nobody has problem with only maybe 5 max out of the like 100 skill gems are usable?

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crunkatog wrote:

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Raycheetah wrote:

There's a reason the same skill sets keep showing up, league after league, and that's the comfort zone of those who work hard to keep their favorite builds operable (and who scream the loudest when any changes touch their creations). New skills released with a league? How many guides do you see utilizing them?

You could not have missed the point more utterly and completely here.

Skills that don't meet some nonzero number of the following hard criteria will simply be underpowered, no matter whether it's by design (noob traps to waste time and sell MTX) or by neglect:

--Scales appropriately with gem level with or without weapon damage
--Allows player to keep moving
--Ergonomic: using this as your main skill does not cause excessive carpal tunnel, eyestrain, etc. By extension, some aspects of this skill can be supported using automated means without losing a majority of your DPS: totems, traps, mines, trigger craft, spellslinger, CWC/COC, etc.
--Has an AOE tag that can be realistically scaled for either clear or bossing, and sometimes both
--Secondary defensive function. TR: vine snares and slowing effect of pods/synergy with blight/wither. Tempest Shield: + block. Cold skills: chill/freeze enemies. DD/VD/Infernal Cry/Profane Bloom: destroys corpses before they can be used against you.

These are necessary but not sufficient to determine what skills become meta. There's other factors, including startup cost, that shape what people plan around in the leadup time to league. Some really interesting skills fulfill all of the above hard criteria for dealing with actual PoE but get ignored because their intrinsic damage is too low to scale with a starter budget, or they are strictly outclassed by another similar skill that happens to have a much better ancillary effect.

Streamers in trade league are probably one of the worst sources for guidance since they often have huge clans funnelling trade goods and gear upgrades into their loadout, enabling them to build around skills that are harder to support due to the economy of scale. If you have 10 or 20 or 50 people all grinding and flipping and brute forcing the RNG in the game to minmax a couple of rainmakers for the guild, they're working on a scale you and I can't compete with and they can afford to steer chain hook to the endgame.

On a side note, this is why the collateral damage feels so huge and pervasive in this game. The above hard criteria for skill worth are prime targets for nerfs and guttings because the game remains the same fast-paced chaotic glut of screen effects and mob AI and the same core competencies are required to deal with it. By clawing back gear-independent scaling, melee skills are universally in grave straits. By gutting secondary defensive knock-on effects e.g. Frost Bomb slows/regen debuffs, fortify on melee hit, blind etc. you get fewer skills that cut the mustard, in every category.

This basically means that with good game design all such "good" skills should have significantly lowered (50% or less) DPS output in contrast to skills which doesn't provide such conforts.

They need to also rework the;

+ graphic animations (visual appeal)
+ bad sound sfx effects choice (a skill sound, that players don't like)
+ added unique utility

of these underplayed skills.


I'm just saying, that yes buff the underplayed skills, yet also look at why players don't want to play these skills. The answer isn't always a 1 way street. I know if the skill sounds like metal hitting metal 1,000 times, I won't play it, which is most of the Blade named gems. Some skills look ugly, Proliferate, Lacerate, meh. Some look overly basic & sound horrible Dual Strike. Cobra lash is neat, tho too plain. Not to say it has enough damage either. Heavy Strike needs a new utility to it, or to be made better for 1vs1, since it's a gimped Boneshatter. Or other skills that are too plain jane. Double strike needs customization options, like eevie the pokemon.

Most skills are aoe based, they need more 1vs1 skills. It's almost like GGG has been avoiding 1vs1 skills so they don't have to rework rare boss mechanics, to be more difficult, when fighting rares or uniques. So most skills are AOE or projectile for trash mobs. Most rpg's have more 1v1 melee skills to use. POE's missing like 10 1vs1 melee skills & rare / unique boss difficulty to use them for. Plus you'd have to make the non-questing rares / uniques below lvl 70, give way more exp to parties, so that parties don't just skip them while leveling every time.

Energy shield needs help on the skill tree, it's x2 easier to build for evasion or especially armour, than it is to build for ES. Energy Shield is more split apart on the tree, than Evasion or Armour is. Or ES needs a jewel that gives it a 200% bonus at least. Why does armour get 1, but not ES or Evasion? ES needs it the most, that transfer Life to ES jewel sucks in comparison to the 200% es to armour jewel.

Yeah overall just too many splash gems. Most of the crit gems are underplayed to be honest. They need to learn from Lost Ark on how to do 1vs1 ARPG hitbox content. I mean I haven't played LA, tho for sure the gameplay on youtube has more 1v1 skills & a pinpoint hitbox purposes. With trips / knockdowns / bashing playings around 1v1. So POE without pvp, nowonder it's 1v1 gems are nearly mia. What double strike? psh. Dual strike which has no animation & sounds like a dying elevator? Other than some traps for 1v1 purposes, theirs not much. Literally everything is meant to mow down mobs nearly. Which I'm guessing single players are to blame, once again. Party player based skills aren't going to just be about zooming to the other side of the map clearing paper mobs, it's gonna have more skills devoted to tougher boss fights & reasons to slow down that zoom bs.

Which brings me to another point, zoomers. While I agree zooming with ms should be a viable playstyle, not everyone wants to deal with that on their eyes. Especially late at night. I made my 1st ms char. The screen didnt feel good on my eyes going that fast on Bloody Aqua. So I re-rolled slower chars since. So they really should stop making this game about racing through maps, give rare bosses more exp below lvl 60, for parties to stop to fight them. Than raise the difficulty on those rare or unique non-quest bosses (after giving them more party exp to kill).

Also on Planetside 2 I'm the best Harasser driver on the server (which is a Jeep or dune buggy of sorts), the reason I'm saying this, is because I do like to go fast. As a theme. It works for Planetside 2, I can jump off mountains & do a flip on my jeep. So for some odd reason, POE doesn't feel good while running super fast, visually speaking. Maybe it's the top down camera, but it just doesn't work out. Obviously some people are fine with it, I'm just noting those who aren't. As if they are sea sick or something with MS builds. Due to POE, not for other games. So I wouldn't base the game around zoomers, when only half of the population is gonna be a fan of it or less. Than those who do it to lvl faster, doesn't mean they are a fan of it, just means they are a fan of leveling faster, not the running itself necessarily. So yea, base POE 2 around slowing down x1000%, stupid zoomers. Maybe after I quit smoking soon (at night), than MS builds will be easier to digest on my eyes. Tho even if sober, healthy, with energy.. I still wouldn't suggest that this camera angle or corridor map layout, is good for movement speed gamestyle. Healthy eyes or not.

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RuneLuthien wrote:

They need to also rework the;

Which brings me to another point, zoomers. While I agree zooming with ms should be a viable playstyle, not everyone wants to deal with that on their eyes. Especially late at night. I made my 1st ms char. The screen didnt feel good on my eyes going that fast on Bloody Aqua. So I re-rolled slower chars since. So they really should stop making this game about racing through maps, give rare bosses more exp below lvl 60, for parties to stop to fight them. Than raise the difficulty on those rare or unique non-quest bosses (after giving them more party exp to kill).

interesting. I also have a problem with the clear speed meta, because it punishes you for playing a slower build. When the game is revolved around killing the most mobs per hour, it makes playing slow builds feel like you are losing out.

if they want to keep the zoom meta, they should atleast make it so those chars cannot be powerful enough to do the highest level content, but the slower chars are. and make it so that higher content drops a greater quantity of currency, so that it can equal out with the zoomers doing the lower content. That way everyone can be making the same currency, zoomzoom on lower stuff or slow char on higher stuff.

basically the major problem with the state of PoE is that there is only a certain type of play style, skill, etc that results in the highest yeild of currency per hour, and all other options you receive less currency per hour than had you just picked the meta skill and ancestry.

they need to make it so that you're not punished with less rewards per hour just because you wanted to do a different skill.

if you put in the same exact investment, you should get the same rewards. the problem is i can invest say a figure we will call "100" into toxic rain, and get "300" rewards per hour, but I can invest "100" into say dual strike, and only get "150" rewards per hour. The same level of investment and commitment, except I only get half the rewards per hour because I picked the "wrong" skill.

If I am going from NY to LA i can walk, Run, Ride a bike, Drive a car, Take a train, fly a jet. No matter what I pick I can still get there. This is how POE works.

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Filousov wrote:

This basically means that with good game design all such "good" skills should have significantly lowered (50% or less) DPS output in contrast to skills which doesn't provide such conforts.

Or give the highest-rated skills a conditional downside e.g. not easy damagetype to convert, has a narrow weapon requirement (perhaps one that taps into a pool of underused uniques like claws or one-hand axes), etc.

The best case scenario though is that player damage is reduced making ancillary effects more appealing and important, and that truly "bad" skills that don't even meet 1 of 4 core criteria are removed or overhauled entirely.

Like, ideally there should be 0 skill gems clogging up the drop tables that feel so bad to play, perform so unevenly, or have so little going for them, that even in act 1 they stop seeing use. Skills that flow so badly and clunkily that even if they did 3x the damage, players would still choose something else because of mechanical frustration or physical pain/fatigue.

Some of those fantastic MTX that are created for skills that "fail the grade" can be tweaked and offered instead for skills that players actually find useful and responsive. Projectile skill MTX effects would probably be the easiest to re-allocate. Sweepers/cleavers that fail the grade could donate their splashy mtx to other sweepers/cleavers including Cyclone.

The important thing to take away here is "first, do no harm". If you want players to come up with wacky builds using low-spec gear and sleeper skills, you can still have that, but even if not every skill is scalable into the endgame, each and every one should be at least usable for 3 hours straight in acts without causing end-user tissue damage, and should at LEAST be better than default attack.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

About 20 different skills are each being used by 2%+ of the people above level 95.

2%. Not sure if you're refuting his point or confirming it.

I'm using a lot more then 5 skills, for a single build.



If I had more sockets, could use some zombies or an AG. Summoners are using a lot of skills.

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Xtorma wrote:

If I am going from NY to LA i can walk, Run, Ride a bike, Drive a car, Take a train, fly a jet. No matter what I pick I can still get there. This is how POE works.

+1

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Xtorma wrote:

If I am going from NY to LA i can walk, Run, Ride a bike, Drive a car, Take a train, fly a jet. No matter what I pick I can still get there. This is how POE works.

Or you can decide that going to LA is such a pain in the ass, that it just isnt worth making the trip, which is what over 50% of the playerbase has done in a few weeks.

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6_din_49 wrote:

I'm using a lot more then 5 skills, for a single build.

Spoiler

Active:
Convocation, Poacher's Mark, Crackling Lance, Vaal Haste, Withering Step, Flame Dash, Desecrate, Summon Carrion Golem, Raise Spectre

Triggered:
Summon Spiders (dagger), Molten Shell(cwdt), Bone Offering(body), Flesh Offering(body), Spirit Offering(body), Despair(ring)

Reservation:
Haste, Malevolence, Determination, Skitterbots, Petrified Blood, Aspect of the Spider

If I had more sockets, could use some zombies or an AG. Summoners are using a lot of skills.

THat has nothing to do with the topic. The issue isn't number of utility skills that are viable. The issue is number of competitive and capable main skills.