OH BOY, THE NERF HAMMER WILL COME HUGE

My guesses:

1.Eater/Exarch altars nerfed giga hard without anything to make up for it.
2. Seismic Trap nerfed by a tiny bit but 10 already under performing skills are hit harder by their roundabout nerf
3. They somehow bring back AN again
4. Posion nerfed but too much so no one will use it from here on out.
5. For some reason 90% of the skill gems wont work with Nimis

They will always switch the meta every new league. That's just what they do to freshen things up. I wouldn't mind that SRS glory is short-lived because another skill will take its mantle.

SRS is rather clunky especially if you are used to playing softcore zoom-zoom builds. Animate Weapon is better but only in the ideal case whereby they don't die in 1 second, because otherwise it will be worse than re-summoning SRS since you must cast Bladefall. Permanent and semi-permanent (Animate Weapon has very long duration) are in bad state at the moment because they always die in harder content like popping open Tul breaches in a T16 alched map with one or two damage mods.

The fact that one player is able to run SRS and beat the hardest content with ascendancies that have no synergy whatsoever with minions or poison like Champion and Jugg (and mostly without wearing Covenant too) is something they can retrospect and fix without affecting minions in general and other skills typically used with poison like Cobra Lash and Spectral Throw.

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MaxW81 wrote:

My guesses:

1.Eater/Exarch altars nerfed giga hard without anything to make up for it.
3. They somehow bring back AN again

1. We get new bosses so it's very likely that we get some new stuff along with it (new influence like eater/exarch, or maybe something entirely new) so this would also add ways for currency farming into the game.

3. I mean AN is still in the game so I don't know why people believe that AN is "gone". The current version is just the most watered down version of AN we ever had, quite boring, unrewarding and also not really challenging at all. Cause right now rares with AN mods are just pretty much worthless and helpless garbage mobs.

Very likely that they change poison dmg some cause the results are just ridicules stong after the "buff" (fix) this league.

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fuzzyrat1234 wrote:

In a nutshell, people are getting tired of it and it has shown. GGG is running out of time. A lot of people are ready to move on. GGG practices can only hold water for so long. It's gotten old, very old. Every new league I just roll my eyes and I keep hoping it will get better....guess what, it hasn't. Next league may very well be my last. I'm sure I won't be missed since CW said he can survive on around 10k players.

You say that but being ready to move on and having a place to move to are quite far apart. If you like ARPGs, where do you go nowadays? LE, as good as it is, is still in it's infants with hardly enough content to keep you busy for 1 or 2 months. D4? Blizzard won't care enough to keep the game running longterm even assuming it's going to be half decent and not a pseudo MMO like D3. Other games showed up over the last few years made a splash at release and were never heard of again after that.
The ARPG market is a wasteland and POE is the only decently sized oasis around, even if it's filled to the brim with garbage, there aren't any other choices to be made here, as frustrating as it is.

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Echothesis wrote:

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raics wrote:

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Xzorn wrote:

The concept doesn't even make sense regardless what they plan to do.

A "Balance Manifesto" aka explaining your changes to players is factually good for your game.
Good patch notes do both at the same time and doesn't need to be a separate thing.

What's worse is going 100% radio silent only 10 days into a league like this one.
We're talking about communication right? Every notable problem gets no response at all.

True enough, but I kinda get where they're coming from, the past few manifestos have been a shit slinging contest. They didn't accomplish their main goal of making players less angry about the changes you're doing in the slightest.

So, it's one of two things, either they really aren't doing much that would make players unhappy, or they are and have judged that a manifesto will do more harm than good. It's kinda like a prayer for the dead, if they were decent people they don't need one, and if they weren't then prayers won't help.

While it is true that negative feedback is not always adequate and argumented and containts actual suggestions on what they should have done instead, but community reaction to manifestos is merely symptom, not a problem. Problem is how GGG handles balance, regardless of amount or quality of feedback.

For example: poison SRS did really well in this patch, enough to be considered busted OP. But something tells me that instead of surgically fixing that specific synergy, GGG is going to nuke whole poison archetype, so my elementalist poison golemancer will be put into the ground, even though it was never OP to begin with. I don't have sheer minion numbers of SRS nor their attack speed, but my investments might well be sent down the drain... again. And with no other reason than "we just want you to start from nothing again".

This has happened in the past, and this approach is bound to trigger mass negative feedback, they know it, and have no intention of changing their ways in the slightest.

thats ecxatly the point!!
they will nerf SRS, or the weapon or poison itself, instead of nerfing a single synergy

and like... there are stuff in the game that u must have dps by at least 20mi to be able to do, with crazy tankiness, like 100%deli maps, and there are builds that are IMPOSSIBLE to reach that, even if u have 999 mirror to spend on gear and the best possible build... and thats is CRAZY!

if u have a great build, and a decent amount of currency to spend, you should be able to chose any main skill and build around it

btw, u should be able to do them solo as well

but they nerf everything like everybody has a 6 party gaming, with mirror tier itens and want to use only skills that have better mechanics like tornado shot etc..... how many more years will it take?

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Orbaal wrote:

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Echothesis wrote:

While it is true that negative feedback is not always adequate and argumented and containts actual suggestions on what they should have done instead, but community reaction to manifestos is merely symptom, not a problem. Problem is how GGG handles balance, regardless of amount or quality of feedback.

... But something tells me that instead of surgically fixing that specific synergy, GGG is going to nuke whole poison archetype...

Id argue the problem is the massive gap between what players expect GGG to do and what they can do given their schedule while also generating profit.

Surgically fixing this one synergy is going to have some sort of impact on other parts of the game no matter what, which then also need to be fixed surgically and those fixes will impact something else, creating a cascading and never ending wave of issues that need to be addressed surgically.

Even IF they ever achieved "surgical" precision balancing across the board, it would only mean they cant introduce anything new anymore because it would disrupt or destroy the delicate balancing.
It would essentially render their business model unsustainable, why would they even want that to begin with?


Im not saying they cant do a better job.
But the term "surgically" is laughable given the context. Thats never going to happen and everyone expecting "surgical" solutions will always be disappointed.

i dont think its that hard really
poison gets overpowered on minion builds only there are many instances supported by it
the best minion for poison should be crowler, and its kinda one of the worst buz its a single minion... spiders and srs, and sometimes zombies/skellys would get too high

they could make like a global "-1% dot damage per minion of the same type", so 20srs would get-20% poison dps, while golens would get only a 4-6% penalty

but i actually dont even think they should be nerfed AT ALL, they ar enot really op, it was only a build more "reachable"

u could just get a decent tankiness with a decent dps with a decent amount of currency

EVERY SINGLE BUILD SHOULD BE THAT WAY, they should actually buff the others that dont

zombies were nerfed so many times that they only serve as meat shield nowadays

they are always killing the fun

ppl want to enjoy the game

last epoch has the dificulty right... there are no crazy one hit kills, there is no crazy dificult craft, but its dificult, and interesting... but poe instead of improving, the last 2 years+- they are going down every single league...

3.20 ended up having the healthiest meta in years, very large number of skills and ascendancies saw play at high level (99-100) in softcore trade which is by far the most popular game mode. How popular?

Almost 17k characters reached lv. 100 in softcore trade
Meanwhile there are 14,3k characters on HC trade ladder - levels 85 to 100
Softcore SSF has 14,6k characters with lv. 93 as the cutoff.

Class distribution at level 100, SC trade

Witch 33%
Ranger 18%
Marauder 13%
Templar 10%
Scion 9%
Shadow 11%
Duelist 5%

I'd say this is quite an achievement - Witch is by far the most represented but that has been the case in any league in the past 3 years (at least) with some of them approaching 50% representation. Out of other six only Duelist was doing kinda bad overall, with Champion and Slayer still being quite healthy.

They really don't have to do much work here, players have a good choice of skills to choose from and one league isn't enough to try everything. Obviously 3.21 will have new stuff that will shift the meta - but we don't need any big balance manifesto. There might not be one.

This league's main fault was chaos orb stack size. This is unbearable with 300:1 exchange rates. Please raise to at least 50 pcs.

Using statistical stuff like that is exactly why the game has the least build versatility in years. I don't even have to look and can tell you majority Occultist with league start Elementalist, majority Deadeye, maybe 3 people played Assassin.

To further that, Ascendancy does not mean build diversity. If I make 50 different Oculists or 50 builds between difference Ascendancies, it's pretty much the same thing.

When you look at actual playstyles it's the worst state ever. Melee is the steepest and unrewarding climb in the game. If you don't do Elemental or Chaos damage then just don't bother and Defenses options have been utterly demolished over time leading to no other option but zoom zoom which the entire end-game is now based around.... and it's boring.

GGG tried to fix this, though not correctly in 3.15. Then they just gave back all the power creep they took out within 3 leagues leaving the game in a worse state than it was before. GGG is afraid of the community going horde mode on them again despite much of 3.15 being healthy game changes.

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Xzorn wrote:

Using statistical stuff like that is exactly why the game has the least build versatility in years. I don't even have to look and can tell you majority Occultist with league start Elementalist, majority Deadeye, maybe 3 people played Assassin.

To further that, Ascendancy does not mean build diversity. If I make 50 different Oculists or 50 builds between difference Ascendancies, it's pretty much the same thing.

When you look at actual playstyles it's the worst state ever. Melee is the steepest and unrewarding climb in the game. If you don't do Elemental or Chaos damage then just don't bother and Defenses options have been utterly demolished over time leading to no other option but zoom zoom which the entire end-game is now based around.... and it's boring.

GGG tried to fix this, though not correctly in 3.15. Then they just gave back all the power creep they took out within 3 leagues leaving the game in a worse state than it was before. GGG is afraid of the community going horde mode on them again despite much of 3.15 being healthy game changes.

physical damage could use some buffs as it is in a rough spot now

1) high phys dps weapons are a gigantic bitch to craft compared to ele
2) no significant phys resist penetration, unlike ele (omni).

It has the benefit of ele conversion and HH mod (gain X% phys as ele) scaling, but in boss encounters you can't rely on HH scaling.

Ele and chaos - you can work with pretty much any skill, as the game offers a robust scaling toolkit. I think it's too robust, as it converges to stacking crit multiplier, applying wither (chaos) or using omni (ele) etc.

Is it me, or is it much easier to scale elemental damage than physical when it comes to melee? There are so many insane ways to remove ele resistances and buff flat ele damage, though very few equivalent utility items and affixes for physical damage. Our strongest item is Abyssus, which has the drawback of making you take 40-50% more damage lol. Come to think of it, even that works for ele too!

Brutality and Pride... Do these translate as worthy competitors for things like Omni? Especially considering you can't double dip with phys from conversion like you can with ele.

mmm too many things to consider to make this topic conclusive.