The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Harmful Content

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Septile wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

In general, I am a person who believes that there should not be any "no-brainer" decisions in a game like this, and that cutting out the no-brainer decisions as they spring up is as important as introducing new content in the first place.

There are a lot of no brainer decisions that are dependent upon the build you're planning to make, and there always will be. Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're trying to say, but taken at face value it seems like you're looking for a pipe dream.

I firmly disbelieve in this. For example, energy-shield dependent characters shun the Life affix, which would be considered fundamental in almost any other ARPG... and in the specific case of some Righteous Fire builds, life affix on gear can actually be seen as a drawback. I won't say GGG invented the process — Diablo 2 had Mana Shield, for example — but GGG has done a decent job thus far finding interesting ways to bypass some of the common assumptions within the system (which you apparently would rather take for granted). However, the certainly haven't handled all of them.

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Septile wrote:

You seem to be making some baseless assumptions about GGG's development process.

We all are. GGG is not forthcoming with their development process nor what process if any exist to remedy bad design decisions. Even in alpha the changes are "here's what we came up with, see if it crashes" not "what should we change" or "how should we change what we want to change".

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Septile wrote:

Inefficient =/= not viable.

I'd agree if there wasn't orders of magnitude difference between the best builds and a janky inefficient build. Given that most of the big multipliers that make up this chasm are avoidable (and many are listed here), we should opt to avoid them.

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mazul wrote:

For dualwielders there are two options currently: cleave and dualstrike-meleesplash-multistrike.

I believe you've highlighted the problem well. DW only having two options is the core problem. You're also comparing a 1L to a 2L (DS+splash).

The stated bonus for dualwielding is 15 block and 1.1x aspd. These bonuses are not nearly enough when compared to 1h+shield, but we'll never know that empirically as long as Cleave does twice as much damage as every other melee skill and is "the dual wield skill".

On the topic of Cleave. Its THE skill..for now. I've been actually itching for skill gem patches instead of feature patches. I would hold off on balancing some skills because of the limited available options at the moment.

Arc however..I've been trying to make it work for the past four months at least. Its my favourite skill but its just so bad.


P.S: Is it a pipe dream to hope for at least 10 different alternatives for each type of playstyle? 10 Lighting Spells, 10 Fire Spells, 10 Bow Skills, 10 Sword Skills.. I can dream.

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pneuma wrote:

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Septile wrote:

You seem to be making some baseless assumptions about GGG's development process.

We all are. GGG is not forthcoming with their development process nor what process if any exist to remedy bad design decisions. Even in alpha the changes are "here's what we came up with, see if it crashes" not "what should we change" or "how should we change what we want to change".

That's not true at all. You don't have to make any assumptions about their development process in order to give good feedback on what is already in the game.

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knac84 wrote:

What some don't understand is that the game is being balanced with these items or top tier rare rolls in mind.

I really hope this is not true beacuse it would disqualify PoE as an fair and "balanced for everyone" game.

However, I don't want to complain about OP Items or nerfed skills. I more complain about core gamemechanics and OP Mobs that make so much dmg. I hate these ones that are immune to almost everything. Immune to elemental dmg, immune to chaos dmg, immune to curses. Hey, why I can't be immune like that, GGG? :P
Why not make them immune to everything and burry PoE because nobody can kill anything anymore? I even feel hoaxed some time because even if you think you have "max resists" or high life or much armor, it actualy means nothing at all when it comes to serious fights. Armour is worth nothing, elemental resists are not much worth against Elite mobs/bosses, Chaos dmg is just to annoy players and is hard to get immune, and so on.
I really have a hard time to see the balance there. I don't want to facetank Piety in mercyless for example (ok to be honest, I WANT!!! XD) but a little bit more value in resists and armour for the players should not hurt.

And I really want to know the exact dmg/resist/armour/life values of each mob. Schould be really interesting I guess, especialy in Merciless. ^^

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TheAnuhart wrote:

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knac84 wrote:

or by making it a Korean grindfest like GGG wants.

Sorry to just snip this one line, but I see this a lot and had to respond.

This puzzles me, why people say this. PoE is actually far from an accidental grindfest or an intentional grindfest.

If GGG wanted to make this a grindfest, making everything buyable was not the way to go.
In fact, there are gates in place, in this game, that no amount of grinding will unlock.

This game is a path-of-least-resistance, buy-your-ready-made-god, sit-in-trade, anything-but-grind...fest. It's a red flag to RMT, but not to counter grind, more to counter clever-shopping/need-to-scam and give instant-gratification-shopping.

Shopping is the new hardcore, apparently.

Well, you are just wrong and your logic is flawed. To buy pricey stuff you need to sell pricey stuff which you still need to find, or sell a lot of less valuable stuff (which also takes time to find/trade for) to acquire enough wealth to purchase that pricey stuff. Is a grindfest unless you are a dedicated trader (which is other sort of grindfest), don't delude yourself. I don't cheat (RMT), that's an entire different question. You can't just assume everybody is RMT'ing (because is blatantly false, rmt'ing is always a minority, larger or smaller, but a minority), you can't balance your online game only with that in mind, because it will turn out to be garbage. I'm aware that some people want just a sort of 'singleplayer' experience with drops and crafting balanced around that. Is a reasonably demand but that's 'other league' material, regardless of gameplay balance.

I know, ARPG are about 'grinding' but you have to strike the right balance to make people feel like they are progressing in someway, instead all you are caring for is that BiS item. You can transition from garbage to god without intermediate steeps, reducing the importance of incremental upgrades and character building is too subtle, sometimes feeling non-existent. The main point was: it's dumb to reduce the importance of 'character building' because that's one of the strongest points of PoE and the one that should be expanded, made more complex, etc. Instead we have a too big focus on end endgame gear right now, and this is the culprit of some of the current OB imbalances, poor player perceived game experience, etc.

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mazul wrote:

I agree with a lot, but I certainly don't agree with your view on cleave.

For dualwielders there are two options currently: cleave and dualstrike-meleesplash-multistrike.

Giving cleave "50% less damage" would leave the latter as the only viable option. You need to remember that 2-hand weapons have higher base damage than 1-hand weapons and can be 6-linked unlike 1-hand weapons. Your cleave remedy sucks. Cleave is at a good position where it is right now. (Physical cleave that is, ele cleave sucks).

You're pointing to a problem with dual wielding in general. Cleave is a bandage for DW at the moment, and once the bandage is removed, the issues with incentive to DW can be addressed.

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Uvne wrote:

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mazul wrote:

I agree with a lot, but I certainly don't agree with your view on cleave.

For dualwielders there are two options currently: cleave and dualstrike-meleesplash-multistrike.

Giving cleave "50% less damage" would leave the latter as the only viable option. You need to remember that 2-hand weapons have higher base damage than 1-hand weapons and can be 6-linked unlike 1-hand weapons. Your cleave remedy sucks. Cleave is at a good position where it is right now. (Physical cleave that is, ele cleave sucks).

You're pointing to a problem with dual wielding in general. Cleave is a bandage for DW at the moment, and once the bandage is removed, the issues with incentive to DW can be addressed.

I would in such case prefer that the bandage to be removed only when a possible cure is delivered simultaneously.

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tmaciak wrote:

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dudiobugtron wrote:

in Onslaught

As strange at it can seems, not everybody want to play in hardcore league, especially in current state of this game.

I suggested Onslaught as a solution to someone's problem about the economy sucking for new players. If you don't want to play in Onslaught, then fine, but stop complaining about the economy. The economy in standard is bad for new players because no one dies.

I think the WED support is balanced around weapon elemental damage being hard to obtain from the passive tree. It's easy to rack up a ton of increased physical through strength and passives, but increased WED comes mostly from Catalyse and gear. Unilaterally nerfing it would be a bad idea imo.