What We're Working On

Splitting Steel

1. It is unexcusable to release skill in state Splitting Steel got released in. It is simply rude and leaves REALLY bad taste impacting future players' actions

that out of the way:

2. good job on making 3 skills somewhat different. Both slow and fast attack playstyles can utilize them, Impaller keystone might have a use now for slow attacks (altho it is still one of the worst designed keystones with ONE use and one use only)

3. scaling options for 'melee ranged' attacks is very limited. For a phys, crit 2h sword setup I use to check it out i had to resort to Slower Projectiles.. and anyone knows that this is a lousy %more multiplier usually not used in main setup and finally settle on Energy Leech (that support is DUMB on so many levels) because nothing else works!




it seems that elemental scaling (on an impale-themed skill!) is better simply due to abundance of good elemental multipliers (EDWA, Inspiration, penetration)

4. scaling is.. as always cryptic and contradics itself. Till this day i have no idea if Conc Effect actually works with this skill or not. no target dummy to test it out === guesswork

5. mana cost seems to be quite high for an attack build (18 with -17 from 2 rings)

6. visuals are bland and distorted. It seems that only few skill types 'deserve' to look good (good != flashy!), sound is also pretty meh

7. the biggest problem, the main reason i type it all:


Call of Steel

like holly fu.. what is that?
I understand you want people to stop calling POE playstyle 'one click/one skill' but at least make it interesting - Frostbolt+Ice Nova is interesting (albeit so strong that playing either without the other is just noob mistake), Warcries.. is forced-interesting but still legit because player can perform the rotation wrong.

with Call of Steel.. player input is ZERO. it doesnt matter where you activate it, you cannot go wrong activating it every pack (esp with a jewel that makes it 'almost-instant). Secondary skill that is mandatory and brain-dead at the same time has no place in this game or any game. Oh, it clears well (it clears amazingly well tbh) and the idea of ammo is at least interesting but currently the 'two click' playstyle is artificial. there is no decision-making at all..

it taints the skill long-term (because in a month noone will remember the terrible launch version)

8. i still cannot trust if the skill works the way it advertises.. the performance with legacy Starforge is rather unimpressive. maybe that Conc Effect doesnt work after all? Have no idea, no way of verifying (i have Vuln + Ass Mark on bosses)



Final verdict: it kills stuff, is very enjoyable but..

what stops me from using 1-linked Steel Skill in any physical build just to abuse the 'impale explosion'? There is nothing stopping me from using it that way and that is pretty dumb

Feedback on Firestorm

I was so giga excited when I saw we finally got METEOR into our beautiful game.
However, having played with Firestorm from act 3 to Kitava, I've had to simply swap to Frostbolt-Icenova due to the spell simply lacking in a few ways.

Identity
It feels as though the current iteration of Firestorm is stuck between it's old identity and that of the Meteor spell. I love the impact of the first big ball of death slamming the ground, but the subsequent "storms" is something I barely ever think about. I fail to understand why GGG didn't just leave Firestorm as it was, for people to do their usual poison shenanigans and whatnot on, and then made a new spell gem with the meteor effect.


Area of Effect

While having a big Area hit from the get go, to me it seems like the initial big hit just doesn't get larger no matter how much increased AoE I put into it. Conversely it doesn't feel like it gets smaller from Conc Effect either so... Yay-ish?

Damage

The damage just isn't there. Swapping to Frostbolt-Ice Nova was an instant 3000% more damage (I'm exaggerating obviously)

I understand that I might just be building it wrong. I initially just went into it with a generic Inquisitor maybe archmage build and banked on hitting big with the initial 150% more damage hit. But the numbers are sadly just not there. Maybe, as I've seen others mention, it is because GGG takes into account that the "storms" can overlap and multi hit, but as mentioned I barely ever notice them actually hitting a target.

Gameplay

As it is now, there is some delay between casting, impact and "storms" comming into effect. This can lead to a lot of janky scenarios with fast enemies who just outrun the big globe of fiery death and b-line straight for your animation stuck long neck.

I don't believe having a delay between casting animation and skill effect, to be a problem in it's essence. But I think at the moment where the first ball doesn't oneshot enemies and you rely on the "storm" to deal some damage as well, the time between you casting - and you getting the full reward from your damage investment into the skill, is just too long.

Side note:
I have no comment on the 3 "storms" restriction. I didn't build around them, didn't play around them and honestly I don't care. I want big ball of death meteor :D

To come full circle however. I mentioned earlier that I don't understand why this skill isn't just 2 separate skills with storms and meteor. Maybe a lot of my issues with the skill can be boiled down to the fact that I played it as a Meteor spell.

I appreciate the hard work. Steel skills feedback for you!

Splitting steel: I'm really liking the way it feels when I have shards. It doesn't feel like it needs any AoE boosting links to be a strong clear skill, and it's single target is decent. I greatly appreciate it's ability to split where I fire it without needing to hit. I do not like how it feels without shards at all.

Lancing steel: It sounds amazing to use. It has crazy on hit potential. It feels like a single target spell but it's targeting and single target punishment makes it feel like it has an identity crisis. Given the massive shard cost I would appreciate it more as a dedicated single target ability. Possibly as a channeled ability instead.

Call of steel: Popping packs feels so good! Losing my 'Master of Metal' ascendency bonus damage does not. It has a strong sense of counter synergy there, but not every thing can be perfect... But I'd like it to synergize! I also dislike the low shard cap. It goes from an AoE burst button to a single target reload. I don't mind this too much except for the fact that in a true single target environment I cannot get full shards from impales and must wait a—admittedly miniscule—amount of time for maximum shards. Another form of shard generation would help that greatly. Alternatively something like the new enchants that give a chance to not consume shards but in support gem/cluster node/passive tree form. That could possibly also work with skills that consume secondary resources like charges?

Also please consider making the use speed bonus of the jewel a base part of the skill if not change it to instant. That was a true night and day difference and in my opinion is a necessity for the skill to operate in the faster paced endgame where immobility is a death sentence. Suggested replacements for the stat are increased shard capacity, passive shard generation, chance to not consume shards, or shards on crit.


Thanks again for working hard. Any other focused feedback you need?

The random DC in Heist missions is beyond annoying.
Especially when it happens on the way out (which is most often the case).

I cannot stand to run heist anymore due to this, it's so fking annoying since you lose everything.

Good concept with Heist, horrible execution.
Still bugs with grand heists as well.

Makes the league mechanic basically annoying and useless if you dc now and then and lose everything, or can't even enter last door in Grand heists.

The new content update hasn't fixed the Vulkan FPS drop which is resolved by alt-tabbing. The FPS drops to 24 from capped 144 until you alt-tab. It can happen at any time. Largely seems to happen when the passive tree, or a menu has been opened, or when a new area is loaded.

It must be linked between Vulkan, G-sync and PoE. It does not happen in other Vulkan games such as Doom or Doom Eternal.

This shouldn't be happening with my spec.

Specs:

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X @4.6GHz
RTX 2070 Super - Latest September Nvidia driver
16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C17 3600MHz RAM
144hz G-sync Asus RoG monitor

Please keep up the good work with the content, I'm loving the Heist league, one of my favourites so far, particularly Tibbs! :)

Blazing Salvo damage/proj count & speed could honestly be bumped up a bit.
Blazing Salvo miner is ok-ish but Ball Lightning is still better in many aspects, BS could stand out more to turn people in

Feedback to the current state of the Game

I really enjoyed the league start and the mechanics of heist.
The bugs were annoying but they were not so bad that i couldn play or anything like that.

From one of the best leagues to one of the worst.
Sadly since the newest "hotfix" the league feels very braindead. I liked the idea of carefully planning the next grand heist, which rouge to choose how do i escape etc.
But now ... its just pick Karst and open all stashes chests and things you find without thinking about it. To compare it i would give an example:
If you would play GTA V or even VI if it comes at some point and you hear about a big heist you and your crew will do. And in the end everything from planning to actually robbing a bank or something and escaping is just a cutscene without actual gameplay. I would be disapointed AF.
This is how i feel about Heist right now.
Increase the mechanical difficulty make it high risk high reward. Not like no risk insane reward.

How to achieve that ?
Here are some possible solutions:
-Keep it that killing mob does not increase the alert level.
-Increase the alert of opening chests by atleast 100%.
-With each chest opened increase the amount of reinforcements and guards by 50 - 100%.
-Lower the damage of ground effects by the mobs. Otherwise the clusterf*ck will actually be to scarry.
-Give the Rouges more character specific and unique abbilitys so that more theory crafting for grand heists is needed.
Or
-Make it possible to pick whoever you want for your grand heist but the mechanics to open the rooms are hidden, so you dont always have anyone you need to open the loot rooms. So you need to scout the area with reveal blueprint option before and than decide which rouges to pick to open the rooms you want. But make it impossible to open all rooms all the time.


My opinion of the new/reworked skills:

Firestorm
-The single target feels bad due to lack of damage.
-The mapclear feels even worse. Even with a lot of aoe scaling its quite difficult to actually clear whole pack with one cast.

How to improve ?
-Give it atleast twice as much base damage. To give it the identity of a single target skill
Or
-Double its base aoe radius. To give it the identity of a clear skill.
Or
-Add a threshold jewel which removes the storm in the end and only use the meteor but increase its AOE by a lot.
-Also i would like to see a vaal version. Like a storm of meteors.


Blazing Salvo
-Same identity crisis as with Firestorm. No real clear nor Single target
-I cant really offer a solution due to lack of playtime with this skill. Maybe its fine in the later state with good gear.


Steel Skills
-They all feel kinda clunky.
-Reduce the animation time of call of steel to 0.25 or 0.3s that would feel much nicer.
-Lancing steel should have either implemented chains or a 180°/360° angle of autotargeting. Also increase the range of the autotargeting.

I dont really know how to improve the other two steel skills ... they are just like leveling skills to me... couse of a boring mechanic.


Also to add something Offtopic:
-Crit scaling is still way to powerfull. Maybe you can do something about it in the future. I still stick to Elemental overload and resolute technique. I really dont like the current state of crit.

-Occultist still feels like something is missing.
-Same with Elementalist

Despite having the worst league start I've ever had i enjoyed the league, the story and the characters. Obviously there are number of issues but overall I did not mind the pre nerf state even though it seemed odd that the best way to go through Heists is to avoid pressing your offensive abilities while making sure you open as many chests as possible before you ring the alarm. It even promotes clearing path to the last room so that you can backtrack, loot few more chests and then sprint within the time limit to actually capture the last objective. I am yet to experience alarm free slaughter in heists but I have a feeling that now it is a loot pinata.

Anyway as far as skill feedback is concerned, I played with Crackling Lance and Void Sphere so here are my thoughts on these:

1. Crackling Lance:

Note: I played from level 28 to 45 and from 64 to 72 on a templar. Primarily focused on testing.

- During the leveling process the skill did not seem good. The damage was not there. Switching to Arc or Ball Lightning provided much better results and experience. The skill barely does enough damage to kill white mobs. But I acknowledge that this is during the leveling of the game with shit gear.

- This one is a bit more actionable I think. The interaction between Crackling Lance and Intensify Support is somewhat strange. It is hard to tell if the Intensify support even benefits the skill. Testing it looks like there is slight change in the AoE but because of the visuals of the skill it is almost impossible to tell how it works. As a previous comment said the damage with or without Intensify support seems bad up to tier 5 maps and the aoe of the stage 4 beam becomes rather small (I dont mind this since it somewhat fulfills the fantasy of the skill).

- The skill does not interact well with Unleash or Spell Echo. This limits the way one can use it. Shooting 4 beams with 0 intensity feels meh so you always have to stop and gain intensity for most packs. If you prefer the Spell Echo you get to the same problem, you are locked in repeating casts that deal low damage and the ramp up time is significant.

- Because of all of the above, the only option is to focus on high cast speed without utilizing the really good options (Unleash/Spell Echo) and bet on the first 1/2 casts to clear the entire screen and casts 3/4 to deal with high HP targets (rares, bosses etc). If new monsters spawn (beyond, corpse spawn etc.) you have to reset your intensity just to be able to actually get decent coverage.

TLDR: I am not sure what the goal of this skill is. It looks amazing but it is simply a mechanical nightmare. I know that with huge investment it is going to work but before one gets to such a spot it simply feels bad.

2. Void Sphere

Note: I did not play that much with the skill but I have few observations

- The skill has high cooldown. This might be OK but I felt like I did not use it often. The PoE combat is so fast paced that if you do not use a skill once 3-4 seconds you kind of forget about it. From design standpoint I don't mind it the way it is. I just realized that one could add it to CWDT setup which kind of fixes this.

- Long cast time - self casting the skill sometimes triggers the cooldown but the skill is not cast successfully because of the sequencing of events. I found myself pressing the Void Sphere keybind and then triggering a move command which cancels the cast and nothing happens. I remember that this was a problem with other skills in the past and I think that for a skill with somewhat big impact and long cooldown there should be a measure that ensures the successful completion of the cast.

TLDR: Nice skill and despite the limited amount of playing with it I liked it. There are issues that I guess will be sometime fixed.

Lancing Steel feels so bad to play with right now.

It's literally barrage for sword or axe. That's fine, but the main problem is that it uses up 4 shards every time and I'm forced recast Call of Steel every third use. With Earthshatter at least not using warcries won't gimp your skill too much, and warcries themselves actually does something to the enemy. While if you ran out of shards on Lancing Steel it's basically a normal attack that hits slightly harder.

It also clears horribly compared to other 2 steel skills and you're forced to slot in pierce or chain to make it work on mapping. While on shattering or splitting steel you can already clear quite alright without any projectile mods at all, allowing to put in more damage supports for bossing.

The old lancing steel is quite unique to play with, why change it to be the most underwhelming steel skill among the other 2? You guys could make it consume shards to shoot smaller projectiles along with the primary projectile (old version) or something. It's just a weaker barrage at the moment tbh, and you can just build impale barrage and it would be the same thing but better.

"

Slaying Monsters Increasing The Alert Level
We killed this. It's not a thing anymore.

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Heists will sure get a lot easier. But it was part of the thrill. It was great to have such a variation of gameplay. Now we'll just run around, kill everything, take the loot and go back, like we always did in PoE. I mean... I like this, obviously. But having some variation in it can be fun, too...

The other news are great, especially concerning the rogue issues. Keep on the good job, guys !