State of the (low level) Game in 2.0. (new edits 8-10-2015)

Now that we have experienced 2.0 and the racing season for several weeks I'd like to compile a list of suggested changes for GGG that should be addressed to improve the overall health of the game, which will net a positive change for the racing community.

If anyone has suggestions for simple, easy, and low cost changes suggest them and I will add them to the list.

1. State of Item balance, and the level at which items can equipped.

With zone changes happening, and the stream lining of Act 1 and 2, we have a crisis where characters progressing normally, but efficiently, are under leveled for the weapons, armour, and jewelry for the zone that you are "intended" to wear them in.

It is intended for you to be able to use a resist ring on Merveil, which is level 11. With the removal of coves and the guaranteed blue pack, if you have bad zones at any point you will not hit 11 without farming somewhere. Before you could skip the blue pack in Coves and still hit 11, but the changes to XP and levels make this virtually impossible unless you get very lucky in the 2.0 version of the game.

It was intended to use a level 17 chest on Fidelitas and Weaver. Their damage should be nerfed or chest level requirements lowered as another example.

Ideally I think all items in the game that are below level 23 should have their required use level moved down one level, perhaps two in special cases.

So poleaxe would be level 17, Woodsplitter would be 12, light brigandine would be level 7, and etc.

Resist Rings

Resist rings would be equip-able at level 10, but I think they might be best at level 9. When resist rings where introduced (I think before my time in the game in 2011) the Cavern of Wrath\Anger were level 14 and 15 (I believe). They are now 12 and 13, and this makes a huge difference. Keeping it consistent in terms of level of item use vs the level of the first zone in the game where a resist ring is really intended to be used (though I would argue that changes to Prisoner's gate makes having a lightning res ring important) then level 9 should be the new level of resist rings.

2. State of weapon balance, accuracy vs casters and their low level gems.

There are several points I'd like to make, just stating the issues and then the solutions can be discussed below.

2a. Melee weapons at all levels were nerfed.

2b. Accuracy low level for melee is extremely unfun, and makes the game seem odd since all you need to do is equip a caster gem and you always hit.

2c. Giving access to gems on the vendor should be more consistent, Marauders for instance get many caster gems and ZERO caster supports in act 2.

2d. Changes to gems for melee specifically have hurt how they operate in the early game to an extreme degree. Every melee class got sweep in the "1.0" and before version of PoE.

2e. Leap slam vs flame dash. Leap slam was nerfed, the distance it can travel and just general usability. This is fine, either give every class access to flame dash or revert Leap Slam changes.

some proposed solutions

Sweep is a great gem because it can be used regardless of weapon type, along with leap slam. Making sweep 12, without giving us a new gem that can be used regardless of 2h weapon type found makes the early game unbelievably punishing. One solution is making level 8-12-13 weapons cost a wisdom scroll instead of a blacksmith\transmute.

My suggestion for Accuracy is to give accuracy the same "no penalty" for normal and then in merciless "full penalty" treatment that resists have. The argument that this complicates things for new players, I mean are we playing the same game? Just having all these different types of packs, ghosts exiles and etc is confusing as it is. Hovering over your accuracy number in normal and it displaying "there is no penalty to accuracy in normal" I think would solve most issues involved.

The accuracy problem before were always problems, but they were ameliorated by the ability to one shot as a melee. You no longer are able to one shot even with some great gear, because of the changes to all low level two handed melee weapons homogenizing them to less damage and around 1.2 attack speed.

Low level weapon damage ranges. This should be reverted ASAP to the last previous state. Attacking marginally faster but doing significantly less damage is a horrible trade off to make a melee, and all it takes is one play through on a melee vs a caster to make you question what you are doing. This is bad because new players who prefer melee over caster will be turned off by this balance state and if they don't try caster, they might just quit PoE.

I'd like a better spread of gems available for each class, since they are already available on the vendor. Right now leveling to level 12 as flame totem fire trap is best for Marauder. I think that this should remain a viable options assuming some of the pressing melee options are fixed. Marauder should have access to at least 1 more caster support gem in normal act 2.



3. Vendor "RNG"

It is simply silly to go to a vendor and not see basic items required by most classes to do things in the game. Normal rarity Iron Rings\Corals should ALWAYS be on the vendor. Most caster classes would argue for a guarantee of Jade amulets, but I think a preferred solution for GGG would be to add a recipe that creates a Jade amulet, say "Any other amulet + green gem" or some variant. This can then be applied to the other "pure" amulets with red gem for Amber and Blue gem for Lapis.

4. Movement penalty

I've been asking for years for this specifically for Marauder, but now that Duelist has such easy access to "Art of the Gladiator" I'd like to see this node removed or changed, and low level chests giving no movement speed penalty. Another option may be to give this node to every melee class, but it is truly an un-fun way to play the game that I cannot wear a chest as a Marauder or any melee class other than a duelist, since it will slow me down.

I realize this might be a subject that GGG is going to reject, but I'd really love if they could at least take another look at making this not as bad as it currently is.

If low level armour chests give -8 MS, could they maybe be reduced to -2, -3 or something other than what they are for wearing a heavy chest.

5. On the beach currency

This has remained stagnant over the years as three wisdom scrolls, but you have removed a gem from Hailrake as a quest reward. So now we are required to have one wisdom beyond what we start with to get either our AoE or preferred melee. (you could just give every class a great starting gem, like molten strike etc instead of archaic single target gems, but I think I know the limit on this one :D).

Suggestion is to give every class 4 or 5 wisdom scrolls. I understand this will change the balance of buying boots but you already removed corals from the low level vendors for casters, so this will not change the early game in any significant way.

8-10-2015 Edit below this point.

6. Dying in Races

The state of the game has changed so much that while it was a grueling endurance slog and surviving it all in CB to race, it is now much more about high speed and getting to objectives ASAP (like bosses).

Descent introduced the concept of dying and getting points, which was continued in Endless ledge and Descent Champs, presumably because they are "void" league races. My suggestion is to give every player regardless of status of their character in a race, points based on the level achieved.

This promotes new players from pushing it to the limit and if they die, well ok! I still got 4 points or something along those lines. This is also nice for long term racers because they no longer feel pressured to not push it in the last 5-10 minutes of a race just because the current race happens to not be a "void" league type race.

Positional points, and Demigods, should remain for characters that are alive.

7. Ghosts in racing

Ghosts are inherently unbalanced like rogue exiles are, and I would ask them to be removed from signature races, though throughout all racing would be best.

The main issue of ghosts vs rogue exiles is that ghosts can inhabit a boss, and this is just absurd outcomes for racers on fast runs. Half of the time the boss will no longer be kill-able by a character, who in normal circumstances would just re-roll the instance and find the boss again, but this is not something that can be done in a race since it means you are now even farther behind (after perhaps trying to kill a "Ghosted" boss for 30 seconds). With racing becoming a shorter and shorter more "burst" like affair, this sort of randomness is too much in the short run.


***New Edits Below 8-24-15***

8. Very odd layouts

Both shipyard graveyard and Vaal ruins likely need a pass for their extremely long and puzzling layouts. This sort of thing would be fine, except most other zones in the game are shorter in length, have clear direction tells, or have a reason for the size (aka western forest has +1 skill, alira and weaver entrance, needs to be larger to encompass that.

endgame gets changed alot but its time to adress low lvl stuff GGG

I agree with this post 100% and i think all the suggestions are both better for racing and better experience for a new player trying out PoE.

While they are at it condense some of the fucking layouts as well. There is no reason to have a random upper prison or cavern spawn as a giant maze with tons of dead ends. Especially annoying in boss kills.

Make ranger not garbage. Thanks

i'd love to see GGG lower the requirement level of the resistance rings i barely get to level 11 before killing merveil in the emberwake race :/

100% agree

Good read , hopefully GGG won't ignore this feedback .

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tryhardgg wrote:

Good read , hopefully GGG won't ignore this feedback .

Pet peeve: large posts that are edited with no indication of what was edited.

Those of us that have read it, don't really want to re-read it and try and figure out what has changed.