Development Manifesto: Balance in Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas
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Nice change about multi-mod, finally bit more diversity in gearing.
Let's wait for numbers tomorrow to see scale of nerfing applied to physical minion builds. It looks pretty dire as so many areas were nerfed. Not just zombies themselves but also armour, impale and physical damage changes - hopefully you guys are not over-reacting for making zombies too strong in Blight? Necro nerf is due - just stick to word "balance" please :). |
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I was actually looking forward to 3.9 and purchasing a supporter pack until I read this.
I find it ridiculous that zombies got hit so hard. GGG is starting to feel more like Blizzard with every league that goes by. They really need to stop having such a heavy hand with buffs and nerfs. If they truly want to balance the game they could make small tweaks here and there. Yes, zombies were strong, but just gutting them isn't the answer. I'm not freaking out and saying the sky is falling, but all I can do is vote with my wallet. I'm sick of the roller coaster. |
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" You do realize that a lot of people skipped this league for classic launch, right? |
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" Agree. The lure of point blank was always quite strong when playing bow builds. Call it a weakness, but I usually gave (but not always). Now we have reached a place where the balance is equal to the reward. And the keystone is still strong, its a win-win. It is good to see the nerf on some of the early games stronger skills. After watching (some of it anyway, sooo boring to watch pve) a new world record a10 kitava last night (2:01 I believe), I realized again how bad they needed nerfing. I don't mind the low time of completing it, but some skills are far and away too good, making leveling with anything else pointless. Imagine ground slam or cleave (insert most skills) even going at 75% speed.. not gonna happen. He was, AOE withstanding, killing packs at the same speed or greater since like act 2 (hell, lets say 1) than some map at. There was little to no fighting of anything. Now, I've done builds like that, love them, and sucks to try to ever use anything different.. now I hope at least there is some variety to spice things up. Pretty hefty zombie nerf, I think it will at least make defensive minion (blight crafted) keystones more attractive. Because lets face it, before, the options were Death Attunement or Ravenous Horde. Minion builds in general have been strong for a long time.... and they excelled in blight where they were in the limelight anyway. I don't disagree with that nerf though. Most of the nerfs seem well thought out although I can't comment on all, some I haven't played or used in several leagues (such as elemental damage and ailments). |
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" Man...no clasic player will play what GGG force them to play...keep that in mind...clasic players have 1 to 3 build to crush the game and thats it. They will get what they want/need from the game and leave it after...it is just like this simple.If GGG pay one strimmer to make one decent " meta " build for no clasic/core players they will win some people to keep almost alive the shity leagues. | |
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I think these nerfs are awesome.
Honestly I haven't been playing a lot lately because the game had gotten too easy, but I am so exited for the new league. Clearly GGG knows what they are doing. Good job. | |
" Standard operating procedure. Buff then nerf. Change meta then nerf that meta a couple leagues later. It must be to flip the economy and to keep MTX cash flowing. I can live with that because GGG needs to make money. But there comes a time in which the obvious needs to be adressed. Builds doing damage in shapers per second will not suffer much. There is such a huge discrepancy between builds doing millions in DPS versus builds doing a few 100k DPS. The game is to easy for my ice golem build, but my golemancer does millions+ in DPS and guardians die in under 10 seconds. And I'm not even using EE/Storm Brand/COH/Vuln. But guess what I'm going to do after this buff to monster health and armor. I'm going to move a couple skill points around, swap some skill gems around and use EE/SB/COH/Vuln. So this nerf will only amount to a speed bump in an empty parking lot for my golemancer, but some of my other builds that were on the DPS bubble are now going to be unviable. I'm not sure that is "balance". Its more like keeping the casual players out of end game. | |
" Standard was a virtual ghost town during blight for the most part. I personally only played blight to get some oils, which I did. So the numbers of people skipping blight and not playing standard appear to be aligned. I think this trend will continue given the reckless manner in which GGG "balances" this game. If GGG was a solitary public company, I would not be investing in it. If one was to invest in said hypethical public stock, in a year $1 would become $.25. They can fail hard but still be held up by Tencent. Many people will consider that a "success". LOL | |
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I'm not really sure I see how this is a "massive Necro Nerf". Necro has way to many support skills to make slight adjustments and see similar results lol.
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Wow, this is all complaints about nerfs, when a league is nothing more than a beta test. Blight League tested summoner and minion changes, if you want to experience necromancy as intended by GGG play 3.9 necro. Are people that daft?
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