PoE life pool is so wrec't and soon ES will be to. Where's the solution?

With the completion of my Legacy build (getting level 90 in May and 19 challenges) I decided to take a couple of old builds not being used and with their full respec allowed play some skills I've never used. First was a cold/fire Whispering Ice cast while channeling build base on [2.6] The Curse Whisperer - Tri-Curse CI Whispering Ice Elementalist - Viable for Everything. Loads of fun and I went from level 71 to level 88 in a few weeks of casual playing. I struggle with my SSF gear to get over 4K ES which is less than half what I need so I end up with a glass cannon. Can do all maps up to tier 13 but get one-shotted by Plaza Uber Izaro type boss. Ok, I don't have the right jewels yet to convert Dex to Int. so I set that build aside for now.

So yesterday I took a dead hierophant and respec'd for a Bladefall dual totem build, [Lighty] (2.6) Bladefall Totem's - Cheap/Easy/T15/Atziri/UberLab etc.... I use my 108 points, play around with different gear and such. Not even 4K life yet so I go back to the build to see what the builder did. For the average build gear, with the exception of the wand each and every piece of gear has life on it. 99% of my uniques just became unusable. Same for 90%+ of all saved gear. Back to the crafting drawing board.

So that brings me to the inescapable point of (NO, not that I suck at build crafting, that's pretty much a given) that the only gear worth keeping or attempting to craft has to have 50+ life on it. The Bladefall totems build is an example where Lighty grabbed as much life on the passive tree as possible and still needed life on each piece of gear just to get an endgame viable build.

GGG has created a big mess of an unbalanced arpg. We see that the top players with no life massive amounts of time spent playing to wait it out in trade-chat to get someone to respond to a trade request to get T1 or T2 gear and get over 20K ES (GGG says they've seen 25K ES builds) and with that much ES a player can trivialize all content. So ES nerfs are coming. On life side the latest thread is how hard it will be to get 9K life on a build. I'm somewhere in the middle of all "average filthy casual" players and can't even get close to half the life or ES that is required to really enjoy playing and not die all the time.

The problem that GGG has going forward is that the top players have pushed this game to it's limits and want more of everything and GGG I guess is doing their best to try and accommodate them but where does that leave the 99% of us that just want a better arpg than D3, TL2, Grim Dawn, or many other arpgs that just don't have the long lasting repeat play value that PoE has (build crafting forever). Sure I know that SSF is self-imposed (but trade chat and "seller is AFK" or nothing 99% is shit for casuals) so I say "screw this trade chat shit" and just play with what I can get to drop. So the top players drive GGG to nerf life first and now soon ES to keep them from trivializing all content and do Shaper or Uber Atziri, etc. runs all day and get BiS gear to use and sell. All well and good thinking for GGG. Then the poor "filthy casual" comes in and wants a good time a few hours a week and gets crushed in red maps and hits the wall because of not enough life and ES. The balance is wrec't and then some.

The Fall of Oriath with 10 acts (5 x 2) looks super fun but until it drops I'll be reading the beta players posts to see what the overall feeling is about getting enough life/es to not struggle all the time. I sure hope GGG has figured out how to get new players to stay engaged (are near 50% still quitting before normal act 2?) but provide us veterans (casuals or hardcore) more of a challenge in the lower acts (another balance problem for GGG).

I wonder if there is a way for GGG to nerf the top end on life/ES but buff up the low end so the 1% can't trivialize all content but other players don't get killed out of playing? Is that even possible or is PoE just too complicated for GGG to balance better?

signed,

Filthy Casual

MoM be with you...
With MoM, having 10k+ HP pool is very easy (you can look at my Berserker, for example). With new CoD, you can probably reach 12k+ HP pool...

Players will have to adjust to the new environment. The problem that PoE had developed was that you could overcome the challenges of the game with equipment rather than learning to play. GGG has always wanted a game that you could beat with skill rather than equipment.

Power creep kept them from ever having this be consistent with challenging those that do have good equipment. So... they're narrowing the difference between the haves and the have-nots. Good for them.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

MoM be with you...
With MoM, having 10k+ HP pool is very easy (you can look at my Berserker, for example). With new CoD, you can probably reach 12k+ HP pool...

Hmm... Mind over Matter so I can have Mana + Life health pool. Interesting and if that doesn't work out I will need the other MoM to settle my upset stomach.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Players will have to adjust to the new environment. The problem that PoE had developed was that you could overcome the challenges of the game with equipment rather than learning to play. GGG has always wanted a game that you could beat with skill rather than equipment.

Power creep kept them from ever having this be consistent with challenging those that do have good equipment. So... they're narrowing the difference between the haves and the have-nots. Good for them.

Yes, that's for damn sure. I mean, full clearing Shaped Strand in < 1 minute. No skill at all needed if speed running maps can be done that fast. Just uber gear up and Flicker Strike smash through all packs from end to end. Total insanity and massively broken.

Edit: Ascendancy got us on the slippery slope of power creep and GGG can't turn the page back on that. I wish they could but that genie is out of the bottle forever. Chris stated he's in favor of an overall slowing of play speed but that too many players would rebel and quit if they were to do that.

if ur failing to get 4k life endgame and just about getting 4k es then yeah, safe to say the problem is on your end tbh.

Where does that leave you? Well you can do all maps up to t13, so thats where it leaves you. That leaves t14, 15 and 16 for the "top players with no life massive amounts of time spent playing" who obviously need content beyond that which you are managing to beat.

So your choices are either to be ok with that, demand you can complete all t14/15/16 too leaving those ppl who are doing better than you with absolutely nothing to challenge their builds or you get better at the game.

What happens if they go the second route, make the content easier so your current builds can beat it, and then you happen to get better at the game and need more challenge? Do they change the game again to accommodate the fact you personally can now reach some of the potential that was always there or do you now accept that the game has no challenge or longevity for you because everything is too easy and quit?


re: failing to get 4k life endgame on an quipped char, a screenshot for consideration...



the guy in the guide u linked has 6,700 life and his gear is fairly terrible.


Heres a fairly normal gear stat priority list outside of weapons. You wear the uniques that you NEED to make the build work, if the build needs any at all. Second you get enough core stats to use all your items and gems. Third you cap your elemental resists. Forth you get as much life or es as possible on that gear.

Thats just standard operating procedure, the basics, you start from there and then try and get other stuff going on, armour, evasion, block, increased damage, crits, attk/cast speed, movespeed, accuracy, + gems, enchants, whatever it is that will benefit you. If you cover the basics really well you might be able to drop life and resist on a few slots for non essentially but powerful stats, a Rats Nest is an example that is widely used despite lacking the basic stats that slot provides.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

if ur failing to get 4k life endgame and just about getting 4k es then yeah, safe to say the problem is on your end tbh.

Where does that leave you? Well you can do all maps up to t13, so thats where it leaves you. That leaves t14, 15 and 16 for the "top players with no life massive amounts of time spent playing" who obviously need content beyond that which you are managing to beat.

So your choices are either to be ok with that, demand you can complete all t14/15/16 too leaving those ppl who are doing better than you with absolutely nothing to challenge their builds or you get better at the game.

What happens if they go the second route, make the content easier so your current builds can beat it, and then you happen to get better at the game and need more challenge? Do they change the game again to accommodate the fact you personally can now reach some of the potential that was always there or do you now accept that the game has no challenge or longevity for you because everything is too easy and quit?


re: failing to get 4k life endgame on an quipped char, a screenshot for consideration...

Spoiler

http://i.imgur.com/aPXkdG4.jpg

the guy in the guide u linked has 6,700 life and his gear is fairly terrible.


Heres a fairly normal gear stat priority list outside of weapons. You wear the uniques that you NEED to make the build work, if the build needs any at all. Second you get enough core stats to use all your items and gems. Third you cap your elemental resists. Forth you get as much life or es as possible on that gear.

Thats just standard operating procedure, the basics, you start from there and then try and get other stuff going on, armour, evasion, block, increased damage, crits, attk/cast speed, movespeed, accuracy, + gems, enchants, whatever it is that will benefit you. If you cover the basics really well you might be able to drop life and resist on a few slots for non essentially but powerful stats, a Rats Nest is an example that is widely used despite lacking the basic stats that slot provides.

I get fairly frustrated when people point to a str based class and say how easy it is to get over 5k life.

A strength based character with say 450 str from items/passives automatically gets +225 base life. A dex based character gets 0 life. An int based character gets +90% ES from 450 int. With 140% life from passive tree (yes I know it could be higher) and +70-100 life on every item but my bow/helm (roughly +650 total life). I also have 118 str. I'm at 4800 life. My armor does nothing for mitigation so when I get hit with physical, it does full damage. To get any mitigation I have to give up a high life roll and some resists for some unique.

Don't even talk about chaos damage. ES builds can get CI. Strength naturally get higher health and can take mind over matter and double dip int/life on items to a degree. Dex? Well we just get one shot, unless we jump on the bandwagon and go ES or jump to another part of the tree and grab more health nodes. I've been thinking about building a hybrid life/ES/EV set of armor but it's expensive. I would have to drop acrobatics/phase acrobatics for that though. Maybe I'm wrong in my approach.

It's just not that easy for everyone to get 5k+ life, especially if uniques are required.

well, in fairness ur playing a ranged character which means ur inherently glass cannon. You can get ur life up to scratch on the right as a ranged char but you have to work at it, make sacrifices. That area for bows is willing you to just go all out cannon, you can spend a whole tree on damage, and you havent done much to resist the temptation. 140% life, diamond rings, unique jewels, nothing wrong with it if thats how you want to play but its a choice youve made.

Even a melee on the right side generally gets more life than a bow character because of the way the nodes play out, this is part of the balance between melee and ranged. My acrobatics bow ranger on the right gets 6,000 life with a rats nest and a lightning coil on, thats a 200% life tree including jewels. I dont go to the scion life wheel but i do go to the duelist area. My right side melees get between 6,500 and 7,000 life. Its there if you want it but u cant go so hard on dps and still get that sort of defense.

I have a non acro right sider with evasion + es + life gear. Its a melee duelist using an aegis shield though. Aegis and Rats Nest are being used which have no life, its got 6,500 life + 2,300 es and hes using iron reflexes to turn the evasion into armour. No acro obviously but it has 70% block and 70% spell block with the aegis. I must admit Ive not tried it with actual evasion as a bow character, Im not entirely convinced it would be better than a lightning coil with acrobatics. But I would recommend a light coil because as you say phys damage can be fairly ferocious with an acro char. Coil, taste of hate, basalt and endurance charges (enduring cry), I find pure ev too sketchy without at least 3 of those 4, personally I go all 4 on every acro build.



str chars have it a bit easier from strength but an extra 300 str = 150 base life = 450/500 actual endgame life pool. That char in the screenshot has nearly 5,400 life without any gear on. Because of how crazy standard is with legacy kaoms thats 11k life if I actual gear him with that armour, still over 9k life with a normal kaoms. Easier to get more life as str/melee, sure, but the difference between sub 4k and 9k is gargantuan, much more than an extra 500 life from strength is doing alone. Its sacrificing damage for life, and in that chars case also sacrificing base defense for life.

Truth be told though a right side melee with 7k life and defenses is more tanky than that guy with 11k life, Im not kidding, my melee ranger and melee duelist who are both hard right both crap all over that character when it comes to defense so life total isnt everything.

Under the premise that the big offenders that are the entire reason for the high buffer meta are getting reworked (volatiles and reflect), also means that there are a ton of new ways to saddle the horse and still be endgame viable.

There really isnt any reason to go buffer anymore, because as long as you can tank all normal hits and all non-telegraphed boss attacks, all the other tanking options become much more attractive. Block/eva especially.

As a matter of fact, with volatiles rework a decent healthpool and a solid secondary defense are going to feel much tankier. (decent beeing some 5.5k health)

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Cataca wrote:

As a matter of fact, with volatiles rework a decent healthpool and a solid secondary defense are going to feel much tankier. (decent beeing some 5.5k health)

A random monster in a high-tier map can oneshot you at 5.5k health, especially without fortify. Tanky, my ass. I had an incinerate marauder at 8,4k life with acro, phase acro and atziri's boots in Tempest league - didn't feel tanky at all, and not just because of volatiles. And that was a long time ago, when map tiers were lower and the monster power creep wasn't where it is today.

Hell, I had a MoM firestorm chieftain at 13k combined life+mana in Perandus league, and THAT didn't feel tanky in high-tier maps. Especially some perandus packs, oh man. Felt positively squishy.

There's a reason almost everyone who can afford it is running with 10k+ ES builds with instant leech. The reason is, nothing else works if you want to consistently survive high-tier content. And even that doesn't always work, it just has the highest probability of success.