Character Balance in Path of Exile: Lake of Kalandra

I understand what they're doing. Cant wait to take a dip in the lake, its going to be dope.

All the minion players are sad but GGG might rework some of the uniques to have + to minion gems. We'll know soon.

Good job so far and thanks for the free to play game.
Its a crime how much enjoyment I've gotten and how little I've paid. Imma buy some boxes once Klandra is out.

Keep grinding.

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Cogbolt wrote:

All the minion players are sad

People are sad then 1 or 2 builds got nerfed, but if you gut the whole archetype and destroy ascendancy - they are not sad, they are mad and enraged

Really seems like they're trying to stomp PoE 1 into the ground so they can start dishing out powercreep candy again after launching PoE 2 sometime next d4 years or something.

Well, they won't get my money back for d6 years with this approach then :D

Ugh. I don't even know what to say. I feel like I need to write a long post about how spell suppression as a mechanic is an awful design choice.

Spell suppression is meant to compensate for the fact that evasion is garbage compared to armour because armour provides mitigation against physical spell damage while evasion provides none.

Armour mitigates against physical damage from all hits regardless of whether they are attacks or spells, whereas evasion only mitigates against attack hits, meaning physical damage from spells is especially lethal to evasion builds, since evasion fundamentally does nothing against physical spell damage.

Both evasion and armour builds get resistances, and stacking maximum resistances has in the past been the most effective way to mitigate elemental damage, but since spell suppression has been introduced and can be acquired by armour characters that also have high maximum resistances, for elemental spell damage to be threatening it ends up needing to be balanced around characters that have both high max resists *and* spell suppression, otherwise those characters become literally un-killable by elemental damage.

Thus, spell suppression forces ridiculously high elemental damage output from monster spells even though it is primarily intended to mitigate physical spell damage for evasion characters. This has the result that if you don't invest in, at the very least, max resists, you're just going to get fucked by elemental damage regardless of what you're playing.

Rather than having to introduce an arbitrary "take half damage from spells" mechanic which necessarily has to fuck up the way elemental damage works because armour exists, why not just make evasion not shitty? Make evasion give a percentage chance to avoid physical damage from hits, regardless of whether they are spell or attack, and remove spell suppression from the game. Then at least the choice between evasion and armour wouldn't just be a total no-brainer.

I been playing minions since Beta. Necromancer is my favorite type, played all the minions that are out there. Just like the mechanic - its soothing. Tried other things - totems, mines, traps, melee, ranger - not the same.

Too bad necro is nerfed, will give it a shot anyway but not hopeful. I really dont understand the logic behind GGG decisions. Makes me sad and wanna look for a new game to play.

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ExaltedWall wrote:

So the philosophy or guideline of GGG is to keep nerfing the popular character and strong build to force players come up with new powerful ways of playing so that GGG has the clue of nerfing for the next league.

HILARIOUS AND PATHETIC...

Now I'm getting more and more looking forwarding to D4.

A little competition is good for buisness. GGG have had it easy for a long while now. With D4 coming out its gonna be a race for the players in a way they havent seen before*.



*If D4 comes out and is resonably decent at launch.

okay, so the implication behind nerfing nature's boon to "counter-balance" the change to master alchemist is that every pf is expected to use master alchemist, and thus won't notice the change. sooooooo what about all the pathfinders who don't use master alchemist, also known as virtually every person who plays the class as more than a week one league starter

like hardly anybody uses master alchemist and it's still worse than nature's adrenaline even with the change, so all y'all have really done is nerf an ascendancy that is okay-ish at best and undertuned and bland at worst

if nerfing pathfinder was the actual intention here then fine, it feels dishonest but whatever, but if y'all are genuinely trying to improve this ascendancy then this change missed the mark

The mana reservation change is really poorly thought out. It says the 15% mana reservation mastery is too strong for the investment. Charisma requires one less point and gives 16% + and additional bonus. What are you talking about? Secondly this is a ham fisted solution to an issue. Sure some builds stack too many auras, but my fringe build using a non-popular skill needs three auras to even function. Now its dead, I have no room for mana reservation efficiency on my shield as it is full. Try targeting the specific builds you want changed and stop just nerf hammering many builds with one change, this is why your build diversity is bad

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Shaantituz wrote:

The mana reservation change is really poorly thought out. It says the 15% mana reservation mastery is too strong for the investment. Charisma requires one less point and gives 16% + and additional bonus. What are you talking about? Secondly this is a ham fisted solution to an issue. Sure some builds stack too many auras, but my fringe build using a non-popular skill needs three auras to even function. Now its dead, I have no room for mana reservation efficiency on my shield as it is full. Try targeting the specific builds you want changed and stop just nerf hammering many builds with one change, this is why your build diversity is bad

And as a bonus, this will drive the already pretty pricy enlightened gems to even more expensive state.. I wouldn't be surprised if a lvl 4 enlighten will go for 25 to 30 ex in 3.19, so this nerf had a much bigger impact around the board than it might look on first sight

Please GGG move +1-2 to all Minion helmet mod to bone rings (+1 respectively if those won't have such) as Ring slot is less competitive with Helmet slot (as most Minion uniques are helmets), you'll just lock helmet choices for Minion builds (as it will require to have only Rare ones (i doubt any of unique Minion helmet will even see to + Minion all skill gems, that will become necessity due to sweeping HP lowering values to all minions).
i Hope that Minion Damage Support "negative" aspect will be removed in patch notes (and it's not because it's Best in slot, it's more of there is no other gems that can be even used for most builds) and sweeping HP values lowered to all minions (they are squishy enough even with good investment (due to Archnemesis mods being so dominant, and require player to be interactive with those, sadly Minion AI is straight Bash till it's dead that makes each interactive mod do full damage to them, that was meant to lower player HP by quite alot if they don't interact in certain manner)).

Sad someone missed opportunity to add Sceptre /2 handed Staff with ability to roll Minion Modifiers, and readjust current Minion Modifiers to a higher Values (as it was done with 2h and bows in this league, as any Staff falls off to 2wands drastically as current Minion builds is socket starved anyway so aspect of 2 6links (as second 6link will be aura + Enlighten anyway (that still mostly will be 5l due to socket starvation and considering 15% mana mastery was removed) actually don't provide such big power boost as to other builds in POE), also not to mention staff loss of defensive capabilities due to Block chance being replaced with Can Roll Minion Modifiers. Oh well maybe in next 2 years (as it's seems it's cycle for minion changes) =)