Mechanics thread

I have faith that GGG will continue to balance act 3's difficulty around only having 4L, like they have for the rest of the game. After all, for people who dual wield or sword and board, they only get one skill at 5-6L, all the rest are capped at 3-4L, and because GGG wants to promote build diversity, those 3-4L skills still have to be able to be viable for end-game, otherwise there would be no point to bother with sockets on any gear other than chests and 2-hand weapons.

I also think act 3 is only going to go up to level 70, because we're also losing a difficulty when A3 is implemented, so we're not getting a lot of new content (4 difficulties * 2 acts = 8 separate acts, vs. 3 difficulties * 3 acts = 9 separate acts), but that's not the point because end-game is end-game no matter the level. I'd say that at the end of act 3, killing level 70 monsters while at level 70 will be just as hard as killing level 60 monsters while at level 60 is now.

Ah, I wasn't aware that we were losing a difficulty. Official Link? That seems weird to me, especially considering the Skill Tree is set up for a maximum of level 100, which would only be remotely possible with 3 acts and 4 difficulties. On the 6L front, I heard a number of people saying that GGG was going to give helmets a max of 6 sockets. Not sure where they heard this, if it's just a rumor, or what. Any truth to this GGG?

Helmets being 6L I absolutely doubt. Each socket takes up 1 inventory square on gear, and helms are only 4 inventory squares big, I can't see a logical way to make helms the same size as a chest armor (because after all, the inventory size is an approximation of the real size).

I'm too tired to search for the official link about losing the difficulty, but it's out there somewhere, I believe by Chris. The reason to losing a difficulty was because ARPG's typically have 3 difficulties, and that making players play through the same content 4 times is just too repetitive. There are also plans on much later releasing a 4th act, but they just want to get the 3rd out before open beta.

Reaching max level isn't supposed to be "remotely possible", because this game isn't an MMO where the real content starts at the level cap. In that sense, level 60 is the current "level cap", where you've beaten the storyline on all difficulties and start getting into the end game, and all levels after it are just bonus levels. The level cap for this game is always supposed to be just out of reach of regular and end-game, because it too is a luxury. The skill tree is balanced for and builds are designed to be viable and have all the necessary keystones and clusters at level 60, with passives after that being put into more generic defensive nodes (life, ES, regen, etc.) or offensive nodes (spell damage, physical damage, crit, etc.). Once you get to the end of the end-game, and start to hit the major diminishing returns on XP (10 levels over what you're killing), those last 10-20 levels to reach the cap are what really earn you a place on the Ladder. That's just how this game is designed, that the level cap isn't an arbitrary necessity that determines when you get to start the real game content, it's that incredibly far off, long-term goal to eventually reach after tons of time and dedication.


EDIT: I found the official link, after looking back through 40 pages of Chris's forum posts (almost 2 months worth), I realized it was in the dev diary regarding maps. http://www.pathofexile.com/news/2012-06-26/dev-diary-maps Scroll down to the History of Path of Exile's End-Game section, and you will see "When trying to solve this, we realised that the fourth difficulty level was only necessary until we added Act Three, at which point we’d reduce it back to three difficulty levels so that we’re not forcing the player to play through the same static content four times back-to-back."
Funnily enough, I realized this while reading a thread regarding the relationship between Samantha and Chris (brother&sister).

2ND EDIT: I sleep now. kthxbye

3RD EDIT: I was looking back even farther through Chris's posts for something else, and found

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KoTao wrote:
I also hope the new endgame has the same level of randomness as maelstrom of chaos (which is great fun, btw), and isnt just a fifth difficulty with static monster/item levels thats otherwise functionally identical to the previous four.

The new endgame will be far more random than the Maelstrom is right now. The fourth difficulty is being removed once we add Act Three.

I expect we'll post a developer diary entry about our philosophy of end-game play as we announce the details of this system.

So he did in fact say it outside of the dev diary! =)

Cool. Thanks for the link.

I tried using search but without success so maybe someone could help me. I'm interested in how increased projectile damage is calculated. When I'm firing an arrow that does both physical and elemental damage does it stack additively with other "increased" modifier separately for both elemental and physical damage? For example if you have 10% increased physical damage, 5% increased elemental damage and 10% increased projectile damage - I could just count it as 20% increased physical and 15% increased elemental damage?

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vankeris wrote:

I tried using search but without success so maybe someone could help me. I'm interested in how increased projectile damage is calculated. When I'm firing an arrow that does both physical and elemental damage does it stack additively with other "increased" modifier separately for both elemental and physical damage? For example if you have 10% increased physical damage, 5% increased elemental damage and 10% increased projectile damage - I could just count it as 20% increased physical and 15% increased elemental damage?

Correct

Quick question on this passive, "5% reduced mana reservation".

Let's say I'm using a 40% Haste aura, and I choose to select two 5% reduced mana reservation passives. The way I'm reading this, is that the two passives add together for a total of 10% reduced mana reservation.

However, I'm confused about the end result when applying to an aura. Using the previous example, is it 40% - 10% to equal a 30% Haste aura, or 40% x (1-.1) = 36% Haste aura?

I'm assuming it's latter, but I want to make sure to see if it's worth taking this partcular set of passives.

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Islidox wrote:

Quick question on this passive, "5% reduced mana reservation".

Let's say I'm using a 40% Haste aura, and I choose to select two 5% reduced mana reservation passives. The way I'm reading this, is that the two passives add together for a total of 10% reduced mana reservation.

However, I'm confused about the end result when applying to an aura. Using the previous example, is it 40% - 10% to equal a 30% Haste aura, or 40% x (1-.1) = 36% Haste aura?

I'm assuming it's latter, but I want to make sure to see if it's worth taking this partcular set of passives.

The latter is correct, but the passive are still decent if you're running many auras.

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Aplier wrote:

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Islidox wrote:

Quick question on this passive, "5% reduced mana reservation".

Let's say I'm using a 40% Haste aura, and I choose to select two 5% reduced mana reservation passives. The way I'm reading this, is that the two passives add together for a total of 10% reduced mana reservation.

However, I'm confused about the end result when applying to an aura. Using the previous example, is it 40% - 10% to equal a 30% Haste aura, or 40% x (1-.1) = 36% Haste aura?

I'm assuming it's latter, but I want to make sure to see if it's worth taking this partcular set of passives.

The latter is correct, but the passive are still decent if you're running many auras.

Thanks for the response. I'm still considering it as I'm only going to use a max of 2 auras at once (Anger and Haste), and they're already socketed with Reduced Mana support, and might consider throwing in a Clarity aura. I'll have to see once I get my Marauder to endgame. (And yes, a Marauder that uses mana.)

As for whether or not it's best for you, you'd have to do the math on your build. How much mana do you have, how much mana are you reserving, what's your mana regen, skill mana costs, attack speed, mana leech, and so on. A max mana node or mana regen mode might be more useful to your build instead. And if you get a piece of gear that has +50 mana and suddenly mana isn't a problem, you could refund a mana reserve passive for another dps one.