Nothing wrong with Blade Flurry, it's not OP it just doesn't suck like typical melee

"

Emphasy wrote:

Well I see the argument that weapons have a native downside in terms of scaling, but that only matters for the start of the league, not for the overall power. Early on the league of usually full of life based casters, which move over to CI casters and later you have whatever.

Weapons aren't really limiting, just try to find a weapon better than Starforge, it is impossible and Starforge is rather cheap.

I also said before that HC is not a good way to balance (and CoD is a pretty odd argument if you are arguing with Ladder placement), not because how many people play it but also because people might play HC in Standard due to the better economy and not being vulnerable to DCs.

Many people just delete chars when they die, that is what people used to do before HC was invented.

Your choice of league when you play "HC" is your choice. But people who play in HC cannot play SC. It indicates HC performance just fine. And I stand by my statement that HC should be the balancing point. If people want to stack damage on their BF assassin, good for them. What I do know is that the following combination on a character:

Assassin ascendancy
Dual wield (no shield)
Life-based

Is fucking riptown. You will not be pulling that shit off in HC, likely will never reach 100 even in SC, and I refuse to acknowledge such a build as a balancing point.

As for the weapons being a limiter, that's really not a good point on my part I guess because they could just as easily double weapon damage on the passive tree than change weapon availability or performance. I'm just saying starting a league out with an attack character is a really shit process, and I don't see any reason for people to be OK with this.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

I was on a break from POE when EQ got nerfed, but unless you have numbers to support a claim that it was or wasn't OP before nerfs I can't comment on it. What I do know is GGG often nerfs shit that doesn't need to be nerfed (and vice versa) and that has nothing to do with its popularity, cheapness, or effectiveness. See current league's BV "nerfs". So that doesn't really indicate anything to me.

"

2.3 patchnotes

Earthquake's aftershock damage has been reduced from 60% more (at level 1, tapered upwards) to 50% more at all Levels. Its mana cost has been increased from 6 to 10. Its aftershock area of effect has been reduced by 12%.

The damage bonus of the Less Duration support gem has been reduced. At level 1, it has been reduced from 20% to 10%. At level 20, it has been reduced from 29% to 19%.

So EQ got hit twice in one patch.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

I'm more interested in the discussion at this point, I frankly just don't understand how someone can look at a melee gem and knowingly and willingly say "this is overpowered", knowing full well that melee is always shit in every single league since the beginning of time.

This is where I will say that demanding a gem to be left untouched just because it's melee also is the wrong approach, but we're way past that.

To be fair, there are some streamers who say that the gem is OK, Zizaran being one of them. And there's the next issue already, Ziz is a clearspeed-slut, of course he likes gems that give him what he wants. And since he likes bladeflurry, chances are that it validates the point of OPness in regards to flurry even further.

While I can understand that you would want the balance of the game to be HC-centric, there is the one big issue that is the number of players. More people play SC. Significantly more as far as I am aware. So chances are that SC is what the devs will look at first, and then think about how it affects HC, if at all. The game lives of off its bulk-audience, mind you.

"

Emphasy wrote:

(and CoD is a pretty odd argument if you are arguing with Ladder placement)

This is also called "bad faith".

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

I'm more interested in the discussion at this point, I frankly just don't understand how someone can look at a melee gem and knowingly and willingly say "this is overpowered", knowing full well that melee is always shit in every single league since the beginning of time.

We are not looking at a melee gem, we are looking at a gem, period.
Stop fixating on "melee", this isn't the point of the thread at all.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

And I stand by my statement that HC should be the balancing point

I'm so glad that you are not in the balance team, honestly.
It would destroy so much diversity if it was the case ...

"

Sure_K4y wrote:

So EQ got hit twice in one patch.

This is where I will say that demanding a gem to be left untouched just because it's melee also is the wrong approach, but we're way past that.

To be fair, there are some streamers who say that the gem is OK, Zizaran being one of them. And there's the next issue already, Ziz is a clearspeed-slut, of course he likes gems that give him what he wants. And since he likes bladeflurry, chances are that it validates the point of OPness in regards to flurry even further.

While I can understand that you would want the balance of the game to be HC-centric, there is the one big issue that is the number of players. More people play SC. Significantly more as far as I am aware. So chances are that SC is what the devs will look at first, and then think about how it affects HC, if at all. The game lives of off its bulk-audience, mind you.

Again ggg does not balance in a sensible way, see bv 2.5. The changes to a gem do not indicate anything about its cheapness, effectiveness, or popularity. I was asking for numbers showing popularity or effectiveness before that nerf.

Regardless, I again agree that introducing an "op" gem is not the way to fix melee, but melee isn't getting fixed in 2.5. We know melee is going to be shit in 2.5 because it's always shit and they did nothing to change that in 2.5.

So knowing that melee IS GOING TO BE SHIT, factually, do you not agree that having one op "melee" gem to balance the shit of melee for this league, is better than introducing a regular gem that won't get used because it's a melee gem? And having melee be complete shit YET AGAIN?

Because that seems to be where the disagreement is here. We all know at this point factually: melee is shit and will still be shit in 2.5. One of us says "ok, let the new melee gem be a little op so melee can DO something this league." The others say "no, fuck melee, it should be garbage forever". Knowing full well that melee fixes ARE NOT COMING.

Regardless of whether Fruz thinks this gem is melee or not it is in fact melee and does have a role to play in the balance of melee as a whole.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

So knowing that melee IS GOING TO BE SHIT, factually, do you not agree that having one op "melee" gem to balance the shit of melee for this league, is better than introducing a regular gem that won't get used because it's a melee gem? And having melee be complete shit YET AGAIN?

Because that seems to be where the disagreement is here. We all know at this point factually: melee is shit and will still be shit in 2.5. One of us says "ok, let the new melee gem be a little op so melee can DO something this league." The others say "no, fuck melee, it should be garbage forever". Knowing full well that melee fixes ARE NOT COMING.

The only thing I would kind of agree to would be statements like:

"Having one more OP gem doesn't change much at this point."

Or:

"If there's one more OP gem, there's one more thing people can choose from while still being aboard the meta train."

Those, I'd say, would be factually correct. However, I am more in favour of not having anything in the game that is as OP as BV or BFlurry. To be fair, there will always be the strongest skill overall, and the strongest skill for specific content, the most budget to build around skill, and whatnot, but there shouldn't be skills that can do any content with barely any effort whatsoever. I wouldn't even mind if BFlurry was a bit OP, a bit OP isn't the end of the world, I never said I'd expect the game to be 100% balanced. Trivializing the game is a serious problem though, and skills that can do so have only one gem tag in my book, and that tag is called "OP".

The way I see things, it doesn't matter what tags a gem has. If it's OP and trivializes content with relatively low investment, it needs to be nerfed. Which is why I also said that, whatever does or does not happen to any other gem, is not actually interesting in regards to BFlurry. My stance is that a skill that is overpowered needs to be adjusted, let alone that the Flurry "nerf" isn't going to matter, because the damage has been left pretty much untouched.

So no, I do not agree that having an OP as F melee gem is OK, I also don't think that having shit like bladevortex is OK. They're in the same basket for me, which is what I tried to get across for quite a bit of time. It's not doing any good to have one gem that is labelled "melee" being OP, for the sake of levelling out percentages on a list of build choices. There's no point and no value in that. If you're going down that route, you're basically saying that you're taking whatever bandaid is available, eventhough you know players deserve better, and bandaids don't cure cancer.

In implying, for the majority of time, that BFlurry isn't as OP as other skills for whatever reason, so it gets away unscathed, you're opening a door you best left closed. Fighting fire with fire is wrong, always. You're an adult, I shouldn't need to tell you about things you certainly are aware of. If what we end up with is this black and white thinking of "OP or completely useless", we might as well make all skills OP as fuck, and have a lame ass faceroll to "play", or rather operate, and call it balanced. But that's going to happen without me, not that anybody cares about me, but when POE is pointless to play, I won't be the only one leaving the sinking ship.

"

Sure_K4y wrote:

The only thing I would kind of agree to would be statements like:

"Having one more OP gem doesn't change much at this point."

Or:

"If there's one more OP gem, there's one more thing people can choose from while still being aboard the meta train."

Those, I'd say, would be factually correct.

That's not even what I'm saying.

I'm saying that because bf is mechanically a melee gem, it is going to be shittier than other "op" gems and thus relatively average overall. Basically. It won't be ANYWHERE NEAR bv.

Again my prediction is that it will not do that well in hc. We'll find out in a few days.

"

Sure_K4y wrote:

So no, I do not agree that having an OP as F melee gem is OK, I also don't think that having shit like bladevortex is OK. They're in the same basket for me, which is what I tried to get across for quite a bit of time. It's not doing any good to have one gem that is labelled "melee" being OP, for the sake of levelling out percentages on a list of build choices. There's no point and no value in that. If you're going down that route, you're basically saying that you're taking whatever bandaid is available, eventhough you know players deserve better, and bandaids don't cure cancer.

Thank you for that, that's also pretty much my stance here : the "melee" tag is just irrelevant.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

I'm saying that because bf is mechanically a melee gem, it is going to be shittier than other "op" gems and thus relatively average overall. Basically. It won't be ANYWHERE NEAR bv.

No, the "melee" tag does nothing but add scaling to the skill, the "melee" tag is just big boost.
"Melee" being unpopular in HC has nothing to do with how it scales, it has to do with many other things, mainly range and clearspeed, and bladeflurry lacks neither.

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

"

Sure_K4y wrote:

The only thing I would kind of agree to would be statements like:

"Having one more OP gem doesn't change much at this point."

Or:

"If there's one more OP gem, there's one more thing people can choose from while still being aboard the meta train."

Those, I'd say, would be factually correct.

That's not even what I'm saying.

I'm saying that because bf is mechanically a melee gem, it is going to be shittier than other "op" gems and thus relatively average overall. Basically. It won't be ANYWHERE NEAR bv.

Again my prediction is that it will not do that well in hc. We'll find out in a few days.

I didn't say that you said anything like that. If that makes any sense.

You're too enticed by the gem tag. The tag is irrelevant, it is nothing but an indicator of mechanical interactions for the player. And no, BFlurry won't be "not OP" just because it has a melee tag, as much as glacial cascade won't faceroll all the things as quickly as Bladevortex does, just because it has a spell tag.

The claim that it might not do well in HC is OK to make. How a skill performs in HC is not a representative benchmark though. If all skills would be balanced around taking only i.e. 10-20 damage related nodes on the passive tree, so HC players could pump the remaining 90-100-ish into Life/ES, we'd end up with overpowered skills in SC only.

The thing is that this argument is pretty much mood because they did nerf Blade Flurry and they actually did the exactly right thing. They reduced the AoE while keeping the damage in tact, this means pretty much like Barrage you now have a skill that is good at destroying bosses but will have it hard to compete with reave for overall clear. Considering they are using exactly the same weapons you can easily use both.

Also I would assume that it isn't too hard for BF to go CI, actually there is no reason to go Life, there is also no reason to not use a Shield, BF has incredible weapon scaling so pick up two Steel Rings and you might have already compensated the DW benefit. I also assume that the bugfixes to weapon speed includes the odd thing with Brightbeak so we are back to using a sceptre purely for the effects it grants (like Deaths Hand or Dark Seer), because no one on their right mind would use 2 daggers or 2 claws.

And this focus on ladder is stupid for another reason it dismisses the option entirely to start with another build later on. And while weapon builds are usually disadvantegous to start out with (except of course Earthquake because there are so many cheap 2h weapons to use), this is basically a non issue if you start a bit later, yes this might keep you from being top placed in the ladder because you won't be that much faster and in 2 weeks many people might already be at a very high level and depending on the league we might have had someone at lvl100 already. But this doesn't say much about the powerlevel of a build, skill or whatever.

So if we do this checkup we have to acknowledge that there is hardly any spell viable. Lacerate would be the 6th or 7th best skill in the game by that definition. We have 3 clear outliers that is SRS, Blade Vortex and Warchief totem and that is pretty much expected. And after that we have 3 other strong skills, that is Flameblast, Essence Drain and Lacerate. Both those Lacerate chars are essentially doing what you would expect of a Blade Flurry char. They use a weapon + Deaths Hand, and one of them is even wearing abyssus, which I wouldn't expect in HC. And if we look at the placements Lacerate is even doing better than ED... well one ED char is above them, but he is dead, the two others are behind the Lacerate chars.

So I don't really see evidence that Lacerate is worse than Essence Drain. It is about the same looking at those stats. And Blade Flurry doesn't even need such a good weapon to perform equally to Lacerate because it deals so much more damage.

Your argument always is that weapon based skills are bad, but what if a weapon based skill deals more damage than most spells even if you are just using a 280dps weapon, and that isn't hard to get. The base dps of Blade Flurry with such a weapon is about 1150, which surpasses many spells. It doesn't get over Blade Vortex, how should it, but besides this only Flameblast is able to top it with 1600 base dps. Firestorm should as well but it is a bit odd to calculate, but it still is the single most damaging spell in existence. Of course Whispering Ice does the same, but it's scaling is so incredible that if you get that much Int it gets ridicolous, but again you need very specific items to get that powerful.

So with preseving the high damage but making Blade Flurry less safe and hurting the clearspeed they did exactly the right thing. That way it isn't outright better in every scenario, while still being incredible powerful given the right situation and exspecially with potentially extended boss encounters in breach it doesn't seem like such a bad choice.

noone really wants to say 'uncle' in this thread huh...