The shadow is a design disaster

ill just throw in the proverbial wrench: I think that GGG is actually moving away from classes - but just for the 'rich' (GGG has to make hamsters run the wheel after all)

Forbidden jewels + Impossible Escape + Skin of the Lords

these make ascendancy choice FAR less 'binding' than ever before. in fact Skin of the Lords make Scion almost redundant. while ascendancy choice is important, what matters in practice are keystones. having a keystone of your choice (wallet permitting) available without being forced to pick 'nearby' starting class makes a HUGE difference. same with 'cheaply' picking the 'good' nodes from far away part of the tree?

cherry-picking the 'good' part of ascendancy with Forbidden jewels is just a final blow to ascendancy as a theme-building mechanic

like it or not, that mechanic made a thematic sense. it got diluted for the price of making people play/farm more - power creep for the rich. the mighty conversion $%.

Yeah. And I don't see that as a wrench so much as a capstone, the cherry on top. We're already discussing how Ascendancy features are bleeding into the Skilldrasil, which in turn would make the significance of Ascendancy choice 'less binding'.

Final thought, not related but not completely irrelevant: funny how a game so staunchly built on not being p2w and fair to all, freeloader and Ruler alike, has due to its aggressive trading and luxurious high end itemisation, nonetheless come to represent a shining example of the vast chasm between the haves and the have-nots...just in a virtual sense, where we can excuse that because everyone has equal chance, right? Not p2w, so it's all good.


...Yeah, I'm sure Joe Schmoe comes home from work on a Friday for a few hours gaming and thinks he has the same chances and opportunities to be a 1%er in Wraeclast as BigStreamerDude69. That's totally how it works.

Ugh. I can't even.

I always get into arguments with people about the benefits/problems with the ascendancy system and while I understand how it originally hindered certain wacky build ideas, the benefits it gave to the game were astronomical by comparison.

Diablo 2 was a game with 5 classes (7 later in the expansion). I usually try to avoid comparison but it is apt in this case. The IDENTITY of your class choice was radically important to how you eventually play the game. This is what defines the rpg genre. We see it in basically every single arpg loot-based game in existence. PoE expanded on older games by having 7 classes, but now each class has 3 almost entirely unique ascendancies to choose from later creating, in effect, 21 classes to play. 21 classes plus the sheer amount of skills and build-defining uniques added up to 100s of different ways to play the game.

Provided there weren't any duds in ascendancies ofc.

Now: rather than continue to balance and solidify the ascendancy identities, PoE has systematically destroyed the ascendancy system over the course of many years. They remove the unique identities of each ascendancy in favor of general buffs to, in their view, increase build diversity. However, I would argue this removes the rpg aspect of the game, and also kills build diversity. Nowadays, the same unique items are used on all characters, a handful of skills are used instead of ALL the skills, sometimes playing a witch spellcaster is NOT as efficient as playing a SHADOW spellcaster or RANGER spellcaster. I would argue this is NOT a good thing for the future of the game.

Yes, the passive tree is the main draw. Yes, the sheer abundance of skill gems is a main draw. Yes, the creativity to build any which way you want regardless of where you start can be a good thing in certain situations. But...its an rpg. All classes devolving into a melting pot of no identity is just not what I signed on for. At this point in the development stage of PoE, there shouldn't even be any classes: just choose your character gender, where you want to start on the tree, and go. Why do we have 21 classes to play if hardly any of them have any singular identity anymore?

I think Diablo 1 did it better while still having a class system.

Diablo 2's popularity is what mainstreamed the class defining roles in ARPGs. Plenty before and even slightly after did not have this. Dungeon Siege, Titan's Quest, Revenant, Silver and quite a few hybrids as the genre was still new. You don't "need" a class in an RPG. Games like Ultima kinda proved this very early on. I've played D&D for 30 years. It always ends in multi-classing.

Class identity is defined by players, giving them a big toolbox to build with. What you end up with it's your own playstyle. Your own variation of some design that is very much different than others.

^multi-classing is fine, but its still classing. All the games you mentioned have classes. Including D&D. Your character is defined by your class.

RPG = role playing game. If you aren't playing a role, its not an rpg.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Yes, the passive tree is the main draw. Yes, the sheer abundance of skill gems is a main draw. Yes, the creativity to build any which way you want regardless of where you start can be a good thing in certain situations. But...its an rpg. All classes devolving into a melting pot of no identity is just not what I signed on for. At this point in the development stage of PoE, there shouldn't even be any classes: just choose your character gender, where you want to start on the tree, and go. Why do we have 21 classes to play if hardly any of them have any singular identity anymore?

I think you said it perfectly and it ties very well with what i said in the OP, GGG focused so much on build diversity that they killed it altogether, when u have all the options everywhere classes just lose identity.

TBH i was not even asking for identity in the OP i was just for the identity to be viable but i guess the lack of viability was just a symptom of the lack of identity or vise versa.

I don think its fair to GGG for us to only complain about things without making suggestions so im gonna make some suggestions.

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The trickster ascendancy leads you into a melee direction so the SOUL DRINKER node should give you ES on hit for melee hits only based on evasion something like "gain 0.5% of ur evasion as ES on hit" adjusting that number accordingly.

Swift killer overlaps with the archer too much, it should be something that touches on both power and frenzy charge like it was before.

I would also like to see something that works like "do X when using a dagger and a claw simultaneously"

For the assassin ascendancy i would love something with chaos on the top side of the tree.

Im not gonna talk about saboteur, i dont consider saboteur a shadow at all, its just a witch with extra steps for me.

Some other stuff would be to give the shadow some splash somehow since it really struggles with that when using melee, something like, minions explode when killed with a crit. Just so u dont have to path all the way to the marauder or anoint tribal fury.

We definitely need more shadow like skills that should ideally synergise with the ascendancies, stuff like, making clones of you and those clones doing damage, very trickster like, making a clone that agros mobs and takes damage for you. Some more crit based stuff like, assassin strike for example, every time u critical strike leaves a counter and when u reach a certain amount of counter u deal damage based on a mobs % percentage, if you are dual wielding you leave 2 marks at or something like an arcane stab where if x mobs with the arcane stab are together they cause an arcane explosion and the player leeches some ES back if he is near by.


Hopefully GGG will take a look at this and maybe do something, one can only hope.

^problem is...when you talk about VIABILITY you run into some major problems. Almost everything in the game is viable: some things are harder than others, some are just simply not as good as others, but its almost all viable. So I agree with what others have said that you CAN make a shadow a "shadow", you CAN make an assassin. But the ascendancy itself doesn't exactly help you do that anymore.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

^problem is...when you talk about VIABILITY you run into some major problems. Almost everything in the game is viable: some things are harder than others, some are just simply not as good as others, but its almost all viable. So I agree with what others have said that you CAN make a shadow a "shadow", you CAN make an assassin. But the ascendancy itself doesn't exactly help you do that anymore.

You can do that IF you play softcore OR if you have a ton of currency, but that is looking at the problem from a very shallow perspective, like i mentioned before, you have to take into account things like immersion and new player experience.

Imagine your new to poe, not only is the tree the most daunting thing you have seen in a game ever the build the game tells you to builds also is terrible do you think thats good thing? old players dont like the shadow being a witch do you think ones will? its just bad game design plain and simple and it needs to be changed.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

I always get into arguments with people about the benefits/problems with the ascendancy system and while I understand how it originally hindered certain wacky build ideas, the benefits it gave to the game were astronomical by comparison.

agreed.

and im also not in favour of so many things like wicked ward, ghost shrouds etc being taken out of ascendancies and put on the passive tree. its broken the good things about ascendancy.

before if u wanted the wicked ward u went witch, if you wanted ghost shrouds u went shadow, and both heavily buffed an es+ev defence setup. so you chose which you wanted, which one do you prefer? its not rly a maths choice its a feels choice, a playstyle choice, a gear effected choice.

now you get both of them on all es+ev chars so its more a case of well this ascendancy gives me more damage, its just a raw number choice they both give me deeps this one has more deeps tho, and i can prove that definitively with a numerical value, so i make that choice and then get ghost shrouds and wicked ward on that character. and if i went for the other option, id have less damage, but what identity would have shifted? its more than just the fact the numbers make the choice for you, its also that you end up with something that more closesly resembles the exact same character with different voicelines and a different tooltip damage number. wheres the identity? wheres the role?

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Final thought, not related but not completely irrelevant: funny how a game so staunchly built on not being p2w and fair to all, freeloader and Ruler alike, has due to its aggressive trading and luxurious high end itemisation, nonetheless come to represent a shining example of the vast chasm between the haves and the have-nots...just in a virtual sense, where we can excuse that because everyone has equal chance, right? Not p2w, so it's all good.


...Yeah, I'm sure Joe Schmoe comes home from work on a Friday for a few hours gaming and thinks he has the same chances and opportunities to be a 1%er in Wraeclast as BigStreamerDude69. That's totally how it works.

Ugh. I can't even.

not being p2w isnt about making everyone equal regardless of time, effort and knowledge. its about making the difference between the haves and the have nots based on your dedication to and understanding of the game, being good at it and working hard at it, that is what gets you ahead, the actual gameplay, not how much money you have to buy an 'i win' token. you dont get to win the game and beat other people despite them putting in way more time and effort and being far better at the game than you.

the arpg genre has always been about rewarding time, effort and knowledge. that is baked into the fabric of having a game with build choices and random item drops, its an inevitable outcome of the fundamental structure of the genre.

If the Shadow is that much of a design disaster, then why are you still playing it sonicphi?