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

There are still plenty of off-meta builds that are strong. Not many as there used to be sadly but that's another situation with damage types, melee and other aspects of the game left to rot.

You don't really need some fancy goofball layering combo. Some are cool for sure but all you really need is a good skill and know how to build around it. Defense honestly couldn't be more brain dead since the rework. Stack some Auras with another source or two of less damage, done.

You know how good Storm Rain is at bossing? Pretty ridiculous.
Know how many people played it this and last league? 0.1% / 0.2%.

This community follows trends. If you want to perform on a budget. Don't.

My first issue with builds is getting the right combo of gem colors and mods together. Six linking items in the current iteration is ass. Before itemized harvest we got things that gave away six links and socket colors. Now not so much.

My second issue is that if a boss is allowed to live like 90 seconds the amount of ground degens and debuffs become overwhelming. It is the number wall and it shouldn't exist. If I want to spend 5 minutes fighting a pinnacle boss, let me.

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roundishcap wrote:

My first issue with builds is getting the right combo of gem colors and mods together. Six linking items in the current iteration is ass. Before itemized harvest we got things that gave away six links and socket colors. Now not so much.

My second issue is that if a boss is allowed to live like 90 seconds the amount of ground degens and debuffs become overwhelming. It is the number wall and it shouldn't exist. If I want to spend 5 minutes fighting a pinnacle boss, let me.

these bullshit mechanics came from MMO's where there is "enrage" that prevents players from clever use of game mechanics. Such as bringing 18 healers to a 20-man raid and slowly chipping away the boss health being able to bruteforce heal through any mechanics. Hard enrage gives the boss an enormous buff to damage and speed, killing any player in 1 hit and being much faster than any class in the game to prevent kiting. Sometimes it's even more pronounced - a spell cast that has infinite range and does infinite damage (piercing through any defensive cooldowns, including immunities)

Soft enrages are less obvious and usually involve ground clutter or increasing number of adds spawning. It becomes overwhelming after some time.

POE mainly uses soft-enrage mechanics - the problem is that they kick in too early. Ground clutter begins right at the beginning of the fight. This isn't good design.