Do defences even matter anymore?

"

ArtCrusade wrote:

Wdym gatekeeping? This is a public forum where things are being discussed. It 100% matters if the person plays a glasscannon build and complains about content being too rippy vs someone with a well-balanced character saying the same

A lot of non-glasscannon builds are saying the content is too rippy. So what? Who does it matter to, if a glass cannon build says the content is too rippy, it might easily still be too rippy? Their gear may have changed since they posted, I'm not playing my geared character right now. This forum, is the "Feedback and suggestions forum". The top company thread in fact, is soliciting first impressions. It's not that you aren't allowed to discuss things here, it is that it is not the intent of the sub-forum. By it's own name. When they have a forum asking for feedback they aren't aren't asking for your feedback to someone else's feedback, they are asking for customer feedback. You know what that means? Like when you go to a cafe and they have a comment and suggestions box? Well... they have yelp now, but same concept. Is it against the rules to put your own suggestion in the box saying that the cafe is fine no matter what the other suggestion in the box say? Naw, you can do that, but it isn't really the point, despite the public accessibility.

I don't think you understand the post you mentioned at all. It references 'first impressions' from players 'who may not understand things we do'.

Also, if this was a feedback & suggestion box from your local Starbucks or whatever the threads would be locked after just the initial post. There are no rules as to how you are ought to respond to other people's threads other than what is outlined in the forum ToS, which states you ought not harass or flame other people. Everything else is fair game, and I honestly didn't expect this to turn into a meta debate about 'gatekeeping feedback (which you accuse me of)

Sure, we can leave the feedback as is and just not help people who clearly struggle with their builds. If that's your idea of a 'good community' we can agree to disagree, much like I disagree with your gatekeeping of responding to feedback threads (which is a ridiculous notion)

"

ArtCrusade wrote:

I don't think you understand the post you mentioned at all. It references 'first impressions' from players 'who may not understand things we do'.

Also, if this was a feedback & suggestion box from your local Starbucks or whatever the threads would be locked after just the initial post. There are no rules as to how you are ought to respond to other people's threads other than what is outlined in the forum ToS, which states you ought not harass or flame other people. Everything else is fair game, and I honestly didn't expect this to turn into a meta debate about 'gatekeeping feedback (which you accuse me of)

Sure, we can leave the feedback as is and just not help people who clearly struggle with their builds. If that's your idea of a 'good community' we can agree to disagree, much like I disagree with your gatekeeping of responding to feedback threads (which is a ridiculous notion)

Yeah, there was some really constructive and helpful feedback for the guy. Whole lot of it.

In response to op.
Long answer yes, and it sucks. Short answer no, because damage is cheaper and better in like 60% of all content.

Basically in order to not get one shot ( or die in 1.5 seconds) you need enough mitigation so that your hp doesn't hit zero and enough recovery that you regain your entire hp bar in that time. This means you need some bonkers ass items that are very overpriced at the expense of doing damage. This usually involves a really weird amount of stacking bonuse that were never really meant to be put together.

Or you just off screen monsters with a bow build for 1/ 1000th cost, or thereabouts.

The crafting system in the game doesn't support playstyles that need specific combination and values of mods, in my opinion. Every patch monster gain like 39- 59% damage and we lose damage and health via numerous adjustments, sometimes players got made the game felt easy. The fantasy of getting gear off the ground and incremently upgrading it doesn't really exist in this game. Getting gear in this game is kind of like those cookie clicker games.

As a side note, giving build advice or critiques when it isn't asked for is very very cringe. I think valid points were made even if some gear is "suspect" and we as a community should be more welcoming of different viewpoints, even if we disagree. The underlying premise of the feedback is coming from a very valid place, especially with how unbelievably, perhaps idiotacally dangerous wildwood empowered monsters are. Low dps builds will suffer the most.

I think most players who complain about balance know the way to solve problems in the game, but don't like the answers. A lot of players are afraid of change and don't others to have a more comfortable experience. A lot needs to change in poe, hopefully the devs have the ability and confidence to make the game feel better to play.

I for one think that ggg needs to make crafting, performance, and accurate tooltips ( especially for minions) a #1 priority yesterday and forever,but others might have much more valid and pressing concerns.

I noticed that most of my deaths aren't even from straight up oneshots - this happens only under extreme conditions such as juicing the map boss with 250% extra physical damage as X elements (from altars) - on a -14% max resistance map.

What gets me is usually a shotgun effect. Many moderately damaging hits connecting at once, especially in content like juiced Abyss or Expedition. On a +2 proj map because that's what we're farming this league. This is exactly what is making Tornado Shot so strong for both clear and single target. It fires a fuck ton of projectiles that do not have any next hit delay, one boss can be hit by 50 projectiles at once. Usually skills that fire so many projectiles had NHD to prevent them being cartoonishly overpowered on bossing - for example Teeth in Diablo 2. Great clearing skill, terrible single target skill, as only 1 projectile hits an enemy.

This can be solved by a combination of 2 things:
-Increase your life pool
-Equip Defiance of Destiny, preferable with max roll, catalyzed. Maxes at 42%.

Now picture a 6000 HP character with this ammy, he can gain up to 2,6k health from getting hit by an enemy. Smaller attacks can even heal you. You will die very rarely if you equip this combination.

Bloodnotch combined with recoup and petrified blood achieves similar effect. Limited immunity to any attack, outside from DOT and straight up oneshots (so much damage in one hit that it breaks this "shield")

"

roundishcap wrote:

In response to op.
Long answer yes, and it sucks. Short answer no, because damage is cheaper and better in like 60% of all content.

Basically in order to not get one shot ( or die in 1.5 seconds) you need enough mitigation so that your hp doesn't hit zero and enough recovery that you regain your entire hp bar in that time. This means you need some bonkers ass items that are very overpriced at the expense of doing damage. This usually involves a really weird amount of stacking bonuse that were never really meant to be put together.

Or you just off screen monsters with a bow build for 1/ 1000th cost, or thereabouts.

The crafting system in the game doesn't support playstyles that need specific combination and values of mods, in my opinion. Every patch monster gain like 39- 59% damage and we lose damage and health via numerous adjustments, sometimes players got made the game felt easy. The fantasy of getting gear off the ground and incremently upgrading it doesn't really exist in this game. Getting gear in this game is kind of like those cookie clicker games.

As a side note, giving build advice or critiques when it isn't asked for is very very cringe. I think valid points were made even if some gear is "suspect" and we as a community should be more welcoming of different viewpoints, even if we disagree. The underlying premise of the feedback is coming from a very valid place, especially with how unbelievably, perhaps idiotacally dangerous wildwood empowered monsters are. Low dps builds will suffer the most.

I think most players who complain about balance know the way to solve problems in the game, but don't like the answers. A lot of players are afraid of change and don't others to have a more comfortable experience. A lot needs to change in poe, hopefully the devs have the ability and confidence to make the game feel better to play.

I for one think that ggg needs to make crafting, performance, and accurate tooltips ( especially for minions) a #1 priority yesterday and forever,but others might have much more valid and pressing concerns.

So, case in point, I just got 1 shot on a white T5 map, normal rarity, I did not enter the wildwood, some essence mob, no idea why. The build I am using isn't perfect, but I can run moderate juice T15s and 16s with it. The issue is consistency and balance, I shouldn't be risking 3 bars or whatever of end game exp by spamming crappy white maps, not when I can go blast through t14s and 15s without issues.

It's resting in the modifiers on the mobs obviously. GGG needs to hire a couple average mooks to playtest stuff, not great players and not bad players, give them balanced meta mid-end game gear, and actually keep an eye on how it goes. It really feels like they don't, like they balance for such deep end game or RMT builds and it feels like they are just ignoring some fundamental principles of how multiplicative math works.

I understand that by agreeing to play their game, I am agreeing to their rules, but I don't want to buy shiny MTX when my character dies all the time, so I would think this stuff would matter to them in a non-PTW game.

Interested in this last post, I had a similar occurrence lately where my build has been completing 40% delerious T16 map, relatively well rounded, but I was fishing for a master mission in an unrolled white map and almost died.
I think you're correct that this relates to modifiers, however I see a lot of people on the forum bashing GGG for not being able to ballance the game. I'd like to know which games they are playing that have better balancing? This is not a moba, or an RTS, or a card game, there are new systems being added constantly in an environment that allows players a great deal of freedom in making their own build. D2 was extremely well made in my opinion when it comes to interaction between player DMG and enemy attributes, but the game wasn't ballance at all. A hand full of good builds and majority of skills not to touch. People are out of their mind if they think it's easy to keep a game with as many systems as POE balanced. Sure they can go and cull all the best builds and homogenise everything, but doing that without making an arpg bland is another story.
From my point of view the biggest problem with the game balancing is that it has been balanced around the logout macro. For anything to be dangerous it has to delete you in a fraction of a second, otherwise players have a way to cheese around it. This is one thing that other arpg have implemented better and it's largely based off servers not being stable in the early years. Even Dot DMG can get you so quickly that it looks like a hit. I don't think there's an easy solution to fixing it, it's how the game has been built.
I think maybe something the developers could change their stance on is the aversion to death logs or in game testing areas. I think it would make it easier for new players in particular to understand why they are dying even though they think they had 90% physical mitigation. I don't fully buy that it would add more confusion. If someone can operate POB they are capable of interpreting a log, or at least getting someone else on the forum to interpret it.
Keep in mind if they don't for what ever reason it's their game. Go play the game that you think is doing it better if you don't agree, or do what CW did and make your own version with what ever specs you want. If you can make a game better than this one I'll happily play it, but I'm not expecting it.

"

Belegur85 wrote:

Interested in this last post, I had a similar occurrence lately where my build has been completing 40% delerious T16 map, relatively well rounded, but I was fishing for a master mission in an unrolled white map and almost died.
I think you're correct that this relates to modifiers, however I see a lot of people on the forum bashing GGG for not being able to ballance the game. I'd like to know which games they are playing that have better balancing? This is not a moba, or an RTS, or a card game, there are new systems being added constantly in an environment that allows players a great deal of freedom in making their own build. D2 was extremely well made in my opinion when it comes to interaction between player DMG and enemy attributes, but the game wasn't ballance at all. A hand full of good builds and majority of skills not to touch. People are out of their mind if they think it's easy to keep a game with as many systems as POE balanced. Sure they can go and cull all the best builds and homogenise everything, but doing that without making an arpg bland is another story.
From my point of view the biggest problem with the game balancing is that it has been balanced around the logout macro. For anything to be dangerous it has to delete you in a fraction of a second, otherwise players have a way to cheese around it. This is one thing that other arpg have implemented better and it's largely based off servers not being stable in the early years. Even Dot DMG can get you so quickly that it looks like a hit. I don't think there's an easy solution to fixing it, it's how the game has been built.
I think maybe something the developers could change their stance on is the aversion to death logs or in game testing areas. I think it would make it easier for new players in particular to understand why they are dying even though they think they had 90% physical mitigation. I don't fully buy that it would add more confusion. If someone can operate POB they are capable of interpreting a log, or at least getting someone else on the forum to interpret it.
Keep in mind if they don't for what ever reason it's their game. Go play the game that you think is doing it better if you don't agree, or do what CW did and make your own version with what ever specs you want. If you can make a game better than this one I'll happily play it, but I'm not expecting it.

There really haven't been many ARPGs that have been worth much to cite. Uhmmm torchlight 2 was okay? Grim Dawn looks fun, D4 bombed, but is slowly climbing out its' hole. I don't think balancing this game would actually be that impossible, systems or not, remove some nemesis mods from existence and solve half the problems. But if it is truly based around logout macro then that's really more of a separate issue. Meaning, if they refuse to balance ignoring logout macro, then they get what they get.

I'm not making a better game, I'm a firefighter, not a programmer, but I think the market is shallow and given time, someone is gonna swoop in and fill it and GGG needs the competition.

"

Belegur85 wrote:

Interested in this last post, I had a similar occurrence lately where my build has been completing 40% delerious T16 map, relatively well rounded, but I was fishing for a master mission in an unrolled white map and almost died.
I think you're correct that this relates to modifiers, however I see a lot of people on the forum bashing GGG for not being able to ballance the game. I'd like to know which games they are playing that have better balancing? This is not a moba, or an RTS, or a card game, there are new systems being added constantly in an environment that allows players a great deal of freedom in making their own build. D2 was extremely well made in my opinion when it comes to interaction between player DMG and enemy attributes, but the game wasn't ballance at all. A hand full of good builds and majority of skills not to touch. People are out of their mind if they think it's easy to keep a game with as many systems as POE balanced. Sure they can go and cull all the best builds and homogenise everything, but doing that without making an arpg bland is another story.
From my point of view the biggest problem with the game balancing is that it has been balanced around the logout macro. For anything to be dangerous it has to delete you in a fraction of a second, otherwise players have a way to cheese around it. This is one thing that other arpg have implemented better and it's largely based off servers not being stable in the early years. Even Dot DMG can get you so quickly that it looks like a hit. I don't think there's an easy solution to fixing it, it's how the game has been built.
I think maybe something the developers could change their stance on is the aversion to death logs or in game testing areas. I think it would make it easier for new players in particular to understand why they are dying even though they think they had 90% physical mitigation. I don't fully buy that it would add more confusion. If someone can operate POB they are capable of interpreting a log, or at least getting someone else on the forum to interpret it.
Keep in mind if they don't for what ever reason it's their game. Go play the game that you think is doing it better if you don't agree, or do what CW did and make your own version with what ever specs you want. If you can make a game better than this one I'll happily play it, but I'm not expecting it.

Grimdawn and Last Epoch are both vastly better games in pretty much every aspect including balance however, they are both significantly slower compared to POE so if "map blasting" is your thing then those games likely won't catch your fancy. Also the level of depth in terms of gearing/build making is only like 80-90% of POE so not quite there yet.

In return you get meaningful loot, good crafting, meaningful combat that isn't binary like POE (relates to the slower gameplay mentioned above), ingame lootfilter and autopickup for currency, no trade unless you REALLY want to, WAY less micro management for endgame farming, offline game play (hi telia) and much better progression and skill/build balance. There are still differences between builds but the factors are in the double digits, not in the tens of thousands.

they wont add combat logs/hideout dummy for a very simple reason - it would unveil all the spaghetti that POE internals are made of

i find it funny that people 100% believe POB. POB does proper calculations and is an amazing tool but.. it might be better at POE than POE itself. but because noone can really verify it - even PVP has its limits - people believe it out of no other options

enter target dummy and there is no escaping reality: tooltip says 'X', POB says 'X' but dummy gets hit for 11/17th of X. go figure.

and combat log? who wouldnt love posts on reddit stating 'plummeting ursa of whatever in T8 map hit me for 19820phys damage. uber shaper's slam is 15000'

so they simply do things 'by obscurity' and keep us guessing


as for defences: spell suppression is broken overpowered, it is so f.. broken that everyone strives to get it capped thus forcing GGG to balance around it. it makes spell suppression EVEN MORE mandatory

after that - phys damage taken as element/chaos (even with 75% all res it is very potent defense because you 'buy' linear reduction)

life/ES regen/recoup/recovery/whatever (there are like 5 stats for that now) - pick one and get it, lots of it

evasion - yeah, why not. but remember that all end-endgame stuff that kills is a spell or a DoT. so do not overinvest

armour - similar story. it is great while mapping, and might help vs endendgame but only if you have like 100k and that is only possible with aura %effect stacking and conversion. casual 10k barely makes a difference

block - only with aegis, maybe with %recover on block. other than that - yeah, get if its is cheap, Tempest Shield is cool as it solves your shock immunity

right.. ailment immunities. immunity, reduced effect, reduced duration - pick one. immunity is best because it covers ALL (including ie brittle).
bleed, poison - depends on your regen and %phys reduction. if high enough - you might ignore them. corrupting blood - jewel implicit

hinder/maim/curses - flasks are enough imo. ~55% curse reduction from flask + 25% from consecrated ground (there are few ways of reliable creation) makes curses a small nuisance. hinder/maim - for ranged chars irrelevant, for close quarters - mandatory. 40% hinder WILL KILL YOU if you are not prepared

but even if you tick all these boxes (good builds have to tick them ALL) youll meet Plummeting Ursa of Whatever somewhere in a back alley and it will smack you for 20k phys + 155% as fire