Devs: A lengthy discussion on combat mechanics, POE vs D3

I agree that combat is the weakest point of PoE, but I'm not sure what's the right way to address the issue.
I also agree that D3 combat is pretty much perfect, but I wouldn't attribute it to its cooldowns. D3 combat is good because it's very fluid: the movement is smooth, target selection is very good, abilities blend well together.

That level of smoothness would be hard to reach with PoE, because of its diverse nature. In D3 every character has a limited set of usable skills, which is very easy to balance and optimize. In PoE every character can get any skills. If you end up with Fireball as your only spammable skill, that's your choice.

Fine tuning is a long and iterative process, and 0.9.11 is definitely a step in the right direction, and from what I understand, combat is already pretty high on devs' list of important things.

Cheers.

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MaxTheLimit wrote:

Uhh...isn't it already like this? There are spamming basic skills like fireball, then there are more powerful skills like flicker strike that have a small cool down to prevent spamming, then there are higher damage skills like traps that do a lot of damage but have longer cool downs and limited number of simultaneous traps. I can only imagine that once the skill system is filled out there will be an abundance of this sort of thing.

As another note, just because you CAN buff a single skill and spam it, doesn't mean you HAVE to or that it is the most effective way to create a character. Many chars depend on a plethora of different attacks for different situations.

Fire Trap? Higher damage than fireball? What game are you playing? How could Fire Trap possibly out-damage fireball when it doesn't benefit at all from the typical +150~200% Spell Damage on a caster's weapons?

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treader wrote:

Please no long cooldowns. I lost count how many times I just stand around waiting until my big cooldowns are over before I engage a rare pack. It is just a really bad system to be implemented in an "Action" RPG. Leave cooldowns to the MMO please.

Are you honestly happy with the current system?

Having logged over 400h in D3 i disagree that longer cooldowns are a problem. To a limit of course. Mind you, the freedom in poe would potentially allow you to choose several ultimate skills of 30 sec cooldown, rotating them as you so desire. You do not meet a rare pack every 10-15 sec, or even 30 sec very often.

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MaxTheLimit wrote:

I didn't mention anything about perfection. What you are saying has nothing to do with what I said. I said that you CAN make a build that uses one skill, but it isn't required. Many high level builds DON'T use one attack because many attacks are either single target and thus not focused, or single target and not good for groups. Sure you CAN modify many skills to be useful for both single targets and groups, but you can also segregate into separate skills for this.

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herflik wrote:

I played this game few times creating ranger from strach like 4 times, all of the results were ending up with just one attack skill that was oliberating everyhing, didnt need more.

And? Like I said you definitely CAN create effective characters that way. You don't HAVE to though.

You said

"

As another note, just because you CAN buff a single skill and spam it, doesn't mean you HAVE to or that it is the most effective way to create a character. Many chars depend on a plethora of different attacks for different situations.

The point is that you ofc CAN or CANT make it but most of player base always pick the best easiest gameplay way so this way, with make the game utter boring and the customization of char goes straght forward to hell. Thats what actualy u can see almost each patch of this game, builds change but majority stick to known best builds.
You say they CAN i say that most people WILL and heres the problem.

You say that it might be the most effective way, it is, i tested those things before and there is no point of even discussing this topic.

The reason why the game is centered around one skill is having usualy only one 6 socket item on your character on end-game meaning you can boost only one skill to hellish power, where the rest are stuck with max 3 supports. You will never do as much with other skill since you dont have so many supports.

About cooldowns, i forgot to mention i wrote my reason in other threads specialy designed for this topic, i dont feel like writing all over again and again it.
Also i was refering to people from those threads, almost noone of them give any arguments just mostly "i dont like it".

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MaxTheLimit wrote:

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Strill wrote:

Fire Trap? Higher damage than fireball? What game are you playing? How could Fire Trap possibly out-damage fireball when it doesn't benefit at all from the typical +150~200% Spell Damage on a caster's weapons?

I never said fire trap...I never compared it to fireball. I'm of the opinion that traps ( for their restricted numbers and cool downs ) are a bit underpowered.

Fire traps also benefit from spell damage%.

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Kabraxis wrote:

Cooldowns are big letdown in D3. Also skill sysstem in D3 is far from good suited for aRPG.

So my answer is NO.

Sadly GGG start putting soem CD's in game. maybe wuththe opposition from the community thet will remove it. CD's does not belong to aRPGs.

How are they a letdown?

You generate ressources, and spend them on a "special attack" that is stronger than it's counterpart. If said special attack was not special at all, merely different serving another purpose ( i.e flickerstrike vs groundslam) we get problems due to the fact that only two pieces of equipment are capable of achieving 6 links - and an aoe skill 6linked is still better for killing singletargets than a 4linked singletarget spell.

The result is that one of these become obsolete.

The combat system of D3, like everything else about that game, is far from what we were used to in D2.

For some, like the OP, this is a good thing. For others, it isn't, and that's one of the reasons we favor PoE over D3. In no way do I see the combat system of D3 being superior to PoE or D2. It's another game completely.

You say it's a one skill system. Sure, for many builds that is the case. That's alright though. The challenge doesn't lie in complex combos or arcade style gameplay.

It's all in the thing that D3 threw in the garbage. The skill tree and build.

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Rakimou wrote:

I agree that combat is the weakest point of PoE, but I'm not sure what's the right way to address the issue.
I also agree that D3 combat is pretty much perfect, but I wouldn't attribute it to its cooldowns. D3 combat is good because it's very fluid: the movement is smooth, target selection is very good, abilities blend well together.

That level of smoothness would be hard to reach with PoE, because of its diverse nature. In D3 every character has a limited set of usable skills, which is very easy to balance and optimize. In PoE every character can get any skills. If you end up with Fireball as your only spammable skill, that's your choice.

Fine tuning is a long and iterative process, and 0.9.11 is definitely a step in the right direction, and from what I understand, combat is already pretty high on devs' list of important things.

Cheers.

Before my current monk, i was using the current cookie cutter build of thunderclat/ sweeping wind/ overawe/ ascension/ faith in the light and blazing wrath. A very stromg build, that runs mostly on autopilot (still much better than poe, but less so than my current lpss monk)

Very effective, but nowhere near as fun.

So i can't agree 100% although your evaluation, although it it is a good point.