On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

I think most people are most annoyed with charge changes and shock changes.

People arent really mentioning chill change.

so ill do that.

Chill is quite a powerful mechanic but it comes with an investment cost.

Now its not going to have much difference on mob clear, mobs will be chilled all the time as they are now if theyre hit and not killed in one shot. But the change for bosses is harsh. I agree that the length of time bosses were chilled was sometimes low and so i understand what is intended to be something of a buff allowing your chill to actually take affect all be it lower. What i would say for chill is just reduced it to 20% across the board but keep your duration change with it or something like that.

It was powerful and so i dont disagree with a slight nerf for it tbh but im especially annoyed at chilled ground being only 10%, its so not worth any cost to do that. Do i want a chilled ground effect for 10% slow......nah, put something else there instead...

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Vivre wrote:

This thread is the most blatant lie I've seen on these forums yet.

Maybe you shouldn't make accusations without proof to back them up. Written defammatory statements are Libel. For my part, I'll take GGG at their word and they have my complete trust. They love their game as much as we do and really go the extra mile to communicate with the community. Responses like yours are why some companies never communicate anything and never respond to their users.

I like the nerfs to promote alternatives. Everytime I was theorycrafting I was like "ok if I go crit I get more damage for the same investment" whatever I do with PoB confirms it.

However please don't overuse the nerfbat.

I like to be able to play with shaper/uber etc after 2 weeks or 1 month of grind. If you make it so hard that you need 100ex of gear to kill it (no double dip, crit nerfed, no big hp pool as ES was crushed), nobody's gonna play with bosses anymore and we're all gonna play T11 all day.

So a good balance of nerfs and buffs should be better than nerfing everything.

The speedrun meta is bad, but besides double dip stupidity, the bosses were at a good level of challenge in my opinion. Doable with like 10ex of gear, easy deletion with mirror worthy which is kinda normal.

Doubling bosses hp was never really needed, if something should have been buffed it was trash mobs.

here's an idea. stop changing the fucking meta. This isn't dota 2. You're not ice frog. Let us coc and vaal spark/vfb in peace. Let us rainbownuke, wormblast, scold's bridle in peace.

boy, it's been a road ... with every major patch, meaning nerf, you retards have been making more and more builds literally unplayable. Someone grinds his way to 900+ vaal reagalia, and just because of some regen showdown - major ES nerf. All forms of defense - non existant. All skills that could do damage - nerfed. You can act as many acts as you like, as many unplayable skill gems you like, but hopefully people will stop playing this unplayable game. You will have only hordes of plebs stopping by to play for few weeks their immortal, never nerfed marauder :)
Like everyone else says, no build diversity, tens of unplayable skills, you totally shitted on the game of what it was some 3 years ago ...

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Please playtest them and let us know the results of what you find. We'll post again after the weekend with our findings also.

Chris, I'd love to help test, but the builds I'd want to be testing just aren't possible on the beta. The supply/demand just makes some unique items near impossible to obtain.

As a fix, I'd suggest that after level ~70 on the beta, can there be a custom/temp/filler master? One that sells most uniques and has a cheat vorici-bench(low cost/free 6l's+Chroming)

eg: Someone like me who might have the time to work up the chaos to recreate and test my character "Vasa_Nistirio" in the beta just cant. There are only 2 cospri will's on the market, and no where near enough chroms/fuses on the market(for a reasonable price) to 6l it and get it 4b-2g

I think the Vinktar nerf isn't aimed at the right spot.

The only thing which has always been super overpowerered about Vinktar is the life leech.

The damage part of the flask was OK and never a problem. The life leech part was (and is). It should be nerfed from 20% to 1.5% (i.e. less than a support gem which takes a gem slot) maximum. Removing mana leech is a terrible choice in my opinion, and so is nerfing the shock aura component.

I really really don't like the Frenzy changes. The new Ascendant Raider was just starting to make casters with Frenzy charges attractive, along with the new Ice Bite you just buffed. And on top of that, all the existing uniques that interact with charges being thrown up in the air.

As so many other people have said, this just hurts build diversity. It seems to me like Raider is more the problem than Frenzy charges themselves. If anything, find some other way to make Raider less attractive for so many builds. Frenzy charges really aren't that easy to get otherwise, or come with annoying drawbacks like Blood Rage or Blood Dance.

I agree Crit was getting out of hand and felt too far above non-crit builds, but 30% seems too low just on a per-point value basis. There are weak 15% crit nodes all over the tree that people frequently avoid. Even with the additional benefits of charge interactions I don't see Power Charges being popular for attack based builds at 30%. When a single jewel can give more than 30% crit with X weapon type, I think 40% for a power charge would be fine.

Assassin's base crit chance which was frequently run with 6-7 charges for 3-3.5% was a bit extreme, but the way they have been compensated for that loss is purely in spell damage. Again, pigeonholing the ascendancy in a certain direction, reducing diversity. I kinda liked the idea someone had of adding some Accuracy to power charges(or as an Assassin node?) to balance out their utility to attack builds. Or just scrap the spell damage and change the node above Instability to "More" (Maybe 5%?) instead of increased, so people can take it if they want it but leave base strength of a power charge higher for attack builds, at 40-50% crit.

Although I agree crit was climbing too far above other damage scalars, I also feel that the ES nerfs also pushed it back a little just in the way a lot of builds tended to path, you'll naturally see power charges being less popular as a side effect.

I personally haven't been testing Poison/Bleed myself, but I have yet to see any impressive builds come out of them. The Assassin nerf on that side is fine *IF* you're going to bring ailment damage up to a level where its viable with a variety of Ascendancy classes, such that you don't want Assassin being the clear standout for it. Specially considering Poison generally has more synergy with attack builds than spells, and Bleed even more so, the changes to the other side of Assassin are hurting here too. A lot hangs on these poison and bleed tweaks that are supposedly coming, and from what I've seen so far Perfect Agony and Crimson Dance are not enough.

As for Shock/Freeze, communication really seems like the big problem here. You say there is more work to be done, but you introduce this new version of them by giving us values that cant be applied to bosses and are unnecessary on white mobs. Why not wait until you have some reasonable values in place, what feedback do you expect to get from this current implementation?

Generally I like all the flask changes. Dying Sun could maybe do with 1 less projectile? The Taste of Hate hit seems a little heavy for its rarity.

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• Nerf the Assassin. This was frequently requested.

Awesome. Just simple as that?

So, if we frequently post on feedback forum reddit "nerf wicked ward" it will be getting trashed someday no matter what.
Why does your balance team called 'balance' team then?
it's rather a 'random community request implementation' team.

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Chris wrote:

There's a common misconception in the community that our balance team doesn't play Path of Exile. They actually do play it, a whole lot. We have people with level 100 hardcore characters, multiple famous community members who have come to work for us and you may not even know it. 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. Our design, balance and QA team are experts at Path of Exile. I would not accept any less. They put substantial work into each change, planning out not only what it affects now, but what it affects in the future. These changes are all considered in the big picture of the other planned changes.

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.

We recently made these charge changes in the beta, and received an immediate negative reaction from a vocal portion of the community. While we firmly stand behind the intention of this change, it's very clear that the community not only misunderstood a lot of the consequences, but also generally didn't like the direction of the change.

We make this game for you guys, so if you don't want the change, we aren't going to force it in purely to solve long-term problems. The short-term and build continuity do matter as well. We hope to get feedback from your playtesting in the next few days of the beta, so that we can make a decision this week about whether it remains in this form, is reverted, or is made in another form.

We communicated poorly about the changes and their motivation. While we may lament the community misunderstanding the consequences of the change, it is clearly our fault for confusing the community. While it has been crazily hectic recently, we do need to stop and take the time to more clearly explain what we are testing, and why.

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.

Thank you for your time, support and occasional overreactions. We expect nothing less <3

Thank you for your response! If it takes the founder to answer the community, the problem is very serious already.

Chris could you please also look into the "hit dot" change? The post your replied on Reddit in last week has not been responded to so far. That part is a pretty big deal. It changes too much.