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

I too find that PoE is a unique game that still forces me (after over a decade of playing) to minimize the game to look things up or go on PoB or go on the trade site, almost more than I actually play the game. Even streamers, if you critically watch them as they play, they are constantly minimizing the game and doing other things or using other tools that are NOT provided by the game because they are essentially NECESSARY to play the game. In fact, the BETTER you are at the game, the less you are actually IN the game. I say this with hesitation, but the more experience you have in PoE, the more you use 3rd party software to optimize your in-game decisions. This is such a weird concept for a video game and is entirely unique to PoE.

I cannot think of any other game with this design, and it points to some SERIOUS flaws in the game itself. PoE is full (or I guess empty) of information "holes" or downright incorrect information. Minions have no reliable in-game info on their stats, damage, or even attack patterns. Tooltip dps for DoT is STILL a mess even after multiple DoT reworks. Tooltip dps for impale is wrong. Tooltip defense %s and information is misleading at best, and wrong at worst.

We are in an odd spiral of a conversation: everyone involved has YEARS of experience playing this game: we can't truly understand what its like to be a brand new player trying to play the game and NOT use the wiki/3rd party softwares we have all gotten so used to. I agree, hand holding every step of the way is not the way to go. But having wrong, misleading, incomplete, or otherwise unhelpful information still in the game after 10 years of development is not a "learning curve" issue. It is a design flaw.

Totally separate topic regarding flat damage: it is incredibly ignorant to say that it is "unintended" to multiply sources of damage together. Every single stat that is released into the game is intended to be stacked together. That is true of PoE in it's beta, and it's true now. It is a numbers game: the players who truly want to push the limits of their build do the math and use every tool provided by the devs. There is purposely more, increased, flat, converted sources of damage that can ALL be used in tandem. There is no lack of intention behind these sources of multiplicative and additive stats.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

...
Totally separate topic regarding flat damage: it is incredibly ignorant to say that it is "unintended" to multiply sources of damage together. Every single stat that is released into the game is intended to be stacked together. That is true of PoE in it's beta, and it's true now. It is a numbers game: the players who truly want to push the limits of their build do the math and use every tool provided by the devs. There is purposely more, increased, flat, converted sources of damage that can ALL be used in tandem. There is no lack of intention behind these sources of multiplicative and additive stats.

Okay, must be something about my english to not be able to communicate clearly.

There are weapons and skill gems designed to be equipped by players, and a set of modifiers for the damage of weapon and spell gem. From wiki:
Damage = (Base_Damage + Added_Damage) * Increased_Damage * More_Damage * Hit_Rate + (Critical_Strike_Damage * Critical_Strike_Chance)

Stacking any of these modifiers is cool and intended, I have no problems with it.

Now, there are other proxies a player can use, and they can be way more numerous than players. They use the same damage calculation, and have their own attacks and spells designed with keeping their potential quantity in mind, so these attacks and spells are weaker than player's weapons and spells. So far, so good.

Now, what would happen if you take modifiers from player's design space, like support gems, and put them on your army of minions, group of ballistas or totems? Flat damage is only tip of the iceberg, there are ailments and other offensives which would combine minion application rate with the new base damage.

Yes, I cannot truly verdict if this is "intended" or not, but it renders original minion attacks and spells obsolete, and also renders selfcast inferior despite some built-in damage multipliers against it, which is design problem by definition of "role-playing". Choosing skills is the cornerstone of an Arpg, it should not have skills no one want to use, same as it should not have skills that everyone would prefer.

If GGG and the most active part of the playerbase do not care about above, okay. There is no principal difference between collecting all "buff damage" in straightforward mobile hack/slash rpg and using provided holes in PoE damage calculation. Amount of these holes is pretty unusual among other notable arpg games.

"

Echothesis wrote:

Now, what would happen if you take modifiers from player's design space, like support gems, and put them on your army of minions, group of ballistas or totems? Flat damage is only tip of the iceberg, there are ailments and other offensives which would combine minion application rate with the new base damage.

Yes, I cannot truly verdict if this is "intended" or not, but it renders original minion attacks and spells obsolete, and also renders selfcast inferior despite some built-in damage multipliers against it, which is design problem by definition of "role-playing". Choosing skills is the cornerstone of an Arpg, it should not have skills no one want to use, same as it should not have skills that everyone would prefer.

This I disagree with. It does NOT render the original minion attacks/spells obsolete. It gives them a new function. These are not the same thing. Take any of the projectile skills: the ORIGINAL attack is generally a single arrow hitting 1 enemy. But then you layer on multiple projectiles, pierce, chain, added aoe, etc. and it completely changes the function of the original skill. Do you also consider these things rendering the original skill obsolete? Skeletons being turned into skeleton mages via Dead Reckoning: does this render the original Skeletons obsolete? No. These tools exist in the game and the players are creative enough to find new ways to: apply poisons, apply ignites, deal more damage, have more aoe; in other words, CHANGE the original skill. This is PoE. It is quite literally the most original and staple thing about PoE that hasn't changed since 2012.

True "exploits" are rare, and unintended by GGG and if they are truly game-breaking then they hotfix. Everything else, even if it isn't even thought of by the developers, is still INTENDED by the developers. It is the very foundation of the game itself.

Regarding skills that no one wants to use: this is ALSO a staple of rpgs in general. There is not a single game in existence where EVERY skill is equally powerful whether it is in terms of damage or aoe or utility. If that were the case, there would generally be no reason to have different skills in the first place. This is why the various mechanics PoE has to "alter" skills still breathe life into underused or underpowered skills. They can STILL be interesting, as long as you aren't expecting them to perform like every other skill. Puncture is never going to be the same as Tornado Shot, Hydrosphere is never going to be the same as Arc. And that's perfectly fine

"

Echothesis wrote:

Nerfing flasks and most support gems affected everything across the board without shifting build disparity, which imho is more serious problem, assuming you want to prevent majority of players from frustration of hitting walls at endgame content. (GGG may not care about such frustration, and have intentionally left wild scaling as it is, so specific category of players could have their fun with it).

i saw a lot of high vis content creators at the time slam ggg for nerfing flasks, support gems etc, saying "this nerfs everyone, this doesnt focus the nerfs on the high end like they should be doing, this is a bad change it just hurts the little people"...

i think that perspective misses the big issue. nerfing more multipliers across the board hurts the big guys more and it solves this problem of wild scaling that is abused by a minority to end up trivialising content that most players find an impossible dps check.

the problem is the elite players are simply stacking more of the more multipliers, and the more damage a more multiplier gives the more stacking more of them will give you more damage.



we got supports, curses, auras, unique flasks, theres 4 common sources of 'more' damage, multiplicative damage boosters.

a new player gets to maps, they probably have a 4 link and lets give them credit and say they have managed to equip a correctly scaling aura or a curse. this means they have 4 sources of 'more' damage.

and elite player has a 6 link, 3 auras, 2 curses, 2 dps flasks. this is 12 sources of 'more' damage. thats why their damage is absurd compared to a new player, or even just a not very clued in to stacking everything in the world kind of average player.



lets run the maths on that new player vs the elite, both starting with 100 base damage just to make it easy to look at, and we will math it out in a game where the average source of 'more' damage is about 40%, and a game where the average source is 10%:




With 40% more damage:

noob final dps: 384

elite final dps: 5,669



With 10% more damage:

noob final dps: 146

elite final dps: 313


so if more multipliers have an average value of 40% more damage the elite guy has over 14x the damage of the noob, if they are 10% its about 2x the damage.

so how do you balance the game around the difference in damage on that first example of 40%? because thats kind of where we are at right now, a source of more damage is generally in the region of 30-50%.

imo 10% would be too low, you want people who put in a ton of work to be paid off by feeling a bit ridiculous, just not so ridiculous its impossible to have anything resembling balance given the noobs damage.



heres the figures with about 20% average more damage:

noob final dps: 207

elite final dps: 891


thats more like it right? you go ham, you get quad damage compared to the inexperienced guy. when more multis are like this is makes dropping one to get a defence aura or curse instead of the deeps one less devastating to your damage too, it just fixes so much about the games scaling/balance issues.


but even if they did want to fix this in this way the community wont let them, they will just call nerf, say nerfing all sources of more damage hurts everyone and doesnt target the top end, theyre so out of touch omg they dont even understand their own game its so bad lets demote chris to cleaning desks where his elitist hardcore vision cant ruin the game any more #pitchforkparty





honestly i think the play is wait for poe2 and then just do it. its the big break, everyones expecting big changes, just come in with poe2 BAM, all supports, auras, curses, unqie flasks are pitched around 15-25% more damage and then you rebalance monster life around the new values.

you need a fundamental change like that, its no good saying just go after the abuse cases cause thats endlessly chasing down individual builds and obliterating them skill by skill which upsets people and never fixes the bigger issue. next league next meta its a new set of broken builds you have to destroy. you make a core change like this and suddenly all balancing becomes easier moving forward because an abuse case isnt doing 10-20x the damage of normal builds, theyre doing 3-6x the damage.

"

This I disagree with. It does NOT render the original minion attacks/spells obsolete. It gives them a new function. These are not the same thing. Take any of the projectile skills: the ORIGINAL attack is generally a single arrow hitting 1 enemy. But then you layer on multiple projectiles, pierce, chain, added aoe, etc. and it completely changes the function of the original skill. Do you also consider these things rendering the original skill obsolete? Skeletons being turned into skeleton mages via Dead Reckoning: does this render the original Skeletons obsolete? No. These tools exist in the game and the players are creative enough to find new ways to: apply poisons, apply ignites, deal more damage, have more aoe; in other words, CHANGE the original skill. This is PoE. It is quite literally the most original and staple thing about PoE that hasn't changed since 2012.

True "exploits" are rare, and unintended by GGG and if they are truly game-breaking then they hotfix. Everything else, even if it isn't even thought of by the developers, is still INTENDED by the developers. It is the very foundation of the game itself.

Regarding skills that no one wants to use: this is ALSO a staple of rpgs in general. There is not a single game in existence where EVERY skill is equally powerful whether it is in terms of damage or aoe or utility. If that were the case, there would generally be no reason to have different skills in the first place. This is why the various mechanics PoE has to "alter" skills still breathe life into underused or underpowered skills. They can STILL be interesting, as long as you aren't expecting them to perform like every other skill. Puncture is never going to be the same as Tornado Shot, Hydrosphere is never going to be the same as Arc. And that's perfectly fine

Skills not being the same is nice. That's not the problem of PoE.
The problem is when they decide "game is too ez" when they see a no-life streamer trivializing the game like it's nothing and make balance changes around that.

When they do this, they put a strain in lots of players and underperforming skills end up feeling much worse.

"

Echothesis wrote:

Okay, must be something about my english to not be able to communicate clearly.

There are weapons and skill gems designed to be equipped by players, and a set of modifiers for the damage of weapon and spell gem. From wiki:
Damage = (Base_Damage + Added_Damage) * Increased_Damage * More_Damage * Hit_Rate + (Critical_Strike_Damage * Critical_Strike_Chance)

Stacking any of these modifiers is cool and intended, I have no problems with it.

Now, there are other proxies a player can use, and they can be way more numerous than players. They use the same damage calculation, and have their own attacks and spells designed with keeping their potential quantity in mind, so these attacks and spells are weaker than player's weapons and spells. So far, so good.

Now, what would happen if you take modifiers from player's design space, like support gems, and put them on your army of minions, group of ballistas or totems? Flat damage is only tip of the iceberg, there are ailments and other offensives which would combine minion application rate with the new base damage.

Yes, I cannot truly verdict if this is "intended" or not, but it renders original minion attacks and spells obsolete, and also renders selfcast inferior despite some built-in damage multipliers against it, which is design problem by definition of "role-playing". Choosing skills is the cornerstone of an Arpg, it should not have skills no one want to use, same as it should not have skills that everyone would prefer.

If GGG and the most active part of the playerbase do not care about above, okay. There is no principal difference between collecting all "buff damage" in straightforward mobile hack/slash rpg and using provided holes in PoE damage calculation. Amount of these holes is pretty unusual among other notable arpg games.

Your english is fine, the premise is wrong. If, dunno, a flame golem uses its incinerate spells it doesn't gain full added damage on every hit, minions also have damage effectiveness when needed. Historically, minions had varying amounts of added damage scaling when it was appropriate, the gain will vary somewhat but you aren't cheating the system if you add damage to them.

If the game expects you to have 10 skeletons or 4 totems, that's what their damage is balanced around. If you give your skeletons an amount of added damage that amounts to them dealing 30% more damage, your total dps will go up by 30%, not by 300%.

There is generally some variance with added damage scaling even on player side, so we could say that some benefit more from adding damage and some benefit less. They used to differ more, but GGG is better at keeping an eye on it these days so it's a few percent at worst, unless the skill is unusual in some way. I remember flame dash having extremely high added damage scaling for a time, I assume it's because the skill isn't intended to deal damage in most cases, but they wanted it to have extra scaling potential if someone wanted to build around it.

"

This game feels like the devs want no builds to clear all content.

um yeah, they have been pretty open about that for a very long time

Lately i have been feeling like there are no builds in poe either

Ive made like 8 different builds over the last 2 leagues and none of them are really playable

All of these builds are basically from the forum reddit youtube or poeninja (i feel poeninja is a REALLY bad place to get builds from)

Can they do t1 maps? for the most part yes aside from a couple that even rares boss or league content was to hard for them

I keep aksing myself why would i play this build (even if it could do t16s) and i think the only answer would be that it wouldnt die as much as my wardloop

The only build i ever play anymore is wardloop because it is basically better then literally every other build ive made... and i die on it so many times its unreal but its dmg can clear stuff pretty easy

This league my wardloop is a lot worse then it was with all the nerfs to

The people defending the game status quo seems to have either dozens of 95+ characters, or be the type who get near 40 challenges, or some mix.

Let me humbly suggest some of you are advocating for the game you want now, with the knowledge you have now after thousands of hours, and you are probably so far removed from learning the game that you don't remember that part of things at all.


I definitely think GGG could use some playtesters and developers who are completely fresh to PoE.


(Also strong agree with Snorkle's scaling example, how can you balance a game where the difference in dps can be two orders of magnitude? There should be a big difference to pay off skill, effort and knowledge, but not so much the game is unbalanceable.)

"

trixxar wrote:

The people defending the game status quo seems to have either dozens of 95+ characters, or be the type who get near 40 challenges, or some mix.

Let me humbly suggest some of you are advocating for the game you want now, with the knowledge you have now after thousands of hours, and you are probably so far removed from learning the game that you don't remember that part of things at all.

Im still learning, havent stopped doing that.
Also Im happy to share what Ive learned so far.
Because of that, Im very aware how hard it is to learn this game - doesnt mean its impossible tho.

If only the guys who are struggling would ask and try to learn, we all could move on and improve instead of playing the blaming game.