LvL 28 PvP Balance Index

Just some thoughts off the top of my head. Will edit or make additional posts if I return to this.

- Secondary defenses (shield/Acro) seem to play a larger role than primary defenses (armour/evasion/ES). I'd especially like armour and ES to start counting for something.
- Elemental attack builds need some love. It's hard to gauge their power when everyone favors going physical attack.
- Casters need to be buffed in general, but certain spells are already competitive (Fireball, Freezing Pulse, Ethereal Knives, Summon Raging Spirit). I'd like GGG to take care in balancing this aspect with Empower and corrupted +1 items in mind.
- Totems are basically worthless. I'd really like to see some totem LLDers.
- Decrease the power of Temporal Chains versus other curses. 9/10 times people have more reason to choose Temporal Chains than any other curse.
- My talk about curses also applies to auras. If any auras are used, it's probably going to be Clarity. I guess you can consider Tempest Shield and the Herald buffs here as well. Anyway, I don't expect any changes here really.
- Crit is way too strong and needs to be scaled back. There needs to be a bigger trade-off when choosing high damage; right now dagger and Puncture bow/trap builds have too many ways to survive (which is actually due in large part to shield/Acro and, in the case of bow users, just being damn far away). I don't mind crit chance at its current level, but crit multi is making damage so erratic that you might survive one moment against a crit build, then suddenly get one-shot the next.
- 2h weapons need some more defensive options, since right now armour and basically the left side of the tree are lackluster.
- I agree with some guy above that flasks need better scaling. This includes hybrid flasks; it jumps from req level 20 to 30.
- Traps are used to good effect for pretty much everyone. It shouldn't be necessary to bring a Bear Multitrap and have this pre-fight trapping fest where everyone just lays traps. It encourages passive play, which is okay but I think right now it's due to the wrong reasons. I'd like trap-specific builds to be buffed (in the sense that they remain viable as trappers) while toning down the power/necessity of traps for other builds.

More thoughts.

- A lot of skills are just not viable because they're meant to scale into late game PvE via passives. AoE spells like Glacial Cascade, Flame Surge, and Lightning Tendrils require AoE passives and support gems, but those aren't really available in LLD. It would be cool if we could expand the viability of some of these skills, but perhaps the basic nature of these skills prevents effective balance changes. But definitely I do want to see a wider selection of skills being used, and I'm sure most people would agree.
- Talking more about evasion, it seems like the best primary defensive option, as armour and ES don't really do much. Yet evasion as well isn't particularly amazing, as accuracy can be really high at low levels especially with Additional Accuracy. I guess this is just to highlight the fact that what I consider primary defenses are actually overshadowed by shield/Acro. There should be a shift in the power of these defensive options, I think.
- Dual wielding isn't very common right now. Dual Ungil's seems like the most viable dual wield build right now, but even it relies on crit, and if crit is nerfed then dual Ungil's will also be no more. Dual wielding has already received nice buffs aimed at PvE, but again it's not as favored as the 1h/shield option. Basically just seems like shields are overshadowing exploration into dual wielding and 2h weapons, but at least for dual wielding it's also because there are so few dual wielding-specific skills (Dual Strike and...you really want to use Cleave?). Perhaps another dual wield skill?!
- As for uniques, Wanderlust is freaking strong. I don't know what changes I would propose.
- Claws are just out of the picture because leech sucks at early levels, Vaal Pact isn't good, and implicit LGoH is trumped by LGoH support gem. Perhaps claws need buffs.
- The introduction of PvP-oriented uniques is good news, but it's easy to make such items overpowered. This is just a cautionary note to GGG that when making such uniques, it's important to avoid nullifying the power of certain skills that rely on, say, status ailments, stun, immobilization, bleeding, etc. Take Ashrend for example; its "Cannot be ignited" mod nullifies so much possible damage from fire skills. Fairgraves' Tricorne has "Cannot be shocked" and the only reason it's not used more right now is because lightning skills are subpar. We'll probably see more use of these uniques if casters receive buffs, and while they serve as nice counters, I think it's wise to develop uniques that will encourage builds rather than destroy them. AKA uniques should have "Can _____" instead of "Cannot be _____." For example, if a unique is introduced with "Cannot be chilled," all cold spells are utterly destroyed (thank god Icetomb isn't req lvl 28 or under).

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GreenDude wrote:

I'd suggest you wait to see the 1.3.0 patch before you do all of this. It already contains a ton of balance changes.

I'm really interested to see how Puncture will get adjusted without being completely destroyed. It was a nice niche skill for a long time, but the DoT changes made it simply too strong and frustrating to play against.

Really looking forward to improved balancing.

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Apokalyxio wrote:

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GreenDude wrote:

I'd suggest you wait to see the 1.3.0 patch before you do all of this. It already contains a ton of balance changes.

I'm really interested to see how Puncture will get adjusted without being completely destroyed. It was a nice niche skill for a long time, but the DoT changes made it simply too strong and frustrating to play against.

Really looking forward to improved balancing.

I agree, I really liked the explosiveness of the initial damage and it fits bow users because it makes their enemies struggle while being kited. The bleed is outrageous when mixed in team fights with chill, shock,and curses.

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A lot of skills are just not viable because they're meant to scale into late game PvE via passives. AoE spells like Glacial Cascade, Flame Surge, and Lightning Tendrils require AoE passives and support gems, but those aren't really available in LLD. It would be cool if we could expand the viability of some of these skills, but perhaps the basic nature of these skills prevents effective balance changes. But definitely I do want to see a wider selection of skills being used, and I'm sure most people would agree

This is a major concern of mine. I don't know how they can possibly make some of the skills better without severe changes to PvE and racing,which from what I understand isn't something they want to do. As you mentioned some skills and abilities are just trash in PvP,and I think they would require complete overhauls to be remotely viable. Which as mentioned before,could break PvE or racing. I will further lobby my idea for seperate PvP servers for this reason. Hopefully with seperate skills,balances,rules, and designs :D https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1097167/page/2/#p9254597

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A lot of skills are just not viable because they're meant to scale into late game PvE via passives. AoE spells like Glacial Cascade, Flame Surge, and Lightning Tendrils require AoE passives and support gems, but those aren't really available in LLD. It would be cool if we could expand the viability of some of these skills, but perhaps the basic nature of these skills prevents effective balance changes. But definitely I do want to see a wider selection of skills being used, and I'm sure most people would agree

This is a major concern of mine. I don't know how they can possibly make some of the skills better without severe changes to PvE and racing,which from what I understand isn't something they want to do. As you mentioned some skills and abilities are just trash in PvP,and I think they would require complete overhauls to be remotely viable. Which as mentioned before,could break PvE or racing. I will further lobby my idea for seperate PvP servers for this reason. Hopefully with seperate skills,balances,rules, and designs :D https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1097167/page/2/#p9254597

I don't know if separate servers are necessary. I think the skill and passive interactions in PvP can be adjusted, and the trouble might come from keeping the players informed on the real stats of their builds.

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Veloxenium wrote:

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A lot of skills are just not viable because they're meant to scale into late game PvE via passives. AoE spells like Glacial Cascade, Flame Surge, and Lightning Tendrils require AoE passives and support gems, but those aren't really available in LLD. It would be cool if we could expand the viability of some of these skills, but perhaps the basic nature of these skills prevents effective balance changes. But definitely I do want to see a wider selection of skills being used, and I'm sure most people would agree

This is a major concern of mine. I don't know how they can possibly make some of the skills better without severe changes to PvE and racing,which from what I understand isn't something they want to do. As you mentioned some skills and abilities are just trash in PvP,and I think they would require complete overhauls to be remotely viable. Which as mentioned before,could break PvE or racing. I will further lobby my idea for seperate PvP servers for this reason. Hopefully with seperate skills,balances,rules, and designs :D https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1097167/page/2/#p9254597

I don't know if separate servers are necessary. I think the skill and passive interactions in PvP can be adjusted, and the trouble might come from keeping the players informed on the real stats of their builds.

Yeah at this point I don't see us getting separate PvP servers. I just think that the task of balancing skills is so difficult.

Take crit for example. There's a lot of talk about nerfing crit, but how would GGG actually go about it? One way that I think is feasible and more likely is scaling back crit multi. But the discussion on crit has been in the context of physical attack builds. What about elemental attack builds? To me, the only way elemental attack builds have a chance is if they crit, but nerfing crit with the goal of reducing the power of physical attack builds will inevitably hurt any other builds relying on crit to just be viable. I don't see GGG adding a bunch of weapon elemental damage nodes to the passive tree, as that's going to impact PvE greatly as well (though I think a change like this is in order, since pretty much everything on the tree for 1h/2h/bows scales with physical damage). I really, really want to see the emergence of elemental attack builds, not just spell casters, as builds that can compete on par with the current meta of physical attack builds.

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Take crit for example. There's a lot of talk about nerfing crit, but how would GGG actually go about it? One way that I think is feasible and more likely is scaling back crit multi. But the discussion on crit has been in the context of physical attack builds. What about elemental attack builds? To me, the only way elemental attack builds have a chance is if they crit, but nerfing crit with the goal of reducing the power of physical attack builds will inevitably hurt any other builds relying on crit to just be viable. I don't see GGG adding a bunch of weapon elemental damage nodes to the passive tree, as that's going to impact PvE greatly as well (though I think a change like this is in order, since pretty much everything on the tree for 1h/2h/bows scales with physical damage). I really, really want to see the emergence of elemental attack builds, not just spell casters, as builds that can compete on par with the current meta of physical attack builds.

Yeah, the meta is quite hard to balance. In HLD at least... arguably the best build is RT and zero block.

Nerfing crit and block in that case wouldn't necessarily be the best course of action. Bonus points for who can guess the build. :)

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Yeah at this point I don't see us getting separate PvP servers. I just think that the task of balancing skills is so difficult.

I can't disagree on likelihood of us getting seperate servers,however,it seems far too difficult to try and balance both LLD,HLD,racing,and PvE. This mostly is why the only thing that comes to mind is to separate the communities some. I'm not a huge fan of the idea either tbh,but someone will be left out in the dry if they try to fix too much. WoW is a classic example of what happens when you try to balance PvE and PvP. It ruined the game,over a long period of time,at least for me and several people I played with. I'm sure this is a concern of GGG's as well,you can't just cater to one group.

Lightning Warp is in a pretty tough spot in PVP and should be looked into. The skill just doesn't seem to work effectively due to issues involving desynch.

This actually helps summoner's like myself but when you use desecrate in the warm up of the game the corpses stay when throughout the rounds and can be used for spells.