POE needs new balance that allows the general population to actually make builds

Pretty much my most major gripe about this game. Here's what I feel like the game does to the average player after they have gotten used to the game.

Spend an hour in pob on an idea you had, no good results, gets boring af so of course ur going to give up when you see no scaling happen.

Spend a couple days saying F it and just leveling a character anyways with your idea, it becomes total ass in red maps.

U follow some build guide as closely as possible and it magically works and makes 0 sense, sure u can have some fun for 1 league but the game just feels flawed this way

and because of this the average population is just conditioned to view most of the game as "no this can't/won't work so why even bother trying" and "I'm bored af of the campaign" while they have no other options but to run a meta build

As soon as you started the post with "spend an hour in PoB" you lost me...and then when you say you follow a build guide as closely as possible that "magically" works...this is NOT the experience of the "average" player. It is the experience of the lazy and ignorant player.

These kinds of posts really irk me...perhaps its my age, experience and memory of playing this game from the beta, or just playing other games but...

The "average" player spends zero time in PoB. The 'average" player PLAYS THE DAMN GAME. You learn everything you need to know by playing the game. Failure is a natural part of rpgs and arpgs and, frankly, ANY game. It is pure laziness to spend time outside the game learning the game. Don't watch streamers, don't copy builds, don't use 3rd party software, just PLAY. I would argue it is the vast majority that does this. Those who never post on the forum except with legitimiate questions, those that never spend time on reddit, those that use no 3rd party software, those that actually want to experience a game.

I don't know when or where it became thought of as "normal" for some players to complain about a game they hardly ever actually play, claiming it's too hard or too confusing or too frustrating, and then in the same breath describing all the things they do to circumvent learning how to play the actual game. I know so many people who don't buy games until they watch twitch streams of other people playing it, have mechanics shoved down their heads long before they have ever even bought the game itself, and then decide whether or not they will play. This is so ass backward to me.

Quickest way to kill your interest in a game or stunt your actual understanding of game mechanics: give up as soon as things become difficult.

The problem is best drops hidden behind Uber bosses. Unless you chose one of the strong builds Character progression is like his.
Story, White maps, yellow maps, red maps and doing the baseline bosses, ___ some grind for Uber Elder and Maven and then ______ actually ____ a _____ extremely ___ long _____ wall _____ of _____ nothing _____ until _____ you ______ make______ your ______ off _______ meta_____ build _____ Uber _______viable.

Until you reach there you are basically playing Diablo 3 and do rifts only because normal bosses drop nothing.

while its true that some skills are far better than the rest any skill can be viable for endgame if one trhow enought currency at it. problem is not everyone has unlimited resources to craft godlike gear to make the skill work.

a posible solution is to transfer power from items to the skill tree so instead of a mace with a base damage of 91-136 we get a mace with 61-106 damage and then mace specific nodes grant an aditional flat damage with maces.

same with everything else armor, ES, eva, life, etc...

expensive items will still be used to max a build but they will no longer be mandatory to make it work.

this change will also increase the value of nodes that are widely ignored because they provide little boost compare to what a good item currently gives.

My experience is quite the opposite. I've always distrusted the majority of build guides. I can always spot flaws immediately upon loading the pastebin into PoB. Sometimes it isn't their fault that their build went viral and gearing becomes more expensive than the build creator originally intended. Other times they just don't fit my personal "policy" of overcapping resistances, etc.

Nowadays I always run my own builds. They fit more closely to my budget, playstyle and I get more sense of achievement out of it.

I skip uber pinnacle bosses because I understand they aren't intended for me. I've seen people deleting Uber Eater and Uber Exarch in one frame with low budget full unique builds that don't have enough resistance to walk ten steps in maps. It's enough to know that it is possible. I don't have to make the same build to prove something that is already proven.

I have quite the opposite feeling. That making currency for builds got much easier and more available to the general public. Atlas Tree system helps with this a lot.

Before 3.15 league being efficient at farming currency meant running some cringe MF strat that had 4000 steps to it and skipping one meant losing money (as those strats involved gigajuicing because of course they did). Don't even get me started on "Nem3" or "Winged Sextant".

Today cringe MF strats with 4000 steps also exist, but this is not the only one that is viable. You can put Harvest and Expedition nodes on your tree and make 4 divs per hour just mapping. Map like that for a day or two and you'll farm enough currency to build a good character.

Leaguestart -> 20 div character -> 200 div character is a valid progression path in this game many people take.

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Esubane wrote:

Leaguestart -> 20 div character -> 200 div character is a valid progression path in this game many people take.

And even a 20 div character can be solid enough to take on most of the content, which feels pretty reasonable. If it could curbstomp absolutely everything then there would be no point in anyone bothering to farm 200 div. And if you can't be bothered to farm up 20 div you're in the wrong line of work genre.

If this game had the kind of character building that would allow someone with little knowledge to whip up something in PoB and slaughter everything for 2 div, what should then a 2 div build of someone that knows what they're doing be capable of? How about a 20 div build of someone that knows what they're doing, let alone a 200 build by a pro, whatever 'pro' meant in PoE context.

There is a character progression model with small linear increments where knowledge doesn't matter much, it's usually utilized in p2w korean MMOs for obvious reasons and thank god that PoE doesn't use it.

Still waiting for the day where people stop confusing themselves with the general public :/

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raics wrote:

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Esubane wrote:

Leaguestart -> 20 div character -> 200 div character is a valid progression path in this game many people take.

And even a 20 div character can be solid enough to take on most of the content, which feels pretty reasonable. If it could curbstomp absolutely everything then there would be no point in anyone bothering to farm 200 div. And if you can't be bothered to farm up 20 div you're in the wrong line of work genre.

If this game had the kind of character building that would allow someone with little knowledge to whip up something in PoB and slaughter everything for 2 div, what should then a 2 div build of someone that knows what they're doing be capable of? How about a 20 div build of someone that knows what they're doing, let alone a 200 build by a pro, whatever 'pro' meant in PoE context.

There is a character progression model with small linear increments where knowledge doesn't matter much, it's usually utilized in p2w korean MMOs for obvious reasons and thank god that PoE doesn't use it.

If you make awful build choices your build will suck and it should suck.
HOWEVER, it is not OK that some builds can faceroll Uber content on a certain budget and other builds struggle at slightly buffed T16 maps on the same budget. Yes I know absolute balance can never exist in a ARPG but currently there are Words, if not galaxies between certain play styles and skill gems. And GGG seems totally fine with it.

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MaxW81 wrote:

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raics wrote:

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Esubane wrote:

Leaguestart -> 20 div character -> 200 div character is a valid progression path in this game many people take.

And even a 20 div character can be solid enough to take on most of the content, which feels pretty reasonable. If it could curbstomp absolutely everything then there would be no point in anyone bothering to farm 200 div. And if you can't be bothered to farm up 20 div you're in the wrong line of work genre.

If this game had the kind of character building that would allow someone with little knowledge to whip up something in PoB and slaughter everything for 2 div, what should then a 2 div build of someone that knows what they're doing be capable of? How about a 20 div build of someone that knows what they're doing, let alone a 200 build by a pro, whatever 'pro' meant in PoE context.

There is a character progression model with small linear increments where knowledge doesn't matter much, it's usually utilized in p2w korean MMOs for obvious reasons and thank god that PoE doesn't use it.

If you make awful build choices your build will suck and it should suck.
HOWEVER, it is not OK that some builds can faceroll Uber content on a certain budget and other builds struggle at slightly buffed T16 maps on the same budget. Yes I know absolute balance can never exist in a ARPG but currently there are Words, if not galaxies between certain play styles and skill gems. And GGG seems totally fine with it.

the game and meta is fairly well balanced at the moment except for Uber bosses. And I dislike the current design of bossing in general.

Because the same key is used to access both standard and uber variant and thus there is a big FOMO if you can't do uber variants. You'll be losing currency if you wanted to do bossing but only standard variants (even rolled to high quantity). The market price of a boss key is balanced towards its uber value. And hardly any build in the game can comfortably do uber pinnacles.

Uber keys should be a separate thing. They should drop from regular boss encounters. If you can beat a regular boss then try your luck in the uber variant. Sanctum unique relics work this way - they make sanctum runs much harder but in order to obtain one you have to beat full Sanctum run with the final boss.