3.26 needs massive meaningful balance changes !

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

That's not to say there aren't many GOOD melee skills to use

True. I made a beast of a character (probably one of the best characters I've ever made from scratch by myself) this league, using Frenzy of Onslaught. Fun as hell.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

Streamers play it because it's strong and versatile yes, but they play other stuff too because it's also strong and versatile. Most of them leagestarted slams, Frostblades of Katabasis was high ranked throughout the entire league, same for Lacerate. Not to mention MSoZ. You putting LS on a pedastal is really just that. The skill is good no doubt, better than many others even but it's far from the best or even outstanding overall.

It is the best tho. Sure, if you have multiuple mirrors budget there are skill which will be better. But there is reason why Lightning Strike was most played skill of all - on low/medium budget (and majority of players will never spend more than like 20-50 div on a build) it is the best skill available.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

but it's far from the best or even outstanding overall.

If you are seriously suggesting that LS is NOT an "outstanding overall" build, then what in the world is?!

Popularity is certainly a thing, but when a full 13% of the top builds (per ninja) are playing ONE skill (LS), even beating out RF by a factor of 2, that should tell you exactly how "outstanding" LS is.

It is literally "outstanding" the statistics

And this isn't even the first league with those numbers.

Dude played LS during this league. Ofc he will try to defend his favorite build so it wont get nerfed.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

but it's far from the best or even outstanding overall.

If you are seriously suggesting that LS is NOT an "outstanding overall" build, then what in the world is?!

Popularity is certainly a thing, but when a full 13% of the top builds (per ninja) are playing ONE skill (LS), even beating out RF by a factor of 2, that should tell you exactly how "outstanding" LS is.

It is literally "outstanding" the statistics

And this isn't even the first league with those numbers.

I don't know what your idea of "outstanding" is but to me it means it stands above all others in terms of performance. That is not the case, not in my book anyway. I consider it one of the best skills along with a dozen others but nothing more.

And again, popularity on POE Ninja <> power. If you insist on that ridiculous logic then that means RF is the third most most powerful skill there is. Are you really trying to sell me that?

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Dude played LS during this league. Ofc he will try to defend his favorite build so it wont get nerfed.

Jokes on you dude, i leagestarted Tecslam then started switching back and forth between it, TSoC and CPoE on my first char. My second char is using Frost Blades. And the third and lowest level (i.e least playtime) build only used LS for leveling in t16. It's actual intended skill and the one i use for serious content is MSoZ. That makes a total of 6 skills i've used this league, disregarding the times i was messing around with FBoK, LSoA and a bunch of others. I am like the very last person in this community that will give a shit even if they remove the skill from the game.

And no, i am not confusing power with damage. If i did that i wouldn't consider FB a top tier skill, it's lacking quite a bit behind LS in terms of single target. But it compensates by having far superior clear speed. Wouldn't call them even but the difference in power is so small that i actually perfered using FB on my slayer rather than using LS.

Yah MSoZ is next on the chopping block. I hope both will get nerfed to be on par with other "melee" skills.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

And again, popularity on POE Ninja <> power. If you insist on that ridiculous logic then that means RF is the third most most powerful skill there is. Are you really trying to sell me that?

Yes, I am LITERALLY telling you that RF is one of, if not exactly the third, most powerful builds in all of PoE. Combining defense, offense, low barrier of entry, ease of play, and coverage in most instances, it is off the charts compared to most other builds and skills.

Again you are confusing "power" with "dps", despite your new insistence that you aren't. PoE Ninja numbers don't inherently tell you what skill deals the most damage (see HoAg builds)....but it DOES tell you what builds are the most powerful, as agreed upon by the entire playerbase. Collective data vs. Singular data

Remember that PoE Ninja is showing you only a small percentage of the BEST of what PoE has to offer. The players that have taken their builds to the literal "end of the line". And when that BEST category is occupied almost entirely by like 5 skills, then those skills are objectively powerful.

Your subjective definition of power (re: dps) is outside the objective PoE definition of "power". Which entails summing ALL aspects of a skill, not just one.

Popularity is almost entirely reliant on power, and cannot be extricated from it. A build cannot be popular if it isn't also powerful. And popularity can be a direct rating of the ubiquitous power of a build.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

I don't know what your idea of "outstanding" is but to me it means it stands above all others in terms of performance.

This isn't a debate: outstanding literally means "standing far outside the norm". Lightning strike making up 13-15% of ALL builds is undoubtedly outstanding, no matter WHAT the specifics are for me or for you. You don't get to re-write english to suit your post.

Well, i guess then we'll have to agree to disagree. Popularity and power are very different things.
Half the reason why RF is so popular is because some guy went through the effort of making an idiot proof guide about it that anyone can follow. If there were guides on a similar level to other skills RF wouldn't be where it is.
Imo you are vastly underestimating the impact of streamers advertising certain skills and/or making guides for them. If they decided to go with something else then we wouldn't even have this discussion now. LS would have close to no usage even with the exact same numbers it has now. We also wouldn't have this discussion if people actually thought for themselves and made their own builds rather than blindly following anything streamers do.

DSoA was considered utterly broken just last league and it's just as powerful now and yet it's nowhere to be seen on POE ninja simply because it fell out of fashion. You are correct that a skill needs a certain amount of power to be popular but that doesn't equate to most popular = most powerful. Advertising plays a huge role in how popular something is but not in how powerful it is.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

Imo you are vastly underestimating the impact of streamers advertising certain skills and/or making guides for them. If they decided to go with something else then we wouldn't even have this discussion now.

And you are completely ignoring WHY those streamers, arguably and likely the best and most knowledgeable players in PoE (far more than you or I) CHOOSE lightning strike to advertise. They aren't getting paid to advertise it.....they advertise it because its THAT good by comparison

You are right, they could always choose to go a different route. But they DON'T because of its power. Streamers will always gravitate towards the most powerful possible builds of a league. Always, 100% of the time. Unless their content is specifically designed to buck the system. Meta is there for a reason, whether you like it or not.

Wrong again. There are a handful of popular streamers that did so but there are plenty of others who played other stuff. If "streamers" "ALWAYS" played the best skill there is then why are there streamers playing something other than LS? Why were so many streamers leaguestarting slams? I could bring up Mathil here, or Captain Lance, there are plenty of streamers playing a wide variety of builds. Your logic simply doesn't reflect reality, like at all.

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This isn't a debate: outstanding literally means "standing far outside the norm". Lightning strike making up 13-15% of ALL builds is undoubtedly outstanding, no matter WHAT the specifics are for me or for you. You don't get to re-write english to suit your post.

Ok then, it's outstanding in terms of popularity. You can cite the statistics all you want but it's pointless because i consider POE ninja numbers a useless metric to begin with.
Half the builds on there are so shitty they aren't even playable. Like all the hex blast occultists and ice trap assassins which are only there to show of high damage numbers but have like 4k ehp.