On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

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GGG_Neon wrote:

Shock and Chill
It would be very useful to hear your explanation of why certain builds or items have been damaged (or improved too much) by the change, with specifics and explanations.

In Legacy I have a lowlife cyclone COC frostbolt raider with frenzy and power charges. It's super fun to play and I clear strands very quickly. I already only have ~~65%ish crit chance on my cyclone with 6 power charges so I feel like this build would not be viable any longer with the current charge change.

I have 6 frenzy and 6 power charges so the "spell damage" would be the same but I would lose too much crit chance on my cyclone to reliably kill packs and map bosses

Sure, I could go assassin, drop the frenzy charges entirely and hit 95% crit chance. But that's less fun than the insane attack speed I have currently. Mind you, I have some pretty GG gear. I invested ~20 ex into this character including diamond rings instead of opals and my crit is still pretty low.

You can take a look if you like. The character name is Chilling Balls. https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Sunscorcher/characters

Per Neon's request, here is some feedback from a spell caster point of view about
>why certain builds or items have been damaged (or improved too much) by the change"

Frenzy charges:

* To build a caster using the raider/trickster ascendancies generally means foregoing *huge* boosts in raw power from other popular caster ascendancies (inquisitor, assassin, berserker, etc.) Losing the 20%-32% more damage from the frenzy charges is a tremendous blow to ascendancies that offers little else to casters in the way of offense (40% increased elemental damage and/or onslaught for raider and 16-36% increased cast speed for trickster). Even with frenzy charges currently having generic more damage, these ascendancies are typically underrepresented when it comes to casters.
* Casters who invest in frenzy charges generally must do so via inefficient pathing for non-dexterity oriented spells. Often times you're looking at 3-6 points spent for +1 charge on the tree, which almost never includes the one in the duelist area. Not only do the raw points spent to pick them up matter, but the additional charge notables are somewhat far away from any other additional spell damage benefits, projectile spells notwithstanding.
* Casters building around frenzy charges often suffer from lower life totals than intelligence or strength-based builds. I often find that the 15-30 points spent pathing to frenzy charges and the requisite nearby nodes would have otherwise been spent on "better" defenses (life).
* Evasion, dexterity and all related defensive issues for life-based characters that are frequently brought up about rangers/melee are magnified when building a caster. Coloring dexterity gear, for instance, has a huge cost attached to it. Trying to get a six blue socket Lightning coil or Belly of the beast; forget about it. And the int/dex area of the tree is slightly lighter on life than the dex/str area. I don't believe that characters who invest in frenzy charges are doing so at a negligible cost.

Power charges:

* I feel that investment should be rewarded. Chris' stated goal of "Nerf total crit chance available. It was getting too close to cap, too easily." can be achieved by reducing crit values elsewhere on the tree and/or gear. Would it potentially pigeon-hole players into pathing to more power charges if they wanted to reach "comfortable" levels of crit? Possibly, but isn't that the entire point? Invest passives and gear for a better return on what you're investing in, rather than picking up most of it by pathing through areas that you would already be going through.
* Encouraging players to run a healthy portion of their critical strike through power charges has a number of gameplay benefits;
* Players have to dedicate gear resources to generating/maintaining charges. Herald + curse on hit + ass mark won't cut it for sustained boss battles. It encourages using the [weapon swap](https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Jaws_of_Agony) for charge generation, for example
* An introduction of more tactical gameplay by use and positioning of [Orb of Storms](https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Orb_of_Storms) which was expressly introduced as a true utility spell.
* Longer boss fights (rather than straight HP buffs) by forcing the player to utilize these charge generation sources rather than holding down the attack button, potentially at the cost of flask up-time.

Some ideas/thoughts to address GGG's stated goals;

>Nerf the Assassin. This was frequently requested.

Can be done without changing charges for all other builds. The nerfs that just hit assassin are pretty strong and don't require changing how charges themselves function.

>Nerf total crit chance available. It was getting too close to cap, too easily.

Can be done by reducing crit values on passives and gear. Charges inherently have more opportunity cost than crit values from the passive tree. Not only do they take the passive points to obtain extra charges, but they also have a duration, which puts the onus on the player to manage and requires gem or gear slots to activate. Reducing crit values on gear and/or passives seems, to me, a superior option.

>Provide more uses for power charges on spellcasters (especially non-crit ones).

Why not leave that choice up to the player in a way that allows further customization; a hallmark of PoE. Change the "Spell damage per power charge" node to "-20% critical strike per power charge, +% more spell damage per power charge". Selecting that node would make each power charge function as the newly changed charge, which provides the desired benefit for non-crit builds while simultaneously not hampering investment for crit players if they choose not to take that passive.

>Make it less mandatory for general damage dealers to invest in frenzy charges.

I don't believe that they are any more mandatory for casters than any other charges are for other builds. However, if GGG wants to remove the cheap and easy 3-4 charges that many builds opt to get, reduce base charge duration to 3-5 seconds and adjust duration values/passives accordingly. This prevents the player who does not invest in duration from having high uptime, especially on bosses, and simultaneously rewards players who choose to invest in them. Ideally a player who takes 3 charge duration passives on the tree would have the same charge duration as is on live currently.

For me, It's not about the Nerf, It's all about the alternatives.

While Frenzy charge could provides your build a decent DPS and clear speed, there may be no other mechanic that could provide the same thing even if with some trade-off. If it really does exist, it could be too bad so no one realize about it.

There are so many underrated mechanics, skill gems, and unique items waiting your team to revise, and make them as, at least, a second choice for something.

If the alternatives clearly available, people will not come out and bully you because they will need a time to revise about their build.

My 2chaos:

Nerf the Assassin:
Having played a fair bit of Assassin, I really don't think it needs a nerf. Yes, it's true you can get a lot of damage from the Assassin ascendancy, but it's rather unique in that there is almost zero defense available to you not only in your ascendancy, but also in the Shadow area. In 2.6, this downside could be largely mitigated with a huge ES pool while picking up easy additional power charges. In 3.0, ES builds are much more difficult to make work and the previous Ghost Reaver+Vaal Pact combination that many high damage Assassin builds relied upon will no longer function.

If the Assassin is going to receive damage nerfs, it should be made up for with a small amount of survivability. It's very much a glass cannon ascendancy, so if you're going to nerf the cannon part, perhaps remove some of the glass element. But I think it's more flavorful if it remained as a high DPS option with no defense. Again, I don't think the Assassin deserves nerfs when there's so many other options for roughly comparable damage and decent to incredible defensive bonuses, like elemental status immunity from the two ranger ascendancies, or reflect reduction, or tons of utility that isn't the pure damage Assassin provides.

The bottom line is that Assassin *only* offers damage. It would need a redesign (and lose a lot of flavor in the process) if you're going to neuter that damage and shift it into other areas. If you're just going to nerf the Assassin without compensation, it will become the new Ascendant. It was only moderately popular in softcore, so I just don't see why it should be demolished.

Total crit chance nerf:
This makes sense, but starting this by blowing up the Assassin is not the way to go. I would have nerfed base crit chance on spells/weapons and/or nodes on the tree, and possibly outliers like Voice of the Storm. Nerfing the Ascendancy whose whole theme is crits just makes it so crit builds will migrate to other ascendancies that offer more damage AND defensive bonuses, like Raider, Pathfinder, Inquisitor, etc.

Provide more uses for power charges on spellcasters (especially non-crit ones):
I'm not sure why this is necessary. Should we rework frenzy charges and power charges to benefit minion builds as well, because they currently don't much of a use (outside of fringe uniques)? There are tons of caster crit builds that already benefit plenty from power charges, and the defensive powerhouse that Heirophant will be in 3.0 can use The Aylardex to provide a benefit to non-crit builds.

Making charges into power=caster and frenzy=attack build limits options and would require you to redesign dozens of uniques (notably, as many others have mentioned, the upcoming Tinkerskin). It needlessly nerfs things like any caster build being able to make use of Tulfall, builds using Surgebinders or Doedre's Elixir, or other nonmeta builds using charges unconventionally.

Make it less mandatory for general damage dealers to invest in frenzy charges:
Again, why is this necessary? Frenzy charges are some of the most difficult to accumulate for single target bosses (unless you have a build that revolves around them, like Oro's Sacrifice, raider, Frenzy, etc.) They're already far from mandatory, most builds have far too much damage even without Frenzy charges. They mostly provide QOL for additional clearspeed from being able to attack/cast and use movement skills faster, which they'll still do. This just needlessly nerfs builds that really needed the damage scaling, like Explosive Arrow or Caustic Arrow while not affecting some of the biggest outliers, like full conversion bow pathfinders.


With all that said, I'm glad you guys are looking for community feedback. If you truly feel like these changes have to be made for some reason, these ideas could work but would really benefit from refinement. I would wait until after 3.0 has shipped and you have less on your plate. There's already a LOT of shit going into 3.0 between the new league, new uniques, new ailment system, double dipping removal, unique changes, new keystones, ES changes, etc. It's already the largest patch you've ever done between balance changes and content addition, so let's just cool it on these changes until everything else is squared away.

I think the power charge change is fine if GGG thinks it's too easy to get near crit cap. Makes them a little useless for attack builds, but maybe that's the point?

Not so sure about the change to frenzies though. It's fun to have the option to make a frenzy using caster.

Couple minor quibbles: Why are you buffing trickster when deadeye remains untouched? Deadeye needs a bit of love too. Inquisitor as well probably, the availability of pen through flasks, skills, and items has made them subpar for almost everything.

Regardless, I'm sure you guys'll figure it out.

See ya next weekend.

please stop only taking your feedback from the vocal casuals aka P L E B B I T. It's just a huge cirle jerk in general.

The changes are ok. Everyone is throwing around comments like "Frenzy/Power charges are now COMPLETELY USELESS for x". Frenzy charges still add cast speed for casters, and Power charges still add crit chance for attack builds. Yes they are weaker for some builds now, but stop with the crap like "does nothing now" and "worthless", etc.

Big fan of the charge changes, I always thought they should have worked like this. Not only for balancing, but for a little shred of class/build identity. What's the point of charges if you're always incentivised to get all of them? Just fix the dumb uniques and we all good

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The minimum requirement to join our QA team is 1000 hours of PoE experience, and we still turn people with that prerequisite away if they're not good enough at the game.

Ah, this explains so much. These are undercover 4chan trolls who derive physical pleasure from destroying the game for everybody else.

Damnit /pol/, we know club penguin was shut down, but not like this. Not here, not now.

Aaand invisible spaceships... tweet to Ted Cruz aaaaaaaaaaaand post.

I would rather see flat nerfs to Frenzy and Power charges (maybe add on a second effect to PC's, like mana regen or chance to ailment) than see them pigeonholed into caster and attack builds. For the ailment changes, they are 100% fine and it was obvious that Mark's summary wasn't the whole story, and more "%increased shock effect" and so on would be added, to make shocking easier.

Chris and the rest of the team, thank you for responding to the community feedback on your game. Players are extremely passionate (for better AND for worse) but ultimately I believe in your vision for the game. The level of communication that GGG has with the community is half of what makes Path of Exile a great game.