Character Balance in Path of Exile: Lake of Kalandra

ok,all crap, now lets talking about melee builds,any buff?

WoW! You weaken Pathfinder again by removing 6% reduced elemental damage taken?
First you made flasks have up to 50% less effect without compensation for Pathfinder and now you think, that 20% increased magic utility flask effect compensates for that?

Back in the days when an indigon Pathfinder still was a thing the Passive Skill Tree travelling for a spellcasting Pathfinder build was much easier. Then you made travelling for them pretty rough and also having to invest heavily into Flask nodes on the tree to get some minor compensation for your flask nerfs.
You can still keep your Mana up but with so much less QOL by having to click the mana flask button 100 times.

This left Pathfinder only useful for Poison and toxic rain.
In my opinion Pathfinder for other builds is only useful to keep unique flasks up. So you should rather change your new passive skill into 20% more flask effect.

Also I don't think that monsters should be able to remove flask effects from pathfinder (Idk if it's still a thing with Nemesis mods removed).

I just wish to get some love for my beloved Pathfinder which you left alone in the rain for the past few leagues.

Player base efficiently nerfed GGG.

I am a noob, I only have 13xx hours in the game.
Let's say I want to - for the first time - kill the uber bosses this coming league. What build do I have to play?

In my eyes, my only option would be seis trapper. But personally I really don't want to play that crap, because everyone is doing it and it seems so boring.

Why are so many builds being nerfed, but the absolute most common and strongest ones are left untouched? I am really confused.

Finally a good reason for not picking Leadership

What a joke

Good job GGG.

Enjoying the kids tears . Keep doing the game awesome!

Yeahhh... you know how player retention went up and you saw more players playing longer into the league?

This balance will end that trend in 3.19, 100% (unless full patch notes address some of the issues we're seeing in the preview).

Many of the nerfs make sense, but many others really do not. Melding, yeah, very fair, it was too op.  Fixing the auric bug, of course, past due. Spell suppression, yeah, I love it but it was clearly too easy to attain so this makes sense - still viable, just takes more investment, good nerf. Defiance nerf? Yeah, just like spell suppression that was expected, and fair.  Nerfing the DD damage and corpse life, that's definitely going to reduce/stop the DD meta, but very acceptable - because that's only one build being nerfed to F tier. 

But, nerfing our defenses (that go across many/most builds) without providing adequate alternatives? Hopefully you'll provide some with the full patch/expansion notes because that's not going to improve gameplay or retention. Not to mention how the hardcore players will take it.

It would be an awful way to force increased difficulty while making dozens of builds less viable - and nobody is going to want to play deep into the league (like recently with more players leveling characters higher than previously seen in many other leagues) if characters die too easily without solid defenses.  Why would we bother to keep grinding if it's too risky (to our time investment) at high level?

I agree that having every player running the Determination/Grace/Defiance combo is "lame" due to the lack of variety/diversity, but we need more alternatives before you cut our survivability. I'm really hoping for some interesting options before 3.19 goes live.

Killing the Gravicus life->ES craft and all the builds' defenses it enables? That's a problem (a mistake), not a solution, especially when it's coupled with the other defense nerfs (pick one, not both please, for now at least).  BUT, if you MUST destroy that survival enabling craft, it's got to be better than just a small amount of physical mitigation.  Raw ES from the craft increases the EHP for damage from all sources (minus chaos), but with this nerf, it's not only gone completely (rather than nerfing the %, which may force us to think outside the box and choose different crafts) which kills an entire defensive layer, but the mitigation replacement is only for physical damage instead of all sources (minus chaos)... this doesn't smell like rain?  

Killing necromancer +2 and the theme of that ascendency? Ooooph.  I dont think it's worth the sentiment, "This skill makes it hard to justify using other ascendancy classes for minion builds." I understand the thought process, but why ruin the minion necromancer theme when you could be buffing minion/nodes for other classes/ascendencies? Also...  Is maiming the minion necromancer, in order to equalize other classes to play minions, a worthwhile goal? Wouldn't that destroy the entire idea behind classes, ascendancies, themes and lore?  It feels like a small move towards Elder Scrolls Online where there is virtually no difference to starting classes/races. If other classes are lacking minion ability, buff them, don't remove what, arguably, makes a necromancer a necromancer. (From a guy who enjoys but doesn't often play, and wasn't planning on playing, a minion necro).

I really hope you surprise us with the full reveal, or a 'gotcha' moment, and solid defenses will still be attainable without ZDPS.  If 3.19 becomes a glass cannon league, or zdps in exchange for SOME defenses, I might have to sit this one out, which would not be fun, and I definitely wouldn't be able to invite others to experience POE.  Right now it looks like I should've pushed harder for them to try it out during 3.18 when things had a very smooth progression (the archnem mods issue scared people unfortunately, those cowards).  

I'm hoping for the best... but I may have to start researching other games to play for 3.19 if the full patch notes double down on this balance. 

PS. The flasks... please don't give us carpal tunnel syndrome, just leave well enough alone.  It's not a great system, but at least the nearly permanent flask uptime helped our wrists (IF configured correctly, which can only be done properly well into the endgame - that's fair right?). Instead of nerfing down to 1,2,3 charges, maybe go with 2,3,4 charges? or 2,3,5 if you're feeling generous and want to make us gamble more alts. Think of how happy they'll be when they roll a 5... then it augments a garbage suffix and we can all laugh at fickle lady luck.

Because, sadly, GGG is endgame fixed and endgame addicted. The normal campaign got and still gets little love. Everything is concentrated and culminates into endgame maps and endgame boss fights. And if this is not enough, they make "ÜBER"versions of it. HOW BORING! If Boss fights are copied and modified, you know a game has lost it´s way and origin.

kind regards Arkon

when does d4 release again?