Endgame PVP(standard). There is no real "Counterplaying", only "Counter-building"
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Simply Because of certain mechanics and the way dmg is scaled. There is no real counterplay.
What I mean by this is like for example way back in d2 pvp, we had Hdins, smiters, bliz sorc, WWbabas, KnockbackBowZons, Bonemancers, etc. You see, in D2 didn't really matter which type of those pvp character you played out, you can get bad matchups, but you would never be completely dominated in any single matchup so long as your equally skilled/geared, along with good latency/fps. PoE on the other hand is pretty much aegis users (properly geared/built) wrecking just about every other build and creating draws with other aegis builds/etc, then finally losing to like the 1% dedicated builds just to counter that specific type of aegis build >..> This is not counterplaying(i.e outsmarting opponents with battle strategies, micro, skill/control,etc). This is what for a lack of better terms i'd call counter-building. Now despite me mentioning aegis, the shield itself is hardly the problem. I am also fine with dmg scaling of skills. The biggest issues in pvp IMO(from greatest to least): 1.
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Armor is way too effective. This is due how heavily physical dmg per hit gets reduced by in pvp(even without getting any additional attackspeed or cast speed). Unless you constantly crit with a big mutiplier any well built armor(aegis) user is just going to straight up tank that harass. Changes should be made to armor effectiveness in pvp.
i.e. If a Player had 40k armor, upon entering arena, reduced armor effectiveness kicks in (let's say 50%) and thus the player has only 20k armor instead of the original 40k. A change doesn't affect evasion based players, and also evens out the playing field more in regards to physical vs elemental damage when fighting armored units. --Another way to go about this is applying a softcap on armor. ie armor above 10k will be halved in its effectiveness. So back to the guy with 40k armor, he would have 25k armor in the arena. This change is even better in the sense that it doesn't penalize AR/EVA builds with moderate defenses. Thus allowing more ways to build for pvp. 2.
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X element penetration.
No dedicated pvper is going to rely on pure physical dmg(excluding trap builds), as no smart opponent would be foolish enough not to get some decent levels of armor. Thus we are left with elemental dmg simply because elemental dmg penetrates and hit avg players as if they had a set 40% element resistance, and no amount of Attack/castspeed increase is going to change that, thus easily making elemental dmg the top dog in terms of dishing out pure dps overall. thus imo: giving players in arena an innate penetration resistance or reducing the effectivness of penetration itself would be a great boost in balance between elemental dmg n phys. 3.
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Legacy items.
Mainly Aegis, Crit Amulets, and Maybe Kaoms. Compared to what you can roll now, the legacy counterparts are like twice as effective. The best solution is to disable items with legacy modifiers in arena and give players a warning like say u can't use x equip in arena, else would have to just count on players to be cool enough to not bring their legacy stuff into the zone. 4.
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CWDT.
No body in the right mind, if they have gem slots left, would not include some sort of cwdt combo. Personally I do lv1 cwdt -blind-firestorm-ball lit & also cwdt - inc dur + immortal call. Things like this IMO should be just left out of pvp, it promotes lazy gameplay when instead devs should develop better activation methods for diff effects and try push for uses of things like smoke mine/phase run/end cry/etc. | |
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Ok so, aegis builds definitely aren't the strongest builds out there. So many things wreck them. EA completely destroys any aegis build, any phys bow build > aegis, any melee sword build destroys aegis.
The thing is if aegis builds want to deal damage, they only become immortal while their rumi's concoction is active. When the potion isn't up they just die. If the build is always at 75% block without rumis, it wont deal any damage that could be considered as a threat. When it comes to armour, it is almost completely uselesss in pvp. I have no idea why you think armour holds any value in a pvp match. Even in pvp, lighting coil is a really good way to mitigate damage against opponents who deal physical damage. Builds that use critical strikes can be countered sooooooooo oh so hard by the passive unyeilding and the belt of the deceiver. Those two combined will almost halve the damage of the crit user. This combination is absolutely insane and literally makes crit builds bad. Add enfeeble to this and it is just ugly. The truly imbalanced and dumbass skill is frost wall because of all of its interactions. EA and LA benefit so much from this and it makes beating those particular skills completely impossible for a melee char. Also every bower is required to use 100% pierce because they cant deal almost any damage otherwise to chars who use cwdt+frostwall. With 100% pierce regular phys bowers can fight against EA and LA to some extent. Melees cant do anything about it. EA would be manageable without frost wall and 100% pierce but currently it is just absurd. Aegis cant be considered even a problem compared to frost wall. Last edited by lapiz on Oct 18, 2015, 10:06:30 AM
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1. You didn't understand my post, What you just said is "counter-building" and leaves no room for opponent to fight back; Not counterplaying, which was one of the main points i was driving at.
2. This isn't always true, try fighting against lowlife spellcaster aegis with 40k armor(no rumi) over 10k es (yes this is possible, and you still get dmg thanks to jewels), even with block pen sword factored in you will not be able to kill relying on physical dmg alone. "
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Point 2 above. Highlights 1 reason why armor is not useless, instead it just further inhibits ability to counterplay for many matchups. A physical dmg cyclone in pvp will do insane amount of dmg vs those with no armor,same with ek; but against proper builds with at least 10-15k, you will nullify around half to two-thirds the dmg of the avg cycloner, which is alot more effective than legacy lightning coil. Coupling decent levels of armor with life regen between melee fighters renders physical dmg completely unplayable, The melee that goes with 100% fire dmg molten strike or lit dmg static strike will always (assuming both are properly geared) outdps the melee fighter with physical dmg. No counterplay once again, only counter-building.
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once again if you read my post accurately, I said aegis is not the problem, in there I was getting tired so I didn't flesh out the ending sections, but cwdt interactions was included on the list.
Once again in this last section of your post you are highlighting the unavailability of counterplay in PvP. Using D2 as an example once more, you take any 2 classes with proper setups (i.e Hdin vs smiter), they both have a relatively fair chance at getting a win; overall id say well geared frozen orb sorcs were the most pain in the neck to deal with, but counterplay was still more than possible. In PoE however, you take your 2 builds (i.e. Poison arrow vs ES arc) One of them is going to get completely dominated regardless of skill. As another example, In d2 when you get hit by a blizzard/frozen orb without cannot be frozen mod from things like hawkmail, you weren't completely f*ed, you can still move/cast etc, you didn't need load you belt with thawing pots or antidotes, and potion useage was frowned upon. It is completely different in PoE, if you go up vs cold dmg without any type of freeze immunity, your basically screwed if you get hit(minus some retarded aegis builds). Add in things like flask usage and you got one hard to balance game. Counterplay. Counterplay. Needs more Counterplay! | |
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Last edited by Lordsidro on Oct 20, 2015, 10:03:02 AM
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" Need to give me a break with the word choices, was writing this stuff at 1AM, but indeed armor is not useless vs physical dmg. When I wrote too effective I was thinking about in comparision with diablo 2, and also various aegis synergies and other life builds with regen allowing for matches to stall to a draw by just running away etc. Armor in Pvp in this game is definately alot more effective than the way armor worked in d2, in d2 if i remember correctly it didn't affect damage directly, rather it affected enemy chance to hit, in PoE, it's different, a bit of armor can nullify alot of physical dmg in PvP, makes a very worthwhile difference between having 0 armor to just 8k armor. Gonna mention counterplay one last time cuz no one understands the point of counterplay....
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3 min 29sec. The level of play by that monk, and how it affected the match is real. That is counter-playing right there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNw_TO6b1zM | |
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Poe isnt d2.
Also there really is almost no skill involved in a game like this. "Counterplaying" wouldnt exist in poe no matter what the devs did. Like it or not, the only skill in poe is in build creation, not the execution itself. Personally I like that fact. | |
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It's hard to remember what you have forgotten
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First off physical builds have better synergy then pure elemental will likely ever have. That alone negates any potential benefits you think armor might have. Armor is indeed more effective in this game then Diablo2, in Diablo it was a non focus because it was worthless 100%. Penetration gems are fine in the current state of the game and with the great synergy physical builds get its mandatory for elemental builds to even be semi viable.
As for counter play, you have scarce item swaps and then you're jailed to your flask choices. So its very limited, because GGG decided to focus a lot of its counter meta balance in the flask system. Basically shutting down many of your options and you basically need to know before hand who you're facing and what their potential is so you can properly gear for it. Diablo2 was no different but with the diversity in builds/skill options being restricted to class it was easier to go in better prepared from the start. I've constantly said the flask system is shitty when paired with queue style arena based PvP. It heavily favors crit builds and/or builds that can abuse flasks leaving you starved out quickly. Limiting the viable PvP builds further. Latency/fps deciding a match up is something people don't consider enough. Some people actually do play classes/builds requiring movement/reactions/hand swaps and calculated approaches. Execution is very small in these types of games but it doesn't mean lag doesn't completely change the outcome of matches. Online gaming in general is pretty much a joke especially when you're talking real execution heavy games. PvP in this game is very much like Diablo3. You have a bunch of numbers that really don't mean shit, they are there to make you feel like you've done som At the end of the day its who hits the hardest (crit) and who dies first. PvP enough in this game and you'll see movement, "counterplay" attempts and most of your stats are worthless. If you want to PvP here make a ranged build with crit, i.e caster/bow, stack a few cwdt set ups and just hold attack. If you wanted to build melee, pick up a crit dagger/sword. Also in standard you'll be facing RMT'd legacy/mirrored gear that carries bad players even further. Summary, Crit, ranged, cwdt, flask. As for counter building, that's just part of the ARPG mold. Builds simply counter others and that's how it works. Wind druid with wolves was technically counter to a bone necro. Trapper countered druid, smiter/hammerdin countered all barbarian builds. After .09 bowzons basically lost to everything because of Enigma and the death of run/walk builds. Melee assassins could counter druid/necro with stun locks and blade shield/venom. Sorceress of all elements was easily bad mannered with absorb and even in good manner duels a 4socket monarch of gems or rune/gem combination and 1 piece of resist gear like dwarf/raven/nokazon/hot spurs/tgods would nullify the damage they could deal pretty well making them imo 2nd worst PvP class. Knowing all the tricks and legit exploits in Diablo2 made matches like necro vs druid more manageable and barb versus hammerdin not a complete shut out. The thing is you did have some work arounds, movement and how you'd engage the opponent and use your tools COULD change the outcome of these match ups. In PoE you have the same thing, you CAN change the outcome of a bad match up BUT you need to have a build already that diverse so you can change gear/re do your tree a few nodes, swap weapons and/or flasks either during or prior to even dueling the person. Or one that simply ignores 99% of the mechanics by default. The biggest difference is in Diablo2 you weren't losing to a guy just standing still. In PoE more often then not you're struggling to take down a person that's basically not even playing. They are just standing there or running around exploding with automatic garbage and/or crit killing you in 0.0001 second. Diablo2 didn't have such stupidity and that alone was why PvP felt much more approachable/winnable and skill based. Only thing that really really wrecked Diablo2 was the amount of hacks, minor ones like map hack showing missles all the way to the maxed out hackers who literally had capped break points,auto heals,auto aim. The only time Diablo2 PvP was as stupid as PoE's is on a regular basis was when hacked Auradins and farcast Zons were the norm..that's the closest comparison to PoE's PvP....BUT you could still resist both with gear and still kill them because crit damage wasn't a variable. Don't be so hard on the guy, he came to PoE expecting it to be a few pegs above Diablo2's PvP. He's confused as to why it blows and was just offering his suggestions. It's like being used to Windows 7, upgrading to 10 because its supposed to be superior but really it is ass and confusion sets in. GGG, the ADA of gaming....huuuur i gotz mai skilz. IGN: MullaXul Last edited by MullaXul on Oct 18, 2015, 3:32:33 PM
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Dear lord Mulla, Nice post. You've put alot of my feelings out there into words.
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" Ha ya I never intend to post so much but it just happens. I just know exactly where you're coming from since I played other games including Diablo2 since the day it was released. Many of us came to PoE as if it was the Diablo3 we felt we should of gotten. Tossing out legitimate suggestions and seeing little return. In beta this game had a solid foundation to build off but mechanic after mechanic and legacy gear just fucked it up badly. They then put their hands in and fixed what was really messed up and kind of just left it as is, in the poor state you see now. GGG, the ADA of gaming....huuuur i gotz mai skilz.
IGN: MullaXul |
