The shadow is a design disaster

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

that can be a valid criticism btw, that a melee shadow with the ev/es core defense combo is simply too gear demanding, too game knowledge demanding and even if you meet these relatively high demands you are rewarded with a character that is less effective than relatively easy to gear, easy to build, easy to play alternatives that are essentially playing the shadow like a witch or a ranger spamming projectile skills from a distance.

its a fairly expert mode demanding character that delivers quite an underwhelming performance. as one of the core shadow fantasy architypes it should probably be a lot more straight forward to get up and running to a viable state and should deliver a lot more of an effective output if you get it right.

i think theres a fair argument that the way the game suggests a character should be played, the architype its presenting, should be fairly beginner friendly to make work and when done right should hold a decent position in the power ratings. i think that makes sense as a design goal and i would agree the melee shadow falls short of that, significantly. as does a lot of melee atm btw.




thwts a perfectly valid criticism of the game, and accurate i think, i would agree with that statement. sid, would you agree with that statement?



i dont think theres nothing to what you are saying, i think theres definitely big problems in this area that are being highlighted here. but if you say that melee shadow or ev/es combo are not viable options youre gonna get pushback against those particular statements because theyre factually untrue.

partially, at best

after trying it lvl 1-83 (and already in red maps) the problems are:

- Viper Strike is a tricky skill for a starter/newbie skill. REQUIRES poison prolif (Bino/Pathfinder) to feel good. and it feels GOOD once you check that box

- 'melee rework' robbed shadow and Viper Strike of '+strike range' stat. class that uses short-ranged daggers and claws. Behead Support, Ancestral Cry, Strike Leader(cluster jewel) are all pseudo solutions. this is a serious problem, i think mastery should give +3 at least

- Assassin is a problem and should be a prestige class for people who know what they are doing. getting Trickster node on Forbidden jewels helps A LOT but it costs A LOT as well. Assassin simply has no built-in defences nowadays and that IS a problem.


other than that?
it isnt more expensive - there is a literal set of pre-made mid-range uniques precisely for this playstyle that are good enough for T16+. you can craft/buy rares if you want something better but thats endgame thing

it is safe - my half-baked lvl 82 with uncapped res stood in the middle of King Harb pack and nothing happened. pure Armour char would die 3 times over. being ~immune to all attacks is HUGE (Blind, get Blind!)

the shadow tree is nice and dense. you are close Whispering Doom, life recoup (great stat for EV/ES builds), Charisma and Influence, have both life on hit and life leech nearby. for chaos damage users you get 'chaos res == chaos damage'

in fact i think that Shadow is GGG's favourite child. they made him capable of doing pretty much everything - traps/mines/bows/melee/life/ES/spells/curses.

compare that to bottom/left part of the tree and the garbage Marauder is being fed with. it is incomparable.



ill stick to 'player problem' comment. shadow (even Assassin, however that requires conscious pathing) is perfectly playable for a new player - that means campaign, early and mid-level maps. new players do not play SSF so they trade for gear. and they take advice (do chaos recipe!) to fund said gear. and HC in modern POE is a joke if a random blue mob can kill 20k ES char with one hit.. just because someone add one '0' too many somewhere

"

sidtherat wrote:

other than that?
it isnt more expensive - there is a literal set of pre-made mid-range uniques precisely for this playstyle that are good enough for T16+. you can craft/buy rares if you want something better but thats endgame thing

Speaking of, it's kinda funny that a 'chase unique' costs 20c, but that's how offer and demand works :/

Raics said it perfectly a few pages back: since its release, PoE was NEVER about "sticking" to your own area of the tree. In fact, it was billed as exactly the opposite of that right from the beginning. The passive tree was NEVER an "identity". The only identity was your skill choices and your planning, but the tree was always free-form. A class starting area is just that: a STARTING area. It leans you in certain directions, but then you actually need to think about where to path. It is the *Y$# TITLE of the game!

I believe it was Snorkle that said what I wished I responded with a few days ago: the op was read by most commenters in it's entirety, commented on, and then the conversation advanced. I find it funny to be ridiculed for not reading the OP when the poster ALSO decided to completely ignore the direction of the conversation...

Basically, I think I am done with this post. It started out with a good point, but hte OP seems more interested in lambasting all other game modes besides HC, without actually having the skills to make a competent HC build. And just completely ignoring all kinds of feedback in favor of "NO IT DOESN'T WORK" head slamming.

I agree with the TITLE of this thread as it pertains to GGG"s new direction with ascendancies, but beyond that, ANY build is viable in ANY mode: you just have to THINK about it a tiny bit.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

"

sonicphi wrote:

This is wrong, in hardcore you pick life because its a million times easier to manage and to sustain unless you are rich which most players are not. Once again you come to the thread with softcore perspectives which dont help because everything works in softcore even the worst of builds you just have to die enough times

youve got ghost reaver on an ev/es dot melee build that has low amounts of energy shield, so your understanding of sustaining energy shield is questionable. i dont think its necessarily a rich thing, but it is a game knowledge thing which tends to have a relationship with economic capability.




the reason you dont see a load of people playing ev/es melee shadow is because they dont want to play it. they can blow up a whole screen with other skill architypes and survive doing it with far less hardy defense investments. theres no incentive to play it, it demands better gear, a better build and more skill to end up with a less effective character.

the reason you struggle to play ev/es melee shadow is because you dont know how to build a character like that effectively.

It might be true that i am not the most knowledgeable person about ES/EV, ive been building mostly HP shadows because those are the ones you can get to work safely in hardcore, but the issue goes way deeper than that.

In HC you have to have your resistances topped at all times, this is non negotiable as you will die to random stuff, you also have to have a way to keep your HP pool topped at all times and you should ideally have a HP pool of 4.5k to be comfortable but you can manage with 4k.

After that being said, i invite every one in this thread to go on poe trade and do a search for some unique items like binos and izaros dilema and items with triple res / HP and EV. You will see that it is nearly impossible to itemize properly for proper defenses when you try to stick to base items that are hybrid, which is what i am trying to do, follow the archetype.

I think i might've needed to be more clear, im not trying to make the character work, im trying to follow what GGG tells me to build as a starting shadow FIRST and im trying to make it work SECOND, hence why i think the shadow is a design character, when a game designer tells you to build something and it gives you the hardcore option (which in my eyes is the only option because in softcore everything work) and then what it tells you to build is constantly on the verge of death when you start to reach the last acts something is wrong.

All that added to the fact that the shadow simply does not have "shadowy" options lets me belive that GGG simply does not care, every one in that office is playing spell casters thats why melee gets left in the dust every patch.

"

sonicphi wrote:

After that being said, i invite every one in this thread to go on poe trade and do a search for some unique items like binos and izaros dilema and items with triple res / HP and EV. You will see that it is nearly impossible to itemize properly for proper defenses when you try to stick to base items that are hybrid, which is what i am trying to do, follow the archetype.

That's what I mentioned above, Bino was practically free the last time I looked. Considering the buff and how rare it's supposed to be, I expected it to be at least a divine, but I guess nobody wants to play anything you'd need it for. Maybe it would be more expensive if they didn't nerf helix, dunno.

"

After that being said, i invite every one in this thread to go on poe trade and do a search for some unique items like binos and izaros dilema and items with triple res / HP and EV. You will see that it is nearly impossible to itemize properly for proper defenses when you try to stick to base items that are hybrid, which is what i am trying to do, follow the archetype.

if you cant afford them, you go and buy items with 1 or 2 resists and craft the third one. from your characters - you seem to forget you actually can benchcraft stuff

there is no excuse for a lvl69 character to use:

"

Coral Ring (30 life)

3% cold damage
23 mana
9% all resists
12% lightning resist

do not try to dance around it. your gear on current HC Sanctum character is WORSE than what you can farm in Act5. dont downplay it, dont pretend it doesnt matter. HC character with this ring (other slots are just as bad). gear up, then you can judge if something works or not.



hint: just run Purity of Elements and get 50% all res AND f.. ailment immunity. i play SC and i seem to care about that more than you do

resists are a premium. basic, starting gear should have 'pool', 'defences' and 'key stats' (like movement speed on boots, accuracy on rings etc). resists you can get from Purity of Elements and replace it in end-game with multi-divine gear-set.

i think it would do you much good to actually get one SC character to juiced T16+ so you can see that a) in SC only good characters work b) how to gear and build characters. youve played many chars to ~act8-10 and stopped. I think you have no idea what lies further ahead and what can be done to make things work. campaign takes ~5hours most, even in HC if you decide to cheeze it.

"

sidtherat wrote:

"

After that being said, i invite every one in this thread to go on poe trade and do a search for some unique items like binos and izaros dilema and items with triple res / HP and EV. You will see that it is nearly impossible to itemize properly for proper defenses when you try to stick to base items that are hybrid, which is what i am trying to do, follow the archetype.

if you cant afford them, you go and buy items with 1 or 2 resists and craft the third one. from your characters - you seem to forget you actually can benchcraft stuff

there is no excuse for a lvl69 character to use:

"

Coral Ring (30 life)

3% cold damage
23 mana
9% all resists
12% lightning resist

do not try to dance around it. your gear on current HC Sanctum character is WORSE than what you can farm in Act5. dont downplay it, dont pretend it doesnt matter. HC character with this ring (other slots are just as bad). gear up, then you can judge if something works or not.



hint: just run Purity of Elements and get 50% all res AND f.. ailment immunity. i play SC and i seem to care about that more than you do

resists are a premium. basic, starting gear should have 'pool', 'defences' and 'key stats' (like movement speed on boots, accuracy on rings etc). resists you can get from Purity of Elements and replace it in end-game with multi-divine gear-set.

i think it would do you much good to actually get one SC character to juiced T16+ so you can see that a) in SC only good characters work b) how to gear and build characters. youve played many chars to ~act8-10 and stopped. I think you have no idea what lies further ahead and what can be done to make things work. campaign takes ~5hours most, even in HC if you decide to cheeze it.

Jesus Christ man, every time you post you add nothing to the discussion and you only seem to care about fixing others people builds while hidding your character, no one cares about your build fixing and your e-peen is not gonna get any bigger by you show boating how much more knowledge of the game you think you have. We are discussing design, tell me how getting a better ring thats gonna give me maybe 100 ou 150 more health pool gonna fix my sustain problems with ES, even if i had more 1k ES my sustain would still be hot garbage with bosses.

Unprivate your profile and then we can discuss how much of the archetype you actualy followed and see if you input is actually relevant or not, until then im just gonna ignore you because you cant even stay on the topic of the damn thread which is SHADOW DESIGN and not fix some dudes build with all those tools that dont belong to the shadow design.

Moving on.

At the time in HC it is extremely hard to itemize, for example when u search for hybrid gloves with 3 res 50 shield 50 hp and 100 ev theres only 1 result with it being 20c.

https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Hardcore%20Sanctum/O7BPY20iE

(i dont know if the link will give the same results)

Binos is 40c cheapest:

https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Hardcore%20Sanctum/y9kecR

And the list goes on, its quite hard to get good gear on HC if not impossible, this on top of the mechanics being in my opinion not that great with melee and melee being trash in general causes a lot of issues for the base build that GGG suggests.

Bloodseeker with soultether which was a way people got around the weakness of ES/EV is at the moment extremely expensive so even if a new player knew about those uniques he wouldn't be able to afford it.

A few leagues ago the market was a bit better, might've been because of the loot changes or people leaving HC because of last leagues mobs.

Even if the issue was gear it should't be, finishing the first 10 acts shouldn't be reliant on gear(within reason), not when you have more 15 tiers of maps and end game bosses, the game literally starts when u end act 10, so having average gear shouldn't also be an issue, specially because the end game is literally farming for gear 24/7, but i guess i am going a bit off topic on this.

"

We are discussing design, tell me how getting a better ring thats gonna give me maybe 100 ou 150 more health pool gonna fix my sustain problems with ES, even if i had more 1k ES my sustain would still be hot garbage with bosses.

maybe just maybe your sustain depends on total ES because it is all % based. it is also based on your damage and attack speed - how quickly you cap the max leech rate.

so maybe sit and read about that mechanic instead of ignoring the rules that make this game work.

TL;DR:

low ES, low damage, no sustain

so get bigger ES and stop dancing around it. all you wrote about gearing so far is 'tell me that you have no idea about how ES sustain works without actually saying that'

"

sidtherat wrote:

"

We are discussing design, tell me how getting a better ring thats gonna give me maybe 100 ou 150 more health pool gonna fix my sustain problems with ES, even if i had more 1k ES my sustain would still be hot garbage with bosses.

maybe just maybe your sustain depends on total ES because it is all % based. it is also based on your damage and attack speed - how quickly you cap the max leech rate.

so maybe sit and read about that mechanic instead of ignoring the rules that make this game work.

TL;DR:

low ES, low damage, no sustain

so get bigger ES and stop dancing around it. all you wrote about gearing so far is 'tell me that you have no idea about how ES sustain works without actually saying that'

Now tell me how am i gonna get all that ES and damage if im doing a starter build and the items that would give me that pool cost a ton a currency? also i am melee and cant regen ES because thats the nodes GGG directs me to use.

damn sonic. YOU ARE the one constantly complaining about gear and being unable to function in the game. When others point out your novice flaws, you jump down their throats?!

They DO NOT COST a lot of currency! In your own playthrough alone you can craft better gear than what you are wearing with NO COST.

https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Hardcore%20Sanctum/vDBmnJBCE

There's your link. Literally 1000%+ better rings for an alch. Not even 1000%, INCALCULABLY better rings.

Do the same for every piece of gear, fix your tree, and your "theme" will work fine. Your order of priorities is fine, but they aren't far apart from each other. That's how ALL BUILDS in POE work: you choose a theme, and then you figure out how to make it work. Otherwise, what the hell are you doing? It is only first day players that just go in totally blind and change their tree and build every 10 levels. As you have so rightly put it, you have TONS of experience with shadows. So why are you still playing and talking like its your first day.