Feedback: Damage scaling is too high

http://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1s17je/the_max_life_highway/

This is the template I used for my last character. I used spectral throw as my main leveling damage (cuz you know, your lack of balance disallows any use of abilities we WANT to level with).

I had over 1800 life before finishing normal. Reached 2k before getting to cruel ledge, and at some point I also put 6 points into phase acrobatics for the flat 40%/30% reduction to incoming damage, using EV gear solely to utilize those points.

Well the short story is that it doesn't matter what you do with your character. With good resists, absurd HP levels, as many endurance charges as allowed, and phase acrobatics, you can still run into a storm herald rare with specific mods that allow him to follow you no matter what you do, and get lucky enough to shock stack you, then shock stack you again, then hit you once or twice and kill you in the space of less than 3-4 seconds, somehow through phase acrobatics, endurance charges, and resists, before you can react and use whatever escape mechanism of your choice you go with.

The reason for this is that a mob can have storm call and extra damage/speed allowing it to easily shock stack your character 3 times, supporting mobs casting curses, extra lightning damage, etc etc until it is doing 20x base damage or more, off a number that was already pretty high.

Bottom line, I chose the most safe, boring fuckass build to level with because of how bullshit your balance is, and still got instagibbed by storm herald. And at no point was it "fun" leveling this character. The fun was supposed to be in the endgame, when hard work pays off and allows someone to enjoy the work they put into the game and all the fucking slow, boring grinding you put into leveling with ST and the current best defensive options.

Who knows, maybe desync played a role. The few options that were available probably wouldn't have happened fast enough to matter. It literally seems like I could not have made any better decisions to prevent this from happening. I really feel bad for the people who didn't invest into a tree that contains 536% increased life because they enjoy doing damage.

When I quit this game last time, there were about 20 trade chats. Now there is usually 1 trade chat, sometimes 2. Maybe making your game playable could have been an option, IDK. This is as about in-depth as I feel like going. People have complained about poor skill balancing, mob balancing, stat balancing, act balancing, and DESYNC for about as long as this game has existed and it seems like the development team isn't interested in hearing about it. There may still be time left, idk, but I think mostly everyone has moved on.

This isn't intended to be an attack on anyone or the game so I hope it isn't perceived that way. I just feel like some very poor decisions have been made that make enjoying this game an insurmountable challenge, and the game had such great potential. Best of luck.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

This is the template I used for my last character. I used spectral throw as my main leveling damage (cuz you know, your lack of balance disallows any use of abilities we WANT to level with).
[...]
I also put 6 points into phase acrobatics for the flat 40%/30% reduction to incoming damage, using EV gear solely to utilize those points.
[...]

Bottom line, I chose the most safe, boring fuckass build to level with because of how bullshit your balance is, and still got instagibbed by storm herald. And at no point was it "fun" leveling this character. The fun was supposed to be in the endgame, when hard work pays off and allows someone to enjoy the work they put into the game and all the fucking slow, boring grinding you put into leveling with ST and the current best defensive options

- I don't really like starting this but here we go : don't blame GGG for your lack of creativity/skill, honestly.
If you cannot lvl up at a good enough pace with 90% of the other skills ( at least ), you probably just messed up.

- Phase acrobatic does not give damage reduction ...

- Actually, level is fun for most people. The fun part of HC/Nemesis ( I believe ) is that there can be threats everywhere, you never know what can come at you at any moment and you have to stay focus. And if you get in a situation where you realize that you're gonna die in couple of seconds, you can still - because it is intended by design - alt+f4.
Btw, are you using a topaz flask with shock cure ? Do you have any shock avoidance ?


Maybe just play standard honestly, I'm not saying that Storm Herald is balanced ( it will probably get a nerf when going to standard I guess ) or anything though. Sucks to loose a char in HC, you'll get over it eventually ...

And btw, I agree that some mechanism in game have too much scaling, and in some situations, that's definitely the case for elemental damage.

"

Fruz wrote:

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

This is the template I used for my last character. I used spectral throw as my main leveling damage (cuz you know, your lack of balance disallows any use of abilities we WANT to level with).
[...]
I also put 6 points into phase acrobatics for the flat 40%/30% reduction to incoming damage, using EV gear solely to utilize those points.
[...]

Bottom line, I chose the most safe, boring fuckass build to level with because of how bullshit your balance is, and still got instagibbed by storm herald. And at no point was it "fun" leveling this character. The fun was supposed to be in the endgame, when hard work pays off and allows someone to enjoy the work they put into the game and all the fucking slow, boring grinding you put into leveling with ST and the current best defensive options

- I don't really like starting this but here we go : don't blame GGG for your lack of creativity/skill, honestly.
If you cannot lvl up at a good enough pace with 90% of the other skills ( at least ), you probably just messed up.

- Phase acrobatic does not give damage reduction ...

- Actually, level is fun for most people. The fun part of HC/Nemesis ( I believe ) is that there can be threats everywhere, you never know what can come at you at any moment and you have to stay focus. And if you get in a situation where you realize that you're gonna die in couple of seconds, you can still - because it is intended by design - alt+f4.
Btw, are you using a topaz flask with shock cure ? Do you have any shock avoidance ?


Maybe just play standard honestly, I'm not saying that Storm Herald is balanced ( it will probably get a nerf when going to standard I guess ) or anything though. Sucks to loose a char in HC, you'll get over it eventually ...

And btw, I agree that some mechanism in game have too much scaling, and in some situations, that's definitely the case for elemental damage.

If you agree there is too much scaling then I'm not sure what you are debating here. To begin with most of what you said is flat out wrong or arguing semantics and I won't bother addressing it.

There are people, by the way, who do/want to play this game without stacking life and defense. I'm just going to throw that out there, if you will.

Storm herald is meant to be dodged. As someone who has made multiple 80+ nemesis characters I'm not buying your excuse that it followed you no matter what. I have made melee characters without block and was still able to survive storm herald with good gameplay(in maps which make storm herald FAR more dangerous).

You were using spectral with 2k+ HP as well, you had the full capacity to avoid that death.

With all that said I do hope storm herald is nerfed or extremely rare with the new leagues. I think it's perfectly balanced outside maps.. but when you start doing minus max and double damage maps, a storm herald on a golem can instantly hit for 5k. It makes many maps three times as hard due to insane multiplying scaling with strong creatures + dangerous map mods.

If you want to complain about balancing then you should focus on devourers that can hit for 4k with a single hit(that you can't avoid). With more insane map mods you can count that as 6k+. Same dps potential as colossal skeletons except you can't avoid it.

So has it been a couple of seconds, multiple of attacks, or have you died instantly as your fifth paragraph suggests ? It cannot be both.

"

There may still be time left, idk, but I think mostly everyone has moved on.

Hm.

This game doesn't need you to mess up to kill you. It just happens.

You can say that he could have this or that to prevent that death but, in the end enough should be enough and it isn't.

Sorry about your death. I think both you and I should go the easy way.
If you really want to succeed in this game you just have to play like a pussy Alt + F4 all the time and play the economy simulator. And a party.

And in the end you will be able to tell everyone the great player you are just cause you have a lvl 90+ char.... That got there through the easy way. It plain sucks. But that's how it is.

Storm Herald can be a real pain. It can be really, really nasty when you come across more than one of them relatively close together, as the area of the "storm" can be really, really large. It is not difficult to imagine situations where the combination of rare monster mods + Storm Herald could result in a 1-shot death. (Storm Herald + Powerful Crits + Added "X" Damage on a fast mob type in a room with a Conductivity curser, yeah, it could be ugly)

That said, none of my Nemesis toons have died to Storm Herald. Oh, sure, the first 15 or 20 of them that I came across made me sweat bullets and got my heart racing, but then I figured out their mechanics. Since then the only time they are threatening is when the space is tight, like the one I met in The Den once.

EDIT: To the poster above me: Really dude? YOU ARE PLAYING A VIDEO GAME. Don't be so serious about something that is supposed to provide enjoyment. I stopped playing in hardcore leagues, even though it is my preferred style of play, because of my crappy computer. You know what? My wife and kids still love me, my sense of self-worth has not diminished, and my dick is EXACTLY THE SAME SIZE AS WHEN I PLAYED HARDCORE. You go on thinking that your concept of "hardcore" somehow makes you a better gamer than others, whatever helps you sleep better at night.

If it telegraphs, it should be allowed to one-shot you, even if you have great gear.
If it does not telegraph, it not be allowed to one-shot you, unless you have shit gear.

Assuming, of course, no significant desync. However, I attribute problems there to the preponderance of desync, and not to the existence of one-shots.

"

You can say that he could have this or that to prevent that death but, in the end enough should be enough and it isn't.

Um what. Learning from death is the main thing people do in HC. Blaming the game is silly. I have reached nemesis merciless with only 1600 HP so don't go on with your silly agenda. Act 1 storm herald isn't even close to the typical storm herald in a simple fleet map.

@Scrotie Storm herald does not one shot. The rare casts a storm just like piety but in rapid succession. Multiple storms can overlap that will easily kill characters if you don't dodge it. It's based on enemy type, enemy mods, map mods. The first thing is the most important making golems/colossal skellies/avian wretches extremely dangerous with it. Fleet/powercharge/minus max maps are also very dangerous since they heavily augment the storm(more so than typical damage mods).

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kasub wrote:

Um what. Learning from death is the main thing people do in HC. Blaming the game is silly. I have reached nemesis merciless with only 1600 HP so don't go on with your silly agenda. Act 1 storm herald isn't even close to the typical storm herald in a simple fleet map.

There are 2 problems about your logic. First, you don't ever know what killed you, so you cannot learn from that experience.

Second, sometimes you think you had enough defenses to survive, and u really had... Unless some godly combination of mods kills you.
There are mobs that you simply CAN'T run away from.

The game is balanced about partying, trading and pussying (AF4). If you don't want to use these... you are screwed.