Balance in Path of Exile: Synthesis
God damn GGG, I know I have no right to demand that the obvious be pointed out to me, but I didnt realize we would loose access to our Jun mods with the merge and now I have a really good sceptre with a crafted flat fire dmg to spells here and cant put the extra non chaos as chaos on it and feel like I shot myself in the foot.
Also if you are trying to make playing Trickster, Saboteur (please dont forget to adjust Ascendant accordingly!) or Occultist appealing in 3.6, it's working. |
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Might as well do an in depth review of this.
" Did you guys start calling it "handcasting" to be able to say "putting power back in the hands of casters"? Even if not originally intended, good to see the wordplay. " Great that the base damage and effectiveness is being looked at across all levels. Yes, Brands, Winter Orb, and Blade Vortex are indeed so easy to use that they're a problem that's hindering further interesting designs and options. I hope GGG is making notes for the future on how these also auto-damage skills have played out. And now I'm curious how many times BV has been changed now... In terms of major overhauls, it's potentially getting its 4th iteration? Something like that. I'd like to hear how Neon and others feel about how difficult the skill has been to work with. " Glad to see mana getting made more consistent though I am wondering how curses are going to fare if they're getting made more expensive. Are we going to see curse resistance on bosses be lowered to make it justified to curse them? And/or some sort of retuning how Curse Effectiveness works? Ah, it's down below. Good, I'll make notes there then. " I'm glad you guys are realizing spell cast speed (or lack thereof) is a killer for handcasting. I hope you also apply this thinking to melee skills and attacks in general, especially given the huge disparities between slow and fast weapons. Perhaps the new Spell Focus gem is also a test to see how something similar fares for melee? Something to note for comparing spells and weapons: If a spell has a .75 cast time that's equivalent to a 1.33 speed weapon. If .75 is the new baseline then I'm hoping all weapons get bumped to at least a 1.25 baseline which would be equivalent to a .8 cast time and still allow for attack speed to be given out more than cast speed. " So you guys nerfed AoE hugely several patches ago and are now coming back around to realizing AoE is kinda necessary in order for various skills to actually feel usable? I'm glad it's finally being done and I hope that can apply to some attack skills as well (particularly Melee Splash). " Yes, Convocation definitely needs a CD boost. I'm guessing about 4 seconds now? Other quality of life things for more spells are welcome and addressing how powerful Arc can be due to its chain length ought to help keep it from dominating. " Finally seeing love for Chain and Fork! Hang on, when did Fork get improved to only 11% less damage? Eh, still sucks compared to Pierce. And Chain being 31% less really kills it especially when you've already got chains from other sources. Innervate has been in an odd position and a little buff to put it in line with Added Lightning might work I guess, but it works best on a secondary skill to gain Innervate for something it's not linked to. Spell Cascade also get killed by having 31% less damage. Glad these are getting looked at. " If I'm reading this right it's specifically Enfeeble and Temp Chains that have their separate values vs rare and unique enemies, yes? And all other curses apply their full effect? If that's the case then I love it! Finally we can rely on damage curses to actually work against meaningful content. " It's good to see ES leech come back to a decent spot and having ES leech itself on the tree independent of life leech is also nice. Should allow for more hybrid builds as well. Question: How will this work with Soul Tether? " 10% of max life per leech effect? I have a bad feeling about this, but I'm not experienced enough with leech's mechanics to say anything more than that. I do think it's crazy how leech could easily counter RF for example, but going this far seems a bit much. " Good to see the passive tree get some more additions and reworks. " The Heart notables are already quite powerful and adding on ES leech might make them damn near mandatory. But I guess I'll hold judgment until I see the other ES leech nodes. " Staves: I'm hoping you added another wheel for staves since they only have 3 while other weapons get at least 4 or 5. Hell, even wands have 4 wheels. Making staves be the AoE weapons might help bring them up but I'm not holding my breath on them being something we'd normally weigh against the stats DW or certain shields can provide. DW casters: Right now in 3.5 the only DW caster wheel is Dark Arts which grants a total of 20% cast speed. All other DW wheels with a notable are exclusively for attacking, so I hope you guys give Gemini or Duality a little love for casters. Shield casters: Straight up damage and defense sounds good to me for shield casters. " Elemental Damage wheel being the Celestial Judgment and Celestial Punishment nodes I'm guessing? If so, it is good to see it get a bit of a reworking since it always looked a bit odd. I'm hesitant about the damage conversion nodes and skills, even with the non-chaos gained as chaos nerfs mentioned later. " Yeah, the Nullification and Sniper wheel are weird. In combination with the Mind Drinker and Blood Drinker wheels they also form something of a cock and balls and have been the subject of many jokes. I'm hoping the rework makes those damn triangles go away or at least look better. " I like this news about Channeling support on the tree. If the tree keeps the other stun avoidance nodes then there will be some nice new options instead of having to take all of Practical Application, Nimbleness, and Heart of Oak and their minor nodes. " Good to see Trickster channeling getting some support. I'll have to wait and see what the new Ghost Dance and Escape Artist look like, but they have been a bit odd, yes. If Escape Artist is getting rid of the ES per chest evasion then I'll be a bit sad since I had wanted to try a Fox's Fortune CI Trickster. Granted, with the way I play that'd probably never come to fruition anyway so I guess I'm not really out much. " It's interesting to see the notes about being stationary. I suppose giving us bonuses while not moving is one way to slow us down in a way we don't get too ornery about. But Pious Path will definitely be fun to use because allowing us to keep those buffs while moving but still having to stop every 4 seconds sounds good to me. " I'm glad you guys are finally getting rid of D&D's 1 and 20 rolls for crits. And the rework of extra crit vs targets helps with that. " Yes, this mod can be absolutely insane and you're right to split it up and tone it down. Question though: With the number of ways we can get elemental added as chaos, what is GGG's current stance on items that do elemental to chaos conversion? It'd be nice to get Voltaxic back to its 100% conversion because goodness knows chaos itself has been getting shat on. " Yeah, I suppose Shaper shields works since it's a prefix and Shaper doesn't have as many there as Elder. " As there should always be some tuning passes on uniques each league. " I assume you guys are not changing CI to be 90%, correct? Otherwise that entirely defeats the purpose of the keystone. As for other damage types, based on resistance being mentioned I'm guessing (and hoping) Immortal Call isn't being affected by this? Elemental being the go-to for actual damage because it's most easily balanced around seems like the best course of action and I support a cap on max resistances. Kinda wish it was 95%, but 90% at least feels like an investment to get into from the baseline 75%. Could you guys be a bit more specific on what you mean when you say Vaal Impurity auras "have less effect per level"? I'm hoping you mean their effectiveness doesn't increase as much for higher levels instead of the other reading which could mean the aura itself has some sort of Less effect on it. " I'm glad Abyss jewels are on your radar. They are indeed pretty crazy, though I have a feeling when they get looked at amusing things like Sire of Shards Spectral Throw will get killed. But until that happens I'll try to roll a DW Last Resort Juggernaut to see how it fares. |
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My wife proactively left me.
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I was considering running a CI build this league, and I may still do that. My guess is that CI will supersede the resist cap, but I suspect we'll likely find out tomorrow.
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Going to be an adventure. Slayer seems a bit rough, but we'll see how it plays out. Very interesting changes with ES leech.
IGN: Sweethart
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" A comeback? Surely you jest. | |
"We will not nerf the build so it is unplayable"....... GJ Bex Man of you word. Dont say what you aint gonna do pls.
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" Ikr, it's been meta since Delve League's crazy es fossil craft with 5 es mods. (3 prefix ES, 1 suffix es, and int plus 30% quality). Look at all those low life 16k+ es Occultists/ Jugg roaming around occupying 1/3 of playerbase. How out of touch can he be to not know that? Last edited by mic01851165 on Mar 4, 2019, 10:20:12 PM
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" Has to be said, it really makes less than no sense... its literally the opposite of what they would do in any sane universe. Occultist was already great... better as a melee ascendancy even (Howa Occultist shits all over any life build thats possible in the game in terms of tankyness and one shot avoidance. while shitting all over any melee damage that any Maurader or Dualist (except maybe blade flurry champ but thats got half the HP) could possibly do at the same time. It feels like there's very little actual awareness of whats actually going on in the game right now, like there's people in charge of melee who are purely clueless while people in charge of other aspects of the game are literally trying to make the game a faceroll for spells and ES builds. I mean tell me the same people on the same wavelength in coordination with each others did this from the last two major patches: Made Brands the most stupidly OP objectively mechanically superior skill over all other skills in every important aspect. Gave Occultist massive buffs after it was one of the best ascendancies in Delve Gave ES buffs after Delve proved ES is once again superior objectively to Life Nerfed almost unplayed Slayer Nerfed Cyclone's already bad AOE. The only sane way I can explain this is that the guy doing Slayer and Cyclone work hasn't played POE since 2.0 or GGG wants melee to be bad because they consider it "the bad card that shows us what good cards look like" and they wont admit it publicly. Arguably the designer of Brands is actually trying to ruin the game for any other skill LOL but thats another post. "only 10% of players care about melee" - Aesop's Fox if he was a GGG dev "when you die in this game, typically you're getting one shot, you're dieing in one frame; almost always" -Ben_ Last edited by alhazred70 on Mar 4, 2019, 10:26:17 PM
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RIP my beloved slayer.
BTW the term 'hand casting' sucks. |
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