1.1.0 Patch Notes - Sacrifice of the Vaal

Great patch notes GGG. Everyone is complaining for justifiable nerfs and are completely looking past all the great changes.

Patches like this give me confidence that GGG will continue to regulate the game, to prevent any build from being too OP. I cannot complain about any particular change, as it all seems justified.

I'm very excited about the skill tree!

All I can see on this "big" expansion on PoE is:

Nerfed this;
Nerfed that;
Nerfed those;
Nerfed yet? oh yeah, so nerf that too;
Nerfed these too...;
Nerf, i love those;
Nerf the hell out of the game =);
Nerf
Nerf
Nerf ;)...

I was absolutely afraid of the patch notes when they announced the SotV, so here i am confirming my fear, it's sad to see that they only want to see people struggling to be alive on the game. We want a challenging game, but when we can surpass the challenge you guys "update" to a point that we can't even deal with the challenge that we've already surpassed. New challenges are welcome, but remove our efforts like this is just a bullshit.

The game is still the same. Same boring maps but more difficult as hell, same items, but yeah, nerfed. Oh ! New vaal items !? Who cares, they'll get nerfed on some another future expansion.

But hey, we got a new area with a new boss ! 1 Area. 3 Acts + 1 new area ? Not even an new whole act ? But i don't really care for it, i was hoping to see things that would make the old players feel safe on they current builds and gears, and make the new players to feel determinated to play the game, but when i presented my friend this game he said "this shit must be raging as hell...", i mean, who cares for my friend right ? but how many people though like him ?

This new expansion made everyone rebuilt their characters from scratch, on passive tree, on gear, and on spirit, considering the efforts of everyone.

"

F1sherKing wrote:

Man all this childish whining. This game is awesome, content wise. It's super fun to play,
especially in hardcore mode. To be able to play this content you have a passive tree and
items to help you. Half the fun is to figure out how to use the tree and the items to do
this.

GGG could change anything they wanted and nerf any node/gem/unique they wanted and I would
still feel like a child the night before christmas while waiting for the new release.

Can't wait until tomorrow to play, keep up the good work.

Couldnt say it better myself!

Stop whining, and if the game is too hard for you, or u cant handle changes and/or nerfs, leave and go play D3 instead :=)

"

databane wrote:

Patches like this give me confidence that GGG will continue to regulate the game, to prevent any build from being too OP. I cannot complain about any particular change, as it all seems justified.

I'm very excited about the skill tree!

Yes let's make sure all builds have the same degree of power. Path of Communism!

Im surprised there was no Witch area rework.

"

SlixSC wrote:

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p0t wrote:

They nerf anything that becomes too widely used, causing some people to adapt and others to qq. It keeps the game fresh and opens up build diversity instead of stale repetitive builds. Who builds HP and doesnt get the scion life wheel? It forces you there by being too good to ignore which alienates other specs or parts of the tree. God forbid the build you used last 4 month isnt as viable now and you have to think.

Ok, sir, then I challenge you to read my post and explain to me exactly how the ST nerf accomplishes anything. It's just absolutely pointless. You will have to accept the fact that GGG sometimes don't balance their game correctly, as is evidenced by the cleave nerf 4 months ago, which made the gem unusable for racing.

"

The ST nerf was clearly targeting race balance. Except that GGG have completely missed the point.

Last season was dominated by Spectral Throw and Leap Slam. Both using 2-handers.

Now they "slightly" nerfed Spectral Throw and left Leap Slam unchanged, but this accomplishes exactly nothing.

Spectral Throw classes will still be going Spectral Throw, because there are no other viable alternatives. And Leap Slam is now the absolute go-to skill for all classes that can use it in races (Scion, Marauder and Duelist).

There is no skill diversity, everyone uses the same 2 skills and why? Because GGG don't know how to balance skills for racing.

The right thing to do would have been a nerf to Spectral Throw and Leap Slam (ideally via nerfing the base damage of 2 handers that can drop in normal) and buffing other skills for classes at a lower level.

Nerf ST and LS (by nerfing base damage of 2 handers in normal), buff cleave, buff roa (early game), buff other skills, so that people have options that can actually compete with Spectral Throw and Leap Slam.

As is, this change accomplishes exactly bupkis, because people are still pidgeonholed into using the same 2 skills, which are leap slam and spectral throw, because everything else is just infinitely worse for speed-leveling.

I don't really care about any of the nerfs, but given that this nerf specifically so clearly targets early leveling efficiency and race balance I will just say that their approach is about the worst I could possibly imagine.

It really is just a bandaid fix, but everyone who is somewhat invested in racing or speed-leveling can easily tell that this change accomplishes exactly nothing.

Sometimes, GGG just makes mistakes, they aren't perfect and some of their balance decisions have a serious impact on especially race balance. I couldn't care less about endgame balance, but to state, that there is always a point in what they are doing is complete and utter nonsense.

It's harder to identify problems in endgame focused patches, because there is alot of diversity, but when you look at race and early leveling balance, the problems are so much more obvious and people simply can't hide behind bullshit arguments to rationalize nonsensical patches.

I've done a fair bit of racing and ST was far too good in a race for other reasons you failed to mention, mainly the utility aspect. ST is high range and high aoe, can kite with it, effective from lv1, has a low mana cost, effective with any 2H you find, but mostly its safe. Its safe because you never have to get close to mobs, its safe because you dont run out of mana in the middle of a pack, its safe because you dont have to touch a dangerous mob to kill it. You can't mule leap slam in 1 min for any char. Its not that long after somebody finally gets slam that ST gets LMP and aoes the entire scren. I prefer leap slam personally and it offers mobility utility, but in a 12 min burst its not even viable, same with endless ledge.

Look at some of the one weeks, how easy is it to gear a new ST char and get to maps compared to a Leap Slammer? Throw is too good in PvE also, with a few chaos of unique 2h you can throw easily into merci without even specing dmg.

Scion(and ST)was a little too good, because as a new hyrbid class it needed something to shine, and now its being adjusted. Theres no question that racing doesnt favor every build and skill and its impossible to have that. Its not like the teams that win the party races are going 6 spec throwers or 6 leap slammers either. Also you hardly spec defense in a race so the 2h which obviously has to have more dmg than a 1h and shield will be optimal in shorter races. Since CB in races and pve the strong builds specs have rotated so often, its not like 2h phys racing is here for ever, there will be shifts. The best racers will win with suboptimal character choices and specs, its about poking the majority or racers and making them rethink and try new stuff instead of defaulting to ST for another 4 months just like Spec throw did to cleave, and im all for that.

"

Pizzarugi wrote:

Because I don't spend too much time on the forum, is it possible for you to elaborate on how this is good for whiners? From a surface viewpoint, I only see this change as making rare things rarer.

It's genuine curiosity, really. Being a poor player whose never seen an exalt drop since closed beta, I actually see this change as hurting me. Unless there's a bigger change that I'm not grasping, like removing 'increased quantity' mods/gems will balance out standard league's economy because there will be less orbs coming into the game.

Heya , seen some other guys answering you but ill give it a go , many people wanted an even playing field .
That means that they didn't want to be forced into having an mfchar and therefore wanted quantity removed , so they could play without mf and don't feel gimped.
Mostly it felt like most things do , people joining a bandwagon without thinking but w/e that is not what we are discussing here.
I have been playing since closed beta aswell , and i have probably had 10 ex+ drop for me , i probably play a whole lot more then you though.
i would recommend for you to gather currency to do
1: use chaos recipe frequently
2: alch amulets and rings when you get decent enough ilvl on them
3: and never throw away a niche item

and put away a couple of hours of pure mfing piety or something , to gather a decent amount of currency.

"

p0t wrote:

They nerf anything that becomes too widely used, causing some people to adapt and others to qq. It keeps the game fresh and opens up build diversity instead of stale repetitive builds. Who builds HP and doesnt get the scion life wheel? It forces you there by being too good to ignore which alienates other specs or parts of the tree. God forbid the build you used last 4 month isnt as viable now and you have to think.

That sounds nice. BUT

They nerf the life wheel, they nerf Bor, they nerfed kaoms

Who is the winner of this. The RMT sites or player who have this items.

If i have a legacy kaom wtf interest me the life nodes nerf

If i have a legacy bringer. I still have tons of more life than the players without it.

I like the idea of legacy items.

BUT if they have a resonable strategie, they bring NEW items with more life or with teh same life as the legacy AND let the monster make more damage.

then i dont need to nerf items AND i dont discriminate new players.

I have no problem with the nerfs at all because i dont use any of this items.

But i see the problem with that. If you have a kaoms or a bor you can reach the laddy much faster then ervery other new player exept RMT players.
So the design phylosophi chris wrote in his first idea for this game is dead.

With money you can BUY ADVANTAGE in this game.

With the other solution you can have a kaoms for sentimental reasons but you have no advantage of it.
Sorr chris the way your company go is a verry good way for players who give you money in the beginning of game (that i can understand)
but for new players its a wrong or bad way.

thats pity

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Qarl wrote:

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Fun_Hat wrote:

But why did you have to nerf Vaal Pact? :(

I think you know.

There seems to be a couple results from the VP change. In the scheme of making it have a downside but equalizing life vs ES builds, the change is A+. However, due to the combination of CwDT+ImmCall+IncDur and physical having an ability to get much, much higher leech totals than elemental and spell sources of damage, it seems like this is a huge nerf to elemental and spell damage. At 75% resist against 18% reflect you're only leeching about 0.5% of your damage with elemental sources, and double reflect will now kill you.

It's obviously worse for melee since they don't have an Ondar's Guile that elemental projectiles could use to negate a big chunk of that (although does anyone do elemental melee now? Not sure).

I'd love to hear a bit at some point about why physical gets such preferential treatment for leeching. And in the meantime, I'd like an immortal call that blocks elemental damage. :)