Development Manifesto: Game Balance in Path of Exile: Harvest

As always, looking forward to nerf notes!

When they have a manifesto to improve certain unpopular builds or playstyles, they truly meant it. This is what happened to guardians and ascendants. At the same time, they are also cautious to prevent the massive power creep again.

EDIT: When you think more about it, it doesn't seem like an accident that those cluster jewel notables exist. They were Purposeful.

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peruguannam wrote:

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Rakiii wrote:

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peruguannam wrote:

hello noob here.
i am standard only player. (starforge)
will this patch effect my character in standard too?

thnx.

Yes but probably not SF item.

oh my god please.

i have yet to beat any of the bosses in atlas and it is going pretty smooth with my build. i have to reach delve 300 so many things to achieve with this build.

i loved this thing so much i went and bought 60$ supporter pack. now I can't achieve anything? how is that logical?

Being on your place, I would rather get ready to get nerfed, as they redact the item base itself, so SF could be possibly completely "renovated". But we will know exactly tomorrow.

path of nerf ?
90% nerf
10% up

SO, nothing about elementalist rework, when all reedit post ask for rework,
nothing about golemancer rework
why rework a pantheon that works fine since they have been created
why nerf again & again cyclone
stun with cyclone you already did it, and then you get off the stun because unplayable, and now you make it again, really you avec a brain lag ?
why deep cut become ladder, no so powerful as you think
why nerf Dual wield and not only boost 2H more than you do ?
you make a mistake about balancing, no need nerf working build but only up the build doesn't work
About nerf herald stacking not so bad, because after 1 month 50% players use this build, so meta kill each league, and we see that @ each league since abyss.
all website, stream, streamer working to show best/meta build killing the game with meta gaming build.
So, just work about that, and stop to kill build after build after league ends.
all invest about build are lost to standard playing and lost about cost invest.
this disgusting player league after league and i'm playing since 1.4 ...
really pm ma about your problem league after league, we vould help you, but this patch nerf is not a good way to retain long terms players...

Sorry about my poor english !

It feels like GGG are in two minds about stun as a mechanic... we want you to use it, but we don't want to be effective when you need it the most. Kinda weird.

It sounds to me like they would have been better off just redeveloping the mechanic altogether. Rather than stun completely stopping an enemy from doing anything, stun could have slowed them down due to concussion and made them less accurate in hitting the player. Then you wouldn't need to have bosses that have an immunity to stun at regular intervals.

Right now it's like Xzibit helped you write the manifest "Yo dawg, we heard you like immunity phases for your bosses so we added an immunity phase within the immunity phase". Err... OK?

Alrighty big brain time. Warning of broken english sorry about!

So frist to all of you complaining. They obviously dont care about what you want or think, what you do is you dont support them if you want them to stop doing this. When i see someone complaining and he has like 5-10 support badges you arent really helping with complaining, you are part of the problem.

I dont support ggg, reasons are game is usually broken and bugged and fixed like month into league (wich i dont mind i just dont play for frist three weeks and then play until last day of league) or not at all (looks at betrayal which still lags me to death to this day). So yeah i wouldnt buy a game thats broken and if it was i would get refund and wait until its fixed, if it is.

So now for the changes lets start with good ones:
1. Buffs to two handed weapons and slow attacking builds-finally took you way too long. Leech buffs are also nice.
2. Change to purity-this nerfes facebreaker wich is fine.
3. Warcries-yay i only used them on berserk before so this is nice.
4. Stun-very nice buff for melee builds, another defence is always welcome but it kills builds that focused on stunning bosses.
5. Hopefully good changes to hierophant cuz its kinda dead now with nerfs to brands and archmage.
6. Timeless jewels on tree-very nice.
7. New oil for new passives, looks at panopticon and surveillance.
8. Removed strong cluster passives nice, adding them back into tree wtf? so i just take them on tree instead?
9.Vaal molten shell-finally, like seriously why wasnt this changed couple leagues back already?
10.Cyclone nerf-cyclone is probably strongest(dunno with new slams) melee ability and this doesnt kill aoe or dmg so im fine with, stun isnt usually problem since those builds have lot of life and dmg reduction anyway, also brine king exists.
11.Nerfing starforge-i think its fine it was best in slot for swords and two handed builds by a mile, and if you went slayer you could go crit too.
12.Nerfing herald rings-not sure if this is good or bad it nerfs really powerful builds but some builds dont have other choice if they want dmg on rings so dunno.
13.Treshold jewels not being mandatory thats fine if the buffs are good enough.
14. Slower projectiles-dunno if its good or bad depends if the buffs are good enough.
15. Sharaki nerf-this is good cuz its must have on almost every build and makes poison basically non existent. Kinda hits low life es builds but i guess poison removal flask will have finally some use.

Sadly this is where good ones end and we start with the clusterf**k:
1. I feel like ggg has global alzheimer's or something. You gave attack skill added dmg so they were better while leveling and now you remove them? Im guessing you will buff weapons so they arent crap while leveling right?! KEK
2. Dual wielding-All you had to do was buff two handed you didnt need to nerf dual wield, i should say double nerf since crit is getting nerfed as well, non crit dual wield is not really good if you compare it to facebreakers for example. Yes dual wielding can scale way higher but you dont need that much to kill everything in game.
3.Brands-People finally started using them and even playing hierophant, that was nice. Hopefully the buffs are enough for brands to be usable tho i doubt it.
4. Warcries-multiple warcries with new passives and cluster jewels are probably gonna be broken.
5. Imbalanced guard-seems kinda broken unless maximum reduction means elemental dmg too then its kinda useless for 99% of builds.
6. Crit nerf-doesnt really make much sense you basically sacrifice defence for more dmg dunno why that needs nerf.
7. Making exceptional cluster jewels was already pretty hard (looks at bloodscent with deepcuts for 30-70ex) and some large cluster jewels arent worth it unless you get good passives. Also this hits weaker builds the hardest, i could play some really bad non meta builds thanks to cluster jewels, strong builds will just use worse jewels or not use them at all.
8.Archmage-now this is big brain. This nerf hits every build except idigon who can just swap helmet for bosses and still delete them while running around and ignoring mechanics. I dont really see much reason to go hierophant instead of inqisitor now, unless he gets like additional brand attached or some huge buffs. All you had to do is nerf archamage by like 50% and it would been fine.
9. Did you guys knows theres bows in this game?

Nerfing stuff like dual wielding or archamage when theres way stronger builds is just shifting meta not making the game better or more balanced, but i dont have any expectation from ggg, sadly they cant even make single league thats not broken or just plain stupid.

Delirium-we forgot we have 2-3 mechanics in every map (global alzheimer's) so we dont stop the fog and you have to backtrack or choose to ignore either delirium mechanic or the other ones. We want people to slow down so we make timed mechanic that doesnt give you crap unless you run specific maps and do them quickly. Grey on grey. Mechanics on death, yes 50 volatiles chasing you every map is fun or dying while picking up loot, we could bring back detonate death totem i guess. Having bunch of graphic effects when game is already unstable as hell and 90% of people lag and freeze. Bridge (every time).
Having two bosses wich appear in maps(wut?), how about making them appear more often in simulcarums instead or keeping just kosis for simul, its always really exicting to fight shaper, uber elder or aul, but if i could meet them every nine to ten maps i dont think it would be.

I could do this on every league but theres not much point. They keep making same mistakes and fix them later and people still play and give them money, theres absolutely no reason for them to change or listen to your complaints.

On another note did you know that you can easily get someone banned if you just put his profile name and characters on r** webside? Yes and you might not believe me, my friend got perma banned like this and support told him they wont give him account back. So i recommend making your profile private, you can still use path of building just google path of exile possess id,should be second link, and it will tell you how to find your id so you can put it in path of building. https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2186508 this is his mirror thread, sadly all items were lost and as you can see he had many supporter packs so if you think spending money on ggg will help you, yeah no.

Thanks for reading this if you did and have a nice day.

Ouch hahaha

You have to love the pre-patch notes and the chaos they always cause :)

The only thing I am not sure about is Starforge nerf?
I mean SHAPER drops it, not a random unique enemy, so shouldn't it be in a higher league than the other items, or more expensive?

Never used it in a build and never will, but I am thinking about the currency in total.

I hate that you are always doing this. Why is it so hard to write "The 20% Physical Damage multiplier when Dual Wielding has been removed" instead of assuming every player nows all the million numbers of this game? Please just be specific with you patch / balance nodes and don't have us look up every other sentence. Same for item changes.

Also "Vaal Molten Shell also removes and is removed by other Guard skills".. what about CwDt triggered guard skills? Is it discouraged to use a CwDt setup alongside VMS, or is CwDt suppressed while other guard skills are up?

Brands totally gutted. Shame because the new brand skills looked interesting.
The problem was Archmage support only, but you went ahead and nerfed every aspect of brands instead of just fixing the problem.

This looks like a Bli$$ard nerf. Pepega 7