Development Manifesto: Balance in Path of Exile: Conquerors of the Atlas
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We felt Raise Spectre was too easy to get a third Spectre at gem level 21, especially with Necromancer’s Unnatural Strength passive. The third Spectre is now granted at gem level 25, giving a more challenging threshold for characters to strive for.
GGG, please reconsider this change. Make it level 24 to grants 3rd Spectre. Lvl 24 is obtainable with 21 corrupted gem + 2 from Necro Asc + 1 from either boots or wand. With your proposal you will need both wand (which will be harder to craft) and boots.
Level 24 will be required some kind of investment and still allow to use some unique weapon/non wand and grant 3rd spectre with boots only.
Spectre nerf.
Zombies nerf.
Feeding frenzy nerf.
No buffs.
I can be wrong but "balance" for me is deleting one thing and adding other thing not deleting few things. Seems that nerfomancer is useless after patch.
After they overbuffed the build to be incredibly strong without any investment you're complaining that it is a real build with necessary investment now. yikes
Spectre nerf.
Zombies nerf.
Feeding frenzy nerf.
No buffs.
I can be wrong but "balance" for me is deleting one thing and adding other thing not deleting few things. Seems that nerfomancer is useless after patch.
After they overbuffed the build to be incredibly strong without any investment you're complaining that it is a real build with necessary investment now. yikes
But, NERFS!!
In all seriousness though, with no numbers some of the nerfs could be minor, like 619–1547 to 600–1500 for lvl 20 damage. It seemed like it'd been super OP and super popular, so I doubt it'll be nerfed to uselessness.
Overall, good direction for the health of the game and many of the changes were expected. In the future though, you really should avoid waiting on archetype reworks to balance items/skills. Hyrri's Ire, Mirage Archer, and Point Blank have been overpowered for a long time. Mastermod needed a cap on affixes as more builds were moving towards full mastermodded setups. Items were both very good and specialized to the point that finding and equipping an upgrade was rare. Same with the other forms of crafting.
Zombies needed a nerf and good to see it addressed as they would have trivialized the next league like they did with Uber Elder deathless no flask/gear/skills 4 minute kills (only 5L zombos). Elementalist's Beacon of Ruin in non-damaging ailments got a mention. Hopefully it's been updated to be useful post-rework. Eagerly await the patch notes to see the full breadth of the changes.
Last edited by typecast on Dec 10, 2019, 1:18:23 PM
In all seriousness though, with no numbers some of the nerfs could be minor, like 619–1547 to 600–1500 for lvl 20 damage. It seemed like it'd been super OP and super popular, so I doubt it'll be nerfed to uselessness.
It's not the damage nerf, it's the (now) missing life multiplier that will actually hurt zombies the most. They will die very frequently in the endgame as they used to pre 3.8.
What sucks is that you decided to completely get rid of cyclone from the game. First you do a cyclone nerf to “bring 2 h cyclone weapons closer to 1h weapons with huge range”, and now you figured that you gonna nerf 2h cyclone weapons.
The only weapons for cyclone (not CoC cyclone) that are somehow viable are elder 2h rates that we make into 7-links, Starforge and Voidforge. Starforge and Voidforge are going to be way more rare due to Elder/Shaper event rarity, and rare elder 2H will be nearly useless without the rolled lvl 20 support. Throw a multimod nerf on top so we cannot realistically craft what we needed already that limits us further from crafting physical % on bench, and voila, you just nerfed actual cyclone even further.
Why are you doing it? Nobody outside of few melee fanatics plays those builds anyways.
Just try Jugg and Pillar of the Caged God. You will be very surprised how strong he is.
I'm playing this game 4 years.. And i find changes in last leagues really strange.
Early, each league have a lot of difference solid builds with different mechanics - and players can always find something good for own playstyle. And it was great - we have huge skill-tree with a lot of different gems, and players always can try something interesting. In party always was different people with different skills.
But in last leagues you buffs left us only 1-2 playable builds and "kill" all other. This league was Zombie-league, Legion was Cyclone-league, Betrayal was WinterOrb-league, and so on. Do you understand what happen if only one build work and all other are broken?
Spoiler
=> nobody want play game with no chances to "win"
=> all want to get 36/40 challenges and kill Shaper/Elder/etc
=> all try to play this one-meta-op-build
=> items for this op-build are overpriced
=> to get them players should farm maps hard or try to trade all time (and yes, it's no more as fun from play, it looks like work to get money)
=> but you, GGG, still can't create normal trade-place INSIDE you game and we use alt-tab (ye, as 15 years ago in browser-games) to buy items
=> or we try to sell loot and get a lot of pm's, but we can't answer... and you know why we can't answer? because you, GGG, create more and more situations in game, when we can't just set portal and go in ho to trade (labyrinth, delve, zana-missions with "no die"-mode, monolit-zones or synthes-locations with timer, etc)
=> and players need more and more time to trade.. and such trade, you know, it looks like work too, not like fun from play...
=> and so on, and so on, and so on...
=> and finally, many days later, when i got good items, i'm ready for blight-maps... and we got 6 summoners (oh, so strange, all playing summoners) in one party and... yes, lags..lags..freezes..game-crash! perfectly!
==>> i'm sure, that 80% of POE-players can't play this game 24/7. we should go school, studying, working, take time for family. i think, people play games to get fun and relax after long work day. but if i need first invest 100-200 hours only to get good end-game items and only than can play for fun, i can do it or.. i find other game to play. GGG, understand please, that you shouldnt focus on 5% of players who live in game - they always run trough acts to fast, they always go in delve to deep, kill main-boss after several days, etc. GGG, focus please on main part of players, that play 2-4 hours daily and want just get fun from this game. Dont write, that "Multi-mod crafting an item was proving too powerful for too low a cost..." - for multimode you need first 10-15 ex for base and craft, and for many casual players it's just impossible.
And please, GGG, make MORE builds playable and EQUALLY powerful.
And please, GGG, don't forget about performance/optimisation - it's still your main-problem.
And please, GGG, TEST your changes BEFORE league!
More balanced bulbs, optimisation, testing before release - please!!!
I like POE, really like. As i already told, i play this game 4 years. But i feel myself some tired from this "trading-work" during first ~2 weeks of each new league to get 20-30 ex for meta-build-items. Sure, i'll try Metamorph. But in March 2020 we get "Mount & Blade II" and i'm afraid, that my after-work-relax will be no more in POE.
Looks to me like you have mistaken playable with broken.
Those builds each league which you mentioned were not "playable". They were "broken as F". Those skills at the time trivialized the whole game and everybody that used those skills at the time roflstomped the content with both eyes closed while playing with one hand behind their back.
