Meaningful combat

It seems like the original problem was mobs being too aggressive. Eventually this was fixed, but by then a bunch of other changes where made. Players got tons of recovery, so for mobs to be a threat they had to be capable of one-shots. It seems to me the state of combat should be brought back to where it was on release, then the fix to aggressive mobs should be applied and then recovery should be reduced to the state of:
- No flask charges from mobs
- Half the number of flask charges
- No modifications to flask, just change them to recover half of hp over a duration, a few times.
- Only recover flask charges on fountain use, after which mobs have respawned and bosses have healed.
- No passive life regeneration, leech or life on hit (but double the total life to balance it with ES)
- Remove ES from the passive tree (to balance it with armour and evasion)

Now the game can be balanced around skill. No more one-shots. If you do a good job you never get hit at all. Only TP back to fountain because you messed up and need to try again.

Only thing I agree with is to remove the ES nodes.

While some of the one-shots are BS, it fundamentally adds a layer of difficulty that makes the game fun. If you cant get 1 shotted, you are pretty much never dying with decent gear, which makes the game boring.

Also, life on hit etc is fundamental for a lot of builds. If you remove that, you remove a lot of potential builds that would be relying on it. Most melee builds need sustain, and your ideas would make range-gameplay the only viable option.

What they need is better visual clarity for 1-shots, like some attacks flashing red etc, so we can know what to dodge.

If performance / visual clarity are fixed, players won't be getting 1 shotted as much anymore.

Nerf ES for sure though, its very imbalanced.

I agree. You've identified the problem with how player sustain (regen, leech, etc) make monster one-shots mandatory, and all other incoming attacks almost negligible. Which in turn promotes the play-style of clearing the screen before you get hit.

I agree that player sustain is out of hand and in the center of balance design problems.

I wouldn't go as far when it comes to balancing flasks. Maybe get rid of charges on kill so "gain # charges /sec" is the standard more controllable variable for how flasks can be recovered.

Life/mana/ES on hit should either have a 1 second cooldown or not exist at all. There are far too many ways in a game like this to hit dozens or more times a second and have infinite sustain.

Leech is a design nightmare right now too. Leech scaling on damage modifiers and enemy density breaks defense scaling. Leech shouldn't scale on damage modifiers at all and just be affected by a skill's base damage. Leech should also be capped at 100% of max life /sec too just as a reserve limiter.

Life recoup should also have a hardcap. You shouldn't profit health from face-tanking damage with a single stat. Perhaps 75-90% of damage as a cap. It shouldn't be able to go over 100% for sure.

Life regeneration is actually not that bad compared to other sustain designs. There are just a few outlier sources that need to be brought in line.

ES increases are fine to exist I think. The real problem is that sources give the same amount as armour/evasion increases. 15% increases ES is WAY stronger than 15% increased armour/evasion. Sources of globally increased ES blatantly need to be nerfed.

Dude, this is an APRG, not an RPG game. When you stop playing the meta structures and start dying constantly, spending 10 minutes even to destroy white and blue mobs (The game will no longer be enjoyable)...

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JoTua#1329 wrote:

Dude, this is an APRG, not an RPG game. When you stop playing the meta structures and start dying constantly, spending 10 minutes even to destroy white and blue mobs (The game will no longer be enjoyable)...

We're talking about changing the meta structure. Where did you get dying constantly from? The OP is talking specifically about player sustain, not monster damage. If you lower player life regen/leech then you can just lower monster damage to compensate and eliminate the need for one-shotting an entire life pool. You might be misunderstanding. :O

Also 10 minutes is a bit exaggerated, if you're talking about the thread title. The 'meaningful combat' is something more like act 1 campaign, or something a little bit slower. Not 10 minutes for a white/blue mob =)

The game is a bit too easy now.
Do you enjoy the campaign, or is it too difficult?
Does the campaign kill you all the time?
Do you usually take 10 minutes to kill white mobs?

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zeddy123#4861 wrote:

Only thing I agree with is to remove the ES nodes.

Great, better than nothing.

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zeddy123#4861 wrote:

While some of the one-shots are BS, it fundamentally adds a layer of difficulty that makes the game fun.

There is still plenty of reason to stay if you get hit. Going back for every mistake is no fun. So it focuses you to do better and not get hit again. There is still going to be plenty of cases where players overestimate themselves, get into a situation with too many mobs that they cannot get out of. Also, you wouldn't be able to defeat any boss that way as they heal every time to go back to town.

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zeddy123#4861 wrote:

If you cant get 1 shotted, you are pretty much never dying with decent gear, which makes the game boring.

Maybe you could still get one-shotted with some well-telegraphed boss attacks. But Johnathan has stated that one-shots are needed because of the high recovery. Without recovery every hit is a real threat to your plans.

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zeddy123#4861 wrote:

Also, life on hit etc is fundamental for a lot of builds. If you remove that, you remove a lot of potential builds that would be relying on it. Most melee builds need sustain, and your ideas would make range-gameplay the only viable option.

As a melee player I don't agree at all. Those builds already interrupt enemies when they attack. This starts right from the start with the zombies. So long as you only engage the number of zombies offended by your attack, they are interrupted and end up not hitting you. You then retreat to make sure that the ones you missed don't hit you. You can get through early game without getting hit at all on melee just fine. With the sand spitters in PoE1 you have a bigger challenge. You have to estimate when their projectile is coming, dodge it and time your hit. Even when killing all the sandspitters it's possible to never get hit. And you'd still have flask charges for the inevitable mistake.

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zeddy123#4861 wrote:

What they need is better visual clarity for 1-shots, like some attacks flashing red etc, so we can know what to dodge.

So recovery is not a factor there? Why even have it at all? To make sure all the other fighting is meaningless because recovery is almost free?

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zeddy123#4861 wrote:

If performance / visual clarity are fixed, players won't be getting 1 shotted as much anymore.

They might be able to somewhat improve visual clarity, but I have even less hope for serious improvements there than for my removing one-shot suggestion.

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JoTua#1329 wrote:

Dude, this is an APRG, not an RPG game. When you stop playing the meta structures and start dying constantly, spending 10 minutes even to destroy white and blue mobs (The game will no longer be enjoyable)...

When you get good you'll rarely get hit at all. Only bad players will occosionally have to go back to town or die due to trying to rush.

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LVSviral#3689 wrote:

I agree that player sustain is out of hand and in the center of balance design problems.

I wouldn't go as far when it comes to balancing flasks. Maybe get rid of charges on kill so "gain # charges /sec" is the standard more controllable variable for how flasks can be recovered.

Leaving any recovery is a major problem. Because it means you still have infinite recovery if you're just patient. So it becomes a waiting game where the best play is to sit around waiting for your health to regen. You might be able to say the same about ES. That's a very different playstyle, I don't really have a solution for that. Other than you should be able to get much less ES than life.

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WhisperSlade#0532 wrote:

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JoTua#1329 wrote:

Dude, this is an APRG, not an RPG game. When you stop playing the meta structures and start dying constantly, spending 10 minutes even to destroy white and blue mobs (The game will no longer be enjoyable)...

We're talking about changing the meta structure. Where did you get dying constantly from? The OP is talking specifically about player sustain, not monster damage. If you lower player life regen/leech then you can just lower monster damage to compensate and eliminate the need for one-shotting an entire life pool. You might be misunderstanding. :O

Agreed. There wouldn't be much changes in campaign, just a bit lower monster damage, not player damage. But there would be a lot of changes to endgame, a lot less monster damage and less damage on the strongest player builds.