Feedback for the 3.19 Manifesto - 3 specific issues - by Asmodeus

Feedback for the 3.19 Manifesto.

First of all I like a lot of the changes and their direction, so I'll only mention the things I have issues with.

1.

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The "Minions have 100% increased Critical Strike Chance" Minion Offence Mastery has been replaced with an option that provides "Minions have 30% increased Area of Effect".

The Critical Strike Chance mastery for minions being removed, and crit power being shifted to a single passive wheel perpetuates the issue where all minion builds use a passive skill tree that looks the same. Masteries make builds more flexible and removing the option to focus on crits through a mastery, removes player choices/options. It would be better to keep the Crit Mastery for minions as an option even if the value was reduced. People like having more options and it encourages more build variety. I'd love to see the AoE mastery added and crit mastery kept (even if it was nerfed).

2.

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This issue is most obvious with Seismic Trap in the current state of the game, but also applies to other cooldown trap skills.

Solution: Trim the availability of trap cooldown and duration. Compensate the damage of cooldown trap skills that are underperforming as a result.

You're going to see this feedback from other people, but it can't be overstated. Seismic Trap needs a direct nerf to the damage dealt by it. These indirect nerfs over multiple leagues now, didn't manage to address the issue of Seismic Trap. A lot of people are going to feel forced to play the same skill again, because it outperforms every other skill in the game by a large margin. I don't know if it should be 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% or more, but that should be something you test and apply to the skill, rather than trying to go around the issue. The direct nerf to Seismic Trap is really badly needed.

3.

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Pathfinder's Master Alchemist Notable Ascendancy passive Skill no longer grants 20% chance to Freeze, Shock and Ignite during any Flask Effect. Instead, it now causes Magic Utility Flasks applied to you to have 20% increased Effect.
Pathfinder's Nature's Boon Notable Ascendancy Passive Skill no longer grants 6% reduced Elemental Damage taken.

This change, while correctly identifying a problem (Master Alchemist being too weak) ends up only nerfing an ascendancy that already is underperforming. The buff to the notable is not good enough to justify taking it and the nerf to the Nature's Boon is going to be the only thing affecting most builds. Nature's Boon is one of a few notables that universally helps most builds, and now it just became weaker, making basically every pathfinder build weaker. The intention was good, but the execution results in a completely uncalled for nerf and no positive change.

Meanwhile Occultist and Champion are disproportionately powerful and don't seem to be on your radar at all, while one of the weaker ascendancies gets a nerf.


I really like most of the other changes and feel like you've addressed a lot of the problems in a very smart way, but these three issues I've brought up seem to be sticking out as big mistakes. Thank you for reading ;) <3

Well said sir!

Seismic nerf should be 50%

Players, (esp racers) are tired of it!

GGG needs to stop monkeying around with indirect nerfs and just bring the hammer down!

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AsmodeusPOE wrote:

3.

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Pathfinder's Master Alchemist Notable Ascendancy passive Skill no longer grants 20% chance to Freeze, Shock and Ignite during any Flask Effect. Instead, it now causes Magic Utility Flasks applied to you to have 20% increased Effect.
Pathfinder's Nature's Boon Notable Ascendancy Passive Skill no longer grants 6% reduced Elemental Damage taken.

This change, while correctly identifying a problem (Master Alchemist being too weak) ends up only nerfing an ascendancy that already is underperforming. The buff to the notable is not good enough to justify taking it and the nerf to the Nature's Boon is going to be the only thing affecting most builds. Nature's Boon is one of a few notables that universally helps most builds, and now it just became weaker, making basically every pathfinder build weaker. The intention was good, but the execution results in a completely uncalled for nerf and no positive change.

Meanwhile Occultist and Champion are disproportionately powerful and don't seem to be on your radar at all, while one of the weaker ascendancies gets a nerf.

You may have missed the indirect 'Master Surgeon' nerf by nerfing 'Flagellant' from 7 to 3.

I agree with the first two statements.

1) Minion builds require tree flexibility, so they don't link too similar. Spiritual Aid should probably be a timeless jewel keystone tbh. & then a minion wheel somewhere thrown south of the tree, as well. Similar to how duelist have some random cold wheel, well also need a random duelist minion wheel. If spiritual aid is a timeless keystone that is.

2) Nerf Seismic trap. #wagon " Just do it "

3) I wouldn't know, I still want hair color option appearance sliders for Scion & Ranger. Was starter hair options, part of path notes? Something mtx does every week, yet shoulda been added to the game years ago for free. smh.

I agree with all your points Asmo, but I would also say that the lack of buffs of any real magnitude to any underperforming builds is going to lead to a league start where we see the exact same skills played except just worse version of them. The "routine balance pass" of underperforming skills was laughable. Most of these skills could have had a 50% damage buff and they would still be bad. People asked for a meta shake up and after 6 months of no balance changes what-so-ever this manifesto completely missed the mark for what the community has been begging for. I really am not sure why they even released it before the patch notes. They had to know everyone would lose their mind and have 3.15 PTSD flashbacks.

it shows who's posting the thread so no need to put your name on it.

Crit mastery was bad anyway, 100% crit for 1 point? pfft. (agree on options are needed though)

A lot of spectre's are lacking a great deal in crit rate without it and probably need a pass done to buff their rates slightly, but i need to see all the new modifiers before a real opinion can be formed.

Post by: SilentSymphony* :P

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mGravitus wrote:

GGG needs to stop monkeying around with indirect nerfs and just bring the hammer down!

This might be the most intelligent thing I've read on the forums today. The number of times I've wanted to play "X" build, but they've said "Y" build is getting nerfed, which destroys my "X" build as bad or worse than the thing they were trying to nerf...OOF.

Master surgeon in it's current state barely does anything useful:
1) Remove bleed and corrupted blood is a flask suffix, corrupted blood immunity is available as corrupted jewel implicit (basically free).
2) Flask charge on critical strike to achieve it's full potential requires 100% crit chance and exactly 10*n crits per second. On top of that it only works while hitting monsters, while Nature's Boon works always.
3) Life recovery on flask use was useful before the "gain charges on hit" flask nerf. There is no point in manually pressing 5 flasks to recover 30% health, when you can have single well-rolled life flask that can recover thousands of hp almost instantly.

Master surgeon should be now completely reworked, alongside with Veteran Bowyer and Nature's adrenaline, that are arguably the most boring and uninteresting ascendancy notables in the entire game.

Master Alchemist change is one step in good direction, as it is now a little better compared to a small ascendancy node. Now the other "remove elemental ailments" line also must be changed, because it is not reliable - you still will be occasionally affected by ailments, and in case of shock/shocked ground/freeze/scorch/brittle it will be enough to die. What about immunity to phys/fire/cold/lightning/chaos ailments for 3-4 seconds when 1st,2nd,3rd,4th,5th flask is used?

For those who are interested, almost a year ago I've covered numerous pathfinder ascendancy problems and here
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3186336

On the Seismic Trap not getting a straight nerf thing... I wonder if maybe Cold Iron Points ended up as one of the 100 uniques that got reworked? If so, that may be your nerf right there (early game you are losing 4 levels, only 2 of which you can get back later game at fairly high expense).

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TemjinGold wrote:

On the Seismic Trap not getting a straight nerf thing... I wonder if maybe Cold Iron Points ended up as one of the 100 uniques that got reworked? If so, that may be your nerf right there (early game you are losing 4 levels, only 2 of which you can get back later game at fairly high expense).

There is another theory - but the other way round:

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Seismic Trap will survive because MTX for Cold Iron Point in battle pass for 3.19 inc?

Here is my little theory, why GGG butchered minions but barely touched seismic trap. Gonne be very funny if they really gonna release Cold Iron point MTX this league in battle pass. Also that would mean that Seismic trap gonna die in 3.20(looks at skeleton mtx in battle pass)

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87% of trappers used CIP at weak 1 this league. It was top 6 used unique - and 3/5 of top 5 uniques already were used in previous battle passes. Legacy of fury and death rush also have some chances to be in battle pass for 3.19

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/wgqf2p/seismic_trap_will_survive_because_mtx_for_cold/