On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

I had a feeling the Frenzy charge change was due to the now increased value of Generic Dmg, I think a simple change to compromise to what I feel the vast majority of the community wants is to make Frenzy charges grant 4% more attack and spell dmg rather then generic, this would make it have almost the same effect now without worrying about the strength of a high source of generic dmg.

I Feel like its much harder to balance the Power charges, I agree it is a nice change to give power charges strength to Non-crit builds but I feel limiting the benefit to only Spell dmg punishes attack based builds to much, maybe give power charges a Flat accuracy bonus in addition to the spell dmg.

Greetings,

One of the biggest gripes of the changes is of course the charge changes. More specifically, effectively locking each charge type to a specific damage source. Yes Frenzy still gives cast speed and Power still gives crit, however being unable to build around with both effectively was never the problem. The problem is that charges are too powerful as is, and this change does nothing but exasperate the problem by keeping Frenzy charges to attack builds that already utilize it effectively.

I like the change to Power charges, it fits more in line with what needed to be changed about it.

If you want to separate Frenzy and Power charges, at least make Power charges grant increased Elemental damage and Frenzy more Physical/Ailment damage. That way you don't restrict charges to certain skills.

To me, a build is only satisfying if it has a lot of synergy. On the other side, anti-synergy is very infuriating to me, and investing resources into something i will not fully benefit from also really hinders my enjoyment.

If my build would just end up skilling 10% increased wrongtype damage, i will be looking for another build, even if the build overall is fine and the numbers would work out. Ever since Ascendency i am struggling to find a build to play every league or death, not because there are so many, but because i don't really like even one of them. I eventually roll with the least bad (non-synergistic, weird playstyle) thing. I can deal with a straight downside attribute of a unique item, but not with investing into positive stuff and not make use of it.


What's the link to the charge change?

Power charges now are tied to spell damage. That means all non-spell crit builds will now have to do without. Which means Assassin does not offer attack builds anymore. Which means the amount of synergistic build's will go down further.

I don't really care about the Frenzy charges, i have not found one satisfying way to make them work with spellcasters anyway. This is partly because neither Ranger Ascendency works for spellcasting.

Don't get me wrong, i love this game, got 3k+ hours... I will be planning my 3.0 starter for quite some additional hours, and hope there will be one build i genuinely like.

"

forsajt wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

Our design, balance and QA team are experts at Path of Exile. I would not accept any less.

Being an expert at Path of Exile doesn't deny being crazy.

Also, Expert at Poe doesnt make them Expert at balancing it

This will probably get buried, but I don't quite understand the uproar and specifically how "frenzy is useless for casters" which is flat out untrue - Frenzy still gives cast speed! Also, to those who say power is useless for melee? It still gives crit chance, which if you weren't crit, you weren't using anyway and lost nothing. Now, for casters, you go for power charges, which is arguably easier to get in the tree.
I think GGG need to look at buffing cast speed specifically for Frenzy to make it more attractive / emphasise the new niche (speed). In addition, having something else attack specific to apply to power charges would definitely help to promote these changes. I agree that frenzy needed to change, I just think it needs a little more tweaking to make it worthwhile for the respective builds.
TLDR: Let Frenzy be about cast speed for casters and power about damage and crit. For attack, let frenzy be about damage and speed, and power about crit (possibly crit multi too?). These changes are good for long term, but need to be refined.
This will, IMO, fix the issue of charges being skewed on items, if each charge has an interesting niche/angle for both types (caster and attack).

The main issue to the charge changes was that it killed a lot of build freedom by shoehorning Frenzy Charges to only improve the damage of attacks and by having Power Charges be biased towards spellcasters. If you alter charges to mostly or only benefit specific damage types, no one will ever use them in any other kind of build.

For example, this would dumpster anyone wanting to play a spellcaster Raider, or support any cold spell with Ice Bite, or use Surgebinders in elemental caster builds. Also Tulfall is a thing.

I think the outcry over this would have been like, 10% of what it was if you'd just nerfed the charges a little. Making Frenzies completely impractical to use on casters was a huge overreach.

Mr. Wilson and the GGG devs.

Just make the game and don't worry about what the vocal minority say.

Players should PLAY the game, not bitch about it.

You should NOT make design decisions based on Reddit whiners.

Players will find a way to adjust to the changes. Players have no idea what changes are being planned in the future and therefore can't make informed suggestions.


Once again, Devs develope/design the game and Players play the game.

Just something I want to add. 3.0 is THE time to make these big changes, dont back down because a vocal MINORITY is like "hurr durr muh niche build doesn't make much sense anymore".
Now while I like these changes the consequences that it introduced need to be changed accordingly and then I think its an overall improvement.

The charge changes i actually think are good, mostly.

Nerfing power charges + assassin is probably overkill. Assassin has an identity as a build that can achieve max critical strike very easily, however, with these changes you now still have to invest a lot in crit. i'd argue that if Assassin can't easily achieve max crit then the entire ascendancy needs looked at for a change. The damage over time nerfs (poison bleed) are reasonable if and only if they are made up for elsewhere. Should be easier to balance them now that assassin isn't completely overshadowing other damage sources for poison and bleed.

I'm not a fan of the elemental ailment changes currently but i'll wait for the update on those for a final decision.

I already posted a separate thread about this in another section of the forum, link here
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1927849

But i'll provide the salient points:

Making HALF of the effect of the charge USELESS for a large portion of builds/playstyles feels "Bad" or "wasteful" in a game focused on minmaxing.

If I am playing an attack build, I am more likely to take a node that says 30% crit, rather than a node that says 30% crit + X% spell damage - even though logically they are the same benefit for my build, because the latter node is already "signalled" as a spell damage node for spell builds. Even if the 30% crit node was originally nerfed from 50%.

It cannot be looked at purely from the point of view of "adding a nice additional effect to this node", rather, adding a limited benefit actually decreases desirability for those that do not benefit.

I believe this is not the first time someone has mentioned this phenomenon, but I cannot find the old GGG dev comment thread on it.