[LLD] The premade Chars are INSANELY HORRIBLE

Dear GGG and fellow exiles,

I know I am beating a dead horse here but the whole thing just turns my stomach. The premade chars are in my opinion a very good idea that shows effort to get new ppl into PVP but the execution is so poor it is not even funny. The chars are composed so badly it begs the question if the person responsible ever played PoE beyond normal Merveil and has ANY understanding of the basic concepts of the game, let alone PvP.

Now I do not want to be misunderstood, I am not complaining because "you need to give ppl top-tier or at least good chars" or sth like that. It is NOT about "the premade chars should be good so ppl can actually compete on the PvP ladder" although it is part of the problem but not the real point. The real thing that makes me uneasy is that the chars set a BAD EXAMPLE and teach plainly wrong lessons. Beginners, the target audience for these chars, might take the chars as official examples and guidelines on how to build an LLD char and on the viable concepts. I sure would. Just imagine you started a new game and there are official example builds for duels against other player. I would take them as a serious lesson and I would try to emulate the shown concepts in my own creations. Take for example Spore, where you recreate, refine and improve upon the concepts of creatures and objects presented to you within the game. Or take Hearthstone, where you play your first games with the beginners decks and refine them more and more by applying the lessons you learnt through playing.
So the issue is that the premade chars teach lots and lots of WRONG LESSONS. They are lying and misleading and will guarantee failure upon failure when recreated and used as an example on how to play PvP in this game.



Let me explain this, but where do I begin?

The gear of those chars is complete and ultimate garbage. The only half-decent item is the wand of the FP witch and it barely makes the cut. The problem here is that PoE scales with gear (it is embarrassing that I feel the need to explain this simple fact but the premade chars look like I and others have to). Not only are there plain and simple gearchecks within the regular content (take the Sceptre of God for example) but the efficiency of skills themselves relies heavily on the number, colour and links of sockets. For PvP this is even more true as in the current matchmaking system you will never know what kind of opponent you face next so your gear needs to be versatile and fullfil several basic requirements. But when you slap some blue garbage on those chars you not only guarantee a bad time for those new players as they will die constantly due to bad gear, but the deeper problem is that they wont know and will likely never learn why. If an official beginners char is completely equipped with blue items it says "you can go PvP with blue items and have a fair chance" but that could not be farther from the truth. In fact, the only absolutely viable blue items are flasks, but guess what?! The flasks on the premade chars all have only one affix! One affix. So the chars not only do have blue items but they have BAD blue items in addition. Another example are the weapons with resists and they are everywhere. I don´t get it, I really don´t. Is that the best you could do? What is the problem with a rare item with 3 or 4 stats? Is that OP?
I mean, I get that you do not want to hand out tier-1 items for free so everyone and their dog can skip the grind and go kill some players. I can surely relate to that. But the gear of the beginners chars is so fucking bad that you are probably better off just leveling a char to 28 and then go duel with the items you found on the way. And we ALL know that this doesn´t work. The whole issue is made even worse by the fact that the gear often does not or only barely synergize with the respective chars and builds, like the shield on the duelist for example.

The gems are in the same boat. Weak, ineffective or (even worse) counterproductive skill-setups like Powercharge-on-crit linked to LMP freezepulse. PCoC requires a shitton of crits to be effective as it is a percentage based procc effect. For lvl28 it has a chance of 33% to procc. Now the FP on the witch has a 12.x%, let´s just say 13%, chance to crit. So PCoC has a chance to procc of 4.3%. That is even worse than basecrit chance of a sword. Speaking of that, why the fuck does the duelist have a critdmg gem in his inventory without a single point in critchance invested and an accuracy sword equipped? Like, that gem has a 5% (basecrit) chance to do something! I guess it´s still better than PCoC on the witch, but why does she NOT have a critdmg gem and the duelist a Multistrike instead? And before you say multistrike is too OP, the shadow DOES have one! Speaking of not having a skillgem: why does the marauder char not have Flicker Strike? I know he is a strength class and the gem is dex-based but come on! How do you expect ppl to get into melee range with 1.3 aps? And why does nearly every char have gems like added cold and added lightning without any way to amplify that dmg? Those gems SUCK with the builds you have put them on and would be a little more useful on the ones you did NOT put them on... I know this paragraph is a mess but it is all the same issue. The gem compositions are HORRIBLE! They are endangering sanity in some cases. And if a new player sees this mess he/she might "learn" to put added colddmg on every meleeattack or added lightdmg on their flickerstrike and then they will come here and complain that they deal no damage and the gems are shit when the real problem is that they were taught shit. Again, lying and misleading.

The builds... oh my god. I can´t even form a real sentence to properly introduce the paragraph on the builds. They are just awfull. Like, take the marauder again. Seriously, that char has a 1.1 aps brass maul equipped. Why don´t you give him resolute technique? why? With such a slow attackspeed it is damn fucking important to land every hit. Instead you specc into Versatility for a whooping 8% manacost reduction for a skill that barely costs any mana to begin with. You know why it costs no mana? Because it is the plain gem linked to Stun (no multiplier) and Additional Accuracy (no multi either). So the base manacost of heavy strike is 7, which is still 7 when reduced by 8% because the game doesn´t round down in your favour. It only rounds down when it would be in your favour to round up... And yes I KNOW you specced Versatility for the stats, but that wouldn´t be an issue if you gave the player some rare items with 3 stats ffs and let one of them have additional int and one have additional dex. But Versatility is just the beginning. You spend 6 points to reach Stamina, liferegen per endu-charge and Juggernaut. Now the Endurance charge is a total waste, because you can only use a lvl4 enduring cry which grants 15charges per 100 enemies. So the only time you will get more than 1 charge per use is if you fight a summoner with like 20 minions or so. In that case the endurance charges won´t matter though. Against a single enemy you will have to run around for 16 seconds and just spam enduring cry for 4 charges. But you are a melee with no shield so you wont even live that long. The other thing is Juggernaut. Granted, the node itself is pretty good, but it is rather useless in PvP because Armour is crushed by physical dmg. I mean, despite having 6 armour-nodes specced the char only has 850 armour. That is like fucking nothing when even an Iron-skin granite flask can´t save your ass from a dagger-crit at lvl 28. So those 6 points are completely wasted. Not talking about having Diamond Skin specced and then having 65% fireres be the highest resist. Give the ppl some res on their gear, srsly. And again, the worst part is the lesson you teach new players here: "grab armour nodes" although it is useless and don´t max resistances on the tank-archetype.

I wanted to write sth more about the witch and the duelist but I hope you got my point. The basic idea is really good but that execution is so insanely horrible there should be a loading screen tip that says "ignore the premade characters for your own mental safety" or sth like that. It´s really mindboggling.

like... REALLY!

Yeah this is feedback they've gotten and will be changing, as far as I know. It was mentioned in the announcement, unless I'm totally making that up.

Tier 2 mid rolled gear shop from leo should open up for premade lvl 28 pvpers. Leo should offer free respecs to pvp only chars. Garbage blue items for 1 build will never ever cut it. Midrange gear over a wide selection would increase the draw of casual pvpers but not deter Die hard pvpers from farming/crafing their own. This is one the the best things that could happen to pvp for temp league especially.

Yeah, I totally agree. But as I said, the gear is one thing but giving ppl a completely false impression is the other. The builds and gemselections definitely need a complete overhaul.

But while we are at it, I do agree that the gear on the premade chars should not be tradeable, that would be stupid but why does it have to be unmodifyable? Why and in what respect would it be imbalanced if players could change the socketcolours or -links or be able to add a stat through craftingbenches or even Exalteds if they wish to? And this question is not meant to be sarcastic or anything, but completely serious. Why is that not allowed? What is the reasoning behind making gear that is basically bound to the character unchangeable?
Yeah, and free respeccs or at least several free respeccpoints should be added to the pvp-only chars.
And as you mentioned Leo, he really should offer a lot more gear when he is reset. Like, every item he sells should be rare except for one or two each day which should be white and have a random number of sockets but should always be fully linked. As of now his offers are completely worthless. Like absolutely. He should also sell several magic flasks (2 life, 2 mana, 2 quicksilver and 2 random utility EACH DAY) with one desirable property (warding, of Heat, staunching, surgeon´s, panicked and so on) and random quality. I am tired of spending like 100 Alts and 50 Augs on every single fucking LLD flask until I get a good roll, but that might be just me.