Blight Statistics: Challenges and Ascendancy Classes

I'd definitely agree that getting to and gearing for traditional end game is way too easy now, and by end game I mean T16's, Shaper, Elder.

They've dumbed down the game way too much in that regard, probably to attract all the new players, and keep the "entitled" ones.


One of the things that drew me to this game originally was all the theorycrafting of builds and seeing what could actually do "end game" in practice as opposed to in PoB. That seems to have died in and of itself sadly. I don't see any return of it any time soon either, as people these days don't seem to want a thinking challenge; they only want an easy solution handed to them on a plate with clear written instructions.


That whole issue in itself would have me worried, but not raging. This constant tinkering for the sake of it every league though, and the enforced Meta's due to league mechanic I do find very concerning. Personally, I just want to go back to the game where you get to choose your style and build according to what style you like to play. This league just happens to be a prime example, Blights suck for anything without any range (or insanely zippy movement to compensate for melee attacks) which kind of kills off an entire genre of melee players from choosing what they like to play.

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Talkii wrote:

nerfing overpowered stuff is fine. thats some kind of balance aswell. few chaos builds shouldnt be able to clear t16s, shaper and so on. thats why its called ENDGAME. tabula, white weapons, 10c toons arent endgame in my eyes. its already a lot easier now to get to endgame tho, i remember when even t5+ maps were very rare, and even getting 90 was a pain on t1-2-3 maps (also like 90% slower clear compared to current)

You're missing the point, there is no point in playing like 80% of all the attack skills atm for what you get limited by the gem(s) itself compared to GGG's handpicked meta blessed sacred cow builds. We're not just saying this for nothing here, go have a look https://poe.ninja/challengehc/builds/

And since you played from "back then" you would know there was a lot more build variety as well with even less skill gems, some of that build variety like poison bladefall mines and other classic builds were all destroyed like everything else with just a few exceptions, destroying skills so hard they never get played again, rofl. I'm fucking sick of it.

And if you were thinking about saying necro/summon is just "op" bc this patch let me tell you as a summoner player myself that it's been the most OP class/skill build in the game that needs virtually nothing to work compared to other builds for like what 7 leagues already.

"Ahh d00 Wonder why this game turned bland and generic and which made people quit."

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Talkii wrote:

nerfing overpowered stuff is fine. thats some kind of balance aswell. few chaos builds shouldnt be able to clear t16s, shaper and so on. thats why its called ENDGAME. tabula, white weapons, 10c toons arent endgame in my eyes.

How about not introducing broken OP skills / support gems / ascendancy nodes so we're stuck whole season with a build that can run with 50c gear and rival the 10ex builds? How about some beta testing before you launch?

I can get behind "broken" builds that require very specific gear to reach that state, like full shaper items eternity shroud setup or full dex stacking bow builds, they're expensive and time consuming to make.

I mean builds that everyone makes in a season because they're cheap and braindead, get to uber elder on day 3, finish the league in a week or two because they did everything they wanted and got bored.

Yes, these builds get nerfed afterwards but taint the whole league with the experience of "1 build to win it all" because if it's already strong at 10c budget imagine how much stronger they become once proper investment is put into them.

These "1 season wonders" that will inevitably be nerfed, but trivialize the current league create a situation where people are extremely drawn to these builds to complete their league objectives, but afterwards if they want to try another build they get discouraged because nothing feels remotely close in power / ease of progress as the "meta" build.

It feels pointless to "play what you like" instead of "play what is strong", unless you love self-imposed challenges and restrictions. There's a handful of gamers like that but majority will follow the path of least resistance.

Still makes me wonder why bone barrier doesn't scale per level or something? Why do you get an equivalent of improved lvl 20 steelskin (lvl req.: 70) at lvl 35 or so? Who beta tests this?

You guys at Tencent/GGG are really trying hard to make anyone with a working brain stop playing your game.

edit: inb4 I get banned for saying that

Poor Scion/Ascendant, always at the bottom. Wish she could get a bit of love.

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Unleet wrote:

Poor Scion/Ascendant, always at the bottom. Wish she could get a bit of love.

No wonder, every ascendancy got new nodes added over the time making each of them better at what they do or even carving new niches they excel in, while Scion got barely any update, so the nodes give maybe half an ascendancy worth of power... The 5 extra points don't even compensate for this, even aura bots now have better classes to play.

You're also very weak until second lab, while other classes get power spike after 1st lab.

Also each class is made of 3 ascendancies, scion has only 1 and it's often less represented than others that are 1/3rd of their class...

Most of the ascendancies are very viable to beat any type of content with rather mediocre investments. We need the next BIG boss since uber elder is very doable hopefully we get it in 4.0

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MackBesmirch wrote:

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Tyrion2 wrote:

as usual, most of the players don't give a flyin f about challenges

*snip*

... but I consider it less a matter of caring about the challenges as much as the challenges feeling achievable at all.

Nailed it.

I read all the stats and all I can say is : "HUGE necro nerf incoming"

Not that it doesn't deserve it, but it'll be destoyed by GGG nerf hammer, be forgotten in the dust and a new ascendancy will raise for the next league... this whole cycle, it's getting old...

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Wazz72 wrote:

I read all the stats and all I can say is : "HUGE necro nerf incoming"

Not that it doesn't deserve it, but it'll be destoyed by GGG nerf hammer, be forgotten in the dust and a new ascendancy will raise for the next league... this whole cycle, it's getting old...

https://steamcharts.com/app/238960

If you use this steam app (time scale slider) to note player retention, you'll see there is a decline since Dec, 2018. There were two subsequent peaks after that date (PoE breached 100k+ peak players 3 times), which in trading we call a "head and shoulders" pattern and it usually indicates a decline to come.

Dec 2018 Peak Players = 123,462
Mar 2019 Peak Players = 111,114
Jun 2019 Peak Players = 113,258

Sep 2019 Peak Players = 74,653

Sure enough, the decline is in progress.

GGG, keep butchering people's work after each league to maintain the META crap and you'll find the decline irrecoverable.

For all the brainy people working at GGG, not one of you seems to notice trends and patterns for the long term benefit of your company.

Destroying people's build achievements isn't long term thinking. You don't balance anything. You butcher and destroy people's time and effort in order to give people the illusion of "freshness".

In another year, PoE won't be the only D2 clone on the block. Pay heed to the rumblings of discontent on your forums GGG.