Play the 5-6 Meta Skills, Or Die in Maps
" Why the hell would I ever play HC in a game balanced around SC play? Hell, Chris (and others) have several times hinted towards a "deal with it" attitude towards HC. HC is a self-added difficulty layer from "normal". SSF is yet another difficulty layer added. When you choose to add these layers of difficulty, the strain on builds will be three times as high as "normal", and you will always be/feel pigeonholded into choosing a build that lets you survive everything while dealing enough damage. Bring me some coffee and I'll bring you a smile.
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" I have played this game for 10 years, and it's only the last two leagues I've ever played a META skill, mainly because these two leagues didn't offer any new skills. So yes, I'm sure. My starter has soon served its purpose, so now I'm ready to theory craft, invest, build and play something else :) Bring me some coffee and I'll bring you a smile.
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Looking at the poe.ninja numbers, most the community play Meta. i don't blame them, if you don't, you wont see 40% of the games content because of the way GGG "balance" the game.
The way the game is balanced forces players to copy paste whatever is meta. I don't consider that good game design, nor do I find copying someone else's work "playing" a game. Why would you play HC!?: Inconsequential, the numbers in skill diversity are worse in softcore, but that's probably due to less and less players playing HC again because of the "balance". I hate to dump on the game as its is one of my fave of all time, it was just better and more fun in earlier iterations than it is now. Last edited by AmpegV4#2473 on May 20, 2022, 3:03:44 AM
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" Well you played lightning strike for at least 3 leagues and that was and still is meta. LS + Nightblade is too good. OK, please make a MELEE build that isn't cyclone or lightning strike(not really melee) or spectral helix(not really melee either). Get that melee build to level 95 in softcore. Do it without smashing your monitor. I do not envy you. 8 mod maps are the new alch and go. Last edited by zakalwe55#2432 on May 20, 2022, 3:05:43 AM
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While the OP is being hyperbolic, it would be unbelievably dense to claim that the choices made in recent leagues aren't pushing more and more people toward meta choices.
I get that it's fun to jump on people but let's be real; at its core his argument is entirely correct. Why in the fuck would they release a league without balance changes when 10% of skills make up 90% of builds? They could have made modest changes, and they should do far more often than currently as it is - absolutely not less often. This is not even considering the fact that they made a core change to the game making it more important to build defensively, which intrinsically makes builds that are already lacking on damage even less strong than they already were relative to meta builds that can happily give up DPS for defense. Last edited by Pathological#1188 on May 20, 2022, 3:12:10 AM
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" Melee is my favorite playstyle, so it should be fine. But yeah, challenge accepted. Bring me some coffee and I'll bring you a smile.
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Is Absolution even meta? I am not so sure. If anything is meta, however, its gotta be Doryani's Prototype + Mending of the Flesh. The synergy between these two is absurd.
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" How is this hard? You just play slams. Easy screen clear as long as you don't mind clicking a bunch of buttons. |
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The question isn't whether or not anything off-meta is possible. With enough investment and budget you can make most things work same as before.
The issue with poe right now is that how you build up to that budget has changed dramatically. The issue is that you can't start off a new character with an off meta build and progress through the different parts of the game smoothly. You can't decide that you want to play for example firestorm at the start of league and have a smooth progression in to end game content. Sure you can play DD and gather xx exalts and build a viable firestorm character but that first requires you to grind out a meta build. I personally don't have the time nor the motivation to play 100 hours of meta league start to gather the currency to make something new viable. The way I play poe has been the same since I started in 2020. Pick a character you haven't played or the one that you haven't played the longest -> pick an ascendancy you haven't played -> pick a skill you haven't played that might work with said ascendancy ( Do not pick meta skill ) -> theorycraft build -> Leaguestart said build -> Attempt to clear as much of the endgame as possible with said home brew build. The goal to me was always to see how far I could push a build or idea. Gather currency with the build and reinvest until you have something that can challenge endgame content. 1 build per league. Some were good and some were bad. This was never an issue. At one point I played a deadeye before the last ascendancy changes ( I think usage was at .2 % at that point ) and went for a physical barrage, impale, crit fork build because I wanted to use a slivertongue. It was terrible and died very often but It was good enough to progress smoothly into t16 maps and kill elder and shaper. In its current state this type of play has become frustrating and tedious. Clearing things takes far longer than it should to be fun because the game is balanced to meta levels of dps. Surviving is much harder for the same reasons. The game should be hard yes but at this point as a player you will hit walls that are very frustrating and tedious to get past. Whether you can break through them is irrelevant at this point. I'm sure that given enough time and/or budget and/or willpower everything can be done. The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not it is actually fun enough to do so. The second your game stops being fun is the second it fails. It's a hobby, not a job. |
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" The only "slam" that shows up on poeninja builds is "Leap Slam" at 0.6% lol. 8 mod maps are the new alch and go.
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