Baeclast Podcast with Chris Wilson

On a personal level, I really respect Chris and the way he shields his employees from hate filled criticism by being the face of the company and doing his best in the realm of answering questions and/or public relations. When emotions run high, the amount of nasty or mean comments far exceed civilized expectations of rational discourse. Conversations tend to spiral rapidly downward into a more degrading (ad hominem) nature; conversations of which have little to no substance or value even when being looked upon by casual observers.

I noticed that Chris said the changes to piano flasking were to help relieve RSI (repetitive strain injury), yet they gave us tons of expedition chests and currency to click on this league?! I actually developed index finger tendonitis from playing POE after all of these years. It is why I sometimes skip leagues or have my filter set to uber-strict mode, only picking up the most essential items. As far as flasks go, I love the instilling orb modifiers "used when you hit a rare or unique enemy, if not already in effect", and "used when charges reach full." I've found that those two modifiers can keep both my "Vessel of Vinktar" and "Wise Oak" flask up exactly when I need them without having to press the flask buttons incessantly.

The interesting thing in all of this is, I really enjoyed playing 'much slower builds' all of these years, until the mobs obtained crazy spikes in damage due to overlapping rare modifiers. I never much cared for speed or efficiency. The first ever build I made fully on my own that I wanted to share with other players many years ago was some sort of wonky essence drain tank with an off-color socket brass dome. It cleared incredibly slow, and the damage was awful in T16 maps (like half a mil dps), but I felt like a literal tank. I relied on roundabout methods to obtain damage, like decay from 'essence of delirium' which they nerfed into the ground retroactively (cutting its damage by a lot on my standard character, instead of making it legacy).

Now-a-days, I feel like all of the moderate defensive options I used to take were nerfed into the ground (I'm literally playing T16 with no evasion and only 7% physical damage reduction), while these 'Gladiator builds' god-tank everything in juiced T19 maps with one specific niche build (with a large investment ofc) while telling everyone the game is fine. This pigeonholing of viable builds goes against the spirit of what originally drew me to POE. Why use sweep and risk being stationary when I can use cyclone? Why use a single target melee skill when I can use large aoe or chain spells to eradicate everything? Once you figure out that 99.9% of the skill gems are just there to be gimmicky filler for players going through the acts, or for use in low tier white maps, you tend to stick to what builds/gems clear trash mobs the fastest. The answer is not to nerf cyclone or those aoe/chain skills, the answer is to bring up all of these under-performing skills (when you invest in them) to the same level of 'this feels fun to play.'

What really opened my eyes was the fact that even the 0.52 cast time (nearly half a second) on my 'Flame Dash' is enough to get me killed in POE in a T15-16 map. I literally cannot afford to be hit or stationary for half-a-second unless my overleech is active. The game now centers around 'kill or be killed instantly' in most cases.

TL:DR I was forced to adapt to the zoom-zoom era or be left behind. All of the nerfs to defense left me with low defense/low damage, whereas before I had high defense/low damage. I now play a glass cannon and do well with the majority of content. Only porcupine packs or high hp bosses with rippy damage effects (Forking River boss or A4 Baran, The Crusader for example) still give me lots of trouble to the point where I lose all of my portals and cannot beat the fight (on my current build).

A summary! Wow! I can't wait to see and read it! Must big a big chat :-)

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Wrecker_of_Days wrote:

A summary! Wow! I can't wait to see and read it! Must big a big chat :-)

Didn't watch but believe this is a good one if you can't wait.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/p2k0fr/megathread_baeclast_with_chris_wilson_discussion/

This was a great conversation - good job to all involved! I can't wait to hear more from Chris on a more frequent basis going forward, too.

Some absolute legend (Reddit user Mijati) did a Pastebin rough transcription.

https://pastebin.com/yUE01aTE is the link.

I am truly excited by hard mode. Don't like HC much due to how conservatively it pushes you to play, don't like SSF because of the solo part. Hard mode sounds amazing, if they get it right.

I fully expect the first version to have a couple issues (e.g. maybe rare rings are too common because of div cards like The Lover) but that should be fixable.

This strikes me as the perfect thing to release in week 10 of 3.15 rather than waiting for 3.16 though. Then when 3.16 hits, the big mistakes will have been found and dealt with.

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sirgog wrote:

Some absolute legend (Reddit user Mijati) did a Pastebin rough transcription.

https://pastebin.com/yUE01aTE is the link.

I am truly excited by hard mode. Don't like HC much due to how conservatively it pushes you to play, don't like SSF because of the solo part. Hard mode sounds amazing, if they get it right.

I fully expect the first version to have a couple issues (e.g. maybe rare rings are too common because of div cards like The Lover) but that should be fixable.

This strikes me as the perfect thing to release in week 10 of 3.15 rather than waiting for 3.16 though. Then when 3.16 hits, the big mistakes will have been found and dealt with.

As casual player, I am hoping the death penalty can be revised in SC leagues and standard, with the introduction of Hard Mode.

Honestly hopeful, when I was expecting to say "I'll come back and give PoE 2.0 one shot, then done." Good ideas, talk, and believable explanations.

Now: Put up or shut up. "Oh, we have these great 7 fixes, but only half of 1 in 3.16.." Ok, I'll try 3.17 then, and hope you get another 30% less multiplier on revenue.

Mana, flask, and ailments made the game much worse. Fix this, and I'll buy a supporter back once I hit 90 in 3.16. You hosed 3.15, do better.

I honestly feel like the balance changes are being approached backwards.

We are eventually going to be getting gems 2.0 where we will be effectively using several skills at a time. This should truly be absolute priority in shipping to the players for a few reasons.

1) Testing - By getting it into the hands of players early you can actually see just how much power creep you are going to introduce. By nerfing currently existing stuff, you are doing nothing productive towards tackling the large change that IS eventually coming (at least not in what would be a most meaningful way)

2) Fun - By introducing a LARGE power creep of all the gems combo all at once, there can be a large spike that can be drawn back in a more respectable manner, allowing players to suddenly become more powerful overall and fixing long standing painful gameplay points (sockets).

3) Balance - As mentioned above, large amounts of testing data would be gained all at once, allowing you to see more accurately what gem combinations will be producing the most powerful effects, and what gems are left untouched or underused. Seeing as several gems would be setup in multiple link settings, this would provide a much larger pool of data to peruse through.

If it's simply not possible to ship gems 2.0 content into PoE 1.0 version, perhaps we should be using the PoE 2 game with only having access to the first campaign (PoE 2 campaign becoming accessible at a later date obviously).

Spike damage first, then wind it backwards into a more tame setting. The overall decrease in player power, without addressing the glaring fault in enemy power, was really bad.



If you want to fix the games speed, play Last Epoch and see just how smoothly the games progression & damage feels. PoE really just feels like an all or nothing game & the abuse is taking its tole. Offense in poe was really the ONLY good defense for the most part, so obviously nerfing damage without fixing the defenses of the player & offenses of enemies just plain destroys the game. PoE isn't "hard", it's broken.

I actually kinda like the league, the changes are kinda whatever. However the new leagues with varying content peaks, continuous busted mathematics, and constantly shifting yet incomplete content design idea's is tiring. Leagues were supposed to be stuff that made the game better and added onto the core experience. Instead, we get a whole lotta "endgame" content or "side" content and very little actual core design fixes or improvements. I am tired of "artificial" ways to keep players retained / involved. I play PoE for the "build diversity" & "creativity" myself, and often feel short changed in the long run because more often than not it feels like "if it doesn't break the game it isn't viable or fun enough".

Hardmode POGGERS!!! Thank you Chris ❤️

Suggestion to something mentioned on the podcast: In regard to making a large stack of something, it was mentioned that you might be losing the "flashiness" of spiral drops. I think the fix is to drop them one by one upon opening, then seeing them combine into a stack.