PoE2 has very few viable builds, why are patch notes nothing but nerfs?

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karsey#2995 wrote:

Here's a fact: I don't agree with every balance adjustment that's been made in PoE2 or PoE1 over the last decade but I've still managed to enjoy every single patch I've played and they are far away my favourite two games of all time, and I've been gaming a while.

No one is arguing your math or against your logic, they're arguing the necessity of it.

This is because measuring the enjoyment (or whatever you call it) of one's personal experience in a video game using math - especially when discussing it's potentiality on a patch you haven't even played yet in such certain terms - is the kind of mistake only a "high-iq intellectual" could make.

You're getting eye-rolls from people who've heard the "Nothing is good/Everything is worse because of X and I've done the big-brain math, trust me" argument from multiple people every single league patch for the last 13 years, and yet, here we are, still having fun.

Okay. I’ll entertain your argument. What is that you are doing differently than I am?

Answer: you don’t care about it, you simply care that you can still play and are excited for new changes.

A person who doesn’t care, is indifferent. The opposite of love is not hatred, it’s indifference. Educate yourself, I’m tired of trying to educate you.

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Cyriac_Darakus#1022 wrote:

You are playing the wrong type of game if this is what you want, generally ARPG's are going to be kill the monster in 1-2 hits. With the odd elite/champion mob in the mix that might be a bit stronger.

No you are playing the wrong game. This is my turf now. Path of Elden Ring. Miyazaki changed things, and it is now you that must adapt. I'm hoping for invasions in a future patch.

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Kalerteth#1420 wrote:

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Cyriac_Darakus#1022 wrote:

You are playing the wrong type of game if this is what you want, generally ARPG's are going to be kill the monster in 1-2 hits. With the odd elite/champion mob in the mix that might be a bit stronger.

No you are playing the wrong game. This is my turf now. Path of Elden Ring. Miyazaki changed things, and it is now you that must adapt. I'm hoping for invasions in a future patch.

This feels like sarcasm but actually the most intelligent thing they can add to poe2 is meaningful and engaging PvP.

If you really want to make separation between poe1 and poe2 the best design room to do so is PvP.

You do make an interesting point tho. In Elden ring the number of “support” builds is next to none and “support” is just someone who can do dps. That’s what they just changed poe2 into as well.

Facts don’t care about how we feel. Facts simply exist. Time/Distance shows us the truth.

Maybe this change was for the overall better, but for that to be true they better actually be cooking real PvP.
You can’t sacrifice an entire way for players to engage with your game and not hurt because of it in unless you make systems that are worth the change.

If you are going to crater the ability for people to play support compositions there has to be something you are doing that compensates for it. And I do not believe that “increasing my own power” is a way to compensate for such an interesting and unique way to play.

We can sit here and argue about what actually got nerfed, if you can’t see that this was measurably the largest nerf in either games history, all I ask is you show me one that is a large % nerf.

Have we even established the next closest nerf? Let’s stay on grips and 500% nerf and not mention bhatair’s 1000% nerf.

What is the next closest nerf in the history of either game to 500% nerf?

Btw grips got nerfed more than 500% but we will round down to 500% to make it easier for yall.

just play crossbows and insta kill end game bosses day 1. Ez gg. Never gets nerfed and never gets much attention from the nerf police

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KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

Lmao acting like the number itself actually matters.

Entire builds have been nuked from existence multiple times. That's functionally infinity% nerf.

“Lmfao acting like the number actually matters”

It does matter and here’s why it matters since you don’t seem to be able to rationalize cause and effect.

If they needed to nerf all allies scaling by 500% and Bhatair’s by 1000% that means they were rather lazy when they designed them. The more you have to nerf something the lazier your design was at the time.

Also, because nothing in the history of this game has been nerfed this hard, and because support compositions were not meta, what has happened is a non meta composition of group play has just seen the widest and most prolific nerf in either games history. The nerf effects THOUSANDS of support compositions.

I kept this response short in hopes you could read it. I won’t hold my breath though.

Who is now paying for the laziness of design? Anyone who enjoyed and spent the last year working on support builds.

Support builds didn’t just not eat in this patch, they were told to dig a hole and lay down in it for the sins of comet players.

And shit bhatair’s was more than 1000%

Let’s say 6 players have 10 rage each, old bhatair’s thats 60% extra cold to every single player in party.

New bhatair’s it’s 5% cold to every player in party.

60% extra cold vs 5% extra cold.

Not seeing the problem? You think it was that broken when CHYULA CAN GIVE OVER 100% EXTRA CHAOS?

The problem is I know how these threads all connect, no one else seems to at all.

And the duration of bhatair’s also got nerfed by 25%. So like bhatair’s got nerfed by over 1200% but pay no attention to that.

Find me a streamer who even talked about bhatair’s in the last year.

If you think it was necessary for balance to nerf allies scaling to the degree it was, is because you needed a solution incredibly quickly and you didn’t care about the actual ramifications of the solution.

Being lazy on the design side then lazy on the nerf side of the same designed items is an amazing strategy long term. I get they are trying to do a hundred things at once, but this is the type of sloppy decision that will create future issues.

Limiting the number of ways to engage with the game as a group isn’t wise but you’ll all realize that 4 weeks into the season when one composition is out farming the next best composition 2 maps to 1.

If the best group build can farm 2 maps to the next best group builds 1 map, are there even 2 group builds?

The answer is no. If you are 50% less efficient than them while trying to do group for resource gathering, you are doing yourself a huge disservice.

Now if you were perhaps only 10% less efficient, then you could argue it’s only 10% over the course of an entire season, 90 mirror vs 100 mirror split 6 ways.

Thats a manageable difference. 50 mirrors vs 100 mirrors is what clowns would do as a group.

None of this is rocket science.

Solo players will be out farmed by groups by virtue of groups can split into teams of 3 to clear different sections of map at once. Even if they removed rarity the way most of you want, which would actually make group farming even MORE CRACKED then it is not less cracked, even if they did remove rarity groups are going to out farm you.

Reasons
1. Groups can split into teams of 2 or 3 to clear content quicker.
2. Groups have more inventory space to pick items up in map to flip.
3. Groups have coordinated strategies for all the maps, and if they don’t they make them.
4. Groups have more possible utility
5. The rarity player in the group can do 0 dmg and they will still clear faster than solo.

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Lore#3772 wrote:

If you really want to make separation between poe1 and poe2 the best design room to do so is PvP.

Do you only care about the most unpopular playstyles? "Nobody" wants pvp in poe. The game is not ever gonna be balanced enough for that and the game is too fast. You need the speed of a game like Lost Ark from what i remember. Its not worth developing because it would be a dead feature.

But hey if you want support roles, maybe you should suggest they should bring holy trinity from wow. Healer/Tank/Dps . Have you played a healer support in MMOs? You should try that. I also played support the last season of Dota2, that's another example of how one can support.

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Have we even established the next closest nerf? Let’s stay on grips and 500% nerf and not mention bhatair’s 1000% nerf.

for 99% of players Bhatair's was nerfed by 50%, the damage buff was cut in half, its not that complicated. It's still straight up upgrade over Ice Bite II if you specced into rage or have minions.

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The nerf effects THOUSANDS of support compositions.

thousands of support compositions, between what, a few dozen people? There are actual games like i mentioned that have been designed with group support roles in mind. They dont have anything like the broken mechanics you desire though.

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Frozendare#3622 wrote:

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Lore#3772 wrote:

If you really want to make separation between poe1 and poe2 the best design room to do so is PvP.

Do you only care about the most unpopular playstyles? "Nobody" wants pvp in poe. The game is not ever gonna be balanced enough for that and the game is too fast. You need the speed of a game like Lost Ark from what i remember. Its not worth developing because it would be a dead feature.

But hey if you want support roles, maybe you should suggest they should bring holy trinity from wow. Healer/Tank/Dps . Have you played a healer support in MMOs? You should try that. I also played support the last season of Dota2, that's another example of how one can support.

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Have we even established the next closest nerf? Let’s stay on grips and 500% nerf and not mention bhatair’s 1000% nerf.

for 99% of players Bhatair's was nerfed by 50%, the damage buff was cut in half, its not that complicated. It's still straight up upgrade over Ice Bite II if you specced into rage or have minions.

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The nerf effects THOUSANDS of support compositions.

thousands of support compositions, between what, a few dozen people? There are actual games like i mentioned that have been designed with group support roles in mind. They dont have anything like the broken mechanics you desire though.

Ah yes, a few dozen people with the IQ to use the most nerfed items in the history of either game. Which streamer talked about this btw? Considering they were nerfed so hard prior to nerf the price points must have been in mirrors right? Def not exalted-single divs.

The fact so few people were using the strategy isn’t an indication of how diverse and useful it was. It’s an indication of average player intelligence. Unless a streamer explains it to the average player step by step on video none of them care.

But do go on, I love responding to trolls with facts. In the long run only one of us is right.

I was the one who knew these rings were cracked before any other player. And I’m not arguing from a place of self loss. I’m arguing from a place of loss of actual group diversity.

I challenge the developers to track the high end of group content players and track which ascendancies are used for support.

My prediction 1 rarity aura bot ritualist mandatory on either atk or spell based team. 1 support ritualist semi manditory on spell/atk based team. 1 semi Mandatory tactician hybrid support dps on atk based team.

If it turns out I’m wrong that means the content is tuned too easy or too hard. Cause meets effect.

Something has to be true and if one thing isn’t the other is. That’s how reality works. Everything is just a yes/no web of connected strings.

P.S. if the average player knew that ritualist team with 3 you and allies cdr % grips each would give better cdr value than legacy temporalis betting it would have seen play.

“That’s so unfair to get better cdr then temporalis tho”
We had to sacrifice 18 ring slots child. And counter act the loss of presence area on each ring. And get grips that had relevant other stats.

6 chest pieces sacrificed is a better deal than 18 ring slots sacrificed.

It’s not like any of these builds didn’t have natural hurdles to overcome and just instantly worked out the box. Using the rings and ingenuity could get you to have to compensate for -100%+ presence area. Btw did I mention grips don’t really scale damage that well at all? If you get lucky and got 18 crit chance crit damage % cooldown grips I guess yeah it’s possible but realistically they don’t scale damage as well as people think. Some of them can be okay.

I’d argue due to these changes the only relevant grips now are pure damage grips and spirit grips.

What were the only price relevant grips before this nerf? Oh spirit and pure damage grips, you don’t say…

Nothing says make the most diverse item in the game even more funneled into its preexisting most utilized cases like this nerf.

Hey you can still roll spirit % and spirit res % and +25 to spirit and +25 to spirit on a grip, seems fair and balanced.

Ritualist before ingenuity and 25% buff to rings can get

36% spirt 36% spirit res 93 spirit 93 spirit. Not cracked at all.

I mean non ritualist can get 24% 24% 62 62 before ingenuity and they only need 1 ring cause of kalandra’s touch

Remind me real quick did minions get buffed?

Also how about grips with

40% crit chance
25% crit damage

Last 2 stats any semblance of

12% Extra damage gained
Area of effect of attacks 18% or spells 18%
Either projectile mod
I’m sure there’s others I’m forgetting.

I can still corrupt for more crit damage.

Seems fair and balanced.

On a legacy ingenuity that ritualist would be getting 279 flat spirit 60% spirit 60% spirit reservation?

60% spirit applies to 279 so 279 x .6 =167.4 167 + 279 =446 flat spirit 60% reservation? With the 60% spirit applying to other sources of your spirit as well?

On a legacy str 5% spirit 15 corrupt large jewel you could get 165-180 flat spirit and 55-60% str.

165 x .6 =99 165 + 99 =264 264 + 446 =710

now add 200 from scepter 200 x .6 =120 320 + 710 =1,030

Now add str % life % amulet with all attributes str and str implicit.

Now add legacy prism guardian 20 hp =1 max spirit. 4,000 life = 1,230 spirit

Oh wait, 100 flat spirit. 1330 spirit?

With 60% spirit reservation in ring stats that’s worth 2660+ spirit?

It isn’t that I can’t just make another cracked build. It’s that a lot of diversity died with allies nerf for the sake of minion builds probably being overpowered.

“But allies nerf is a nerf to minions?” It sure isn’t if you are a solo player.

Oooo a new point of my argument unlocked.

There is now no incentive to ever have two minions players in same party. Lul.

Not only will the minions be a determent to your fps, but you literally are less efficient for just teaming up. Neato.

Ooo Neato another new point unlocked:

There is never going to be positive EV on having a support and a minion build in the same party 😮‍💨

I’m sure this decision wasn’t made in haste and didn’t take into account all aspects of what will unfold.

Cool you made it to pinnacle end game content wanna team up bro? Na you a minion build and I’m a minion build, the only way this team up makes sense is if minions are so broken the loss of scaling doesn’t
matter.

At this point I’ve given The Ted Talk on why this was a bad decision. I’m done.

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I love responding to trolls with facts. In the long run only one of us is right

Well i think youre basically strawmaning and are a little out of touch with the rest of community.

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Lore#3772 wrote:

prior to nerf the price points must have been in mirrors right? Def not exalted-single divs.

The lineage gem wasnt particularly rare in the first place compared to some like the ones that drop from ubers.
The price on the market mostly reflects the value it has to solo players, the majority of players who are playing the game that are designed for them. The game is not designed around group play at all, that's why your whole meta is taking advantage of mechanics in unintended ways.

The streamers are also solo players and their audience are solo players. Broken group play strategies are not relevant.

If the devs accounted for industrialized group farming strats they should make all buffs like that unique, they shouldnt stack at all. That would be much more balanced. They certainly dont stack for a solo player, and you can only use one lineage support gem each for a reason.

A game balanced for such group play like yours would never look the way it did. None of what you were stacking would have been stacking in the first place if you were in consideration.

GGG should continue to make changes to kill or discourage as much "degenerate gameplay" as possible. item rarity on gear needs to go ofcourse.
How are you arguing in favour of "build diversity" when your whole complaint is that a group cant benefit from everyone having the same unique item and same unique support gem with the exact same buff? They should nerf everything that encourages this behaviour.


Let me give you an example of how a game is balanced around group play.
In WoW there is a powerful raid-buff called Heroism/Bloodlust. It's a 30% haste buff to the whole raid for 40 seconds.

So what should a group do? Invite many heroism providers and stack haste to 300% and zerg the bosses? Nope, not possible, they dont stack.
Okay then maybe you get enough haste classes so you can have the buff the entire fight? Nope, you can only get the buff once every 10 minutes.

This is good and balanced because otherwise you'd have to stack certain classes and favour raid spot for them, instead you just need 1 of that class. A requirement for an effective raid is much lower and the game is much more balanced. The use of the buff is also more tactical, you need to decide when you need the dps boost the most.

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the content is tuned too easy

The content is tuned too easy. Id argue that game needs to be able to provide engaging gameplay/combat even if you have a good build in the endgame.

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Frozendare#3622 wrote:

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I love responding to trolls with facts. In the long run only one of us is right

Well i think youre basically strawmaning and are a little out of touch with the rest of community.

"

Lore#3772 wrote:

prior to nerf the price points must have been in mirrors right? Def not exalted-single divs.

The lineage gem wasnt particularly rare in the first place compared to some like the ones that drop from ubers.
The price on the market mostly reflects to the value it has to solo players, the people who are playing the game that are designed for them. The game is not designed around group play at all, that's why your whole meta is taking advantage of mechanics in unintended ways.

The streamers are also solo players and their audience are solo players. Broken group play strategies are not relevant.

If the devs accounted for industrialized group farming strats they should make all buffs like that unique, they shouldnt stack at all. That would be much more balanced. They certainly dont stack for a solo player, and you can only use one lineage support gem each for a reason.

A game balanced for such group play like yours would never look the way it did. None of what you were stacking would have been stacking in the first place if you were in consideration.

GGG should continue to make changes to kill or discourage as much "degenerate gameplay" as possible. item rarity on gear needs to go ofcourse.


Let me give you an example of how a game is balanced around group play.
In WoW there is a powerful raid-buff called Heroism/Bloodlust. It's a 30% haste buff to the whole raid for 40 seconds.

So what should a group do? Invite many heroism providers and stack haste to 300% and zerg the bosses? Nope, not possible, they dont stack.
Okay then maybe you get enough haste classes so you can have the buff the entire fight? Nope, you can only get the buff once every 10 minutes.

This is good and balanced because otherwise you'd have to stack certain classes and favour raid spot for them, instead you just need 1 of that class. A requirement for an effective raid is much lower and the game is much more balanced. The use of the buff is also more tactical, you need to decide when you need the dps boost the most.

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the content is tuned too easy

The content is tuned too easy. Id argue that game needs to be able to provide engaging gameplay/combat even if you have a good build in the endgame.

You responded to the sentences of the argument that were literally least important and voided them of context as well. That’s cute, you went out of your way to do that for me :,) means I’m making a lot of valid points.

But you’ll see eventually there is only one path in the yes no spider web. And if you know the way you know the yes and the no that pop up from any made decision or decision to be made.

You may not be privy to some of the information, but using this wild tool called common sense and cause and effect you can rationalize every reason except chaos.

That’s how reality works for a human my boy. Try it out sometime.

And if you insist In responding further please respond to the post before this one and the actual points made therein. Without voiding them of context, because you feel like you got a dub if you do. That seems way more strawman than I am.

You go play end game of .5 with 3 minion builds and a support and a support rarity let me know how it goes.

There will be people clearing maps at 50-100x your pace have fun

There are gonna be poor souls who don’t realize this and actually get to end game
And can’t figure out why they can’t slap content as a team anymore. It’s gonna be hilarious. And if they can slap content as a team it literally means minions are over powered. If minions themselves can compensate for the loss of allies scaling and party added difficulty, they are over powered.

That’s called an objective fact

Finding the path to objective facts is called rationalization.

You don’t need to be some prophet to use your brain man.

Everything is a 0 or a 1. Everything is a Yes or a No.

The important part is the questions you rationalize to get the answer.

Then when you have a lot of data you input it together to find correlations.

That’s why the only thing it doesn’t work on is chaos.

I’m legit out here long form defining common sense, it’s that bad people don’t understand how it works anymore.

I wish more people would try to answer the riddle in my tag. But alas that takes critical thinking skills on something that is considered an uncomfortable topic. The perfect place for a simple riddle to shine.

But I’m apparently low IQ individual idk man listen to the mob. Group think is seldom the answer, example; how many groups knew about kulemak builds prior to me yapping about the scaling? Ah yes, the big brains were making group builds using hundreds of locks and tacticians. When better tech existed for exalted orbs.

Group think beyond 2 main people always devolves into too many chefs in the kitchen prove me wrong.

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Lore#3772 wrote:

You responded to the sentences of the argument that were literally least important and voided them of context as well. That’s cute, you went out of your way to do that for me :,) means I’m making a lot of valid points.

You are confused and have it backwards. I have actually engaged with what you say and explained my perspective. On other hand you continue to make a strawman and youre not directly engaging with what I or other people have said.
The stuff i ignored are not relevant because youre just responding and arguing against some strawman and position nobody has argued.

So no, those points aren't "valid".

Try showing you actually understand the points I'm making and be free to disagree, but youre not even doing that.

While youre talking about IQs and spiderwebs or whatever, im making very clear positions.

And lastly, how can you be suggesting you care about "build diversity" when you are defending a meta of an entire group using the exact same items, with the exact same support gems providing exact same buffs?

True build diversity in your group play will come when each party member has to bring entirely different set of buffs and have different uniques and support gems. They should continue balancing until that happens.

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And can’t figure out why they can’t slap content as a team anymore. It’s gonna be hilarious. And if they can slap content as a team it literally means minions are over powered.

The game is balanced around solo play and barely anyone play like this, but have you considered that the problem is not the nerfs to unintended stacking interactions, but group scaling/balanced on the monster side? Your implication is that monster HP is scaling too high, so maybe they should look at that.

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I wish more people would try to answer the riddle in my tag

that's literally just a jujutsu kaisen reference.