Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Lone Wolf]

What is it you take issue with, specifically?

 

[Baron Dupek]

Fortify for harder hits, guess that BV and bleed builds gonna have harder time than slammers...

 

[didntdemon]

If only there were anyone left who plays BV, bleed or slam.......

 

[Lone Wolf]

Gladiator Bleed SST was pretty meta this league.

 

[Tacgnol]

Armour is going to be a lot more effective in the new league.

Looks like Evasion is going to be in a worse spot due to the merging of evasion and dodge, before they rolled separate dice so you had 2 chances to dodge/evade.

 

[Jaedar]

If only there were anyone left who plays BV, bleed or slam.......

I played poison blade vortex occultist a bit last league. It was fun (mostly because of plague bearer), but bad and I barely got to yellow maps before abandoning the character as nonviable (in SSF at my level of time commitment).

Buffing evasion seems weird to me, as it was pretty trivial to reach 70%+ evade chance already. At least for lower red maps. Having base items drop with variable defences should be decently fun, since you know will want to pick up whites with good rolls for alcing a bit more consistently. Making hybrid defence builds work seems fun.

Was not convinced by 2nd iteration of flask changes, this seems like good changes overall. Removal of dodge is excellent since it's pure rng.

 

[Gerrard]

What is it you take issue with, specifically?

That your idea of what the game is like is 100% based on watching streamers.

 

[Sharpedge]

What is it you take issue with, specifically?

That your idea of what the game is like is 100% based on watching streamers.

His point was that the entire economy of SC trade is more or less determined by whatever the top 1000 or so people in SC trade are doing. You can opt to play SC trade like SSF if you wish, except occasionally trading for some unique item which would otherwise be irritating to obtain, but this doesn't change the fact that the underlying problem is that the entire game is balanced around SC trade. This means that regardless of which game mode you choose to play on (SSF, HC, etc), what goes on in SC trade will impact how your game plays in some way or another. I have played the game in many different ways, mostly to keep things interesting, by experiencing the different flavors of PoE. This league I tried out group play, so I do actually have some perspective on what that is like. From an economic perspective it gives you such an overwhelming advantage relative to anyone else doing it that it is like a completely different world. This is a screenshot of what my gameplay looked like, for perspective.

Spoiler

You cannot see anything, there is just loot all over the place and yet despite what people will tell you, there is actually a lot more to manage in group play than there is when playing solo. You need to constantly keep in range of everyone else, because if 1 person is out of range they will automatically die and then the map is bricked. Each map takes significant investment (we were investing 4+ ex into every map we ran) so you don't really want to brick them, but you make 20ex+ back per map you run. You cannot move too quickly, because otherwise you will encounter server issues which will either cause significant rubberbanding, or someone will crash. When entering zones like Alva missions, you need to time movement to take advantage of the grace period so that you do not die, because after moving on the first server tick your auras are not active on you and so if something hits you you will instantly be deleted. All this + having to coordinate with 5 other people and having the additional management factor ends up making for a lot more work than just playing ssf but obviously, it does enable you to do whatever you want after that point. After a couple of days like this only playing 1-2 hours in the evening I was sitting on this:

Spoiler

And as I said, I was very casual about this and was only playing 1-2 hours in the evening, compared to people running for 5+ hours and treating the game like a job. Its very easy to see how playing like this gives you such an overwhelming economic advantage in a trade league that you can basically determine what goes on in the market. I am not sure if I would ever do this again though, its quite draining to do and feels a lot like work. It gives you complete freedom to make whatever you like in PoE, but I think that part of the fun in the game is playing with restrictions and not being able to almost item edit your way into whatever you like.

The problem with it is obvious though, players who play like this funnel the entire economy into their characters and saturate the market to a level that would not be possible if this type of gameplay did not exist. Since the game is balanced around SC trade and since the entire balance of SC trade is determined by these few players, the experience of everyone who plays the game is dictated by how they play.

 

[lukaszek]

Looks like Evasion is going to be in a worse spot due to the merging of evasion and dodge, before they rolled separate dice so you had 2 chances to dodge/evade.

citation plz

 

[Tacgnol]

Looks like Evasion is going to be in a worse spot due to the merging of evasion and dodge, before they rolled separate dice so you had 2 chances to dodge/evade.

citation plz

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3185101

Key bits:

Problem:
Evasion doesn't provide sufficient defence. Evasive characters instead rely on the Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics keystones to provide Attack and Spell mitigation.

Solution:
Remove Attack Dodge entirely. Substantially buff Evasion so that it is a good option and make sure it is easily available on items.

Regarding spell dodge:

Introduce "Spell Suppression" on Evasion items as well the Dexterity section of the Passive Skill Tree, which gives a chance to halve spell damage taken. The chance can be stacked up to 100%. Convert existing sources of Dodge and Spell Dodge to Spell Suppression or replace them with other bonuses.

• Acrobatics has been redesigned. It no longer has any of it's old properties, but now changes any modifiers to Spell Suppression into Spell Dodge at 50% of it's value. The intention is that Acrobatics is the only source in the entire game for Spell Dodge, for characters who would like to benefit from that playstyle still. Spell Dodge is still capped at 75%, and the Keystone Passive will specifically mention this.
• Phase Acrobatics no longer exists.

Aside from a flat source of spell dodge from acrobatics, you won't be getting both dodge and evasion anymore.

 

[lukaszek]

so potentially one can play hybrid life + es + eva, or just es + eva with acrobatics now? Without getting/understaind math it sounds like potential straight improvement? As in will it remove block penalties and such?

 

[Tacgnol]

so potentially one can play hybrid life + es + eva, or just es + eva with acrobatics now? Without getting/understaind math it sounds like potential straight improvement? As in will it remove block penalties and such?

It'll be much easier to hit the evasion cap, but a truly mix maxxed evasion character won't be as powerful as before.

Previously it was possible to hit the dodge cap on both Attacks and Spells and also hit the evasion cap, which gave you about a 0.6% chance of ever being hit.

Hybrids will be much more viable for both Armour and Evasion.

 

[Lone Wolf]

That your idea of what the game is like is 100% based on watching streamers.

So, your criticism isn't about any of the substantive points, but that you've heard them before from streamers?

 

[tritosine2k]

These patch notes , wow :D no prisoners :D
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3185299
meanwhile noticed "unleash" is usable to break the (now) slow spell echo, I might just MTX up now




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[Sharpedge]

The patchnotes were quite tame tbh, I expected worse. An aurabot can still reserve 7-8 auras and go CI, or they can go low life and potentially reserve up to 10-11. As far as aura effect goes, obviously you can no longer stack up to 450% like was possible before on an extremely decked out character and nor can you multiply people's damage by 40-50x, but being able to increase someone's damage by 4-5x is still possible and significant and its still possible even post nerf to get up to 86-87% allres. I am not sure if its possible to get up to the 300% break point for 90% resistances anymore, maybe with good glorious vanities it can be done, but overall that isn't needed for most content in the game and where it does make a difference (6 man party play) those groups can further specialize to make it possible. Overall I think groups playing with 6 players will still be functional. They will swap out the now defunct strength stacker (this build was actually deleted, the item which it scaled works differently now so the build can't work) for a 2nd aurabot and the auras will probably be split between 2 of them. Then there will be a few other adjustments and 6 man party play will continue as normal. Aurabots running with only 1 other person shouldn't have much of an issue either, since groups of 2 were not scaling content to the same degree as groups of 6. Yes, the builds are strictly worse than before and yes, they were heavily nerfed, but they are not nerfed nearly to the degree that they maybe should have been.

Tl;dr Aurabots are like a hydra. Try to kill 1 of them and now 2 take their place.

 

[tritosine2k]

Goes beyond stackers, aura was(?) also bread &butter for minions and now they both displaced ele eq notable and whacked it . WOW.

Expedition was basically "hatred+minion" league at one point 30% builds had the offcolor (green) triad grip gloves!

It was already hard to apply both EE and curse for solo minion (with my lightning animate weapon leveling build thats pretty decent for a good while).


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[Reinhardt]

Burning Arrow is too complex

 

[lukaszek]

i like the change of bringing ee to ranger

 

[tritosine2k]

Any "mind of the council" idea from someone this round Absinthe maybe? I'd want some sort of mana stacker obviously aaaaand pure lightning damage. Spectral helix?

 

[Absinthe]

tritosine2k, sure. Mind of the Council, Rigwald's Curse, Doryani's Fist, and maybe Manastorm. Get a Brutal Restraint (Nasima's) for Second Sight since Doryani's Fist always hits. Stack reduced mana cost passives and throw in a Praxis so your skills don't cost mana. Use Arcane Cloak guard skill (lvl 21, preferably 20% divergent) so you can stack more lightning damage off of your mana pool. Play either Berserker or Assassin. Use cluster jewels for tons of Scintillating Idea notables. I think there's a bunch of shit that scales off of mana near the Templar side and that's where most of the reduced mana cost passives are so odds are Berserker is the way to go.

Of course, you can also go Hierophant if you just want massive ES (use Will Shaper cluster jewels in that case). If you do go Hierophant and use Sanctuary of Thought, you can probably skip a lot of reduced mana cost passives, and I guess you could use both the Ancestral totems for more damage. I guess if you use multiple totems support and maybe Flame Bond there's a decent bit of damage you can pick up as Hierophant.

The benefit of Doryani's Fist is that it scales really well with flat elemental damage (and it saves you the cost of a 6L), and with Rigwald's Curse and Nasima's Brutal Restraint it has pretty solid crit.

 

[didntdemon]

The patchnotes were quite tame tbh, I expected worse. An aurabot can still reserve 7-8 auras and go CI, or they can go low life and potentially reserve up to 10-11. As far as aura effect goes, obviously you can no longer stack up to 450% like was possible before on an extremely decked out character and nor can you multiply people's damage by 40-50x, but being able to increase someone's damage by 4-5x is still possible and significant and its still possible even post nerf to get up to 86-87% allres. I am not sure if its possible to get up to the 300% break point for 90% resistances anymore, maybe with good glorious vanities it can be done, but overall that isn't needed for most content in the game and where it does make a difference (6 man party play) those groups can further specialize to make it possible. Overall I think groups playing with 6 players will still be functional. They will swap out the now defunct strength stacker (this build was actually deleted, the item which it scaled works differently now so the build can't work) for a 2nd aurabot and the auras will probably be split between 2 of them. Then there will be a few other adjustments and 6 man party play will continue as normal. Aurabots running with only 1 other person shouldn't have much of an issue either, since groups of 2 were not scaling content to the same degree as groups of 6. Yes, the builds are strictly worse than before and yes, they were heavily nerfed, but they are not nerfed nearly to the degree that they maybe should have been.

Tl;dr Aurabots are like a hydra. Try to kill 1 of them and now 2 take their place.

Hadn't done the math, but this seems pretty plausible to me. Since the main change were that less auras can be reserved by a single party member, it's seems trivial to simply split the auras between more members, and have each apply some kind of utility skill. With the dodge-reliant builds wrecked (miners and trappers which are the other league start powerhouse), it may even be possible that group play becomes better relative to solo play.

But pathofmatt says "solo is the way to go", he may be seeing something we arn't.

 

[Absinthe]

You can still stack a bunch more auras by throwing in aura totems.

 

[tritosine2k]

Quickly PoB-t 1million on scion hiero/pathfinder (on my other stacker) with dumb(?) supports (all ele stuff) . Without adding attack speed or crit (EO) . Not sure about AOE on the dory fist? Looks like it has potential.

Will try to go crit as EO has coming nerf.
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I made some money last league selling +100ES "energy from naught" small cluster that got whacked too (wasnt too good biz anyhow) , doubt stackers will be around this time. They already complained about being broke and rippy afaict ("oh I hate flasks so much" )


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[Saark]

Looks like Evasion is going to be in a worse spot due to the merging of evasion and dodge, before they rolled separate dice so you had 2 chances to dodge/evade.

If you played raider, yes. For any non-raider EV builds, this is a buff. Spell suppression is straightup better than phase acro, it is ridiculously powerful, especially in the current meta of bosses not really being able to kill you except for one shots from avoidable mechanics. Pick Lethe Shadow notable to greatly diminish the effect of Damage over time as well (elder drain, shaper beam, elder minions caustic ground, ignites, atziri spear bleed , hunter poison/caustic ground, crusader stormbind, redeemer storm/tornados). These 2 new mechanics alone, will make it virtually impossible to die to high-end content unless you're playing some shitty softcore 4k HP build.

No one cared about Acrobatics. It was pure RNG, so even with capped Dodge (which you rarely had) youd still get hit 1/4 times. Compare that to raider Evasion, and your odds of getting hit were ~1/20, and it used entropy so you wouldnt get randomly one-tapped by 20 attacks hitting at once. The only reason to go acro was to grab phase acro, and spell suppression is waaay better.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Was there really a Ranger/Shadow build that didn't take advantage of the whole '3-4/10 attacks/spells don't affect you, period'? It's such a no brainer for a five point investment. With blind, you could still easily hit ~70% evade. Coupled with Wind Dancer, 4k HP builds were basically fine. Obviously, Raider was tailor-made for it, but I'd take Dodge/Phase Acro on every Saboteur, no matter what. Ditto for Deadeye.