Content Update 2.6.0 Balance Changes

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godlyatheist wrote:

If that was the case, then they can just not release the patch notes details at all and leave everyone to figure it out for themselves. They would just say "patch 2.6 brings changes to items, passive tree and some balance tweaks". Almost everything in the wiki is through player's own detective work, not just posted by GGG for all do see. It's not exactly hard to notice Call of the Brotherhood says only 1% of Lightning Damage converts to Cold Damage when you have trouble killing clearing even low tier map. Besides, the players on the PBE knows about this stuff way before the general player base. One way to keep the hype train going would be to make the new stuff better than the old. However, if they did that all the time the power creep would get out of hand. Instead, they nerf old stuff and reintroduce new stuff at the previous S-tier power level.

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godlyatheist wrote:

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Clig wrote:

Flasks need to be rebalanced too, life flasks first. My opinion is that leech is bad mechanic, but only instant leech can overcome huge damage spikes. How many times you'll drink instant life flask to full up? with life flasks nodes and being a pathfinder - 2.5k hp/use, and 1 hp flask can be pressed 5 times, not 3 times with much less amount for common life builds. Also leech is no brain mechanic at all, you take it - it works, you need only 1 life flask in the end, which instant heal helps only in rare occasions when high es build will work as good. Second problem - very strong utility flasks and that es builds can utilize extra one, rumi was nerfed - good, problem still remains. Why es builds strong? Third problem - cheap defense (maybe only shield block is hard to get). Basalt + armor flask + flasks nodes will give you 75% phys mitigate in stat window (83% i got when played pathfinder with eva+es gear), which will work in 99% situations, only some bosses with many damage afixes will be strong enough to one-shot you or be fatty enough to last longer than 16 seconds of your deffence flasks. That worked as good for Blade flurry build with abyssus, just for curse you use enfeeble and you can facetank almost anything. Something is not right. Yup, it's not a faceroll gameplay when you use flasks, but in the end you have huge ehp in es-build and some strict defense to forget about armor/evasion stats on gear. Also cheap and very good defence mechanics is enfeeble and blind, while enfeeble works worse on bosses, blind don't have any restrictions. Cheap dps from shock - or you use lightning trap or vinktar flask, 50% more damage just from shock? i was literally shocked when known that lightning trap has 3 charges, something is not right people. I think you must have a chance to shock yourself when attacking shocked target or make multiplier lower. More damage from lion's roar flask (time restricted), more damage from conc effect gem (it works fine, not cheap damage), more damage from shock, more spell damage from rf (not cheap damage), warchief totem more damage (totem is strong itself, why it gives you buff i don't understand).

I think strong willed people, who use heavy strike, want some attention again. Heavy strike must torn targets appart. Your heavy strike dared to crit on shaper? his right arm will fall off, blood and meat flying around all of the place because your strike were really heavy. Also game still don't have any melee skill with bleed effect, maybe it's time. Heavy strike must be strongest solo target skill, bosses will suffer from undergrave injuries because you suffer from real melee range. Mob farm or boss farm, melee/ranged, elemental/physical, spell/attack variety of builds come from style you want to play, making versatile and strong skills for all situations is bad for skill balance, but good for fun - you always know that any content can be done even in bad gear, making ranged skills (even if they are use melee mechanic) best is bad for melee/range balance (although ranged skills will always be more versatile).

I really think that game needs mechanic like point blank to work for all of the skills, will it be cleave or split arrow, also if you use high range skill in boss fights with heavy running, melee range skills won't look so worse like now, though it'll need balancing too and that's not an easy task. And i think that gear class (es, eva, ar) must increase base stun avoidance and stun recovery, pure armor gear will have highest one avoidence and no recovery bonus and es gear highest recovery and no avoidence bonus.

All of this is due to the speed clearing meta. Flasks and Vaal skills became permanent skills - not the occasional steroid. If your build can't keep up permanent Vaal and Flasks, it's not good. This game would be unplayable if all the builds became slow dogs that took 5 minutes to clear a map. PoE is a grind game, made by Grinding Gear Game. If you took away the ability to grind efficiently, I might as play TL2 with my OP custom edited mods.

Leech was never the problem, every game has it. You see, PoE's very own design created this face tank problem. There are only so many possible outcome in a single player based game with no dedicated healer role.

1) Boss does so much damage that you can't take a single hit - PoE has this and we deal with it by spamming movement skill. This is a very binary game play style that's not very fun: either you take no damage or you can't play the game.
2) Boss does enough damage that so you have limited time to kill him before he kills you - PoE has this too and it's dealt with by using your 6 portals
3) Boss doesn't do enough damage - trivial case

There is only 1 thing that determines which of the 3 ways the fight will go, you GEAR. Everything is a gear check, that's it. You can reduce leech/reduce damage/reduce EHP whatever it will just increase the gear requirement. The skill you use in your build doesn't mean anything, only the effective damage it can deal with the gear you have. The more a skill scales with gear, the better it is. If Glacier Hammer dealt more damage and cleared faster than Blade Flurry, everyone would use it. Same with Elemental Hit.

Because GGG made it possible to trivialize case #2, only fights with one shot mechanic matter. Now the only way to make the game harder is to make one shot harder to dodge by making it faster. There is a limit to how much time you give a player to dodge in an online game so we've hit a ceiling. If #2 can't be trivialized because mechanic/gear/passive/talent gets nerfed too much, you can't play the game.

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Vaal Discipline no longer grants any bonus energy shield

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Hulio225 wrote:

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Rory wrote:

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.

Where was the "old location" ?

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Entropher wrote:

Niice but

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Vaal Discipline no longer grants any bonus energy shield

What does it do then? Oo