On Balance Feedback and Charge Changes

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Chris wrote:

Our design, balance and QA team are experts at Path of Exile. I would not accept any less.

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PigJuicer wrote:

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Chris wrote:

Our design, balance and QA team are experts at Path of Exile. I would not accept any less.

1000 hours.

Thought about it like 24 hours straight and talked with tens of people

I actually changed my points on almost all the changes

What's good:
-Both charges changes are actually quite good and logical (it certainly didn't seems like it from the first view tho)
-The direction you're going with ailments seems pretty legit, but definitely need some additional work, especially considering bosses life (shock/freeze values or the mechanics itself should be different much likely. It's different ailments after all)


What's bad (it's more of a concrete examples rather than overall directions)
-Assassin by no means is overpowered, just check the stats for level 85+ in 2.6 league. There were no problems with assasssin as a class, there were problems with es and double dipping.
-Occultist's Forbidden Power remains untouched and stands for maybe 0.4 value of trickster's swift killer now (the sad part of it is not the node but rather that you changed one ascendancy and completely forgot about the other one)


In general im actually starting to have faith in balance team since like 100% of changes looked really bad at the first sight. But as it turns out i just didnt thought deep enough about some parts of the overall mechanics

But guys. If you are changing frenzies - make sure you also adjusting everything related to them accordingly (items, skills) Same goes for power charges (As an example, power siphon makes even less sense now even from a logical point of view, also power charge on block staff node in templar area)

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Chris wrote:

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

Wait, but you also nerfed crit multiplier, right? Isnt that too much - nerfing both chance AND multiplier? Crit may end up being shit...

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Chris wrote:

Nerf the Assassin. This was frequently requested.

Wait, but you also changed how poison/bleed work (so they cant double-dip, and cant benefit from critical strikes for free). When you also DIRECTLY nerf Assassin on top of that, he may end up being shit.

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Chris wrote:

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

Then, maybe, "increased crit chance" should be removed from power charges completely? Just look - frenzy charges granted attack, cast speed and damage, those are useful for almost any build. Endurance charged grant resists and physical damage reduction, also useful for anyone. Power charges granted increased critical strike chance, and it's useful only for crit builds. Now, when they give both crit chance AND spell damage, they're really useful only to crit casters. In my opinion, such core mechanics as charges, should be useful for all (or at least, MOST) builds. You could make power charges benefit non-crit characters with some extra keystone or unique (like Blood Dance changes bonuses from Frenzy Charges).

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Chris wrote:

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

Then, you could just change "more" bonus for "increased", or nerf it a bit. Now, frenzy charges are useless for casters, but are just as mandatory for attack builds.

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Chris wrote:

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.

Because while your intentions might be good, the way you implement those changes is kinda questionable (like i described above). To reach great balance and diversity, you shouldnt just "buff" weak things and "nerf" strong ones, without understanding WHY those are "weak" or "strong". For example, when you "reworked" (essentially - nerfed) how AoE skills work in PoE (changed AoE bonus from radius to area, m,aking stacking it far less benefitial). Yet, you forgot that another kind of skills - multiprojectile skills - DO exist, and their ability to "cover" huge areas remained just as strong.
Not to mention, that though the strongest AoE skills were justfully nerfed, many other AoE skills were just reduced to "junk" state.
So make AoE change (nerf) complete, you should also change (nerf) multiprojectile skills, to bring them more in-line with new (much weaker) AoE bonuses. And revise weaker AoE skills, to bring them in-line with more powerful ones. When you make a complex, complete change, it will be free from "unintended effects".

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Chris wrote:

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

I, personally, dont like that changed to charges actually limit diversity, instead of increasing it.

I am also worried about poison and bleed. With new mechanics, you need a LOT of nodes affecting those specifically, to make them work well for dedicated builds.

Also, i'm worried about Eldrich Battery in light of ES nerfs. It's already a kinda under-pwerforming keystone, and after reducing ES from items, it might end up being junk. I havent seen ANY word about improving the state of Eldrich Battery (for example, pushing "Infused Shield" behind it, instead of jusr removing it from CI). Or maybe add few other fancy nodes behind it.

I'm worried about bosses as well. In 3.0, they seem to be far more challenging, and i like it. However, challenge should be rewarded appropriately, and that's the weak point here. When bosses offer no experience reward, most players (who hunt for experience, let's be honest) will just skip bosses. For me, it's kinda wierd, that killing a tough challenging boss yields no experience reward (character doesnt learn from it), but stomping over 1000x damn weak trash mobs yields huge experience boost. I think, that killing a boss should yield significant part of total experience/loot, that can be gained from a map/area - something like 20-30%. Boss' challenge should appropriate, of course.

And the last, i'm kinda worried about your recent practice to "fix" weak skills (or simple change how they work) with threshold jewels, while "support gems" now seem to take "more damage" role. Just look at all those new gems you've introduced - most of them are nothing more than "more DPS" multipliers, without changing how skill actually works. While most "ultility" support gems (that dont grant raw DPS power) are too weak to be considered as an alternative. Players intentionally avoid using gems like Knockback, Stun, Life Leech, Mana Leech, Reduced Mana, etc. IF they need knockback, they rather use "free" knockback from passives like King of the Hill, if they need leech, they'd rather use "free" leech from Warlord's mark, or nodes like Vitality Void, Berserker's ascendancy. Reduced Mana could potentially be used for build stacking 100% reduced mana cost, but get provides too small value to even consider such a build. Most "utility" support gems (maybe, with an exception of GMP/LMP and sometimes) are far too weak, and should be buffed drastically, or even changed/merged, to be worthy rivals to "more DPS" supports. Sure, it's far harder to make "utility" support gem viable, that mere "more DPS" gem, but then, your players will say "wow, here is a REAL diversity", and, i bet, will be far more happy with that.

Perhaps a better change to charges would be a quest that allows us to choose which of either Power or Frenzy charges give us the generic damage multiplier? Maybe even something like each give 2% of spell/attack damage, instead of 4% as they do currently, and later you can choose a 2% generic bonus for one of them, maybe tied in with the (assumed) additional charge quest? This would also promote hybrid charge usage.
I feel that Endurance charges shouldn't get this damage bonus as they are already very strong on their own and adding damage to them would force everyone to get them, period.

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Tobias1501 wrote:

Perhaps a better change to charges would be a quest that allows us to choose which of either Power or Frenzy charges give us the generic damage multiplier? Maybe even something like each give 2% of spell/attack damage, instead of 4% as they do currently, and later you can choose a 2% generic bonus for one of them, maybe tied in with the (assumed) additional charge quest? This would also promote hybrid charge usage.
I feel that Endurance charges shouldn't get this damage bonus as they are already very strong on their own and adding damage to them would force everyone to get them, period.

Or just don't change it at all.

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Or just don't change it at all.

Exactly.

The charges are ok the chill too ,but the shock changes seem counterintuitive it seems that if you hit for 5 % of the life of the mob you will get a 5 % increased damage/more damage (don't know which one ) but that doesn't mean if you can hit for 5% of the mob's life the next damage will do even more and than even more damage ? consecutive hits will be more and more powerfull . As I understood you wanted to change the shock to be procced more often at a lower state than 3.0


P.S: Maybe i didn't understood how the changes will apply and i will wait an answer with some explenations if that is the case

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PigJuicer wrote:

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Or just don't change it at all.

Exactly.

Like nobody even complained about charges then that mysteriously balance guy who has 1000+ hours in poe apparently just brought it up and goes THIS IS A PROBLEM.

Hell nobody even gave a shit about chill and shock either wtf lol