Feedback from Season 2

With PvP Season 2 coming to a close, we would like to gather your balance and general feedback.

Please let us know what you felt worked or did not work in Season 2, and what you would like to see in Season 3. Detail is useful!

To help you get started, we're particularly interested in:
- Team or Solo events -- which were more fun? Which felt more rewarding?
- Blitz, Swiss, CTF or FFA -- Which events did you enjoy the most and why?
- Skill diversity -- Which skills do you feel were underrepresented?

We will be keeping this thread open through the Season 2 invitational.

Thanks guys!

will edit post in an hour

will edit the post soon, loads of stuff to feedback, dont have the right now but later i will.

"

Qarl wrote:

- Team or Solo events -- which were more fun? Which felt more rewarding?

I would have to say team events are a lot more fun. It is nice to see how certain builds synchronize with other builds, and it is very interesting to see which combinations come out on top. Team events, at least for myself, feel a lot looser and less stressful. The Solo events seem to be much more competitive and really require you to be on top of your game. Solo events are obviously more rewarding because the difficulty of finishing first is much harder in a pool of players that is at least 3x that of which are in team events. Also it is often difficult to overcome bad matchups for your respective build, but when you are able to in a solo setting it is very rewarding.

There is a lot more room for improvement with the team events. Team events give you much more opportunity to come up and experiment with game modes. For example, a game type like King of the Hill could be tested. Where teams fight to control a marked "hill" to gain points while controlling the objective. This is just something off the top of my head, but I'm sure with time more well thought and viable game modes could be created.

As for solo events, you have pretty much covered all the bases by including ffa, blitz, and swiss. Not too much can be done objective wise in a 1v1 situation and I feel as if the quick 1 round blitz, ffa's, and bo7 matches from both laddering and swiss events are a really well rounded group of game types for a solo queue.

"

Qarl wrote:

- Blitz, Swiss, CTF or FFA -- Which events did you enjoy the most and why?

CTF is problably the most enjoyable to me, beacuse it actually enforces a different mindset than all of the other game modes. It isn't about going out there and just killing teams the quickest and is a lot less fluckey as opposed to something like a blitz or ffa. Teams are required to use a proper composition of builds and assign roles to these builds on the team. However, the queue times are a little crazy on the ctf's. Also, it would be nice to play two halves of a ctf game, where each team gets to play from both sides of the map to further enhance match balance.

"

Qarl wrote:

- Skill diversity -- Which skills do you feel were underrepresented?

This is me speaking on behalf of LLD exclusively as I don't pay much attention to HLD at the moment. I think as it stands in LLD, shocking your opponent is a little weak. It does nothing to slow or degen your opponent like chill/freeze and burn respectively. As a result, skills like lightning arrow, lightning strike, and a majority of the lightning spells (excluding spark) suffer from this and become a less viable option. I know I rarely will run shock immune flasks because shock is not much of a threat in the current meta.

Dual weilding, outside of being a caster, is still pretty weak. Cleave and dual strike still don't really have a place in LLD. There have been some decent crit dagger builds that have taken advantage of dual strike, but there are still better options.

EK also suffers, because its a physical spell and is not backed by any type of penetration gem. EK itself in LLD is really hard to increase in damage, and limits you to only a few characters you can use it in a build with because of the small amount of skill points.

Summoner's use to be very interesting in LLD, but are so lackluster at the moment. If summoner is ever to be a viable build for LLD, some changes have to be made here.

First of all, I'm mostly giving feedback for LLD. HLD is fun and all, but not what I'm most interested in, and I feel its hardly possible to balance it to a stable state, just because the way characters are in PoE : exponentially scaling to an absurd level of strength at the higher levels
So I'll start by answering the questions, then will express my personal feelings/thoughts/analysis on this pvp season

"

- Team or Solo events -- which were more fun? Which felt more rewarding?

Definitely team events. A big thank you by the way for adding CTF events after the community asked for more of those. I'd say all of them were interesting and it was a good mix. Last comments on team events... feel free to add even more capture the flag !
Now solo events weren't bad, but team events adds another layer (team synergy/coordination/strategies) making the pvp simply richer. Whereas in solo events are much more random and have more chances at being one-sided.

An example/illustration :
In a 3v3 organised pvp, if a top team faces a low team, any mistake from the top team can still cost them dearly, as even one strong player can fall quickly to three weaker ones.

"

- Blitz, Swiss, CTF or FFA -- Which events did you enjoy the most and why?

CTF, as I felt it was the epitome of pvp. Team pvp is more interesting, it requires a balanced team, and lastly requires a bit of strategising. Might need some balancing around traps and other skills that benefit too much from narrow spaces (ice shot, firestorm ? many more certainly).
Blitz and Swiss are both nice, however the sheer amount of blitz was a bit too much, whereas Swiss events were too few. It's very interesting to see various/different builds and skills do well in various environments. Potions in blitz are a bit of a problem though, favoring all-in potion-using kinds of builds. What about 2-round blitz? That'd still be fast enough to "keep up the blitz feel", and would make for many more draws (1-1 scenarios) then currently. I feel that would rebalance the potion/all-in kinda builds a bit

FFA can be pretty fun, but only ON A SMALL DOSE. I'm actually very happy about the amounts of it we've had, wich is ONCE a week AT MOST. It feels like the fun-bash-all-around thing, but having too many of those would be very detrimental, as it would feel horrible to be "rated" (in terms of points/competitivity) too much on those. But once in a while, it can be great fun ! Last comment on it : the scoreboard popping up too often, and sometimes the chain of random TPs to now arenas can be very annoying

"

- Skill diversity -- Which skills do you feel were underrepresented?

Good job on that question. I mean, you couldn't phrase it better, "let's not talk about the OP/dominant stuff, there's a throng of topics on that already".
So let's see, what was underrepresented. For a clear reading, I'll separate this into 3 categories :

Melee
- 2-handers are rather nonexistent in LLD. In HLD, a huge amount of HP can somewhat make up for the loss of defence, but in LLD nobody uses two-handed weapons. I know this is not a skill, but think of it as "EVERY SKILL WITH 2HANDED WEAPONS". Oh and add Sweep of course ;)
- Lightning strike : despite having good 1v1 damage and usable to kite/at range, I guess other ranged/hybrid skills are preferred. Would've loved to see more though, as it is so interesting mechanically speaking
- Cleave and Dual Strike : There's a bit of dual strike though not much, but it's mostly the strongest AND richest players playing with dual-wield and those, for it requires top gear + a vagan weapon to be good I guess

Casters
- Lightning spells : All of them except for spark wich is VERY strong (hybrid uses : good as trap, good as long-range, very good as closerange shotgun). This is for LLD, as in HLD its quite the opposite, there are tons of lightning users.
- Summoning skills : skeletons, SRS, zombies... they're all too weak for LLD and HLD. Maybe buff their life up in pvp? That would also make minion instability stronger, but they're so weak/nonexistent right now that I feel even that would be ok... plus it would add some very nice diversity to pvp. Lastly and most importantly, summons refresh potions. As long as that is the case, summoners will never stand a chance in pvp. Please change that in any kind of way, but just change it !
- Fireball : apart from some fireball-trap action, very little fireballing action in LLD
- Glacial Cascade : An interesting and good skill, but it's hybrid damage fits wrongly in pvp where one would want to capitalize on one element + relevant elem. penetration
- Etheareal Knives : Not much represented, but definitely not too weak. Has nice synergy with everything scaling physical (bear trap, puncture, poison arrow) as shown in season1 invitational

Archers
- Lightning arrow : this is both a pve and pvp problem. The skill is just way outdated with the current state of the game
- Poison arrow(LLD) : Underrepresented in LLD, all the opposite in HLD. But it might not be "weak" in LLD, as it can serve as a support/secondary skill and with the right setup, can still reach really good damage. Not easy to achieve tough (good setup = corrupted gear and empower gem and passives)
- Elemental hit : same story as lightning arrow, only even worse
- Burning Arrow : In terms of strength it seemed ok, but clearly underrepresented. And even so, it might be too weak, for it's been litteraly ONE player using it in LLD ( __Dub__ ) and being pretty good with it. This might give it a false sense of strength, and it might need some buff


________________________________________________________________

And now my opinion on the hot topics / op skills / pvp balance and future

1. Season 2 Pvp general feedback
- Communication : Although it probably comes from low staff count (most GGG'ers are probably busy with act4/next expansion), the lack of communication and occasional mistakes have largely contributed to the pvp-community feeling neglected (or even abandoned at some points). This is definitely not healthy in the long term for PoE's pvp-future as it has made many a player feel bitter (examples : 5th EU Swiss event / no countdown to pvp-ranking)
- Incentive : The rewards being lower than season 1, and absolutely no other incentive. There's not much more to be said, the pvpers from season 2 were those most passionate about it (hence many flaming hot topics in those forums), but even passion burns out in the end. If nothing is done for season 3 and onwards, it certainly feels like pvp is going to slowly die out (although I'll still be playing, of course ^^' )
- Events balance : I feel GGG did a really good job compared to season 1 at balancing the events. The communication part was maybe a bit off (season2 was announced as an LLD season whereas it ended up 40% HLD / 60% LLD), but the events themselves were nice. We got more and interesting team-events, some capture the flag, maybe a bit too little swiss, maybe a bit too much blitz, but overall pretty good !
- Items and pvp : A few things come to mind here : Elreon jewelry feels too dominant/mandatory, and toning down mana costs might help with that. The fact gems such as elemental penetration(any element) or blockchance reduction are very widely used makes many-links kinda mandatory as well, wich inflates the money cost of builds. Leo's items should have lv36 itemlevels for pvp instead of 28, and I doubt anyone would disagree on that. Lastly, the BCR (block chance reduction) gem really should be white. It's equally used by all kinds of builds and feels a bit unfair for some setups that it has dexterity requirements and needs a green slot
- Leo Reputation : The speed of leo's leveling is a known problem and has been answered to by GGG already, so I'll only mention another problem : in team events, each team members still gets points only for his kills only. And that is an AWFUL problem, because it means any supportive build will get less out of these events then pure-dps kinds of character. An easy example of this is CTF : a tanky flagrunner is not gonna get much compared to his teammates. Please make it so that reputation is equally shared by party members in all team events !



2. Specific skills and mechanics balance
(Obviously, I'm not going to talk about the underrepresented skills which are mentionned above

- Elemental penetration : It is strong, and perhaps too strong. Now I don't think it is WAY OP like many others seem to, as without it anything physical would simply vastly outdamage elemental, but still perhaps a bit too much
- Curse-on-hit gloves : The level of the curses is probably too high and should probably be toned down. As a sidenote, it's even stronger in pve, so this is probably needed as a general balance thing
- Traps : Still too strong overall. Every build uses them, it's a mandatory part of pvp. I don't think that's bad as the current pvp meta is balanced around it (for instance, no traps would make facebreakers and some other melees insanely stronger), but they probably need to be toned down a little. On a side note, a big problem with traps is the namelocking and trap-casting very far off with a huge aspect ratio/screen resolution. It feels extremely unfair that some players get a huge advantage from their computer specs.
- Cast When Stunned : Too strong overall, certainly needs a damage reduction. "man bomb" builds filled with cast when stunned stuf have had some pretty impressive success, and it's probably unfair just how strongly they slaughter melee opponents. Against ranged it's balanced, as it only requires the ranged player to be careful and outplay the opponent, but for melee's its a real nightmare
- Molten Shell : I don't feel its damage is that much of a problem, especially considering the following : it is possible to play around it with fully elemental hits, and a part of MS's damage comes from the aforementioned elemental penetration which might be a problem. But it's real problem is the no-cooldown, allowing for permanent re-cast and even worse when linked to cast when stunned.
- Firestorm : Very map dependent. Possibly too strong, but not by a lot. It's mostly the combination of curse-on-hit(temp chains)+stun gem+firestorm+elemental penetration that makes it pretty strong. On a side note, this feedback is taking the announced QoL changes for the next expansion into consideration. In other words, many have voiced their dissatisfaction with firestorm making their computers lag, and if the promised fixes for spell effects/particles are delivered, this problem should dissapear and make the skill much more manageable
- Cold Snap : Too dominant in terms of crowd control, every single caster build feels forced to use one
- Bear Trap : Exactly the same as Cold Snap, but for physical users
- Puncture : Kinda in a weird spot. Probably too weak in blitz (bleed immunity potions + potions in general allow one to nearly ignore puncture traps), but extremely strong in bo7. I think it's in an interesting spot, at least competitively speaking. It might still feel like a nightmare for new players though, but that's because of it's inherent mechanics
- Ice shot : The mechanics are very strong, especially the chill it leaves on the ground. The cone thing is strong too, although can be played around. For the rest, its strength mostly stems from elemental penetration and curse-on-hit gloves once combined with the chill. None of the effects are too strong, but all together are VERY strong. Very map-dependent like firestorm. Sidenote : on the end of range, it can bug and the projectile can be invisible, which causes extreme and understandable frustration, and needs a fix.
- Spark : Very strong. It feels like it does too much, as it can be used at very long range and very safely (can go around borders/walls), but also as a strong traps and most strongly, as a melee shotgun. The last one specifically is insanely strong, maybe too much vs melee, but it's still mostly the skill's diversity that makes it so good.
- Cyclone : Very strong as well. It feels too strong but certainly not by much. It's also very good in laggy or desynchy conditions (if the enemy is somewhat around you, he'll get hit regardless of ping). Just like spark, I'd say it strength lies in it's diversity : moving + stun immune + good damage, all at the same time, is VERY strong.
- Heavy Strike : Very strong damage, and the 100% knockback seems too good on it. Perhaps it should be lowered (Low experience on that skill, this opinion comes from trusting some excellent melee LLD pvpers)
- Poison arrow(HLD) : simply feels too strong in HLD, and absurdly unfun to play against. It might be just my feeling, but it seems all matches are extremely one-sided for poison arrowers : either run around and wait for opponent to die, or get destroyed instantly by some of the top-players (the last one being the reason why they are NOT on top, but if you look at the amount of poison arrowerss in top 20 for any HLD event, it is scary). In LLD, underrepresented
- Kinetic Blast : Underrepresented, not viable and yet problematic. It's viability is extremely questionnable and limited to blitz and ctf modes, and that is because it has an insane mana cost, requiring several mana potions from the user. Yet in said game modes, and disregarding mana costs and any forms of defense, kinetic blast has the potential to achieve the highest damage in LLD. And that's where to problem lies, it ruins the fun for some players. Getting one shot by a melee player with insane gear who's using potions (diamond flask and taste of hate) is one scary thing and can be played around/countered, but having it's entire team being oneshot instantly is simply not fun. I think a serious downgrade in damage is necessary, altough I cannot stress out how much the skill is NOT viable, whatever it's damage. A very nice and in my opinion very needed fix would be to both reduce damage and mana cost


3. Pvp accessibility and larger thoughts
- About the future : It feels pretty obvious, as voiced by numerous community members before, that the number one problem, the absolute priority for PoE's pvp is the amount of players involved. The pvp needs to grow, and first of all in terms of participation. How to make it grow and/or in what way are other topics, there was a need to stress this out first
- Pvp Accessibility : One of the hottest topics and certainly one of the ways to bring more players in. First of all let's talk about the various hardships a newcomer might face coming into pvp (we'll talk later on about how to remove or lower said barriers) :
Firstly there's game mechanics. Let's not forget that path of exile is a complex and unforgiving game. Now for those whom don't dive too much into mechanics, there is a lot of help and guides around to tell them "what to do", but although there are pvp guides, there is still a lot to be understood/read in those, unlike for pve where a short guide/instruction might tell a newcome what he should or shouldnt do.
Then only comes the gear/money barrier : Not only should one have a solid or at least good enough understanding of the game's mechanics, good enough stuff is necessary. This is certainly a barrier, but not as big as many seem to think it is. It can be blown out of proportions when the other accessibility problems are ignored (mechanics/experience). Still it is a problem. More specifically, the cost of multi-modding items is simply too high and requires people to dedicate A LOT of resources to pvp.
The last hurdle is pvp experience : The more complex the pvp game, the more evolving too, the bigger pvp-experience is a factor to success (as seen in complex MOBA-genre games). In other words, a player has to "know and feel" the actual pvp metagame. This wouldn't be such a problem if the ppvpers sample was bigger, but with such low amounts of players, it is. An example of this is : a new player comes into pvp and falls last in every event. With some courage and time/currency investment, said player makes a real pvp build, gets some gear and... still falls last, feeling absolutely terrible. Why is that ? Because the player might have evolved/progressed tremendously, it will not make a big difference if he only compares himself to the top of the ladder, wich happens if there are too few people partiking in said events.

So how to improve said problems? Here are a few ideas/suggestions, although I'm sure many players will have many other good ideas !
- Have a pvp town or get-together place where pvpers can meet eachother and talk, find groups and such. Or even a pvp chat, that works too. The pvp community needs more tools to stick together, that would help for motivation and it would be a nice place for newcomers to ask for help
- Lower multimodding cost or make it cheaper for pvp. That or some pvp-gearing trough Leo's leveling up / trough acquiring favor
- Give pvp more incentive to be played. Achievements to try out various pvp events perhaps ? Pvp-specific rewards upon Leo lvlup? Gear trough Leo as mentionned before ? There's many possibilities !
- The premade characters are definitely too weak, but I doubt making them stronger would change much. With neither good gear, game understanding or experience, a newplacer using these stands no chance at all. That being said, they could still be improved to have at the very least capped resistances, as pvp damage is balanced around those ! A newcomer who loses every match and a newcomer getting oneshot by almost everyone is not the same thing, the first might think he can improve and try further.
- Advertise pvp more (especially if more incentive appears, advertise that).


Lastly, for those who wonder where my feedback comes from, I'm an european player whom goes by the name of Snowflakes in LLD, and Smoothpaws/Snowflakes in HLD (with small variations to the names).
Trough this season I've played
- LLD : elemental barrage, puncture trapper, wander kinetic blast, ice shot archer
- HLD : dual dagger molten strike, manual cast discharge
My rankings in HLD where mostly 10 to 20th in most events, and in LLD in solo play 10th to 15th at first then 5th to 10th, and in team events, 1 to 3.
Thanks to my decent performance and much more to my awesome teammates I will be partaking in the US pvp invitational

That's it, and if you've read all of this, thank you for the time and patience you gave to my humble thoughts

"

Qarl wrote:

With PvP Season 2 coming to a close, we would like to gather your balance and general feedback.

Please let us know what you felt worked or did not work in Season 2, and what you would like to see in Season 3. Detail is useful!

To help you get started, we're particularly interested in:
- Team or Solo events -- which were more fun? Which felt more rewarding?
- Blitz, Swiss, CTF or FFA -- Which events did you enjoy the most and why?
- Skill diversity -- Which skills do you feel were underrepresented?

We will be keeping this thread open through the Season 2 invitational.

Thanks guys!

-A countdown should have been done for the PvP ladder so we know how much time is left until its official. The decay should probably be a bit more aggressive so people are actually forced to Queue. I emailed support and other than telling me that the ladder was over after this weekend they had no clue. Who's weekend its a global game? NZ time? My time?

-I like 3v3 blitz events the best. Its a lot more chaotic and moves quickly. The no team ones were actually awesome as well as you got to team with people you would never have played with and it made the winner a bit more random. FFA needs a rework because the constant zoning and spawn camping are bad but THE FUCKING STANDINGS IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SCREEN are a huge problem fix this already its broken!

I know people love the 1v1 best of 7 but it is a bit boring for me. I would love to see a 5v5 or whatever max Sarns can handle Royal Rumble fest. This would limit the camping, can add variety and maybe points for different things.

Skill wise I think we saw more variety this league it wasn't just Tornado shot versus molten strike. I think lvl 28 limits the skill gems used a bit but I was pretty impressed with some of the creativity. I didnt see more than one summoner and one of the main reasons has to be that they just feed pots. SRS or zombies mean endless pots, thats it. I haven't been pvping very long so I don't know how much variety there was back in the day.

Although we all love them I think Elreon mods are so mandatory that otherwise build enabling jewelery was skipped over. Maybe lowering the mana cost overall would help in this.

Lastly I want to thank all the veterans like Yoda and AdSense, VZ,Pretty boy, and a bunch of other guys for being so helpful. I definitely ramped up way faster than I would have if it wasn't for you guys helping me and giving tips.

You can't stop the cone!
http://gyazo.com/da6159e17a1ec3710b9cb8601a145a9a

"

neyhoumi wrote:

- 2-handers are rather nonexistent in LLD. In HLD, a huge amount of HP can make up for the loss of defence, but in LLD nobody uses two-handed weapons.

Not even close

"

MullaXul wrote:

"

neyhoumi wrote:

- 2-handers are rather nonexistent in LLD. In HLD, a huge amount of HP can make up for the loss of defence, but in LLD nobody uses two-handed weapons.

Not even close

He's saying in LLD. And specifically says they can be made useful in HLD...

My response only pertains to LLD.

"

Qarl wrote:

- Team or Solo events -- which were more fun? Which felt more rewarding?

Team. Solo games end up being a game of rock-paper-scissors with builds, given equivalent gear and skill. (Melee>Bower>Caster>Melee)

"

Qarl wrote:

- Blitz, Swiss, CTF or FFA -- Which events did you enjoy the most and why?

Blitz and CTF are my favorites. Towards the middle of the season, the LLD community would play a few games of CTF after the US events every night, and that was probably more fun than almost any of the GGG-hosted events. (Except 3v3 Blitz no-party, which was the best. :D) Swiss is nice too, if only there wasn't such a wait.

"

Qarl wrote:

- Skill diversity -- Which skills do you feel were underrepresented?

Rather than asking what skills are underrepresented, a better question would be what skills are over-represented. In melee, we predominately saw Molten Strike, Heavy Strike, and Cyclone, supplemented with Spectral Throw. For bows, we saw the rise of Ice Shot over Tornado Shot. Puncture, Burning Arrow, and Barrage were still around. In spells, we saw a bit of everything (listed in order or popularity from what I saw): Cold Snap, Freezing Pulse, Firestorm, Spark, Molten Shell, Arc. We also saw the emergence of wand builds, using Kinetic Blast. Everything not mentioned could probably be considered "underrepresented". I know I would love to have Ball Lightning be lowered in level, so that it can be used in LLD. :P

Overall, I thought the balance was pretty good. We saw a mix of types of builds throughout all the events, and the "top tier" players/builds weren't overwhelmingly more powerful than the "tier 2" players/builds.

Since this could be one of the rare opportunities to get GGG to listen to feedback, I'd like to mention: what's more important for PvP is not the balance, but the number of players participating. As it stands, we could call PvP the "ultimate endgame" of PoE, similar to racing. The primary difference between a race and a PvP match is that a race can work with only one player, whereas PvP cannot. Gear is very expensive. (I know my PvP character worth ~20ex costed more than any of my PvE characters in the temp leagues.) There's also no "RPG element" in PvP. If you lose, you get nothing. If you win, you also basically get nothing. There's no real progress from playing alot of PvP. You have to play PvE to progress in PvP. As such, it would be nice to have some "RPG style" incentive to play PvP.

first of all, some background to my person:

I started doing pvp, especially LLD, with the start of pvp season 2 and i had no clue about it before. i spent a lot of time into it, learning and theorycrafting.
In the end of this season, i managed to get an invite to the eu invitational.

i would like to share my experience regarding pvp starting with 0 experience and 0 gear up to reaching competitive levels.

When i started, there were some walls which were frustrating. Mostly, beeing unable to play certain builds because of having no decent elreon rings(-mana cost+multiple crafted mods) was a bad experience. These rings have way to much impact and are 100% mandatory for reaching certain rankings in ladder and in pvp events. Lowering all mana cost in LLD or creating a unique that gives -mana cost could be a way to deal with this problem. Such a unique(if it's cheap to get) could also lower the prices of creating decent pvp chars and might get more casual players without tons of currency into lld.

The thing that kept me beeing addicted by LLD was the Season and it's events. Although there could be better and more valueable rewards for reaching specific season points, the events were so much fun. I liked the way people were queued against each other, so that after playing some rounds, skill and gear levels were close to another, enabling thrilling duells.

When i started, i had no friends in my flist that did lld and it was very hard to get a group going for 3v3 events. The no party events were the best thing that could happen to me. Getting queued with different players over and over was a great experience. As a less skilled and geared player i was so happy when getting a top-tier ally. Watching them wreck the whole enemy team( =>snowflakes kinetic blast xD) was great and also made me get better at lld due to learning from them. I would like to see more no-party team events, they are the best thing to do when trying to get more players into pvp.

In season 2, the 1v1 LLD ranking queue was really empty. depending on server time, you wont find any player or have to wait 10-20 minutes until anybody else queues. this results in unfair matches due to the big differences in skill/gear levels, keeping people away from pvp. In my opinion, PvP popularity can grow a lot with encouraging more people to participate in the ladder.

More people=> more equal matches and less waiting time=> more fun.

We could get more ppl into playing the ladder with some small rewards for doing so. lets say, gain a random currency like trans/alts/chromes/chance for each won game or gain a reward for winning 10,20, 50,100 matches. this should be done carefully because there are going to be people who are trying to abuse this. I believe the succes of PvP in PoE is bound to the ladder queues and something should be done here. Another way would be to make leo's crafting abilities at high level/hideout decorations better.

I think the LLD balance overall is in a good state. Chill might be too strong. Maybe tune down the trap support gem a bit, firestorm seems really strong, so does ice shot. These are all just small issues tho.

i liked the diversity of events with blitz, ffa, swiss etc, you can keep it like this season.

I would like to thank GGG for doing an awesome Job and trying to improve things with the help of the community.

Sacr0