Armour Stacker, ES Stacker etc. need to be removed from the Game - Change my Mind

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scooter1997#7755 wrote:

ahhhh yes, ,,it's money sink so it's fine"

1. please explain to me how es stacker winning hc ssf gauntlet doing uber content day 2/3 is okay?

2. remove or nerf iron reflexes - that's enough of a nerf for armour stackers. Downside is non-existent at this point.

3. If you want to armour stack and not a single item you are wearing is armour/hybrid armour based means the balance is bad.

4. remove energy blade from the game - it's been broken for far to long and it's clear you can not balance it so just remove it.

5. Nerf EE to 5-10% or just straight up remove global increased energy shield from it.

6. Invert the values on escape artist. ES for evasion on helmet and evasion for es on body armour. Also remove bonuses from soul drinker - leave it at leech is not removed. Slayer do not get flat leech from his ascendancy or any offensive bonuses so why should trickster get it?

7. Coruscating Elixir - why is it still not nerfed? Change increased duration to lesser duration, also it should consume all charges on use. There is no reason for it to be so broken when only alternative is a pretty mediocre chest piece.

8. Finally revert the changes to flat values of es on gear + line up the values of increased ES on tree to match the ones for health.

1. Lol using this as an example that its bad....HC SSF Gauntlet is not an indicator of anything relating to "normal" gameplay balance.

2. Yes....I do think this node is too powerful, maybe make it a 50% conversion rate. Or add a line like glancing blows: "Your armour can only lower physical damage by 75% maximum" or something.

3. This is not how armor stackers gear.

4&5: I have never played Energy Blade, I have zero comments on it.

6. Escape Artist needs tweaking. The leech is because you CANNOT get ES leech for anything other than spells on the passive tree. Meanwhile, life leech CAN. The trickster node is allowing es leech outside of having to take the keystone, or using es leech gem. This is quite balanced. It's incomparable to slayer life overleech simply because of how leech exists on the passive tree.

7. That's just incredibly funny...."coruscating elixir is OP". The fact that you point out there is only ONE other alternative (two actually), is the very reason for its existence and more importantly CONTINUED existence. It is by no means "too powerful", it is exactly as useful as any other build-enabling unique, or even less so since it can be shut down by flask penalties. Only 3% of all top builds right now on PoE ninja use it, and basically none of them are stackers. Hardly over-represented

8. Yes, this point I totally agree with. It doesn't make sense that we get more ES on gear than life rolls. On top of getting more ES in the tree than life %.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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scooter1997#7755 wrote:

2. remove or nerf iron reflexes - that's enough of a nerf for armour stackers. Downside is non-existent at this point.

2. Yes....I do think this node is too powerful, maybe make it a 50% conversion rate. Or add a line like glancing blows: "Your armour can only lower physical damage by 75% maximum" or something.

Can you not see the contradiction here? You guys want Iron Reflexes nerfed or removed, a keystone that has been around longer than any piece of Armour Stacker gear, because you consider it too powerful for said builds? Like, what?

Str Chaos stacker and ES Lightning stacker have always been at the top. Armour stackers are like whatever. Way too much currency in comparison.

Not gonna read 9 pages of bs on a topic where the OP doesn't understand the problem.

The problem isn't that stat stackers are way too strong.

The problem is that progression past the point of base t16s is gated behind those archetypes.

Up till maybe 2-3 years ago you could make a character by picking a skill, and then investing separately into your offense and your defense. That character could do all content.

Now you NEED to be getting both offense and defense at the same time, otherwise you simply DO NOT have enough resources available to scale into t17s etc. And that wouldn't be a problem if t17s were actually what GGG claimed they would be - aspirational content.
Instead, they are mandatory content. If you're stuck at t16s you are making hundreds, if not thousands times less money than those who are doing t17s, let alone stuff like valdos. For the love of god, t16s can't even sustain GOLD for basic farming + shipments.

T17s bad.

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PrimordialDarkness#3913 wrote:

The problem isn't that stat stackers are way too strong.

The problem is that progression past the point of base t16s is gated behind those archetypes.

Up till maybe 2-3 years ago you could make a character by picking a skill, and then investing separately into your offense and your defense. That character could do all content.

Except those archetypes aren’t the only way through this tier of content, and pretending otherwise just highlights a pretty glaring lack of understanding.

There are literally hundreds of players every league, even in SSF, who clear the same level of content using completely different build archetypes than stackers.

The irony here is that OP’s whole argument is based on calling out supposed problems, but it just ends up exposing a massive gap in their own knowledge.
Claiming that progression is “gated” behind specific archetypes isn’t just false, it’s a subtle form of gatekeeping that discourages people from experimenting or playing what they enjoy. The idea that you can't move past base T16s without playing meta stackers is simply wrong and rooted in outdated thinking same as OP's take.

The way you play the game might not have changed, but the game itself has. Between power creep, new systems, and more accessible gearing routes, it's never been easier to just pick a skill and succeed.
POE is in the best place it's ever been for build diversity and viability. You can go from zero to hero with literally any ability, no questions asked.

If you’re struggling to make that work, the problem probably isn’t the game.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

The irony here is that OP’s whole argument is based on calling out supposed problems, but it just ends up exposing a massive gap in their own knowledge.

🤣🤣🤣

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

The idea that you can't move past base T16s without playing meta stackers is simply wrong and rooted in outdated thinking same as OP's take.

Your posts are like watching someone getting all sweaty while shadowboxing, i.e. you really love to make up imaginary argument points and then argue against those. Especially funny because I exclusively play off-meta builds of my own making and, as per your own words, am "notorious for budget constraints", and yet still taking my builds to Ubers, and you somehow think you "gotcha'd" me with that. You are so full of it that you can't even see the fallacy in all of that. But hey, private profile trolls are just their own special breed. :)

Keep 'em coming, please. I need some good material while I drink my morning coffee. 🤣👌

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PrimordialDarkness#3913 wrote:

For the love of god, t16s can't even sustain GOLD for basic farming + shipments.

Bruh, what? I run a very simple Blight strat for gold and average at least around 20k per map. Haven't you heard that we have access to 3 different Atlas trees?

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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scooter1997#7755 wrote:

2. remove or nerf iron reflexes - that's enough of a nerf for armour stackers. Downside is non-existent at this point.

2. Yes....I do think this node is too powerful, maybe make it a 50% conversion rate. Or add a line like glancing blows: "Your armour can only lower physical damage by 75% maximum" or something.

Can you not see the contradiction here? You guys want Iron Reflexes nerfed or removed, a keystone that has been around longer than any piece of Armour Stacker gear, because you consider it too powerful for said builds? Like, what?

Iron reflexes has a problem with double dipping. As I mentioned previously the fact that armor stackers use ES gear instead of evasion/armor means that both keystone and ES deserve a nerf.

Problem with keystones in general is that some of them like Call to Arms or Ancestral Bond are balanced around archetypes of builds that will use them. Upside is moderate, and downside is huge but easily mitigated by the archetype. For example: totem builds with +1 totem do not care about downside but +1 totem can hardly be called huge game changer.

On the other hand you have CI and Iron Reflexes where upside is astronomical or even build enabling and downside is non existent and that's the problem.

Both are keystones and require 2 passive points to allocate but how do you compare complete immunity to chaos damage or multiplying your armor x4/5 to +1 totem or 100% more warcry duration?

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scooter1997#7755 wrote:

Iron reflexes has a problem with double dipping. As I mentioned previously the fact that armor stackers use ES gear instead of evasion/armor means that both keystone and ES deserve a nerf.

And like I've said, the keystone is much older than stacker gear. That doesn't make the keystone OP, it makes those interactions OP. We only got Grace and Determination nerfs because of this bullshit, not because the keystone was OP. I get your position on the matter, but I'm wondering why you can't see what I'm seeing?

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scooter1997#7755 wrote:

Problem with keystones in general is that some of them like Call to Arms or Ancestral Bond are balanced around archetypes of builds that will use them.

You are comparing keystones that were added after the fact. We got those keystones after the Warcry reworks, not because of Warcries themselves. The rework made them far too OP and was the cause for the Warcry piano metas several times in a row. Iron Reflexes was introduced in 0.9.4 (December 1, 2011) and is one of the oldest keystones in the game. And it's been doing the same thing all these years. Hence my question above.

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scooter1997#7755 wrote:

Both are keystones and require 2 passive points to allocate but how do you compare complete immunity to chaos damage or multiplying your armor x4/5 to +1 totem or 100% more warcry duration?

I agree with you on CI, as it's been bugging me for years, in particular because in the past, GGG have changed Hydra's Poison immunity to allow for Poison builds to get to Shaper, adjusted Freeze immunity of endgame bosses (from immune to cannot be fully slowed) and reworked Immortal Call from 100% PDR to the multiplicative charge version we have now, yet fucking CI (!) gets to live rent-free in the game to provide insane value for a single keystone. It is, hands down, the most broken keystone in the game, bar none. Iron Reflexes or not. I refuse to play CI for this very reason, because I consider it busted. There's no challenge in practically cheating.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Your posts are like watching someone getting all sweaty while shadowboxing, i.e. you really love to make up imaginary argument points and then argue against those. Especially funny because I exclusively play off-meta builds of my own making and, as per your own words, am "notorious for budget constraints", and yet still taking my builds to Ubers, and you somehow think you "gotcha'd" me with that.

The only time builds even came up was in response to the claim that you can’t push past T16 maps on anything non-meta. That’s it. Nobody, literally nobody was talking about your personal builds.

It wasn’t about you, it wasn’t about your builds, it was simply pointing out that the idea of needing a meta stacker to function past T16 is just as cooked as the “stacker is too OP” take. Or the latest hit: “block is too OP.”

But since you’re so eager to keep your builds in the spotlight, let’s break it down real quick.

You’ve played across four leagues. Out of the seven Ubers in the game, you’ve completed exactly one. And that was this league, the one that throws absurd amounts of artificial player power down your character’s throat like candy. So sure, you’ve technically “done Ubers,” but claiming your off-meta builds handle Ubers feels more like creative writing than an honest reflection of experience.

That said, props where it’s due, you experiment around on your own instead of just copy-pasting the meta, and that will pay off in the long run. Stick with it. Maybe next league, when the training wheels are off, you’ll make it past more than one Uber.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

You are so full of it that you can't even see the fallacy in all of that. But hey, private profile trolls are just their own special breed. :)

Real trolling is trying to dig into someone’s profile as soon as you’re disagreed with or proven wrong, then publicly admitting you failed.