3.20 Balance Manifesto: Curses

GGG needs a reality check
PoE gameplay is VERY fast based compared to other ARPG's and trying to self cast curses on every pack of monsters while mapping is literally impossible no matter how many "Buffs" you throw at them.
Does anyone from GGG's dev team actually play the game ???

"In most cases, systems that facilitate somewhat automated gameplay, like Hextouch applying Hexes automatically, should either come at a much higher cost or be less effective. In some cases, both are needed to counterbalance the significant upside of automation. Otherwise, the option to automate will always be the obvious choice and eclipse other more interactive gameplay styles."

Do you guys just HATE Accessibility players or what??? Every other studio is reaching out to partner with Accessibility Organizations to ensure their game is playable (and without pain) for everyone. You guys seem bound and determined to go the exact opposite direction. As an Li/Low APM player (from physical injuries) and a supporter of Accessibility in Gaming Organizations and charities, I have to say this is kind of disgusting.

I already have to plan my builds around automation just to play your game at all. I always sacrifice a ton of DPS. It's the only way a lot of us can play at all. I just don't understand why you want to drive us away.

so a nerf to general mapping wich is 95-98% of the play time and a buff to bosses. interesting. why not just remove the penalty for bosses and be done with it. why the hell nerfing automated curses. and for most bosses, aka map bosses, vulnerability goes from 40%*0,66 inc taken to 40% so 10% more dmg. nice, not gonna complain, but i dont see why it would justify to nerf 95% of our playtime with this automated curse nerf.

i am surprised very few content creators insist on this nerf. Sure it s interesting as sth to reconsider and run some numbers for killing bosses but overall, it s a nerf to most players during most of their playtime.

as for blasphemy aura it sucks hard anyway now in maps where there isnt any penalty so not gonna change. And for bossing , it s not a problem to self cast the curses. so blasphemy will be still useless besides cursebot. blasphemy doesnt reach the side of the screen anyway. determination and grace doesnt distinguish between close monsters and edge of screen monsters. who would chose a curse and get fucking destroyed by mobs that happened to be too far to not be on the influence of curses.

tldr : clearly interesting changes for pinnacle bosses but at the cost again at a nerf to most our playtime. wont help retention. remember the loot has still been destroyed for groups that before would shower trade with loot.

another tldr : disapointed.

feels like you rip curse master identity with theese changes. +1 curse and explosions thats all is left. Malediction was not only dps it was survivability also. +No one gonna bother to use 2 points for +1 curse its bad. You say you compensate the dps and what about less damage taken part? 15% curse effect gone, want it back spend some passives on it.. Can you please stop nerfing everything, occ was one of the classes that was actually good. How about buff the weak ones, strange logic guys.

Could you please let us know in the "Curse FAQ" if we do get any other source to acquire "Malediction" like as a mod for gear or maybe a passive-skill-tree node? Because with the change to the Necromancer Ascendancy in 3.19 you pretty much moved the "+2 to all Minion Skill Gems" from the Ascendancy skill tree to the gear mod pool. So it would be nice to see something like that happening to the "Malediction" one too.

Maybe in the same way as the Minion gear mod with one version - probably a Tier 2 - which is weaker than the actual former "Malediction" of 10% and then a stronger but more rare mod - Tier 1 in this case - which is as strong as the former version with the 10% to less damage taken from cursed enemies as well as enemies take 10% more damage.

that ring seems nuts

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50Hertz wrote:

Could you please let us know in the "Curse FAQ" if we do get any other source to acquire "Malediction" like as a mod for gear or maybe a passive-skill-tree node? Because with the change to the Necromancer Ascendancy in 3.19 you pretty much moved the "+2 to all Minion Skill Gems" from the Ascendancy skill tree to the gear mod pool. So it would be nice to see something like that happening to the "Malediction" one too.

Maybe in the same way as the Minion gear mod with one version - probably a Tier 2 - which is weaker than the actual former "Malediction" of 10% and then a stronger but more rare mod - Tier 1 in this case - which is as strong as the former version with the 10% to less damage taken from cursed enemies as well as enemies take 10% more damage.

with the medium cluster jewel, you can get malediction after 33% of the curse duration, so i suppose if you rotate 2 curses, you can get 100% uptime

Damn I actually loved hexblast doomsday with max doom. I also wanted to play it in 3.20 since 3.19 was the first time I played it and I must say it was fun to play around the one sec max doom doomsday since it gave the deserved ammount of damage. And it was fun to switch between blasphemy during maps and self cast during bosses...So my build is destroyed and it's not even start of 3.20 haha... How can GGG call everything "making the game better" when everything so far is just useless patch or change of things that actually didn't matter or destroying fun and rewarding builds completely.
The game is already too complicated for making anything new and there is nothing in between tanking with 0 dps and automating everything and killing everything in one shot hoping you won't get hit or it's oneshot from white mobs. And this curse "improvement" is far from making it better.

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Mursa wrote:

that ring seems nuts

and noone will drop it

I am pretty on board with the changes here, but like with the jewel changes they just seem like odd places to put your attention. I can imagine a lot of dev time went into redoing arch nem (again) and you had to just fit in what other balance you could get to that's been on the list; but there are a lot of things that the community and ggg have talked about needing improvement that have been seemingly ignored again.

While I personally do not care, melee still needs the rework that was promised for this patch on the 3.19 announcement stream. While you may feel like it is in a good place now, not having a discussion about loot is short sited at best. The trade system desperately needs an overhaul and is consistently one of if not the most frustrating part of the game. The ui is ancient at this point, when you updated the skill tree you said that it was older then some of the devs children, on top of that your ui was meant to be reminiscent of older games, so this compounds into being one of the most outdated things about your game. We have also been dealing with basically the same meta for 3 leagues now.

Your game needs work and if all of these things are not going to be ready for poe 2 then that needs to be delayed.

I also realize we do not have the context of the reveal or the patch notes so some of these issues may be addressed but to quote some asshole at GDC "Always make the game as good as it can be right now."