iboardthesword's view on LLD currently

My short wall of text about LLD.

As background I willl just say that I’ve played all types of characters with close to best-in-slot gear. Have also dueled extensively against the guys who have the best stuff in LLD standard at the moment. Won some swiss tournies too with the more serious characters. So I guess my point of view will be the actual competitive side of LLD (if you can call a group of 20 or so one).

Currently the main issues that I feel needs to be addressed:

Amount of players: There are way too few people interested in pvp at the moment. Im guessing the main cause for this is mostly because of the huuuuuge gap in gear strength. Something has to be done but I’m not exactly sure what because concept-wise its extremely hard to change anything drastically. If I were the one in charge I would probably implement a system where a player could choose his gear from a respectable pool of items and gems when he or she is creating a character. All the gems and items wouldn’t be tradable in any way of course. The strength of the items would have to be at least 75% of bis gear strength. This way people who wanted to pvp could do so with gear that is actually adequate.


Interface, Tournaments, etc: These are the ones that are easy to fix easy to spot. I will probably forget a lot of these problems in this list but here goes the more important ones.

Let both players see who and which class joined the area. Please.

My personal opinion is that it would be extremely great to have a 30s prep time every time you enter a duel in swiss or normal ladder. During this prep time you would be allowed to change pots and gear. The thing is LLD is all about potions and a few gear swaps. This prep time would be beneficial to both participants because they could both fight with their best setups against one another. Currently people are forced to duel with whatever useless pots when faced with an unordinary matchup.

We need more tournaments. The amount of tournaments is nonexistent at the moment.


Balance issues: This is a tough one. I would like to remind Im talking about only the highest level of LLD with close to perfect gear. I would also like to remind there aren’t many people who play LLD at this level. There’s probably a max of 50 people who have gear like this on standard and it’s a sad thing more people cant take part in this interesting and difficult side of poe pvp.

During the last month the builds have developed a lot I would say. People have finally realized cyclone is the ultimate melee vs melee skill and bow characters can only beat casters. Casters have finally realized bear trap with clever construction is the most retarded thing in the game along with its main ability of causing massive desync. The balance is very volatile and its extremely hard to break this rock paper scissors game of melee>caster>bow>melee. There are exceptions of course but this is the case most of the time.

Cyclone itself is probably the only skill that requires actual changes to its numbers or mechanics. Bear trap is another skill that I would like to see changed for pvp cause currently its just a pain in the ass to play against it because of the massive desync it immediately causes. I don’t see anything else being way above average or in need of a nerf. General community might want to see at least molten strike and elemental traps nerfed too but I feel that its too early to start doing something like this. I know there are ways around those skills and setups that people just haven’t figured out yet.
In short I feel the balance is surprisingly close to where it should be.

Ahm yeah that’s mostly what I had to say.
Last edited by lapiz on Jan 13, 2015, 4:23:16 AM
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Last edited by Lordsidro on Feb 18, 2015, 1:07:36 AM
Hence a utopia PvP realm would allow GGG to begin balancing.
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Last edited by Skyforth on Jan 13, 2015, 7:36:25 AM
I agree with all you said but I can't really have a say in what the top tier of competition is like.

I am currently ranked 118 on the ladder mostly from playing the blitz tournaments. I play a ranger with puncture, puncture trap and ice shot. I have beaten some top players a few times but most of the time I lose. I feel that it is mostly my skill in PVP that causes me to loose because sometimes I can beat a cycloner in blitz and next matchup against the same guy I get wrecked in a second. I feel these deaths often come from my poor placement and bad anticipation of where that melee guy will go.

This is my gear.

Spoiler


Maybe the wrong thread but I would appreciate advice on the gear and also on play style such as positioning and dealing with cyclone.
"
lapiz wrote:
My short wall of text about LLD.

As background I willl just say that I’ve played all types of characters with close to best-in-slot gear. Have also dueled extensively against the guys who have the best stuff in LLD standard at the moment. Won some swiss tournies too with the more serious characters. So I guess my point of view will be the actual competitive side of LLD (if you can call a group of 20 or so one).

Currently the main issues that I feel needs to be addressed:

Amount of players: There are way too few people interested in pvp at the moment. Im guessing the main cause for this is mostly because of the huuuuuge gap in gear strength. Something has to be done but I’m not exactly sure what because concept-wise its extremely hard to change anything drastically. If I were the one in charge I would probably implement a system where a player could choose his gear from a respectable pool of items and gems when he or she is creating a character. All the gems and items wouldn’t be tradable in any way of course. The strength of the items would have to be at least 75% of bis gear strength. This way people who wanted to pvp could do so with gear that is actually adequate.


Interface, Tournaments, etc: These are the ones that are easy to fix easy to spot. I will probably forget a lot of these problems in this list but here goes the more important ones.

Let both players see who and which class joined the area. Please.

My personal opinion is that it would be extremely great to have a 30s prep time every time you enter a duel in swiss or normal ladder. During this prep time you would be allowed to change pots and gear. The thing is LLD is all about potions and a few gear swaps. This prep time would be beneficial to both participants because they could both fight with their best setups against one another. Currently people are forced to duel with whatever useless pots when faced with an unordinary matchup.

We need more tournaments. The amount of tournaments is nonexistent at the moment.


Balance issues: This is a tough one. I would like to remind Im talking about only the highest level of LLD with close to perfect gear. I would also like to remind there aren’t many people who play LLD at this level. There’s probably a max of 50 people who have gear like this on standard and it’s a sad thing more people cant take part in this interesting and difficult side of poe pvp.

During the last month the builds have developed a lot I would say. People have finally realized cyclone is the ultimate melee vs melee skill and bow characters can only beat casters. Casters have finally realized bear trap with clever construction is the most retarded thing in the game along with its main ability of causing massive desync. The balance is very volatile and its extremely hard to break this rock paper scissors game of melee>caster>bow>melee. There are exceptions of course but this is the case most of the time.

Cyclone itself is probably the only skill that requires actual changes to its numbers or mechanics. Bear trap is another skill that I would like to see changed for pvp cause currently its just a pain in the ass to play against it because of the massive desync it immediately causes. I don’t see anything else being way above average or in need of a nerf. General community might want to see at least molten strike and elemental traps nerfed too but I feel that its too early to start doing something like this. I know there are ways around those skills and setups that people just haven’t figured out yet.
In short I feel the balance is surprisingly close to where it should be.

Ahm yeah that’s mostly what I had to say.


When it comes to balancing pretty sure GGG isnt balancing for top end players. They are balancing for the middle class which is what the majority of newcomers and players which cant invest hundreds of exalts into their characters to compete. Also remember this is being balanced for new league pvp. Not everyone is going to be able to get top end vagan mod weapons and elreon jewelry. I think the ratio of gear to effectiveness balance is quite off with many builds especially puncture/nado. Takes very little gear to get to an extremely competitive build. Melee have a facebreaker gear check they need to overcome to participate in this meta. Bows definitely outclass everyone other than maybe caster (which is countered by bows) at this meta.

In balance I think you skipped over a few things tbh. Trigger gems are currently in an awful place. Facebreakers dont even have to attack to get kills on other melee, just hit the flask when needed and stand there. I feel like blink arrow and the new arrows movement skills need a slight CD too.

Also when I hear u talk about top end geared players I have to wonder what you mean. +1 corrupted 6links? Legacy perfect corrupts? Perfect vagan mod gear? Not all classes need this to be considered top end geared. I feel like you are speaking about the balance between the TOP END VIABLE builds gear lvls. Theres many builds we have yet to see in this meta and the debate of balance is far from being completely deconstructed.

your flask swap idea is awful tbh. It gives players making new builds constantly a huge edge on players using the same character name more often. Also some matchups have much better counter gear switches than others so its not really fair to that spectrum of the meta. If you can make your simple swaps in the 3 seconds before the round starts I think thats more than fair.
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Last edited by GrindcoreTHRALL on Jan 14, 2015, 4:18:38 PM
I agree with everything 100% except the pre-game swapping idea. Swaps need to have a cost associated with them, and fumbling around in round 1 is a pretty good one. Besides, in theory you shouldn't know what swaps you need until you've started fighting them (in practice of course people's class, character name, and reputation are usually enough).

Oh, you also forgot puncture. Nerf puncture. Then nerf it some more, and more, until it is dead.

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