3.20 Balance Manifesto: Monster Mods and Archnemesis

Also, how is this going to impact HH?

Magma barrier also made them explode sometimes. Seeing everything Magma barrier did, I'm glad for these changes, will see how it pans out though.

I do miss the simplicity of reading a short list of mods though

so you spent years balancing rares to get them to the state they were before you decided to make AN core, you make AN core even tho 99% of your community was against it and telling you it was a bad idea, now your back tracking and we probably going to be stuck with you balancing rare mobs again for next 12 months? Why not just listen to your playerbase in the first place? Or has it taken us all to leave and play count to drop so far before you realise you fucked up. last 12 months of updates has been nothing but nerfs on top nerfs.

I'm assuming since the AN mods are split into small ones, i dont assume that monsters will have like 10 mods (which would equal to a monster with 2 AN mods).

--> this in result would lead into another big HH nerf and a giga Inspired Learning nerf.

is this thought of? will they stack again now? will there be more rares now?

Wow, did not expect this change, this is HUGE and personally was hoping for, great post, made my day!

Thank God Archnem was one of the most horrendous changes to ever hit POE.

Please tell me that there will not be a executioner type of effect anymore, it always gave me a heartattack

Thumbs up!

At this point I expected GGG to be too stubborn to give up on silly archnemesis. I've been proven wrong, and that feels great.

Nice changes!

As part of the beta testing team, we are happy to see the system we tested for three leagues implemented.

Who are the testers?

THE ENTIRE F***ING PLAYER BASE.

WE WERE WORKING FOR FREE FOR GGG FOR THREE LEAGUES.

I'm BURDENED to this sh*t.

This all sounds pretty reasonable.

I honestly didn't have a major problem with Archnemesis as an in-game system.

I mean, coming back to the game in July after not playing since burning out at the end of 3.16, I found it rippy enough that it was a better choice to level (my little-engine-that-could decoy totem/selfcast-hit-fireball CI occultist standard character from Delve) from 99, where I'd left off, to 100 in Yellow beachheads vs. Red.

But after getting to where the character I actually played couldn't lose XP (I will say that the magnitude of the XP death penalty, the magnitude of the XP scaling at high levels, and the Archnemesis mod system do not all fit well together), I didn't have a problem with it. Well, aside from a few details of implementation (crystal-skinned is fine, even kinda cool, mechanically but the crystal creation should have been A LOT more visually obvious, in line with other similarly powerful effects; obelisk packs could use some more fine-tuning). And, well, the absolutely INSANE decision to have it be possible for gem/quality currency/flask reward conversion types to take precedence over currency conversion (a strict hierarchy of priority tiers was in order: my formulation would be currency > uniques and scarabs > cards > quality currency and gems > flasks), because killing a Solaris-touched rare and having it drop some Alcs, 1 Divine, and 3 Chaos might trigger some FOMO with all the hype about massive MF spikes but it certainly feels much better than killing a Solaris-touched rare and having it drop 3 Alcs and a handful of item-filtered gems, which is the other kind of "MF".

But aside from that, I didn't have really have a problem with archnemesis, while pretty good but far from elite at the technical execution of gameplay with a spectacularly non-meta build. Especially after hitting 100 and respec'ing for more damage via crits vs. "huh, that SHOULD have been survivability..." While playing in standard without Sentinel or Kalandra league mechanics. Without aggressive juicing or a deep-seated psychological need to ZOOMZOOM through everything in a coked-up fashion. With legacy ES gear. On a character that's immune to chaos damage. After there had already been multiple rounds of nerfing the AN mods.

Okay, I can see people's points...