What We're Working On

The Skeleton Archers from the alt Q gem can only be supported by the most bland Supports WTF.

I get that they are using their basic attack and thus not all suports work. But come on - this is so incredibly lame!

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captkip wrote:

I was running heists after the change and I can pretty much kill everything and open every chest without setting off the alarm. That might have been what a lot of people want, but it is definitely less fun. I worked around it and strategically killed enemies, ran past other, used decoy totems for some. As far as opening doors, set out a totem, use area control, and don't get blasted! I might be in the minority but I enjoyed that aspect more than just mindless free loot, which we can get in other parts of the game. Hopefully as the league progresses we have heists that require some strategy.

Yeah I'm with you on that. In the few Contracts I did since this patch, I sought out and opened all the Chests and Reward rooms and basically killed most if not all enemies in any room I entered. The Alert Level was still around 45% full by the time I got to the Curio Display.

I think that totally removing the "killing enemies increases Alert Level" mechanic made the process of reaching the Curio Display a little too easy to tear through 'Leeroy Jenkins' style, which goes against the League's idea of, well, stealth.

I understand the general idea of punishing players for getting into unnecessary fights, and if they mess around too much, they won't be able to get everything they want from the mission, thus they have to actually be strategic.

Given the removal of the mechanic, players no doubt thought it was too punishing. Though I think a better option would've been to instead transform it from "killing enemies raises the alert level" to something more like "aggroed enemies raise the alert level while they're alive".

I'd find it more reasonable if it worked like that, and players who make builds that specialize in killing enemies as quickly as possible would no doubt be fine with it since they wouldn't feel forced to stray away from how they typically play.

You could maybe counterbalance this new change by increasing the rate at which the alert level goes up, but the main point is that totally removing the "killing enemies increases Alert Level" mechanic takes much of the challenge and strategy out of the Heist missions; you kinda lose something that helps distinguish Heist from the other Leagues.

might be a bit better if there was a time limit to remove alert level raised by mobs, sort of how you see the amount of alert when you highlight a chest, have a 1-3 second window to be able to remove it if you kill them fast enough. when it comes to crackling lance, allow intensify from spell echo repeat, and be able to retain intensity level from one use of travel skill every 3-4 seconds? or maybe increase the amount of time before losing intensity from walking. firestorm is decent, maybe if it was phys to fire conversion it would be better. but definitely speed up the meteor pls.

Unfortunately with the removal of alert on kill, stealing part of heist lost its identity. Now you dont have to do any decisions, just kill everything and open all chests.
Maybe it was imperfect, but what's the point now in avoiding patrols and Nenet?
Delve was my favourite league, because it gave unique gameplay.
Heist had it as well...for the first few days.


Now, in act 4 mines there are mobs that start hitting the wall as soon as they spot you to spawn chaos golems. What if patrols have same kind of mob that runs to the nearest wall and sounds the alarm, if you fail to kill him fast enough?

My ideal Heist Experience

I mentioned already a few things on the League mechanic, esp the removal of enemy kills not raising the Alert level. I just thought I'd consolidate the concept which I feel would be the best experience and compromise.

Enemies and Alert Level: As I mentioned in another post. Enemies should be treated as objects (animated statues) until they are alerted by Player-Only proximity. This means Skills / Summons / Heist companions will not interact with them at all until their proximity is set off.

Group Enemy Patrols: These should be a much larger Alert level increase however their patrol route in some cases should be longer and they should move a bit faster. Just speed up the whole interaction a bit so players don't need to wait quite as long to avoid them. Same time window just less tedious to watch.

Proximity Detection: Lets bring lighting into the equation. Players moving in front of an enemy in darkness are less likely to be seen than ones who pass by in a visible area. Call for help is another mechanic that could work well and reward thoughtful play especially for Patrols. If the player sees an enemy preparing a specific skill animation they need to be killed or other enemies will also be alerted.

Chests both Big and Small: Alert level for chests in general should be much lower and instead larger chests are more difficult to pass by unseen making it more about getting in than this mini game of "Pick X out of Y chests then Leave" mechanic that's going on right now.

Most other interactions of the League just need some polish and bug fixes. I really hope this doesn't turn into the aforementioned "Pick X out of Y Chests then Leave" because removing enemy Alert level is probably going to cause that and as a big fan of the Thief game series that would just be a waste of potential IMO.

Can you bring back the alert level from killing guards back please, even if it's just a little bit? I was one of the few ppl actually waiting around corners for the guards to pass by and that was very fun for me. Now heists are just another braindead map where you zoom zoom and oneshot everything...

Please revert the change. Let the alert level raise from guards be at 50% or even 25% of what it was before, I just want the option to be stealthy to matter, while not impacting those who want to go fast.

Getting alert from guards will also mean that you won't be able to loot EVERYTHING, so you won't have to nerf loot multiple times. Most of voice lines don't make sense anymore which ruins immersion. This change sucked out all the fun out of heists for me :(

Slaying Monsters Increasing The Alert Level
We killed this. It's not a thing anymore.


Sad to see how GGG is becoming a Zizaran employee, all his frustrations in all the mechanics in the game are changed. When he opens the next stream and says that the POE should charge a monthly subscription, we are all screwed.

currently there is ZERO ( 0 ) IceStorm builds which is viable to run even T15 maps. Therefore You are doing everything WRONG about them.

Feedback on Firestorm


AOE
Okay so i have started this league really hyped from firestorm preview video. My initial reaction on skill was that Aoe was way too low compared to video. Now i am lvl 85 hiero archmage with firestorm. Skill with 140+ aoe skill started to look like on video.

Damage
Damage of meteor part of firestorm feels okay with archmage support but even on fivelink im not alweys able to oneshot rare mobs on white maps.
Problem is damage of little fiery balls following a big meteor their damage is really subpar. And their position is mostly rather bad.

Duration
Duration of firestorm is rather bad if you want to wait for all fireballs hit an enemy you have to wait for all fieryballs to fall. And also the window between cast and meteor part is rather bad. You would want to either increase aoe to compensate for it or lower the window between cast and meteor. Also in my opinion good improvment would be lowering total duration of firestorm and also increasing frequency of fieryballs to fall it would make firestorm less clunky.

Cast speed
Last but not least is cast speed which is counter productive with firestorm's (You don't want to cast it rapidly becouse of limit). But cast time of firestorm feels particulary bad becouse of it and window between it and fall of meteor.

Improvments i would consider are:
- increasing frequency of balls but lowering duration.
- increasing aoe of all parts of skill
- increasing limit of firestorm (I dont think it's that needed if first improvment is made/ Maybe increase it to 5 to make use of unleash with extra charge)
- increasing damage of fieryballs and slightly damage of meteor

Feedback on Steel skills:

Let’s start with something I have not seen(apologies if I missed it) discussed in this thread. We lose shards on corpse destruction. Maybe this is intended. Currently, Gratuitous Violence, Haemophilia, and other sources of corpse destruction removes the shards when the corpse is destroyed.

This affects shard generation from Call of Steel. Because there are fewer shards available, Call of Steel takes longer to fill up our “ammo”. Furthermore we lose out on the damage from the shards ripping out of the corpses. Dropping shards to the ground upon corpse destruction, and allowing us to call these dropped shards, would be an effective solution.

General feedback on Steel skills:

The Steel skills perform poorly without shards, and that generating shards with Call of Steel leads to a “clunky” play style. Additionally, animation interruption leads to canceling Call of Steel much too often for my preference.
These skills are balanced around the damage expected when the player has shards. What purpose does Call of Steel serve then?

1. Simply to slow down the player and force them to press a second button?
2. To provide a secondary source of damage by effectively mining an area?

If it is point one, then why? Skills like Earth Shatter feel good without a Warcry. A Warcry makes them better. Call of Steel should make the Steel skills better, not just bring them up to baseline. Why force a punishing and clunky mechanic on the Steel skills?

If point number two was the intent, then consider removing the shard requirement from the skills and make Call of Steel instant with a suitable cool down. Make the AOE larger to give a bonus nuke that can be occasionally used when mobs have entered the mined area. Another thought is to make short lived steel tornados over impaled corpses. Let Call of Steel do something interesting rather than just making the Steel skills playable.

If the intent is some of both, then give a passive generation to Steel skills that Call of Steel can top off if your attack speed runs you out of shards. Make Call of Steel instant with a suitable cool down to keep the maximum attack speed within a desired range.