Content Update 2.6.0 Balance Changes

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Exile009 wrote:

LMAO!! All these tears. Do you crybabies realize that almost all of these changes have been REQUESTED by the community for a while now?

AoE nerfs, Blade Flurry nerf, ES nerfs (more of those will come in 3.0), crit nerfs - all of these mechanics have been an issue that's been raised not just by GGG, but by players themselves on the forums and on Reddit. A lot of us aren't too happy with the screen-wide, speed-clear fest that PoE has become of late.

None - and I mean none - of these changes look like they've made any skill un-viable aka unable to handle endgame content. Rather it just makes them slower as they can't kill everything within 2 screen of your character in 1 click anymore (well, that's the hope, anyway). You can still clear maps just like before - you just (hopefully) can't pretend you're playing "Gone in 60 seconds".

Meanwhile, we have people complaining about there being no life buffs and, of course, the perennial complaint about 1-shot. First off, 1-shot is intentional. If nothing in the game can kill you before you can heal back up, then this game really has become a faceroll. They'll never remove the potential for 1-shot (except, of course, for those who stack enough ES to overcome that aka CI aka just wait till 3.0).

As for life buffs, it's already been understood that a larger life v/s ES rebalance is scheduled for 3.0. Whether that will significantly buff life or just significantly nerf ES, I don't know. But you've been given 1 more league to enjoy the CI meta. If you don't like that, then wait a few months. Or play a life build, I have - and in the current CI-meta league too. Deliberately chose not to play any AoE skills as well - Scorching Ray and Frost Blades, for those interested. They're perfectly viable. And yes, including against Shaper - you can find enough vids online for proof.

Besides all this, the Threshold jewel changes promise to make things more interesting. And contrary to that one guy, I've played a Volley Fire build - it's fine even if they limit it to just 2. Rolling Flames...well, that's another story, but they didn't say every Threshold jewel would have a hard cap. Indeed, the Viper Strike one looks pretty nice, actually.

All in all, I'm actually rather happy with these changes. And more changes will always come. For those complaining that GGG still hasn't finished balancing their game, I'm sorry but they'll never finish. Regardless of whether you think the current game balance is good or not, it'll never be "over". This game is intended to be continually shifting and evolving. So I'm afraid you're never going to have the comforting surety of safely having mastered the game for all time. It's much like how the real world operates in that sense, actually - nothing is ever going to be 'as safe as houses' (including houses - see GFC 2008). Get used to it. Get gud!

P.S.: Or maybe you can master the game for all time. This guy has, after all - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/105920 But you'll never do so by just following whatever the current meta is. There's a lesson for life in that as well. Peace!

"

Rory wrote:

2.6.0 includes a long list of changes to game balance. Our primary intent is to better enable a larger selection of powerful build types and skill choices. Many of the more extreme changes to core systems have been held until The Fall of Oriath's Beta, while 2.6.0 will have a stronger focus on improving underused passives, weapon types, unique items and skills (with a focus on their Threshold Jewels). These changes will all combine to create a large selection of new builds to try out.

Improvements to the Passive Tree
Various improvements to specific clusters and the locations of passives have been made, making areas which weren't taken frequently more efficient, and opening up some new options for builds.

• Some physical to cold conversion has been added to the passive tree near the Ranger area. This allows for skills like Ice Shot & Frost Blades to have more conversion to cold than ever before.
• A new weapon elemental damage cluster has been added to the passive tree near the Ranger. This now allows for dexterity aligned characters who specialise in elemental attack skills to invest more of their points into damage.
• The area between the Shadow and the Ranger has been made more efficient and less restrictive, while also improving the efficiency of clusters in that section of the tree.
• The Thick Skin cluster now attaches to the outside perimeter.
• Mana has been added behind Mind over Matter, allowing for those builds to be better than ever before.
• Some claw, staff and sword passives have received some special attention and should now be more powerful overall.
• The Vitality Void and Spirit Void cluster near the Duelist starting area that grants life and mana leech to attack damage has been rearranged, and is now also attached to the outside perimeter path.
• The sword critical cluster has been made part of the Ranger's large exterior sword cluster. The other path of the sword cluster has been significantly reworked to grant more power.
• The Master Fletcher bow cluster between the Ranger and the Duelist has been removed, and the Avatar of the Hunt cluster has been moved to its old location.
• Leech effects in the Shadow area of the tree now leech from all attack damage, not just physical attack damage.
• The lightning clusters Arcing Blows and Crackling Speed have been combined, and Arcing Speed has been improved.
• Master of Force, the physical cluster in the Scion area and Ash, Frost and Storm, the elemental cluster in the Scion area now grant a small value of reduced reflect damage taken of their type.
• Many other changes have been made to pathing, positioning, and values to improve underused passive skills.

Elemental Conversion
Some unique items that converted elemental damage to other elemental damage types have had their conversion values lowered, to increase the opportunity cost of total element-to-element conversion. Converting spells to other damage types was so easy with Pyre and Call of the Brotherhood that it compromised elemental identity for many skills.

We've made it slightly easier to convert more physical damage to elemental damage for some attack skills. Frost Blades and Ice Shot now have 60% physical to cold conversion, up from 40%. Wild Strike now converts 100% of physical damage to a random element.

Unique Item Rebalance
Over 100 unique items have been rebalanced, with a focus on improving underused uniques that didn't have a strong role in the game. We've tried to make sure that all uniques either have a positive impact on leveling characters, act as a good item to wield when first entering maps, or have a defined role for end-game characters. We've got more changes coming in future, but we've managed to make changes to a significant number of older uniques.

One-Handed Weapon Damage and Weapon Implicits
One-handed weapons were seeing very little use outside of daggers and specific one-hand skills. To improve player choice, we've increased the base damage of many one-handed weapon types across the board.

We've also changed or rebalanced many weapon implicits. Here are some of the major ones:

• Daggers now have a lower implicit value. This will also apply to already-existing dagger implicits. Previously daggers granted 40%, 60% or 80% increased critical chance. These values have been changed to 30%, 40% and 50%. This is to reduce the impact specific base types had on weapon choices, and lower the power of the standout critical caster weapon base type.
• Lower level claw base types that granted life leech now grant life on hit, as life leech has very little effect at lower levels.
• Maraketh claw base types (Double Claw, Twin Claw and Gemini Claw) now have separate life and mana on hit values, as they now grant more life on hit.
• Maraketh thrusting swords have a higher chance to bleed, going from 8%/12% to 15%/20%. Other thrusting swords have a lower critical multiplier value.
• One-handed maces now grant stun threshold at 10%/15% rather than stun duration at 20%/40%, to increase their ability to stun.
• All staves have had their block values increased. Previously, staves granted either 12% block chance or 18% block chance. They now grant 18% and 20% respectively.
• Almost half the one-handed and two-handed sword base types now grant flat accuracy, instead of increased accuracy. This should make them more desirable for characters that don't naturally have high accuracy rating from dexterity.

Area of Effect Changes
All sources of "Increased Radius of Area Skills" have been replaced with an increase to area. This means that rather than the area of the skill increasing geometrically as the player invests in the modifier to area scale, the radius gained per point of the stat will be lower and lower as heavy investment occurs, similar to diminishing returns. Many old radius increases that have been changed to area increases provide a higher numeric value to compensate for this change. The goal of this change is to make investing in the size of your area skills to be less rewarding the more you invest, so players don't feel like they need to gather every single point of area radius to reach their character's full potential.

As an example of how this change will work, the map mod that granted increased radius of boss skills previously granted 40% increased area of effect radius, but will now grant 100% increased area, which results in approximately the same increase to area.

As many lower level skills don't have as high a base area, they will now receive an additional flat bonus to radius at certain levels of the gem. An example of this is Blight, which gains +1 area radius every 5 levels of the gem.

All values of curse radius and aura radius were doubled when converted to curse or aura area size, to result in a similar change.

As another notable change, Melee Splash now gains significantly more increased area than it did increased radius as the gem levels, bringing it much closer to equivalent area skills.

Skill Balance Adjustments
A small number of skills have had their damage values adjusted. Damage increases have been applied to two skills that we were satisfied with the mechanics of, but felt like they didn't deal enough damage.

• Sunder now deals more damage with its direct hit, but less damage with its secondary area effects.
• Ice Crash has had its damage increased.

A damage reduction has been applied to one skill that dealt significantly more damage than other skills of its type, especially after one handed weapon changes.

• Blade Flurry has had its damage reduced.

Two vaal auras have been reduced in power.

• Vaal Haste now grants slightly lower values of attack, cast, and move speed.
• Vaal Discipline no longer grants any bonus energy shield.

There will be many more changes to skills coming in 3.0.0 as part of The Fall of Oriath's Beta.

Changes to Existing Threshold Jewels
For the majority of Threshold Jewels, the opportunity cost of having to take otherwise inefficient passive skills made the jewels too costly for their effect. All Threshold Jewels now require 40 of their chosen attribute to be available in the area, and no longer require it to be allocated. Many have a maximum number of jewels of that type that can be socketed, letting us be more generous with powerful effects that would be problematic if you could fill a large portion of your tree with them.

Some existing Threshold Jewels have had their values adjusted, some now have additional effects. We plan to make further changes to Threshold Jewels as part of the Beta.
Here are some examples:

• Heavy Strike's Threshold Jewel now grants a 20% chance for double damage, and is limited to 2.
• Viper Strike's Threshold Jewel now also grants a 10% chance to gain Unholy Might on hit per poison stack on the enemy, and is limited to 1.
• Vigilant Strike's Threshold Jewel now grants allies Fortify for 20 seconds, up from 3 seconds, and is limited to 1.

We'll reveal the full patch notes and skill tree for Content Update 2.6.0 a few days before it launches on March 3rd. Due to the number of changes being made, all players will receive a one-time full passive reset at that time.

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Attlus wrote:

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Exile009 wrote:

LMAO!! All these tears. Do you crybabies realize that almost all of these changes have been REQUESTED by the community for a while now?

AoE nerfs, Blade Flurry nerf, ES nerfs (more of those will come in 3.0), crit nerfs - all of these mechanics have been an issue that's been raised not just by GGG, but by players themselves on the forums and on Reddit. A lot of us aren't too happy with the screen-wide, speed-clear fest that PoE has become of late.

None - and I mean none - of these changes look like they've made any skill un-viable aka unable to handle endgame content. Rather it just makes them slower as they can't kill everything within 2 screen of your character in 1 click anymore (well, that's the hope, anyway). You can still clear maps just like before - you just (hopefully) can't pretend you're playing "Gone in 60 seconds".

Meanwhile, we have people complaining about there being no life buffs and, of course, the perennial complaint about 1-shot. First off, 1-shot is intentional. If nothing in the game can kill you before you can heal back up, then this game really has become a faceroll. They'll never remove the potential for 1-shot (except, of course, for those who stack enough ES to overcome that aka CI aka just wait till 3.0).

As for life buffs, it's already been understood that a larger life v/s ES rebalance is scheduled for 3.0. Whether that will significantly buff life or just significantly nerf ES, I don't know. But you've been given 1 more league to enjoy the CI meta. If you don't like that, then wait a few months. Or play a life build, I have - and in the current CI-meta league too. Deliberately chose not to play any AoE skills as well - Scorching Ray and Frost Blades, for those interested. They're perfectly viable. And yes, including against Shaper - you can find enough vids online for proof.

Besides all this, the Threshold jewel changes promise to make things more interesting. And contrary to that one guy, I've played a Volley Fire build - it's fine even if they limit it to just 2. Rolling Flames...well, that's another story, but they didn't say every Threshold jewel would have a hard cap. Indeed, the Viper Strike one looks pretty nice, actually.

All in all, I'm actually rather happy with these changes. And more changes will always come. For those complaining that GGG still hasn't finished balancing their game, I'm sorry but they'll never finish. Regardless of whether you think the current game balance is good or not, it'll never be "over". This game is intended to be continually shifting and evolving. So I'm afraid you're never going to have the comforting surety of safely having mastered the game for all time. It's much like how the real world operates in that sense, actually - nothing is ever going to be 'as safe as houses' (including houses - see GFC 2008). Get used to it. Get gud!

P.S.: Or maybe you can master the game for all time. This guy has, after all - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/105920 But you'll never do so by just following whatever the current meta is. There's a lesson for life in that as well. Peace!

So what, you just came in here to be a cunt and preach from your high horse? gg retard ya did it.

By the by, oneshot mechnics are a terrible thing when the majority of mobs can do it and the entirety of endgame content is either "build to oneshot, or be oneshot". But I guess that comes with your senibility to compare games to real life, because that's exactly the right comparison to draw.

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Jerle wrote:

Nice shake up of the meta!

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Exile009 wrote:

LMAO!! All these tears. Do you crybabies realize that almost all of these changes have been REQUESTED by the community for a while now?

"

jplimab wrote:

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Jerle wrote:

Nice shake up of the meta!

That's is the spirit!

Alright, for those who are saying stacking ES is better to prevent one shots:

Have you ever considered that your one-shotted deaths are by just not paying attention to what you are killing, due to the fact that you have a 50 bazilion DPS build that instagib bosses? I mean, a Volatile Devourer on a Vuln/Ele Weakness map+mob damage mods is meant to kill if you are not paying attention to what you're facing.

I've played only life builds so far, even on hardcore, and I never experienced one shots except to when not paying attention or too slow to dodge things that are meant to kill you.

You guys just want to faceroll maps in 60 seconds without even care about mods or what boss/skills you are facing, so stop complaining about "ES is better than life".

Life builds do need some workaround but I don't think it's utterly unviable as people say.


PEACE.