I'm starting to realize, GGG should give us feedback too.

So then, which skills do you use ? What kind of bow / crossbow archetype do you play ? Elemental attacks like lightning arrow, lightning rod, freezing salvo, elemental bolts ? Grenades ? Poison dot ? I didn't find a single clue on what kind of build or archetype you play.

"

vittorcsj#7475 wrote:

Guys, seriously, most of nonsense message is coming from old PoE players that just want PoE1 with better graphics

PoE2 is exactly this. Poe2 is PoE1 with
- slower walking speed to increase playtime
- bigger maps to increase playtime
- casino crafting to increase playtime
- longer campaign to increase playtime
- 1-death-maps to increase playtime
- longer boss fights to increase playtime
- full rng atlas quest to increase playtime
- increased exp loss to increase playtime

PoE2 is PoE1 with better graphics. It's GGG's vision to increase playtime for maximizing profits while not acknowledging developments in the arpg genre in present times. The company seems to have a huge amount of staff that played D2 over two decades ago, while not observing the evolution of the genre since then.

I have a 15k galcial shot that actually do more like 98k DPS on my gemlings (without acounting fork, which is a feel good thing to have on glacial shot, but you can't play with friend with that), it's bad, I can do some T15 maps but even with 50% armor, 79% evasion, 2.5kHP (which is average around level 80-85 since we don't have nodes), capped res, I still die very frequently from on death effect or instant Detonate Dead rare (Don't "You have a full second to dodge !" me, this skill have like 50% AOE, and since it's mostly corridor and 600% movespeed mobs, you simply can't. I prefer Sanctum, at least I know why I die, since it's Zaroth and his 4 OS mecanics.).

On the other hand, I have a 275DPS tooltips essence drain that melt bosses and maps alike, 7 level behind my gemlings, with around 5 times his EHP (because witch is broken, I do have a drawback, but ES is just this strong, by the way I found out that most white trash in T15 maps hits for more than 1k damage, per hit.)

So, no. They didn't playtest this. Like, at all. It's pretty sure since some ascendancy don't even work at all (still no leech on bloodmage), some are so severly undertuned it's a joke (Whoever thought that having a Chayula acolyte with a breach without minion probably needs a therapist, it's probably the same person that thought that Darkness was a good idea : you can't have spirit gems, you can't have aura, you can't have anything on it, since you can't reserve it. "But it's for survivability !" dude, it's 700ish non scalable HP with the same downtime as ES. Just get 4K ES, it's cheaper and way easier to get. A good way to fix this would be to make is reservable, even at like 20% more cost of reservation, it would actually feel great. When I think breach I think swarms of monster, not Alone in The Dark). Some are completly busted (Stormweaver anyone ? I know it's basicly the same thing in POE1, but here's the thing : it's POE 1 power, in a game that quite litteraly is toned down, at least for player, at 1/100 of the power. OF COURSE IT'S BROKEN).

They, for sure, didn't do the campain (Maybe the first two act, the 2nd one is kinda long but at least it's somewhat rewarding, but act 3 ? I don't want to travel texas desert with flowers every single map : Azak Bog is trash, chimeran is trash, WATERWAY IS THE WORST VERSION POSSIBLE TRASHED WITH BAD AI SHMIT I EVER SAW, flooded city is insufferable, etc, took me a day make a new character from act 1 to end of act 2, took me a day to finish act 3, took me a day to finish act 1 cruel to act 3 cruel, finished this morning, after 12 hours of discontinuing play, yes, i'm unemployed. No wonder people are still locked in the campain after weeks. Every time I have to get through act 3 all joy left in me leave my body, If I wasn't on heavy antidepressant and anxiolytics, I would have offed myself the moment I saw the maps.)

And the Atlas is obviously a placeholder, they won't let things like that : the atlas tree is a bad joke, the atlas map is a pain to navigate (no, it's not engaging to do 30 low tier map in a straight line, doing maybe 28 absolute trash layout and 2 okayish, it's discouraging and unrewarding), the layouts are atrocious

And I won't even talk about ascenscion, I actually like the sanctums in POE 1 (and despise Ultimatum from the bottom of my soul), but this ? It's just a bad, no reward, tedious, unnecessary long version of it. I still kinda enjoy it, but it's probably because of the meds.

But hey, at least it's in a better shape than POE 1 during beta, so if we have trust, and 10 years before they listen to some things in the community (not a very good track for them on that part), it's gonna be a good game. People (like me) who sticked through all those year will probably stay, other, no so sure, and I'm already theorycrafting my next character for the wipe/new season, because the campaign is just pure torture with negative fun, so I really must brute force through it

"

bewilder2#0356 wrote:

So then, which skills do you use ? What kind of bow / crossbow archetype do you play ? Elemental attacks like lightning arrow, lightning rod, freezing salvo, elemental bolts ? Grenades ? Poison dot ? I didn't find a single clue on what kind of build or archetype you play.

gem mercenary, icebolt + fragmentation rounds + herald of ice + herald of fire + fire cascade. Gas grenade to shield enemies that blocks all projectiles.

"

vittorcsj#7475 wrote:

"

bewilder2#0356 wrote:

So then, which skills do you use ? What kind of bow / crossbow archetype do you play ? Elemental attacks like lightning arrow, lightning rod, freezing salvo, elemental bolts ? Grenades ? Poison dot ? I didn't find a single clue on what kind of build or archetype you play.

gem mercenary, icebolt + fragmentation rounds + herald of ice + herald of fire + fire cascade. Gas grenade to shield enemies that blocks all projectiles.

Ah ok I see on why you struggle to kill the boss. Sadly, yea, not all skills / ascendancies were made equally. Some of them have far far easier time and scaling than others, the rest of them will have way way harder time. And this is also prevalent in PoE 1. Things shouldn't be like this in PoE 2 tho imo, game should way way different than PoE 1, better focused on action combat and less about tailoring the game around trade but it is what it is.

And you will have better time if you switch into pillar of the caged god attribute stacking with gemling legionnare than with crossbolt build. Crossbolt bolts build just simply underwhelming and need major improvement, and both mercenary ascendancies were not made to use bolts. The best ascendancies to use crossbolts build is actually the alltime golden favorite child ; Deadeye.

"

bewilder2#0356 wrote:

"

vittorcsj#7475 wrote:

"

bewilder2#0356 wrote:

So then, which skills do you use ? What kind of bow / crossbow archetype do you play ? Elemental attacks like lightning arrow, lightning rod, freezing salvo, elemental bolts ? Grenades ? Poison dot ? I didn't find a single clue on what kind of build or archetype you play.

gem mercenary, icebolt + fragmentation rounds + herald of ice + herald of fire + fire cascade. Gas grenade to shield enemies that blocks all projectiles.

Ah ok I see on why you struggle to kill the boss. Sadly, yea, not all skills / ascendancies were made equally. Some of them have far far easier time and scaling than others, the rest of them will have way way harder time. And this is also prevalent in PoE 1. Things shouldn't be like this in PoE 2 tho imo, game should way way different than PoE 1, better focused on action combat and less about tailoring the game around trade but it is what it is.

And you will have better time if you switch into pillar of the caged god attribute stacking with gemling legionnare than with crossbolt build. Crossbolt bolts build just simply underwhelming and need major improvement, and both mercenary ascendancies were not made to use bolts. The best ascendancies to use crossbolts build is actually the alltime golden favorite child ; Deadeye.

So you try to call someone out assuming they will not have even a somewhat decent build or just basic enough understanding so you can say what? let me guess "git gud"? Turns out they do, you basically agree with OP but then still suggest they use the 'favorite' instead of recognizing and acknowledging OP and that the game is not balanced or even properly tested and does need more work. Wow.

I hope everything stays exactly as it is so GGG and their new souls-like fanboys can all keep congratulating each other on their totes amazeballs game, bro. Don't listen to the new and old players being reasonable requesting balances, not just nerfs, and that are capable of rational discussion towards improving the game. Keep it just like this so I can see what rationalizations and cope people come up with as the player count drops and even the irrationally loyal fans stop having fun when leagues with more acts to do release, if it stays as is.

"

Ah ok I see on why you struggle to kill the boss. Sadly, yea, not all skills / ascendancies were made equally. Some of them have far far easier time and scaling than others, the rest of them will have way way harder time. And this is also prevalent in PoE 1. Things shouldn't be like this in PoE 2 tho imo, game should way way different than PoE 1, better focused on action combat and less about tailoring the game around trade but it is what it is.

And you will have better time if you switch into pillar of the caged god attribute stacking with gemling legionnare than with crossbolt build. Crossbolt bolts build just simply underwhelming and need major improvement, and both mercenary ascendancies were not made to use bolts. The best ascendancies to use crossbolts build is actually the alltime golden favorite child ; Deadeye.

Quite true, but don't forget that to build an attribute stacker with pillar of the caged god, you need A LOT of divine to make it works in the current state of the economy.

If you have spare gold, I would suggest trying some fun things and not obviously streamer builds (that are out of reach in terms of currency, not everyone can make "budget build" that cost 50 divines and "normal version" that cost 200), even taking inspiration in other class, like, why not, a minion gemlings that's based on explosive shot and gas arrow archer ? This way you'll experiment the weapon swap skill tree system, and gemlings really looks like a very good fit for minions builds (possibility to have 36% quality, meaning 18% reduced reservation cost for frost mage and gas arrow archer, +1 free level of all gems for which minions benefits a lot, armour ES or pure ES by pathing from the right [around 36 point to a big ES nodes, you'll get a lot of stat in between, since it's very dense in the top tree], relative freedom of stats, affordable items since your won't need the exact same things as an infernalist spirit stacker, might even be creative with alpha howl or things like that, reduced cost of skill, at the cost of higher attribute requirement which are not a problem at all for a gemlings in the first place, access to mana, etc)

Or something else, but yes, crossbow is trash on gemlings, bottom tree-ers need some love (Might respec into something like this myself with my gemling actually, got some 1 to 10 exalts items that could fit, I still need to do the math though)

Be creative, avoid the nerf

"

vittorcsj#7475 wrote:

This is not a feedback post, but a questioning post.

To answer you in a more "objective" way vittor, as a developer (not from GGG so that there's no confusion), we do try to test as much as we can. At least, critical aspects of the game.

Now, from an ARPG perspective, people being insanely talented theorycrafters, it's impossible to test every permutation. There are "simulation scripts" that will run dozens of combinations and drop rates to check if your skills or drops are ok, but... from there, you can't really ensure you have tested everything.

Now, what will follow is not a "get good" / "you need to learn" comment as a troll, but an actual "factual" behavior of these games: you can't expect all skills to perform as good as you'd want to "out of the box".

No matter how good your weapon is (dps wise), maybe your skill setup is not optimal, maybe your skill interactions are not very good. They might be excellent for farming, but not enough for bossing: this, is common.

You have some builds that are perfect for speed farming, others for bossing.

Now, I'm not saying boss at difficulty 4 might not be overtuned on the dps check... but what I'm saying is that, not every setup / skill / build can do all content. It's not a matter of testing or failing to make every skill viable, it's actually how it is designed... and how you might need to potentially theorycraft your way through your build and make it better on bosses.

Even tho PoE 2 has a bunch of bugs (to say the least), I've seen very weird clever/inventive builds on YT clearing all content and bosses.

Still... yes, developers can't test everything, and think of everything. Especially on very "organic" games like PoE. The amount of balancing needed to make the game feel great is kind of insane : )

Beyond that, what you are describing overall is definitely a theorycrafting issue probably. If your build is perfect for farming, maybe you might want to improve it for bosses.

"

AngryGekko#0233 wrote:

"

vittorcsj#7475 wrote:

Guys, seriously, most of nonsense message is coming from old PoE players that just want PoE1 with better graphics

PoE2 is exactly this. Poe2 is PoE1 with
- slower walking speed to increase playtime
- bigger maps to increase playtime
- casino crafting to increase playtime
- longer campaign to increase playtime
- 1-death-maps to increase playtime
- longer boss fights to increase playtime
- full rng atlas quest to increase playtime
- increased exp loss to increase playtime

PoE2 is PoE1 with better graphics. It's GGG's vision to increase playtime for maximizing profits while not acknowledging developments in the arpg genre in present times. The company seems to have a huge amount of staff that played D2 over two decades ago, while not observing the evolution of the genre since then.

Exactly as I see it, its antithetical to all the interviews they were shitting out. I want to know where all the work went into making this a standalone game and not just a poe 1 expansion that was ripped away and called standalone. All the poe 2 "original" stuff is inferior to the original. There are no new systems - they just ripped all the poe 1 league mechanics and shoved them into poe 2 with zero explanation what they are and how they work. The gem system is turning out to be a massive disappointment and is just funneling people into 1 button builds without travel skills. Mapping is trash and they couldn't even have a working waystone tab. Everything "new" added in poe 2 seems to be half baked and not tested; I guess its to be expected when you cater to streamers.

"

Sadly, yea, not all skills / ascendancies were made equally. Some of them have far far easier time and scaling than others, the rest of them will have way way harder time. And this is also prevalent in PoE 1. Things shouldn't be like this in PoE 2 tho imo, game should way way different than PoE 1, better focused on action combat and less about tailoring the game around trade but it is what it is.

The whole point of my frustration is that playing the game, I literally feel like any of my skills were not actually tested to check if they could actually be viable on most demanding bosses.

If I do what you suggest, I'm actually proving my point, that many skills does not work on end content, since I will need to follow a guide and use an outline offensive skill to finish the content.

On my point of view is really simple to balance these skills. I just don't understand why they don't, or at least ppl don't come with alternative ideas. Everybody just says "Build Issue", "Get good", like the game is perfect in the current state.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One way of balancing all the skills in the game is just to simple:

1. Spawn a boss with a inactive AI, frozen state, and set the character to have infinite mana.

2. Get each of the offensive skills gems in the game (without any support gem, or passive tree allocated or gear), and start attacking the boss with any skill chosen.

3. They all MUST kill the boss at similar times.

This don't consume development time, since they can automate this process, so is not that costly to do. You can speed game time, or do any other trick without taint the results. You have the source code of the game and good hardware after all.

I'm fine if GGG choose these skill to kill the boss in a second or in a week. I just want the main attack spells to actually work on all content. Now after this, if the spells still weak to kill the bosses, buff them all. If there is an outlier skill, is probably an overpower support gem, or passive node, etc.

Want to know if the suggestions gems works, do the same, but this time, using the suggestion gems in the process.

Want to improve the suggested gems? Makes 3 columns on suggestions supports gem when using an uncut gem: Utility column, Damage Column, Sustain Column. Simple, and it covers the main paths player will follow as they need.

Want more players? You don't need to change the identity of the game, you just need to make player ideas to work, so they don't hit a wall that makes no sense.

I know balancing is trying and error, but I really feel like the "try" part was not done. Like they had no benchmark when these spells were made. They made them interact, they made the effect amazing, but they forgot to check DPS scaling trough the content. I really feel like they had no benchmark at all of power scaling for these spells.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's my honest suggestion. Will GGG ready? probably not. IF they read they will do something about it? even an alternative fix or create there own benchmark? Probably not, don't know. These info are hidden from us anyway.

And I'm not even trying to mold the pace of the game, or the genre of the game on these suggestions. I'm just trying to show my frustration and what I feel, and I'm actually probably wasting my time for trying to suggest how to fix the game, and for free.