On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

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Makivante wrote:

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Vivre wrote:

This thread is the most blatant lie I've seen on these forums yet.

EDIT: referring to the first paragraph about 1000 hours of experience. Or maybe 40days of AFK trading counts.

Additionally CEO posting damage control posts like this really crumbles GGG's credibility.

You're seriously suggesting that Chris is blatantly lying?

Turn off Alex Jones.

I personally wouldn't go as far as to say he is lying, but I think he Very Obviously does not understand what qualifies as an expert.

I do not doubt that these QA testers have 1000 hours of PoE before joining the team. But then, so do I (steam says over 1600).

However, they are clearly not intelligent humans who are capable of making intelligent builds. They're more like, say, ZiggyD. Looooots of play time, looooots of created builds, some even original, but pretty much an awful player who doesn't understand the game at all (unless he's gotten better in the last year, I haven't seen anything from him recently)

In order for the GGG balance team to be qualified to make the kind of decisions they make, they'd need to hire, like, Havoc and Mathil first.

I have a question about the chill/shock changes though. Does it mean that you are now guaranteed to chill a boss as long as you have 1 cold damage? like you would chill for a 0.0001% slow for 4 seconds which means you can use stuff like hypothermia easily? Or is there still a threshold to apply the ailment? I dont mind but it would mean that Hypothermia is now sooooo much better!

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shirobonq wrote:

I agree with everything but the Frenzy Charges change. I think it should either give less More Damage (what?) per charge or give some Movement Speed (I was thinking of it as a stackable mini Onslaught) and no damage increase. Heck, why not some extra general cooldown recovery speed rather than more damage, as Frenzy Charges are thematically 'aligned' with speed, nimbleness?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umDr0mPuyQc&autoplay=1

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Coil1 wrote:

Yea okay Chris "Goddess Unleashed is a powerful weapon" Wilson. Still waiting on that 1m+ dps beta poison build that magically justifies nerfing poison even more.

Waiting..

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DemonikPath wrote:

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Icemasta wrote:

The problem with the constant nerfs, especially in regard to charges, is that it's aimed at the top end builds but affecting every other build on the way.

While you are attempting to bring the top end-build in line with everyone else, the way you're going about the nerfs and bringing everyone down a few steps.

Here is a shitty paint drawing that I did quickly, where area represents the build diversity:




You had quite a few broken builds before, but you probably had the best diversity of skills that could clear T15 and a few bosses. With the constant nerfs, you're basically pigeonholing everyone, not just at the top end, but in the mid-end as well, and it's leaving so many builds that just don't scale well or at all in the end-game, because you keep removing mechanics.

Yes, frenzy charge was an issue to top end builds that could afford them on top of everything else, but now every mid-tier build that used frenzy charges and still managed to get to t12-t15 gets fucked.

tl;dr; your nerfs to top end is having massive collateral damage on lower end builds, in your goal to increase build diversity, you're decreasing it.

And that's totally fine. Not every build is supposed to clear top tier content. And even good build should invest some currency to clear top tier content. There shouldn't be budget top tier builds. It just makes game boring.

You're completely missing the point here, the problem isn't top end build, it's the destruction of low/mid tier build diversity.

I do like Chris but his is not an adequate response. Do they not realize that these changes completely shit on the new Tinkerskin unique before most players will even be able to use it? And what about Power Siphon?

ctrl+z is required.

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Coil1 wrote:

Still waiting on that 1m+ dps beta poison build that magically justifies nerfing poison even more.

It's "millions", which means it needs to be 2m+ dps, and it also needs to not sacrifice defenses. As Qarl said. (also, in order for the "real" DPS to be millions, it additionally needs to not take 6 seconds of continuous single-target attacking in place in order to ramp up to max poison DPS. PoB builds that people don't know how to read are rampant).

Damn Chris AND Neon, the big boys! Cheers for taking time to address all this.
My main complaint is having options taken away, it has been building since the AoE nerfs, a lot of us dropped AoE skills for proj. and many good skills (in my mind) were left behind and made subpar by the nerfs. Then we had ES along with VP, again i feel my options are being limited. For example, if you wanted to play some kind of janky melee CI/ll character, say vaal ground slam, you could make it feel nice by making up the lack of ES nodes where you start and extra travel points with playtime and or knowledge getting or crafting high ES gear and even though you spent a lot, you really only just got it working. Now with such low values this feels like a no go and without VP to boot, i can't see myself enjoying any es based melee character (running away for recharge and melee isn't a good mix to me)
Continuing with ES, personally it's all i want to play and the reason i chose it over life was the freedom i had with my points to really min max and play around late game, where if i was life based, everything "fun" cost dearly in hp. I can understand wanting to tone things back but the playstyle i and many others fell in love with lives and dies with VP, i don't wan't or need meta shifts, i want freedom.
Leading into the next one, spell echo/multi strike on vaal skills and sac harvest nerf. Obviously there are 2 big targets for this but everything else felt like it was caught in the firing line. I mean take ci/ll reave/Vaal reave for an example, it wasn't a problem at all and very underplayed just before the AoE changes, but nearly everything i have mentioned above has hit it in the firing line of other skills/interactions and really hurt it a lot.
Finally we have the charges, again more feeling like my options are being limited, i'm no dev but i see little benefit for trying to "theme" these.
Not a fan of the flask nerfs but it's hard to argue against, they are really nice.
DoT i don't know enough about to comment on if i'm honest.

tl:dr One of the stand out things about PoE for me has always been the freedom to make and create almost any idea that pops into your mind or sounds fun and it upsets me to see that being reduced. I also don't see players who aren't racing, in competition with each other as far as mapping goes, trading will always make more currency. So to be fair i'm more worried about what i enjoy than being worried about testing my skill vs AI. Outside of competing with other players, i don't see this as a game requiring intense mechanical skill and feel good destroying content by making adjustments to my character and investing the time into it over being upset the mobs/boss didn't put up a fight. Starting from a half drowned homeless person and working your way to god status is something i really enjoy and feel with enough time and currency invested, you should destroy most the basic (t1-15) content in the game if you built for it. Skill testers like the big boy bosses are awesome too for a change of pace but not my cup of tea for every map content.

Just gonna throw my 2 cents in:

I really love the changes around Chill and specifically Shock. To me Shock was always the odd one out since non-lightning builds got free shock with Vaal Lightning Trap and Vinktar. Now Lightning and Shock specific builds have a unique aspect to it.

I also really like Power Charges changes, since, as you said, it provide more uses for non-crit spell casters (which currently do not have any need for power charges and dont tend to get Frenzy Charges).

However, Frenzy charges seems too limitting. There were fun options to build non-attack builds around frenzies (especially with Raider ascendancy.

Raider has interesting elemental dmg nodes and phasing and Frenzies. Before you could make a cast raider and it would be a good character. Now that's no longer the case as only 2 out of 6 nodes are at all beneficial to casters. And what is that? One less build type, less diversity.

Frenzies aren't in a problematic state. Sure, everyone WANTS them, but not everyone can get them, and many dont bother.

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Nozumi wrote:

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ErugoPurakushi wrote:

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TRIPL3try wrote:

Don't cater to the crybabies, Chris. You should also nerf the way spell casters exploit Fortify with shield charge and whirling blades. Remember how that is supposed to be designed for melee? Every class uses it now. It's stupid.

Absolutely agree! You guys do fantastic job of making that balance feel good and nice. I think we need that changes to make builds vary more!

Again, agreed, no need to revert the changes GGG.


Reddit will always cry about their beloved builds getting gutted.Builds, mind you, that are being played for several leagues on end, without even thinking about trying something else.If its facerol capable, the "regular" reddit soldier is a happy little camper.


The Changes are fine Chris.

but the builds getting hit by the changes are not the OP ones. these changes hurt the rest of the builds way more than they ever will the top 1% builds.

vaal spark will still exist mark my words and will still be the top clear build.
barrage conversion will still be best boss killer as this doesnt change that at all as guess what frenzies still affect it.

traps well they was dumpster before due to trap issues they refuse to look at yet bring out a new unique which not only emphasises the issues but is then proceeded to become complete trash only a few hours later(if i was the supporter of that unique i would ask for a refund)

any of the bottom right crit setups will now be dumpstered and focused as RT as the investment to hit even some crit chance is way too high now which guess what that is removing builds from the game and is opposite of build diversity.

nerfs are fine and those outraged at this dont give a shit about the nerfs its the downright brokenness of the changes that they need to essentially overhaul so many passives/uniques and other interactions to essentially brand new items and passive nodes.

dot builds are now dumpster people have tested and GGG refuse to give us their "magical millions of dps build" when everyone else in community cannot do that at all.