Game Balance in Path of Exile: Ultimatum

Unhappy with most of this.

If its one thing this game needs its MORE defense. On higher levels you end up with either having 0 damage and decent defense, or just going dodge.

Keeping up fortify with vigilant strike is boring and unecessary, but at least it freaking works.

Nerfing Rallying cry I guess? Pity, was the only build I had fun with the entirety of last league. There is literally nothing I am tempted to play now :|

I am not too mad about these changes, but I don't understand whats the problem with toxic rain. It has good early endgame progression curve, but flattens significantly as most of DOT skills do in higher endgame without very significant investment. It just makes no sense to me. And Vitality? It's just funny that you buffed it not too long ago (3.12) so you can nerf it now, even though it wasn't used much. I don't really understand what's going on rn.

I hope you gave Awakening atlas objectives some sort of bonus instead of the master mission change since it's only other bonus is %inc map modifiers effect, which is 'great' intensive to grind through atlas - not boring at all, lol.

I expected you to target some of the mana stacking bs that's been happening for quite some time now, but still nothing? It limits spell builds variety so much.

Not as mad as is usually the case, but I think there are overlooked places you should be taking look into and pieces of change that make little to no sense.

Great nerfs well done!

POG

Wow, so the lesson GGG learnt from Harvest nerf outcry was to go ahead with more senseless nerfs and be snide about it in their posts.

I can understand nerfs to damage output because it is getting out of hand but this balance manifesto includes several defensive changes that are just unwarranted.

Hardened Scars nerfs just blows my mind as it was already very painful to utilize such expensive annointment and it was really only viable for Pathfinders. This change is completely nonsensical and makes the annoint completely useless--you do not need Fortify after you got hit and recover your life, you need Fortify to reduce damage from the hit. Most players use instant flask or high-powered flask that get your health back within second or two, which means Hardened Scars are useless to them. Why not changing the annoint in a way it prevents its permanent uptime but still allows players to use it preemptively to mitigate incoming big hits?

I will wait for patch notes to see the extent of nerfs but I'm burned out from Ritual and might skip this league. I'm also done with giving money to GGG because their view of a game and mine are now diverting very significantly.

Fantastic changes, supporter pack worthy. Get in there guys!!!
3.14 shaping up to be one of the best patches in poe history, let reddit cry a river.

The activation of auras no longer costing their reserved mana is so good.

Ok the vaal skills could be a lot better for builds that don't oneshot, but let's see what the streamers do with it first.

Last league i tried farming divergent berserk (ran heist the whole league) and no luck and now you nerfed it, taking away 75% of it's power. It was a nice alternate effect similar to the attack version but not anymore. Please don't gives us alternate effects and nerf them all to dust over time... Really depressing. At least buff the drop rate by 300% now it's that much weaker? Eh, who am I kidding; nerf the casual to target the top end of builds has been the policy for ages. Still frustrating though.

Mostly warranted nerfs it seems, but at this point it should just be called ''game nerfs for balance purposes'' as that seems to be a more apropriate description every time without baiting expectations. Not really something to feel excited about other than the QoL.

Time to suffer the nerfs till we discover what is good now, then switch to it mid league so we can play it a bit before burnout and the inevitable nerf next league? No ty, I'll do another abysmal DoT build that isn't worth nerfing cause it doesn't use strong mechanics (hopefully?).

Really looking forward to the vaal skill buffs. Also excited about the new lab changes. Hopefully I can finally get a good helmet enchant on my own!

Did I miss a fireball nerf in there? Seemed like 500M+ DPS fireball was popular enough to get the hammer.

go go go