Ninja nerfing via droprates is worse than straight nerfs to the builds

Stay the hell away from squirrels.

Approximate old drop rates in 3.17:
Crystallized Omniscience: 20%
Ashes of the Stars: 20%

Old day 0 to day 14 price range in 3.17:
Crystallized Omniscience: 16-124c
Ashes of the Stars: 84-154c

Current 3.18 prices at the time of this posting:
Crystallized Omniscience: 30ex (3300c)
Ashes of the Stars: 31ex (3410c)

In 3.17 if you completed 140 maps you would, on average, get the item you need for your build to function (61% of players on poe.ninja used one of these two items by end of league.) You would probably need to spend a few divines but that's it.

While we don't have a big enough sample size to determine the drop rate in 3.18, comparing old drop rates of other Exarch/Eater uniques on trade to trade availability pegs Crystallized Omniscience to be relatively 15-20x rarer than in 3.17. Complicated by the fact that obviously more people want Omni than Annihilating Light/Dawnbreaker/Dissolution. The price is so out of this world insane that it can't just be a problem of supply.

So I would guess that Ashes and Omni are either now uber-only drops, or the drop rate was lowered to Starforge-tier (~1/30 kills.) Starforge-tier would make the drop rate 6 times less than last league.

If that's true, you would still get the item you need for your build to function in 840 Exarch/Eater influenced maps. That still seems reasonable. If it's 12x rarer that's still "only" 1,680 maps, which for a no-lifer is no big deal. But the "you can plan your build out and it'll be the same as last league" statement was very disingenuous. Chris knew he was nerfing the hell out of everything when he said that. Thru drop rate changes and new rare system.

There's also the demand factor - in the previous league, the items were new, so they weren't parts of any builds as their power was yet to be discovered and tested.

And by the time it was, the economy had a ton of them.

Now, we started with zero of them in the economy due to league launch, but with the overwhelming majority of players knowing it's their BIS neck.

And it's only the day 3 of the league, so the drop rates may have not been changed at all.

There is also the supply factor with far less players on average, especially at endgame, all wanting similar gear setups (looking at skill distributions)

So if you add up a supply shortage, due to less players, a drop rate nerf, and a specific increase in demand due to lack of build diversity, then you get what you get.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

It's Spring... at least on the top half of the planet. Go outside. Feed a squirrel. Realize that this is only a game and that in 10-20 years you wont even remember it.

I remember and still play d2(the remaster now) and I was also playing that 20 years ago.. Not a valid point.

They told your build wont be nerfed, not that it will cost the same.

This is a textbook example of the toxicity amongst huge parts of the PoE community. Feel free to disagree with my opinion. What is beyond me is how people have to resort to a bunch of simple minded stereotypes but not even bothering to read the whole post.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Well since you are contradicting yourself, here is what I would suggest.

Pretend that Omni and Ashes were actually nerfed into the ground, and undesirable. That way you dont have any FOMO related to being priced out in the market.

How on earth did I contradict myself? I explicitly said I would have been fine with GGG nerfing these items to the ground since they were overpowered for sure. But making a fuss out of leaving balance unchanged just seems deceiving.

The fact that almost all content creators built their suggested league starters around these items (while the single most important to league starters is that they don't rely on overly expensive uniques) is a very strong indicator of how deceiving the communication was.

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Gopstop22 wrote:

they literally said they would "adjust" omni/ashes drop rate wich means they are nerfing its droprate HARD so no it isnt ninja nerf???

And I literally acknowledged that in my orginal post. Did you even bother to read it?

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Shagsbeard wrote:

It's Spring... at least on the top half of the planet. Go outside. Feed a squirrel. Realize that this is only a game and that in 10-20 years you wont even remember it.

Don't worry about me. I have a healthy social life. Yes, I do enjoy PoE and I do sink time in it. Maybe too much. However, if I don't enjoy the league for some reasons I am perfectly fine moving on. I might still point out stuff I dislike and the reason for my annoyance. But again, people here seem to love to resort to stereotypical insults (go outside; crybaby who can't play his zoom zoom build).

Bottom line is, this is just another step towards making the gap bigger between casual players and those who sink much more time into the game. The broken builds still exist but as of now they are not accessible to casuals. People hat lots of fun in 3.17 because it was different then (much like with harvest crafting before). I personally don't like that approach. And I dislike it even more that all these statements about GG trying something new and keeping things as they are for once feels rather hypocritical a couple days into the league. Again, feel free to disagree, but at least respect other people feeling differently.

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Shafirion wrote:

How on earth did I contradict myself? I explicitly said I would have been fine with GGG nerfing these items to the ground since they were overpowered for sure. But making a fuss out of leaving balance unchanged just seems deceiving.

The fact that almost all content creators built their suggested league starters around these items (while the single most important to league starters is that they don't rely on overly expensive uniques) is a very strong indicator of how deceiving the communication was.

You were ok with the items being nerfed, and the insinuation that you wouldn't be using them because they were nerfed into the ground. Given that, why would it even matter to you personally then, that they were not, and even worse, now somehow upset that they are too expensive?

You literally were planning, and ok with, not using them. Now you are upset they are too expensive in your judgment. That is the contradiction. Just don't use them, or worry about the price, as you intended before the league. Problem solved.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

It's Spring... at least on the top half of the planet. Go outside. Feed a squirrel. Realize that this is only a game and that in 10-20 years you wont even remember it.

The irony of this post is EPIC

I play ssf, last league I farmed 1 week for omni to enable my build. This league it will be at least 1.5 month, you can plan your build just same with last league, what a joke. My planned build bricked.