Seems the new Retaliation Skills were only a Pipe Dream after all...

"

ArtCrusade wrote:

Where's the ad hominem? You're just ignoring their arguments and personal perspectives while implying everyone else just doesn't understand your arguments.

---

It might be difficult for those who frequently use them to discern when they are, in fact, using them.

ad hominem
adjective
(of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.

"

BaumisMagicalWorld wrote:

"

ArtCrusade wrote:

Where's the ad hominem? You're just ignoring their arguments and personal perspectives while implying everyone else just doesn't understand your arguments.

---

It might be difficult for those who frequently use them to discern when they are, in fact, using them.

ad hominem
adjective
(of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.

Kind of a boy that cried wolf situation here I'm afraid. Rules for thee but not for me!

---

---

I like how everyone has disagreed and provided feedback and data why they disagree and has been met by the OP with:

"Well I actually didnt say that..."
"You fail to understand what this means"
"You are just attacking me with ad hominems"
posting defintion of ad hominem
posting gif of a guy eating popcorn


Clearly the OP is just looking for people to agree with them rather than any open discussion and has now defaulted to unrelated, and silly responses. Unfortunate.

---

The new skills are NOT retaliation, they are a bad meh slam skill with HORRIBLE conditions to activate.

GGG/Tencent Removed retaliation, a skill that people quite liked, that some elite entitled people and GGG absolutely hated. because "player agency" aka play how i think you should play.

Block builds used to be fun, hard to accomplish but fun, they kept getting nerfed because of a small amount of players screaming "NOOOOOO I don't want you to enjoy playing like that" They were niche but some of us really liked building into it, the constant nerfs for "agency" were an annoyance but many players still enjoyed trying to build it.

Sadly the small entitled group won, and forced a game play style that was not wanted onto other players, again in the name of "agency"

block builds were fun at one point, sadly with all the whining that started to die off as many things were taken away from then, hell even the chance to block was taken away from them and split up (block / magic block) along with all the stuff that now ignores block completely.

there is no retaliation anymore, just janky gimicky slam skills with extra steps that force you to pay attention to a horrible position on the screen, cant be used as a main skill just a throw on to garbage, forces you to stop moving, forces you to now select where it is going.... its a massive step back. As a player who used to like block builds it was removed.

At this point just remove any skill that can use bows because why not, I say why should range skill be allowed, why should magic be allowed, remove that as well. Why allow gems at all, just remove them it would force "agency" I dont agree with you using any skill at all. hell just make the log in screen "you suck you have died" and then create a new character..... basically what you have asked people to swallow with these changes.

"

Judicas wrote:

The new skills are NOT retaliation, they are a bad meh slam skill with HORRIBLE conditions to activate.

No, I don't entirely agree. I don't think they are bad per sé, it's the combination of several intertwined mechanics that make them good on paper, but not in actual practice.

High base damage + high flat damage multiplier: Good

Why? It's a tradeoff between skill uptime and expected damage. Also makes gear stats more impactful.

Why does it need high base damage? To "feel good" when you get the "opportunity" to use the skill.

Cooldown: Mandatory

Why? Because of high base damage. Also, because it adds this moment of "opportunity" that triggers that neuron activation. FOMO is a great example with lots of interesting studies.

*Edit: Oops, forgot to add the duration factor.

*Duration: Adds that "FOMO" to the skill, making it feel more impactful when you get it, except in PoE it's just not that big of a deal. I can use one of my all-time favorite games from the past as an example here: Darksiders. When you got that bar filled to go full Apocalypse mode, it felt so bloody good because you felt OP as fuck and it really worked in that game because you were introduced to this mechanic at the beginning of the game and then immediately downgraded. And when you got that power back over time, each power-up you got felt really good because you knew what you could look forward to.

Furthermore, they added other goodies such as "can't be evaded", to make these guaranteed to hit. Add to this a flashy animation, and you got something for melee builds that feels special in the sense that nothing else like it exists.

Divine Retribution is the perfect example where this design space just acts in reverse: Because we already have spells with high base damage that will always hit, it offers nothing of value. It has no special interaction of any kind. Just another button you can press to activate an ability. It doesn't "feel good" to use because it's, well, just another spell.

I really like this one in particular because it highlights a fundamental problem: the disparity between spells and attacks. Like, not talking from a DPS point of view, but from a design perspective. At a basic level, spells are superior in every way. Especially now that attacks also cost a lot of Mana by comparison. You don't need Accuracy Rating, so crits never have to roll twice, they come with flat damage and strong level scaling, which makes them far less gear dependent at a basic level.

The problem with Retal skills is simply that they can close one of the gaps, but in how they are fundamentally designed, they just cannot compete.

If they would just activate when you get hit, with a cooldown, they would be far easier to balance than the mess they currently are. Not only did they receive a ton of new passives, they also just... don't do anything special. Mostly comparable to Fist of War Support, but in the form of an active skill with a bunch of extra conditions tied to them.

Say, if Crushing Fist, as the name actually implies, would actually literally apply the "Crushed" debuff, it would already be a better skill. Alas, it's just another "nuke" button press. *yawn*

As I had said they changed them from a retaliation skill like vengeance, automatically went off once conditions were fulfilled. To a literal slam skill- slam skills are high damage slow skills that root you in place and forces you to target with a gimmick.

Personally i hate slam skills, yes they have a high base damage, its very slow to recast and locks you into place for a moment, no movement = death.

It is a horrible tradeoff, if they had just added these skills to the actual retaliation skills, so you had them that you could proc in addition then it would be decent, as of now, its yet another trash skill you have to pay attention to and has to many hoops to go through to use correctly.

Why is cooldown mandatory? other skills do same or more damage without the added requirement gimmick of being hit AND having a short window to use. Those two things should completely remove cooldown on it and even increase the damage higher, or add special things to them.

easy way to see this..

normal slam skill
high damage +1
large area +1
use anytime +1
uses mana -1
slow attack -1

gimmick slam (aka new retaliation)
high damage +1
large area (dependant on skill) +1
use only when blocking -1
large CD -1
forces use of "main skill" instead of it being a main skill -1
uses mana -1
slow attack -1


so as i said, similar skills, just one goes through extra hoops to get to the same ending. It is no longer retaliation, just slam with extra steps

Old skills should have been buffed up but even as they were
required block skill (or parry) -1
automatically retaliate +1
extremely fast CD +1
low damage -1

at least the old skills were automatic, even though for "agency" they were nerfed again and again.


GGG/tencent has this horrible design of skills where every single thing a skill can do is added together so they think 1 = 4 = 2

what i mean by that is to them, 1 damage = max range = proliferation = opportunity, sorry but proliferation, is worth much more than the single damage and opportunity to even use a skill is a negative not a positive.

"

Judicas wrote:

Why is cooldown mandatory?

It is, from a design perspective. These skills have high base damage and high flat damage multipliers. It's by design that they have a cooldown because they are not meant to be used constantly.

If these didn't have a cooldown, they would probably be the most busted skills in PoE history and the META would be to build around Vaal Breach with reverse Knockback and then spam these skills until everything is dead within a second.

GGG was (presumably) trying to simulate the feeling of "rage mode" you know from other games, except that in PoE it would require such an insane power spike that it would be a serious balancing concern. Think of Vaal Haste. Concept is the same, just a different type of application. And players would just chase that high and try and break the game, or quit when they can't get it. Which is why this concept was doomed to fail from the moment they were designed.

Diablo 3 is a great example of how detrimental disproportional design can be. Sad thing is, PoE is moving in this direction. We are now in the realms of over a billion DPS. And only 5-6 years ago, a couple million DPS was considered top tier. And a billion is 1000x a million, to put that into perspective.

"

Judicas wrote:

so as i said, similar skills, just one goes through extra hoops to get to the same ending. It is no longer retaliation, just slam with extra steps

You wouldn't be saying this if these skills were actually unique, which is basically my point. They are not unique, they got nothing special going for them that'd entice you to want to use them constantly. And that is a problem.