On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

Bumpity bump bump

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_Saranghaeyo_ wrote:

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D3izhistory wrote:

Bumpity bump bump

This post just looks silly now lmao

What's silly about "Our design, balance and QA team are experts at Path of Exile." ?

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Chris wrote:

There's a common misconception in the community that our balance team doesn't play Path of Exile. They actually do play it, a whole lot. We have people with level 100 hardcore characters, multiple famous community members who have come to work for us and you may not even know it. The minimum requirement to join our QA team is 1000 hours of PoE experience, and we still turn people with that prerequisite away if they're not good enough at the game. Our design, balance and QA team are experts at Path of Exile. I would not accept any less. They put substantial work into each change, planning out not only what it affects now, but what it affects in the future. These changes are all considered in the big picture of the other planned changes.

<3

Do all of your so called experts also make money streaming your free game on Youtube and help price fix the economy? Or is it just half of them?

haHAA

This thread is a great example why I usually dont participate the community.
A serously addressed topic is trolled by a minority of players who think they know all about this game because they know how to exploit some top-notch gear and game mechanics for super specialized builds. Of course, this requires some knowledge and skill but this makes these people specialists but not general experts, and the later GGG is talking about. It is for sure that a specialist always excels in his field but it also for sure that a specialist often have difficulties when it comes to consider the bigger picture. So for the sake of seriously improving a great game, please stay fair and stick to the topic. There is a rule of thumb which should be common knowledge: The more unhappy you are with something the more constructive you should be with your feedback to have a better chance having your oppinion to be considered.

Having said this, I am pretty sure that the team at GGG is smart and professional enough to know the added value of every kind of feedback.
Thank you, GGG, for keeping the communication alive.

Anyhow, back to topic: Please find my humble feedback below.

A brief orrientiation on my experience and play style: Playing 2 years now with some focus on number crunching but in a more casual way and I like to take it slow and less meta, playing usually SSF and do not trade. And, yes, I am part of the more silent part of the community.

I can confirm that it is very easy to crit-cap just by using what the passive skill tree and the ascendancy classes provide. A key factor in achieving crit-cap is using power charges (but alone they cant do the job). Even with little knowledge on game mechanic, this is very easy to figure out. On top, the assassine exels on power charges and can make so much more out them. So I am happy to see that this is currently addressed by the ballancing team.

Simplified I would conclude the current situation as follows.
Pro: Some very interesting builds (e.g., using the 100% chance of ailment on crit or other effects triggered by crits) are enabled in a very effordable way. (Please consider this when adjusting ailments.)
Con: It makes builds not using power charges feel less powerfull, particularly when comparing assassine builds with non-assassine builds.

A good solution should be able to keep the Pro alive but mitigate the Con, which is hard to achieve in this case to be honest.

While crit-cap enables new builds, it makes these builds very powerfull at the same time.
A possible solutions could be rething how ailments are applied. Maybe power charges could add less to crit chance but a chance to add ailments on hit. While this works for ailments, it probably does not work for other builds using triggers on crit generally.
Another idee could be that it becomes more difficult to keep charges at maximum. It is hard to say, if that is even an valuable option. I think that it is one of the key features of charges to keep them constantly up just like a buff. Having said this, there are lots of mechanics removing charges which could be a hook to explore the idea of removing charges as a source of buffs rahter than just as a nerve.

There are many skill gems transforming charges into buffs (like Immortal Call). My impression is that such skills are very popular for some very good reasons. Immortal Call for example trade the endurance buff of the charges for a temporal invulnarability.
Why not explore this mechanic a little bit more? There are many of these skills in the game but not all are usable for all builds possivle (e.g., attack vs caster). Again there are good reasons. For example does melee damage scale differently than caster damage does. Therefore additional effort is necessary when considering different scaling mechanics for different builds.
IMHO it has a high potional added value for the game overall to have more skill gems using charges to provide temporal buffs. For the reasons of ballancing this should come with a reductiuon of the effect charges provide themselfes. This potencial nerve could be compensated by adding or adjusting skill gems using charges of that kind. In this case charges are treated more like a resource that certain builds can create, sustain, and utilize while others can not. Additionally there could be made more use of mechanics that make profit of not having charges (i.e., by reducing the maximum to 0). This would be great counter weight to the very power full charge mechanic we currently have. In the best case, the decision of charges are used or not is based on prefered play style rather than damage and survivalbility alone.

Thank you for reading and have fun playing / developing the game.

Charges not balanced at all, endurance charges useless and weak compared to other.

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TreeOfDead wrote:

Charges not balanced at all, endurance charges useless and weak compared to other.

lol.

Nothing more to say.

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diablokiller1 wrote:

Nerfs are a good thing.

All previous OP builds must be nerfed. ES was OP. Kill it, make people play Life.
Assasin was op -> kill it

Correct,

And i am not being sarcastic.

Why nerf assassin ??? double dip is gone + poison is weaker from its used to be !!!!
I disagree with nerf assassin from previous leagues statistic you can see how many ascendancy people choose for assassin and how poorly for changes with poison nodes from previous version also double dipping is gone, If its changes its will make this class dying because benefits from crit.chance/multipliy with power charges will apply to all poison mechanic so people will not play Assassin for poison build forever .
About crit-cap it just choice that depends on player style because mostly crit build are high budget like ele-build but for assassin power charge is benefit for this class so its should be things that people who play assassin choose it right?
But for Change for Charges i'm fully agree to make its more balanced especially for frenzy its make all builds a lot faster so i think just drop down a little bit speed/value of its and for some changes for endurance charge to make it more value to use it like for tectonic slam right now. For spell caster may need a little buff with power charge for spell like cast speed maybe i think . Anyway hope you guys agree with me :D

Yeah nerf everything until we have only % Life and % Damage nodes and the build diversity become 1. Oh and naturally you feel no shame about it!

Currently 1-2% of the players play with assassin. So you have to nerf it more because somebody play with it yet. Assassin never were the most played characters but sure not in 2.6.

Before 3.0
https://i.redd.it/rkl7pbff7mky.png

After 3.0
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2008293
This is your balance!

Chris change your design, balance and QA team. It will be better for everybody...

And we reached the point the life nerf. Why would anybody need thousands of it if 1 Life is exactly more with 1 life, than what you need to stay alive?

Look at this video Chris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm8rKtv33Yg

You see Life is overpowered 1 Life is far enough!
In next patch note i wanna see the "Maximum life from now is 1." sentence.
You nerfed the energy shield and i made a decision. I will build fully on damage. Why would i need life or ES if 1 life is more than enough oh and dont forget the ascendacies which give you 100% reflect protect so like i said 1 life is more than enough! You pushed the domino with VP and ES nerf!

Thats everything what your **** team could create. An unbalanced ****.

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Chris wrote:

We make this game for you guys, so if you don't want the change, we aren't going to force it in purely to solve long-term problems.

So the most players want the ES nerf? Then the most players played life builds no? Then what was the reason you killed the most CI builds? Oh your QA players playing in hardcore and they find it strong? And this is the reason for you guys to nerf those builds too which dont have 10k+ ES? The hardcore builds? And what about the softcore ones? Only 1 technical changes would have a huge impact on ES without nerf all ES builds. "Above 10k life and energy shield the increases 50% less effective." or something similar. Example if you would have 20k ES, then you would only 15k. I never cared about yellow items and i will never be more because of ES nerf. I always loved to build around uniques. So if you wanna start to change the game then go back in time and create the game without them. And from then like a briandead idiot i will build the same 0 unique mechanic rare gear builds like everybody else.

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Rory wrote:

We've seen characters reaching over 25,000 Energy Shield while still having the damage output to sufficiently complete all of the content in the game, compared with the 9,000 Life that a very heavily invested Life character with perfect items could reach.

Here is your overpowered ES builds from before nerf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy19eI5bsoA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk-2eoj5fj8

And weak life builds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Xol4j_5PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB8sAcS5xvI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCwTwxMN-Hw