My feedback on SoK

While I realize that no one may ever read this, and that casual player opinions are largely ignored compared to streamers and associates, I still want to share my opinions after having played SoK for quite a few hours.

I was originally going to spend time writing an entire post about each part of this patch, but I decided against it because it would probably come off as just complaining.

Instead I'll give "brief" TL;DR's on them instead.

Faustus (Trade Market)
Keep this in. This is the single best thing you could have ever added to the game from a casual player perspective.

Imagine actually being able to PLAY the game! Oh my god, I know right? Preposterous!!

With this, no more spending 50-80% of your allotted playtime, attempting to trade with other players.

Gold
If the gold was only to be used for the Trade Market, good job! Keep it as is! If however, the gold is to be used in conjunction with the Settlement/City and workers; You should definitely look into balancing it. You could easily 2X the amount dropped in maps, and even then it probably would not be enough.

Settlement/City Management (Little more than a TL;DR)
It was a breath of fresh air at first. But you promised us that there would be no FOMO. That was not the case. Everything about the city became FOMO related.

- Not finding enough gold to keep the city running? - Missing out
- Ran out of uniques to disenchant? - Missing out
- Not awake to receive ships and send new ones? - Missing out
- Not awake to handle commandeered ships? - Missing out (Mostly because the timer would continue from when it was commandeered)
- Not awake to restart mappers? - Missing out
- Not finding maps 4:1 in maps for runners to run? - Missing out

So yeah, nothing BUT FOMO I would say.

On the other hand however

- Disenchanting gave far too little dust (after dust shipment multiplier nerf)
- Shipping rewarded way way too little for shipments less than at least 45.000.000 compared to the time and effort put in
- Shipping with 0% risk? Hah, think again Exile! If a random crew member dies or decides to leave your crew during the delivery, your risk just went up to where it would be with one less crew - Automagically!
- Running maps with 1% chance to perma die was more like 10% it feels like, or at least a dice was cast every second instead of on completion
- Map runners return on investment (The enormous amount of gold per hour) is insanely hard to justify. I ended up only running around 150-200 maps on them, and I think the highest value item I ever ended up getting from them was 3 chaos orbs, or maybe a divination card worth 5 chaos orbs.

New skills/Ascendancy/Changes
I enjoyed the new Retaliation skills while playing on the changed Gladiator ascendancy. It was a breath of fresh air for sure, but I would make some changes.

The main problem is that you are kind of forced to use the retaliation skills as your main attack, since it's a 2-part skill: First it needs to trigger, then you have to manually execute it - and within a timeframe. Uses do not stack either (At least Crushing Fist)

Using any other skills in combination with retaliation skills for normal map clearing (and some boss fights) is just not feasible since there's a lot going on on the screen. Having to attack, dodge, duck, dip, dodge and attack again, noticing a weak symbol above your head or a skill becoming highlighted in your skillbar is.. Not happening.

It's even worse if you have shrine buffs obstructing your view.

I would do one of the following:

1) Increase the base time that retaliation skills can be used (100% more) + allow them to store uses (3 is probably a good number) and reduce the cooldown
2) Make them automatically trigger and attack based on a percentage chance (much like Cast When Stunned but with a lot lower values)

Other feedback
This was supposed to be Melee League, but have you completely forgotten about one of, if not the, most useless support gem in the game?

"Cast on Melee Kill" is way overdue fixing.

Please check and be in awe, of the amount of characters that are using this support gem.

Here's how it could be become relevant and maybe even make it into a league Meta build:

"Each supported spell skill will have a chance to be triggered when you kill an enemy with a melee skill. Cannot support skills used by totems, traps, or mines. Vaal skills, channeling skills, and skills with a reservation cannot be triggered."

(10-20)% chance to Trigger Supported Spells when you kill an enemy with a melee skill
Supported Spells have (0-15)% more Spell Damage

Additional Effects From 1-20% Quality:
(0-5)% chance to Trigger Supported Spells when you kill an enemy with a melee skill
Supported Spells have (0-5)% more Spell Damage

The whole idea behind this is to allow the support gem to be detached from the actual melee skill that performs the kill. Much like Mark on Hit is detached from the actual skill doing the hit.

It would at least make the skill usable, and would be cause for new theory crafting and build being made around it.

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That's all for now, thank you for an overall enjoyable league!
I'll be seeing Faustus in the next one!

Wow, there is not a single thing that I dont agree with. You just resumed this league from the perspective of someone that actually played it and understands it.