Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Perkel]

caster caster caster caster caster.
As if casters weren't the most op class already.

Clear map meta retards have complete control over GGG with their wines.

I don't like where this train is going.

With ascendancy they ruined one of key elements of POE that every class can be good at everything (just with different pros and cons). I don't understand why ascendancy classes needs to be ties to starting classes like you couldn't just pick what you want from ascendancy list classes upon getting points.

 

[Ismaul]

caster caster caster caster caster.

also endgame endgame endgame waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Y'know that design focus changes every league / expansion, right? Right now they've been working on Necro, with summoner QoL and the corpse spells. They'll do something else next time.

 

[T. Reich]

I'm currently really concerned with the feature bloat of PoE, and all the power creep (more like power gallop at this point) that comes along with it.
It's already bad enough that there's a billion of different extra things to do in PoE on top of the basic "kill-loot-level up-kill some more" routine - all the gear customisation options, character customisation (skills, jewels, ascendancies, pantheon), managing atlas and sextants (thankfully, they dropped legacy), managing prophecies, managing map mods, and, of course, trading in order to support all of that shit.

And now we're also getting MORE atlas and map management, MORE character and gear customisation (jewels that can go both in gear and passive tree), and even MORE gear options with the "primal" (whatever, I'm not bothering to remember the correct names) rares that get a whole new huge pool of OP mods to be crafted with. Now you can get your 6L in every piece of gear (and 5L rings, too), and a whole ton of extra power that comes with it. You get even more shit to do in maps.

And for what? The expansion isn't even out yet, and I'm already feeling dat feature fatigue, and I'm a veteran player! The newbies and returning players are literally skull-fucked with all that new content - good luck deriving any sort of pleasure in between micromanaging all that mess.
I'm starting to understand the simple-minded players who only want their cookie-cutter build guide, linear maps to go with it, and an AH to easily acquire the gear. After all, a mind can only take that much information in before imploding.

Additionally, it also stresses the fuck out of GGG as well. There is so much shit that has to be balanced against each other (inb4 "GGG balance team" meme, some balancing still has to be done), that what we players get in the final product is a bunch of broken mechanics that go untouched for months/years at a time. We get a game that has features that look like a patchwork of different features thrown on top of each other, a lot of which are horribly outdated, simply because the devs don't have nearly enough time to update everything with the new content. This is also the reason why PvP and racing are as good as dead, and the reason why a shitton of older skills will pretty much forever rot in obscurity, and the reason why we haven't had a decent passive tree overhaul in what seems like an eternity.

And it's only going to get worse over time.

 

[Reinhardt]

Now you can get your 6L in every piece of gear (and 5L rings, too)

Wait, wut?

 

[SirSingAlot]

yeah, those Elder/Shaper bases kinda worry me.
if those get crafted correctly (and they will), things will get absurd.

 

[Perkel]

Frankly speaking those things are minor imo because they are just adding more to already existing mechanics and they are offset by even harder maps and enemies.

My main issue is approach to design in basic form.

You are fighter you meet 3-4 creatures. 1 of which is rare and has 3 blue sidekicks.

In D2 you usually spend a bit of time trying to kill that group and you had chance to die. You also read mods and tried to change your play-style to those mods. Immune to fire ? try some weak physical. etc.

In early PoE this was similar case. Before you started to fight rare mob you read its properties.

Now in PoE you don't do it. Mob can have stacked 6 different mods and it doesn't matter. It needs to have stacked multitude of mods + some auras + maybe ghosts to not be a joke to kill in seconds.

It is clear that short elation from mindless clear map speed is what driving GGG these days. They don't really care about gameplay but numbers and they are afraid to do anything that will make clear map speed meta retard sad.

Even most interesting unique doesn't matter if you can just as well kill everything with random magic item under either way waterfall of projectiles.

You can also see how loot changed. It used to be that uniques sometimes were clear improvement over random rare or they had some amazing abilities AT COST. Like Kaoms huge hp pool for no slots. Now almost every unique is straight up upgrade.

Vall gems was interesting project. For a chance of fucking up completely your gear you had chance of some unique and interesting mod that could basically make your rare into unique item.

few years later you can reforge sockets as you want. And now you get those unique properties on items without vall mallus.

Resistances ? What resistances. It is complete joke. You can get 75% resists in every thing easily aside from chaos.
Chaos ? what chaos ? Mobs barely use it nowdays and damage they are doing is either way lucklustre.

Each character being capable of baing good in anything ? lol lets introduce classes in our classles system. Forget about duelist being good summoner.

 

[T. Reich]

Frankly speaking those things are minor imo because they are just adding more to already existing mechanics and they are offset by even harder maps and enemies.

You nigga better provide a direct quote from GGG in reference to this in 3.1.0.

Resistances ? What resistances. It is complete joke. You can get 75% resists in every thing easily aside from chaos.
Chaos ? what chaos ? Mobs barely use it nowdays and damage they are doing is either way lucklustre.

All monster damage in maps is actually balanced against players having that 75% all ele res cap already. That's why -max res in any form (direct map mod, a curse, ele pene, or simply being undercapped) is the deadliest map mod, and why that + added ele dmg mod combo is straight up nope even in SC. Same reason why +% max res is so OP and hard to get.

While baseline chaos damage (from whites/blues) IS something that can be ignored, chaos damage from rare/unique mobs in higher tier maps is actually one of the deadliest things in the game. It's one of the reasons why CI was OP for such a long time, and why people tend to consider Chimera guardian and T15 overgrown ruin renegade warband bosses some of the deadliest enemies in the game (for non-CI builds).

 

[Perkel]

You nigga better provide a direct quote from GGG in reference to this in 3.1.0.

Are you trying to argue that shaper isn't harder than any other boss in game ? You got higher ilvl maps and probably next expansion will also move that limit up.

All monster damage in maps is actually balanced against players having that 75% all ele res cap already.

That is the issue. It is not any res when you are expected to have 75% res as default.
It is bad design which produces those shitty stacks and those weird shitty deaths.

Whole point of RES is games is to give you ability to have EASIER fights with some bosses mobs who specialise in some element.

"I specialized in fire defense so boss XXX is cakewalk for me."
"I don't have a lot of cold resist so Marveil is kind of hard for me"

Above lines only work at start. While mapping it doesn't because you are expected to hit max caps for all res or you get brutally murdered.

It is supposed to be a choice. Now it is mindless chore.

 

[T. Reich]

I'm not "trying to argue" anything.

I'm saying your statement of "Frankly speaking those things are minor imo because they are just adding more to already existing mechanics and they are offset by even harder maps and enemies." is utter bullshit unless you provide the concrete proof that GGG will increase the game's difficulty in 3.1.0 to even out the significant player power boost in form of the new items and affixes.

Previous experience with GGG's practices indicates that no overall noticeable increase in game difficulty would be implemented to counter the extra player power.

 

[Saark]

caster caster caster caster caster.
As if casters weren't the most op class already.

Yeah, fucking casters everywhere, dominating every league with no attack builds ever showing up.

SSF HC Mayhem has a 50:50 split between caster and attack builds. Sunder replaces KB in SSF since gearing KB is a lot harder, aurobots dont exist to boost attack builds and sunder is the most broken ability in the game right now.

Spoiler

Between the first 50 lv100 characters in Harbinger HC there are 6 pure caster builds. 1 BV, 1 DP, 1 Frostbolt, 1ED, 1EK and 1 RF build. Only 3 of them are actually selfcasting. The remaining 44 builds are SRS summoners, Aurabots, 1 GC Miner and about 30 Sunder/KB/TS/ST/LS/Flicker/Cycloners. Elementalist/Occultist are pretty much dead. The only way you can actually play a self-cast caster build right now is by playing Berserker, Inquisitor or Trickster for ED/RF.

Fucking casters everywhere man.

 

[T. Reich]

I've run quite a few prospective builds via path of building in the last few weeks, both self-made and borrowed from the forum guides.
My general take away from the results:
0) all exceptions to the below observations are the result of some skill+gear combos being downright broken for some thing or other.
1) almost every skill can be milked to deal "decent" (250-400k sustained) non-bullshit dps on a reasonable endgame budget (4x t3 affix rares, non-chase uniques, 3x mod jewels, 20/20 self-leveled gems).
2) most self-cast spells will have trouble going beyond that treshold though, and that usually involves copious amounts of crit that makes a build very vulnerable to reflect.
3) non-zerker/trickster/flaskfinder casters are pretty fucked in terms of life sustain, be it fast regen or leech. Warlord's mark is anything but reliable in most situations.
4) a properly-optimised melee build in general has no problems breaching into 400-700k sustained dps zone, with peak dps breaching 1mil thanks to plentiful strong offensive flask options. Leech/sustain is easy to acquire.
5) both pure ele, pure phys and phys-to-ele conversion variants work fine, though efficacy of each scaling variant can vary strongly depending on skill of choice, plus the choice of gear and passives.
6) melee's strength in damage scaling is the result of having access to certain very strong dps-oriented gear pieces, which (or analogues of thereof) do not exist for casters.
7) ranged (bow/wander) skills combine the scaling strength of melee with the safety and aoe coverage of ranged attacks. Having access to barrage + extra arrow mods allows for truly monstrous single target.
8) trap builds are generally on par with self-cast skills in overall strength, trading away ease of use and the last remains of leech for somewhat more raw damage (especially burst damage).
9) miners are generally stronger than self-casters due to having much higher damage per-hit that is only limited by mine-laying + detonation speed and mana sustain. Trade-offs are the same as for trappers.
10) totem builds are generally at least as strong as self-casters, with options for extra totems making totems a superior choice for for higher dps if you build correctly.
11) No opinion on spectre/golem/AW/skellies summoners due to lack of experience, but SRS is still very damn strong, and zombies still suck.
12) Basically: any skill is decent for general mapping due to non-boss mobs being squishy punching bags, but ranged and caster builds come out on top due to beter aoe capability. Bossing due placing to emphasis on having extremely high single target is rather the domain of specific skills (barrage, blade flurry, blade vortex), with other skills usually performing worse due to relative lack of OP damage-scaling options.

 

[Gerrard]

Now you can get your 6L in every piece of gear (and 5L rings, too), and a whole ton of extra power that comes with it.

Good, maybe I'll finally be able to use some 6 linked skills.

However, in reality those items are going to be super rare and/or 99% of them will be shit and those support mods will probably scale from level 1.

 

[Perkel]

caster caster caster caster caster.
As if casters weren't the most op class already.

Yeah, fucking casters everywhere, dominating every league with no attack builds ever showing up.

SSF HC Mayhem has a 50:50 split between caster and attack builds. Sunder replaces KB in SSF since gearing KB is a lot harder, aurobots dont exist to boost attack builds and sunder is the most broken ability in the game right now.

Spoiler

Between the first 50 lv100 characters in Harbinger HC there are 6 pure caster builds. 1 BV, 1 DP, 1 Frostbolt, 1ED, 1EK and 1 RF build. Only 3 of them are actually selfcasting. The remaining 44 builds are SRS summoners, Aurabots, 1 GC Miner and about 30 Sunder/KB/TS/ST/LS/Flicker/Cycloners. Elementalist/Occultist are pretty much dead. The only way you can actually play a self-cast caster build right now is by playing Berserker, Inquisitor or Trickster for ED/RF.

Fucking casters everywhere man.

What i see: casters, casters ,casters.

If you send projectile from your sword. Then this is no longer melee skill. Sunder is just melee spells.

Double/dual strike is melee, cleave, heavy strike etc.

 

[Saark]

Fucking casters man, how do they work?

 

[Saark]

On a more serious note, at what point does a "melee" build become a caster all of a sudden?

I'm guessing you would consider a dagger dualstriker melee with a range of 8, yes? Is the unarmed range 4 facebreaker build still melee even when he uses something like infernal blow? Are 2-handed weapons or foils casters already because they have a range of 11/12?
What about a corrupted atziris disfavor, which has a range of 15. Close to caster-territory I suppose.
Or a lv21 cleave build with MotA/Warlords Reach, double 3-white prismatic eclipse swords, which has a range of 30, more than almost every single aoe/cone spell out there, which can obviously be boosted even further by area increases. At this point I'm guessing you would scale such a build with spellpower instead of phys-damage, because it is pretty much a caster, right?

Do yourself a favor and don't be fucking retarded.

 

[ArchAngel]

I have been looking into viable Lightning Tendril builds in 3.0 and before and I noticed they all use Spell Echo. New LT will be a channeling skill now so no spell echo.. seems this change will be a major nerf. Only way to unnerf it is to try to use cwc support, I wonder if I should even bother planning a LT build for 3.1

 

[Perkel]

On a more serious note, at what point does a "melee" build become a caster all of a sudden?

Probably at point where you stop using your swords etc. directly to kill things and instead you create some bullshit waves of dirt, projectiles and other bullshit that doesn't have anything to do with melee and more to do with casting spells.
Currently almost all beside few first melee gems are all spells. Just named "melee"

Distinction between bow/spell in poe also is close to none. They work exactly the same just use different base items.

due to how packs of monsters work in PoE all focus is on AoE damage so melee simply can't exist. And this is why you don't see ALMOST any melee skill like heavy strike, double strike etc. Only melee skill that works is cyclone because ... it is AoE.

 

[Saark]

Yeah it also surprised me that abilities that only hit a single target are worse when trying to kill multiple targets, especially when you compare them to skills that hit multiple targets without requiring a support-gem to have that area coverage.

It's almost like some abilities were designed to clear packs, and some abilities were designed to kill bosses. Skills like Dualstrike, Heavystrike and especially Barrage provide some of the highest dps for single target. That's why they are still used in a lot of builds for killing bosses, but in a weapon/gem swap or on an essence-crafted 5link.

If every skill would perform the same in any given situation, the game would've died years ago because it would be boring as fuck. The way it is now you choose what skill to use to reach a specific goal, and build around that tool and goal. If you want to farm the most XP, you go ahead and chase the clearspeed meta. If you want to farm specific bosses for uniques, you're better off investing into high single-target damage and sub-par clearspeed. That's the way the game has always worked, and I wouldn't want to have it any other way. The only issues lies with skills that can easily do both, clear packs and provide singletarget DPS. Shotgunning was removed because some spells were able to do exactly that thanks to this mechanic. So was KB/LA combined with Frostwall.

None of this has anything to do with "casters are op" or whatever point you were trying to make.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[T. Reich]

Searing bond totems bruh. It's where it's at.

 

[Zdzisiu]

To be honest, the new skills do not look too arousing to me. But I will check the updated Lightning tendrils.

And maybe try something with the volley supports, looks nice, like a wave of projectiles killing shit instead of a weird cone.

There is also the other support that gives you two additional casts, one in front and one behind your original casting, that may work nice too for some skills.

And finally, the new Poet's pen unique is interesting, but I will probably wait and see what can people smarter than me do with it.

 

[Saark]

Volley is going to be insanely good with Fireball and Arctic Breath.

 

[T. Reich]

I'm so far interested in Volatile Dead (it potentially comboes well with Unearth to solve the biggest issue with DD - lack of ...material for consistent bossing post dot nerf), new Tendrils (if the promised buff is actually good), as well as the icey dagger and the quill wand uniques.
The new aoe cascade support is also looking swell (probably a band-aid addition to "fix" the aoe scaling fix), but I'm currently not sold on the relative worth of volley support yet.

 

[Saark]

but I'm currently not sold on the relative worth of volley support yet.

Since this is going to be how projectiles are spreading with the new volley support, both Fireball aswell as Arctic Breath will be shotgunning like crazy with multiple projectiles. Vaal Lightning Warp a boss close to a wall and with some inc. AoE you can hit him with every single projectile.

Spoiler

 

[ArchAngel]

To be honest, the new skills do not look too arousing to me. But I will check the updated Lightning tendrils.

And maybe try something with the volley supports, looks nice, like a wave of projectiles killing shit instead of a weird cone.

There is also the other support that gives you two additional casts, one in front and one behind your original casting, that may work nice too for some skills.

And finally, the new Poet's pen unique is interesting, but I will probably wait and see what can people smarter than me do with it.

Unless they buff its base damage it will play better mechanically but suck in DPS.