0.2.0 Stormweaver Feedback

Seeing 400 hours of my hard work and struggles optimizing and tweaking my own build to be able to work just disappear was extremely frustrating. That being said I can see you are open to actually listening and fixing things so here are my pain points and suggestions. However, as time goes on with no mention of good buffs for the class I'm losing hope in the balance team being able to make this playable. My feedback is as follows. Hopefully someone reads this and actually addresses the issues soon.

Passive tree changes
- Eldritch Battery feels horrible. The doubling of mana costs completely negates any meaningful benefit it provides. This passive already removes your energy shield having it also double your mana costs feels extremely bad. Either there needs to be a support gem that adds damage to your spells based on how much the ability costs or the double mana needs to be removed.

- Jewel slot removal really hurt mana builds. It's now really hard to get both the mana pool, mana regeneration, damage, survivability, and crit needed for what is an extremely mana hungry build (ESPECIALLY WHEN USING MIND OVER MATTER). I feel like either more notables need mana regen or Arcane surge needs to have a bigger impact on mana regeneration.

- Practiced Signs and Open Mind could really use a +5 to intelligence as pathing through those nodes along with either Pure energy or Raw Power could solve a lot of early game mana issues as well as helping with some of the support gems that require strength and dexterity early on.

- With the nerf to mana stacking in the new builds I feel like Arcane Intensity could use a fairly hefty buff. Maybe 5% per 100 mana or 3% per 80 Mana. You'd have to test it out.

- Alternating current is such a cool Passive that just doesn't feel like it's good enough to take. I've tried to make it work over and over and I always spec out of it. Maybe increasing the mana regeneration would make it more viable.

- Mind over matter currently feels unplayable with archmage. Maybe this is an archmage mana cost issue. However, I think if you changed the mana recovery rate on mind over matter it could potentially solve some of the bad feeling with survivability on our glass cannon.

- Path of Flame/Winter/Storms. Could they be combined into one node? I feel like sorceress would have a lot more build variety if she had early access to just flat elemental buffs in that early group and it would make the early game a lot simpler for new players. This also give us more points to invest in multiple elements later in the tree to encourage elemental combo builds instead of just spark spamming.

- Sorceress has a ton of nodes that increase mana costs and regen times, but not many with reducing costs. Can we get something similar to Conservative Casting in a more reachable location?

Ascendency

- Tempest caller and Raindancer are really cool conceptually. However, I feel like they are extremely weak. I feel like reducing the cooldown on Tempest Caller by 30% or so, so you can have more Elemental storms active would help with the abilities viability. The damage on elemental storm also needs a huge late game scaling buff.... the skill is pretty useless later in the game.

- Force of will. Post nerf feels really bad. I lost easily 2000 mana on my build because of the changes to eldritch battery, archmage, and the maximum mana nodes. I feel like this should be at least 2% but potentially 5% to make it feel better.

- Scouring winds post nerf feels kinda bad as well. Could it potentially apply its own resitance debuff that can only trigger every X amount of time instead?

- Removal of the 4% max mana nodes hurts a lot of the builds. I understand you don't want spark to one shot everything. However, the changes to archmage should do that enough by itself. I feel like you could do half and half to help mitigate the problem. 2% max mana and 6% regen would make it feel a lot better and open the way for more flexibility in different builds.


Items/Skills

I don't want to go to deep into this because theres just a ton of information. However, I feel like the unique changes to everlasting gaze and Mahuxotl's Machination along with the other passive skill tree changes really bricked a ton of builds.

The scaling on spark got hit too hard I think. It's really hard to clear stuff now.

Cost on archmage can go back. Keep the damage scaling as it is but the cost is insane.


People in the comments feel free to add valid criticisms. However, if you do please also present ideas and solutions. I would like to actually give them good ideas. Also feel free to criticize my ideas but keep it constructive.

Edit: I've also added some additional feedback in the comments. Hopefully this helps along with other people's feedback.

Edit: Another player also had some great feedback in the comments saying

"

One of the other massive issues is the top side tree. Your options are extremely limited. This is partly because the tree seems to still be empty in some spots compared to bottom side and, more importantly, there's like 30-40% of minion clusters that only one build will ever use. Why is there only one three point cluster that buffs area of effect but 4 times more that are just pointless minion passives. Genuinely. The existence of minions is ruining sorc passive choices and all the different options that could be there for actual spells instead.

And think this is what causes a lot of our mana issues. We pretty much have to choose between damage, survivability, or mana. We have no good options for any that cover 2/3 bases outside of 2 or 3 passive nodes. I feel like the minion passives also block a lot of or pathing options between these parts of our tree.

Thank you for being civil. It is rare

I also had an Eldritch Battery and Mind over Matter character, as a Witch. I really enjoyed playing her. When this patch dropped, this character wasn't just nerfed, she was outright destroyed. It's pointless to even try to make her work. The fact that these features, Eldritch Battery and Mind over Matter exist makes it a possibility for players to want to make builds that revolve around them. For the developers to then do everything in their power to destroy that build completely is absurd.

That was one of my three characters. The other was a Monk who didn't have Astramentis or Hand of Wisdom and Action, and thus was struggling to find his identity. He was decent, but not "overpowered". They nerfed him too. I can probably find a way to make him work now that they un-nerfed part of the Tempest Bell.

My first character was a Fire Witch, using Pyromantic Pact, Avatar of Fire, with Incinerate as her main skill. I had already given up on using Demonform with her, not because I didn't like the idea of Demonform, but because Demonform made the character fundamentally weaker compared to equipping a staff. I made a Witch in the first place because I wanted to use Demonform. (My Mind over Matter witch was able to make use of Demonform sometimes). Both of my Witches took the Hellhound for the 20% damage reduction effect. Not being Minion builds, the Hellhounds did no damage and died quickly. With that being removed, it became pointless for my non-minion build Witches to take that. My Fire Witch was the most viable of my three characters after the massive nerfs, so that was the character I attempted to play. She was in a decent spot pre 0.2, not overpowered, not incredibly weak, with room to improve.

After 5 minutes of playing, I exited the game and haven't come back to play again. The changes to the game made my only possibly viable endgame character (Both Witches were level 91) incapable of doing basic Tier 15 maps with any reasonable expectation of success. The slow careful gameplay I was forced into was not the issue. The issue is the cost of failure compared to the reward for success. The cost of failure is way too high and the reward for success is way too low. My three favorite characters are no longer viable. The ways I wanted to play the game were deemed unworthy of existing.

I know there are other classes and other builds I could use to make progress and get the rewards I want, but they are not the way I wanted to play the game. I wanted to play an Avatar of Fire character that uses fire spells. I wanted to play a Mind over Matter Witch with Eldritch Battery. Having the option to do these things was what made the game fun for me. Ideally I also wanted Demonform to be more viable.

What this game became in 0.2 is a game not worth my time.

In all of my time playing Path of Exile (1), my characters were never utterly destroyed the way they have been here. This decision by these developers is an utter shock to me.

I will not return to POE2 unless changes are implemented that allows for me to play the game in a way I enjoy. I don't want to be pigeonholed into a limited selection of build options that could be absolutely destroyed in an upcoming patch.

I never even bothered trying the Huntress, because if Endgame is not enjoyable, why would I waste time creating a new character to get there?

"

Thank you for being civil. It is rare

Took a bit for me to cool down. However, I really do want to like the game, so I'd rather give constructive criticism and hope it gets to a playable state for the build I made rather than just give up on it and quit.

"

I also had an Eldritch Battery and Mind over Matter character, as a Witch. I really enjoyed playing her. When this patch dropped, this character wasn't just nerfed, she was outright destroyed. It's pointless to even try to make her work. The fact that these features, Eldritch Battery and Mind over Matter exist makes it a possibility for players to want to make builds that revolve around them. For the developers to then do everything in their power to destroy that build completely is absurd.

The nerf to Eldritch Battery and Everlasting Gaze really does feel like a kick in the nuts to pretty much anyone that was using it from what I can tell.
Also not the biggest fan of the mana regen debuff on MOM personally, but I understand why it's there.

Another thing I really haven't liked is how pretty much every pinnacle boss pretty much one shots me now that I can't run Mind Over Matter. The resistances aren't enough. I get hit through over 2K shield and 1.5K health by almost every boss attack. With max elemental resistances and some armor. Unfortunately I don't have a ton of armor though because I can't afford the strength requirements for a lot of that gear or it doesn't fit my build at all.

I’ve tried to play my sorceress since patch day, I can’t put in more than 10 minutes at a time before being fed up

Archmage and EB might as well be removed from the game at this point for all the reasons you mention.

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Archmage and EB might as well be removed from the game at this point for all the reasons you mention.

I don't think they need to be removed. Just balanced properly. I think EB was fine the way it was before, but it would be cool if they added "add damage to spells you cast equal to the amount of mana spent on them" to the current EB. Archmage definitely needed a nerf, just maybe not as hard as it was nerfed.

Doubling mana use was just lazy imo, it feels like they just nerfed everything without much thought when it comes to sorceress. I know changes needed to happen but my god they gutted them and have not even mentioned them in any of their feedback / plans.

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I know changes needed to happen but my god they gutted them and have not even mentioned them in any of their feedback / plans.

I feel like this is what is causing a lot of the frustration. If they came out and said "Hey we emergency nerfed this so people didn't instaclear the new content. We are working on balancing it." people would be happier.

I guess it just feels like we aren't being heard really. I know they cant really respond on the forums without being obliterated by angry people.... but it would be nice to know they were actually hearing our voices.