Path of Exile: Ascendancy (News Coverage)

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laminarija wrote:

I'm not trying to be offensive I just trying to understand why people complain that much. If you're not minmaxing you should be least concerned about this change, because you still get more choices than before and not less.
Others simply overreact because most of them look at a specific nodes and think how that would affect their existing builds and forget about new possibilities.
There was a very good example of a bow Duelist in one of previous pages. While as a Duelist you don't have access to all those bow/projectile nodes from Ranger ascendancies, you get permanent Fortify that allows you to reduce number of defensives nodes you need in your passive tree and use more of the offensives ones instead. And if we agree with PTs point that 10 points can make or break a build, then it's quite likely you don't need access to Rangers ascendancy classes, because you now have several spare points that can "make" your build work :)

I think the disconnection is happening is on why and how you play the game.

One one hand you have players who view the game as a pure challenge. Its all in the numbers.
And competing with yourself of others on how to best beat the game.(Im not in this camp, so my description might be a bit truncated. Apologies)

But then you have another crowd who sees all the options in the game for different builds, and want to push that as far as it goes. Experimenting with different classes for thematic reasons. Because it "feels" right to play that way. It doesn't have to be the best. Thats not the point.

Its the latter crowd who gets punished by these changes. We are automatically reacting against this because it takes away the flexibility we had from the starter characters and where we can go with those.

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SerahWint wrote:

But then you have another crowd who sees all the options in the game for different builds, and want to push that as far as it goes. Experimenting with different classes for thematic reasons. Because it "feels" right to play that way. It doesn't have to be the best. Thats not the point.

Its the latter crowd who gets punished by these changes. We are automatically reacting against this because it takes away the flexibility we had from the starter characters and where we can go with those.

What I do not understand is how this punishing you? If you get another n builds instead of m number of builds to already existing pool of x number of builds, how does that punishes you? I guess for some it's never enough even if they won't be able to try out all the possibilities in all of their lifetime :)

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laminarija wrote:

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SerahWint wrote:

But then you have another crowd who sees all the options in the game for different builds, and want to push that as far as it goes. Experimenting with different classes for thematic reasons. Because it "feels" right to play that way. It doesn't have to be the best. Thats not the point.

Its the latter crowd who gets punished by these changes. We are automatically reacting against this because it takes away the flexibility we had from the starter characters and where we can go with those.

What I do not understand is how this punishing you? If you get another n builds instead of m number of builds to already existing pool of x number of builds, how does that punishes you? I guess for some it's never enough even if they won't be able to try out all the possibilities in all of their lifetime :)

Because its not about the numbers. I thought I made that clear.
Its a different way to play the game. Something unique that POE offers in an otherwise rather homogenized ARPG market(classes).

We can browse through all the different possibilities. Look at the skills on offer and what talents and equipment that is available that synergize with that. And we try to make it work(thats the really fun part).
And we have a lot of flexibility when it comes to theme(starter character being an important part of that. Me for example only play female characters).

I love playing my Scion summoner. Animated armor, Weapons and Specters.
Push some auras onto that and you have a fairly solid build. It might not be the best you can do in the game. But thematically, its hell of a fun for someone like me.
Think of it as self imposed limitations(Its not exactly that, but hopefully you get the paint)

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SerahWint wrote:

Because its not about the numbers. I thought I made that clear.
Its a different way to play the game. Something unique that POE offers in an otherwise rather homogenized ARPG market(classes).

We can browse through all the different possibilities. Look at the skills on offer and what talents and equipment that is available that synergize with that. And we try to make it work(thats the really fun part).
And we have a lot of flexibility when it comes to theme(starter character being an important part of that. Me for example only play female characters).

I love playing my Scion summoner. Animated armor, Weapons and Specters.
Push some auras onto that and you have a fairly solid build. It might not be the best you can do in the game. But thematically, its hell of a fun for someone like me.
Think of it as self imposed limitations(Its not exactly that, but hopefully you get the paint)

This is my point. It doesn't matter if you're minmaxing or not, it's your own choices that limits you the most. No matter how many more options the game will throw at you it will be never enough, because you will always discard portion of these for whatever reason, should it be efficiency (numbers), or theme, or playstyle.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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__Z__ wrote:

Honestly I just begin to play HC and like it, but did you really think that I want to die because I stay less than one second on spiked trap ?
This is seriously not fun, not heroic to die in HC just because you encounter a lag spike or your isp just jaunt for a second ?
I accept to die when I fight for my life, but this is an entirely diferent game where you risk to die on each step/misstep on an online game ?.. Obviously Ascension seem very interesting from a SC perpectiva, but seem absolutely not designed with HC in mind...

I hope it's not that, but I really fear that it ll be the end of HC that was sufficiently deadly already.

Feeling about that HC people ?

theres a chance it wont work like that.

Ive only briefly watched the coverage videos once, so Im not entirely sure how it works. But Ill tell you about an area in I think Grim Dawn? They have a rougelike dungeon where you enter and you have 1 shot at the dungeon, if you die you are ported back outside. I dont think the death counts as an actual death in hardcore mode. The thing is like a contained zone with its own set of rules the way PvP is, you can die in PvP right? I dont play it but I presume you can die in hc 5 times in a row in a PvP match and still walk out and be in hc league not standard because its a separate little environment? I dont know how this dungeon works but the way they were talking about the air lock zone at the start etc makes me wonder if this will work like that. If you die you get ported back out to the air lock zone and have to start again but thats all it is.


Maybe not I dunno.

I really hope it's something like that, or I prepare myself for some really really frustrating time...

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This is my point. It doesn't matter if you're minmaxing or not, it's your own choices that limits you the most. No matter how many more options the game will throw at you it will be never enough, because you will always discard portion of these for whatever reason, should it be efficiency (numbers), or theme, or playstyle.

I guess its a matter of degree then. Does that make sense?
This expansion changes the focus of the game away from that flexibility we are all so used to. And some of us love to bits. Its been that way from its inception.

Before all this we could do silly things in the game and still push that to end game most of the time.
It was fine if Atziri and some other content where excluded from us. It was a choice as you say.
But these new classes are so powerful, that they are inevitably going to be forced to be balanced around. And that really puts a hamper on things if you want to get creative in other ways than pure numbers.

Try to see it like this. Before we could both have our way.
After this change... maybe not so much.

Where the malcontents see limitations I easily see possibilities for extending existing builds,and finally a way to make class choice meaningful.At the same time,there are no limitations for builds diversity as the core mechanic we currently have,skill gems placed in slots + passive tree remains untouched.In fact,diversity of builds will increase thanks to ascendancy classes binded to starting classes.

Best idea ever GGG!

Thanks GGG

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SerahWint wrote:

I guess its a matter of degree then. Does that make sense?
This expansion changes the focus of the game away from that flexibility we are all so used to. And some of us love to bits. Its been that way from its inception.

Before all this we could do silly things in the game and still push that to end game most of the time.
It was fine if Atziri and some other content where excluded from us. It was a choice as you say.
But these new classes are so powerful, that they are inevitably going to be forced to be balanced around. And that really puts a hamper on things if you want to get creative in other ways than pure numbers.

Try to see it like this. Before we could both have our way.
After this change... maybe not so much.

You assume too much. Honestly.
From what you have seen so far, can you tell me what makes you think that it limits your creativity? Let's take a look at initial Duelist ascendance classes, because he's the only with all classes revealed. By looking at those, could you tell what are current builds that you would like to try, that are no longer viable because of ascendance?
Let's say summoner Duelist. Creative and quite possibly unpopular idea. No real support from nearby passive tree nodes makes this not as efficient as other summoners, wouldn't you agree? Let's take a look at ascendance classes. We can see that Champion gives us Fortify, that will benefit our survivability and some aura nodes that will support us and our allies. So with these nodes we get a buff that will quite likely allow us to be just as capable in post expansion as we were before. Wouldn't you agree?
Edit: Let's try another option. Let's say you go Gladiator instead. No direct benefit to minions sounds like a big drawback, but we get some really nice nodes to our shield which would suggest that we can spend fewer points in defenses in our passive tree, and use these in minion passives instead. And because we already assumed that ascendancy is so powerful, switching those few passive tree nodes should only improve our build and not break it.

Of course you're still not as efficient as other summoners, but who cares? We're not looking to minmax stuff here.

Your Scion summnoner build not having access to Fortify, but having access to other defensive abilities that we have yet to see, does not make it less creative or less capable (one could argue that Scion summoner is a creative idea :)).

To me it makes little sense if any to give something like Necromancer access to say Ranger when Ranger is that far away from any zombie/specter/skeleton nodes that could make use of it. Even if you push your creativity to limits, Necromancer class alone won't make your undead summoning Ranger nearly as good as any other class that have easier access to those nodes.