ES, GS, or GTFO

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indczn wrote:

Explosive arrow does not work as intended with lmp/gmp as the explosion is not affected by the damage penalty associated with those gems and Chris has stated in game that this will be fixed in the future. Enjoy it while it lasts...

Interesting. Makes sense given the high base damage of the skill, of course. Still, I wonder what this will mean for Quill Rain builds. In all honesty, it might not be a huge deal - the single target DPS would be the same, the AoE would receive a minor nerf. Of course, that also means it'll require 2 slots on the hotbar as well as 2 separate gem setups, but that's really no different from anyone else using a single target + AoE setup currently.

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MonopolyLegend wrote:

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indczn wrote:

Explosive arrow does not work as intended with lmp/gmp as the explosion is not affected by the damage penalty associated with those gems and Chris has stated in game that this will be fixed in the future. Enjoy it while it lasts...

Interesting. Makes sense given the high base damage of the skill, of course. Still, I wonder what this will mean for Quill Rain builds. In all honesty, it might not be a huge deal - the single target DPS would be the same, the AoE would receive a minor nerf. Of course, that also means it'll require 2 slots on the hotbar as well as 2 separate gem setups, but that's really no different from anyone else using a single target + AoE setup currently.

Even now, EA kinda sucks as a single target kill, as it takes time to stack and explode. I've always run some other skill to kill single targets when running EA in the past. I suspect Quill rain will still be fine using EA/gmp even at half damage. There almost always so many monsters that stacking 5 charges on the group at 3+times per second with a large enough radius will be sufficient.

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but here's another way to look at how I'm feeling about this:

How many games are there where I can go play a hulking giant of a man who swings an enormous mallet at enemies' heads? Quite a few. How many are there where I can play that same hulking giant of a man but pick up a silly little wand, or throw bolts of energy at the enemies and still keep up with the mallet-guy next to me? Hardly any. Up until recently, PoE was one of the few where this was possible. Perhaps it's part of GGG's design choice to wipe out this sort of variety, or maybe I'm going about it the wrong way in terms of builds, but as far as I'm concerned, there's no reason why this cannot still be an option. As I've iterated numerous times throughout the thread, yes, it's still a possible option to do these sorts of things, but "possible" is far different from "effective." I can go play that silly wand man on another game, but he won't be very effective. Therefore, there's little reason to play him. Right now, I'm experiencing the same thing here - this is something which I originally thought would not be an issue. :(

Between all of the recent tree balances, it feels like these 'fun, unique' builds have been sort of thrown to the wayside, hopefully unintentionally. However, reintroducing them would possibly reintroduce a lot of the same issues before, if not handled properly - from a design perspective, this is problematic.

The oddest part about this is that I now have quite a few more points to work with (due to quest rewards/added content) yet feel more limited with how I can spend them and what they accomplish. I used to plan 67 point builds (level 60 + Oak Passives) and now plan 81 point builds (level 70 + Oak Passives)

I agree it does feel very limiting. IMO there should be a medium between pre 9.11 and 9.11 patches. Before it was totally open, now it feels totally condensed. We need a happy medium, I want a blood mage!

If I base myself on previous occurrence, when something becomes too popular, it gets nerfed (remember shocknova?). Chaos inoculation already got nerfed and by the look of it, it might receive yet another one (chris said they add a lengthy discussion about it a few days ago).

If something is so strong that it kills build diversity (because you feel gimped otherwise), expect GGG to nerf it to be on par with other options or to make other options better.

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If I base myself on previous occurrence, when something becomes too popular, it gets nerfed (remember shocknova?). Chaos inoculation already got nerfed and by the look of it, it might receive yet another one (chris said they add a lengthy discussion about it a few days ago).

If something is so strong that it kills build diversity (because you feel gimped otherwise), expect GGG to nerf it to be on par with other options or to make other options better.

I think thats a mistake, if something is strong enough to break diversity but its not imbalanced (for pve) it shouldnt be nerfed, right now i think CI is strong but its ok, if everyone goes ci, its because everyone likes ci why in the world would u nerf it? the problem here is that they took away the variety of the skill tree, now most armor-life nodes are centered in the mara-duelist skill zone, the evasion and atackspeed are centered at the shadow-ranger zone and the critical is at the witch- shadow zone as well of elemental is at the templar-witch.

I think thats cool but its a mistake to concentrate all the nodes there, unless u want the standard builds up untill now (witch: elemental crits etc...) in the pre 9.11, hell the version where they removed avatar of fire had the amount of diversity required to get that feeling that almost any mmo has, the personalization of the character not in a visual way but in a mechanic way.

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GinsooPanda wrote:

I think thats a mistake, if something is strong enough to break diversity but its not imbalanced (for pve) it shouldnt be nerfed, right now i think CI is strong but its ok, if everyone goes ci, its because everyone likes ci why in the world would u nerf it? the problem here is that they took away the variety of the skill tree, now most armor-life nodes are centered in the mara-duelist skill zone, the evasion and atackspeed are centered at the shadow-ranger zone and the critical is at the witch- shadow zone as well of elemental is at the templar-witch.

This really drives my point home. I don't feel like CI or ES itself is overpowered. I feel like its location on the tree makes it more convenient to build DPS (any kind, not just spellcasters) than it is for life builds. As it is, you can make a melee ES character, an archer ES character, a wand ES character, a caster ES character, a Summoner ES character, or any other unique variation of builds you could ever imagine. With life, it's Melee (usually Ground Slam) or get the hell out of the life area. This is due to the focus of nodes into specific areas GinsooPanda is talking about here. If nodes were more spread out or even a more varied bit of them were sprinkled around the tree, it would really help the wall in build diversity that we're seeing right now.

It's interesting that there are 2 schools of thought here. on one hand, we have people saying that CI builds are OP cause of the way DPS nodes are situated there. On the other hand, HC Racers are always saying Maras are OP coz of the proximity of the resist nodes and all.

In the end, it all depends on what you value highest. DPS or survivability.

In my opinion, HC Races are more fun than anything else at the moment, and as the tree stands and especially once the resistance penalties kick in, hp builds such as mara/duelist are way more OP compared to CI builds.

Survivability > DPS

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Invalesco wrote:

It's interesting that there are 2 schools of thought here. on one hand, we have people saying that CI builds are OP cause of the way DPS nodes are situated there. On the other hand, HC Racers are always saying Maras are OP coz of the proximity of the resist nodes and all.

In the end, it all depends on what you value highest. DPS or survivability.

In my opinion, HC Races are more fun than anything else at the moment, and as the tree stands and especially once the resistance penalties kick in, hp builds such as mara/duelist are way more OP compared to CI builds.

Survivability > DPS

Hardcore is almost an entirely different game than the default league. Of course survivability is favored there, and I wouldn't hesitate to play the 'mediocre' builds I was talking about before. When survivability is more important than DPS (as is the case in a Hardcore league), a Marauder's going to be the stronger option; however, Melee's still going to be the best option for that.

In any case, I'm talking more about the default league where people tend to favor killing speed more (so long as your character isn't completely glass cannon). This means a moderate amount of defense with high DPS. The opposite would be true in a HC league for most people.


Also, as I said before, I feel CI is an inferior form of defense (in some ways; obviously it has strengths as well). I would expect CI builds to have an easier time getting more damage, but like I keep saying, the gap is crazy right now. It's tough to even get a third of the DPS an ES character has if you want to go non-melee with life.

I would love to give an actual example, but sadly due to not having a lot (any) free time recently, i can only make some theorycrafting.
I know you would rather see an build in action and actually see its numbers, but maybe the idea will work, what i though was something similar to this:
Link
I know it has no blood magic, but i somehow feel safer with mana ;) Though you could drop the int and mana nodes and go for more life and regen and blood magic, but i'm not quite sure (haven't played any BM character myself, so i don't have a feeling about how much is needed)

The above passives could be tried with burning arrow as a single target attack and maybe iceshot for groups... Another option would be spreading a poison cloud with Poison arrow and than beggining hammering with Burning arrow (BA is nice because it doesn't convert the physical damage, but add some percent of it as fire damage). The dexterity with an Onyx amulet should be enough for a Thicket Bow.

I'm sorry that it is only theorycrafting, but as i said currently i sadly can't offer more...