Axe Passives are poor and unbalanced GGG please take a look
|
Axe passives are bad, but also, one handed designs, skill interactions and limitations, seem to follow no rhyme or reason whatsoever.
Can't cleave with claws and daggers - Why ? Can't whirling blade with one handed axes - Why ? Are one handers just tripping over themselves with viable skill routes and abilities ? |
|
|
I made a more in depth post here when 0.11 launched, about this exact issue:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/406690
Spoiler
" A bit on cleave:
Spoiler
" Choosing a weapon should really be an aesthetic choice. 90% of the weapon specific nodes are just there to fill up the tree and make it look interesting, while going into them do not provide a change to the gameplay. Axes, swords even maces and daggers they don't give an interesting alternative gamestyle. Only 2 handed maces start to matter because the stun could mean something. 1 Handed maces... it is just a trade off. The only interesting weapon clusters are the elemental mace cluster, with crit multiplier nodes, adder's touch dagger cluster and the life-steal claw clusters. Even daggers are roughly the same thing, except that they sometimes offer a nice choice w.r.t. wands for spell casters. Some people have issues with cleave being used by daggers and claws, but there is no reason to have fury slashed or another visual skill that is exactly the same as cleave in it working method. Except now it is no longer called cleave, but fury slashes. Linking skill choice to weapon choice really limits build diversity, it something that should be completely removed along with hefty changes to the tree. So we remove most of these plain damage clusters, which are just an artificial choice... there is no choice there. Put everything at the sword level. The new clusters are changed to do the following: Mace -> general form (so all weapons can get the cluster): Melee elemental weapon dmg clusters + crit multiply. Clusters that give weapon stun, duration and threshold. Adder's touch will lower your base damage, and stay the same. (Effectively you are now at the dagger lower dps, nothing has changed, but now all weapon can get this). Interesting heavy crit multiplier melee weapon cluster. (to replace the effect of thrusting swords) Life leech cluster also for reduced damage (to simulate what claws do) General high physical dmg cluster(s) (simulates axe) If you than still feel like making some weapons work better with certain nodes, you could just change the base dmg, ats and or crit chance. Like thrusting swords could have higher crit and thus scale better with crit multiplier nodes. Just nothing too big and deviating and not through an explicit mod. For the sake of spell casters the dagger probably needs to remain the same. This would just change the choice to: 2 handed. dual wield, shield All skill combos of these 3 Which way I go? Which clusters are interesting? Similar to bows and wands. Most of the time weapon choice is just a difference of the animation and name of the skill(s). That is how it should have been and than we can probably have far more interesting clusters. Maybe something with chaos damage or something down below around melee AoE. A clusters that could turn knock back to a root in place at max melee distance (just movement wise, they could still attacks you). A disarmament clusters, where based on you accuracy rating you get a chance to lower the enemies critical damage. So much more interesting stuff possible than just sword, mace, axe physical dmg clusters which are next to 1 handed, 2 handed, dual wield physical damage clusters. At least dual gives you a choice often between physical and block. Last edited by Ozgwald#5068 on Jul 31, 2013, 3:28:36 AM
|
|
|
mace passives seem to be the only ones that are convenient to get. (2-3 clusters that is)
it makes no sense how weapon specific passives are on par with weapon type passives. if there is a passive that gives all two handers 25% ipd, the mace should be 40% ipd at least. ign = ultrahiangle
|
|
" While I agree with a lot of your post, I totally disagree with this, and the conclusions you draw from it. Choosing a weapon is *currently* only an aesthetic choice, because the weapon-specific nodes are so generic. Your solution is to make them even more generic. This is terrible. A much better solution is to make them actually different. Face it, all of your suggestions are worse than this idea:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/657756 |
|
|
There are two main problems with the axe passives in the Duelist area:
1) The Slice and Dice and Headsman notables are just utterly rubbish 6% IAS and 24% Acc resp. 8% IPD and 24% Acc. If you are going axes instead of swords you are probably going to take RT and then these nodes are not even better than normal non-specific physical nodes. Likewise is the Hatchet Master cluster filled with Acc. (and in a crappy location to boot). 2) The Splittning Strikes cluster is actually a very strong cluster. It is just located in a very inconvenient place. Many Duelist traverse the outer highway all the way from IR via US to RT so it will cost at least two nodes to reach the SS cluster. Taking SS via Steel Skin and dropping US (plus Riddle of Steel cluster) - both 11 nodes - is another possibility. This will net you the following: Highway route: 70 str 50% AR US SS route: 40 str 10 unt 72% IPD 2% IAS I don't think melee is in a state where you can afford to sacrifice this much survivabilty. The exception might be Rain/Taker builds with extremely good gear. Another thing that I have always wondered about: Why is the Fencing cluster equally strong (24% IPD + 3% IAS for two points) compared to any Sword/Axe cluster AND it is placed in the perfect spot costing 0 point to reach as you are going for Thick Skin anyway? [Standard league - UTC +2]
|
|
|
As an axe user I like the axe nodes, I made it to level 82 grabbing plenty of axe nodes.
Here is my build if anyone is interested, infernal blow is my main skill. http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQAAecEswUtE0wUIBRNFHEZLho4HOcg8Cb4J-0otTBPMHcyCTKJNug26UCgQapE50ZpR35QR1BQU99USVWpVgRX4lhjWK9Y21nzXz9gS2CIYLthIWFSZFJlTWWnZp5qHmo7bmlyqXTtd-V673zZhNmE74ZghymMz5BVlZuXtJkrm4Ofy6IApzCnhKgYq8WsqqyvrLquULT5ud29gb6nwA_AGsGjxLjG2NJN1I_V-OJh42rnUuw47w7vTvAf8i_z3fZI9zL3vvjr-tI= R.I.P. my beloved P.o.E.
|
|
" Now they are supposed to be different, but are equal just that you are left out to do what PoE sets out and make your own build, for that the weapons often restrict skill combos (whirling blades, glacial hammer). If you can make more combinations than you get more unique builds. You get more unique looking characters because people are free to combine or wear the weapon they like and use the "spell effect" that comes along with it. They also will be more unique because their build will make use of more unique build nodes, which are now generic. It could be that you align weapons to be slightly more effective with certain nodes (higher crit, faster attack, more or less base dmg), but this in fact would make certain weapons mandatory for a certain node cluster and that is what I like to break up. For claws you could have the skill shadow slash, which is just cleave, however now you have some ominous black slash that fits claws and you feel more shadow/ assassin playing this way. To complement this you took the melee chaos cluster. This would require some work from GGG's end, but overall it is in lien with what PoE strives for. If you change weapons too much from one another you will add a layer of complexity in the balance game and probably make x or y mandatory for a or b. It is also a terrible system to add more skills. Currently the options for axe wielders is underwhelming, so we add a skill for the axe and mace... now the people using swords are unhappy? Not the best design choice, than making cleave two times but with different animations is probably far less work. GGG seems stronger in the graphic area than the coding area, so what could be pulled of better? I rather have the unique feel come from visuals, even as simple as carrying a different weapon and through more skill combos and better options in the tree. Right now we got swords vs axes. One with more phys base dmg the other with more acc. Than one has more phys and ats on nodes, while the other gets more accuracy from nodes. In the end the exact same thing, but since you selected a skill you always have to use the sword or the axe. Thus both in build and aesthetic you see the exact same thing in this manner, currently. I hope I got my point across better why I choose the dumb down route for weapons. |
|
" You did, yes. It is a well reasoned and sensible argument. However, I still completely disagree. Why even have different weapons at all, if they're so generic - just have a '1 handed melee weapon', and allow you to skin it? I'd much rather play a game where the choice of 1 handed melee weapon to use was more than aesthetic. There are lots of ways you could make the weapons actually different, without making them 'mandatory' for particular skills. For example, if axes focused on damage per hit, you could add some really neat notables that helped enhance this. For example, you could add ones which sacrificed aspd for damage per hit. (It could be a strict dps increase if you want, so that it's not keystone-worthy.) All skills have an aspd/dph tradeoff you might want to do. Maces could focus more on stun duration and threshold reduction. Axes would still be viable for stun builds though, because of their higher damage per hit - so it's up to you how you want to do it. It doesn't have to be these ones either, any notable which added some genuine 'uniqueness' to axes or maces would be awesome. Like 'adders touch' does for daggers, or the guard-ignoring ones do for swords. Face it, all of your suggestions are worse than this idea:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/657756 |
|
|
From an idealistic perspective, I would not advocate making specialized nodes stronger than general-purpose nodes. The reason is: the harder and more strategic the game is, the more players must make decisions based on power level instead of preference. A specialized node that has more power than a general purpose doesn't create choice in this situation. It moves the choice of what gear to use from being about the items that you find to being about the character build you chose.
This is a destructive-choice because the first case (a character which can use any weapon) the choice of what gear/weapon to use is already rich and complex by itself, without bringing character builds into the equation. Shifting that choice from being about the items to being about the character build loses that element of the decision, and replaces it with the less interesting choice of which passive nodes give the best mods (a question that always has the same answer). The choice of what gear/weapon is best for your character will change as the game develops. The choice of which passive node provides the highest benefit does not. Making specialized nodes stronger effectively replaces a real choice with an illusory choice. From a practical perspective, the different weapon types should be reasonably balanced options and there are two ways to get there: changing the items and changing something else. It's not always practical to change the items. So sometimes it is just more practical to give an underpowered weapon type stronger passives to compensate. |
|
" Yeah I somewhat agree of course to see maces be more stunny would fit maces well. Things could roughly remain the same, after all there are sword and thrusting swords already (acc vs crit mult, explicit). I do think more skills should be opened up and they should just copy paste skills with different animations on it to do so. Than a complete overhaul of the weapon specific nodes as I suggested and make them accessible to all builds. Than you got higher skill variation, weapon variation, weapon handling variation (2hand, dual, shield) and tree variation (more diverse options). The thing to go is the specific nodes they would be melee nodes but doing something special (I gave some options). There needs to be than some tweaking of the explicit mods, they should be meaningful, but not OP as to be the only way to go? Currently what makes maces stand out for stunning is not the explicit mod, but the combination of explicit mod and the specific nodes. I do firmly believe the wand/ dagger or bow route is far more interesting and going around the tree is more fun. Just as is the choice between 2 handed, dual and shield. Currently it breaks down on uninteresting passive clusters and little difference (for a few exceptions that I mentioned). The only way to get this is to make weapons more generic, without the specific nodes the explicit mod might not be enough to differentiate itself. While making the explicit mod stand out more creates the 1 option for the cluster (as explicit becomes too strong). Typing as I am thinking about this and I don't see a solution 1..2..3.. to combine the best of all worlds. btw I do like you sacrifice aspd for more dmg, like the unique that changes how frenzy works, exactly the kind of stuff we need among the tree to make it more interesting. Perhaps we should visualize this issue to the devs. I am thinking about making an image that cuts the tree up and which puts the nodes in clusters in a diagram form. Than you end up with a lot of life nodes in a big block, an Es block, than tons of similar sword/ axe etc. blocks and finally tiny blocks with stuff like fencing, skill duration, life leech and so on. Last edited by Ozgwald#5068 on Jul 31, 2013, 5:33:15 PM
|
|
