Balance Changes to Chill, Shock, and Charges

I dont really get the Shock changes.
If I deal 75% damage to a regular foe, it suffers from 75% more damage for 2 seconds, right? That sounds quite awesome for me, and allows to play some kind of team-focused lightning build I ve long been waiting for. (We in general miss team builds, besides aurabots.)
Yet there is this 10% thing for maximum Shock effect. That does only apply to bosses, if I understand correctly? But it scales the same way? So damage equal to 10% of life of enemy increases the damage taken by 10% for two seconds. Well, thats at least reasonable. But! Why would I want to skill increased Shock effect if it doesnt increase the maximum?! I`d be far better off, simply skilling as much lightning damage as possible to achieve the maximum effect. So much more useful, than skilling into increased shock effect, which only is useful on "very tough" bosses, and even worse, scales really bad with my overall character progression and damage increase, since the more damage I make, the less I am in need of the shock increases.
Should just allow the skilled shock increases to increase the maximum effect, would make them feel way more like a strategic choice.

Wow, I will admit I did not see this coming, at least this close to release date.

I will admit, GGG, you managed to surprise me in a good way, and in this issue, greatly exceeded my expectations; when I saw the announcement I was expecting some form of weak justification to stick with the proposed changes on the beta as-is. My predictions were wrong, and I'll readily admit that. Well done.

As far as the merits of the changes themselves, you've made the right choice:

• I think most of us can agree that capping crit chance was a problem, and the bonus from power charges needed a reduction. Whether it was to 40% or 30%, either one would do at least something to contribute to a solution.
  
  
• To repeat from before, while many players might've WANTED the spell damage bonus on power charges, that didn't make it a good choice; after all, a lot of players would love to have all the power creep in the world for THEM, but that doesn't make for an engaging game people keep playing for seasons on end. Hopefully, an alternative can be found that both keeps the theme, as well as not locking power charges behind a certain build type. (After all, ALL builds can and do benefit from endurance charges)
  
  
• On a similar note, while the mandatory nature of frenzy charges is problematic, gating them away from spellcasters and ESPECIALLY trappers (!) did NOTHING to really fix the problem; they went from "an amazing bonus for all that's mandatory if you can reasonably invest" to "either always worthless or even MORE mandatory;" black-and-white design there isn't good. Again, hopefully an alternative is found to re-work them, perhaps in time for 3.1.0.
  
  
• On ailments, thank you for listening, even if it was only because Reddit had such a consensus. The changes didn't actually provide any improvement on their own: the threshold had remained exactly the same, with only the "borderline" cases becoming massively weaker, while the duration ALSO was a huge sting to players. (e.g, perma-chill would be common) While some of those issues still sorta remain, the removal of the minimum is a big step, as even a weak effect on high-HP bosses is better than the old "no bothering" route.

"

Boskiero wrote:

Before it seemed that to gain a benefit out of these changes you actually HAD to invest as otherwise you couldn't deal enough damage to have an meaningful effect come out. Which in my opinion seemed a great idea as then an elemental ailment wasn't something "free" but rather an choice you made and invested points into. Yet everyone seemed to miss this and just complained that it's too hard, yet I saw no one mention about spending some resources to gain added chill/freeze effect.

The problem was that, inadvertently, the original changes were a nerf. It was easy to SPIN them as an improvement, but actually crunching the numbers showed that it wasn't the case; the minimum damage threshold for shock stayed the same, and the threshold for chill Actually went up by 2/3; and even then, enemies you'd care about applying the ailments to were those you'd barely affect, like bosses. And with the new system, you'd generally get a weak effect that's almost insignificant instead of a strong one lasting long enough for one more hit.

At least lowering the threshold to 2% (as below that it rounds to a zero effect, rather than just cuts off) will make it more plausibly achievable for fights where it'd matter; even a small effect is better than never having any.

Guys, He said there will be future changes on power/frenzy charges, just not yet. Can you all calm down plz?

The question is, and always was: Power/Frenzy charges work with too many different items/classes/builds on this game, and I guess they really need MORE TIME to make significant changes on it. With all the new content incoming, probably not enough time to see exactly what effects those changes would have in the game.

Just for example: Raider would be a class specific to "attack" skills. No more Raider spells. Victario's actuity unique item would be changing from gold to trash. And MANY MANY others classes and unique items that I can't even listen all of them here.

So, let's breath, let's play 3.0 for the next weeks and give them MORE TIME to check this changes.

I didn't freaked out like reddit, I don't think those changes was so bad like other players, but yes I think that's unnecessary changes to 3.0. Keep charges as it always was for now, and rework on charges effects on next balance patch is by far the best call, and that's what you did. Point to you GGG. ;)

"

Threshold Jewels/Vendor

Due to a production mistake, some threshold jewels that failed internal testing (Choking Ash (Fire Trap) and Straight and True (Split Arrow)) were released on the Beta alongside the ones we do intend to release. Please note that these broken ones will not be released as part of 3.0.0, but may be reworked in the future to an appropriate power level for release.

The vendor itself will not be included in 3.0.0. Your feedback about how it trivialises the acquisition of unique items (and associated Prophecies/vendor recipes/etc) is completely correct. We will ensure that the quest offers all of the threshold jewels to all characters (regardless of class) so that SSF players are not at a disadvantage due to the lack of the vendor.

Sorry but what am I missing? split arrow jewel is "broken" for what reason?
Number of arrows is the same, damage is the same, whats the difference between default attack and "paralel"? I didn't got it. To me atleast, split arrow still bad as it always was. By far the worst bow skill. Maybe even worst than Caustic arrow ( CA really need a good and interesting Threshold jewel, please do it ).

Yes, quest offering all threshold jewels would be totally amazing. Specially to me that like play SSF HC. Do it! :))))))

NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE
NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE
NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE
NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE
NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE
NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE

RIP PoE!

lmfao, wtf.

"

Smear wrote:

NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE
NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE
NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE
NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE
NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE
NERF NERF NERF, BALANCE BALANCE BALANCE

RIP PoE!

lmfao, wtf.

i think thats what the closed beta was for, you got it

Was looking forward to the powercharge changes. Powercharges are effectively now a 20% situational crit node which doesnt lead up to any notables, and the loss of that 80% inc situational crit for probably 5 passives or whatever is easily countered by running a diamond flask instead. I dont see why I should invest any more into powercharges than what I happen to path through or get for free anyways, unless you are running Void Battery of course.

Why dont you rather let the charges keep the flavour of generic defence/speed/crit, and add 2% more damage to all of them? This keeps them as an open option to alot of builds, doesnt nerf any builds, ballance their power (Frenzy is now way above the others) and opens up for that crazy build that invests heavily into two or even three charge types.

I got 4 lvl90 toons on SSF HC now, and still missing alot of the threshold jewels. There is no viable chance orb strat, no divination card, no Cadiro strat, no nothing except for random drop. I wanted to build with the zombie one for example but havent seen it. If you ditch the vendor there should be a good way to reliably get a hold of them, and dont tell me theres a quest at level 60 so I have to level 2 guys if I need duplicates of a threshold jewel, thats why you put in the gem vendor, remember?

And please, add some more divination cards for impossible to get build enabling items. Ill give you a good one for free: "unique golem jewel"

"

The problem was that, inadvertently, the original changes were a nerf.

The thing is, I don't care if it is a nerf or not. That can be ironed out later.

The mechanics were sound. There are shock and chill nodes on the tree that NO ONE uses. With the proposed chances if you wanted to get meaningful effect out of these ailments you would have had to as the needed damage to cause such effects would have been impossible to achieve without increased effectiveness. This would have made chill and shock a CHOICE rather than just something "free" you get for playing a lightning or cold build.

Of course there is a chance that it wouldn't have been like this even before due to high threshold numbers but those should have been incrementally changed over a testing period to levels where the system would end up in a state like this.

Timing was a problem and now GGG has showed that they can 'backdown' so why not do the same here. They could have reverted this too to make ailments interesting rather than something to just have.

TL;DR I want ailments to be a choice reflected in the skill tree (picking shock/chill nodes).

seems fair,

what is the minimum dmg we have to do now as a percentage to apply the 1% of aliment effect?

On chilled grond; I have used chilled ground from flask or arctic breath a couple times to slow down a difficult boss. This is one of the reasons PoE is such a great game, you always have some options to make stuff easier although you pay for this by getting a slower and more akward approach to the encounter. This is stuff that no tier 1 build uses, and no build uses to trivilise everything, just to plug a hole in the meme build for a specific encounter. Except for that guy who showcases fun stuff on youtube (that couldnt make an effective build to save his life it seems) what build of the week, streamer or end.game farmer uses chilled ground to save his ass? Havent even seen chilled ground on any shaper kill showcase. I really dont get the nerf of chilled ground. Why should I keep a 20%q aquamarine flask now? If you keep on nerfing stuff like slow-effects every patch you will have to lower damage/difficulty eventually which would not be good for the game, and build diversity will go down if theres no way for that wonky memebuild to survive Izaro or other stuff. I mean, you nerfed temp chains on bosses, blind, now chilled ground and high ES, whats our next go-to option? Frost wall totems, knockback flametotem and offscreening? And after you nerf all that stuff? We all have to run 30K armour and 10K HP? As I see it, so many of the changes removes fun and build diversity and invalidates current items and skills. All the interesting stuff is in the new items and skills, which will always be outnumbered by far at this point. Fewer viable options = less diversity and fun.