3.20 Balance Manifesto: Jewels and Ailment Mitigation

wardloop dead?

I imagine it will be incredibly hard to find to dust jewels now with correct rolls. Also the jewel for flask duration (survival instincts) seems to be very hard now that it no longer gets rewarded from A2 crypt.

Things have kinda gone downhill since you started this "problem and solution" type of balancing. When the only tool you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail. When you have the stance that every change you make is a "solution" but everyone is still kinda not liking it... you might have failed the test.

Just saying... your solutions might be the wrong answer.

and another nerf league comes. my hope of good upcoming league started to die... i hope other changes will be better. however with previous experience e expect worse. good luck with that ggg

Sounds great.

“We're making it so that every unique jewel that drops is very rare and highly desirable.”

GGG always can’t figure it out. Players don’t want the fun that comes from scarcity. This may lead to not being able to get the unique jewel they want for the whole season. When everything becomes scarce, it leads to two hours of playing every day after get off work. Not even a single valuable loot would make me happy to have a good dream.

The adjustment of the drop rate in the past has no good results. It is always repaired amidst complaints and abuse. The enthusiasm for the season will also be wiped out

Your idea is not cool at all.

A couple of concerns with this

The first concern is that there are currently quite a few jewels that alter or affect a skill to some degree. Some of these are for skills that are under-performing and are untouched by the majority of players anyway but even so I'd hate to see those niche effects on skills disappear all together (like the frost bolt multiple projectiles one). Another worry on this point is that the jewels functionality gets incorporated in to the skill's base mechanic but in a worse state like was the case with spectral shield throw.
I really do hope GGG has taken a good look at why they had a jewel for that skill in the first place and if the skill would be playable without.

The second concern is broadly mentioned and that is increasing the already huge mod pool for jewels once again, reducing the chance of ever finding a good one once again. With jewels only rolling 2 prefix and 2 suffix mods on average (there are ways to get 3 prefix/suffix ones) and at least both 45 prefix and 45 suffix modifiers at the moment that equates to roughly 2.5% chance for the wanted roll per slot. As each slot can roll individually that means getting 2, 3, or 4 wanted modifiers easily drops you well below 1% chance. On top of that jewels can not be crafted at the bench and anything from harvest that could affect jewels has either been removed or made in to something that would be the same as slamming a chaos. In other words, no way to craft them. Has this been taken in to account and do we get at least something to push jewels a bit in to the 1% or higher region again or can we just leave rare jewels disabled on the loot filter as always?

My third concern is the drop rate and availability of non-skill specific jewels. Which jewels won't make the cut, and which ones will we keep? I hope to see a list of that before the league goes live so we can see if our build will hold. This in particular came to mind as I used "Melding of the flesh" for example. While it isn't mandatory for my build it does add a lot of defenses. If it's removed all together it's an easy answer but if the drop rate would be so low that it's price would go up to like 10 devines then it would still be unobtainable for good ole casual me and i'd need to look for an alternative. Would be nice to know in advance. While for me the breaking point on "rare" (rare just means more expansive in this game) is quite low, most people will have some kind of breaking point where it would be unobtainable for them as well.

My final concern are the boss unique's like forbidden flame/flesh, watchers eye, etc. Will they become even more rare as well? Will they remain in the game unchanged? What happens to those?

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Malice4201 wrote:

Things have kinda gone downhill since you started this "problem and solution" type of balancing. When the only tool you have is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail. When you have the stance that every change you make is a "solution" but everyone is still kinda not liking it... you might have failed the test.

Just saying... your solutions might be the wrong answer.

By now i doubt "Problem" communicated is the real reason for change.
It is part of communication to playerbase to add more "visibility and reasoning" to change they have thought of by wording it in a way it causes least possible uproar.

At times, i doubt the official reason is anywhere close to what is really being communicated - some POE2 pipeline stuff, code problem, maintenance overhead or something different.

+1 on hammer example thou :)

We still have like the Impossible Leap right?

Just had an idea....instead of removing jewels, let us fuse jewels together, combining affixes into one jewel, to make them more powerful.

Doesn't really sound like a good thing, sorry.

When you "expanded" Abyssal eyes they become pretty much worthless.
Rare jewels are good and no one cares about their defensive properties.

You're just making it harder to roll good ones. Two slots are already mandatory for a passive.
This strikes me as a waste of time... or just a nerf in disguise.