On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

whatever keeps the game interesting is fine. Let ppl rethink basic mechanics or proofen concepts if needed. The good players are up to the challange and like a good mix every once in a while.

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bustr wrote:

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zzang wrote:

Okay so here is my feedback about charges:

I tend to generally agree that crit cap should not be possible or be extremely hard and demanding to reach in terms of skill node and item investment. Assassin made and is still making crit capping way too easy.

If frenzy charges are supposed to work with attacks only then make power charges crit chance for spell only. Id also suggest to lower power charge crit chance even more to about 20% per charge but buff spell damage per power charge. this also kinda balances Lord Skyforth the OP.

About frenzy charges: I think a MORE multiplier in damage be it attack or general is TOO BIG for a charge bonus. We cant have proper frenzy charge generation on hit because frenzy charges with their more damage multipliers are imbalanced compared to the bonuzs of the other charges. Make it 20% attack damage and 5% attack speeed for each frenzy charge then its fine. This also balances overpowered raider.

Currently raiders gets with optimized build 10 charges = 40% MORE damage this is like getting Aspekt of Carnage from berserker without any drawbacks instead you also gain elemental alignment immunity at full frenzy charges that are generated on hit against uniques and bosses for raider only. The more multiplier on the frenzy charges has to go! This automatically balances raiders a bit more and allows to introduce some opportunity unique items that provide frenzy charges on hit without a deadly drawback the red trail.

Regarding Tinkerskin. Give it an additional mod that allows "the new" increased damage mod from frenzy charges damage to apply to traps. Problem solved.

And he is exactly the person u shouldnt listen too, Raider isnt a problem at all, focus on Game Balance and not Class Balance first, ppl like him destroying the view others have on the game with his QQ talking "Class OP NERF PLZ".

I smell a raider abuser from 10 miles away.

Chill/Shock - I'm not opposed to the change if there's a decent way to increase its effectiveness through jewels, uniques, and/or nodes on the tree, but without it, its pretty much garbage, especially for bosses.

Power Charges - I know crit needed to be nerfed, but Crit Multiplier is what needed to be toned down. Let people crit if they want to, it allows for cast on crit builds and other mechanics. Don't nerf Crit chance, just nerf the multiplier. More specifically for the Charges, don't change it so its more specific to spells, that's only going to hurt build diversity. If you have to spend 2 points to get power charges, then attack builds are getting 15% crit chance per node and then you have to have a reliable way to build the charges.

Frenzy Charges - There's not much else to say other than its literally just a build diversity killing change. I mostly play attack builds so this wont affect me much, but if my spell casting brethren want to build frenzies, let them. This game is supposed to be about build diversity, if you kill that then all you'll be left with is D3.

Flask Changes - This was done well, Flasks needed to be toned down.

What if they changed it to:

Power Charges: +2% more damage per power charge and +2% more spell damage per power charge (plus the crit stuff); and

Frenzy Charges: +2% more damage per frenzy charge and +2% more attack damage per frenzy charge (plus other stuff)

That way if Frenzy are attack themed you get the full damage potential from attacks and half damage from spells, and if Power are spell themed you get the full damage potential from spells and half from attacks.

Asuming that the game is considered to offer a diverse building and playing experience, I can't see the "big picture" in which these changes seem appropriate.

That being said, I like that Power Charges are getting a more % like Frenzy Charges did.
Though the reasonable way to implement that, would be to nerf Frenzy Charges to 2% more global damage while giving Power Charges 2% more global damage as well.

I'm just asuming that you would take a look at charge focused/generating Ascendancy Classes to adjust them if needed, and this way there wouldn't be a need to change a bulk of unique items to spare them the vendor tratement.

What is actually baffling me is that Endurance Charges are not being changed. I never understood why they offer % Elemental Res, I guess in the Beta it wasn't as easy to cap your Res? Nowadays it wouldn't hurt anyone to lose this Mod though. Therefore just give in some % of global defenses instead, that way you get Frenzy/Power Charges as offensiv, Endurance Charges as defensiv options, while still keeping true to their initial charakter.

PS: Asuming that the new trapper chestpiece is a supporter unique, these changes are the biggest "screw you!" since you gutted all the chaos conversion uniques after you realized that you messed up with the poison changes/gem. :D

Misunderstood the changes??? You didn't explain them! You've explained nothing! The write up for the league in 6 days is 1 paragraph!

Zero patch notes! Zero beta changes excepting removing a few rooms from the Lab in months!

What have you been doing with your time! There is no transparency at all, you are making changes willy-nilly with no information whatsoever being shared with your own community. Then you start another post talking about how Leet your employees are.

I can promise you. Your BALANCE team plays very, very little of this game on a month to month basis. What experience they have is years old and out of date.

Where is our information. Describe this new league. You are talking about power charges like they were commonly used. They weren't. What do you mean Frenzy's were ubiquitous? We know that. YOU may it that way. Well over a year ago when you made even 4 frenzy charges better than almost and single 20/20 gem in the game.

I find it remarkable changes to charges and ailments would cause such a unified protest from the community but the 2.6 aoe changes which once and for all made sure melee and some spell builds would never be able to compete in end game clear speed scenarios.

How has the community turned a blind eye to far worse offenses but will take arms against something arguably far less damaging to build diversity?

This thread is proof that GGG will listen to community but only if there is unified disapproval and their income is at stake. It is also proof your QA team is out of touch or being driven solely for a desire to harshly nerf players with no vision of overall balance. Hire the people who have played since open beta and have several characters over level 98 or the ladder runners who are the first to reach level 100 to see how the game is actually played.

to me it just feels that p-charges are now inferior to a simple jewel slot.


1# jewel can have 2x14%=28% crit, p-charge is 30.
so they equal now = no reason to prefer a charge over a jewel now.

2# then also charges need investment into a mechanic to sustain them.
mana reserved for ass mark; is better replaced by an additional dmg aura/herald.

2.1# or an additional cast with at least 3L.
can feel clunky and takes up a full 3Ls which u could use better
if u just replace charges with jewels.

3# then also, jewel slots can be found everywhere around the tree,
while for charges you need to go to specific areas
(and therefor in most cases carges need more passive points)

4# also jewels dont expire.
you dont feel like "i want to run now, while my charges are up!
clear stuff while my full dmg potential is up!"
no, replace charges with jewels and you can comfortably chat and joke and take it easy.



so i resume:
for anything that is not spell dmg, one would have to be really retarded to invest into charges rather then jewels.

and for spell dmg, well you get more more dmg; 20% with 5 charges, ok....
or: you just buy a jewel with 2x14% crit and one or even 2 times any generic dmg for your skill.

as stupid as it sounds, but then you could as well remove p-charges completely and replace the points in the passives with generic crit notes or jewel slots....

thats just...
why even?
i dont understand....

Man, those gotta be some pretty stupid 1000h+ PoE players you hired... Because pushing changes that take a HUGE chunk of build diversity out of the game can never be good. I mean, thats the biggest bonus PoE has over other games! Build diversity! Every class can become everything. Now you have to be an idiot if you go for a caster Raider or an attack Assassin. Not to mention the big pile of builds that got killed outright with these changes...

Well, thanks for the better explanation of the changes, but eh, still totally unwarranted changes that I just don't understand. (This seems to become a theme lately... Still havent seen that "millions of DPS poison build" you guys always talk about whenever you make Poison even more unplayable... Hint: It was already pretty fuckin dead with the 75% to 30% nerf of Perfect Agony. Now with the nerfs to Assassin you have killed the last little glimmer of hope that poison COULD be ok with a 100% focus on it. Not even with giving up all your defences you wont be able to kill the first fuckin T1 map boss...

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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

My beta build is a CoD | Pledge of Hands Raider Caster, which bases defences on 61/69 dodge with quartz flask up. It's an evasion caster tha layers big hits through mana pool. I use a 7L freezing pulse and the damage is already quite balanced to rpetty bad in high tier red maps, especially vs bosses. This build is a HC orienteted and was never meant to do any of the 6 big bosses,especially in HC. Personally i couldnt care less if it deals ~20-25% less dps based on frenzy charge change. WHAT IT DOES DO HOWEEVER IS MAKE UNIQUE BUILDS SUCH A A CASTER RAIDER NOT VIABLE, you limited builds bases on classes already once with ascedancies and i really didnt like it perosnally, especially the insane power creep in brought to the game.

I've played the closed beta when my group mirrored our last 77 map. I would love nothing more for the power creep to die down and the game become harder again, especially normal mobs not to vaporize instantly. I would love magic/rare mobs in maps to be notable battles and not run through one shots. Limiting the builds diversity through the frenzy / power charge changes is not the way to go. It kills creativity and is the most anti pant of exile core philosophy change you've made.

I've also played non crit arc builds in the first HC leagues almost exclusively or at least on char per league and i can tell you that that shock change is really questionable. Given the fact that you wanted to buff those status ailments and the direction of the changes. It is no suprise that the community says stuff as "you are out of touch with your game" as this change makes them even more useless than they are. Especially vs the things they useless already (bosses).

Combining both the ailments changes and the specifically the frenzy charge change working out very poorly in practice, limiting build diversity, pigeon holding some builds into even more limited options ( especially non crit self casters ). Destroying interactions between many uniques and even ascendancies it is pretty factual statement that this changes feel rushed in due to time constraints and very poor thought out in general.

And yes i have beta tested those changes: Char name is Defayultqw on beta, its linked to this account. Please go and verify why the changes kill the build.

P.S The community is mainly upset because ferfing the charges would've been okay. Changing the nodes to be more build-specific is bad.Charges are an interesting mechanic because they are universally-useful for any build which doesn't also purposely sacrifice a mechanic.

Every build can make equal use of the defensive buffs of endurance charges, every build can make equal use of the speedy buffs of Frenzy charges, every build can boost its damage with some additional Power charges. Reducing scope of charges artificially to benefit only a few damage sources makes the charge system feel less well rounded and interesting, which in my opinion is a poor design path.