The State of this season

Once again the discussion that originally had nothing to do with it (reread the first post - not a single word about poor racing class balance) quickly turned into "NO MY CLASS IS WORSE, VALVE BUFF PLZ". The glaring problems of this season that have been mentioned by Rithz are long forgotten.

There will never be balance in PoE. Look at the developers that have stated that they want the balance to be like in MTG, with changing meta game. Look at what was popular and considered cookie-cutter and even imbalanced in normal game since closed beta: LA, Dual Spork, 2h ST, Summoners, LL ST, RF. Every couple of months a different skill/build starts to dominate. If the skill is nerfed, it usually is nerfed to the ground - spark, cleave. Look at the racing meta since CB: PA, cleave, ST, FB. Leap slam is the only exception, because it's a skill that has been relevant since the asdfgod showed us the way.

The problem with points brackets can be fixed by implementing individual class point brackets (imagine the hell the casual players are going to go through, they get lost with point system as is; also Neon would have to copypaste a giant wall of text each time :-D). Class balance in non-vanilla races can be fixed by better gem selection for each class. Why haven't this been implemented yet? Because GGG:

- Never thought about these problems
- Listed racing as a low priority part of the game
- Doesn't have enough manpower to implement everything we post here

Choose the answer that fits you best.

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cwu wrote:

There will never be balance in PoE. Look at the developers that have stated that they want the balance to be like in MTG, with changing meta game.

Which is nothing but a stupid copout on GGG's part, a much better way of changing up the metagame would be to have different options available for all classes that get buffed/nerfed periodically but never to the extent that any of them are overpowered.

However, what isn't part of that "metagame"-changing process (or ideally shouldn't be) is that some classes just end up being worse than others.

I would be totally fine if GGG balancing was something like this (class-specific):

Season 9: Cleave ranger the best way to hit max bracket
Season 10: Cleave nerfed, bow ranger buffed, bow ranger now the best way to hit max bracket
Season 11: Bow ranger nerfed, spectral throw the best way for ranger to hit max bracket.
Season 12: Spectral Throw nerfed, some other skill buffed

and so on...


But in reality, this is what we got the last 3 seasons:

Season 6: Spectral Throw, no metagame change at all
Season 7: Spectral Throw, no metagame change at all
Season 8: Spectral Throw (nerfed a little but still best), no metagame change at all

Nothing about changing the metagame even remotely implies that some classes have to be worse than others, you can easily change the metagame and not shift the balance one bit.

The real problem is that GGG often times swing the nerfhammer without putting much thought into it and then use this idea of "changing the metagame" to justify their own incompetence.

But as I've demonstrated above, nothing about "changing the metagame" even remotely implies that we have to end up with an imbalanced game. That's just nonsensical.

And by the way, you are conflating two different things "endgame skill gem balance" and class balance in races. Of course it's much harder to balance endgame skills and it arguably doesn't matter for shit there because nobody is competing for actual points in the endgame.

But race class balance is a totally different ballgame. I agree with you to the extent that, if nothing else they should have class-specific ladders and the level brackets should be adjusted for all classes. However, that to me is side-stepping the problem, as the game would be much more fun if people could actually choose what class/skills to race with and not be pidgeon-holed into using one specific skill that GGG currently have a hard-on for.

Slix please, i'm really sorry that you like bow ranger, but it's time to let it go. Noone is going to rebalance skills every racing season. The devs balance the skills and content based on normal game.

I was not conflating anything, i just wanted to show that we had several skills that each dominated the game at a specific period of time = changing meta (what GGG want)

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cwu wrote:

Slix please, i'm really sorry that you like bow ranger, but it's time to let it go. Noone is going to rebalance skills every racing season. The devs balance the skills and content based on normal game.

And why does bow ranger have to be worse than most other specs in the normal game until you have a windripper? What's the rationale behind this?

I'm suspecting that GGG aren't actually balancing anything for the normal game either, they are just making random changes every now and then and if the results are good redditards praise them for it, but if the results aren't so good (DC swords, cleave,reave etc..) we have no reason to complain because "balance don't matter".

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cwu wrote:

I was not conflating anything, i just wanted to show that we had several skills that each dominated the game at a specific period of time = changing meta (what GGG want)

Right and what I'm saying is they could easily do this for all classes and change up their dominant skills periodically, they don't have to limit themselves to just 1-3 classes.

I love using bows, I use bows in pretty much any game I play and I see absolutely no reason why bows have to be so much worse than everything else. I don't care if GGG's stance is "bows have to always be shit because METAGAME", that's not a good enough reason.

I mean think about it this way, post-"poison arrow", ranger was cleave -> ST -> cleave/ST

at what point am I justified in saying "hey you know what, some of us would really enjoy something else... you know maybe using bows would be kind of fun, given that ranger is the supposed bow class... I don't know... maybe I'm just being silly, but it seems reasonable."

edit: I think you are giving GGG way too much credit, I mean just think back to the "blood magic keystone"-change and Chris' claim that "it is now stronger than ever", which turned out to be complete nonsense, because outside of some very niche builds like flame totem NOBODY is even considering ever using that keystone let alone actually using it.

And that's what I mean by GGG being incompetent (in terms of balancing the game, they are quite competent in other areas I have to admit), their changes aren't thought through at all, they are random. They change the way auras work, make the BM keystone useless, then go on to claim that it's "now better than ever" and when people point out that it isn't they add an extra node that makes absolutely no difference. That's facepalm material right there.

This thread is about the state of this season and its problems - questionable signature, questionable schedule, concerns about cheating. Yet you're posting walls of text about your vision on ranger racing balance and bashing GGG for their decisions.

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cwu wrote:

Slix please, i'm really sorry that you like bow ranger, but it's time to let it go.

don't go full hilbert slix

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cwu wrote:

This thread is about the state of this season and its problems - questionable signature, questionable schedule, concerns about cheating. Yet you're posting walls of text about your vision on ranger racing balance and bashing GGG for their decisions.

I was responding to Rithz's complaint that "shadows are underpowered" by stating that "ranger is in pretty much the exact same boat."

If you really want to claim that I was derailing the thread doing that, then alright, I don't care. I'm not into playing semantic-games anyway.

And who died and made you king of the land to decide what is a relevant issue and what isn't anyway?

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SlixSC wrote:

And who died and made you king of the land to decide what is a relevant issue and what isn't anyway?

The person that puts demis in my statsh while you sit here and derail 50% of the threads with your bow ranger agenda.

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cwu wrote:

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SlixSC wrote:

And who died and made you king of the land to decide what is a relevant issue and what isn't anyway?

The person that puts demis in my statsh while you sit here and derail 50% of the threads with your bow ranger agenda.

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cwu wrote:

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SlixSC wrote:

And who died and made you king of the land to decide what is a relevant issue and what isn't anyway?

The person that puts demis in my statsh while you sit here and derail 50% of the threads with your bow ranger agenda.

I wasn't derailing the thread. People were complaining about balance, so I added to that.
And it's rich of you to think that I'm just sitting here complaining.

You could have given me this bullshit about not being good enough at the game maybe 2 seasons ago, but I'm one of 3 rangers who ever managed to get to 25 in Vanilla Descent and was holding DC ranger records until people started going cleave. And truth be told it's very possible that I'll beat your record soon, you weren't that far off back when I still went bow and cleave is substantially faster.