On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

Im sorry but i do not understand the changes to the charges.

They kill build diversity, they werent a problem to begin with and you had to actually invest into items/passives to obtain them, now Casters cannot benefit from Frenzy charges and caster builds in general are less popular anyway at this point - why are we being punished and why are you watering down your game by reducing the effect of builds, you even released a new version of the trapper chest and it now gives frenzy charges, too bad the 4% damage increase doesnt work on traps anymore... while these changes doesnt "kill" builds. it reduces their effectiveness wich wasnt needed in the first place. you need to re-think these changes or revert them, please.

Regarding Chill and Shock, there is no point shocking a mob when you take 50% of their health in a hit/crit anyway, you will kill the mob in 1-2 hits afterwards anyway.

One of the issues are/will be bosses in Fall of Oriath because of the amount of extra HP they recieved and I am happy the bosses do indeed become more of a challenge rather than fall over - however I could see rewards being upped for killing them in return.

One of the reasons why these shock and chill changes are bad aswell is because they were used to be safer / kill bosses faster and now with the current changes they will do absolutetly nothing - again this coupled with your changes to boss HP makes it a bad design choice.

RE-THINK THESE CHANGES, THEY ARE NOT GOOD IN THEIR CURRENT ITTERATIONS!

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Chris wrote:

Almost all of these changes are on Beta. Please playtest them and let us know the results of what you find. We'll post again after the weekend with our findings also.

I don't have a key, Chris.

EDIT: Changed my mind, I'm not fine with the charge changes. Frenzy and Power Charges should both give the same buffs to attack builds and spell builds, whatever buffs they grant.


To the people giving feedback on the chill/shock changes: It's extremely likely that there will be more ways to gain Increased Ailment Effect incoming, which will

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shadowraiden wrote:

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DemonikPath wrote:

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Icemasta wrote:

The problem with the constant nerfs, especially in regard to charges, is that it's aimed at the top end builds but affecting every other build on the way.

While you are attempting to bring the top end-build in line with everyone else, the way you're going about the nerfs and bringing everyone down a few steps.

Here is a shitty paint drawing that I did quickly, where area represents the build diversity:




You had quite a few broken builds before, but you probably had the best diversity of skills that could clear T15 and a few bosses. With the constant nerfs, you're basically pigeonholing everyone, not just at the top end, but in the mid-end as well, and it's leaving so many builds that just don't scale well or at all in the end-game, because you keep removing mechanics.

Yes, frenzy charge was an issue to top end builds that could afford them on top of everything else, but now every mid-tier build that used frenzy charges and still managed to get to t12-t15 gets fucked.

tl;dr; your nerfs to top end is having massive collateral damage on lower end builds, in your goal to increase build diversity, you're decreasing it.

And that's totally fine. Not every build is supposed to clear top tier content. And even good build should invest some currency to clear top tier content. There shouldn't be budget top tier builds. It just makes game boring.

your misunderstanding though. also the whole not every build is meant to clear top tier content contradicts their whole purpose for this game which is build diversity.

build diversity is the ability to do "ALL" content in the game no matter what you play, some just do it better than the others but they still have the ability to do it.
with these changes they have destroyed quite a lot of builds which means why would anyone ever play them if they cant go higher than say t10 whats the point your purposely removing content from yourself.



these changes were too drastic in a short amount of time. if they had been put into the beta from the start and let us play around with them then maybe we could trully see how changes will impact.

also it breaks so many interactions with uniques and other skills that the charges need a complete overhaul if they was to do this.

we then move onto ailments essentially being deleted from the game as hmm that 50% hit that has give them a 50% increased damage debuff sounds amazing oh wait ill kill them on the next hit anyway.

vinktars was needed but again wasnt even what people was saying was needed. the shock was just a small part of the issue its the leech that makes vinktars op.

overall these are changes that come in after 3.0 and had some time to work around what 3.0 currently looks like.

Might want to re-read my post because what you're saying is exactly what I said, you just ranted on repeating what I said.

Example 1. Crit based Incinerate with 2 Void Battery, Assassin.(yes i know everyone is using this example)

With crit gem at level 18 and 8 Power Charges you could get almost 6 base crit, a very good base to scale off of, with heavier investment into a good weapon, shield, jewels and maybe neck you could probably get at or near crit cap without needing Diamond Flask.

With the changes you can only get 4 base crit chance with level 21 Crit chance gem. And historically gems with 4 crit chance aren't played as crit builds cus all your gear, gems, passives, literally everything needs to be geared toward crit chance to have any decent crt rating.

Example 2. Raider EK, getting the Frenzy nodes and phasing nodes, scaling more for cast speed, movement speed and poison.

With these nerfs to Frenzy charges this build no longer gets damage to scale EK and the Poison, just the cast speed...I think, or should I say hope, cus if you guys remove the cast and attack speed then there will be no point at all to use Frenzy Charges.

The farther extent to this nerf is that not everyone was trying to get frenzy charges, if we could, awesome, if we couldn't, no huge deal, really only Raider can sustain them against single target anyway. I do however agree that the changes to Power charges is an overall buff to them, maybe give them like 2% attack speed per charge for the melee crit builds, I mean something, cus for things like Hegemoney's Era this is a huge, HUGE nerf to the builds overall feel and effectiveness.

Example 3. Other DoT builds that didn't abuse Barrage or Viper Strike, but wanted to use the "new" mechanics to have some fun for 3.0.

Assassin and Raider both make DoT delivery skills much less 'feel good" because now you can get extra damage from power charges if your not using an attack, and you feel forced into crit as a caster, but now you get less damage and less consistency with crits and less damage from your More multipliers.


ON THE FLIP SIDE, Arcane Surge changes, very sweet, rather than version 1 of the skill, I like this one alot better. It kinda ruins my Hirophant "cast everything for free" build, but whatever, that build was a novelty.
I really like that thematically, all the charges have 2 effects tied to them. Frenzy gives, or used to, give damage and speed, Power charges give crit and damage, and Endurance give phys mitigation and resist. Thematically I think this is very good for the game, overall I think Frenzy needs to be reverted and then nerf the damage numbers to like 2.5% more.(I feel 2% is going to far and 3% is corny, just my opinion.)

And 1 last thing that I have been bitching about since 1.6, and I will continue to bitch about till its changed back. I WANT VIPER STRIKE TO HAVE FLAT DAMAGE, THIS SCALING TRASH NEEDS TO STOP, IT DOESN'T WORK AND IT FEEL LIKE SHIT TO PLAY.

And that concludes my essay for why I dont specifically like the way Frenzy Charges were gutted, not nerfed cus nerfing would be changing the numbers, they were gutted,

Why I'm against the changes to charges:

You claim the intent is to make it less mandatory for general damage dealers to invest in frenzy charges.

That's all fine and dandy but general damage dealers mostly don't invest into frenzy charges. Investing means taking additional charges using frenzy uniques and the likes, not utilizing the 3 default charges.

The proposed changes won't make it less mandatory for casters to invest into frenzy charges, it will make it downright stupid to invest into them. Using 2 points or your amulet or your boots to gain a measly 4% cast speed just feels bad and is a horrible investment.

The changes won't make investing into frenzy charges a choice, it'll completely restrict it to attack builds.

Casters may still use their 3 default charges from time to time but they'll never actually invest.

It's the same for power charges and attackers. 90% crit chance for ~2 gemslots (OoS + Inc. Crit.) is nice, but no one will get additional ones at 30% crit per charge.

The change effectively removes options (using ice bite on a caster, and yes, even the hipster raider caster) by making them comparatively worse than just investing in the completely obvious thing (e.g. PC for casters). It also messes with the themes of certain uniques (Tulfall, etc.).

That would be fine if it had other merits, like opening up new a similar amount of possibilities. But it doesn't in its current form it doesn't seem to.

ATM it just makes investing into the charges that aren't "designated" to spells or attacks respectively feel bad.

Of course a big part of this is subjective. My issue isn't that it could be a damage nerf but that it restricts possible combinations and doesn't mesh very well with established interactions and themes regarding charges.

PT was right all along.

It seems like the consequences of the changes are far reaching and might have unintended effects. For how much is changing in 3.0 it seems like this may not be the most bulletproof change you've planned on.

It also is kinda a huge bomb to drop a gigantic change to a very fundamental system 1 week before release. This change might go over better if people had more time to test it and become comfortable with it.

Hi,

i have been playing PoE every league since the start of the Open Beta. What i love most about PoE is the build diversity and all the possibilities you can combine to build a new and somewhat unique character. There is no other game that comes even close to PoE in terms of theorycrafting.

I do like a lot of changes in the 3.0 beta. The clearspeed meta was out of control and had to be tuned down. Increases to minion life and nerfing poison/ignite double-dip damage was necessary. But i feel that a lot of the changes/nerfs done in the 3.0 beta ( and some which were applied beforehand) remove the build diversity in PoE.

In the recent state of the game (3.0 beta), there is one typical way to build a character: equip a spell/attack, add some dmg multiplier, aura's or curses to it and kill stuff.

This used to be different. Remember the good old days with Cast on Crit builds where you had many different things to add to your character to make it stronger. There were so many coc builds possible besides discharge.
Wormblaster was an excellent build that was really unique.
scold's bridle used to be fun.
Any burning/prolif build with elemental equilibrium was fun and challenging to craft, bleeding builds were interesting. CWDT builds/detonate dead builds/temp chains+freeze builds and yes, also poison double dip builds were fun to craft because they had some more complex mechanics in it.

They all got removed from the game or nerfed to the state that they are not viable endgame choices anymore.

I fear that some of the nerfs and mechanical changes result in too many limitations on how to build different characters ( frenzy charge only working with attacks as one example )

Game mechanics should be kept so that they dont force the player into some specific direction but increase build diversity and enable crazy combinations. The game is not just about balance, it's about fun and finding cool things to try out- that's what made PoE such a succesful game.

I very rarely, if ever, post on the forums and I hope Chris, Neon or the other guys read this and consider it.

I'm not going to comment specifically about the changes because it's a lengthy discussion and I'm in work.

I feel like what would be nice though is if GGG were to give us examples of the reasoning behind the changes and the impact it would have on one or two specific builds to demonstrate how the change effectively does what you are aiming for. Yes, a write up would take time but it would help communicate the impact of the changes and also allow you to explain why/where you are going with them. It will also allow the community to point out areas in which any balance changes will interact with builds or skills in an undesirable way that perhaps you haven't though of. If you commit a small amount of time to one of the devs doing this and interacting with the community with regards to the balance changes I think we would all benefit in the long run.

I also believe that if you are changing things just to shake up the Meta then you should be forward and say that. I don't think anyone is going to complain about the Meta being shifted in of itself but labeling it as "balance" changes will give people the impression you aren't understanding the impact the changes will have as they can often effectively destroy niche builds, regardless of popularity, when you are perfectly aware of what you are doing.

I think you guys are doing a great job with the game and applaud you for the amazing interaction and time you all spend with us. You of course aren't obliged to tell us anything behind the reasoning of changes but I think if you meet us in the middle and do a manifesto style post around changes it will benefit everyone in the long run; The players will have better insight and understanding around changes and it gives us the opportunity to address concerns we have with changes directly to the people who are testing them. Even just posting on the thread to acknowledge you have read the comments can go a long way in our minds.