New Brand Gems and Brand Changes in Path of Exile: Harvest

Dang, really wanted to play arcanist brand cold snap to spice up an old self cast style. Rip brand recall.

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99 nerfs on the wall, 99 nerfie nerfs
take it down patch it around, 1 million nerfffie nerfs on the wall.

This is why you never EVER EVER buy a skill MTX, never!!!!

wanted to try something like glacial cascade brands. then I got to the part about brand recall. RIP brands before Brand League even starts

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Jerle wrote:

Cool

yeah other playstyle...

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Brands were first introduced many leagues ago with Storm Brand and Armageddon Brand. Brands are all cast on a location and attach to nearby enemies, repeatedly activating to perform their unique effect. They detach if the enemy dies, ready to jump to another target.

We generally feel that if a common build has ongoing damage with very little input, it should deal below average damage or require massive investment. Certain Brand builds that instantly refreshed Brand duration indefinitely provided too much power for their opportunity cost. Rather than lowering the damage of these builds, we've changed the mechanics that let the build be played passively.

I don't understand all the passive vs active gameplay debate that is going on in this topic. I find it quite irrelevant. There is a target audience for both just like some people like chocolate and others like ice cream.

What we should be focusing on is giving feed-back on the design philosophy and implementation for the health of the game as a whole.

From a personal perspective, iff I like to engage with end-game bosses with builds that require me to be up close to the boss and focused on keeping up dps while paying attention and dodging the fight mechanics, than that is what I will do because that is what is fun and rewarding to me. What other people do in their own boss fights is completely irrelevant to me. I don't even care if they can be safe and dodge all the mechanics while something automatic keeps up the same dps as mine for them. I find it boring so I won't play a build like that. If others find it fun, that is what they will play. Everybody wins. This is not a moba so I don't fell like I get the short end of the stick.

Now... from a game design perspective, you may want to balance the 2 play styles out. Just as GGG stated in the paragraph I quoted. Damage dealt vs opportunity cost.
They start off by stating what the phylosophy of brand design was when they were first introduced to the game. Cast them, have them attach to an enemy, deal damage and then detach being ready to attach to another enemy. Which is what brand recall was introduced for at the same time as the two initial brands. It creates a play style that is right at the niche between an active play style and minions (loot simulator).

Also GGG states in the last paragraph something that contradicts all of their brand desing phylosophy. Instead of addressing the opportunity cost and damage output, they are REDESIGNING the way recall works, and we go from "brands detach when an enemy dies, ready to jump to another" to "brands fall off and have to be recast".
They are literally FORCING onto players a more active play style which is basically telling us "hey guys... this is how you should enjoy our game"

I find that to be the real issue because in a genre which traditionally encompasses both active and passive play styles with the whole spectrum between them, which by nature is just solo play 90% of the time and non-competitive, they are condemning a play style and pushing the scale towards the "superior" more active play.

This is not a discussion between ice bolt vs fire bolt and which one is better (debate on basically particle effects of the same skill). This is far bigger than that.

Also, realistically speaking, If you gutt the play style and it is not appealing to the semi passive guys, and you rework skills into worse self-cast skills than the ones that the active people use, what is the purpose of them at all? Just to have them in-game and cluttering the passive tree with nodes that never get used? Solely to bloat the numbers of skills in the game? To check some boxes and pat yourselves on the back and feel good that "we now hav e X aditional spells in the game that almost nobody wants to play".

Just my 2cents. I never played brands I just tried them out for a short while in 3.6, but taking away a play style and condemning it as "bad" instead of addressing the numbers that made it broken in ONE league is imho just bad design philosophy.

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Varilecki wrote:

HAHAHHAH dead skill will rather play 5 y old srs than thys XD

u killed it no one will buy mtx for brands after that NERF

SRS works quite ok btw. I would love some buffs, but one can do with it (supported with other minions of course).

Gief 1.5k dps 2handers already.

please just at least let us brandrecall on target area, so that we dont need to melee every pack with brandrecall.

I dont totally dislike the changes but it feels a bit like the tripple nerv hammer on winterorb.

coming soon..... heralds^^

If I link Flame Dash/Lightning Warp to Arcanist Brand, does the brand teleport or me? Because I really hope it's me.

Neat, so you're taking the only useful part of brand away and replacing it with less ease and utility.