Game is too Critical Strike/Damage while applying status ailments Heavy. Solution Inside

sirjonnyboy, and LadyDevimon.

Truthfully I don't even know what to say to you guys. You have to understand the damage metagame to understand why I made those suggestions. From the looks of it, not to sound rude again, it seems like both of you don't. There is a reason why people stack so much elemental. This is not coincidence.

I explained it in my first post as much as I could, and the other posts i've made in this thread, so either:

-You still don't understand it
-You think you do, but you really don't so when you reply you reply out of ignorance
-You understand, but know it will affect "YOUR" build. Rather than seeing things from a balance and diversity perspective, you see it as "MY" build will be affected by this.

Charan's post expressed how I felt when I read both your replies. Especially your statement, sirjonnyboy, about how "Witches have virtually 0 HP 0def 0dodge

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Charan wrote:

I'm sorry, just how much of this game have you played?

Also, what you're saying is completely different to what is being proposed. This thread is far from done, but I'm not sure you need to add anything more to it, not going by just how much of the point you missed.

Right now, every class HAS access to the same types of damage. Do you even understand how classes work in this game?
Exactly, which is what I've been saying since the first post. Every class has access to the exact same type of damage. What this means is that once the "big damage" source has been found the classes will rush to it. In this case, elemental + crit chance + crit multiplier is the big damage source in PoE. How do you give people an incentive to go to other damage sources? You have to do something about the elemental damage crit heavy gameplay

Witches CAN have quite a lot of defence, usually via Energy Shield and Chaos Innoculation.

Yep, witches can stack a lot of energy shield with CI, making them even more tanky than many melee builds.

I'm sorry if I come off as if I'm attacking you both, but I don't know if I have the strength to keep responding to you 2. You need to understand how things work or we'll just keep going in circles. Unfortunately I don't have the power to do that.

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Aezlo wrote:

I'd be interested in this change, especially in the movement to delink criticals and auto-status ailments. That, and perhaps a physical damage ailment would widen the range of builds available. I've personally tried a few pure-physical damage characters; I managed to drag one into Ruthless before finally giving up.

I think it's a mistake to assume that all physical damage builds are huge life-regening tanks that fear nothing. I've tried building pure physical damage shadows and duelists, and I usually either give up or dump elemental damage into the mix because otherwise they're going to die constantly.

I don't have much to actually add to this conversation, just that I support it. I like the sound of the puncture-ish ailment, though we have to consider this in light of stunning. Would stunning be elevated to an ailment, or a step in an ailment like chill?

Wow, you must have read my mind. I've had 3 builds so far.

Pure physical damage shadow
Crit lightning shadow
Chance to shock shadow

Pure physical shadow did "okay", and i mean barely, up until i reached ruthless. Damage was just too low. I didn't want to use elemental cause that would go against the build's design. By ruthless I saw just how bad physical really was and sadly had to throw him away. That was when I decided to demo the "everyday damage source" that was in town, just to see why so many people used it. That was also when I found true power, critting with lightning and shock stacking.

Hmm, I haven't really put much thought into the physical ailments side just yet, although I do like the idea. One that just crossed my mind was "confuse", you hit an enemy so hard with a chance to confuse them. Confuse makes them attack their allies. Probably a bad idea, but just wanted to toss something out there xD.

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Caiada wrote:

Maybe the game just needs more and stronger pure physical or physical-related skills. Most of the builds that do well with physical damage and without ailments have a hard-hitting, bread-and-butter skill to work with, i.e. Ground Slam.

The problem is that physical damage related skills still benefit from elemental damage. Your elemental damage is factored into the total dps of the physical damage skill. If the physical damage skill only took physical damage into account then that would be a different problem, but they don't. So adding more physical damage spells still wouldn't fix the problem.

Also, another change that might need to be made if these suggestions were to be considered.

Spell quality bonuses that affect "Chance to" and "Increase duration" would need to be tweaked. "Chance to" on 20% quality spells should not pass 5%. Added to the base 2% you automatically get from using elemental damage would bring you to 7%. So you'd still need to invest in the passive tree if you want to the 25% cap. "Increased duration" on quality spells would also need to be lowered as well.

What about approaching this from the other direction? Instead of changing the mechanics for players, what if certain classes of monsters had a much lower chance of being critically hit or were highly resistant to status ailments? Having ailments kick in on critical hits is pretty intuitive...what's counter-intuitive is that monsters like the undead and golems are just as vulnerable to burn, shock, and chill as living mobs. The undead are...dead. They don't have living flesh to burn, freeze, or shock, not to mention any vital parts to deal a critical blow to in the first place. Even more so for golems...freeze a stone? Critical hit on a boulder?

It would also give the these types of monsters a much-needed boost. As it stands they're too slow to be a real challenge. Often you can kill a golem before they're even up and walking.

Though not a bad idea by any means, de-linking status ailments and critical chance is bound to encounter a lot of resistance. Balance through nerfing has a nasty psychological effect on a lot of people. Changing the mechanics of critical strikes and ailments on certain monsters, however, just might offer the best of both worlds: it would help bring spell damage into balance while encouraging an intelligent, tactics-driven, combined-arms style of play.

Related discussion: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/44412

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Charan wrote:

To preface my response: you're dead right.

However...

I would agree with Charan to a certain extend.

"However" ppl, the real problem isnt the spell or physical attack, or the Crits, or the status aliment.


ITS the LACK of IMMUNITY on mobs.


I say, its time to bring-on:-
Immune to Burning/Shock/Freeze/Chilled for the mobs.


We have Immune to Stun mob already, why there isnt any for the above?

Stun is universal "effect" that happens when you take a "big hit". It can be mitigated via stats and mods (max hp and stun/block recovery).

And I recall a GGG response calling "immunity" as "cheap difficulty" and that they have no intention to add it.

Sorry, didn't read every post.

My thought (probably need more input, just a draft):
1) Agree that non-AOE/non-projectile casting spell may effect by accuracy/evasion and block rate.
- Direct nerf to non-AOE/non-projectile spells
- Direct buff to Evasion

2) Agree that physical damage needs a buff, since spells are not affected by evasion, and spell block rate is very low.
- Direct buff to physical damage

3) Accuracy needs a nerf, since it is too easy to get high accuracy.
- Direct buff to Evasion

4) Elemental resistance needs a nerf, since too easy to reach max resistance.
- Direct buff to spells

5) Chaos damage should not be crit (no spike in damage), and have Chaos resistance nodes
- Direct nerf on Chaos

6) Crit should be based on base crit, while aliment (chance of _____) should be a direct increase (may need to nerf a little).
- Direct nerf to spells
- Direct buff to aliment stats

7) Need to have Physical crit rate.
- Direct buff to physical damage
- Direct buff to aliment stats

8) New chest armor stats for 1) immune to freeze 2) immune to shock 3) immune to fire 4) immune to blind 5) immune to knockback 6) increase resistance to all aliment effects by 10% (counter for aliment status builds)
- Direct nerf to aliment stats

9) Energy shield buff on reducing elemental damages, and non physical aliment
- Direct nerf to elemental damage
- Direct nerf on aliment status

10) Armor defense buff on reducing physical aliment (blind, knockback, and etc.).
- Direct nerf on aliment status

11) Shield should have base block against spell damages
- Direct nerf to spells

12) Direct buff to non-AOE/non-projectile spell casting skills
- Direct buff to non-AOE/non-projectile spell

Resulting:
- Same to Physical damage
-- Direct buff to physical damage (~10%)
-- Indirect nerf by evasion (~20%)
-- Direct buff to physical critical damage (~10%)

- Nerf on Chaos damage
-- Direct nerf by Chaos resistance (~50%)
-- Direct nerf by no critical damage (~10%)

- Nerf to Elemental damage
-- Indirect nerf by evasion (~20%)
-- Direct nerf by blocking spells (~25%)
-- Direct buff on spell (~20%)
-- Direct buff by reduced resistance (~20%)

Edit: change stun into blind.

I hate responding to threads without reading every post, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I don't have the time to read it all right now. :(

Anyway, I've noticed the exact same thing since the last elemental nerf. Criticals are generally the best way to go for DPS right now, and I find a vast majority of my non-bow characters wearing the 80% crit daggers. I don't like being pidgeonholed into one damage type (it was elemental damage before), but balancing damage types in a game as diverse is this certainly can't be easy, so I imagine it's something that we'll have to put up with to an extent. Power charges give a LOT of crit chance as well - I was surprised to learn it was 50% crit chance modifier per charge, rather than something mild like 15%. You can essentially focus your passives into critical damage modifiers then use things like the 80% crit daggers and power charges for your crit chance. Throw some elemental mods/auras in the mix (if not playing a Spellcaster), and you're set.

Another annoyance of mine in regards the current state of criticals is most of the good critical (not to mention elemental) things are in the CI/ES region. I'm a blood magic user at heart. I'm not a big fan of CI and really try not to use it if possible in my builds. The only real benefit to going blood magic + crits that I could find was using Voll's Protector - the 50% reduced mana mod doesn't do anything to you.

I guess what I'm trying to say is making a non-ES critical build feels wasteful in terms of passives, and would be nice if it were a more viable option. Either way, I'd rather criticals not be the 'only' option for optimal builds anyhow. I'd rather see a mix of character types, both in the public and on my own account.

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Taohn wrote:

What about approaching this from the other direction? Instead of changing the mechanics for players, what if certain classes of monsters had a much lower chance of being critically hit or were highly resistant to status ailments? Having ailments kick in on critical hits is pretty intuitive...what's counter-intuitive is that monsters like the undead and golems are just as vulnerable to burn, shock, and chill as living mobs. The undead are...dead. They don't have living flesh to burn, freeze, or shock, not to mention any vital parts to deal a critical blow to in the first place. Even more so for golems...freeze a stone? Critical hit on a boulder?

It would also give the these types of monsters a much-needed boost. As it stands they're too slow to be a real challenge. Often you can kill a golem before they're even up and walking.

Though not a bad idea by any means, de-linking status ailments and critical chance is bound to encounter a lot of resistance. Balance through nerfing has a nasty psychological effect on a lot of people. Changing the mechanics of critical strikes and ailments on certain monsters, however, just might offer the best of both worlds: it would help bring spell damage into balance while encouraging an intelligent, tactics-driven, combined-arms style of play.

Related discussion: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/44412

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starsg wrote:

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Charan wrote:

To preface my response: you're dead right.

However...

I would agree with Charan to a certain extend.

"However" ppl, the real problem isnt the spell or physical attack, or the Crits, or the status aliment.


ITS the LACK of IMMUNITY on mobs.


I say, its time to bring-on:-
Immune to Burning/Shock/Freeze/Chilled for the mobs.


We have Immune to Stun mob already, why there isnt any for the above?

Giving mobs immunity still wouldn't change the fact that people would still go elemental and crit. All immunity would mean is "Oh I can't freeze CERTAIN monsters now? Oh well. I still have my crit damage which is still big thanks to stacking elemental damage".

The status ailments are icing on the cake. The real issue is how everyone is going crit and stacking elemental damage. Which in turn limits other damage mechanics (physical and Chance to).