A Few Specific Balance Changes in 3.2.0

FINALLY A BISCUIT NERF THAT MAKES SENSE.

FUCK THAT AMULET.

I can't shake the feeling that the Bisco nerf isn't because Biscos is that good of an item, but because a lot of people convinced themselves that it's that good of an item. So knowing that a chunk of players are pigeonholing themselves into one amulet it then gets nerfed again to get 'em out of that line of thinking. I could be wrong, though.

Also all these comments and hostile attitudes towards that amulet (like the comment above mine). Wtf?

I also find sextants to be strange. Hordes of players have to constantly feed the so-called "top % players" all of their sextants in order for these sextants to be useful. So you need a whole class of underlings to forfeit this rewarding part of the game. My change and suggestion is to just have a box at the bottom of the atlas to put sextants in (or better yet, league stones). Have it apply atlas-wide and that way all players can use them. This way we don't feel like shit when Breach gets removed from the map device.

I feel like there's a missed opportunity here with Standard League, especially. Make that a league where you can pick any past league and play it through the map device or something. Breach level 8 Zana, ~6 chaos. Harbinger level 2 Zana, ~2 chaos. That sort of thing. I don't know, just throwing that out there.

Nice changes. Totally understandable, why you do this.

Still, there is a lot of improvement to do in the game.
Maybe for the next leagues: less new content but more balance existing content.
These days the game is balanced way better, than in the "old days" with double dipping etc.

I am very happy that sextants were changed, but think this is one of the worst ways it could be done =(

Sextants, by themselves, feel very bad to use. If you never blocked or did any of the other crazy sextant strategies, you would have negative EV every 3 maps due to the excessive re-rolling required to get useful mods. Blocking became mandatory in order to achieve a positive EV over 100s of maps. People didn't hate sextants inherently, they hated them because there was exactly one use in which they were profitable. And if you didn't do a fully-blocked setup around a shaped map you were almost guaranteed to lose money.

With a sextant-blocking setup, you were much more likely to get only desired mods, which minimized re-rolling, which allowed sextants to be profitable. Now that we are not able to block out bad mods like Slipstreams, Stationary Damage, attack and cast speed, forsaken master and more, I'm guessing that sextants will actually cause you to lose currency over time and only be used to seal maps.

I'm all in favour of changes, but at face value this seems to be a pretty poor way to improve a broken system. I hope there are more monster density buffs in light of sextants getting killed.

league overall seems tedious.
The damage changes will increase 1 shots .

The changes to sextants is poorly thought out, as sextants just need to be redone in general.
i have never had the time or patience to try and block mods, nor should that be a thing.

just have the 5 sextant mods apply to the atlas in general.

people talk about nerfs .id say FINALLY! no more ....sextants.Zana without breach?, not planning to rush to lvl100 by doing only breaches ;not like the 5% of no lifers around; the majority of people wont miss that perk .Bisco ,uhm first u have to find one and then u sell it to someone problem solved xD ( i'll go for a fulldmg amulet as always hehe)

thumb up to the changes.

What a disappointing update. Oni-Goroshi was totally uncalled for. It wasn't that easy to get and it wasn't that powerful either.

Breach is the best Zana mod IMO and many builds use breach only items. Another crap.

Sextant mattered for very small number of people who were (ab)using sextant use.

Bisco wasn't that powerful either but you cant stop taking away anything that players use or go after more than other things.

Give us better alternatives don't take away the ones we have and like.

2 thumbs down.

Skipping this league. Hope you are now happy.

It seems that you are running out of ideas, ggg.

Replace the sextants with league stones and im happy.

Oh, look. Another boss buff. *Sigh*. Look, i know it's your game and your vision and all, but seriously, personally, i do feel this is getting a bit ridiculous. For a while now, balancing has, to me, seemingly been done around that percentage of the player base that destroys the top content. Even introducing content aimed at solely those players. I've seen some quotes in a recent article, supposedly from Chris, saying the new uber elder fight is aimed to only be doable for "the ones with no job that can sit around and play poe all day long". You try to balance stuff here like the oni drop but that will only make it more unattainable for other players, to all others, perhaps a minor nuisance. Look, i don't know, i don't have all the data ofc, but it surely seems the power creep and most other changes from the last years have so far only benefited that crowd. I wouldn't call myself a casual player at all, having put a few thousand hours into the game and plenty of funding, but i have to say, i'm starting to have a difficult time keeping up with the content. That's my problem ofc, but maybe, it'd be nice sometime spending one of the next updates doing a rework off all uniques and skills you've patched into oblivion over the years. I'm pretty sure that'd be something all your players would equally appreciate.

Also, i realize it's been stated a few days ago that the new ascendancies are still being worked on and all and that by having taken it upon yourself to put out four content updates each year, the schedule is surely very tight, but for such extensive changes, you might want to try to fit a slightly more acceptable time between release of the info and the start of the new league start into your planning for next. This is just too short day.

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Fukurokage wrote:

And I'm still trying to get my first ever oni...

Where is RNGesus when we need him!?!

BTW: Diablo 3 has close to zero changes and people don't like it. PoE has dynamic, ever-changing environment and people don't like it... If you want every other season and patch looking just the same like the previous ones, go play Diablo3 or something...

In hindsight, Diablo 3 very rarely ever gets nerfed, everything gets brought up in line with something else, so it gets a lot of actual power creep. The game certainly doesn't get nearly the same additional content thrown at it ( even though league content is pretty much 3 month temp content ), but you never dread when patch notes go up, wondering if half of your builds and collected items are worse than they were last month.

Path of Exile, on the other hand, nerfs just as much as it "buffs" something; to the extent that there is never any actual power creep, just a new redistribution of build popularity. I have never, in that regard, ever felt closer to getting to shaper and killing him. Nor have I felt like each league becomes easier and/or quicker to get to where I was the previous league.

If anything, I feel continuously bogged down with new hoops to jump through; and the previous hoops that I actually enjoyed are now stuck behind a zana rotation or "10%" rate; or removed entirely from the game.

I never saw the appeal of playing "standard league" in Diablo 3, but I certainly understand it for PoE. You're not nearly as thrown into the wilderness naked, and you get to keep the majority of your goodies as legacy features. PoE leagues hold the player hostage to the whims of whatever the patch notes say the day before the league starts. It's not a problem of change, it's a problem of uncertainty.