Character Balance in Path of Exile: Lake of Kalandra

Aloha all readers (hopefully also GGG-Devs or employee's),

(warning, im a native german one and my english is not as well as i wished, so please don't be mad about all my typos.)

tldr:
Cry cry cry, mimimi, too much nerfs! defence nerf, minion nerf, totems still not viable, Melee need tons of investment to be decent and still feels not as good, cause of certain mechanics. (in my opinion) please rock the patchnotes so this leage don't will be a hell to play. (in my opinion)

i thought about the manifesto and took a sort break to deeply breath in, watch some other ppl on Youtube to talk about this manifesto and thought again over it. But i'm still kinda worried. Sure, the patchnotes aren't out yet and there could come somethjing nice. But at this point, even of 3.17+3.18 i haven't got as much as fun as i wished for. I'm kinda bad in PoE but still try my best. But i get one shottet on a t16 map with one mod (40% Phys reduc from monsters) and got 90 allres, 75% block on both 8k life and 2k energyshield besides of crit immune and 100% spell suppression, 20 fortify with increased effect and 8 endurance charges (and yes, defiance banner, grace and determination too). And now the defences seems to be nerfed again? How many percent of softcore players seems to need to play Defiance Banner, Grace, Determination and so on, to don't get one shottet? And you also nerf Manareservation?! For now, i'm massivly worried. i dont like too squishy builds but still get oneshottet from white mobs with all those defence layers and lower my dmg for more tankyness, and it worth..... nothing. And also i dont see any changes to the Nemesis mods? I still hope they get reverserd or nerfed away or something. Cause still i got monsters that are more tanky than Maven or Sirus... as a basic yellow monster. And yes, im kinda whiney for now in this post but try to think this straight, try to hope for the best. I took vacation for the first league week to start over good, but as i saw the manifesto it feels like, i should ask to cancel the vacation and still work. For real, i hope the monster get squished a bit (just the yellow ones) and make it well accessable, if you drop some dmg to be tanky enough to dont get like 10k dmg from a basic white mob without any added dmg stats. Still don't know how this is possible. And if my dmg is kind bad at the certain point and everything will do less dmg, how should i be able to do the normal bosses and so on in a 'well' way? Adn i don't talk about uber bosses, the regular ones. I'm just sad, worried and hope, there will come something that will lift the dmg or squish the monsters in a certain way. And for all those, that say 'its easy right now to do xyz' im not good and i'm kinda unlucky too, sadly. Unlucky like 300 searing exarch with ~60-80% mods and no item worth more than a few chaos, so no Omniscience or 'good' forbidden flame this league. Should sell the invitations and get more currency with it. But to keep going about the manifesto. I think also the suppression nerf ist not good, but okay-ish. Even if many ppl got the point with the recombinators and that those maked it possible the way it is. Also the detonate dead/corpse life nerf. Okayish but still, i dont think those were not an issue. i love to play totems, minions and some more mid-full range builds. But totems are kinda not worth it, as it feels right now, also Minions need such high investment and got again... again again... nerfed?! And Mind Over Matter, really? I think the MoM-Playstyle right now is kinda... weak in comparison but now some stats got deleted, so you are not able to fully play a mom setup well, as i think over it? So even this kind of defence mechanic is gone, or at least nerfed to the ground? please, really please, i hope there is something coming that will justify all those nerfs. If some ppl know some nice totem and/or minionbuilds that are well playable after that but not too squishy and insta dead, and also not like 2 mirriors to do basic stuff, please let me know! Also range/midrange setups. And please, dont say seismic trap and/or explosive arrow. (whisp/personal messages)

So, over all?
I'm worried, and hope the Patchnotes will justify this manifesto. Please make defense stats/tankyness more accessable if you don't want to play full glass canon on sc trade. and if you want to play with defence auras, you still need to drop too much dmg options and now even more!


And just do mention, i dont want it to be super easy and lame. But if yellow mobs are tankier than bosses/uberbosses thats ridiculous in my head. Also the build disabling stats.

Let we all pretend that IceStorm and CI does not exists.
Let's we all become a "meta" builds, and play like the kids going in 3rd grade :
"- Because someone is doing it! "
or
"- Because someone said so !"
disregarding if this is fun or no.

Hello, I hope someone with GGG will read it. Although I am only a casual player, I still see many problems in the game. I apologize for my not very good English, it's not my native language.

The biggest is of course the balance of individual builds. If we look at the statistics, a large part of the characters/players in the endgame play max 5 builds, which is not enough for how many options the game offers. Any change for Hierophant :) ?

Another problem related to why people only play a few builds is, of course, "damage taken". Here the solution is simple... just reduce the damage of all enemies.

The nerfs on mana/life reservation efficiency are a big disappointment for me... it would require a change in how auras work, e.g. change "cost" from "%" to "value" (such as "vitality aura"), which could be easily balanced. Players who would like to use more auras would be able to have them if they invested passive skill points in mana.
Possibly change some auras/skills that reserve mana... I would definitely change all heralds skills and tempest shield (from "%" cost to "value".)
Another possible change would be to add, for example, a support gem that, instead of reserving mana, would burn mana (on a similar principle as "Righteous Fire") so it would not be affected by the "mana cost" passive skill as "Righteous Decree" so we would not be able to achieve " free auras". Or just change auras in this way...
If auras had a cost in "value" and not in "%" there would be options for additional opportunities to add to the game such as: cost energy shield instead of mana. Which is not completely possible to do now, because 50% of, for example, 10 ES is "free aura" :), but if it was, for example, 250 mana, it would no longer be possible to transfer it to ES because it would not have enough ES (if he will have still only 10 max ES).

Changes for spell suppression are fine for me.
Also the nerf for "Defiance Banner". I'm also very happy for the "MoM" buff, I like this skill.

Add passive skills like "Avatar of Fire" for other elements (and maybe chaos/poison)
I would add options that would support a build without using critical hits.
It would like to change a few passive skills that are literally useless to use... such as "Resolute Technique" or "Precise Technique" etc. With the new nerfs on the reservation, "Blood Magic" would also deserve a buff.

Currently, most melee skills are too weak to even consider using them. PLS buff them.

Bleeding mechanics would deserve a significant buff. Currently unusable as a primary part of the build.

Flask nerfs are a bad idea. Or at least buff passive skills for flask charges.

Juggernaut's Unbreakable skill was perfectly fine for me, the given changes are bad, at least I don't see a reason to split it into 2 parts. And where did "5% reduced damage taken" disappear??? Until now we were reducing damage to everything, now suddenly only elemental.

"Damage taken recouped as life" would be great if we had such an option at the bottom part of the passive skill tree.

Thank you. Have a nice day.

If your game has over 250 active skills and players only play like 10 of them as much because the others are dogshit...

GGG, YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING WRONG.

"

ENSASKE wrote:

I did not play this league because it was very repetitive. I hope they add new things or ways to do the same thing but differently.

This nerf was coming, I knew the double defensive aura was too good for the game and the ways ggg intended.
I knew attribute stacking was a lot of fun, so it would be nerfed.
I knew that the mana reservation was too much for what GGG is used to, I knew that this would be eliminated.

Minions is always nerfed in each league, it was missing in this one, but I don't understand, skelemancers is not a super powerful build, it is very very difficult to keep skeletons alive and now it will be much much worse, for me they saw that many used it and decided to eliminate it. It is not OP build but it is very comfortable to play and that is why people liked it.

Just when I decide to try skele, they have eliminated and damaged all the sources of improvement, helmet and the ancesdancy of the necromancer, it would not make sense to go there anymore. The same thing happened with carrion golems, they nerfed it, I tried it and it worked after a lot of investment, the difference is that now they have gone too far with the nerf and I'm not going to waste time and money to make skele half work and then complain that it doesn't work at all.

Now they have this crazy tendency to nerf it until it's useless and then release a buff two weeks later. And already at that time you lost the start of the league.

I'm not worried, I'll just go back to chaos, again I guess.

Haha, melee builds got treated like that for like last 4-5 leagues, even cyclone is bad nowadays.

Oh, this may kill what little enjoyment I still had on this game. I'm playing this game due to my past love for it as is...

"

feike wrote:

GGG is aiming for that sweet spot where only streamers and no lifers play the game(focusing on the whales, full diablo immortal style)

Yup. The ONLY thing that guides their decisions is profit impact metrics. They would absolutely prefer the reduced server costs and 10% of the current sever population with equal or better profit.

They actively don't want new players. What new players they do want to get must first be psychologically screened by the horrifying new player experience.

It's basically hazing and control group.

If new types of people joined in numbers then it would wreck their carefully maintained psychological models.

Every game company is a digital drug dealer, and it's a science. Nothing that looks like incompetence actually is. Rather it's hostile and exploitative agenda.

"

MikeDCold wrote:

I come back, blow 600 ex on improving my build and they nerf it AND make it so I will likely have to craft or buy different items. Appreciate it, really. I hope this doesn't make me and my friend quit before the new league again, which it likely will. Not sure I'll come back again if that happens.

Sounds like you're playing standard league, which tbh is not considered AT ALL when balance changes are made. Standard league is an imba cess pool mess, and with basically unlimited currency in standard, you shouldn't really care about having to change gear.

"

Riverwind77 wrote:

If your game has over 250 active skills and players only play like 10 of them as much because the others are dogshit...

GGG, YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING WRONG.

Now it is 2. LS and Seismic.

problem: too much damage
solution: nerf

problem: too much defense
solution: nerf

miss the days when I was lying in the chair farming without worrying about anything with the perfect build



pray for PoE 2