Dotcap and dot build scaling needs to be rethinked.

I don't think they should cap damage, that said there is a better solution to damage scaling being so out of whack. Remove more multipliers. Make everything additive. That alone would probably serve to massively reign in damage, make content easier to balance and help with build diversity since the differences between builds wouldn't be as huge as they are now.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

I don't think they should cap damage, that said there is a better solution to damage scaling being so out of whack. Remove more multipliers. Make everything additive. That alone would probably serve to massively reign in damage, make content easier to balance and help with build diversity since the differences between builds wouldn't be as huge as they are now.

The thing is even if GGG wanted to they very likely couldn't. Players would just riot and not play the game. It happened before with Expedition, it would happen again. You can even pull up GGG's financial statements (all public on the NZ gov website) for that year and see that they actually tanked revenue because of that. As far as meaningful balance goes this game is beyond saving. Literally.

They've designed themselves into a corner and are stuck there, this thread is a pretty good example of that when you've got someone asking for a 35mil dot cap to be lifted because its not high enough lmao

This is why MK2 Ubers were bad for the game, there were so many ways to keep the difficulty curve that didn't involve tacking things on and pretending it was harder.

There are ways to fix it but they are all drastic and time consuming, the community won't tolerate the first as they've been pandered too for a long time now and GGG can't deal with the second as they have a packed schedule to maintain.

If your finding lack of challenge is sapping your enjoyment in SC though you should switch to SSF or HC, lack of trade/defence requirements both add a substantial burden that can really refresh the options again.

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Draegnarrr#2823 wrote:

They've designed themselves into a corner and are stuck there, this thread is a pretty good example of that when you've got someone asking for a 35mil dot cap to be lifted because its not high enough lmao.

It sounds ridiculous but this is the reality. For hard content juiced t16.5 and 17 30 mill is not really that much as you think. It is just insane people run around with 3-400 mill dps and it is fine but dot is hard capped at 35 mill no matter how much divine you invest into the build.



Maybe it is just the nature of Explosive arrow that it has the 1 second base delay on the explosion but if things don't die pretty much instantly you are as good as dead. 1 second is an eternity in this game.

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Crîmnor#4334 wrote:

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

I don't think they should cap damage, that said there is a better solution to damage scaling being so out of whack. Remove more multipliers. Make everything additive. That alone would probably serve to massively reign in damage, make content easier to balance and help with build diversity since the differences between builds wouldn't be as huge as they are now.

The thing is even if GGG wanted to they very likely couldn't. Players would just riot and not play the game. It happened before with Expedition, it would happen again. You can even pull up GGG's financial statements (all public on the NZ gov website) for that year and see that they actually tanked revenue because of that. As far as meaningful balance goes this game is beyond saving. Literally.

I believe it's mostly a matter of implementation. The community likely would riot if they made that change while leaving the content as it is. If GGG adjusted both player AND monster power then i believe things would be different. Ofc there is no way of knowing so this is just my personal opinion.

That said, i think they'll need to do something sooner or later anyway. We are arguably already on a level where ubers could use a buff because they are becoming trivial and it will only get worse with time. Rather than just forcing another massive nerf down our throats to buy themselves a few more years they might as well try and solve the issue once and for all.

I don't think dot cap is really a problem. I remember having a poison ts pathfinder with actual uber dot cap. It cleared super juiced affliction wisped t16 abyss maps so well that I had to cut back on dps cause spires died before they could spawn a single wave.

In my opinion the high end scaling of dot builds is just inferior in options compared to crit builds and often times you have to sacrifice singe target dps for clear or vice versa.

In general dot multiplier should either be stronger on items and tree or some other source of dot damage boost should be available.

But having 35mil dps that doesn't take ages to ramp up should be more than enough for anything. If its really 35mil in that specific content you are doing. At least thats my take.

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Draegnarrr#2823 wrote:

They've designed themselves into a corner and are stuck there

I 100% agree with you there. its an issue that they let fester, and in fact they fostered this issue to all the power creep we have today.

if we're going to talk about nerfs, it needs to be both on players and mobs together.

ggg tends to nerf players but make mobs harder which really skewers the game even more.

theres tons of things that need to change. for starters attack speed. i m of the opinion that attacking more than 8 attacks per second simply creates an unbalanced game.

similarly all projectiles need a shotgun nerf where the more projectile/aoe overlaps, the damage is reduced, and to a point ignored entirely.

maybe crit needs to be reworked too where most players could easily reach 30% crit chance but once they hit 50% it has significant diminishing returns so getting 100% crit is not the encouraged.

in anycase i think its way too late to do this balancing.

as for dot build scaling, i actually like POE2's dot scaling, where your final attack damage is used as the poison base damage. unlike poe1 where any increases to attack does nothing for poison damage.

taking a page from poe2 one idea is to limit poison stacks. maybe to 16 stacks? i dont know.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

You are of course entitled to your opinion, but I strongly disagree. Stuff like old Multistrike, which enabled 20 APS builds in the past, did not skew the balance of the game. In fact, I miss it, because attacking fast can be fun af, it's just stupidly expensive these days and not remotely on the same level. A

fair enough. we're entitled to our opinions but i will agree that having fast attack speed is indeed fun, tho i would still prefer the game to be balanced around a slower playstyle.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

Not sure if you are unaware, but most of the projectile skills currently in the game cannot inherently shotgun.

i m very unaware of that. theres a buttload of things i admittedly do not know about the game. i still feel having a gazillion projectiles on screen at once is probably the wrong direction.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

it weirds me out that multiple mechanics in PoE 2 now work like they used to in PoE 1.

i was very hyped for how GGG kept revealing their design choices for poe2 making it sound like its much more deliberate and how they've learned from poe1.

they actually demonstrate this where poison damage on surface double dips, but actually it does not. unlike poe1, most nodes that give attack damage does not also give ailment damage. these 2 nodes are separate.

you could double dip with chaos damage but chaos damage nodes tend to be on a lower value in comparison to pure attack/ailment nodes.

but what you said about "learning from POE1". it hit me real hard when i realized melee totems exist in poe2.

they removed melee totems in poe1 to make players rely less on totems and have more agency to do damage themselves.

but they reintroduced it in poe2? like nani le fuck.

in any case i have very little confidence that ggg would try and rebalance the game. its a ship that sailed long ago.

despite saying how i would prefer things to be nerfed/rebalanced. with that being a pipe dream, then the next best thing is to give players more unbridaled power.

just let players have fun lol.

I think my general issue with skill and gem balance is that a lot of the balancing has left many gems in very unfun game states. The existence of Poison minions or Archmage has completely decimated some skills. When minmaxers find a fun skill to throw all their currency into, then the skill receives like a 10-20% reduction later.

What I think needs to happen is great rebalance wave, remove a lot of mechanics and add them back into the game at a sensible level. Like strip out every gem and support gem, and then readd them with new stats and synergies. Remove stuff like point blank from the tree and leave it in gem form, that kind of thing. Make the passive tree more interesting and diverse.

It would be a lot of work, but a lot of balance changes from a decade ago are shafting areas of the game now. GGG has the hard task of making a game fun for people who are doing like 5 maps per minute on a uber mirror twink character and a player taking his time and hitting like 4 buttons in a combo to slowly kill one monster at a time.

Players need to spend so much gear and passive tree investment on making a skill feel "good" to play. Area of effect is slightly too small or too large, projectile speed is slow, accuracy being a thing at all for attacks. There are so many little checkmarks of I need this much melee strike range, or totem placement speed.

In almost every case the floor is too low and the ceiling to high. Monsters do too much damage versus capped resistance and a reasonable amount of es/arm/ev. Life regen never seems to outpace burning ground. I think almost every system could be changed for the better. The mana costs of attacks is way too high as well.

Damage over time cap is probably based more on server tick rate shenigans than intentional restrictions on damage over time. If it makes you feel better hit based builds also hit a cap, but it is very hard to hit. in the sense that almost every computer program has an integer limit.

I honestly think they did a great job balancing DOT builds, and I believe it was done on purpose. The DOT archetype is already pretty strong compared to other build types, especially early on. Once you apply your DOT, you’re essentially free to roam, dodge, and focus on positioning without having to worry about maintaining your damage. That uptime is huge, it allows you to keep hitting your enemies while staying mobile and avoiding danger.

It feels like this was a purposeful design choice to make DOT builds more accessible and efficient in the early game. Another reason DOTs are so appealing is that, while they require more gear to truly cap out damage, they deliver solid results early on for relatively little investment. That’s why they’re such a go-to for players starting the league, they get cheap, effective damage that carries them through content. You can rush through the game, then swap to a more high-end build once you’ve cleared everything.

With DOTs, you can get consistent, tanky gameplay while not having to micromanage downtime, making them perfect for rushing through content and then upgrading to something with insane damage scaling.