Game is balanced to following builds, punishes experimentation (1000+ hours played)

Some people like to follow existing builds and guides, which is perfectly ok! Whether that's because you don't have the time, or whether you prefer the action rather than the build crafting, it's your prerrogative.

However, if you enjoy figuring out your build, crafting your own gear and resorting to trade as a last resort, the following is part of the joy:
- respeccing somewhat frequently, to try things out or adjust to gear
- upgrade new gear you find, to figure out if it's an improvement

Gold is scarce, and so are resources, and that's the case until well into mid endgame.

In order to play the game, specially if you dare play something that's not meta, you're forced to make multiple trips to town to sell or scavenge gear, particularly if there are strongboxes or expeditions.

But it gets worse. To get waystones with 4 mods (nexuses) or 6 mods (3 slots for tablets in towers), you need exalts. And in maps below 6-7, you can very well run a map and not get enough exalts, which means you're squeezing the resources you find on the exchange, to try and come up with enough exalts only to be able to play.

And during all this time, where's the joy in playing with gear? Nowhere.

Granted, my experience this season is less than 100 hours, compared to 1000+ on the previous one. But as it is, there is no joy. I find it demoralizing and frustrating. And even if it gets better later in endgame (which it does), all the hours you put into it to get there, are not enjoyable.

And I'm sure other people's experience is different, but insofar, I'm miserable playing this season, squeezing resources and suffering portals. If it wasn't for the fact that I found a few items that sold well, I'd have given up already.

Here


PS: by level 50 I had dropped a grand total of 13 Regals and 19 Exalts, and by level 80 I've dropped 2 Divines and 1 Perfect Orb- all while running rarity at 70%-120%.

Pretty solid take and well laid out.

I try to play a specific build every league. The only experimentation is trying to make it work into late endgame and doing pinnacle bosses.

Right now, lots of things changed and so I am respeccing a fair amount. However, even with that, I still have gold to do it.

I do agree that a lot of the other things are scarce enough to make it difficult to get to the late endgame.

I personally haven't had an issue maintaining waystones, thankfully. Knowing higher tier are pretty controlled with boss fights, I know how to stock up.

Most gear drops for me, however, are just trash. I don't have the same rarity increases as you do, so I don't even attempt to check them for anything than regal shards.

I have had a handful of exalts drop before the endgame, mainly in acts 1-3. I just did get a divine, so I may be able to buy a piece of gear. However, crafting? Nah, that is too much time I could be grinding waystoness.

RoI for me is best clearing waystones and buying gear. There isn't enough drops and gold to really put any effort into the RNG heavy crafting.

Correct, and this is unfortunate. In the end, the satisfaction is that of copying somebody else's homework or following a cooking recipe.

my theory is, they didn't have enough time to test other builds, so they made a few viable builds, without the foresight that there's only one viable build within them.

i think in time more builds would be possible, but they are so afraid of overpowering stuff.... but then made LS op anyway.

its a tragic failure

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kell_pt#7882 wrote:

Some people like to follow existing builds and guides

I don't. I haven't looked at a build guide yet.

In 0.1 I played a build built around critical strike and Impending Doom that everyone told me wouldn't make it out of T5 maps; I cleared T4 arb/xes/sim with no problem.

I'm playing Tactician in 0.2. I'm not even sure there are any guides given how few people are playing the Ascendancy, and I've been reading from the start that it's basically non-functional and certainly not "endgame viable." Meanwhile I'm on pace to clear further faster than I did in 0.1 with a build I came up with myself.

At no point have I felt "punished" for not following guides and experimenting with my build is basically the #1 thing I like about the game.

Just this weekend I completely redesigned my build from a Beast Tamer w/ Oil Grenades & Artillery Ballista (https://youtu.be/FE5p37aDt-4) to a far more defensive/CC-oriented approach using Flash Grenade, Ripwire, and Blasphemy: https://youtu.be/otg6O9JIewM

No guides. Just tried shit until it felt good.

I feel like a lot of people who say they're being "forced" into a certain build are just doing it to themselves. They watch a bunch of videos or streams and compare their own performance to those players and then get impatient when they try something that seems far less effective at first because it takes time to experiment and figure things out. That's the whole point to experimentation. You're not going to find your way into an OP build on day 1 - so it might feel "punishing" at first until you can figure out what's going wrong and fix or improve it gradually, item by item, passive by passive.

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LiMA6#0387 wrote:

its a tragic failure

Is that what it is? Man. I feel like this is the most fun I've had with a tragic failure since I lost my virginity.

I only got that impression in a few places early in campaign on my ritualist. Doing a bleed thing but with ALL the setup. It's not too far off the trodden path but I've not felt the need to boot up trade and get items, or run out of exalts in maps (Campaign was rough though) Especially since alchs are so cheap for the 4mods you need.
Obviously i'm not full ssf and it's likely an issue for people who are but I found doing expeditions and rituals (Pre the loot buff) was enough to sustain exalts.

This is bs, I haven’t followed or even read a single guide and now casually doing 15s in ssf as ritualist fire mage

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I'm playing Tactician in 0.2. I'm not even sure there are any guides given how few people are playing the Ascendancy, and I've been reading from the start that it's basically non-functional and certainly not "endgame viable." Meanwhile I'm on pace to clear further faster than I did in 0.1 with a build I came up with myself.

At no point have I felt "punished" for not following guides and experimenting with my build is basically the #1 thing I like about the game.

Just this weekend I completely redesigned my build from a Beat Tamer w/ Oil Grenades & Artillery Ballista (https://youtu.be/FE5p37aDt-4) to a far more defensive/CC-oriented approach using Flash Grenade, Ripwire, and Blasphemy: https://youtu.be/otg6O9JIewM

Interesting, all the ballista builds I've seen people running also use tame beasts and oil grenades and almost everyone using grenades is using flash grenades because of how strong they are, ripwire is hit or miss depending on how optimized they are. Which is sorta the big thing, the ascendancy doesn't quite matter, it's whether you picked the 2-4 correct skills and then supports. I saw a dude the other day absolutely stumped, he was playing Siege Cascade and had an idea to switch to cold and run herald of ice and couldn't for the life of him figure out why siege cascade wouldn't proc freeze; the skill doesn't say anything anywhere about the interaction....unless you specifically look into the "payoff" tag and see that the skill itself can't actually do any immobilizing itself in any capacity.

My guess is that they want to actually lessen the amount of possible builds and then balance the game around the most optimal ones. That's why the game is full of restrictions. Now it is up to us to find the most optimal ways to build stuff so GGG can nerf it into oblivion and we can finally enjoy the vision. The game is already balanced around the most optimal builds. It is basically unplayable if you decided just to f around a bit.

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Lord Pinkleton#8277 wrote:

Interesting, all the ballista builds I've seen people running also use tame beasts and oil grenades

Okay, well I don't know what you mean by "also" because I just told you I dropped both of those abilities over the weekend - you know, as part of the whole experimentation thing we were talking about.

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almost everyone using grenades is using flash grenades...ripwire is hit or miss

I'm not sure where you're getting that information. I haven't looked at guides but I have looked at some data.

Of the 1,294 Tactician builds tracked by poe2ninja, there are exactly 48 using Flash Grenade as one of their main abilities. If you add Explosive Grenade, it's ~30.

Throw Ripwire Ballista in the mix and I'm one of exactly 2:
https://poe2.ninja/builds/dawn?class=Tactician&skills=Explosive+Grenade,Flash+Grenade,Ripwire+Ballista

And even then you can see that the two of us aren't even using the same supports.

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the ascendancy doesn't quite matter

I mean, maybe for you dude - there's no way my build works without Right Where We Want Them for CC and Polish That Gear for stun immunity - not to mention A Solid Plan that lets me run Blasphemy, Herald of Ash, Wind Dancer, and Overwhelming Presence w/ 108 Spirit.