Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Saark]

Now if you balance the game such that insane clearspeed is as easy to achieve as in POE and therefor becomes as comon as in POE, simply "playing slow" wont do the trick, because then you miss the point of the game.

Its like if i make a racing game and give every car a maxspeed of 1000mp/h. It would not be enjoyable, yes people could simply drive slowly by only driving on first gear or something, but that would suck.

What I dislike most about clearspeed-meta discussions is how everyone automatically assumes that not conforming to it means going slow. Theres a middle ground here, you realize that right? And the difference between over the top clearspeed meta stuff and "I play however I want, yet I know how the game works so my build is still pretty optimized" isn't double or triple the time investment per map/guardian/shaper/atziri.

Not to mention that most of these issues don't matter at all for large parts of the game unless you're trying to hit 100 as soon as possible. And even then there are other variables besides just clearing as quickly as possible like rolling maps/sustaining a base that early, having a decent support who doesn't fuck your shit up and your builds fault tolerance all play a much bigger role. None of this may matter much on SC, but that is a completely different ruleset anyway, I can only talk from a HC perspective.

The mapping issue is a fickle thing, and there certainly are some things that are wrong with it. Packsize is the only real thing that matters here though, and I'm fine with the fact that prefixes don't grant it at all. Ideally you simply don't assume that highest challenge = best rewards and you have no problem. Hard content generally still provides the best/most rewards, but since difficulty in such a complex game is quite a relative thing GGG decided to opt for giving packsize only to mods that affect the player and not the monsters. Might make sense to you, might not, but that's how it is and I see no reason to grant packsize to any damage mod when most people don't want to get hit in the first place. It would also be a pain in the ass to roll maps in HC, and GGG has gone quite a few ways to include bosses that far supercede both the difficulty aswell as the rewards of any map, which alleviated this issue a lot. There simply is no easy solution to this issue.

it's because you can sustain flasks when you kill 5 mobs a second forever, which you couldn't do originally, and you can't do in dangerous maps. It's actually safer at this point to blast through with flickerstrike and piano key your flasks than it is to play something that might have to go without flasks being up for 5 seconds.

Surgeons was a thing way back before the current set of Utility Flasks were introduced, and the second it got nerfed pathfinder came around the corner. You were almost always able to sustain important Flasks 100% of the time if you wanted to. Your Flicker example is flawed in the sense that while you may have to rely on your Flasks being up 100% of the time and for your build it may be worse to not have that uptime, I can simply make a build that doesn't rely on having 100% flask/curse uptime to be viable and die the second they drop (which is what a lot of people don't understand even on HC and you see them pop left and right because their flasks dropped or they forgot to press the button). If you prefer a high-risk high-reward playstyle (like Flickerstrike) and you cannot sustain your flasks and die then this is on you, not the game. But saying "you weren't able to sustain flasks 100% back in the day" is simply ignorant.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

I never considered the economics of rare vs. Blue maps, especially when you hit t15. Something tells me you're still better off spending some currency. I made plenty of profit running t13-t15 with bloodlines for better map drops.

I was certainly happy that my two characters this league (warchief and ST HOWA) gave no fucks about regen or temp chains mods.

 

[Saark]

I never considered the economics of rare vs. Blue maps, especially when you hit t15. Something tells me you're still better off spending some currency. I made plenty of profit running t13-t15 with bloodlines for better map drops.

I was certainly happy that my two characters this league (warchief and ST HOWA) gave no fucks about regen or temp chains mods.

You certainly are better off, the "blue maps are 90% as effective as rares" was pretty much just trying to get a point across. About as true as me saying properly rolled maps are "triple the reward" of blues. At least it used to be like this before Atlas though. Last time properly rolled blue maps were close to rares was back in the "Area is a maze" days.

 

[Grif]

What are the odds that they might restore the old levels they have removed? Didn't Lunaris and Solaris used to contain 3 levels?

 

[Projas]

Yeah they did. Very very low I'd say, since a lot of people hated it to the point of paying for waypoints.

 

[Grif]

Yeah they did. Very very low I'd say, since a lot of people hated it to the point of paying for waypoints.

I always understood the hatred stemmed from having to do them three times because lol artificial padding. Now that they apparently removed difficulty progression, I was thinking they might return to that style of padding instead.

 

[Projas]

It was not just that, it was still a slog because of the layout and annoying enemies like the statues. Anyway, I don't think there needs to be any additional padding if they want to maintain a smooth progression curve, because right now there is actually a difficulty drop between a4 and a1 of the next difficulty.

 

[Saark]

Well, we're basically gonna get 2 "new" acts, since Act5 and 10 will both be in Oriath. The rest can be spread out, so its the 4 current acts, and we revisit the majority of it. Since there have already been plenty of new tilesets/layouts introduced in atlas they will probably be mixed with stuff from the leveling process. I would expect the new acts to be slightly larger than the current ones, which is easily doable with what they already have in the game. Padding for the sake of padding should not be necessary at all. Most of the 3-layer zones had the second one to provide a waypoint that you had to actively look for instead of just walking past it naturally. They have since moved away from this almost entirely.

 

[Arkeus]

Yeah they did. Very very low I'd say, since a lot of people hated it to the point of paying for waypoints.

I always understood the hatred stemmed from having to do them three times because lol artificial padding. Now that they apparently removed difficulty progression, I was thinking they might return to that style of padding instead.

Game began with '8 acts', then had '9 acts', then '12 acts', and now will have '10 acts'. A lot of the content being cut was done when we went from 9 acts to 12 acts, for obvious reasons. It's very possible they choose to put it back.

OTOH, old Solaris was cancer. Old Sin wasn't great either.

No, you fucking retard, it's because you can sustain flasks when you kill 5 mobs a second forever, which you couldn't do originally, and you can't do in dangerous maps. It's actually safer at this point to blast through with flickerstrike and piano key your flasks than it is to play something that might have to go without flasks being up for 5 seconds.

It's because there is a ton of new really really really powerful unique utility flasks. We are at a point where each flask that's not a utility one is a significant weakness. There is a small meta with life builds without life flasks now lol.

 

[Hyperion]

Clear speed meta is where it is right now because endgame bosses are balanced around double-dipping, but nothing else is. If they can change movement skillls to travel farther, but with a 4 - 6s cooldown, those 2 fixes should go a long way to making the game a lot more palatable. Reducing the damage potential (too many skill gem multipliers right now) and possibly AoE of spells, and making namelocked melee the highest damage potential of anything, they'll go a long way to making it the best experience for us PoE grognards.

Not counting on it because the 10 Act change is going to bring us all back anyway. hah.

 

[Saark]

A couple of things largely influenced the meta. One being Flasks that increase DPS, therefore "requiring" you to use them non-stop instead of selective usage. Automation of curses and charge generation also has become an issue in my opionion, you used to weave something like frenzy, enduring cry or a specific pcoc-setup into your clearing-ability to maintain them. Since all charges can be generated through curses, those two issues alone had a huge influence. Some may call those QoL-Changes, I think they took away something from the game. Some builds got left behind in the process, since this automation cleared up gem-slots for the majority of builds while builds like zombie/spectre summoners are still slot-starved even with Unset Rings.

Toning down the automation part might become tricky though since it largely depends on CoH and you will have to figure out a way to nerf auto-cursing for non-supports builds while still enabling quad/penta-curse support builds.

 

[Zdzisiu]

A couple of things largely influenced the meta. One being Flasks that increase DPS, therefore "requiring" you to use them non-stop instead of selective usage. Automation of curses and charge generation also has become an issue in my opionion, you used to weave something like frenzy, enduring cry or a specific pcoc-setup into your clearing-ability to maintain them. Since all charges can be generated through curses, those two issues alone had a huge influence. Some may call those QoL-Changes, I think they took away something from the game. Some builds got left behind in the process, since this automation cleared up gem-slots for the majority of builds while builds like zombie/spectre summoners are still slot-starved even with Unset Rings.

Toning down the automation part might become tricky though since it largely depends on CoH and you will have to figure out a way to nerf auto-cursing for non-supports builds while still enabling quad/penta-curse support builds.

Also, support builds, in general, are a weird piece of a puzzle to figure out. Right now, supports can literally triple or quadruple your dps while giving you all resistances at 81%, added armour and energy shield, haste and God knows what else. Sure, you have to go low life for those, but Shavs aint that expensive anymore, and even relatively cheap Guardian builds are insane addition to any party.

But on the other hand, they really are unable to play the game solo. Except some more niche builds.

If you want to experience the true Insane DPS/Insane survivability, invite a Guardian low life aurabot and watch the numbers go crazy.

 

[Hyperion]

What's odd is they removed the automation of charge generation through EC + CWDT, but implemented Blasphemy shortly after. Builds get left behind because they never follow through on their changes. Why introduce War Cries as a mechanic if you never update them, never improve them, never give them a real point outside of declassifying them as spells to work around a mechanic you didn't like in EC + IC? Personally, I think IC should get the same treatment, and be pulled off of automation before anything else. It's a stupid mechanic that doesn't belong in the game. IC, Endurance Charges, and a Basalt Flask completely trivialize physical damage, and thus make armour shit in the process.

The same goes for Fortify. It was supposed to be their answer to the melee damage reduction that Barbs, 'saders, and Monks got in D3, but ranged classes received more benefit, because whoops we forgot it works with movement skills, and has essentially become a passive 20% damage reduction for them. On that topic, their support gem balance is trash. Whenever they add one, it's just another more multiplier. And spells / elemental damage have A LOT more of them than melee do. As a left-sided melee physical build, you get...melee physical damage. Melee damage on full life is too useless, and added fire just adds elemental damage, and benefits conversion skills better because of the interaction with WED. Pierce has a more multiplier....why doesn't knockback or stun?

There's NO reason for the Nova support gem not to exist. Sire of Shards allows it, so we know they have the mechanic. Melee splash should turn a namelocked skill into a ground AoE. It shouldn't be THAT hard to come up with support gems that completely change the way a skill functions.

And, we all know 3.0 isn't fixing this.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Melee damage on full life is great... if you're CI. The devs are blatantly out of touch with the actual game balance. They have to play with godmode on whenever they show new content. If they sucked at actually playing but still understood the mechanics, they could just set up an overgeared character in an easy area for this, but they're so out of the loop they can't even ballpark that shit and need to be literally invincible. They get a lot of their ideas on the game balance from casuals on reddit that still don't know the difference between more/increased multipliers. I had a buddy that was convinced increasing his Int was raising his elemental resists. I didn't correct him when we started playing because I figured he'd notice it eventually... months later, even after reading character builds and getting multiple characters to mapping, he still thought that's how it works. He's the target audience.

 

[AMG]

Melee dmg on full life is totally usable, especially with slayer leech. You can nearly offscreen stuff with lots of melee skills nowdays. Although the point still stands, melee phys support gems are rather lacking, which is why EQ was so good, since you can link it to less duration.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Why would you want to give up bloodrage though? The damage from frenzy charges is going to outstrip that anyways.

 

[AMG]

Attack speed is not that useful for earthquake for example and if you generate frenzy charges through some other means then it is worth it (f.e. the new op jewels).

Also, sustaining charges against difficult bosses is usually impossible, so that's another reason to forgo blood rage.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Didn't know they added charge generation jewels, that's hilarious. Looking forward to some 'Gems in this item are supported by level 30 blasphemy' crafting mods next perhaps.

I think, ultimately, the game is doomed to this kind of meta because of the economy. The various crafting currencies can't be allowed to scale in droprate with difficulty because it'd render them either way too common in the market in general or way too rare until you're at the very endgame. As things stand now, you can get a chaos drop pretty easily, or at the very least use the vendor recipe to make one. But even something like the shaper won't drop a dozen chaos orbs, despite being 100x more expensive to gear for (not to mention the cost of the map itself) than the dried lake runs that will get you a dozen chaos orbs even if you're literally naked except for a 4 link with blade vortex or whatever the flavour of the month is. Because at some point, people can do shaper in under 5 minutes, and would just flood the market with currency if he dropped decent amounts. So the high tier loot always has to be crap, because the economy needs to be balanced for 6 man parties that can trivialize it. That means the bulk of the currency comes from casual players doing low level content, and that means the fastest way to acquire it is to grind the content they're in as fast as possible. If the bulk of the loot came from difficult content, the average player couldn't afford anything and would ragequit.

 

[Hyperion]

Melee dmg on full life is totally usable, especially with slayer leech. You can nearly offscreen stuff with lots of melee skills nowdays. Although the point still stands, melee phys support gems are rather lacking, which is why EQ was so good, since you can link it to less duration.

Yeah, i meant to type niche, but said useless instead heh. It also pretty much precludes using blood magic for the big life bonus, which you need to survive potential one-shots on hardcore, or for QoL when getting mana leech is a pain in the ass.

 

[T. Reich]

Those jewels cost 5-10 ex each, are league-specific, AND are non-guaranteed drop-only non-chanceable uniques from the super-rare boss that can only be farmed by no-lifers.
As soon as Breach is over, you can pretty much forget about these jewels.

Of all melee builds I played, I can only think of 2 that don't want to run blood rage - earthquake (where ias hurts instead of helping), and pure elemental builds (where phys leech is useless). And for the latter it's just a matter of personal preference, because ias and extra damage from fcharges are hella helpful there.

 

[Cyberarmy]

We don't have to play same acts over and over again?
Well, I was kinda bored with Grim Dawn after 500+ hours so, yay!

 

[ArchAngel]

We don't have to play same acts over and over again?
Well, I was kinda bored with Grim Dawn after 500+ hours so, yay!

Well there is still 3-4 months before 3.0 releases, you can fit 300 more hours into Grim Dawn :D

 

[Zdzisiu]

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1834597/page/1#p14195391

Legacy League announcement.

You can get items that will allow you to get legacy uniques. Like 1000hp Kaom, 1000% Facebreakers and all that jazz. Sure, that shit will be super uber rare but boy will that be something to chase.

 

[Saark]

Liking the changes to threshold jewels that basically give you a free link on most underused skills and the buffs to certain areas in the tree that are pretty shitty. The big nerfs will come with 3.0, for now we get even more powercreep but I am fine with this for once. The AoE nerfs will be interesting to see.

Glacial Hammer will probably be viable for once, only to be played with Pyre for 100% fire conversion :/

 

[Zdzisiu]

Liking the changes to threshold jewels that basically give you a free link on most underused skills and the buffs to certain areas in the tree that are pretty shitty. The big nerfs will come with 3.0, for now we get even more powercreep but I am fine with this for once. The AoE nerfs will be interesting to see.

Glacial Hammer will probably be viable for once, only to be played with Pyre for 100% fire conversion :/

And some of the threshold jewels are not limited to 1 but to 2, like the freeze pulse one. So 4 additional freeze pulse projectiles and 50% increased FP damage if you shattered a mob in last 4 seconds for the price of two jewel slots.