Constructive criticism on gem changes. Good and bad.

I would like to thank GGG team on their great work on regular changes on the game. Not many company can achieve the same amount of support for game this old. I have played for a long time and most of the time i have been happy about the changes, even it might take few patches to get work.


Lets start on positive note.
Overall idea of combining multiple system for one more simpler system is great. Most of the gems seemed to look build changing and some of the gems got really the love they needed. This proves the developers play the game and really care about PoE 1 even PoE 2 is on the works. Most surprising was that the numbers seemed to be decently balanced but only the time will tell.


But i think there was a lot of unnecessary negative side effects.
First of all i would like to share some thoughts on overall execution on gem representation and schedule. If i understood right, one reason why we got gem reveals so late, that they were still on the works. This is one small detail that tells that league ( in my opinion ) should been delayed week or two. Part of the excitement is to plan your builds and imagine how your league start would look like. What to do and how to progress. This did not happen, atleast for me.

But i feel like that is not even the biggest L on the big pile of problems you faced on this balance patch. Even whole system looks like good, and the gems we got are surely better or interesting, you left so many underused ( or even unviable ) gems out of this patch. On top of that, all these gems are without lab enchants and alt quality making most of them even worse than before. At the same time, shaking meta and destroying even more gems and builds than previous patches we have seen.

As an example: Dark Pact, that has been in game for years with multipurpose ( using on skeletons or on yourself ) did nit get the help that was needed. After spell zerker nerfs ( and with gem nerf ), HP based sacrifice self cast has not been on the table since. Sure you can make low life variant and cheat the HP cost or use it on skeletons, but you did not help the small player base leaving it out of the changes. And there is tons of more gems than DP. I just used this as an example, because i have been waiting this for years.

On top of the gems that you left out, you made radical changes to wanding as a arctype and deleted the only good single target skill that they had and offered nothing even compareable. Maybe barrage will work, who knows.

Even RF was destroyed as good league starting build . Even you offered interesting alternative way to play RF, most of the RF players feels it was unnecessary. RF was never best build in the game and the damage you get in mid to high budget was not even that high or impactful. Even i dont play that much RF i feel like this was huge over reaction.

I could make tons of other examples but i think you guys got the picture.


So what went wrong and what I think should have been done to prevent this:
- Delay league week or two to finalize the gem system
- Present the gem ideas beforehand for overall feedback from player base
- Provide reasons why gems were made that way
- Provide better presentation on changes itself ( highlight key points what were changed ) and provide few second video clips on how gems work in game for demonstration
- Include ALL active gems OR prioritize gems that were not played or less played
- Offer helmet enchantments/alt quality on gems that was left behind to keep them relevant


Even it seems to have alot more negative than positive, i am happy to explore new possibilities we now have. Most of the negatives could have been eliminated with time, thought and communication.

I wish GGG and fellow exiles good christmas, and have fun on upcoming league!