Q&A with the Developers!

Will eternal orbs stay legacy?

Any plans on expanding the skill bar, to give us a few more skill binds?
Or, is it possible to make it a bit easier and quicker to activate/turn on auras and heralds, without having to swap skills in and out every time you log in or resurrect?

I usually fill up all my skill binds with active skills, so if I run with 2-3-4 auras or heralds, it's always a bit of a hassle to turn them all on.

Firstly - THANK YOU for the changes in Talisman, and the ones coming in Ascendancy. Ever since I started playing I always wanted the class system to be a bit more thematic and decisive. And the changes to Chaos/Poison in Talisman have been greatly needed!

Question:
Will there be huge sweeping changes/additions to PoE when Ascendancy is released, and if so, what would they be (that you can divulge now)? eg. Entire passive tree changes, entirely new forms of gameplay (shapeshifting), specific active skills only usable by certain classes, all skills re-balanced, etc?

Edit: Not sure if we're allowed to ask a second question, but if so:
Do you guys know certain combos or usefulness of passives, items, and skills, that the community doesn't, and you balance accordingly? This would explain why some things that "seem" OP or UP don't get changed.

Given the claim that poison is *supposed* to be something you have to try to invest in and build around, how do you justify maintaining a system where things like increased/more 'projectile damage' or 'minion damage' or whatever else is allowed to apply directly to poison, enabling only certain types of builds significant additional options to scale poison without making the slightest effort to 'build around it'.

I guess the short version is: Why do characters like melees have to go out of their way to scale their poison, while characters like bow-users or summoners get to scale their poison simply using modifiers like 'projectile' or 'minion' damage that they already pick up in plentiful supply to pump their initial hits?

Posted in Reddit earlier.

So I'm currently testing out a crit Facebreaker build with the Rigwald's Curse unique talisman, and I noticed that several claw nodes don't work with it, in particular Claws of the Magpie (25% chance to steal end/frenzy/power charge from enemy) and Soul Raker (gain 1.2% of claw damage as life leech and 0.8% as mana leech), as well as the claw accuracy nodes. The damage and attack speed parts of the nodes work fine, it's just the utility stuff that doesn't.

Now, reading the text of the talisman, I can see why they aren't applying, as the talisman only specifies modifiers to attack speed, damage, and critical chance, but I was wondering if this was intended or not, as not having access to Soul Raker in particular is a fairly significant downside for a build that already demands a heavier opportunity cost than traditional Facebreaker builds (due to the heavy investment into the upper right half of the tree to utilize the unique), and losing the accuracy bonuses makes running a crit build counterintuitive.

Would appreciate some clarification, as it seems clear the unique is designed to enable a different type of Facebreaker build, but as currently stands, I don't see it being very achievable, nor desirable compared to a standard RT Facebreaker.

Have you seen my bike?

Do you have any plans for any major updates to the game engine?

How many vendor recipes have yet to be discovered, or if all have been discovered, how many recipes are yet "common"? (common being used by more than 25% of players.

Are you in search of a recent college graduate with a bachelors in marketing? :)

Hello,

How many vendor recepies (at mmt - are u adding new?) are missing on wiki? http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vendor_recipe_system - underestand recepies are secret until discovered ... just number pls :)

Do exist Exalt vendor recepie, or its just internet troling? (just yes or no pls :)

Thx

Chris, any ETA on the MTX stash sorting? It's getting more messy each supporter pack.
Will the rework include more things than just sorting?

Question 1 - What are your thoughts on the impact of Masters and 3rd party websites on PoE's economy? Have you ever heard the term "Path of 1 Chaos"?

Context for question 1


Question 2 - Are you ever going to come back with statistics like we had in the past, such as how many players allocated X keystone, how many are using a certain unique or what is the most deadly zone (or boss)? They are so rare these days. I would love seeing these once per month.


Question 3 - Are master experience really balanced around the fact that people can join public "rotations"? They do it 2.5x faster than everyone else and as a solo player I feel like this hurts me because I have a level 88 and a level 75 character in Hardcore Talisman and I've yet to hit level 7 on my Elreon despite doing every single one I've found.


Context for question 3


Question 4 - Are we ever going to get a invasion 2.0 type of league with 60 bosses designed by the very evil Nick?

Question 5 - Why are vaal skills able to gain souls with kills? Thematically, it doesn't make sense and this allows powerful things such as the very famous Vaal Spark builds that are going around.

Question 6 - Any chance we get increased talisman spawn rate or maybe make monsters hold more than one talisman at once? I feel like the league isn't interactive enough because there are only 6 or 7 types of monsters, we only find an average of 1 per zone and the encounters are not even dangerous for the most part

Question 7 - I loved the Kevin VanDam related unique chest. With the addition of labyrinths, are we going to get fishing achievements such as "Deliver the fish at the end of a labyrinth while it is still fresh", "Survive from 'Sword-Fish' traps" and "Defeat Sharkalachai in the Shark Core"?

Question 8 - Are we going to get harpoon and net specializations within ascendancy classes?