosses. win.

it was one of my fav builds ever. and it is NOT slow (in the realm of normal builds)

Would you share that build? I would like to try it.

"

Draegnarrr wrote:

they do balance damage vs QoL its why warcries are so high, and ostensibly why all the combo skills outperform (usually), chances are if it requires setup or an extra button it does extra damage.

They did it in some cases yes, but they are far from consequent with it. Slams, BF/BB, Frostbolt/Ice Nova, Essence Drain/Contagion are examples on how to do it right. But there are tons of cases where it's not the case.

Cyclone, yeah maybe it's got 300 aps and 0,33 damage effectiveness so essentially +- zero multiplier which is relatively bad but Blade Vortex? It's still one of the best skills around. Toxic Rain? Ball Lightning?

Also, for me one of the most powerful "QoL" aspects is moving while attacking. Miners can do that, Totems can do that, COC/CWC can do that. Do they have a damage penalty for that compared to selfcast? Hardly, for the most part they do more damage.

Then there are Archmage/Unleash builds who typically give of one big hit move and then hit again, are also very mobile because of that. And happen to come with one of the biggest damage supports in the game. Compare that to traditional selfcast spellbuilds that have to stand still and dps for extended periods of time and still barely manage to compete in terms of damage. There is a reason why skills like Freezing Pulse or Blazing Salvo barely see play outside of mines which is a pity.

Then comes the biggest offender, Strike skills. You can hardly get it worse in terms of Qol but the damage is mediocre at best. VDS is good, Flickerstrike has it's niche and stuff like LS/FB/WS also work because it's more of a projectile skill than actual melee but aside from those you get horrible QoL with mediocre damage. Perfect example, Glacial Hammer vs Ice Crash. Ice Crash has AOE build in AND higher base damage.

Personally i think QoL will always win at the end of the day because you can just compensate lacking damage with investment so ultimately, even if they started balancing along those lines, skill usage probably won't change all that much. But they could at least try to give those hard to use skills something that makes them look interesting.

A necro January posting and this is what we got meanwhile from such stuff..


Steam in 60 days >

160k >>>> 15k active players says it all...

All these nerfs and stupid changes to such an old game werent needed...

Maybe they prepare the playerbase for POE2 with this weird strategy...

And all these PVE players calling for nerfs should think about the damage they did to this game over years with their stupid egoistic ignorance...

They never PvP but call for endless nerfs .....

They just see another PvE player doing better on Maps and instantly start a whining forum post after another instead of just playing this game and shut up..

If you PvE nerf crying players would at least do some PvP....

but no.... you are just jealous that someone else does it better...

honestly the whole north of this planet has a problem with these jealous people at all ages...

Everywhere the same crap >>> "My neighbour has a better car, i cant afford such a car, kill the neighbour"

"

TorsteinTheFallen wrote:

"

sidtherat wrote:

Stormbind - leave this skill alone. I think people have tested it for 10 secs tops and deemed it thrash after that. it is not. it is EXTREMELY strong AND smooth once you ease into it. totem to spread squares, 0.1 sec channel to blast them (like TWO screens of them). scale AOE so you get ~20 squares overlap on bosses. win.

it was one of my fav builds ever. and it is NOT slow (in the realm of normal builds)

Would you share that build? I would like to try it.

i have like 3.10 (?) version so it is no longer relevant. And the gear i used is simply 'old' compared to what we have today:

gloves to add +mana to cost of skills makes channelling instant
get as much AOE as possible so explosions overlap. ive seen a breakpoint list for where you can count on 9, 16 and finally 25 explosions. shrug of anyone who claims Conc Effect is 'good'. it is the WORST support gem for this skill
totems to channel squares - link damage to these
self-cast to detonate them - link CWC curses/whatever here. temp chains are great combo with built in hinder.

one 'bad' feature is that it is you who deal damage despite damage support linked to totem. so reflect is dangerous.