Final 0.9.4 Patch Notes

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MDragoon wrote:

Crit on witches is crazy due to people not speccing for crit in passive tree but equipment stacking. I would like to see crit made into a global ability instead of just spell crit. Why was it just spell crit on most gear in the first place? Melee doesn't need crit help? It seems like some mods are just missing from the game so far.

And Hybrid armors need global % increases, not half an armor boost. It just makes them seem so lackluster currently. If you're going to make the requirements game harder, we need to see results from the equipment we wear, or it's the same farmfest for equipment as before with endless amounts of useless stuff

yes I totally agree, particularly with the hybrid armor. The biggest thing about hybrid armor is that +x% armor/evasion/ES is only half as effective on them.

I disagree with the knockback though. With a knockback support gem and fast attack speed, knockbacks will be very frequent. You can also get knockback on crit passive, and get a bunch of increased crit passives that ranger has access to, as well as increased crit chance support.

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OnmyojiOmn wrote:

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Chris wrote:

What do you do if you're designing a game and you find that one build is insanely overpowered and much stronger than you intended?

Reduce the effectiveness of the build rather than removing it. konfeta put it pretty well: you remove the crit, he stacks spell damage instead. He's now a spell damage witch.

The burning/freezing/shocking effects are pretty interesting. Keep crit chance, weaken crit multiplier mods, and put more emphasis on what happens when you crit.

The spell crit chance on items were OP. They only affected spells (not attacks), and the values were too high.

Removing them does not mean you cannot still run high crit builds, it just means it's not as stupidly overpowered. How hard is that to understand?
Crit multiplier mods were a bit overpowered too (mostly in combination with increased spell crit on items), although at least anyone can make use of them.

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pupp3t wrote:

keystone (later) in pvp/cutthroat league -- always hit,never stun,no crit -- why i should invest in crit passive,stun passive-- what/will happen with dagger users or keystone will works only in sf/hc ?

dagger users wouldn't want to use the always hit. Stun passives will work against anyone who doesn't get the anti-stun keystone, namely anyone except marauders and duelists, so it's still quite useful, just kinda coin-flippy

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MindBullets wrote:

I understand this will insult a lot of players....

90% of players (while reading) want a simple kill button in their OP characters with aoe skill. If the op class and aoe skills is nerfd, they cry like there is no tomorow ?!

Nerfing aoe skills is the solution and not a problem. Adapt or die.

I don't think that developer's intented 1 button aoe win on every lvl or even at end game, do you ? It might sound extremly harsh, but that's the reality we are and where the game is going atm.

Yeah no kidding. There's AoE (Cleave, ground slam, fireball, frozen pule), and then there's OP 1-shot-wonder shock nova (not sure about frost nova, don't see as much use, I'm sure it's pretty strong, just less damage due to the cold)
I think shock nova should cost more so that it's not as spammable, or even give it a cool-down.

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Faerwin wrote:

Chaos Innoculation: 20% increased maximum energy shield. Provides immunity to chaos damage. Maximum life becomes 1.

That one is god awful. Why would anyone want to trade 500-700 hp to gain maybe 80 to 100 energy shield? Make it a 200% energy shield and it might see some use

I think you're misunderstanding the levels of energy shield and health that witches can have if they spec into ES gear. This passive could be quite useful — especially when chaos damage is more common in pvp or from monsters. It's currently pretty much a free way to get 2+ frenzy charges as a witch with blood rage .

Overall, I think it could use a bit of a buff though. Like 15% decreased energy shield regeneration delay, and maybe more like 30-50% energy shield.
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With regards to blood magic, does anyone (namely the devs) think it would be overpowered if it were to take from life and/or energy shield instead of just life? That way it can have better synergy with templars (wearing templar armor) and particularly witches.
Certainly the logic isn't as sound when the skill is named blood magic, but who cares about names compared to game balance? I think it's a pretty viable option, no?

In before Chaos Innoculation + Blood Rage for free Frenzy Charges.

Hell, throw in the unique armor that adds +60% energy shield and grants Power Charges on crit for good measure.

only downside of this massive thing with tons of opportunities is that with a fixed passive skillreset, there is a big risk of trashing your lvl 50+ char by making a bad build out of it or mistakes,etc.. :P

could be a tough thing to a) calculate your way in the nods with like 65points to place b) experiment and hope that things work out as intended

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ronda174 wrote:

only downside of this massive thing with tons of opportunities is that with a fixed passive skillreset, there is a big risk of trashing your lvl 50+ char by making a bad build out of it or mistakes,etc.. :P

could be a tough thing to a) calculate your way in the nods with like 65points to place b) experiment and hope that things work out as intended

Taking a quick glance at the passive tree in 0.9.4 shows that they didn't make many substantial changes to it, thankfully. As long as you knew how to make something functional beforehand and you're careful with the keystone passives, you shouldn't have to worry much about accidentally trashing your characters.

0.9.4 dev gameplay thread: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/13552/page/1/

I don't understand why increasing base weapon damage progression will make the increase damage mod less mandatory. What makes it mandatory is the values on it. As long as this mod can reach +100% (even less), it will be more powerful than other mods, thus mandatory.

I can see how it will prevent lower level items from outperforming higher level items, but 100% is still 100%...

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zriL wrote:

I don't understand why increasing base weapon damage progression will make the increase damage mod less mandatory. What makes it mandatory is the values on it. As long as this mod can reach +100% (even less), it will be more powerful than other mods, thus mandatory.

When next tier of weapons has 10% more damage than the previous one, you can have +10% dmg mod to compensate it. When next tier of weapons has 50% more damage, you have to roll +50% dmg mod to be as effective which makes values up to 50% not mandatory when you can have better tier. Of course the values won't be as high as that but this is how it works.

looks like a big mess to me tbh.
i'll wait and see but i dont like a lot of the changes.

minus 70+ AA alone seems to make it impossible to wear any of my current gear/skills/supports.. makes no sence to me to grind up 74 lvl and before i even can give high lvl feedback i play a new game..

when it was not intended to have that amount of crit dmg multiplier why make them spawnable on gear in the first place? just needs a lil logic to figure that everyone will go for that huge dps increase..

i also dont like keystones that grant u a 100% chance for something.. melee always hit with flicker strike.. good night pvp.
for ranger i was expecting something like reflected shot (chance to hit 2nd target on crit or flat & chance) or shield penetration (chance to pierce shields) stuff like that...

speaking of pvp... anything included in this patch to prevent desync and lags. its still awfull and i read ppl complaing about that in global chat all the time.

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el_puno wrote:

i also dont like keystones that grant u a 100% chance for something.. melee always hit with flicker strike.. good night pvp.

In practice, you won't actually see a 100% hit rate with flicker strike even with that keystone. Flicker strike positions you behind an enemy, but you still have to factor in the time it takes your weapon to swing. If the enemy is quick enough, your weapon is slow enough, and the enemy is running away from you, flicker strike will miss outright simply because the mob isn't in range for the skill to deal damage. That is, it doesn't even perform an accuracy roll to check whether damage is to be dealt.