On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

I love trying to incorporate both endurance and frenzy charges in most builds I create, and I always felt "I want to incorporate power charges too", but there wasn't a point to it if I didn't go crit or used some niche unique like The Aylardex. Now I kinda feel the same way about frenzy charges.

Endurance charges are quite easy to attain for any build and they're incredibly strong defensively even with only 3 charges. I felt that Frenzy charges were about as strong offensively as endurance charges are defensively before this change, so I was fine with both. Power Charges, however, I felt was a bit weak as you could only effectively use them in very specific cases, so I felt they were a bit lackluster compared to the other two.

Considering that it often requires investment and planning (currency, warcries, curses, links) and even with a potential drawback (sacrificing gems, alternate setups, blood rage life degen) to generate them, and being limited to 3 charges each by default, it was fine if they were a bit strong, as you could never get 6+ of each without sacrificing loads of other things.

I've been reading a lot of angry comments this morning but in the midst of them I saw a suggestion (unfortunately I cannot remember who it was by) about reverting the changes, but buffing power charges so they would give "50% increased critical strike change per power charge and #% more damage for non-crits per power charge". This would make all charges desirable for any and all builds, if you think it's worth the investment getting them is another matter though.

In my personal opinion, if you want to strive to generate all three kinds of charges, you should be able to do so and get benefit to YOUR build, regardless if it's a spell, attack, crit, non-crit, channelled or any other type of build. With the current changes to power and frenzy charges you basically make it so Power Charges are 66.6% for Casters and 33.3% for Crit-Attackers (Melee Crit is kinda hard to build already) and Frenzy Charges 66.6% for Attackers and 33.3% for Castspeed Casters. The non-castspeed casters (Contagion/ED, Righteous Fire, Scorching Ray) are saved a bit if they go trickster, but no compensation was given to the melee crit builds for the power charge nerf.

TL;DR: In my opinion, any and all charges should be beneficial for any one build, at the appropriate cost and effort, rather than having builds being pigeonholed into using one or the other. As such I rather see the frenzy charge-change being reverted and incorporating "50% increased critical strike change per power charge and #% more damage for non-crits per power carge" for power charges, or something similar.

Regardless I'm really looking forward to 3.0 and trust you will provide us with yet another great experience come August 4th, best regards!

The changes you did is fine, don't listen to the vocal reddit users. Thank you!

Horrific changes literally murdering build diversity in game even more.

Better to revert them while it is possible.

Bakedchicken have a good point why these nerfs are just nightmare.

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Arrogant wrote:

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Chris wrote:

While processing player feedback in preparation for 3.0.0, we found four requests that we could address simultaneously with our proposed charge changes:

• Nerf total crit chance available. It was getting too close to cap, too easily.
• Nerf the Assassin. This was frequently requested.
• Provide more uses for power charges on spellcasters (especially non-crit ones).
• Make it less mandatory for general damage dealers to invest in frenzy charges.

I'm sorry but I disagree with #4.

Making it less mandatory for general damage dealers to use frenzy charges does not mean make it impossible for spell casters to use frenzy charges.

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GGG_Neon wrote:

We will re-evaluate the Power and Frenzy charges situation over the weekend. 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. Many of the posts so far have just said "X is ruined". While the initial feedback has been somewhat helpful, proper discussion and analysis from the community will really help us fine-tune (or abandon) this change.

Alright I'll start with an example. Bitterdream freezing pulse is a character I played once. Ice Bite is no longer useable for spell casters now as it no longer provides more damage from frenzy charges. That frenzy charge generation and more damage application made it worth while to use a very low spell damage 3 linked mace instead of a full 6 linked chest or staff. With Ice bite (assuming it still generates frenzy charges, I haven't checked) no longer being useful as a caster I can't see any reasonable usage for Bitterdream anymore.

http://cb.poedb.tw/us/gem.php?n=Ice+Bite+Support

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Towlg wrote:

Horrific changes literally murdering build diversity in game

you can't "literally" murder build diversity as it is not a person.

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Sacr0 wrote:

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.
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 agree so much with this post. I would love for those builds to come back. It hurt bad when they got removed. I loved the game back cthen.

Also the AoE change(nerf) was sad because since then it is strictly GGG's choice if a skill will have good AoE or not. While before you could make a silly build sacrificing both damage and survivability for insane AoE, for fun. Or you could challenge yourself to make a pretty bad skill work through getting aoe on items and some really good gear for the damage.
Now the AoE stat won't even do anything when stacked. And skills with bad base aoe is doomed from the start.

Apparently frenzy charges once only added attack and cast speed?
I hadn't known.

I think getting rid of the more damage on frenzy charges entirely would've been better received since it wouldn't have suggested "attack skills only" and caused people to worry about reduced build diversity quite as much as it did.

With my new knowledge about the history of frenzy charges I'm a little less concerned, plus a little more interested in trying out frenzy charges next league.
But yeah, definitely the wrong way to communicate it but you obviously know that now.

Sorry if I was one of the over-reactors.
Good luck.

The explanation on the shock/chill stuff has me satisfied: pleased in fact :)

The charges reasoning also has me satisfied: though I'm curious to see how viable power charges are to non-crit builds.

Cast speed raiders (and i guess projectile caster deadeyes too if people still play them) will take a slight hit from the frenzy charges, so that's a bit unfortunate, but they often dabble in witch/shadow anyway, so picking up power charges as well might not be too difficult.

My only real concern is the interactions/power of charge-oriented uniques (including the up-coming Tinkerskin, but also surgebinders, tulfall, hegemony's era and so on) will need to be reworked to function adequately.

It seems like there is a common misconception that this change will nerf existing builds. It's not about the existing builds, it's about the chance and opportunity to create builds which basically will never get the opportunity to shine. It puts a barrier and a huge one at that at what might be possible.

The main thing I don't like about the charge changes is that it feels like the charges are being totally shoehorned, and that now there are just fewer options available. What I like so much about PoE is the build diversity. I like theorycrafting, I like that anything is possible. Even if frenzy charges are a little difficult to fit into your build as a Templar magma orber, if you could find a way to squeeze them in you could do a bit more damage. These changes just destroy that. Now, ATTACKS get the GREEN ONES and SPELLS get the BLUE ONES. End of story. There's no option. The game simply has one less dimension to it. There's almost no reason to invest in frenzy charges as a spellcaster, and less reason to get power charges as an attacker.

Of course, I also don't like that, without any further changes to the many specific cases, these changes further hurt already-niche things like Power Siphon and Tulfall.

Although I don't claim to be an expert by any means, and I'm sure similar things have already been considered, I'd like to go through the motivations you posted for the changes.

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

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Nerf the Assassin. This was frequently requested.

It seems to me that both of these could simply be addressed by a nerf to power charges. What about just changing power charges to only giving 30-40%, similar to what you did?

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

Honestly this one just seems odd to me, so I'll not comment too much. Given that's a legitimate and common request, though, with the previous requests in mind, I actually quite like the changes to power charges.

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

This is where I really have a problem. This, to me, is a totally fair change to want to make. However, I strongly disagree with the change that has been made to address this problem. How does removing spell damage from frenzy charges solve this? All it does is entirely preclude any spell-based character from ever building frenzy charges, while leaving them still just as mandatory for all attack-based characters. I agree that this is a difficult problem to solve, and I don't have a great solution for it, but consider this: What if all characters had 0 max charges, and each of the +1 max nodes instead gave +2 max?

Now, you don't just slap blood rage onto your Templar build because it's a free 12% more damage and 12% increased attack speed. You don't just toss assassin's mark CoH into your HoI for some free crit chance. If you want charges you can invest in them, leaving the choices open to players, and if you invest in them you can get the same number as you could before, but up until you've fully invested you'll have less than before. This also alleviates the issue with the crit cap being reached too easily and is a nerf to assassin, because a character with just two power charge notes will only get +200% crit instead of +250%, and one node will only get +100% instead of +200%, and assassins that don't invest fully will be hurt even more.

You could then maybe buff the charges a little bit to make up for that and make investing in them worthwhile. Or, considering you're trying to nerf frenzy charges and crit chance, leave them the same but buff endurance charges a bit. Perhaps even keep roughly the same power charge changes.

Heck, this might even buff Scion, making it so that her good tree traversal is actually worthwhile.