The nerfs are making the game rippier, not slower

I want to preface by saying that I think the nerfs are good. I think this game could benefit from being slower and more tactical. However, if all you're doing is nerfing the players while doing nothing that warranted them wanting to be fast, then you're ultimately not making the game slower.

Let's remind ourselves what the game has:

1. Timed leagues. Incursion, Legion, Delirium. These are DPS checks. If you can't kill things quick enough, you will be punished. Speed is necessary to get anything worthwhile from these encounters and thus its discouraged to have low DPS.

2. Bosses with poor to nonexistent telegraphs. As many people who visit this section of the forum will tell you, Sirus is a massive offender in this regard, but there are other endgame bosses that share this problem. Shaper's beam is quiet, often happens offscreen, and is difficult to notice during intense moments like at the end of his "Ultimate Chaos" attack while there's still lots of damaging projectiles in the arena. The Enslaver has lots of high damage attacks with heavy ignite damage, but has no telegraphs. He'll just do them without any kind of wind up. Slower builds are heavily punished by these bosses, because the longer the fight drags on, the more likely you are to die.

3. Visual clutter. This will be even worse going forward due to lowered damage and raised mob HP (at least for those in act 1, but GGG will be buffing the other acts later). Too much visual clutter, a particle clusterfuck, providing too much stimulation to your brain at best or completely obscuring monsters at worse.

4. 1shots. From trash mobs to bosses, if you make one wrong step or stand still for a millisecond, you're dead. Bonus points if the 1shot came from offscreen. I'm looking at you, Sirus, or I would if you didn't teleport offscreen while buried under particle effects.

Nothing I listed is being changed for the better, all that's being changed is player damage and defense. DPS check leagues are going to be more punishing, bosses are going to take forever and a half to defeat, visual clutter is still going to go through the roof, and the threat of being 1shot from anything is still as prevalent as before if not moreso.

This game isn't being made slower with these nerfs, it's being made rippier. If anything, I expect more players will cling to whatever is the meta in order to squeeze as much DPS as they can out of their build for the amount of currency needed. They already are, but it's going to be even worse in spite of GGG adding all of these new gems and nerfs to encourage build diversity.

It's a weird way of setting the game back a few years so they can spend the next few "power creeping" it again. That's what it seems like. Are we back to Bladeflurry + Abyssus builds yet?

But yes the OP is right. I didn't mind slower builds in the past when it meant I could be tanky and really build into it. I also like the option to go fast as well depending on my mood. I just don't like the shoehorning.

exactly

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jsuslak313 wrote:

exactly

In the league reveal stream, Chris talked about how much people liked the slow and tactical gameplay for PoE2 when they were able to play it in Exilecon. He specifically mentioned the fight with that boss who uses a giant bell as a weapon.

It's pretty safe to assume that he wants the game to become slow and tactical, not rippy. The nerfs we received this league does nothing to achieve this, but does make it more rippy.

agreed
poe2 looked like slow ripy crap also thought. First boss was killing hard core players in act1 with one shots...

In a way, rippier is slower :)
Either you have to pay more attention, or you just die a lot which means losing xp, losing time respawning and going back, maybe even losing maps.

Anyway, you're probably right and they didn't adjust the timed content but it isn't something they can't fix, and they will probably need some feedback to do so properly anyway. We can likely expect the timed content to be about as hard as it was back before it went core.

We're in for a few very messy leagues, I'm afraid, but there's no helping it, it's all for a good cause and even in the worst case scenario it isn't the end of the world if a few things don't work for a while.

OP forgot to mention that monsters (lvl 1 thru 86) will have 40% more health and will now 'explode' for 40% more damage. probably one white mob will do the trick to kill most players. (although my bleed explosion build will enjoy the extra buff, yes I said it, buff - to damage)

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kalbright wrote:

OP forgot to mention that monsters (lvl 1 thru 86) will have 40% more health and will now 'explode' for 40% more damage. probably one white mob will do the trick to kill most players. (although my bleed explosion build will enjoy the extra buff, yes I said it, buff - to damage)

A couple playstyles that survived the nerf wave unscathed or even got buffed doesn't negate the fact that everything else got smashed. If anything, if corpse explosion builds become meta, it would only reinforce my point that most people will gravitate towards it in response to the game becoming rippier.

Also, to clarify, the 40% health buff only applies in act 1 then scales down all the way to current HP at level 84. It'll be terrific to bust through act content with, but as you reach higher and higher map tiers, it's gonna get weaker.

So, what do people think now that the league is out? I feel like what I said was pretty accurate. Everything feels rippier, 1shots are still aplenty, and timed leagues are now more punishing than before due to lack of damage.

Do you realize how much flasks were nerfed? Game has become slower because of that. Also the Quicksilver flask related movement speed increase was nerfed.