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

really good thread. enjoyed the reading.

a few notes though:

- I can't think of any creative way to balance Kaom's Heart, but the "players have no armour" is over-nerfing it. my Witch's Zombie minions have over 3k life in mid-game, and they die like flies.
a player with no armour and 4k, 5k, or even 6k+ life would still be extremely squishy - unless he's an evasion build. so, this suggestion essentially makes Kaom's a niche evasion chest, with no evasion :)
it's kind of like the new unique Astral Plate: it's a niche Chaos Inoculation chest (because I don't think anyone could survive the crazy 4500 base Chaos damage on kill) - but it contributes nothing in terms of ES.

- Arc skill gem: my Witch is level 51 with an appropriately leveled Arc gem as a main attack. I teamed-up with a level 40 Witch yesterday, and watched the guy 1-shot stuff with Freezing Pulse while I needed to hit them at least twice. but Arc isn't about flat damage. I linked mine to Lightning Penetration and Elemental Proliferation - which means packs of shocked monsters on almost every hit, ripe for my allies and minions to pick :)
it's a great skill when used correctly, and should stay this way.
I also get tons of Power Charges thanks to Voll's Protector - which brings me to the next and final topic:

- Discharge skill gem: please don't nerf it. the skill requires a lot of preparation, after which you run into the largest pack you can find, and blow up.
then, you die. why?
because there's an elemental-reflect mob you didn't see hiding behind the pack, giving them that almost invisible minion-aura.
because it's enough to not kill all (or most) of the pack, to find yourself in an extremely dangerous situation right after the blast, surrounded by hungry hard-hitters.
because unless you have Voll's, you can't chain-discharge to clear-off any survivors. which btw you can with skills like Ice Nova or Freezing Pulse, that hit almost as hard and require no prior set-up.
because it does have the potential to 1-shot strong rares and even bosses, but let's see you build charges for it while facing one boss and not having Voll's or a super-quality Power Charge On Hit/Frenzy/Enduring Cry gem.
so, Discharge is a very gear-dependent and gem-combination-dependent main skill, which also requires good knowledge of game mechanics AND keyboard-dexterity AND careful gameplay.
as such, there really is nothing wrong with it. if you're good enough using it, you *deserve* to one-shot stuff.

Regarding Arctic Breath, I agree that it needs some work. The cold dot sounds like an interesting idea, but then is it really much different from a Fireball that slows?

What if it was reworked to be like what the Merveil's Daughter's cast? Short-Medium range cone or wave in front of the caster, like a caster cleave.

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johnKeys wrote:

I can't think of any creative way to balance Kaom's Heart, but the "players have no armour" is over-nerfing it.

It wouldnt be over-nerfed even if it removed all armor, evasion and energy shield. At that point it would actually be a balanced, semi-niche build enabler (pure life/regen stacking as main/only defense) instead of an almost bis torso for every life build.

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Nobake wrote:

What if it was reworked to be like what the Merveil's Daughter's cast? Short-Medium range cone or wave in front of the caster, like a caster cleave.

What if it was also renamed Freezing Pulse?

We need that merveil daughter pulse as a microtransaction, btw.

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Aux wrote:

I know many of you guys complain when a decent unique comes out without a glaring downside (since many of you don't realize that lacking stats and item rarity are downsides) that makes the item unusable. Many of these same people will surely and gladly use every item they complain about, and are certainly super excited when they find one as it is one of the guaranteed ways to increase your in game wealth.

I actually think that rare belts are better. Wasn't really a fan of the downside negation though because I felt that that weakness was what distinguished Life from ES. Still, it made melee CI great. If anything, my only beef with it is that it bridges the gap between Life and ES builds too much but its an otherwise novel concept, especially with the ilvl requirement on it.


Oh and your design process seemed interesting. Mine was far shorter.

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KoTao wrote:

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johnKeys wrote:

I can't think of any creative way to balance Kaom's Heart, but the "players have no armour" is over-nerfing it.

It wouldnt be over-nerfed even if it removed all armor, evasion and energy shield. At that point it would actually be a balanced, semi-niche build enabler (pure life/regen stacking as main/only defense) instead of an almost bis torso for every life build.

Hey that's a good idea! Lets also have CI remove all evasion rating and armor. And Shavronne's!
Now we've got plenty of semi-niche build enablers :)))

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KoTao wrote:

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Nobake wrote:

What if it was reworked to be like what the Merveil's Daughter's cast? Short-Medium range cone or wave in front of the caster, like a caster cleave.

What if it was also renamed Freezing Pulse?

We need that merveil daughter pulse as a microtransaction, btw.

Is that really Freezing Pulse? It looks nothing like it. Wider and slower moving than Pulse, which is what I was going for.

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Omnivor3 wrote:

Ghost Reaver needs not to be changed to melee phys only. It would completely decimate CI caster, ranged and MELEE elemental builds. And what I have understood about Path of Exile, is that more possible builds, the merrier. The issue again lies in the life and CI balance. If CI and life would be in balance we would not be having this discussion at the moment. And also if your suggestion would go through, the dual totem needs a nerf(which you addressed) at the same time or the ever powerful sporker will become even more powerful.

Two things.

First, melee elemental damage is a part of melee damage. I did not say melee physical damage. It would not decimate ranged attackers if ES values were increased alongside this change, which is what would be required for this change to work at all.

Secondly, the current argument of balancing CI and life is backwards. Wanting both to arrive at the same value with the only difference being a red bulb or a blue bulb is not a meaningful player choice. In the past, eshield was different than life. Without GR or ZO and with much higher eshield values, you were required to kite with eshield and rely on its quick recharge out of combat -- in short, to play to its strengths.

The farther we go down this road of turning eshield into life the less interesting eshield becomes as a defense. It does not help that equipmentless armor and evasion popped up alongside this devolution of eshield to cement the red bulb or blue bulb "choice".

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johnKeys wrote:

it's a great skill when used correctly, and should stay this way.

Arc is a mediocre skill when used correctly. It does not scale in any meaningful way and if spreading shock stacks is the goal, spark and shock nova do better jobs at it. It definitely needs something more unique about the skill.

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johnKeys wrote:

Discharge skill gem: please don't nerf it. the skill requires a lot of preparation, after which you run into the largest pack you can find, and blow up.

"Please don't nerf" is not a very solid argument. I've been playing dischargers since I first started playing. Here is a post I made about burning discharge back in February 2012 and it's just as relevant today as it was then. Discharge has gone through numerous number changes and the boom and bust of Diamond Flasks and the introduction of multiple new avenues for charge generation, but has overall remained the same.

I was also playing a discharger during the 0.10.8 patch which doubled its base damage and base crit chance. I was doing okay before the patch (but much worse than any other caster) and suddenly was rocketed into faceroll. I'm very confident on my numerical change suggestion.

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johnKeys wrote:

really good thread. enjoyed the reading.

a few notes though:

- I can't think of any creative way to balance Kaom's Heart, but the "players have no armour" is over-nerfing it. my Witch's Zombie minions have over 3k life in mid-game, and they die like flies.
a player with no armour and 4k, 5k, or even 6k+ life would still be extremely squishy - unless he's an evasion build. so, this suggestion essentially makes Kaom's a niche evasion chest, with no evasion :)
it's kind of like the new unique Astral Plate: it's a niche Chaos Inoculation chest (because I don't think anyone could survive the crazy 4500 base Chaos damage on kill) - but it contributes nothing in terms of ES.

What's suggested is a fairly common version of CI just life instead. A pure ES CI toon will have very high ES but no mitigation. Someone with kaoms, especially if they can't use armor (or evasion) would put a heavy focus on life and it would be fairly easy to get to 7-8k life. With that comes very high passive regen, a huge leech cap, awesome resistance against procs/stun and the use of pots when in a bad spot.

Kaoms removing armor isn't a new idea it's been tossed around for month. I just think GGG are hesitant to nerf it because of how expensive they are to trade for. Someone who farmed for months to get one would end up with a huge nerf.

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Moosifer wrote:

What's suggested is a fairly common version of CI just life instead. A pure ES CI toon will have very high ES but no mitigation. Someone with kaoms, especially if they can't use armor (or evasion) would put a heavy focus on life and it would be fairly easy to get to 7-8k life. With that comes very high passive regen, a huge leech cap, awesome resistance against procs/stun and the use of pots when in a bad spot.

Kaoms removing armor isn't a new idea it's been tossed around for month. I just think GGG are hesitant to nerf it because of how expensive they are to trade for. Someone who farmed for months to get one would end up with a huge nerf.

which brings me to the old ES vs. life debate.

7k ES =/= 7k life.
why? let's start with the simple fact, there's no way to regenerate 7k life in seconds, while ES just automatically does that, and you can even make the delay smaller with certain bonuses.

a pure-ES character can afford to have no mitigation, because all he needs is get out of harm's way for several seconds. a life build needs to get out of harm's way, drink all possible flasks, pop a Rejuvenation Totem, have a Vitality aura...

the best solution to the "Kaom's Heart problem" is what the new leagues did: remove it completely and say "deal with it".
why such a broken unique is in the game in the first place, is beyond me.

Well, to be fair, you're implying the person with 7k life is actually playing ES like back in CB. While this is sometimes the case, the other main factor is that Vaal Pact + Ghost Reaver, or Zealot's Oath and some uniques (this is the case with low life too) can give great survivability without forcing the ES user to retreat (which is what is intended in my opinion).