absolute cope 3.28 bingo for Mark

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Bosscannon#3325 wrote:

Why? Cause game just constantly relentlessly pressures you to squeeze out as much DPS as possible.

Not really, the ceiling of what's actually required is quite low and getting past the ceiling is just getting easier and easier each time they introduce new player power. It's easier than ever to get a build going even on a low budget thanks to power creep.

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If I ever felt like I dont need the extra 30~50% more multiplier from a damage support gem maybe I would slot in that inc AOE support for QOL but I never ever feel like I have enough DPS. When I look at other peoples builds on pooninja it doesnt look like it happens for them either.

Most of the time you use inc aoe for better clear speed. If you already lack the damage in a mapping environment, which has a much lower ceiling compared to other content it's fair to say you're at fault for doing things wrong with your build.

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The ssf argument is kinda mute. Sure you can force things with untold hours sunk into farming or same untold hours sunk into learning how to farm faster. The simple reality is majority players don't have infinity time to both learn the game on entry and relearn it with each patch.

ssf is a good prime example of how generous the state of the game is since it's a lot harder without trade, but people still get things done within a week or two.
Looking at most characters across trade league and ssf it's pretty obvious that the majority of the playerbase does know the game well enough to be fine by playing popular builds, making currency, or just playing their own thing successfully.

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The baseline requirements for characters to not get stomped by the game are currently too high and you can dance around it with "you can still overcome it if you brute force it with time or do everything exactly right" all you like but it will still, always, be either tedious or handraily which will always feel unfun.[/b]

The baseline requirements are getting lower with each patch. This league alone did made the game a whole lot easier with the tree farting out overly geneorus items left and right. All the leagues with new player power made the game a lot easier and more forgiving.
I think you should be happy that GGG stopped with larger balance patches to counter power creep. Cause things would look a whole lot different if they were to throw out an Expedition, dial player power back to a point where you have to do a bit of work to surpass baseline requirements, compared to what we have now with power creep pushing you past the baseline requirements for free.

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When a game is "do everythin correct or fail" it becomes more like a test or a job.

Almost every game is about you as a player making the right decisions.

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Bosscannon#3325 wrote:

When a game is "do everythin correct or fail" it becomes more like a test or a job.

The game should simply allow more jank and fooling around. If it refuses to then less builds get played and people who otherwise might have been entertained are instead bored.

The challenge to relax ratio is off. This is subjective. Its fine if you like it harder. I dont.

Yeeah 100% agree, at some point the game has gotten bloated with so much bs like t17 modifiers that trying to play or follow a strong build feels like a chore.

If I could just pick a cool skill I enjoy,wing it and still clear the content I'd be happy. I dunno, maybe GGG could do different balancing for SC Trade compared to the other gamemodes, SC is supposed to be the easy,casual mode of this game anyways. They could easily giga-buff every underperforming skill and let people have fun, maybe even add back in some of the OP Phrecia ascendancies. Maybe even the Idol system from that event. They really need to experiment more with leagues, that's the whole point of them.

Otherwise players like me, of which there are probably thousands, will just quit the league early after only leveling 1 build because there is literally nothing to do. Build diversity is basically 0 right now because there's too much mandatory stuff for every build like suppress,max res,block,dodge etc. its just way too much. Every build looks the same. Everyone uses es/evasion gear with suppress. Its just boring.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

If I could just pick a cool skill I enjoy,wing it and still clear the content I'd be happy. I dunno, maybe GGG could do different balancing for SC Trade compared to the other gamemodes, SC is supposed to be the easy,casual mode of this game anyways.

SC Trade is already the easiest mode, and the game is designed around it. If it still feels challenging, perhaps it is time to revisit the fundamentals or consider a different game, as the experience is already presented in an easy-to-pick-up, watered-down state.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Otherwise players like me, of which there are probably thousands, will just quit the league early after only leveling 1 build because there is literally nothing to do. Build diversity is basically 0 right now because there's too much mandatory stuff for every build like suppress,max res,block,dodge etc. its just way too much. Every build looks the same. Everyone uses es/evasion gear with suppress. Its just boring.

Rest assured, the game is not balanced around players who represent a minority. Build diversity is at its strongest it has ever been and if you still find the game challenging I cannot stress enough to mention it once again that revisiting the fundamentals and taking the time to properly learn how to play is truly the only way forward.

The developers will not lose a moment of sleep over single individuals quitting the league after speedrunning challenges via carries only to burn out and feel bored after a week despite there being an immense amount of content to play, all while refusing to learn the game and blaming it for their own shortcomings.

And I think its too hard to play a meta build in SC Trade atm. This topic is about 3.28 and what people would like to see, I'm just gonna leave my feedback here:

Hope the t17 rework they promised comes in this patch, so those maps are finally fixed.Petal skills need a rework too.

Sanctum rewards revamp was also promised a while ago, would be nice to get some good loot from it again besides the 1x or 2x divs.

Heisting in hideout. Login to hideout button, PoE 2 has the tech so they can just copy+paste it here.

Oh and a big one would be price checking in-game with the Asynch Trade UI, hope that one's coming soon. I'm kinda tired of posting all my legion jewels for 1 div then vendoring, never knowing how much they sell for. I probably also vendored rares that would have sold for so much chaos, price checking by just slapping the item into a search bar would be suuuch nice QOL.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

And I think its too hard to play a meta build in SC Trade atm. This topic is about 3.28 and what people would like to see, I'm just gonna leave my feedback here

If playing a meta build in SC Trade feels too hard, that might just be a reflection of your approach with the game, and perhaps SSF would suit you better. Of course, it still requires the same amount of fundamental knowledge to succeed. But if we are being honest, what players want is more challenging endgame content, which is exactly what already inside OP’s bingo board.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Frostbolt and Spark do different things. You're comparing apples and pears here. Your credibility takes a big hit when you're asked to provide evidence for your claim and then just make another claim instead.

You say "they obviously lied" as if that was something obvious to everyone, but I rewatched the Official Release Announcement video which had been livestreamed on Twitch and they clearly state their intent is to make the game more challenging again and to counteract the cumulated powercreep from the past. That's as cut & dry as you can get it. Where's the lie? I can't find it.

You are needlessly stretching truths to fit a narrative, but you don't back it up with evidence and thus the argument falls flat. You could build a much stronger case if you actually tried forming a coherent argument.

You are correct however in one thing: building a character "correctly" as you put it is rewarded by the game becoming much easier. It's almost like knowledge and experience pay off? As opposed to what exactly, playing poorly and receiving a participation trophy?

I did stupid ideas this league and was rewarded for it. Right now I'm leveling an Eye of Winter Mines Warden which is going to be the first of its kind in all of SC Keepers because no one has come up with a concept like this yet and by the looks of it, it'll exceed expectations. The game has always rewarded creativity and experimentation like that. But people shoehorn themselves into hyper-optimization and narrow their thinking into "if it can't do T17 and uber pinnacles on first try, it's trash" and lose out on a ton of fun in the process.

That's what's actually sad.

I am comparing two spells that do spell damage. These are not apple and pears. One has scaling avenues and easity builds out to be many times over more effective. The other has no scaling avenues and does nothing beyond a generic "hit once we done". This creates a disparity between these skills where a 25% buff to frostbolt damage is meaningless and the dps it outputs is still laughable compared to a real skill. If this to you does not count as evidence towards my claim then you are just not serious about this. Current frostbolt is only a delivery tool for ice nova of frostbolts and all these 25% fiddling they do with it sometimes in the patch notes is completely meaningless and will only serve to mislead some poor noob into thinking its a real skill and will ruin their day when they inevitably realise how it really is much later down the track.

"if it can't do T17 and uber pinnacles on first try, it's trash" - haha, what way to misrepresent it.
No, frostbolt is trash cause it will require disproportionally more effort to build it out to equivalent acceptable levels than it requires to build out a real skill so choosing to play it becomes an excersize of de facto applying a handicap to yourself. If you want to argue with this - where is the "zero to hero self-cast frostbolt" video on youtube?

Now about the other thing:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3147157
For a while now, we have been concerned with the power gap between support gems. There are gems that grant huge multiplicative damage bonuses and there are gems that do a bunch of stuff you don't really care about. When you're building a character, by far the correct choice is just to stack on all the multiplicative damage bonuses and ignore all the interesting utility support gems because their opportunity cost is just too high.

This achieves two goals for us. Firstly, the gap between the "good" and "bad" support gems has been narrowed, creating more interesting build opportunities. Secondly, player damage output in the end-game is reduced, which is a goal for this balance pass. As I mentioned, we want to iteratively restore challenge to Path of Exile. It's worth clarifying that we haven't buffed unused utility support gems as part of this balance pass. It's fully intentional that it's a reduction of power for the most damaging ones.

Nope, it only achieved one goal. The utility support gems still dont go into main skill links. Maybe awakened inc aoe does sometimes, but only cause that one still has some more multiplier. All this talk about "you can more dps than ever" is meaningless when on the opposite scale there is more monster ehp than ever to counteract the "on paper" gains.

When you refuse to notice/acknowledge these things and how they play out to create an illusion of diversity instead of real diversity it casts doubt on your own credibility or good faith. Maybe you lack the capacity to see the problem, which is fair enough. But if you do see it but choose to hand wave it away for some reason of your own then is not fair enough.

Case in point:


vs:


Sweep:
Mid-sized AOE, knockback, relatively high dmg%, disastrous attack speed

Earthshatter:
slightly better but still terrible attack speed, lower dmg% effectiveness but.. it is a slam so it benefits from warcries like crazy, can use 2 ~100% MORE supports (overextertion + fist of war).

these are two, primarily two-handed, slow skills
only the first one makes sense to be used. Sweep is completely, utterly pointless in current game. it has nothing going for it (previously it had huge flat phys and could be used with Voidforge). even using 900pdps weapon it might be difficult to make an uber viable build (unless ofc some form of magic cheeze is used - but that speaks more about said cheeze, not the skill - because Eartshatter with said cheeze would do 10 times more on the exact same setup)


each archetype has pairs like this. obvious choices and choices you should never make.


minions are similar story. pretty much every successful temporary minion build uses poison. if you try to use the same skill with non-poison scaling the result is universally worse (may be still playable but worse)

most people uttering 'git gud' are playing the obvious choices, meta builds but have the courage to speak about non-meta choices as well


if there are couragious 'git gud' players out there, go ahead, try to impress the world taking Sweep to ubers, trough T17, trough Simulacrum. but no energy blade, no meta tricks. meta tricks works despite skill choice, not because of it.

That's funny you keep mentioning Sweep, sid. I was planning on playing crit bleed sweep slayer in this current patch. https://pobb.in/Mlsd8p-JMf1R

The reason I said Spark and Frostbolt are poor comparisons are because not every spell's purpose is to be the main act in a build. By that logic you should buff Contagion by 5000% to be on par with Essence Drain. Skills don't exist in a vaccuum and your examples only work in a vaccuum.

Why would you use Sweep for bleed? Esp crit bleed? You know that the best best bleed supports are: Fist of War and Ruthless and you cannot use neither with Sweep? Critical Strike Affliction barely reaches value of one AND requires close to crit cap to be reliable

Perfect Agony for bleeds is an interesting choice (with newly buffed Rupture in a second link group) but - again - Elder mod gives you 'DOT multiplier' that Perfect Agony happens to negate. Values of DOT multiplier are far higher than crit multi on the weapon. the inefficiencies mount.

Then there is question of why Sweep in the first place? Lacerate of Butchering has enormous range and hits twice in the same time with better chance of high-rolling. EQ has sick aftershock multiplier etc etc (sticking to two handers here)

i actually played sweep many times, trying to force it, trying to find that 'magic sauce' it has. but after GGG removed its threshold jewel (also weak but it at least was something) this skill is DEAD. most non-strike/non-slam skills (aka skills that cannot benefit from OBSCENE warcry scaling) are dead. and sweep has actually NOTHING going for it. there is no overlap, no multi-hit, no vaal skill (Cleave is garbage but vaal cleave if you can chain it kinda saves it)

new pohx league starts soon, i wish you all the luck with Sweep crit bleeds, but do not think others havent tried that before (a hint: Impale, with max impales, perma War Banner, ~120% impale effect from jewels and uber rare roll on a weapon etc STILL SUCKS because it is not a slam that gets obscene buffs from warcries)

eh.. Golden Charlatan. yep, that might make it work (otherwise you need +crit from chest and support) but isnt that sword like kinda expensive?
edit: oh, it isnt that expensive now, nice sword

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sidtherat#1310 wrote:

Why would you use Sweep for bleed? Esp crit bleed? You know that the best best bleed supports are: Fist of War and Ruthless and you cannot use neither with Sweep? Critical Strike Affliction barely reaches value of one AND requires close to crit cap to be reliable

Perfect Agony for bleeds is an interesting choice (with newly buffed Rupture in a second link group) but - again - Elder mod gives you 'DOT multiplier' that Perfect Agony happens to negate. Values of DOT multiplier are far higher than crit multi on the weapon. the inefficiencies mount.

Then there is question of why Sweep in the first place? Lacerate of Butchering has enormous range and hits twice in the same time with better chance of high-rolling. EQ has sick aftershock multiplier etc etc (sticking to two handers here)

i actually played sweep many times, trying to force it, trying to find that 'magic sauce' it has. but after GGG removed its threshold jewel (also weak but it at least was something) this skill is DEAD. most non-strike/non-slam skills (aka skills that cannot benefit from OBSCENE warcry scaling) are dead. and sweep has actually NOTHING going for it. there is no overlap, no multi-hit, no vaal skill (Cleave is garbage but vaal cleave if you can chain it kinda saves it)

new pohx league starts soon, i wish you all the luck with Sweep crit bleeds, but do not think others havent tried that before (a hint: Impale, with max impales, perma War Banner, ~120% impale effect from jewels and uber rare roll on a weapon etc STILL SUCKS because it is not a slam that gets obscene buffs from warcries)

eh.. Golden Charlatan. yep, that might make it work (otherwise you need +crit from chest and support) but isnt that sword like kinda expensive?

I played Sweep before and it always felt better mechanically to me than Earthshatter does. I unchecked Ambush to not dilute visible DPS too much but you can hit some gnarly bleeds, and the entire thing is set up to be a very fast and adequate mapper since Sweep covers a big area, isn't clunky to click (most bleed slammers I played have windup I dislike). Tried to balance DPS and speed here, and with Gull + Charlatan stacking Shrine buffs & effect just makes a very fun mapper.

The weapon itself is a rare drop from a new uber and I didn't drop it in our private league so the build never happened. In SC Keepers it sits around 5d so quite cheap all things considered. Might throw a toon together after my current project if I'm feeling bored actually. Our conversation kinda reminded me I had one more in the chamber :D

Point I was trying to make is that attack skills suffer from this one particular issue where a lot of them behave similarily in function at which point it becomes a question of where can you squeeze the most and best DPS supports in, and what gem has the best multipliers (as you also point out). But that's where finding new unique angles comes in (such as my proof of concept).

I have had the most fun with melee builds trailblazing new concepts. We just reached a point where people assume we've figured the game out completely and found every build, when in reality there's tons of undiscovered stuff still under the hood