Development Manifesto: Balance in Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas

"

ormvråken wrote:

... but increasing armour of the enemies will do nothing against the broken builds that deals a lot of damage but it will further cripple the already struggling builds with lower damage.

"

Belzak55 wrote:

Reading these developer manifestos makes me miss the good old Diablo 2 days, where games didn't needed to have countless balance patches that never made the game more balanced... back then, games like Diablo would be released and devs only worried about fixing bugs or stuff that was clearly broken, and guess what? Those games are still fun to this day, so this whole nonsense of "balance patches are needed to keep the game alive and interesting" is just bullshit from fanboys trying to justify the mess that GGG does each time a league starts.

Which leads me to ask: What's the point of these balance patches, other than just annoy and screw your player base? You have been trying to "balance" this game for nearly a decade, trying to make the game "better", but all you're doing, is covering holes by digging other holes around them... shifting the meta is not making the game "balanced", but instead you're just giving players a placebo, making they believe the game is now in a better place than it was years ago...

I really wish developers would just focus on improving their games by adding content and fixing bugs, instead of going in this endless chase after a game more balanced, because all you're doing, is making the game less fun to play, while you pretend you're reinvigorating your game once every 3 months.

Keep chasing after that carrot, GGG... But remember that you've been doing this for nearly a decade already.

"

Leveling

Certain skills and supports were too prevalent when leveling, allowing players leveling new characters to advance too quickly while not rewarding players using skills appropriate to their final build.

Orb of Storms, Lightning Spire Trap, Onslaught Support, Smoke Mine and Stormblast Mine are being reduced in power at low levels, but will be around as effective late game.