Weekly Beta Report Two

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Deployment

I'm a bit wondering that the 'improvements' on act 6/7 is scheduled behind the introduction of act 8 :?

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Balancing

as expected

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Labyrinth

I was very pleased with the cruel lab yesterday ^^
Is there a reason, why the manifesto says 'three trials' for the 3rd lab instance (merci), while the lab device only shows one dot? (even more curious, why it shows this at all, as there's no possibility to get this trial(s)?)

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Release

Do when you feel its 'done'.

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MTX/Hideout/Benches

This sounds really a 'bit' disappointing: I read it as we'll (probably) still not being able to upgrade our HO's with the act 8 deployment next week?! Maybe even not in the other week too?!?
At least make sure we'll be able to fix it later...

Nerf the everlasting shit out of build diversity. DoT builds are fucking useless now. If it's going to take 10 minutes to down a boss from the shitty fucking damage they deal now.

Yeah, is it no surprise most shit is just elemental crit? Those builds get to retain their high dps.

I'd like to see these reports of extreme damage numbers with Perfect Agony that isn't double dipping with assassin ascendency and more multipliers from skills.

Anything that doesn't have that ridiculous scaling potential from a handful of skills and a single ascendency out of 19+ choices was heavily struggling to make perfect agony worthwhile and still maintain mapping life pools. These are theory'd builds with 500+% multi and double ignites from burning arrow failing vs a non-crit burning arrow build with immolate instead.

Nerfing all of these dot mechanics by this amount is folly. Not adding in benefits to make up for these massive nerfs is also folly.

The worst part is the half-assed explanation of these changes that explained absolutely nothing.

Delays with masters, lab, skill points, etc means I've been doing more theorycrafting than playing and while I can usually hit about 400k with most skills and gear that I could feasibly afford or craft, DoT builds that put aren't assassin+more multiplier spells are struggling to get even close to those numbers AND they suffer from no leech and the juggling of extra mechanics while you take 5-10x as long to kill a boss compared to hit builds.

Even my lightning strike dead eye build beat out the perfect agony burning arrow build... I get that dots need to be less effective than hit because you could just 'Jew' the whole game and portal out and invulnerable-kill bosses or just run in circles and throw traps/mines/minions/totems to do the work for you but... Those are really problems with how those mechanics scale DoTs(and of course that DoTs shouldn't burn mobs while you're invulnerable) and should be adjusted accordingly...

All in all, these sweeping nerfs are largely unjustified in a world where only a handful of very specific builds could even scale numbers like the beta report describes. Doubly so since the beta info is incomplete because of the missing skill points, acts, items, crafting benches, etc.... And it's further compounded by the fact that even more people are avoiding the beta because of these missing things. This type of balancing requires complete data and we can not provide that in the beta so how can these changes be justified?

Tl:dr - Finding bugs and abusing mechanics in beta is helpful info only when we have all the pieces to the puzzle. Fix dots separately from abusive skills. Don't nerf DoTs because a select few skills/interactions that apply dots are too strong. Nerf the interactions that are OP not dots as a whole because dots need love and not hate in this, their new infancy.

Dear GGG,

I usually do not post in forums, but I wanted to let you know that I'm amazed by your work and over the past year I've became a big fan of you.

Also, as I'm currently working in IT area, I'm aware the struggle you may have during the development phase, especially under the pressure of deadlines.

I'd encourage you to take a break sometimes as your own lives are much more precious for us on the long run. It doesn't matter if you deliever the new contents two-three weeks later. Take your time, have fun sometimes and go out with your family as well. They will fill you up.

Best wishes,
George

The nerfs to dots are a bit baffling really. Will be much stronger to just stick with Ancestral Warchief / Totems / Defender. Totems are basically a fire and forget source of damage over time. When you think about it, Totems function in the same way as dots, only in a much better way that leads to more damage and many more build options. GGG have a strange way of "balancing" things, I suspect it revolves around the very very top end of the game, where content is trivial and most of us do not play. That would be the only way to explain the crazy balance decisions.

So far I'm liking these changes, gems I'm using getting buffed.
Gems/passive notes I'm not using getting nerfed... a bit nervous when I hear bleed will have massive changes, playing a bleed cyclone Gladiator right now.
Build is really fun hope it won't be nerfed away.
And I really hope it won't be till end of July to fix Mx-Tab ...

great job go on
just fix zana map device mine disappear after create second hideout and thx

Thanks GGG. Keep up the great work.

The DoT changes are very disheartening. Done with beta for now, not interested in testing when it was a struggle just to get a non-ED poison/chaos DoT build to feel somewhat decent. Now I think that is gone with both the gem nerfs and the Perfect Agony keystone nerf...

Might return once 3.0 is released and things are "balanced" for a few months before being jerked around again.

I know I sound more and more negative with every new reply I post, but the game is losing a lot of fun with every release and patch, so it seems. These first waves of beta changes were fun to play with and, yes, some where a little over the top and I expected them to be scaled back, but there is a big difference between scaling something back and outright stomping on it. For "balance" changes, I feel that GGG has been doing the latter for far too long now and the game just isn't as fun anymore.

Perhaps, if 3.0 still feels the same after release, it will be time to say goodbye to PoE.

Ok...Decay rip...and where's poison? o.O