Armour Stacker, ES Stacker etc. need to be removed from the Game - Change my Mind

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Draegnarrr#2823 wrote:

mageblood would be gone well before stackers for me :p

Hmm, not sure I would agree. While Mageblood is extremely powerful, I think the real problem is that we have flask enchants (and mods that stack additively) granting huge bonus effect with downsides that Mageblood can just ignore. I think it would otherwise be fine, gated by its rarity and subsequent cost. It doesn't grant any inherent mechanics that stack on top of themselves, it gives a lot more freedom in other ways.

Thing is, as was pointed out already, even stackers use it because, frankly, it does grant a lot of defense (translated into offense as well) in that case. And that is what bothers me.

If you look at the latest item releases since Mageblood and Co. have entered the game, to me it feels like GGG is a lot more reserved in their design approach, which (to me) ultimately boils down to boring uniques being added. They are too afraid to add things because they could completely "brick the game" by accident. Take the fire pen/res jewel ring that was altered before it was even added. And there are plenty more examples.

I dunno, I wish it weren't so. No more interesting flasks because of Mageblood. Now we need caps on everything because of stackers, etc. Just a shame, really.

Edit: typo

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

When I start some early-league setup that decks out with 30 divine, what am I supposed to do? End the league?

Fair argument, but why don't you consider trying a new build or something? Why does it have to be one of the most busted things in the game?

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

You can´t really say those builds are "out of reach". What do you mean by reach?

Out of reach in several ways:

* Sniping items early, cornering and price fixing the market, gating the availability of those items and subsequently inflating investment. They do it every league.

* Content you can't compete with. Full party setups with several supports, using builds with billions of DPS to wipe contant as quickly as possible, then directly inject the profit into the build and the strat you are running. Practically immortal builds.

It's why you got players like Steve doing currently +18k Delve, and guess what he is using? An ES stacker. Last league it was STR stacking Molten Strike of the Zenith, iirc. And no, this is not me being envious or something.

The argument could be made that in Steve's case it could be something to strive for. But then we have to ask the question: Can it be done without busted mechanics?

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

Adding onto point 2, the reach: My current build kills all ubers, farms ultra-endgame stuff like risk-stacked titanic blights in t17 maps... for around 0.7 mirrors. What exactly is there left that other builds do what I cant do aside of doing specific content faster/better? In what way are stackers out of reach here?

Have you compared it to how many times you die? How long it takes you? What mods you can ultimately run? Etc.

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Fair argument, but why don't you consider trying a new build or something? Why does it have to be one of the most busted things in the game?

It doesn´t have to - and I did not even play one of the busted setups you refer to. With very high scalability comes always very high investment and very hard-to-find or craft gear-pieces, and I am at a point where I don´t need to minmax everything to its tiniest percentage, therefore I often don´t see a reason to play stackers. When they fall in the category of builds I want to play I play them, if not, then I dont. My entire point was that it is good to have high-investment builds in the game for people who decide to play them, and my current setup proves that you don´t necessarily have to play them anyway.

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* Sniping items early, cornering and price fixing the market, gating the availability of those items and subsequently inflating investment. They do it every league.

Sniping items early has NOTHING to do with lategame builds. People who play trade league often times invest early on into things that naturally go upwards in terms of value and there are literally tons of things you can focus on, including but not exclusive to fractured ametyst rings, synth +1 charge rings, 50+67 attack clusters, gift of the goddess, stranglegasp, mirror cards/shards and many other things. In fact you could argue that EARLY BUILDS are far better at pricefixing as those scale fast and actually accumulate the funds to invest early, while stackers need to invest into their build to reach playability. If you are late at the market, this is not the fault of stacker-builds but your own inability to generate currency early.

*

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Content you can't compete with. Full party setups with several supports, using builds with billions of DPS to wipe contant as quickly as possible, then directly inject the profit into the build and the strat you are running. Practically immortal builds.

Once again, full party setups and stacking has nothing to do with it. The most famous party has been running more non-stacker carry builds than stackers as far as I´m correct. So your problem lies with group-play now?

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It's why you got players like Steve doing currently +18k Delve, and guess what he is using? An ES stacker. Last league it was STR stacking Molten Strike of the Zenith, iirc. And no, this is not me being envious or something.

Yeah, for the very hardest content it might be possible that stackers are the best options. But his builds costs multiple mirrors, like 10*ish. Do you want the game to be that one-dimensional that every build can do everything? I surely don´t. I can guarantee you one thing - his Deep-Delve build is slower than a far cheaper ranger-setup when it comes to blasting t17s or legions, other also viable strategies - hence my initial point that builds are supposed to fulfill a purpose or have their niche.

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The argument could be made that in Steve's case it could be something to strive for. But then we have to ask the question: Can it be done without busted mechanics?

this comes down to what you define as a busted mechanic, and - coming back to my initial point - I don´t think stacking is all that busted, seeing how much it takes to even get them remotely online.

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Have you compared it to how many times you die? How long it takes you? What mods you can ultimately run? Etc.

This is such a shoestring-approach to make a valid point because it - once again - ignores that builds are better in one thing and worse in other things. I can, just for examples purposes, clear ubers in less than a minute and can take hits (a.k.a I am tanky). I also can utilize explosions for dense content like the aforementioned VERY hard titanic blights that many consider far more difficult than ubers or t17s - also without dying.

Is a build that has 10 times the investment even stronger? Yeah, probably. AND IT SHOULD BASED ON THAT! You act like stackers need minimal investment to outperform everyting else, when they only start to outperform once you at least triple the invest that you put in other builds, for me this is the definition of balanced in a game with an economic environment.

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

My entire point was that it is good to have high-investment builds in the game for people who decide to play them, and my current setup proves that you don´t necessarily have to play them anyway.

We had those before stackers. Pseudo 8L helmets, 9L weapons and so on. We don't need stackers to have chase builds. Cluster Jewels are also a thing.

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

Sniping items early has NOTHING to do with lategame builds. People who play trade league often times invest early on into things that naturally go upwards in terms of value

Not what I said. Read it again. This isn't about sniping items for profit, it's about restricting availability. It happens every single league.

Edit: To be perhaps more clear: If you take the competition out of the economy, there's no one you have to compete with. That's how it works IRL, too.

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

Once again, full party setups and stacking has nothing to do with it. The most famous party has been running more non-stacker carry builds than stackers as far as I´m correct. So your problem lies with group-play now?

Part of the symptom, not cause and effect. One party group also does not dictate what is meta. PoeNinja is usually a good reference for an overview. Feel free to browse it.

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Do you want the game to be that one-dimensional that every build can do everything? I surely don´t. I can guarantee you one thing - his Deep-Delve build is slower than a far cheaper ranger-setup when it comes to blasting t17s or legions, other also viable strategies - hence my initial point that builds are supposed to fulfill a purpose or have their niche.

No, I do not. Don't twist my words.

Whether his build is slower than a maxed out Ranger running maps is irrelevant. He can do content nobody else can. Whatever price he sets, people will have to pay. And if GGG adds more options for more builds like it, we just get more power creep. Unhealthy for the game, simple as.

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

You act like stackers need minimal investment to outperform everyting else, when they only start to outperform once you at least triple the invest that you put in other builds, for me this is the definition of balanced in a game with an economic environment.

Fair, that one's on me for getting sidetracked and not articulating it properly. See my point made above. Do you think that monopolizing builds should exist? I, for one, do not. Every piece of gear that happens to have a stat that stackers use gets vastly inflated to the point where only they can even afford it.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

My entire point was that it is good to have high-investment builds in the game for people who decide to play them, and my current setup proves that you don´t necessarily have to play them anyway.

We had those before stackers. Pseudo 8L helmets, 9L weapons and so on. We don't need stackers to have chase builds.

Who is this "we" you're talking about? Don't you mean "I don't need stackers to have chase builds"? Which is fine and all, but you're not in charge of balance - thankfully, given some of your takes - and thus don't speak for anyone but yourself.

The fact that these builds are a staple of the game for years now should give you a hint. Clearly they aren't the problem you're making them out to be, else you can be assured they would have gotten the GGG triple-tap by now.

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Ulsarek#7159 wrote:

Who is this "we" you're talking about?

I think you can do better than that. Try again.

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Ulsarek#7159 wrote:

Clearly they aren't the problem you're making them out to be, else you can be assured they would have gotten the GGG triple-tap by now.

Agree to disagree.

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Whether his build is slower than a maxed out Ranger running maps is irrelevant. He can do content nobody else can. Whatever price he sets, people will have to pay. And if GGG adds more options for more builds like it, we just get more power creep. Unhealthy for the game, simple as.

I am not entirely sure what you are trying to say here. Steve might be the person that is the most deep in delve, but by no means he is the only one that sets prices. There is literally no drop in delve that is exclusive to any depth past roughly 200. Certain nodes appear more often once you reach 600, and then again around 1.200, which a lot of builds can do.

Since I am not a deep-delve expert I can´t really say anything about the scaling going further down, but at 1.200 (which I still consider shallow-delving) you are already at the level where you can produce 20-25 div per hour.

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Do you think that monopolizing builds should exist? I, for one, do not. Every piece of gear that happens to have a stat that stackers use gets vastly inflated to the point where only they can even afford it.

First of all, prices are a direct result of demand and rarity. The best builds should be gated behind hard-to-achieve items, and the more people want to play that, those things get expensive. Try to get a best-in-slot timeless jewel and you have to pay 350 divines or up to a mirror as well, do you want to delete them as well because they are gatekept by the 5-way-community?

Secondly, and in addition to my former point: By no means are items unobtainable for only stack-chars. Again, I mentioned this earlier: Your ability to farm currency is not a linear correlation in regards to the power of your build. The game has never been as diverse when it comes to farming-strategies as it is now and from abyss, breach, feared-rotation, deep-delve, blight-ravaged, simulacrum, and probably a few more things generate close to 20div an hour and there are probably 20 other strategies being only slightly less effective.

You don´t have to be a stat-stacker to farm efficiently, and therefore you dont have to be a stat-stacker to buy valuable items. Period.

Last point, just because I recently saw two very interesting videos. Path of exile is for me the best game ever made because if you are looking for a REAL correlation, you´ll find it here - between knowledge, skill and currency.

I play whatever I want, often explicitly off-meta because I like to show others that you dont have to play what everyone plays, and I am faster in the endgame and produce more currency or in a shorter time than the league before. THIS is the real veil in PoE - people who accumulated knowledge and those who don´t. And the aforementioned videos proved that, where someone playing a completely off-meta setup ended up with his first mirror after 4 days into the league. To believe that you would ever require stackers to be able to gate-keep, generate currency in order to stay competetive or that they are the only answer to the game is simply wrong.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

OP’s been around for, what, a year and a half now? And it shows, though not exactly in a way that inspires confidence.
The lack of understanding is usually just background noise, but on this topic, it’s practically under a spotlight.

Yep and casually claiming ad hominem attacks when its just pointing out wrong information, and not an attack at all....its always the same pattern. Just like how I was quoted from previous threads with similar mindset: I KNEW what I was getting into and it went exactly as I thought.

Never mind the fact that 90% of the thread has also disagreed in exactly the same way...but I get attacked rather than argued because I actually do point out the specific holes in the argument, and the lack of credible information.

Never mind the fact that, unlike the OP, I have actually built these types of characters multiple times, and know first-hand what they are capable of at each stage of their development. I am not going on a gut feeling and lack of understanding.

Never mind the fact that I have ALSO built tons of other bonkers-broken builds that outperform stackers in every way, at a fraction of the cost. The fact that stackers have a higher ceiling when you pour in oodles of currency is....simply not an issue. It's true of basically every "good" build that has ever existed, stackers aren't unique.


This isn't even in the feedback section: it was a specific choice to put this topic in the general discussion with "change my mind" in the title. But there is no actual discussion to be had. It is pure bait and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

Since I am not a deep-delve expert I can´t really say anything about the scaling going further down, but at 1.200 (which I still consider shallow-delving) you are already at the level where you can produce 20-25 div per hour.

I think Steve is doing it for bragging rights, mostly. Delve stops scaling at 6k, iirc, but it takes specific builds to do so. From what I recall, going that deep means much more frequent boss spawns and other valuable nodes. However, you'd have to ask him yourself. I merely used his build as an example to underline my point. Maybe a mistake on my part, as you seem to get hung up on the specifics.

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

Try to get a best-in-slot timeless jewel and you have to pay 350 divines as well, do you want to delete them as well because they are gatekept by the 5-way-community?

Again, I'm not against expensive builds. Again, my stance is that builds that scale offense via defense should not be a thing. Whether they are expensive is irrelevant. They simply overshadow everything else mechanically. Refer to my earlier reply with Mageblood.

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

Secondly, and in addition to my former point: By no means are items unobtainable for only stack-chars.

Again using words I did not say. I did not say "unobtainable", I said "to the point where only they can afford it". Nuance in wording you are leaving out.

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

The game has never been as diverse when it comes to farming-strategies as it is now

I actually agree! That's beside the point, though.

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Vennto#1610 wrote:

You don´t have to be a stat-stacker to farm efficiently, and therefore you dont have to be a stat-stacker to buy valuable items. Period.

And again something I didn't say. Period.

They do, however, directly and indirectly gate content, be it via in-game market monopoly, game mechanics or design space.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Never mind the fact that, unlike the OP, I have actually built these types of characters multiple times, and know first-hand what they are capable of at each stage of their development. I am not going on a gut feeling and lack of understanding.

And, as per usual, you think up invalid assumptions and present them as facts. Which is exactly why I do not engage with you in any other manner. And the irony of it is that the above statement is, in fact, ad hominem.