Character Balance in Path of Exile: Lake of Kalandra

We got a slap in the face. Thanks for that.

What people expected to see (I am not even starting on the fact that no mention of new skill gems has been made):

Problem: Melee skills, especially strike skills, are in horrible state due to lack of damage and area of effect compared to the spells/ranged builds - which we caused by nerfing support gems + active gems + items over the last 5 leagues.

On top of that, they require even higher damage:defense ratio split than other builds and the mechanics of the melee skills often cause "standing-still" disease, which hampers the surviveability of the unfortunate Exiles.

Solution: Fortify support and Melee splash support are removed. They are incorporated - fortify : all melee skills (fortification based on melee damage, max fortification provided by 100K damage hit), melee splash : all strike skills. Slam skills have %more attack speed modifier applied to compensate lower attack speeds of twohanded weapons.

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Problem: Exerted attacks require a piano play that was previously required for flask management.

Solution: Call to Arms cooldown is lowered to 4 seconds and any warcry used procs all equiped warcry gems instantly. Call to Arms require melee weapon excluding staves (not warstaves).

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Problem: Damage of melee skills (excluding flicker strike) is sub-par to basically every other build.

Solution: We are reverting the flat damage provided by gems to Legion League levels.

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Problem: Left side of the passive tree does not provide any spell suppression, which is required to survive current powercreep of monsters which we have introduced.

Solution: Monster damage will be revised in the further leagues and will be closely monitored. For now, armour is applied to elemental hit modifiers at 20% of the value for Templar, Marauder and Duelist classes. This "passive" will be added as a form of reward for completing all the labyrinth trials (Grief, Pain, Suffering,etc.).

The nerfs are very expected and are justified IMO. But what about the buffs? The manifesto feels very underwhelming to me, I expected more buffs/reworks/meta shake up since there were an additional 3 months without changes. Hope we get some new skill gems on the reveal stream.

Pretty sad to see a HUGE column of buffed skill gems and at first glance you realize that only 2-3 are now at a point where someone may even consider using them.
And the change to Juggernaut is just a sad joke. Now that Trickster gets reworked Juggernaut will be the least used and still sees a "buff" that might as well turn out to be a nerf.

I actually welcome this. I think these are nice changes however I would have like to see a little bit more in terms of helping the left side of the tree with more survivability. I'm fine with the spell suppression and mana reservation nerfs but their should be something on the tree to help melee builds a little more with survivability since melee sucks right now. Over all though I like the changes and can't wait to see what else you guys have done!

Thanks for everything

6 months between "balance" changes well spent

There is just no more hope with this company

The left passiv tree side need definitely more defensive option. How about something like stagger in wow when portion of incoming physical or maybe elemental damage to be dealt over 5 to 10 seconds rather than instantly.

I was just in Mathil's stream and even he thinks PoE will be pretty much unplayable after this patch.

Think about what you are doing GGG! After this patch Mathil will be doomed to create only 27 end game viable builds. ARRRRRRRGHHHHHH!

ok,all crap, now lets talking about melee builds,any buff?

WoW! You weaken Pathfinder again by removing 6% reduced elemental damage taken?
First you made flasks have up to 50% less effect without compensation for Pathfinder and now you think, that 20% increased magic utility flask effect compensates for that?

Back in the days when an indigon Pathfinder still was a thing the Passive Skill Tree travelling for a spellcasting Pathfinder build was much easier. Then you made travelling for them pretty rough and also having to invest heavily into Flask nodes on the tree to get some minor compensation for your flask nerfs.
You can still keep your Mana up but with so much less QOL by having to click the mana flask button 100 times.

This left Pathfinder only useful for Poison and toxic rain.
In my opinion Pathfinder for other builds is only useful to keep unique flasks up. So you should rather change your new passive skill into 20% more flask effect.

Also I don't think that monsters should be able to remove flask effects from pathfinder (Idk if it's still a thing with Nemesis mods removed).

I just wish to get some love for my beloved Pathfinder which you left alone in the rain for the past few leagues.