There are no builds in PoE. Everything is just exploiting, abusing, and gimmicks

"

Orbaal wrote:

Nope thats just not true.

There are still plenty good minion builds out there. Im playing one of those and melts pretty much all content effortlessly.
I could do the exact same thing with skellies or zombies or even phantasms if I wanted to but I do prefer SRS.

Besides: The "barely viable" minions you are talking about had been dominating minion builds for years before those got nerfed. YEARS!
It started back in Blight league (thats 2019 just for the records), when minions got multiple insane buffs and I warned back then, that this wouldnt last forever and come at a cost down the road.
Still, back then you could slap a Spectre gem into your setup the moment you got access to it and steamroll the game for no reason or investment needed. That worked for years - not just a few leagues.

And at some point they took the nerfhammer to the face. That was predictable, not surprising at all. The only surprise was that GGG allowed this to go on for as long as it did.

Looked at your SRS, yeah, I can see it should work, but stacking chaos damage on SRS is exactly the "gimmick" OP talked about, meaning unintended usage of the skill outside of its original design :)

Also, aegis aurora is long overdue for nerfhammer to the face too, according to your logic.

"

Echothesis wrote:

Looked at your SRS, yeah, I can see it should work, but stacking chaos damage on SRS is exactly the "gimmick" OP talked about :)

Also, aegis aurora is long overdue for nerfhammer to the face too, according to your logic.

Wrong again :)

The gimmick here is poison.
Flat chaos dmg simply amplifies the poison dmg but its really about poison just like so many other builds out there right now.

If I wasnt using poison and instead stick to the traditional SRS scaling, Id end up with about 15-20 mill dmg instead of the 45 mill Im dealing right now.
Huge difference in numbers obviously but in reality it wouldnt make much of a difference. Because the traditional SRS would deal upfront hit dmg whereas poison needs to be stacked over time to reach those numbers and that buildup takes about 5-6 sec. At that point the traditional setup would have dealt enough dmg to kill/phase any boss anyways except ubers.

So it doesnt change all that much. However I wanted to make a poison based minion build for ages and couldnt quite make it work. It always had the dmg but it was severely lacking defenses and I dont like that.


And yes, Aegis should have been nerfed a long time ago.
I doubt its going to happen, since its an item designed and paid for by a supporter. GGG might change the drop rate and call it a day, which isnt really nerfing the item itself but it will drive up the price.

Yes, I did mean poison inside the "chaos damage" term. Point was, to make your minions strong, you basically use them as transmit vector, replacing damage payload with something not intended to scale with large number of minions you can concentrate on a boss. Not many casual players would come up with ideas like that.

Same goes for many other top builds: people take traps, totems, mines, and then rig other skills on them to multiply single target damage. GGG rushes in and tries to compensate for that, leaving selfcast and basic melee in ruins.

"

trixxar wrote:

It is a bit surprising you can't pick a fire skill and get fire, elemental damage, and maybe some crit, and have a functional build.

Or you can't pick an axe, and say sunder, and get +physical, attack speed, flat damage, defenses and have a functional build.


If we look at common builds, we see https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds

1 - Spark aura-stacker nebuloch abusers
2 - RF + trapper which is pretty specialized and not intuitive either
3 - Low life/defense tornado shot map clearers/sanctum runners
4 - Ice spear Heartbound loop CWDT annihilating light

The third one is kinda a normal build, but it still is paper thin and would die super fast if not run by a pro.

Overall it does seem fair to say you generally need to be exploiting a gimmick or odd/unnational interaction.

Both melee and self-cast seem to be weak and discouraged in favor of totem/trap/mine/coc/cwdt mechanics, which is slightly counterintuitive.

I am not sure whether it is intentional or not that you can't pick X skill with Fire/AoE/Ele tags, stack those attributes, and over time succeed.

Then again most other MMORPGs do let you succeed that way, so ... its just the game.

-

Here is my guess, they can't find a way to make the game viable for a wide audience with 'normal' builds without vastly overpowering and therefore boring the audience that will happily play 8-12 hours a day for weeks on end.

The game balance is somewhat collateral damage from streamer-level players.

Again, just a guess, and not a criticism. If that is who is keeping the game afloat, they SHOULD balance around that.

This.

Don't think its a matter of keeping the game afloat though. If game didn't feel punishing to me I would be inclined to spend more. Maybe its just that the 8-12h per day crowd are really the lucky rich guys who don't need to work and can buy up everything GGG puts in the cash shop? Maybe its about which group will bring in more profit in the end? Or they are just making a game that they want for themselves and there just happens to be this overlap of devs who, maybe, actually, play their own game in the office and, naturally, can and do play it a lot and streamers/other extreme playtime crowd.

Whatever it is, it makes for top-oriented balanced game that is becoming more frustrating than fun over time for anyone who is trying to balance their gaming with job/family/exersize/etc. I hate it. I understand that others like what it became/is becoming but I entered the game in 2015 when things were much more relaxed and now it feels like I am being squeezed out.

If the hardcorisation of the game is not the goal then the AN un-fuckening this league was a step in right direction, but just a step.

"

Echothesis wrote:

Yes, I did mean poison inside the "chaos damage" term. Point was, to make your minions strong, you basically use them as transmit vector, replacing damage payload with something not intended to scale with large number of minions you can concentrate on a boss. Not many casual players would come up with ideas like that.

True.
If "casuals" could come up with stuff like that, deal this sort of dmg and delete all content in seconds this game would turn into a joke tho.

I dont like the term "casual" to begin with because there is no clear definition what this means and is often used as a sort of excuse.

This game is and always was knowledge based.
Knowledge is king. Nothing comes close to this.
Obviously "casuals" can acquire knowledge too, if they wanted to. If you spend enough time here on the forum you cant help but notice that this is exactly what the complaining players refuse to do. Whatever help is offered, the complaining player will shut it down and ignore it, which means this player wont improve and forever be stuck in the exact same position.
Thats hardly the games fault and thats why I refuse the "casual" argument.

"

Echothesis wrote:

Same goes for many other top builds: people take traps, totems, mines, and then rig other skills on them to multiply single target damage. GGG rushes in and tries to compensate for that, leaving selfcast and basic melee in ruins.

This is absolutely true.
You can still make those builds work and have fun but it will take more effort and knowledge.
This is fine as far as Im concerned simply because veteran players should know what they are doing and thus are willingly opting into this.

At this point the "what about new players" will be brought up and I dont care.
New players cant have the knowledge needed and therefore are supposed to hit a wall early in maps no matter what. Thats how the game is designed and its always been that way.
If those players are intrigued, wanting to learn more and progress further, they can. Nothing is stopping them from doing so except their willingness to learn and improve.

I dunno. I generally pick a skill and go. Not usually a starter skill but sometimes.

It works fine.

What currently doesn't work fine are damage types. This has been a thing since Expedition 3.15. Pure Physical, Impale, Bleed, Ignite, Poison (actual poison skills) are meh to bad right now.

This does translate to lower build diversity, esp with the janked Fortify we have now. I was making fun of Fortify in another topic. Arctic Armor + Wind Ward giving me 21% to 51% less damage taken makes it better to just face tank some things on a Deadeye and it's not damage dependent.

I'm fairly sure you can take Fireball to end-game though. Just build it front-end, Ignore ignite. It has a very high Damage Effectiveness. Sniper's Mark is an easy pick to help with single target.

I play hipster stuff all the time and it works. Some better than others.

"

Echothesis wrote:

Yes, I did mean poison inside the "chaos damage" term. Point was, to make your minions strong, you basically use them as transmit vector, replacing damage payload with something not intended to scale with large number of minions you can concentrate on a boss. Not many casual players would come up with ideas like that.

Same goes for many other top builds: people take traps, totems, mines, and then rig other skills on them to multiply single target damage. GGG rushes in and tries to compensate for that, leaving selfcast and basic melee in ruins.

hes using these



which are specifically designed to scale dots from your minions, so in what way is it not intended to have minions use dot damage like this?

he has 45 million dps, why would a casual player need 45 million dps? why would a casual player need to come up with an idea like that? why would the game be better if all the ideas that were effective were instantly obvious to all the casual players?

ggg have not balanced the game around having 45 million dps and left everyone who doesnt get that much in ruins. the vast majority of endgame is cakewalk easy mode with 1/10 of that damage. he didnt make his minions strong, he made his minions stupidly broken and it would be awful for the game if it was instantly obvious to all casual players how to make your build stupidly broken.




of all computer games i can think of that i have ever played in the 41 years ive been alive path of exile is one that is supposed to have the biggest learning curve with many tiers of game knowledge and mastery to work towards and overcome. if a casual player doesnt want that then why are they here? they literally came to the game with the biggest skill trees and skill count with the most mechanics and items and affixes and content that offers the most depth and scope for learning and inventing things. thats why people come here, thats not a bug, thats the selling point, if someone doesnt want that then theyre playing the worst possible game in the worst possible genre.










i get it, dont think im completely dismissing the direction of these kind of thoughts. the game isnt friendly enough, it doesnt do enough to tech you how to do the basics, it doesnt support the basics well enough. more should be done to work out some basic architypes for each class, guide clueless players in those directions and make sure theyre all effective in a basic fashion for the basic easy to reach endgame activities at all times, regardless of the current meta and patches. ggg just cant rely on the community to make these builds and guides because theyre constantly pulling the rug out from under the feet of the current game state. this has to be something designed into the game and factored into changes made at the design level.

there should probably be 3 skills each class starts with, one that would work with each of the 3 ascendancies, and then common uniques, quest rewards etc should be added to support the most basic, obvious way to play those skills and every time they rebalance the game they should put together those basic builds in a basic way and make sure theyre still effective in appropriate content at appropriate levels/gearing. the game should probably put the other options for your main skills later down the road or have them in places you have to go slightly out of your way to get. the game sort of does some of this already, sort of, but imo not really in such a considered and supported fashion.



we also have to acknowledge tho that the game is always going to be complex, its always going to have a long learning curve and the most effective things are probably always going to be fairly extravagant expert strats. and thats a good thing, thats a desirable game state. if i play the game for 3000 hours there should be stuff im thinking of and capable of that i wasnt after 30 hours. thats why this is a game that has grown for 10 years, thats what makes it great.

You know I do agree with a lot of what's thrown around. More definitely should be done to guide newer players to the basics of a build I listed. While the points sound obvious and extremely elementary to veteran players, new players are never once told the importance of resistance, defense layers, etc. I think if the game does a better job of addressing those things during the campaign (i.e. "Grab that sapphire ring on the ground. You will be fighting an Act boss that does a lot of cold damage and it will help you survive.") far more new and casual players would realize they are important and look out for such things.

Instead, we have an environment where the only thing new players see others talk about is how much dps they have. So they end up on the path of just focusing on dps.

"

Yes, I did mean poison inside the "chaos damage" term. Point was, to make your minions strong, you basically use them as transmit vector, replacing damage payload with something not intended to scale with large number of minions you can concentrate on a boss. Not many casual players would come up with ideas like that.

Same goes for many other top builds: people take traps, totems, mines, and then rig other skills on them to multiply single target damage. GGG rushes in and tries to compensate for that, leaving selfcast and basic melee in ruins.

This is a stupid perspective. Severed in sleep came out in fucking breach league and poison CWC animate weapon was the premier build that used it. It functions pretty much exactly like poison srs does now. You look at the weapon and automatically know what it's useful for if your brain works. There's no "unintended interaction" there.

Selfcast is not "in ruins." Check out my occultist this league. Tell me how META and gimmicky my (well not mine, it's ZApwner's) build is. It's low life ivory tower, HERESY I tell you. I don't understand why failure to play the game well results in bad faith arguments or just straight up ignorance being spouted out of a loudspeaker.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

hes using these

which are specifically designed to scale dots from your minions, so in what way is it not intended to have minions use dot damage like this?

he has 45 million dps, why would a casual player need 45 million dps? why would a casual player need to come up with an idea like that? why would the game be better if all the ideas that were effective were instantly obvious to all the casual players?

ggg have not balanced the game around having 45 million dps and left everyone who doesnt get that much in ruins. the vast majority of endgame is cakewalk easy mode with 1/10 of that damage. he didnt make his minions strong, he made his minions stupidly broken and it would be awful for the game if it was instantly obvious to all casual players how to make your build stupidly broken.
...

It is not intended because poison, and its ability to stack with itself is not present as innate skill of SRS. They were designed with Ignite, single DOT per enemy. Ability to use player-grade support gems on minions, totems, and traps is a hole in the balance, because it is not possible to even dps out between these setups and selfcasting 1 spell at a time.

About 45 million dps, I don't know if player thinks he/she needs it, but it opens up totally different gameplay: buy uberboss invitations/fragments, farm them for their unique rewards, and sell rewards for profit. This is much more time-efficient than peasant map grind for the "balanced" builds.