Appeal to GGG – Mana leech

"

RogueMage wrote:

"

unkempt wrote:

There aren't enough mana regen nodes in the tree and the 8% mana increased nodes barely even make a difference unless you're running EB. The witch area should really have way more mana options than it currently has. I've tried to make a ton of casters and they all end up with mana issues even though I'm taking every mana regen node within reach.

That's the crux of the problem, and the reason EB is practically mandatory for casters.

I have a hybrid Life/ES Witch who subsists on a mere 800 mana. After reservation, I have about 200 mana free with 50 mana/sec regen. To do this, I not only needed to take all mana nodes in the Witch area, but also the Primal Spirit nodes way down in the Ranger area. Shadow is even worse, there are no %Increased Mana nodes in the core Shadow area, you have to railroad down to the Mana Geyser cluster between Shadow and Ranger.

The Ranger also has convenient access to the Charisma 15% Reduced Mana Reserve cluster as well. How does it make sense that the Ranger core area offers better mana management than the Witch and Shadow areas combined?

it is due to Intelligence giving flat mana and said flat mana then is way easier to scale

The changes that were made were significant and made long after the end of beta and official release of the game. My impression is that the first "expansion" would set the tone for future expansions for POE. From my perspective the tone is that in any expansion the skill tree may be remade to the point of destroying a build (not mine but others) and that skills from gems may be nerfed to the point of destroying or seriously hamstringing a build (my case) or both. It is my opinion that the changes were made in part due to irrational anger with and/or contempt for certain high level characters and in part due to a lack of understanding of what players want in terms of a stable game and character development system. I don't want to support a game company that maintains this sort of attitude nor do I wish to risk spending hundreds of hours of my free time developing a character only to find that which was working for me destroyed by the whims of the developer.

Addressing my own build, the skill tree was remade to the point where I no longer recognized much of it but there was enough similarity that after thinking it through I was able to spec out with the same amount of life and life regen and mana, a little more armor, and one extra point for each max elemental resist. I was extremely annoyed at the fact that I had to rebuild from scratch! but I think that I have learned enough about the game to be able to do the respec successfully. Also my build is pretty well-balanced (I think). The life leech nerf kills me not from being unable to recover from blood magic but from not having the extra life regen that allows me to melee against a group of enemies. Like I said before I was using self-found gear and therefore none of it would be considered optimal. I spent quite a few nights just trying to find a piece of gear that might give me even a slight improvement and my ability to ratchet myself up has been slow but steady. I needed the life regen from life leech to survive as a non-optimally equipped character.

So for now I am leaving the game. It was a good run and I had some fun, but in the end it could have been much longer. I know that it doesn't matter to anyone including the devs, but at least the message gets put down somewhere.

Thanks sidtherat and RagnarokChu for answering my question. It seems it was right in front of me after all, so to speak.

Another question I have is: how many leeches could you queue up prior to this change? I never looked into it before, so I have no idea.

Something I would ask the PoE team specifically is: what was this change supposed to balance?

I'm a casual gamer compared to a lot of the people who post in the Forum. I've only ever had 1 character up to Act2 Cruel, and 2 characters through Act3 Merciless then to maps, but prior to the patch I never bitch-slapped Dominus in 15 seconds because I had a good mana leech. Hell, I never beat any boss or breezed through any location because of my mana leech. All mana leech did was keep me from having to stand still 50% of the time waiting for my Mana to regenerate before moving on, or having to devote 3 potion slots to mana instead of 1 or none. This was a convenience, not something which made my character a boring, overpowered game-killer.

I have to admit life leech certainly helped my Marauder beat Dominus on all 3 difficulties, but his Life, Armor, and DPS had just as much, or more, to do with it. Even with all those factors, my Marauder didn't just walk over Merciless-level Dominus. The battle took quite a bit of time, a party, and some auras from those party members in order to make it something viable for a simple player like myself. Even then, a couple of people in the party died. Some of those more than once.

I think the leech nerfs were applied to shut down certain builds where it was discovered that characters could become nearly invincible with the right set of gear. I don't think that the fact the nerfs would destroy or severely hamstring a diverse number of casual and less "optimal" builds with fairly ordinary equipment was given sufficient consideration.

I put the word "optimal" in quotes because I have run into a few different people in public map groups who seemed (overly in my opinion) very concerned with being optimal or "op" as they call it in chat. To me optimal means that I have the most fun and not that I burn through the enemies as quickly as possible without having to do much of anything to manage my life and mana.

The changes to leech in general are just catastrophic.

I can't even run Lightning Arrow/LMP/Chain/Blood Magic/Faster Attacks in a low level area, because I heal nothing back--and this is with a 20/20 Leech gem that gives me 28.8% leech. Seriously devs, log onto my account on your test server and try this out.

Now, I understand you can use LGOH... but there are definitely gonna be builds out there that can't for whatever reason. This just seems like you've irreparably ruined them.

And mana leech doesn't even HAVE an alternative like LGOH, except for the Thief's Torment ring.

GGG, you guys dun goofed. This needs to be reevaluated.

Firstly, nerfing leech a bit was a good idea, overall, it was really too good.

However it was done on the same level of elegance shown in nerfing CwDT, which is about as elegant as a dog riding a bicycle.

Why? Because it's really inconsistent. For example this:
- you got level barrage and split arrow and barrage
- both skills do 4 hits per use
- both skills cost the same amount of mana
- both skills have the same usage rate

And we got barrage sustainable by leech and split isn't, even though barrage even does less damage per hit, and the only reason is those hits are distributed differently.

So what was the intention here? Nerfing leech only for skills that do near-simultaneous hits while leaving it almost intact for all others? If that's the case we could call the mission accomplished.

"

trhoffendjr wrote:

The changes that were made were significant and made long after the end of beta and official release of the game. My impression is that the first "expansion" would set the tone for future expansions for POE. From my perspective the tone is that in any expansion the skill tree may be remade to the point of destroying a build (not mine but others) and that skills from gems may be nerfed to the point of destroying or seriously hamstringing a build (my case) or both. It is my opinion that the changes were made in part due to irrational anger with and/or contempt for certain high level characters and in part due to a lack of understanding of what players want in terms of a stable game and character development system. I don't want to support a game company that maintains this sort of attitude nor do I wish to risk spending hundreds of hours of my free time developing a character only to find that which was working for me destroyed by the whims of the developer.

Besides irrationally assuming some irrational anger on the developers' behalf, I cannot say this opinion is unjustified. I don't share it, per say, because I view the game's meta as a more liquid affair, rather than set in stone.

This was my greatest criticism of the expansion, as well, that it was coupled with all of these sweeping balance changes. I should hope somebody read and at least considered my criticism, because I believe an otherwise fantastic expansion, their first expansion, was muddied by decisions that further destabilized the meta (beyond what just expansion would have). I believe these balance changes should, in the future, be reserved for a separate patch from the expansion.

Though it's somewhat off topic for this thread, I'd also like to append to that criticism: While I understand why this was done--withholding little changes here and there until one patch, as to save on server downtime, and manpower hours spent implementing patches--I believe it is a mistake. The consequences of working more economically on your end, shift those burdens onto we, the players. Excepting any changes made a the end of a four month league, I believe any other balance should be performed more gradually, over time...make it a more liquid affair, rather than shattering the stone it was set in... While it might mean more manpower hours on your end, I say that is the cost of this business.. the business of providing an enjoyable experience for your customers. Most of the frustration comes from, I believe, how sweeping these changes can be; it allows little (often no) time for players to adapt, before they're given the ultimatum to sink or swim. That is a pretty volatile environment, to expect your customers to enjoy themselves within--that some of them should suddenly sink, at no fault of their own.

relevant thread: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/815665

also i'm debating starting a separate topic for that long post i made. it covers a wide range of topics, much more than just mana leech.

"

Veta321 wrote:

relevant thread: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/815665

Fixed that link for you :)

I realize that it is irrational to think there is irrational anger / contempt. TBH the idea did not come from me. It was floating around the global chat in game and also discussed among various players in whispers. It sort of fits the idea that the nerf was so drastic and appears so ill-conceived that perhaps it was done as much out of anger than anything else.