Zizaran and build viability!

Firstly, I liked the interview overall. Good job.

That said, on the most important subject of the whole interview, build viability, you got totally swallowed by Mathil. No critique to him, he just went into it like a debate, while you went into it as a pure interview. Mathil also has a couple of luxuries that 'most' players don't have; 10+ years of knowledge and 8+ hours of game time per day.

So, Zizaran, you attacked this completely wrong. You lacked examples. You lacked comparisons. You lacked context.

Build viability is not in a great place right now, mostly because certain skills have been forgotten for a long time, both when it comes to numbers and mechanics, and the fact that the "average" has been nerfed through defenses and support gems, hurting "average skills" more than "good skills".

Now, what you should've done, was to ask Chris: "For Jimmy, a player playing a couple of hours a day with the goal of beating Sirus/Maven, is it as viable for him to choose Heavy Strike as it is to choose Spectral Shield Throw? Is it as viable for him to choose Cleave, as it is for him to choose Forbidden Rite Totems? Is it as viable for him to go self cast Freezing Pulse as it is for him to put Freezing Pulse on a totem?

Of course it isn't.

A wide nerf like the support gem nerf, will always affect the "bad/average" skills the most, and the buffs of those skills weren't on par in most cases. While I'm personally OK with the support gem nerfs, the buffs to the skills themselves need some work - and need to be looked at for 3.16 (even though I think that some buffs to defenses will help a lot).

And Chris, while we all like transparency, be careful of not going completely Sean Murray.

(And no, I'm not really expecting any of them to read this)

I think you're confusing build viability with build disparity a bit. I'm confident that every skill is viable for all content. The main reason it would feel bad is because you know other skills are significantly faster, smoother, stronger, etc. That build disparity can be slowly nudged around over time by nerfing the top builds every patch.

'Top builds' escaped nerfs this patch because I don't think GGG had any idea what would come out on top. It seems that they didn't even have time to test flasks and skills like Absolution properly. To nerf and buff skills going into a patch environment where this much other stuff is changing would have been like throwing darts blindfolded.

I'm not sure why GGG tend to let things stick around as S tier for multiple patches. (See BF/BB and before that Carrion Golems and before that Aura Stacking) all 3 of those builds were widely nutted over pre league, some for multiple leagues.

GGG can do a lot better on build disparity/balance but lets not confuse it for viability. Most skills have been very underrated in their viability in the 'modern' popular era of PoE because of streamers and reddit's elitism. No one has proved this better than Mathil1 over the years.

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innervation wrote:

I think you're confusing build viability with build disparity a bit.

I don't think I am, though. I'm just changing the viability angle a little bit. "Viability" is a wide term, and we have to look at everything when we're looking at how viable a skill/build is, not just pure "PvE".

There's A LOT going into deciding how viable a skill/build is: Its raw power/numbers, its mechanics, the investment required, the knowledge required to build around the skill and how strong the sum of all those factors are compared to other options. ESPECIALLY when time is a factor. And it is, for 99% of all players.

If a skill's numbers or mechanics make it impossible for me to reach my goals within a certain timeframe, while other skills don't, it's not a viable option for me. Call it viability or disparity, I don't really care. It needs to be looked at.

Build viability is currently good with unlimited currency in trade league. I believe QA just takes skill gem put mirror gear on it, test it against something and report to Chris that its all good, community just didn't figured that out.

The problem is people act like skill gems are the only factor here. The gem itself is just a small part of it. You have tons of passive points, items, ascendancy, etc stacked on top of that. This can lead to a lot of variation in use with the same skill that can lead to differences in how powerful it can be.

Players aren't making use of all the tools and optimizing and planning things out correctly. That's why there's the perception that Harvest was big diversity thing, because if you just stack enough power into something, it matters less that you didn't do it right. Meanwhile someone could be getting that power out of that skill in a way that you don't quite know how.

I think a better defense balance would actually do a lot to make more things good, because I've always picked characters based on whichever one has the lowest chance to die, thus the easiest to level, getting damage is way easier and just something you work out after.

What we can't do is just do a blanked buff to everything again so that bad builds get enough damage to not be bad builds. Bad builds have to stay bad for good builds to be good. You should be able to make a bad build through bad choices that no amount of gear can fix.

Hmm. Now I'll have to see what was said. Mathil is the only streamer I'll watch.

We share a very similar approach to the game and making builds. He's the pinnacle example of "No, you're wrong. This is perfectly viable". I also do that hipster stuff. He's also fairly drama free.

Ziz on the other hand I just had to eventually block on Youtube because he always has something to say nearly every day that's nothing but opinions and 90% of the time follows the pitchforks.

Is there anywhere I can see this that let's me throttle the video quality down? I am on DSL, (all that's available here), and things like twitch and such are just slideshows.

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Sabranic_SilverDeth wrote:

Is there anywhere I can see this that let's me throttle the video quality down? I am on DSL, (all that's available here), and things like twitch and such are just slideshows.

I think Youtube lets you throttle down but I also believe streamers on twitch.tv are not allowed (by contract) to upload their stream to another platform for 24/48 hours. Sirgog made a post about that today.

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Phrazz wrote:

There's A LOT going into deciding how viable a skill/build is

I don't think there is. Bringing personal baggage into a discussion on viability is a huge no-go for me because I believe viability has objective connotations as a word. Viable means 'it can be done'. Can/cannot is objectively determinable on this subject.

I get your point but I think the semantics and pedantry matters when the forums and reddit fill up with posts about what and how badly GGG is screwing up and no one wins when the wrong words are used. Dissatisfied vets get saltier and start parroting and memeing phrases. Would be new players turn away - who wants to play a game with just 1-2 'viable builds' out of an advertised 500? Whoever curates feedback for the devs is probably at their wits end trying to translate.

There has to be some rough target the devs balance for in terms of temp league goal achievement. We can surmise that by how many times they've changed exp gain over the leagues. Maybe one of these streamers should ask that. Mathematically, who, if anyone, are you balancing this game around? How long is the average player who kills Sirus/Maven taking to do that? What is ideal. Knowing that would help to frame which skills are 'viable' - but of course viability would only be a useful word in that situation with those specific goals in mind.

What if your goal is to blast maps, the league mechanic, delve, etc? When you consider alternative goals (which I wish there were more of) I think skill viability is just fine - some just don't fit into meta niches, and others (traditionally melee) don't 'come online' till later in the league.

Ahh thanks for the information.

Every skill is viable in this game, it just depends on the level of your damaged masochistic persona to go thru with it.

You masochist? Well then you have no issue here. Welcome to PoE both hands hug.

You sane person? Well then you have realization that Ele hit Raider does 50-200 times more damage than Boneshatter Jugg and it's nobrainer for you.