eLLD Ruleset v1.1.2 (expect an update in the next patch)

Thanks for everyone for EXTENSIVE feedback
Special Thanks
Sidro, Red, Mimi


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Discord
https://discord.gg/wP6c2b8kgg


Magic and White List Uniques only (see below for details)
No Resistance Implicits or Affixes (anoints are fine)
No Fossil/Essence specific Affixes
Anoints Allowed
One Support Gem per skill Maximum
Support Info

Multiple skills can be linked to the same Support


Magic Item Crafting Rules

No Fossil/Essence specific Affixes
No Synth items
No Beast Aspect Crafts
No Abyss Jewels
No Resistance Implicits or Affixes (anoints are fine)


Max 20% quality on Armour and Weapons
No Rare Items
No Item/Gem swapping between rounds of a match
No Beneficial Corruptions (no talisman either)
No Quality Gems (no alt quality either)
No Catalyst quality jewelry
No Enchants
No Legacy Mods or Items (including Warbands+Incursion mods and event rewards)
No Jewel Implicits
No MTX pets even for Spectators (sadly this has to be here)

Banned Skills/Supports

Vitality
Lancing Steel
General's Cry
Enduring Cry
Fire Storm
Molten Shell
No Purity Auras


White List Uniques (allowed)

Jewels
All Unique Jewels allowed except
Unnatural Instinct
Watcher's Eye
Megalomaniac
Voices
Hidden potential

**Timeless Jewels can be allocated for Keystones, but NO adjusted notables may be taken**

Weapon
Redbeak
Replica Quill Rain
Troll Timber
Replica Last Resort
Hand of Thought and Motion
Skirmish
Matua Tupuna
Roth’s Reach
Al Dhih
Ewar’s Mirage
Ungil's Gauche
Brutus Lead Sprinkler
Lakishu's
Pillar of the Caged God
Edge of Madness
Xirgil's Crank

Armour
Veil of the Night
Replica Veil of the Night
Mark of the Red Covenant
Crown of Thorns
Malachai’s Simula
Leer Cast
Shackles of the Wretched
Hooves of Abberath
Bones of Ullr
Solaris Lorica
Victario’s Flight
Maligaro’s Virtuosity
The Baron
Facebreaker

Jewelry (ring/amulet/belt)
Atziri Foible
Praxis
Shaper’s Seed
Eye of Chayula
Rigwald’s Curse
Ungil’s Harmony
String of Servitude (no double stat or resistance version)
Kurai Ward
Stone of Lazwhar


Flask
Doedre’s Elixir


Do not expect significant changes in this ruleset
v1.1 update march 31st 2021
v1.1.1 clarified that Essence/Fossil specific mods are out
Molten Shell Banned
Fire Storm
Scorch Ray
Blazing Salvo
Light of Lunaris removed from White List

v1.1.2
Block Chance Reduction no longer free support
Scorch Ray unban
General's Cry ban
Blast Rain unban
Blazing Salvo unban
All other cry's except Enduring unbanned
Trap/Mine support unbanned
White List updated


FAQ

If a rare item is 1 prefix and 1 suffix it is legal
No Implicit Resist items includes Bismuth/Topaz/Ruby/Sapphire Flask
No Amethyst Flask
No Res per small passive cluster jewel
Animate Guardian can use any items
Resistance are allowed in usable uniques
Last edited by ProjectPT on Apr 11, 2021, 6:58:59 PM
Last bumped on May 10, 2021, 6:42:32 PM
saving spot as I format

Will be using this post to explain rules in detail without cluttering the rules.
All the rules try to achieve 2 goals:

1) Bring the barrier to compete as low as possible
2) Remove easy One Shots so PvP isn't who hits who first

Magic and White List Uniques
Limiting the Blue items was the simplest way to create an easy gear entry into PvP where players can perform at a high level without having to waste a ton of currency just to try something, while white listing uniques can keep the creativity PoE players crave


1 support per skill Maximum
Even with such extreme restrictions builds are easily capable of One Shots. Previously in another ruleset there was a 3 support limit but it was accompanied by an extensive and constantly growing skill ban list. A single support has worked great



Anoints Allowed
There was a large debate on this one, and it was "no golden anoints" in an earlier version. Though this one is the highest cost rule in this it allows so much flexibility it feels like too much of a loss to remove


Max 20% quality
Though not the biggest source of power when combined with the rest of the rules, it simply ends up being a large extra step to collect all the quality bases


No Rare Items
Rares offer little creative stats at LLD and ends up just making the gear gap larger without good reason


No Beneficial Corruptions
Though the power level of these can be reasonable along the rest of the rules it creates a hyper tedious min/max that quickly adds up. Even mass corrupting 1alch uniques can drastically increase the cost of items when a large amount of players are aiming for rare corrupts


No Quality Gems
Simply a cost and damage reduction across the board


No Alternate Quality
As much as there is some interesting PvP options in the alt quality pool, this is an extreme power and cost spike to every build for a single gem.


No Synthesized Items
This one should be fairly obvious to everyone


No Catalyst
Purely a cost reduction, if a league mechanic could DRASTICALLY reduce the cost I'd enjoy allowing these


No Enchants
Glove enchants have been given Tvalues since the last ruleset but this is just a tedious step to builds


No Abyss Jewels or Jewel Implicit
Abyss sockets become available in creative ways and this gives more control over player power. The jewel implicit stats can be significant at this gear level


No Aspect Crafts
This can behave weirdly, as an example spider aspect's slow will persist between rounds


Vitality, Enduring Cry Ban
When regen is too easily available damage does not "stick" and a player can run for a second restarting the fight. The more a player can regen the more the meta becomes forced into 1 shots
Last edited by ProjectPT on Apr 10, 2021, 2:30:13 PM
You already know my stance on these new rules so I won't dwell too much on them, but the choice of whitelisted uniques seems pretty random and subjective. Facebreaker but not Meginord's Girdle or Blackheart? Solaris Lorica but not Crown of Thorns or Replica Last Resort? There's a lack of synergies that automatically makes some of these uniques not worth building around. And people aren't even allowed to use their leveling gear, e.g. Lifesprigs, for PvP--they actually have to find or use something else lol. I understand the intention of trying to whitelist, but you end up unintentionally leaving out plenty of accessible uniques and synergies that literally come from people's dump tabs. I don't see how that achieves the purpose and would much prefer to blacklist abuse cases.

Also, I think it's inevitable that we'll need to adapt the rules. Doing a 180 on the rules in a day makes it easy to miss things; it's going to take time to actually get a good ruleset. As an example, I'm almost positive that some more skills will need to be banned due to not having PvP scaling yet. I'd also like to see certain skills be allowed 5 supports due to how extensively they've been gutted by PvP scaling, but that idea can be entertained later. Examples below (though was testing against some rare gears I believe):

1) Lancing Steel seems way overtuned. FPG has respectable gear--nowhere near unethical top end--but his 2L setup (without BCR) could 1-shot my fully decked out 1.6k hp char from Betrayal League THROUGH 75% dodge. Even FPG's premade char could do decent damage (and we all know how bad those premade magic gears are).

2) Warcry stacking looks kinda problematic because it results in 1-shots. It's slower though, so at least you're not getting 1-tapped from range. Hollow Palm was miserable to play against, but maybe it's fine with magic gears. Worth monitoring.

3) Heads up for anyone looking to build around Flameblast: don't. I don't know what happened between patch 3.7 and 3.13, but it basically deals nearly 0 damage with max stages and legacy Softcore BiS gear (6L etc etc). I think GGG must've fucked the scaling on most of the channeling skills, but Flameblast got hit super hard. I could barely deal damage to FPG with 34% fire res.
Last edited by mimivirus on Mar 28, 2021, 2:51:24 AM
"
random and subjective. Facebreaker but not Meginord's Girdle or Blackheart? Solaris Lorica but not Crown of Thorns or Replica Last Resort?

Meginord's would be BiS for all attack builds. It is possible that Facebreaker doesn't get enough support but facebreaker was also weak in the other ruleset, easy to remove facebreaker from whitelist if it ends up being a full noob trap. Crown of Thorns or Replica Last Resort are fair to add to the White List.

"
And people aren't even allowed to use their leveling gear, e.g. Lifesprigs,

+1 global weapons have been better than life sprig for a while and would work. They already couldn't use many leveling gear in the other ruleset.

"
Also, I think it's inevitable that we'll need to adapt the rules.

We have to start somewhere that solves key issues. There could easily be a few more white list or banned skills but we do have to give a good period of time to discover them.

"
Lancing Steel

Def seems a bit overtuned compared to others but need to give people an opportunity to find other broken skills too before we wackamole ban skills.

"
Warcry stacking looks kinda problematic because it results in 1-shots. It's slower though,

This is an interesting one similar to traps/mines, traps can 100% one shot if they set up. How much time it takes to set up and how realiable the one shot is through dodge or armour will be the deciding factor but there is one shout that is more problematic than others (cough cough intimidating)

"
Flameblast

They gutted Hooves too :(

Last edited by ProjectPT on Mar 28, 2021, 4:43:12 AM
Discussed some of this with PT already, but sharing here since we need more people's points and counterpoints.

Unban:
Spoiler
- Reverberation Rod: Most casters seem pretty bad right now compared to the top builds. This at least gives another option instead of alt spamming a +1 gem wand and also makes Spell Echo available in LLD. The only caveat is that we shouldn't allow slotting trap/mine skills (e.g. Explosive Trap) into the wand (because they can add Empower and get +5 gems given that Spell Echo doesn't work as a link). Other skills that require a link to make them a trap/mine (e.g. Arc/Glacial Cascade/etc.) probably can be allowed IMO.
- Malachai's Artifice (& Replica): These offer interesting options and fit into the philosophy of introducing different ways to play. The normal ring allows selfcast skills to potentially get EE. The replica version is kinda meme-y, but as an idea it could be paired with Ungil's Harmony for some weird Scorch/Brittle/Sap shenanigans.
- Lakishu's Blade: Gives Multistrike, so it enables Strike builds in theory. I haven't seen anyone even attempt to make Strikes work.


Nerf:
Spoiler
(Preface) The general idea is to remove most instances of 1-shot capability, regardless of how "skillful" you need to be with them. The current S tier builds seem to be suffocating build diversity IMO, since you have to design builds with them always in mind. Note that I don't think any of these builds can necessarily be nerfed in isolation, otherwise the others will become unquestionably S tier.
- Warcries/Slams: No surprise, Warcry stacking is an issue. I don't even think the Slams themselves are problematic, but the fact that you can 4x your damage with two Warcries (Intimidating and Seismic) is ???. Sure, they have windows of opportunity and outside of those they're not great, but General's Cry seems to pad that weakness pretty well. The tankier dudes shouldn't also have glass cannon damage. I think banning Seismic and/or Intimidating Cry will help to reduce 1-shots. My personal preference is to ban Seismic Cry first because it works with Slams. If we ban Intimidating Cry, any Strike build will remain garbage for sure. I'd be happy to see a non-Slam melee build that uses Ancestral Cry. If 2 Warcries need to be banned, then I think we'd have to see both Seismic and Intimidating Cry go. Infernal and General's Cry don't seem as problematic.
- Lancing Steel: It has the potential to 1-shot (read: 1 skill use/rotation) nearly all builds aside from 1.5k+ HP Molten Shell beefcakes (and builds with Acrobatics if you have good dodge RNG). The most common counterarguments to this seem to be that other builds should manually dodge the projectiles and get phys reduction. Manually dodging does work, but the reality is that Lancing Steel CAN 1-shot from offscreen and tanky builds have also been at the receiving end of this. How do you dodge what you cannot see? Phys reduction works to an extent if you use Molten Shell with sufficient armor, but let's be real phys reduction is terrible in LLD. This choice isn't really even available on the right side of the tree. If Warcries get nerfed, then I think Lancing Steel might need to come down in power too (though I don't have a good idea for how to tone it down).
- Poet's Pen: I (Warcry abuser) fought quite a few rounds with Cookie and the matchup doesn't seem one-sided. I think Red and others might have more experience playing (or playing against) this build, but it's very true that the damage potential is high without sacrificing defenses too much. I think Cookie said he had 1.3k HP and Acro? This one isn't strictly a 1-shot build, but if you get in range you're oftentimes fucked. As with Lancing Steel I don't know the best way of toning this down, but if Warcries/Slams get touched then this might need to be as well (though to a smaller degree).


Worth monitoring:
Spoiler
- Traps/Mines: If the above 3 builds (which I consider S tier) get nerfed, then I'm pretty sure traps/mines go from A/A+ to S. I don't think they can 1-shot as easily as the above 3, but they're up there in terms of damage while allowing a pretty safe playstyle.
- Rain of Arrows: It's being overshadowed, but it's obviously strong. At least you can play against it since you can't get 1-shot from range (unlike Lancing Steel).


With some touchups to the above skills, inevitably we'll see more build diversity. Selfcast spells? SRS? Non-Slam melees? Probably they'll still be bad, but at least we narrow the gap between S and C tier builds. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
Last edited by mimivirus on Mar 29, 2021, 11:41:35 PM
So some pretty sizable changes. I didn't catch the end of PT's stream, so some of the below might've been discussed but:

- What was the verdict on Ungil's Harmony? (Also I see it listed in the Weapon section.)
- Without item swaps, wouldn't Veil of the Night just be BiS? Like there's no point going into matches without it equipped and facing EE + ele curse + Exposure.
- Why are all Warcries banned? Rallying Cry? Ancestral Cry?
- Does Chaos res follow the same restrictions?

"
What was the verdict on Ungil's Harmony? (Also I see it listed in the Weapon section.)


it seems over budget but it stays for the time being


"
Without item swaps, wouldn't Veil of the Night just be BiS? Like there's no point going into matches without it equipped and facing EE + ele curse + Exposure.


overall yes, it's essentially a greed play. If you assume the person has veil it is a waste of your investment to EE/curse/expose. But if you assume your opponent is assuming veil you can use a helm with life

"
Why are all Warcries banned? Rallying Cry? Ancestral Cry?


Simplicity though I think there is a great reason for discussion on Ancestral as it may be the only thing to help strike (but it also seems that one strike skill is already close to top)

"
Does Chaos res follow the same restrictions?

yes
Hey,
1. Are legacy uniques from the white list allowed?
2. Thx mimi, unban Lakishu and/or Tempestous to have melee strikes in the menu^^
3. How the f..k may I enter Sarn Arena with a pvp-only char? Not possible?!?
Last edited by DedeX on Apr 3, 2021, 2:33:06 PM
"
1. Are legacy uniques from the white list allowed?

Nope! All legacy items are banned, I'm pretty sure.

"
3. How the f..k may I enter Sarn Arena with a pvp-only char? Not possible?!?

You can't...GGG got rid of Leo in hideout lol.
"
DedeX wrote:
Hey,
1. Are legacy uniques from the white list allowed?
2. Thx mimi, unban Lakishu and/or Tempestous to have melee strikes in the menu^^
3. How the f..k may I enter Sarn Arena with a pvp-only char? Not possible?!?


1. banned, any form of legacy
2. those whitelist are potential, but rules are locked for the week
3. ya they fucked sarn

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