Q&A with the Developers!

Hey, about ascendancy, all those skills look really fun and powerfull, and as such kinda bit of power creep. Should we expect the enemies to be buffed in response to all that new added player power?

1. Are there any chances for a charity race in the near future? I really loved the previous one and I'm looking forward to another one.

2. Could you post (maybe as news in periods when there's not much going on) some facts, photos or short interviews with voice actors from the game?

maybe it's a good idea to link to previous q&a sessions when announcing a new one so players don't ask the same questions over and over again.

what about sheep as mtx? I would spend points on a flock of them..

When will you provide the possibility to organize the microtransactions in the microtransaction stash tabs. This is your way to finance the game and you should give it more attention. Why is it so hard to allow us to left click an MTX and then place it somewhere else within the MTX stash?

Sorry if these have already been asked.... 60 pages

1) Can you share any plans with us on how talismans are supposed to merge into the core game? Are talismans going to be added to a map mod and the poor will just have to settle for coral amulets? Are they not going to be added as a zana mod and they legacy out, so that the super rich wear talismans and the poor wear coral amulets? Are you going to buff the trash pit that is amulet implicit to compete?

2) Is cruel going away? The labyrinth is going to make the game even longer, will this soon turn into WoW where you must grind for months to play endgame? The game used to be relatively fast up to maps, now there's a whole added act and for hardcore players a ridiculous amount of gearing and farming before each malachai, since normal malachai hits as hard as A2 or A3 Cruel bosses.

3)Would it really be OP if spell echo worked with spell totems? Seems to me that the less damage from spell echo combines with the less cast speed from spell totem make that an incredibly not OP combination, but it not working limits what viable totem combos exist (faster culling totems, ignite totems for self cast flame surge etc). I can think of many non damage totem builds that would be more viable with this working. There are a lot of quirky modifiers relationships like this with minions and totems, but particularly totems. I would love it if a dev who knows their stuff could come give us a chat about why certain supports don't work with summons, and whether or not this is intentional or just miscoding in whether they modify the totem gem or the skill gem it casts.

hmm.... how to phrase this as a question....
4) Can you PLEASE give us an option for alternate skill effects, a customization, an addon ability, anything? As someone who has multiple machines of differing qualities, please please please let me not have to alt+f4 immediately when i find I'm in a party with a discharger, lest i melt my gpu!

5) Why does relentless fury look absolutely badass in your backpack, and then like a toy axe in your hand? They don't even look close, it looks just like a normal decorative axe in your hand, which is weird for one of the most flamboyant skins ever on its sprite.

Ascendency Questions:
1. When will what information be given out. (Will all the trees be available before launch? I would really love to have some rough sketches/ basic directions of the trees that are still unfinished/not public so that I can figure out what class I have to make my passive trees for/ experiment on.)

2. Why is the Iron Commander in 2.2? For balancing or bugfixing or just to have something seriously amazing to lure us in. (I personally love the idea of a Whispering Ice for dex and am only semi joking when I say it is the biggest thing for me in the patch. Siege balista is my relaxing build when I feel like having real health numbers.)

3. Really loved the Stream on the Leo Launch (PvP patch). Not sure how much of a success it was for GGG but a stream of the developers against the maze would be awesome. Maybe run the normal maze on pvp characters for showcasing without the crew having superior gear for lowlevel content. That would probably also give people the opportunity to talk pvp after ascendency. PvP is something I am slightly worried about. The ascendency nodes seem very impactfull to say the least.

4. Would really love to get a early outline what the different ascendency classes are supposed to do. Does not have to be a full tree or anything just making sure if a build has to migrate to a different class. (for me it would be a Marauder that gets something from bm or lowlife, because otherwise I need to roll a duelist and it is not as silly to put him into Victarios Influence as it is to have the Marauder in the suit.)

General question:
5. Did you ever get into trouble for the items in game? Alpha's Howl and the wolf pet made me wonder. Any pet owners complained about all the animal heads or something like that? Compliment on the art on the realistic animals btw. Looking at them and the amount of different animations one realizes how much work is in everything you guys do.

Questions about old stuff:
6. Revisiting old leagues. What instantly comes to mind are the vaal gems (sacrifice was an expnsion and no league but there have been no new ones since the season they were released, right?). Can we have sacrifice revisited. Maps get the new leagues permanently with zana mods but strongboxes only have mods that were around before them. We could hide beyond, invasion and warband bosses in there. The exiles get so lonely. Shrines would be a nice place to park the unused tempests in. Not sure if the beyond pantheon needs even more silly people but maybe one that changes the element so you cannot mitigiate it with the right resistance flask forever. That would be a place wild strike could find a home.

7. Will there be new belt bases? With the number of amulet bases increasing drastically it makes the fact that we have not got new belt bases in a while stick out a bit.

8. Tempest shield. Will there be changes to Tempest shield? Running a level 1 tempest shield on every guy with a shield feels strange. It needs a scaling duration, number of bounces, block chance/ recovery or any other defensive capability. If only the damage changes through level and quality it will allways have to compete with arc and that will never work out as long as arc is at least somewhat reasonably good. (by not having increasing bounces in comparison to arc it actually gets outpaced really fast.)

Questions about auras:
9. Big thing for auras and pvp. A gem "cast all auras" (like detonate mines/ portal) or a unqiue flask or item that casts your auras on use / makes all your auras active outside of town. Pretty sure you can run literally every aura at the same time since the release of Skyforth. It only takes forever to cast them all.

10. Auras. More. Red vaal auras do not exist. Crit, block, chaos resist or damage, damage conversion taken or done, sharing damage, increased health, anything that works with damage over time, I will take pretty much anything and give it a whirl. My build does not use disc, vitality and clarity but I intend to get them up and running before the end of the season (disc for tempest shield, and the other two for a 6s chest if anybody wants to check the setup). We hit the sweetspot where reservation and sockets allow to run exactly all auras. Would be nice to have decisions again. :p last time I complained about sockets and not enough reservation, I know. :p

11. Auras as ground effects and "nearby" on items. Could we please see the radius of things? We have so many ground effects allready and this one would be really usefull. (and it does not even need to be for every single aura, just the lowest one per player) It's really great that the person that gets the aura can see when he is out of range but the person that has cast the aura has absolutly no idea. Bonus points for aura radius that is big enough that the person cannot see what direction to go in to get back into the aura. Could we calculate "nearby" on items as inside percentage of base aura radius. that would make everybodies live a lot easier and people would still have no idea how much that is because only a level 1 aura with no aura radius from nodes or items will ever be that small. (I seriously played auras for over a year and only have a rough estimation of my aura radius. I am as clueless as most what the base is)

12. Can I please see the auras I am running right now? (even those with generosity) Having to set up many auras takes a moment and sometimes I forget what aura I am still missing. Without generosity you can look at your status bar but auras with generosity are not shown as things that are on you. When you have them in the hotbar they are animated while active but while selecting what skill to put into the hotbar all auras look the same. The "activate all auras" gem would fix this and additionally make it possible to ditch all vaal auras from the hotbar. Allowing aura bots to actually run active skills again. (3 vaal auras, 2 aura totems, frenzy, enduring cry, walk. not much mobility in here)

PS: "cast all auras" is a lot worse compared to "activate all auras". It would still help with the setup in pvp but you cannot substitute it for the vaal auras unless you feel like dropping all your auras. Doublecasting cast all auras does not work either. Don't get me wrong though: I run 2 unsets and I would find space for either gem if you are willing to give me one. :D "Activate all buffs" would work too but it would work with warcrys, what makes it problematic probably. "Cast all buffs" would work like cast all auras and would cause a cwdt issue. Not been in a situation with my auras to use cwdt for a while but I have heard of some builds that do not have to run double unset rings and even can spare some slots for cwdt. :p
Life as an aura character has improved a lot. But there are still some little things that might be better (like the price for skyforth. the reservation is tasty but the prices remind me of alpha's during the buzzsaw time) Thanks to the person that made that unique btw. I will put it into my lifebased bm aura build at some point and make it work (no promises if it will be amazing. But I am confident my character will not fall over and die instantly). But at the moment they are a little excessivly expensive. :p not sure if Skyforth was intended for ci or auras.

pss: 13. What is the unique that was used in the most different way compared to its originial intention? (suprising the people who made it and the developers that balanced it)

The skill tree has gone through lots of changes to get to our current one, and I've always missed the pre-templar version due to the lack of attribute highways. I'd love to see more bridges between these attribute highways, like the Templar has with Purity of Flesh, and more love for the rarely travelled highways (I assume you guys have a "heat map" to mess with). Another skill tree concern is the clunky pathing required to trigger threshold gems, and disproportionate distances for jewel areas to attributes. Any insights to the current tree design ideals and future goals would be great.

Since the beginning of PoE, melee attacks have been a little clunky to use unless on left click, especially vs some tiny-hitbox monsters, like serpents. Any plans on tweaking this? I hate missing Fortify from Vigilant Strike, but still putting it on cooldown, or even worse, Vaal Lightning Strike the air and use up a charge.

Finally, Dead Reckoning. I used it, and was sad; LMP or Echo supports not working, overall damage reduced from melee ones. Can skeleton mages get looked at? Probably normal melee skeletons need a touch up too.

Hello GGG,

2 Questions:

1. Trading System (Like 100000 others i think we NEED a ingame solution) - anything planned?

2. PLZ do something that mapping is not the only thing you do in endgame
- no idea for other mechanics?
- you have to do maps.. just maps.. maps all the day.. maps all the night - some alternative systems to level would be awesome!

Thanks!

1. Any new mtx wings planned (something like ice wings for the ice set)?
2. How about Act 4 Hideout decorations?
3. New Hideout Areas would be nice. I know every Hideout Area is bound to 1 Master but it would be really nice if we could choose between more than just 1 Hideout Area per Master.
4. Any "snow" Areas planned for future Content?
5. How about placing Shop/Supporter Pack Portals in our Hideout? We can place Pets aswell so why cant we place our portals from the mtx stash?

Can monsters summoned from talisman stone circles in a map drop a map.