On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

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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.

Path of Exile is not just one game. You have 2 different game modes with a 3rd becoming more and more popular. Softcore and Hardcore play styles are completely different. Having a lvl 100 hardcore character is nice but does that even have anything to do with how softcore players want to play the game?

Speaking of the big picture, the players have no clue what you're trying to accomplish. We do not know what you discuss in your meetings. Only thing we see is change of direction every 3-4 patches, butchering things we begin to enjoy to a point of utter garbage never to be seen again(RIP Incinerate). Telling us everything you want to do with the game would mess up your sales factor, but telling us what you want from the game in terms of mechanics, balance and build diversity can't hurt your sales that much, can it?

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Chris wrote:

• 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.

Regarding crit cap, you added a flat value to critical strikes gem on top of a diamond flask - here's your problem as to why getting crit became so easy and effortless.

Assassin was the remaining ascendancy which seemed to be able to make the corpse of poison builds to work decently. With the current change not only that aspect of the class is dead, the budget crit class is also rather pointless since the Critical Strikes offers you more than the class itself. This was a huge problem(and for some ascendancies still is) initially, you're now simply backtracking to that state for some classes.

Remember way back, when you wouldn't nerf Spectral Throw because it was so popular and just let it be the be-all-end-all ability for everything? Now that players actually have options for such builds, you're taking some of them away.

Frenzy charges are not a problem. Not even close to be a problem either. Main issue is that out of all 3 charges, they are the easiest to get and maintain by far, AND available to everyone. They provide something that is annoying to get for a lot of builds, hence the popularity. Think of them as a patch on the road to cover holes. Removing them will not make your road better.

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GGG_Neon wrote:

Shock and Chill

The changes to Shock and Chill needed more balance put into them and I regret and apologize that we couldn't have delivered it with more accurate values at the time. We of course will be making these ailments much better than what is currently on Beta. This includes changes to Skills, Passives and to the values for determining the strength of applied Shocks and Chills. It should be the case that with builds that rely on hits for dealing damage you can apply reasonably powerful Chill and Shock values to Map Bosses (even with their increased life values) with well-built characters. It should also be the case that normal, magic and on occasion rare monsters with that same level of character power will frequently be getting shocked as they were prior, for full value but with more reliable durations.

There will be more details to come on the Chill and Shock changes as mentioned above soon. We have discussed them thoroughly and I will be making those changes within the next day or two.

As long as the change actually makes it a worthwhile investment, by all means, go for it. What you guys brought to the table, if anything, made it even worse.

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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.

Power charges basically allowed to get to 70%ish crit chance with out too much investment into crit. Diamond flask did the rest. Proposed change is pointing more towards not using any at all(investment is not cheap, pathing towards anything other than the witch one is horrible), unless you're using something like Void Batteries or, for whatever reason, still trying to play Discharge.

I addressed my opinion on frenzy charges above. There are underlying issues as to why everyone wants to use them(and it has close to nothing to do with increased damage, it's just a nice little perk).

The power charge :

I like the change, it makes the charge less niche, and open new horizons for builds, making malachai loop, the aylardex, romira's banquet and some other items really usable.


For attack crit build, rip powercharge but 2 passive point for 50%crit wasn't a really good deal anyway... except for Assassin, and we don't have the 4th charge now with bandits.



The frenzy charge :

They are really strong and global, nerfing them to only apply to attack build don't change anything. they're still really strong but only for attack builds.

The simple fact that double dipping is removed, makes frenzy charge less powerfull.
Not a lot of casters go for frenzy charge anyway, but now it's totally useless.

Okay we still have access for attack/cast speed. But generating and keeping frenzy charge up isn't a simple job. You need to sacrifice something as a caster for this. Now we won't even think about it.


Shock / Chill-Freeze :

nothing to say, seems nice.

Nobody asked for area nerf, or to destroy poison and bleeding, but you still did it...

Yeah im not a big fan of the changes, this makes gearing for crit cost even more now that crit on powercharges is worse and the assasin node longer longer give you the option to get high crit on your heralds while already using increased crits pretty much killing any crit build using a 0% crit skill.

and with most of the changes pretty much forcing you to play a certain class killing unique builds that dont want or cant spend 50ex to get perfect gear.

this pretty much kills one of my build ideas for an assasin arc miner that sutances power charges by using herald of thunder + power charge on crit to gain power charges and also nerfing the damage from using certain items such as the lighting bolt from voice of the storm while also uping the cost of the build even more and as a player that doesnt play a league for the full 3 months 24/7 i dont have that currency to get that gear.

so these changes up build cost, ruin build diversity & experimental builds and nerf damage even more.

i thought poe was the game were you could be a duelist spell caster instead of the generic mage == mage games

if these changes really go trough i except to also seen changes to things such as item rolls the skill true and skill gems to compensate for the nerf to certain classes. so instead of being forced to play assasasin to be a herald bomber they nerf the assasins but buff the heralds to have crit change so you can now play a herald bomber as assasin but also as other classes

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a_z0_9 wrote:

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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.

Piggybacking on this, I rarely if ever, saw cries for an assassin nerf. Mostly it's "delete pathfinder/vinktars/VP!"

Maybe it's me but the toxic delivery nerf seems a little unwarranted.

Regardless of whether or not charges need to be looked at, one week before the start of the next league is not the time to do it given the huge number of interactions they have.

Assassins DoT needed a nerf with a complimenting buff to DoT's, the issue was it being basically mandatory for many DoT builds. Assassin should wind up being the same as where it was, with other options becoming somewhat more viable, basically close the gap a little bit. Again, 1 week before league drop is not the time for balance changes, since it doesn't provide enough time for feedback and adjustments.

My opinion is the next about these changes:

-Assasin subclass is based for crit and melee ailment/dot. Make that class usable for melee's.
-Frenzy charges was good designed. If you want nerf it then change a values not the mechanics. That was used for lot of spellcaster class and Trickster totally losing a point of usage.
-Power charges change are totally good.. Nerf is okay in that case.. 50% was too much... 30% is worthy but not OP and change a additional spell damage modofier to same damage modifier as frenzy charge was.
-Do default charges amount to 2.. If someone will build to charges than should get more charges.
-Review a most used skills and balance them a bit. Example wander skills are totally OP and will be a meta for 3.0..

Sorry for my bad english but hope you can understand my opinions.

I have about 9k hours.. 7615 hours on steam and 1,5k before added to steam..

My thoughts on charges... Crit was always dominating over non crit, casters always dominated over attackers, power charge after change give benefits to crit caster ? Logic ?

This!

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Kaemonarch wrote:

TL,DR: I want my Icestorm to Chill Ground to Chill for more than 10%, and I don't see the point in killing build diversity by making Charges/Ascendancies/Etc to only work with X instead with many things.

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SeventhSolar wrote:

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

I have amended my post to account for this information, thank you.