2.6.0 Area of Effect Changes

Most things are buffed or neutral which is good but the two that stand out to me as very bad are:

-Reave: nerfed into the ground, previously one of my favourite skills. Do I really have to play Blade Flurry now?

-Melee splash: previously you stated

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"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."

but this doesn't seem to be the case, Melee Splash seems to be largely unchanged, even slightly nerfed leaving single target skills augmented by melee splash basically in the same place they were before or worse off. Clarification?

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Alhoon wrote:

To everyone crying about this: do you really not realize that exponentially increasing area of effect was bad to the game?

Thanks for the great change GGG, hopefully this is the first step in a path of lowering the ridiculous speed that the game has gotten.

I really hope you don't cave in to complainers. I have my faith in you.

You have to be pretty new player here. You know HOW MANY NERFES this game got in 4 years? So everything according to you was "really" bad for the game? EVERY aspect of the game was somehow nerfed in history of game. EVERY 3-4 months is something nerfed.

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Alhoon wrote:

To everyone crying about this: do you really not realize that exponentially increasing area of effect was bad to the game?

Thanks for the great change GGG, hopefully this is the first step in a path of lowering the ridiculous speed that the game has gotten.

I really hope you don't cave in to complainers. I have my faith in you.

Describing it as exponentially increasing area is a misnomer, since the deciding factor in whehter or not you hit any given mob is the radius, which did not increase exponentially.

I agree that curbing the growth of aoe radius size is not a bad thing for the game, but it was hardly near the top of the list of problems that I thought needed immediate attention.

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Alhoon wrote:

To everyone crying about this: do you really not realize that exponentially increasing area of effect was bad to the game?

Thanks for the great change GGG, hopefully this is the first step in a path of lowering the ridiculous speed that the game has gotten.

I really hope you don't cave in to complainers. I have my faith in you.

The fastest builds were not strictly aoe based.

All this does is hurt the tier 2 builds that needed min maxed aoe just to be viable.
One of GGG's biggest failures to date and time will tell.

All hail Path of Projectiles. Maybe I should go back to play tornado shots. It's one of the few skills that did not get a single nerf since its release.

Whats happening with Flameblast?

Think I like these changes generally.

Yeah, would really like to see a flameblast comparison as well.

RIP vaal fireball.

Seems like you guys changed aoe increase mechanics because you assumed people get confused about elementary school geometry; radius increase vs area increase... and then it turned out in the process you completely messed up established balancing in areas that were totally uncalled for. Tons of work resulting in even less polish than before.

We get it. Two 20cmm pizzas are way less nom nom than one 40cm pizza. You think people that support your game get confused about this? We didn't all steal our moms credit cards you know.

People that want huge AoE on their skills will still go for all passives they can reasonably get. Be it radius based increase or area based. I'm sorry, I get why you wanted to get rid of exponential growth and it makes perfect sense to make this change, and I know it's a groundwork investment and it's gonna feel way better in a year or so - it just seems like a complete mess at this stage. I hope I'm wrong and it's all carefully rebalanced... but then I look at reave and melee splash infograph and I just know it's not.

There is a reason you release it now in a "filler" league* rather than wait for 3.0, and we all know it.


*legacy looks really awesome thought and I already hope it goes through to core. PoE is life, GGG is love.


edit:

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Nephalim wrote:

The fastest builds were not strictly aoe based.
All this does is hurt the tier 2 builds that needed min maxed aoe just to be viable.

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viperesque wrote:

This creates as many questions as it answers.

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The_Korgoth wrote:

Not only it feels off, it's absurd. Reave did nothing to deserve this.