Problem with the balance thread..

Hey guys, first I have a lot of respect for everyone here. Some more than others I have to admit.

I agree with what lapiz is saying, but not what he is trying to imply. People can only be knowledgeable about the things they have experienced first hand. So in order for someone to be unbiased. They would have to have played every build vs every build....more or less achieve a type of POE singularity.

I do agree that he is right in how "some" people are trying to justify X because of Y.

What we can do is talk about are own experiences and describe our own observations. There is nothing wrong nor biased about that.

Xull makes really good points that always get ignored or derailed. Why not address them. First, you could explain that critical mechanics are not the problem. Multi hit skills in relation to the pvp hard cap formula is. For example.

DOT's hit at full unmitigated values with crit/non-crit. While an actual per hit skill gets capped at about 5k crit/non-crit. A high critical multi, can really push the envelope on bleed/poison/ignite way harder than a base 150% multi/rt user can. As the base damage requirement to = the critical multi requirement is mathematically impossible. Xull is trying to say that the opportunity cost "tree points/item mods saved" vs critical strike investment (Points/mods invested into crit) are not equal. He's right. This is in relation to Dots.

Skills with multiple hits per activation. "hauntworld stop trying to justify/mention firestorm in every single post you make. Yes, it's mechanically flawed against high ranged in open spaces. No, it's not a balanced skill, in fact it has the highest sustained DPS potential in the game, no frost wall necessary" barrage, molten strike or any skill with AOE overlap ECT. Lets use firestorm as an example and a brief summary of my basis.

Most skills use a T value based on the rate of cast, attack or activation.

Some skills have a static T-value, normally skills with other cost/trigger requirements. Charges for discharge, Molten shells detonation threshold. Or tempest shields reliance on block.

Some skills however, have multiple hits per activation, and if you look at skills like Riposte or say double strike they are T/2. Crit changes things, as in 5k potential per activation turns into 5k X 2.

One activation of heavy strike caps out at 5k per hit "IF" you can hit the damage cap threshold.
One activation of firestorm "potentially" does 5k per rock X times per second. So you fully exploit the crit multi potential over many hits without hitting the road block of hard capped damage.

Does this make sense to anyone? This is why shotgunning is so effective. It's why barrage is so effective. It's why molten strike/discharge is so effective. Even cyclone in the hands of mirrored 2H/facebreaker, is very much effective (Closing distance and melee vs ranged mechanics aside).
I agree that interactions like these should not exist, but critical strike is not solely to blame.
It is more related to the skills themselves and/or multiple hits and/or AOE overlap potential.

(OFF TOPIC "My fully charged discharge does about 125k Damage per hit/non crit, 8 Frenzy, 6 Endurance, 4 Power. It does about 5k vs 75% res to un-cursed, un-EE'd and un-shocked players. That leads me to believe that external debuffs can lead to a higher per hit damage ceiling. Of course, if an ignite is activated, the damage is astronomical, Q-bot/libritannia go down in about 5 seconds despite their massive ES/life regen, It is easy for me to say that the DOT damage is the problem here and this is without critical damage coming into play.")

Math isn't debatable. Crit + multiple hits = effective per activation, Each cast is more effective vs non crit. Higher crit multipliers allow the player to really push the envelope despite the games T/X formulas vs multi hit skills. Tempest shield is an outlier. It has a static T-value that can trigger quickly or not at all vs (high range) circumstance. It was a huge problem before 2.0 but still remains a problem afterwards. This skill in my opinion is outrageous. It's a skill that punishes tempo, but only at a 40 units or so range. Crit/non-crit/Rumi's, tempest shield needs to be re-evaluated. Cwdt has a -25% less penalty for a reason. Automatic, non involved play needs to be punished.

So far we have looked at multi hit skills, AOE overlap, tempest shield and DOT's. Critical damage seems to have a huge impression.

Does that mean critical hit is un-balanced? No, the skills themselves need a t-value associated with them that reflect their damage output. (T/# of hits, "then" impose the hard cap PER activation) One shotgunning of LA would do 5K just like one activation of say heavy strike. Right now, LA can do upwards of 5K per projectile with a high enough multi. 5 projectiles can equate to a potential 25K shot. AOE overlap is at fault.

Critical strike and multi come with a large opportunity cost. It's that cost that makes any fully crit specialized melee not very viable. Yes, molten strike/coc/discharge, doublestrike/coc/discharge, cyclone/coc/discharge does in fact do massive dps. Not a single one of those builds are something I would consider to be "Pvp viable". Considering the EHP just isn't there. Ranged on the other hand can circumvent the EHP opportunity cost of going crit by simply being ranged. Melee must have ehp and the ability to close distance. Ranged simply do not. However, mechanically, POE does not take that fact into consideration. Anyone can use anything, and the ranged/melee disparity is just a byproduct. Imagine a non-crit ranger vs anyone with a regen or block/dodge investment. They would not have the stopping power or any way to put pressure against a mobile target fleeing/regenerating behind an intermittent wall.

In closing, you can't compare RT "a single node" to ranged critical hit/multi. You can't compare a blanket statement "RT" to an entire ranged critical hit build. RT is a node to supplement a lack of accuracy to save on opportunity costs. RT does exactly what it says it does. It just comes down to the simple observation that never missing vs evasion < critical chance. This is in relation to dodge mechanics, block mechanics and the real defensive tools that exist in pvp. I believe that RT should grant dodge/block penetration, somewhere between 50% to 100% and only be exclusive to melee.

You mentioned in another post that AOE overlap should be removed, i totally agree with skills that are currently abusing it trough mechanics that were not necessarely intended like frostwall for exemple.

But removing the overlap effect on firestorm ? This is how the skill is designed, you cannot simply remove the overlap effect from it and it is totally how it should work. It's the players fault for standing too long in the stacks, not the skills fault.

In fact firestorm is not even overlapping, it's just a quick succession of hits.

Overlapping in reality for most skills in pvp is a ''shotgun'' effect, firestorm does not shotgun and needs to be able to overlap multiple storms in order to do damage. The damage of one single cast is actually pretty low.

Am i defending firestorm ? Maybe, but that's mainly because it's one of the few remaining real competitive pvp spells atm... until stuff changes.

See firestorm Dps calculator on the wiki. First. Look at the damage and probabilities. Keep in mind firestorm is also able to stack. Check firestorm T-values and compile. For fun you can compare it to other skills in the game.

Yes firestorm is a quick succession of hits. No, it's isn't a "shotgun" Hence, multi hit in my writing above. Do I need to quote it? Perhaps, a ctrl+F Firestorm will do and check your reading.


This is a context error on your part. You also attempted to insult my intelligence as well. As if i'm ignorant to firestorm. That would be an assumption on your part. Why assume? Especially, when I provide an argument based on mathematics and my own observations. Would it not make more sense to either agree or explain why not? Perhaps.

I did not say or make any suggestions to change firestorms mechanics. I suggested that it become liable to the pvp damage scaling just like everything else. Again, another context error on your part.

In your closing statement you suggested other spells are weak. Firestorm is one "of" the last remaining good pvp spells. There is a clear reason why. You then assumed I was ignorant to the mechanics of firestorm again. Why assume? Does it not mechanically function in the way I described? Does it not interact with critical multi/chance the way I described? Is it not a multi hit ability per activation?

You know. One of my friends plays a firestorm pvp build. Jorgesantamariadelacruz. His items are not very valuable but very smart. He deals between 20%-45% of my life per rock on average. 45% of my life per rock x per .1 seconds. Realistically, I die in about .8 seconds. Probably, because of potions/regen, life on hit X my IAS, spell dodge or a 5% non spell crit. He is a firestorm/crit/multi/X build, you should try it out and see for yourself. However, it looks like you already did or sort of did.

Your post in my opinion seemed like a defensive response in order to evade a real discussion. Which lends credit to the title of the thread. Somehow we hit a lot more than 2 birds with one stone. Or we can say we hit one bird with one stone every .1 seconds over <insert bird reaction time/latency here> seconds.

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Does that mean critical hit is un-balanced? No, the skills themselves need a t-value associated with them that reflect their damage output. (T/# of hits, "then" impose the hard cap PER activation) One shotgunning of LA would do 5K just like one activation of say heavy strike. Right now, LA can do upwards of 5K per projectile with a high enough multi. 5 projectiles can equate to a potential 25K shot. AOE overlap is at fault.

LA does not have enough aoe to shotgun with all projectiles. my 'shotgun' is stronger with 2 arrows than 5 arrows. (non LMP or GMP) i 'shotgun' with 1 arrow too. i can show you. cause its not shotgun. its sth different.

its like
LA -> 2 arrows-> 2 initial arrow hit + 2 aoe explosion due to pierce: 4 hits. thats how LA hits.
LA can have 2 aoe explosion at once with its small aoe. GMP, LMP doesnt matter, 2 max.


about crit, lapiz is using non crit build btw. and probably im the only one with attack based crit build in pvp scene. as i always say crit alone is not the problem, wrong skill design with crit is the problem. barrage + crit/multiple hits without T value reduction), LA + crit(hit + aoe), bleed+crit, crit+dot... etc are the problem... and so on.
though, barrage is weak without namelocking. maybe namelocking is what should be fixed.

also vs crit builds, deceiver + unyielding works perfectly fine. i'd even say its a hard counter.

You look pretty butthurt, none of my sentences stated you as an ignorant, contradicted your theorys or doubted of your intelligence, stop making up stuff the entire post is fine and nothing was wrong with it.

And please dont compare my firestorm build to your friend's firestorm build, they are not even the same level and there a huge difference between the two...

He focuses 100% around DPS and is extremy squishy, in fact he dies 1 shot to almost anyone in pvp. His build rely entirely on killing the enemy before they hit him, which favors sarn arena plays but is not good for 1v1 matchups. I'm not sure how high pool he has but it must be less than 5k. He is also dual wield, doesnt use a shield and is very prone to get damaged.

My build is 50-50, it has probably the same amount of damage but way more defenses. I range from 8.5k-10k energy shield and make use of block. I can take quite a few hits and can give a really competitive match to anyone in pvp and last a lot longer than one encounter per round. It is a much more a 1v1 oriented build and is nowhere near like a sarn arena build. If you want to really be competitive in pvp, you cannot simply be FULL dps or FULL defenses, thats one side minded and wont do good, it has to be well rounded 50-50.


I'm not saying jorge's build is bad, but in reality it is a sarn arena build more than anything else ''aka'' pub stomp build.

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MullaXul wrote:

All I keep seeing is "play crit, nothing else matters".

Or people claiming to have answers to things you can't have answers to. The universal response is to simply quit playing it and build for the crit ranged meta instead of finding balance. A meta that hasn't changed since the first day of PvP. Crit + ranged was always dominant, everything else just kept getting nerfed. Like I pointed out, nerfs will always impact non crit builds more then crit ones until you reach a point where they are worthless.

Seriously though, I want the both of you to team up and compile a bunch of information to back your theory on PvP balance.

lapiz is not crit, let me say that again.

he is using a rare bow with + 1 arrow implicit. he does not suffer deceiver belt + unyilding damage reduction, does not give avenger charges to his opponents, his barrage hits with 6 arrows instead of 4, and in short, it deals almost same damage i do with my crit bow. he revealed one of his build ideas in the past, i see no harm sharing these info with you. its not hard to guess what bow he is using.

there is no attack based crit build in pvp scene atm. only me. oh, yeah faster is using crit bleed, right, but his build is not the best in duel arenas, its more likely a sarn arena build.

Haunt and shin you both have valid points(and some vague ones) but I can see it from both of your perspectives. I have played most builds there is(and I try them all each patch so my memory is fresh). Writing from a phone right now so won't be a novel. The build I've that's my main for PvP atm (besides my 2h) is ethrunarn(or Richarddeananderscion) that's firestorm(also got an icestorm character) and while I enjoy the build a lot and agree with haunt that the storms are few of the "viable"(read satisfactory) spells in this meta I think the storms are a bit too strong(got a pve/pvp nerf 2.0 with the quality which was needed). Problem with it is that the "multihit function" should remain and the base damage nerfed, but not to oblivion.

Speaking of Jorge, he can't kill me even with his diamondpots(unless I stand still which isn't a good idea vs any build) and no way in 1v1. Why is this worth mentioning? Bragging? No! Point is he does high damage, same with haunt, missuse, fall and kills you near instant it requires quite a bit more vs me, and therefore nerfing it too much would make people like me and others near immortal to him/those(though some of them kills me easier than others).

Personally I don't have the highest tooltip, possibly half their tooltip if not more, yet I say the build is just as good. I wouldn' care personally as I got several characters, but I'd care for others if yet another spell became "meh".

Edit: should mention atleast I that doesn't go insane damage, ci aegis is impossible to killbut it's not a real issue as they can't really kill me either(once again they will if I afk)

about firestorm, such damage calculation would be good imho, first hit 100% damage(damage reduction with), second hit 10% less, third hit 15% less and so on. only for pvp of course.

Personally I don't think that's a good fix, but we're all allowed to have opinions!