Season 2 Balance Feedback - Week One

We have a few things on our radar as potential PVP balance issues we could change. We have decided if we are going to make changes, we would reserve them for after the first weekend of Swiss Tournaments.

This thread is a place to post your opinions, and to have discussions on this balance.

To lead off the discussion, I thought I'd tell you our general assessment of the current state of the balance.

We have noticed the meta-game on the Europe Low Level ladders, and those on the US Low Level Ladders were quite different, but seem to be becoming closer. The builds dominant in Blitz seem slightly different again.

We have received contradictory feedback about all common forms of build, which usually suggests things are in a pretty good place.

One of the things we like to pay attention to is builds that have some dominance in mid-tier play, but are very unfun to play against. We have had several philosophical discussions in the office about whether we should only balance for the top tier, or more generally. In general we fall in favour of focussing on the competitive side. When a skill is less fun to play against, we tend to feel its more important to attack builds that start to become more dominant in the mid tiers.

Puncture-Trap builds are very common on the US ladder, and are gaining popularity in the EU queues also. If we look only at the top ranked players it seems to have a reasonably fair distribution. If we look below the very top ranks, mid to high mid-tiers, it is very dominant. If this is also reflected in the Swiss tournaments, or this dominance starts to be reflected in the top tier of play then we are highly likely to make a change to this skill.

For similar reasons Heavy Strike is being looked at, however it is less of an issue than the Puncture-Trap builds.

High level play is much harder to assess. There are a couple of strong spell builds. We know players want spell builds to feature in PVP, but we have received comments on specific ones when they start to be very effective. It can be hard to assess where these builds sit, as part of their success is tied to gear and play. We are, however keeping a good eye on how they perform.

Enjoy the Swiss tournaments! Feel free to post your predictions for the Swiss torunaments.

Balancing Mid Tier vs Top Tier

Like in most competitive (esports) games, the Top level of competitive play is key to the success of the scene as a whole. If top level balance is not fine tuned because the priority was balancing mid tier, then the top guys will stop playing and as the mid tier players reach a higher skill level, they will encounter a contradicting balance to what they were experiencing in mid tier play. Furthermore, mid level players often ask "experts" for help by asking competitive players for tips, watching videos of tournaments or even reading build threads. This means that if the top level scene is not there, the mid scene will not follow through as it has no one to look at above them, nor a goal to reach (be as good as "them"). In essence, the competitive minority fuels the excitement and determination of the mid level and therefore should be prioritized for any balance decision. I am not against decisions that help mid level without affecting top level, but realistically I don't think that is ever the case.

Bows Everywhere

This is a non-issue. Yes bow users are found everywhere in events lately, but this isn't a problem nor does it show a lack of variety. A lot of players will categorize "bows" in one build when reality we are seeing a ton of diversity within this class. Ice shot, Burning Arrow, Puncture/Tornado, Explosive Arrow, Poison Arrow; just to name a few. Puncture Trappers are actually at the best balance ever. They are very manageable and can barely keep up with a top 5 position (at least in Blitz, we'll see in Swiss). They do good damage but not over-powered damage. Their traps can be broken after 2.5 seconds and they struggle against RT/Stun/High Evasion Rating Enemy/Resistance towards Curses & EE. If players are truly complaining that bow puncture traps are everywhere, this may be because of other reasons like: They are easy to make, They were in vogue last season, There is a lack of build diversity in non-bow builds. The latter is not true although still some gems are unusable or clearly sub-par.

Balance Issues

A few notable issues include Firestorm, Elemental Equilibrium and Kinectic Blast. I am 100% in favor of builds that dominant one mode of play but are sub-par in others. However Firestorm is currently winning 1v1 Blitz, Team Blitz and No-Party Blitz quite easily. This is because adding the Stun gem to firestorm gives perma-stun to anyone without stun immunity. Usually Stunning someone rhymes with dealing a big hit but Firestorm can manage to stun a player long enough for another ball to mini stun once again, creating an infinite chain that is hard to get out of. Add to this the Temp Chains on hit effect and you are creating a wormhole that covers a fullscreen and will not allow anything to get out of it. The solution seems obvious: Wear a Chayula. Unfortunately Chayula's dont solve everything. I'd like to remind everyone that the firestorm's damage is high too and the temp chains can still be annoying. Furthermore, the cast speed achieveable combined with the large AoE of the skill allows for quickly covering large portions of the map, forcing a player to enter the storm in order to damage the caster within it. This means the attacker has reduced life and damage due to Chayula, is taking heavy damage as he travels within the storm and is forced to use a curse immunity flask at least if not also a Health flask to approach the player. These are exceptionally high costs that the Caster will gladly trade with as he can then take you down, smokemine away or run with a quicksilver. This can be and has been done in 1v1. But in 3v3, the havoc it causes it unprecendented. Speaking of 3v3 unbalance, Kinetic blast is currently able to one shot players by getting a hit off a wall (similar to EA builds). They usually only have 500 hp but their kinectic blast allows them to one shot while maintaining high attack speed too. I have personally experienced an instant kill of me and my entire team at the start of a round in a small map where kinectic can fire across the full length. I was extremely pleased to see a brand new build immerge, that was exclusively intended for 3v3s, but considering more things that 1 shot have been removed in LLD, this feels quite broken.

Elemental Equilibrium

The keystone needs to be nerfed in pvp. This can be done without affecting pve by mentioning that it's effects are 50% less effective against Players. The reason for this is because it is extremely hard to overcap certain builds for curses, let alone EE which cannot be dispelled. In High Level PVP, in order to stay at 75% resists from a Dual Curse + EE combo (with high gems and quality), you need 232% for all three resistances. Please note that applying EE and the curses can all be done offscreen using a bow for example.

Knockback

One of my goals when visiting NZ to help out with PVP was make Knockback immunity more accessible. This was because Heavy Strike was not only a hard hitting skill that can stun very well, but it also has 100% knockback and causes what is known as Knockback Lock. Knockback Lock happens when a player knocks you back, sending you in the knockback animation. But before the player can end the animation, the player gets knockedback again. Combining 100% knockback with fast enough attackspeed creates an infinite loop that locks you into this form of "stun". To avoid knockback, a player needs to craft 50% knockback avoidance on gloves or corrupt boots for 100% knockback. During my visit, I suggested making a unique, similar to Chayula, whose purpose is to allow players to swap on a Cannot Be Knockedback unique when facing a heavy striker. This is a useful tool to have until you acquire the boots and liberate the slot. Chayula uses the same purpose for stuns.

Other Issues

Stunning should be made possible through using Stun Gem + Stun belt/gear or even passives. Currently stunning is a bit too easy without much cost (only requires a gem that has no mana multiplier).
The nerf to Clever Construction to 2.5 seconds was done because of Traps. However that change affects Remote Mine in HLD which is weird because Remote Mine was already quite easy to counter whereas now with 2.5 seconds it is almost too easy.

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I'll gladly update my post or make a new one after Swiss. Currently the only events we have are Blitz (which is fun but gets boring when the meta is exclusively about rushing). Swiss will help create different metas and playstyles but it only happens once a week.

Dsfarblarwaggle has the ultimate stun build.

Heavy strike and molten strike stuns players, his firestorm mtx stuns PCs.

GGG WTB Eye of Chayula for my poor machine.

I think stun needs looked at and maybe reducing the duration of it in lld.

Disclaimer: This is simply my opinion base on personal experience.
This is not a nerf request list, simply a list of things that potentially needs looked into.


LLD

Traps -
-Traps should have half duration in PvP. This will fix a lot of "trap opness" in my opinion. If you're able to get the traps onto someone that takes a bit of finesse. However the imbalance I notice (I also play a trap build) is from rogue traps that are on the battleground for 25 seconds or so (in a 1.5 minute event).

Molten Shell -
-The damage output of molten shell is pretty insane.

Ice Shot -
-Ice shot is quickly replacing Tornado shot as the goto bow skill. Part of the reason is half of the time you can hit people with the cone that are standing behind pillars and also the damage is real.

Stun -
-LLD Stun is pretty strong. Possibly a reduction to stun duration making it beneficial to grab stun duration nodes/gear with it.


HLD

Elemental curses + EE -
-(Assuming 20/20 curses + 20/20 curse on hit and dual curse on the tree) If you are hit with a dual curse on hit Ele weakness + Frostbite + EE arc for example, you would need 233 Cold resist in Merciless to stay at 75% cold resist. (47+39+50)+ 16% effect = a reduction of 158 of a specific element.

Cast on Crit -
-Being shotgunned by a barrage + CoC + GMP + 3 spells can cause all of them to hit you at once.
Barrage + GMP + Arctic Breath + Ice Spear + Fireball = 8 Barrage projectiles, 40 Arctic Breath, 40 Fireballs, and 40 Ice Spears in less than half a second.

Poison Arrow -
-Nearly impossible to see where the poison is.
-Building max AoE + max Duration allows a player to litterally fill the entire arena with poison arrow. There ends up with no safe spot to "avoid the cloud" if you're lucky enough to even see the cloud.

3v3 Events

Maps -
-Some of the 3v3 maps are entirely too small.

CTF -
-Why is there only 1 CTF event this season. If you are going to schedule 1 LLD ctf, why not schedule a HLD one? Also more CTF events would be great.

Blitz Events
-The timer should be reduced to 1 minute. There are entirely too many people who have a goal of just running the timer out.

"

GreenDude wrote:

Balancing Mid Tier vs Top Tier

Balancing Mid Tier vs Top Tier

Like in most competitive (esports) games, the Top level of competitive play is key to the success of the scene as a whole. If top level balance is not fine tuned because the priority was balancing mid tier, then the top guys will stop playing and as the mid tier players reach a higher skill level, they will encounter a contradicting balance to what they were experiencing in mid tier play. Furthermore, mid level players often ask "experts" for help by asking competitive players for tips, watching videos of tournaments or even reading build threads. This means that if the top level scene is not there, the mid scene will not follow through as it has no one to look at above them, nor a goal to reach (be as good as "them"). In essence, the competitive minority fuels the excitement and determination of the mid level and therefore should be prioritized for any balance decision. I am not against decisions that help mid level without affecting top level, but realistically I don't think that is ever the case.

+1 to this also.

Work in progress.

"

FreeMark wrote:

CTF -
Why is there only 1 CTF event this season. If you are going to schedule 1 LLD ctf, why not schedule a HLD one? Also more CTF events would be great.

Yeah this is silly. I even made a CTF build :(

It's not too late to add them GGG!

Currently in this season I feel there is a lot of variety in builds. Explosive arrow, ice shot, static strike, and even kinetic blast in 3v3 just to name a few. In my honest opinion punc trap/ tornado shot is not even all that great, but it is used a lot strictly because of how easy it is to gear. I feel the diversity in builds is in a good place and there is a good mix of melee, caster, and bow no matter the type.

Concerning stun, I feel that people are really overreacting. Stun is very easibly avoidable through gear with the lvl 5 leo mod, chayula, and stacking stun recovery. Also stun recovery nodes and keystones like heart of oak are available in the tree to help even further counter stun. The counters are there and to be honest it is fine as is.

Addressing curse combinations with status ailments, things such as temp chains combined with chill are suppose to be strong. Its a word I like to use called SYNERGY. Skills that go hand in hand with each other that bolster thier repspective effects are suppose to be effective, and they are as it should be. Just as vulnerability is strong with bleed, so are combos such as temp chains and chill or elemental weakness and elemental equilibrium. EE could use a slight nerf just for the sake of hld, but anything past that is too much.

The last point I would like to mention is about players doing exceptionally well with a skill. An example I would like to use is Dsfarblar's firestorm character. I normally don't like to throw names out there, but I'm sure he won't mind the praise. I've played several firestorm players this season and haven't had much trouble in both 3v3 and 1v1, however Dsfarblar is playing exceptionally well and is making the build look very strong. He is playing out of his mind this season taking a lot of the events, including two 3v3's I won with him this past Tuesday. People have been calling for nerfs to this or some aspects to the firestorm build like stun, but you just can't nerf it because one player has an awesome build and came out swinging this season. Sorry it just is not cool or fair in any way. Same could be said for my ice shot build. There is no need to nerf the cone damage on it just because its an advantage to the build. If all the adventageous portions of skills were nerfed then there would be no need to use them and as a result would kill build diversity.

Nerf EA wall explosion damage, and lightning warp travel speed!

Bleed: in mid- and low- level play I can see bleed dominating against players that don't know how to deal with it properly. The tools exist now though and I personally think its in a pretty good place, at least for high-level play. Staunching is still the most essential flask mod after Warding, though. And NOONE likes getting punctured; it is the single least fun thing that can happen to you in a PvP match.

Stun: we haven't seen any competitive swiss matches yet this season to know if Chayula swaps are a reasonable enough counter (it definitely was last season!). Besides Chayula though, STUN RECOVERY IS A GEAR MOD and I think people often forget how important it can be! There's the Leo mod too, and hopefully people at least try this before complaining about how OP stun is. Having said all that, stun is the main reason I'm using cyclone as my exclusive melee attack. As Greendude said perhaps more investment should be required to effectively stun someone than simply equipping Heavy Strike.

Overall balance has felt a lot better this season. Can't wait for Swiss!

1v1 Match-making algorithm

supposed to find a player/character which is roughly your skill-level and roughly your character's strength and level.
works about half the time.
the other half, you either get someone who decimates you in seconds, or someone you decimate in seconds. and may continue getting that exact same person, especially in Low Level Dueling.
and in High Level Dueling it is mostly a problem with matching char levels, presumably because there is such a wide range.
if the algorithm "thinks", and continues to "think" a level 60 character is a match for my level 80, or vice versa - that part of it should be fixed.
though I'd prefer an entirely new tier: MLD: Mid Level Dueling.
a Character in Cruel/early-Merciless cannot enter LLD events, but also has no point entering HLD events.

1v1 Low Level Dueling: the gear problem

gear is, and pretty much always was, the deciding factor in PvP since I played it in Path Of Exile. player skill can and will matter, but only as long as both players in the 1v1 event pass a certain "gear threshold".
well that gear threshold is steadily increasing, and steadily makes less and less sense.
it is an "Arms Race", really. one where the huge disparity between the "rich" and "poor" and "trading" and "self-found" in this game shows all too well.
I think items such as corrupted 5/6-links and gems, level 7-8 Master-Crafted rares, and general Map-tier loot, have no place in LLD.
honestly, there are items out there which would make a character viable to run Merciless or even do maps with, in PvE, yet for some unexplained reason require level 28 - and completely destroy your opponent regardless of skill, if he/she doesn't have gear of the same kind.

please make level LLD 28 items... well... "level 28-tier". throw insane items out of LLD, simply by increasing their level requirement. there are more than enough stuff out there (especially uniques), to make LLD fun without breaking it.

and this should fit well with the new MLD events I am suggesting.

positive feedback: Capture The Flag team events

very, very fun.
even teaming-up with a group of complete strangers, against another group of complete strangers - is a lot more fun than I initially thought it would be.
it also brings an element of "team strategy" to PvP, which I like very much.
my only slight gripe with it, is the game's graphical optimization. when you can have up to 12 people on the screen at once, potentially high-level and spamming GPU-costly skills repeatedly - things can get bad rather quickly.
but this is an issue with the entire game and not PvP-specific, so I'll leave it at that.