



Progression



Progression pre maps is not as streamline as it was in CB making the gap between normal content and maps pretty brutal to get through.



Problem I’m not sure what happened but in CB I remember facing vaal around mid-50s, doing a few levels in fellshrine then heading off to maps. Vaal was 58 in CB and maps started at 60. In a race, being HC and all, I’d probably grind to 64-66 in fellshrine before facing vaal then jump right into maps. I never enjoyed this lull in action because it felt like grinding so I’m able to grind.



It’s even worse in OB for a few reasons. While Peity is lvl 64 and maps start at 66, there’s no go areas to grind like fellshrine or ledge from previous acts. The best place is city of sarn but it’s a lower level and much smaller than other maps in most of the other acts. While I know places like docks, catacombs and even lunaris have become popular grinding areas they aren’t very good. The reason being they don’t have a clear path to follow and no backdoor allowing you to run them on repeat easily. Lunaris and catacomb are both mazes so you can get lost having to backtrack, meaning that’s time you aren’t gaining experience and docks is a similar mess. All three require you to TP out and then reset by going to the WP. There’s just too much downtime.





Solution I know people have been citing act 3 ex as the solution but that’s new content that’s probably a while out. Sorry but the “just wait” solution doesn’t mean that when the waiting is done it’s fixed.



Some easy ideas

- Link Catacombs and Church from act 2. Have a quest where you have to unlock it from act 2 and it gives the respec points. Once opened from the back you can access it from marketplace or even vice versa. They are the same tileset but catacombs is bigger, not 2 floors and doesn’t have a boss.



- Raise the lvl of lunaris 2 to match lvl 3 then place the WP right near the entrance to lvl 3. This way you can WP in to a familiar spot and progress to the exit to lvl 1, then reset the instance. It’s not an easy grind but can be done.



- Make one of the middle areas (battlefront, marketplace, warehouses, slums) a straight shot similar to old fields, crossroads, fellshrine, ledge or whatever. Have a road you can follow, even if it’s not straight just something you can mindlessly grind rather than every single area being a maze. Progression pre maps is not as streamline as it was in CB making the gap between normal content and maps pretty brutal to get through.





Mana



At the highest levels mana is a pain in the ass. I understand it being a problem early and even mid game but at lvl 80 why is the only option mana leech?



Problem

I’ve been on this for months, mana is out of control. Most people just accept things the way they are, get clarity with mana leech, BM with a ton of life/life regen or EB. These are the extreme options, but late game, with a 6l or mana hungry skill (explosive arrow, EK, high APS FP) it’s the only options. There’s no balance here.



The idea that clarity is REQUIRED for a witch is mind bogglingly to me. Witches have all that mana right in their opening area, they should have no issues with mana, similar to how maras don’t required vitality but has anyone seen a mana user (regardless of class) not using clarity?



Lately people have been stacking auras because of a few reasons which I’ll discuss later so you guys jacked up their mana cost. No one flinched and was able to stack them all anyways, the reason is because everyone is already stacking a ton of mana just to use their skills.





Solution



Mana/Mana regen from tree + gear, clarity + gear, clarity + tree should all be just as effective as mana leech, BM or EB.



- You guys don’t want people easily stacking auras, ok, bump regen up ALOT. Add flat regen to the tree and add more % mana regen nodes in easier to access areas. Shadow has no option but to go out of their way for mana. Maybe a notable that gives 5-10 mana regen with 40% regen. Clarity gives I think 20 flat regen, even with inner force people still need 2-3k mana pool or mana leech. I know 10 mana regen and 40% regen seems high but when you consider what I just said, you’ll still need help.



- Make the amount of regen given from max mana higher. If you got more regen from mana you wouldn’t need to get into the 2-3k range, with all mana regen gear to support your skills. The other problem with this is when you have such a large mana pool running flat auras becomes a joke so you use them all.



- Bump mana nodes from 8% to 10% then throw these around the tree like crazy. Shadow and ranger are in desperate need of mana. At the highest levels mana is a pain in the ass. I understand it being a problem early and even mid game but at lvl 80 why is the only option mana leech?





Melee



Melee sucks balls right now for many reasons.



Problems



- Doesn’t do the same effective damage. Even if you are able to get 20-30k dps on your AOE as melee, you still need to close the gap, attack limited ranged, readjust until everything is dead then repeat for next pack. A ranged character with 5k DPS aims to the right and kills the majority of things before melee can close the gap.



- All melee builds are very similar. They are depressingly similar. First thing is you need 20-30 life passives, most important thing so you have to plan the quickest routes to each life circle you are going to get. Then figure out what you can get along those paths that help your build out. Duelist means you are heading to mara or north. Mara heads to templar start and down to duelist. Templar heads to mara start and between witch/shadow for that fitness. (I’ve never made a ranger). These builds all end up in the same spots with small variation.



- Doesn’t end there, skills are the same too. Cyclone is a step in the right direction but what is a physical melee user linking to it, lets just guess randomly and say added melee damage, added fire damage, faster attacks then for the 5th/6th link they can select from life leech, concentrated effect, increased aoe or maybe a fun elemental damage gem like quality added lighting/cold. Sounds familiar right? That’s because those are the same gems you will use with GS, sweep and cleave, all the melee aoes. Oh, take conc effect/IAOE out and those are the supports you’ll use for almost every single melee skill, single target or AOE.



These new skills are fun and all but look at the options projectile users have. They have skills that are AOEs alone like ice shot, PA, LA, freezing pulse, fireball. Then they add LMP/GMP making a single target into an aoe or their aoe into an even larger one. Then they add fork/chain to make it hit even more targets. There’s no interesting melee gems like this, ones that make the skills work differently/better.



- Melee has no advantage over ranged (but the opposite isn’t true). A range character has the safety of being away from combat and killing things. It also has the advantage of being able to be build with melee EHP. Leech only working through physical damage is kinda a gap here but damage being what it is at this point everyone has a life leech gem on their main (or don’t care about staying alive).



Solutions

Give melee certain advantages and add much more diversity



- Add more gap closing skills, ones where you have control and they move quick. Whirling blades is awesome for most 1h/DW builds. Leap slam is good too. Flicker strike is disorientating and lightning warp isn’t good for this. 1-2 more gap closing abilities could do wonders for general gameplay, PVP or PVE.

- I’ll talk about keystones later, but more build defining keystones. I’ll also talk about life later but if that’s the route we are going then let’s not be half assed about it. Put better life nodes in more places. If someone is investing 20-30 nodes in life then make it so they can travel any direction and get them. I don’t like having so much life but a node out of the way would be more appealing if I knew I can get the same life going that direction than if I go away from it.



- Cleave, sweep, GS and lightning strike should be SUPPORT skills. I know this is a little strange but have them work off shit like heavy strike or dual strike. Limit what they can be used with and how they function and everything. Ice shot for example has no added damage effectiveness but add LMP to it and it then has 70% of it’s effectiveness. Do the same thing with heavy strike and infernal blow. Lower their damage effectiveness (possibly to just 100%) then when you add cleave to say dual strike, it takes it down to 70%. This gives options to builds. Say I want an infernal blow GSer. I link the two, it will do less damage than single target but I can stack fire damage and have a very effective AOE that’s truly different from a GS build or an infernal blow build. Also when adding these new skills I can have 4-5 options on how to make them different rather than having a different skill, with the same supports and almost the exact same build.



- Give melee a EHP that’s strictly for them. This can be done a few different ways. Either having melee damage + leech (just leech, regardless if physical or elemental, only thing that matters is it’s from melee damage). Melee damage + life, unless the life is ridiculous, no ranged character will feel the need to get a melee/life node when there are life nodes elsewhere. DR when in melee range. Someone had a good suggestion a while back (sorry for not giving you credit who ever you are) which was a keystone which gives DR but lowers ranged damage. It could work similar to point blank but rather than scaling damage up or down it scales DR. Then maybe another keystone that gives flat evasion when using melee weapons. There’s plenty of options here it just takes testing and balancing to make them backbones of melee. I don’t think they should be free keystones but I do think we need something.

Melee sucks balls right now for many reasons.





EHP



EHP is a mess. Only things you can rely on are life and ES, armor and evasion are just nice extras.



Problem



Right now life rules all for a bunch of reasons which we all know. ES is a close second but because of a lack of control (stuns/ailments/lack of flasks) and high gear requirements it’s not as popular.



Armor/evasion

Right now these two things are ass backwards. Armor users don’t have to worry about little hits because armor eat little hits. Evasion users can’t eat these little hits but get SOME forgiveness on hard hits. Both aren’t awesome against hard hitters but at least armor users can eat little hits.



ES

We are what, 2-3 patches away from being able to turn it completely into life now? A few months ago ES was completely different from life and the advantage to taking it was having a very large EHP pool being able to absorb all hits. Now the pool has been scaled down but now there’s ES regen, leech and you can even have ES take chaos damage. The only difference now are stuns/ailments are still based on life and flasks don’t recover ES. That’s the drawback now, restricting CI builds to two uniques? Amazingly there’s been 3 threads this week of people complaining about even that. I guess people won’t be happy until ES is the same thing as life.



Life

Because it works better than the previous 3 options people will try to stack it to the high heavens. Thus limiting build diversity because every build using life needs so much of it. Even builds with 5-6k life get stuck in bad situations and die so everyone fights over kaoms, a very restrictive unique, in hopes of having 10k life. I’m seeing former cookie cutter builds, like GS mara, with the same health pool of righteous fire builds.



Solution



Armor/Evasion

I’ve already discussed this and people brushed it off. I have no problem repeating myself. Flatten the armor curve out so less armor is much more effective. Make evasion users the life tanks. Armor users should have large DR against harder hits so they don’t require so much life to deal with them. A 5k incoming hit will blow through almost anyone’s armor requiring them to eat the full damage so they need to be life tanks. Evasion users eat most hits all the time but don’t have access to the same life armor classes do. If you flatten that armor curve out armor users can take a Brutus/Vaal GS and survive without having 6k life to eat the whole shot, their armor would actually take some of the damage off. Evasion users don’t have that luxury, ever. So you give them access to all those great life nodes allowing them to stack it like an armor user does now. Basically move mara’s opening to ranger. Make mara’s EHP work mostly through DR and rangers work through life. Mara users will not enjoy this but down the road I think both will be happy (ranger/evasion users especially).



ES

I’ve been scratching my head about this one for days now. It needs to function differently than life with drawback and positives. Having keystones that just make it into life kinda sucks. How about Zealots Oath has mana regen apply to ES as well as mana (with the mana changes I suggested above) and Ghost Reaver only works on life leeched from elemental damage? Two things that are pretty connected to that side of the tree and are unique from life. Just add 1-2 life leech from any source nodes somewhere in the templar or shadow tree.



If ES has to function similar to life then at least make the same mechanics function differently. Make them something unique to that area of the tree rather than making everything so vanilla.



Life

This one is tricky because if you nerf it without buffing the others people will die constantly as it’s the only thing that works all the time. If you make armor better or reduce incoming damage you can nerf life but at this time the only thing you can do it add more, any nerfs will hurt the majority of builds. EHP is a mess. Only things you can rely on are life and ES, armor and evasion are just nice extras.



Keystones



There isn’t the give and take with keystones anymore. How the game has gone they are just required or the builds taking them don’t suffer any drawback.



Problem



I don’t think all the keystones are bad but some it’s just a big node that says “if you are close you are coming here to get this no matter what you want to do.”



Resolute Tech - Removing crit is a drawback to templar but not really to mara. In an area with hardly any accuracy/dex and no crit, removing crit for always hit is a no brainer.



Blood magic - Someone stacking life and life regen to survive with little access to mana, why wouldn’t you take this unless you wanted % auras?



Unwavering Stance/Iron Reflexes combo - This is just dumb. US has a great drawback if all you have is easy access to evasion. When combined with IR, it means free armor from grace and cannot be stunned. There’s a reason maras always head down there.





Solution

RT has a few. Either move it to shadow/ranger area or put a harder drawback to it. If you move it to shadow/ranger it’s taking a large portion of the appeal of those classes away, crit, for something that can be a pain late game, accuracy. That’s an actual tough choice. The other option is taking away something mara’s actually use, like leech, stun, kb, reducing physical damage or even reducing/removing fire damage.



Blood magic, the gem and uniques all make it so skills cost more, quick fix, do the same to the keystone. If you want to have a difference between the keystone and uniques/gem then make it less. Rather than skills costing 200%, do 150%. Or make it so when you use blood magic you just can’t use auras period, including flat mana cost ones.



Unwavering stance, this isn’t my idea, it’s malice’s (or someone else) have it REMOVE evasion, not chance to evade/dodge. This removes the IR combo.



Iron Reflex - Just remove the damn thing. Take my ideas for making evasion life tanks, and evasion won’t be so bad then remove the bandaid that allows people to never really deal with evasion. Also if you remove the bandaid you’ll be forced to balance armor and evasion. There isn’t the give and take with keystones anymore. How the game has gone they are just required or the builds taking them don’t suffer any drawback.



Attributes



Problem

This is a quick one. All 3 attributes gives damage and EHP, not all are created equally. Int giving mana and ES% works fine. Neither is very good without something along side it, sweet. Dex gives flat accuracy and eva%. Not too bad, the accuracy could probably be higher but compared to INT, it’s good.



Now STR fucks this all up. Str gives flat life and %IPD. INT and DEX both give a mitigation, a way to have damage not touch your life, str gives all those %life nodes they have a base to build up. INT and DEX also give ways to do more damage while str just gives more damage.



Solution



Str should give armor% or even flat armor, and I can’t think of an equal to accuracy and mana in str tree so I guess IPD works without adding a new mechanic to the game.







Class Balancing



Problem

No offense, but many of these classes seem randomly thrown together and based off one build idea. Duelist can’t make anything besides DW that won’t be done as good, if not better as another class. Ranger is the same thing with bows. Mara with 2h weapons. Now don’t come out and say how you have this extremely good caster duelist, it can be done just as well, if not better as a different class.



Solution



When looking at the trees I think every class should be good at 2 general things, 2 things that aren’t restrictive very vague things. When I think balance I look at Templar’s tree. The opening has elemental damage, it starts as just straight elemental damage then breaks off into each element. The bottom half has some IPD stuff that leads into life that leads into the best WED node on the tree. Once pass his opening areas there’s a ton of options. You can easily do a physical damage staff/mace build, one with crit even or you can do it with elemental damage. Or how about a caster, or a necro, or a dual totem users. How about a build that stacks armor/es and regens ES? How about a build that uses elemental adaption because of the different elemental choices? A ele wander? There’s SO many options which all spawn from a general opening area, one that most people start on the top path and ignore the bottom opening. The reason there is they start general and when they get on solid footing they get more specific nodes. If they went 1h or 2h they can just grab it later on.



When looking at other classes they all seem to have something restrictive forcing them in one direction or another but generally they have one path that everyone goes down first. They need both of these routes to be general and offer things that will build off the more specific nodes later on. I personally thing each class should be good at 2 things (for the two routes) then the more specific stuff on the outside. Just a quick rundown for my preference, I don’t care if it’s different just to give an idea of what I see each class being best at, also taking into consideration my previous suggestions.



Templar - Elemental Damage and DR (or just elemental damage and WED)

Mara - DR and melee damage

Duelist - Physical Damage and IAS

Ranger - Projectile Damage and Life

Shadow - Crit and MS

Witch - Spell damage and Mana



Each ends up good at a damage source and a resource. I say melee damage with mara because they should be the melee class, it fits their persona but you can make a caster/bow build through the DR route. Duelist right now is fairly restricted to melee and DW. If you had general physical damage they could easily make an EK build (and any other physical damage spells to come along) also with not much access to elemental damage the IAS can help physical bows builds alot. Ranger can easily make a LS or caster build with just projectile damage but still is best with bows, life I mentioned above in the EHP section. Shadow’s EHP comes from quick kills and faster escapes. Witch is the most restricted with spell damage but you could easily turn that into projectile and area damage to make it more general.



Remove anything that restricts classes to one certain weapon or skill bracket so they all can do whatever build they want and have advantages and disadvantages over each other. Want a tank caster, mara. Want a fast physical bow build duelist. It opens up possibilities for builds across the board rather than restricting classes to being better for a select amount of builds. Just stop and think of how many builds you can do on a templar and how many you can do on a duelist. Templar you won’t waste many or any nodes doing almost any type of build while duelist you’ll be stuck at some point getting something you don’t want or need depending on the build.



Maps



I started playing because of build diversity and the idea of a dynamic end game. I’m use to doing baal/cow runs in D2 or in FF series (only games I really got obsessed with as I’ve played almost every one over 100-200 hours each) picking the highest lvl area and grinding until 99. I got excited with the idea that you can grind to 99 (100 here but w/o playing the game I assumed 99) in different areas with the same experience growth of sticking to one area.



Problem



It didn’t turn out to be that way. Instead we get stuck at the beginning of the map tier grinding forever knowing that there’s better experience higher up but it’s not much better experience, just higher. Then once you finally break through and get higher you find out you need to spend a tremendous amount of your wealth in hopes that you will progress again or sustain where you’ve reached. Even if you dump all your wealth in there’s still a good chance you’re dropping back down. You leave realizing the exp isn’t that great, you are poor so can’t afford to keep doing that and have very little to show for it all. You are left frustrated and feel like you are grinding just in hopes of getting back to where you were.



Solution



I’ve given a ton of feedback on maps, many people have agreed with me and yet there’s been no change. I think this is really a large area of my frustration with the current state of the game because this is where I want to spend the majority of my time and it seems there isn’t much time devoted to developing it into something better.



- Have map mods that interact with each other making the map harder give higher IIQ. This should have been added months ago.

- Make maps the same size as their non-map counterparts if not bigger. If I’m spending all this time grinding to a high lvl map then spend all my currency on it and I’m done with it in 5-10 minutes it’s so anti-climatic, I want more. Spending a week of grinding for 5-10 mins of content is just not something I want to be doing often. If you make the maps larger you can have a lower (probably much lower) drop rate. People can sustain higher maps easier and won’t spend so much to keep doing them. Also you could drop +area and maze mods in favor of something else like a mod that gives IIR but lowers IIQ. There’s many options that open up.

- Make multiplicative mods give lower IIQ (like negative) and hard mods higher IIQ. Doubling mob damage isn’t even 20% more IIQ (100% damage added as X element). Getting 100% IIQ shouldn’t mean a suicide map as you guys removed the IIQ bonus we had from gear. People were running with 150-200% IIQ on gear, maps should go to the same amount. Even if it means lowering the current drop rate.

- Maps should have a 1 lvl gap (so 66 then 68 then 70) and they go to 80-86, possibly 90. This way there’s a huge experience jump every time you move up a lvl in maps. In merciless you’re usually doing 1-5 areas max before the area jumps a lvl, by the time you are 10 away you’ve gained a couple lvls character and area wise. In maps you might be stuck doing 66s for a long time waiting for a supply of 67s to build up. By the time you move to 67s they aren’t much more exp than a 66.



These solutions make it so people will run less maps, depending less on a high map drop rate and means they spend less rolling them while getting a higher return from their investment. Right now I feel I NEED to have an MF build to fun mapping. This isn’t fun. I don’t want to have an IIQ build to farm currency and an IIR build to find items to trade just so I can level my main while finding gear upgrades for him. I hate MFing and I don’t want to do it at all but lately I’ve been pinned in a corner with no other options. I’m not a party player, I like solo play so it’s MF build so I can keep mapping or make a bunch of characters to 60-70 which sounds boring as shit to me (I know people enjoy that, but I don’t, especially with how limited build choices are now). I started playing because of build diversity and the idea of a dynamic end game. I’m use to doing baal/cow runs in D2 or in FF series (only games I really got obsessed with as I’ve played almost every one over 100-200 hours each) picking the highest lvl area and grinding until 99. I got excited with the idea that you can grind to 99 (100 here but w/o playing the game I assumed 99) in different areas with the same experience growth of sticking to one area.



Ok, this is already long as all hell so rather than picking out little things I’ll just stop here. I really don’t have much desire to keep playing. I feel I’m MFing so I can play the game and playing the game means playing a build very similar to 5 others I’ve done with some different nodes here and there maybe a few different skill set ups. Then I get to maps and between rolling them and trading for gear I end up with nothing to show for 2-3 weeks of MFing.



I do think this game can be great but you guys have gotten away from diversity and pushed more into everything being similar.



edit: seems adding "I quit" overshadows the points I'm trying to make. Let's assume I play 20 hours a day.



Edit 2: the replies are coming in and there's some good stuff that will probably end up buried so I'll add some of the ones I like here.



" Me explaining with math how bad mana is right now



For some context here's the post I'm replying to:



trendwitlasers

Your only actual argument in that post is that clarity is "must-have." Seeing that it doesn't do anything on no-regen maps, and I can do no-regen maps fine, clarity isn't as must-have as you think.



You're only really getting back to the point that blood magic lets you not have to manage mana flasks.



*someone asked him what build he's using*



Dual spork: CI isn't allowed to use blood magic and totems can't mana leech, but you have twice as much usuable mana without clarity. The wander: I can just drop clarity and have twice as much usuable mana pool, coupled with surgeon's flasks you never run out of mana. It's the same with my EK character, but in that case mana leech is a simpler solution without crits.



Anybody that takes races seriously just gets used to playing the game with mana flasks. Moosifier doesn't and is apparently in the same boat with a lot of the population where they simply don't bother with managing resources.



Here's my reply:



You are using totems as a way to bypass mana issues. You aren't spamming totems. I just set up my guy with spark w/o totems on a 5l. Without any FC it's costing 75 mana/cast @ 2.31 aps so 173.25 mana a sec. I could easily get that to 3-4 aps so 225-300 mana a sec.



With a totem it's 143 mana a cast. Assuming your totem isn't lvl 1 and you are casting it alot, safe to say it's up for 10-30 seconds before recasting. You need 286 mana to cast 2, then you need to regen 9.5 to 28.6 mana a sec. To have that regen w/o clarity or any regen from gear you'd need a mana pool of 1,630 total mana. This isn't very hard to do, also clarity can just about cover it by itself. With that mana pool though you can run a bunch of auras as you don't need to cast more than 2 totems at one time which requires 17% of that mana pool. Stack auras for minions, for your EHP, do whatever.



For me to support spark without totem, let's do it at my cast rate which is VERY low for a sparker w/o totem, which is 173 mana/sec. I'd need a mana pool of 9,861 to support spark without clarity/regen gear/leech. Hell, I'd need 8.8k mana with clarity. Ok then let's be a little real about this. How about 50% regen on both rings, ammy, shield and wand for a total of 250% regen and clarity (I have a lvl 17 clarity for 17.3 regen so I'm using that in my math). So with 5 slots with near perfect regen and clarity I'd still needs 3,913 total mana to support spamming spark.



How about leech then, just the gem for the 4% leech (I have a lvl 15 spark and fully supported is doing 13-250 lightning damage). So each spark would give about 5 mana return, but there's 3, so 15, but there's fork so 45 but there's shock stacks 104, then crit can bring that upwards of 10x limited only by your mana pool. Let's be friendly, I'll stay at 45 mana being regened and let's keep that 250% regen. That same build above that needs 4k mana, with the addition of mana leech only needs 1086 max mana to support the skill. Also can easily get away with even less when you consider how lightning damage scales with shock and how most builds of this sort will easily have crit.



Clarity + leech and no mana regen will pretty much cover your cost completely. Clarity plus regen gear doesn't even come close. Go get 4k mana without EB, I'd love to see that happen.

Do you guys get it? 1 gem does more than 5 pieces of gear and a bunch of regen nodes (as if you got them all you'd still need 2-3k mana). I'm arguing for additional options for regening mana, not the elimination of what works, I just want MORE things to work so we aren't limited to what we can do. Ok, seems this has been posted to reddit and people just aren't understand my points. Rather than posting here and having me comment they are over there thinking I don't know what reddit is. I just did a long post explaining the mana different between clarity + gear and clarity + leech (also why totems are so popular with mana the way it is)For some context here's the post I'm replying to:Here's my reply:You are using totems as a way to bypass mana issues. You aren't spamming totems. I just set up my guy with spark w/o totems on a 5l. Without any FC it's costing 75 mana/cast @ 2.31 aps so 173.25 mana a sec. I could easily get that to 3-4 aps so 225-300 mana a sec.With a totem it's 143 mana a cast. Assuming your totem isn't lvl 1 and you are casting it alot, safe to say it's up for 10-30 seconds before recasting. You need 286 mana to cast 2, then you need to regen 9.5 to 28.6 mana a sec. To have that regen w/o clarity or any regen from gear you'd need a mana pool of 1,630 total mana. This isn't very hard to do, also clarity can just about cover it by itself. With that mana pool though you can run a bunch of auras as you don't need to cast more than 2 totems at one time which requires 17% of that mana pool. Stack auras for minions, for your EHP, do whatever.For me to support spark without totem, let's do it at my cast rate which is VERY low for a sparker w/o totem, which is 173 mana/sec. I'd need a mana pool of 9,861 to support spark without clarity/regen gear/leech. Hell, I'd need 8.8k mana with clarity. Ok then let's be a little real about this. How about 50% regen on both rings, ammy, shield and wand for a total of 250% regen and clarity (I have a lvl 17 clarity for 17.3 regen so I'm using that in my math). So with 5 slots with near perfect regen and clarity I'd still needs 3,913 total mana to support spamming spark.How about leech then, just the gem for the 4% leech (I have a lvl 15 spark and fully supported is doing 13-250 lightning damage). So each spark would give about 5 mana return, but there's 3, so 15, but there's fork so 45 but there's shock stacks 104, then crit can bring that upwards of 10x limited only by your mana pool. Let's be friendly, I'll stay at 45 mana being regened and let's keep that 250% regen. That same build above that needs 4k mana, with the addition of mana leech only needs 1086 max mana to support the skill. Also can easily get away with even less when you consider how lightning damage scales with shock and how most builds of this sort will easily have crit.Clarity + leech and no mana regen will pretty much cover your cost completely. Clarity plus regen gear doesn't even come close. Go get 4k mana without EB, I'd love to see that happen.Do you guys get it? 1 gem does more than 5 pieces of gear and a bunch of regen nodes (as if you got them all you'd still need 2-3k mana). I'm arguing for additional options for regening mana, not the elimination of what works, I just want MORE things to work so we aren't limited to what we can do.



" Charan attacks Unbalanced Keystones! Unbalanced Keystones take 0 damage! Resolute Technique

currently:

Your hits can't be evaded

Never deal critical strikes



I think this keystone already has a drawback. Pretty sure I see one there.



But people think it's not enough? Hm.



On-hit effects reduced to X% effectiveness



Unsure about this one. The only time I used RT was to test Whirling Blades. Still missed. A lot.





Unwavering Stance

Suggestion:

Cannot be stunned

Evasion rating is reduced to 0



Bye bye iron reflex users.



Iron reflexes

Suggestion:

Converts all evasion rating to armour

Movement speed reduced by X%



You're not evasive anymore, you're tankface. Iron's heavy. I still hate this keystone with a fiery passion.



Acrobatics

Suggestion:

20% chance to dodge attacks

Removes all armour

Energy shield reduced by X%



I imagine that an acrobat can retain their arcane defences but they might not be as effective if you're tumbling around.





Eldritch battery

Converts all energy shield to mana



Honestly, people are already complaining this keystone is underpowered, probably in light of the energy shield changes. I think it's fine where it is.



Blood magic

Suggestion:

Removes all mana

Spend life instead of mana for skills

Skills cost X% more



Because your life reserve is that much higher than your mana. Malachai's simulacra already does this, although I feel that 100% increase is too much.



" Baron01 Spoiler My biggest gripe lately is with IIQ/IIR, which again completely overshadow the rest of the gear priorities. I hated Diablo 3 for its focus on MR gear but PoE is no different if not worse.

I have recently turned my attention to melee, a lot of challenge in that area, but despite having great success with my 2H duelist, I realize I would not be able to play it as my first character. I'm losing wealth every moment because I need to keep my gear up to date to survive. I cant afford to have IIQ/IIR on the gear because all mods are dedicated to survival or damage. Lastly, melee character is a joke compared to average ranged player in terms of efficiency.

Lastly, the game is not rewarding enough nor it provides you incentives to keep grinding. The fact experience gains drop so fact past lvl75 in commonly accesible content is very demotivating. It is not all about drops but if you cant even get tiny amount of experience for hours of grinding, it get really boring and dull really fast.



" Xendran Spoiler By far the biggest sign that they've been straying from their vision is the skill tree.



I have no idea why 4 starting areas was considered "too complicated" when in reality it simply had a steeper learning curve than most games... which is what i thought GGG wanted. It is IMPOSSIBLE to have variety if you do not want a steep learning curve, because increasing the variety in possible builds DIRECTLY INCREASES the learning curve.



Note: The learning CIELING is increased much more than the learning curve is, as long as there are still obvious choices for builds, however do not force EVERYBODY to go down these paths like you've been consistently doing for the past few months.



The current skill tree is so ridiculously restrictive, and forces you into the same builds.



I'm not saying the old skill tree was necessarily better, as i don't really remember it that much anymore, but having 4 starting positions and offering substantially more freedom was the right choice. Lowering it to two very basic, cookie-cutter encouraging start points was literally the worst possible change they could have made to what was originally the biggest mindblow of the game.



" Hilbert Spoiler " I’ve been playing probably 4-12+ hours a day since I started in late July. I love the game but recent changes and lack of changes have just driven me away. I still love what it could be so I wanted to give feedback on my frustrations rather than just walking away without a word, like much of my friends list.

I gave up on the dev changes around 2 weeks after OB. The only thing that can rescue the game are private leagues with full modification rights.



One guy doing the balance only appealing certain kind of players.

This won't end well.



How I would change it:



Spoiler

If I had full modification rights I would create a league where leveling/grinding won't be the case an eternity but it would be extremly challenging to a point where high level maps feel like fighting 200 bosses with low HP.

I would increase base movement and attackspeed so the game feels more fluently(OFC mobs would be turbo)

I would completely remove broken mechanics like lack of mana, so you will be able to spam skills.

I would rewrite the dumb following AI(no more circling), write several boss scripts/patterns with different difficulties and use them based on a random number.

For example Vaal would start with several summons and try to shoot you offscreen.

Randomly interupt a sequence and use his turbo smash.

Restore old receipes and rework the valueable currency system on alchemy/chaos/regal/exalted with a quality.

So exalteds would be common but getting good mods would require many low quality exalteds which makes them rare like now but low quality exalteds can be used on maps and roll all mods level 28 PVP items etc.

Also currency quality would make it easier to roll good linked low level items. So you can have a 6 link royal bow with level 28 mods and aren't doomed with an ilvl50 item.

Add an Armorclass system on evasion so heavy and light hits are more forgiving on evasion.



Add Life nodes in clustered domains such as in the Str domain between Steelskin and Razor edge so you can create useable paths without sacrificing to much life with some more skill points.

Replace Accuracy in damage Wheels with defensive nodes so those wheels become more interesting and add unique nodes at the end of accuracy wheels.

Restore CB CI since it's risky in Turbo.

Rework Minion parts to make them tougher and place some minion nodes in different areas.

So you got tough summons in the int domain, heavy hitting summons in the str domain, fast summons in the dex domain, while restoring the old amount of skeletons, so basically the amount of summons is purely decided by the gem level. Resistances Life, Regen, Minor Damage in the int Domain.

Major damage, Criticals, Elemental damage in the str domain.

Attack Speed, Movementspeed, Ailment triggering, Support Gem like nodes in the Dex domain.



This way you can create hybrid characters with the dex domain. Really powerful summons with the Str Int Domain.

Good Meatshields which deal damage in the STR and Dex Domain.

Of course the AI will try to kill summoners/summon totems first so you won't be in the middle of the fight without any danger.



The main aspect of such a modification would be a league where survival would be the main goal without enternal grinding(of course you would mf but you have an increased quantity so it's more efficient)



Also PVP and CT would have focus.

For example if some mechanics can't be changed such as 4 Viper charged, since the skill must remain its PvM power certain combinations won't be allowed in PVP for example Vul, Incresed Duration and Viperstrike, Tempest shield gem all at once in lvl 28 PVP.



Since its a modded realm many modders are invited to help and players are there to post in a feedback thread so modders can create a list with criticism(desync isn't something we can fix) and something that requires to be buffed.













Considering Grinding. It is even worse.

The experience output became terrible. I don't rush my if there isn't any need, so I didn't rush any time. The result I was 4 levels underleveled all the time.

I never grinded that long in Closed Beta, even in 1 week races I leveled till level 58 rolled some semiuseable EQ and went mapping. The only Race where I actually had to grind a bit was the 1 week Turbo where I had to grind 1h to find a map so I started with 2 maps.







" - Link Catacombs and Church from act 2. Have a quest where you have to unlock it from act 2 and it gives the respec points. Once opened from the back you can access it from marketplace or even vice versa. They are the same tileset but catacombs is bigger, not 2 floors and doesn’t have a boss.

You could add a cross act quest without linking. Something like an act3 item opens a new high level area in Act2.





" I’ve been on this for months, mana is out of control. Most people just accept things the way they are, get clarity with mana leech, BM with a ton of life/life regen or EB. These are the extreme options, but late game, with a 6l or mana hungry skill (explosive arrow, EK, high APS FP) it’s the only options. There’s no balance here.

There were like 10 threads in closed beta already that heavily critisized the mana system.



While I agree with the problem there are several possible solution. Limit Auras similar to charges and add nodes which allow one more aura, and a better mana boost on mana nodes, while heavily lowering the mana cost for skills.





" (I’ve never made a ranger). These builds all end up in the same spots with small variation.

I got a friend who played evasion shadows/ranger in closed beta before the big shadow buff.

He took quiet a few block nodes and lifeleech, but he hasn't logged in for months and I doubt those builds would survive now due chaos damage.







" We are what, 2-3 patches away from being able to turn it completely into life now? A few months ago ES was completely different from life and the advantage to taking it was having a very large EHP pool being able to absorb all hits.

One reason I liked turbo was simply because going CI wasn't worthwile.

I saw 2 player(I think torin was the shadow) getting killed on Turbo within 1 second and it wasn't like they had that bad equipment if they could kill Turbo Vaal in Merciless.





" Right now these two things are ass backwards. Armor users don’t have to worry about little hits because armor eat little hits. Evasion users can’t eat these little hits but get SOME forgiveness on hard hits. Both aren’t awesome against hard hitters but at least armor users can eat little hits.

I suggested an Armor Class system similar to PnP games several times for Evasion. If such a system is implemented IR can go.



" Resolute Tech - Removing crit is a drawback to templar but not really to mara. In an area with hardly any accuracy/dex and no crit, removing crit for always hit is a no brainer.

I never understood the intention of that node even as a Templar with 24 dex I had a 50% hit chance on mobs with normal attack(I a was caster with a mace)



"

Blood magic - Someone stacking life and life regen to survive with little access to mana, why wouldn’t you take this unless you wanted % auras?

This sounds harsh but Blood Magic is simply. Have some idiot in party with auras, while you spam the skill.

BM should be an option not a must, now we end up at mana again.





" Unwavering Stance/Iron Reflexes combo - This is just dumb. US has a great drawback if all you have is easy access to evasion. When combined with IR, it means free armor from grace and cannot be stunned. There’s a reason maras always head down there.

Not only Maras. My ranger builds always takes those 2 nodes too.





" It didn’t turn out to be that way. Instead we get stuck at the beginning of the map tier grinding forever knowing that there’s better experience higher up but it’s not much better experience, just higher. Then once you finally break through and get higher you find out you need to spend a tremendous amount of your wealth in hopes that you will progress again or sustain where you’ve reached. Even if you dump all your wealth in there’s still a good chance you’re dropping back down. You leave realizing the exp isn’t that great, you are poor so can’t afford to keep doing that and have very little to show for it all. You are left frustrated and feel like you are grinding just in hopes of getting back to where you were.

There is even a bigger problem.

Getting into maps.

Once you are in its hard to drop out.

I complained after 5 days after OB due terrible map drop rate.

Nerfing vendor receipes is also not a part of the solution.

Make them interact with the itemlevel(currency has an itemlevel). Create a currency that raises the itemlevel. Or instead of an item level give currency a quality, so instead of creating stacks you create stacks of quality and you can use low quality chaos orbs to improve themselves to higher quality similar to the 3 PG system in D2.

This way players can grind chaos/alchemy orbs to roll maps and items get unaffected and high level/quality currency is worth a lot.



I find it hilarious that some devs even think totally broken support gem mechanics are fine.

"Hey you got a 20k Beartrap with an aura and 3 support gems, while I got a 3k dps 6linked Ice Nova, with reduced cast speed"



"

We added a lvl65 random dungeon generator aka MOC where players can grind & also acquire items to unlock higher level content". We added a lvl65 random dungeon generator aka MOC where players can grind & also acquire items to unlock higher level content".

There is such an unique map forget that you have been trolled. I gave up on the dev changes around 2 weeks after OB. The only thing that can rescue the game are private leagues with full modification rights.One guy doing the balance only appealing certain kind of players.This won't end well.How I would change it:Considering Grinding. It is even worse.The experience output became terrible. I don't rush my if there isn't any need, so I didn't rush any time. The result I was 4 levels underleveled all the time.I never grinded that long in Closed Beta, even in 1 week races I leveled till level 58 rolled some semiuseable EQ and went mapping. The only Race where I actually had to grind a bit was the 1 week Turbo where I had to grind 1h to find a map so I started with 2 maps.You could add a cross act quest without linking. Something like an act3 item opens a new high level area in Act2.There were like 10 threads in closed beta already that heavily critisized the mana system.While I agree with the problem there are several possible solution. Limit Auras similar to charges and add nodes which allow one more aura, and a better mana boost on mana nodes, while heavily lowering the mana cost for skills.I got a friend who played evasion shadows/ranger in closed beta before the big shadow buff.He took quiet a few block nodes and lifeleech, but he hasn't logged in for months and I doubt those builds would survive now due chaos damage.One reason I liked turbo was simply because going CI wasn't worthwile.I saw 2 player(I think torin was the shadow) getting killed on Turbo within 1 second and it wasn't like they had that bad equipment if they could kill Turbo Vaal in Merciless.I suggested an Armor Class system similar to PnP games several times for Evasion. If such a system is implemented IR can go.I never understood the intention of that node even as a Templar with 24 dex I had a 50% hit chance on mobs with normal attack(I a was caster with a mace)This sounds harsh but Blood Magic is simply. Have some idiot in party with auras, while you spam the skill.BM should be an option not a must, now we end up at mana again.Not only Maras. My ranger builds always takes those 2 nodes too.There is even a bigger problem.Getting into maps.Once you are in its hard to drop out.I complained after 5 days after OB due terrible map drop rate.Nerfing vendor receipes is also not a part of the solution.Make them interact with the itemlevel(currency has an itemlevel). Create a currency that raises the itemlevel. Or instead of an item level give currency a quality, so instead of creating stacks you create stacks of quality and you can use low quality chaos orbs to improve themselves to higher quality similar to the 3 PG system in D2.This way players can grind chaos/alchemy orbs to roll maps and items get unaffected and high level/quality currency is worth a lot.I find it hilarious that some devs even think totally broken support gem mechanics are fine."Hey you got a 20k Beartrap with an aura and 3 support gems, while I got a 3k dps 6linked Ice Nova, with reduced cast speed"There is such an unique map forget that you have been trolled.



" VictorDoom Spoiler I do think the problem with melee is monster damage actually.. thats why everyone goes ranged monsters just hit too hard in the endgame, going ranged means you can get roughly the same amount of life as a melee,do decent dps, but you can avoid getting hit much easier.



Thats my opinion on why melee suddenly turned to shit in OB, monsters damage is just too high, especially the map bosses in 70+ maps, the damage is just too big for a melee with 4-5k life to kill them, do all melees need kaoms heart now or what? even with 8k bleeding life you can still die to a few hits from a vaal laser or gravicus fire storm, the damage is just mental.



I have to do the sneaky thing and just get a few hits then run away from bosses like Loath, Piety,Vaal etc. rince, repeat, i do declare that i do maps that are pretty hard but still, i shouldnt have to waste so much time and risk death so i can kill a boss because a hit takes away 2/3 of my life with 4.5k life, 10k armor, 5 endu charges and 80% all rez.



It is too much damage that is killing melee, before this damage was in no one complained how ranged is OP, now ranged is OP because they dont have to get in the thick of it and get hit as much as melees.



" Relidar Spoiler I'm not a big fan of "feedback" posts on these forums any more. It's usually the same group of people with one perspective or point of view gathering with one purpose only. And if you even try sharing your own experience and solution you get yelled at and told to never come back. I personally have not been affected by this, i mostly hang around in the class forums helping people with their builds, but I've seen it be done to others.



With that being said, I'm not a big fan of Moosifer. He has always seemed like one of those people who doesn't want "outsiders" to come ruin 'his' game. But he did provide a lot of good feedback with this post, and it shows that he does care for the game's well being.



I really hope this thread can stay on topic though, so that the developers can get constructive feedback. After all, it has been mentioned several times in this thread already, that they seem to be reacting more to mass complaints rather than good and constructive criticism.



So here's my feedback



* I don't agree with the "nerf everything and build up from the ground" concept. There are definitely some big nodes on the passive tree that need to be remodeled, but completely ruining them isn't gonna help any one in the long run. For the devs to be able to gather as much data as possible they need people to actually play with these nodes active.



* Melee is in a bad spot for sure. But it can easily get too powerful as well. I think VictorDoom said it best, the mobs leave very little time for skill and reaction to play a part in the game play. Something that ranged classes usually get a lot of time for. I'm not suggesting that they need to dumb the game down, but if melee don't have time to react, then the game becomes russian roulette.



* On that same note, i think we need to be patient, especially now when so many new skills are being introduced. I never played CB when you had the 4-way option, i really like the sound of that however, and i hope this is something they still consider an option.



* Life and Auras is something i have been talking about (mostly with my friends on voice coms) for a very long time now. These two things NEED to change to promote diversity in builds. You'll never see more and creative/fun builds on the forums when it's mandatory to have at least 3 auras and 250-300% increased life %. Inner Force is way too strong still and some auras are becoming so invaluable to almost all the specs out there, it's getting boring.



* The progression curve definitely changed in OB. Leveling during CB felt right, all the way to end game. While now, you constantly hit walls where you are forced to spend time either grinding or paying for certain gear to get around. Again, i don't want them to dumb things down, i just want that fluidity back in the game.



* There definitely needs to be some equality between mana and blood magic. There's a reason almost ALL my characters are blood magic, it's just easier and a LOT more fun to play when you don't have to constantly juggle your mana pool. EB is a good option, but it still feels inferior to BM. Granted EB gives you even more auras, but that doesn't always help.





What i find hard, from a player's point of view, is knowing where the line between "Our Vision for the game" and "We just need to shut this group of people up for a while" is. Is this game open to be molded by it's community, or are things set in stone?



" ampdecay Spoiler What I was thinking is a new zone appearing after killing Gravicus. I think it makes sense to call it Bridges since the bridge is blocked because of the Blackguard and general Gravicus. Just pop it right between battlefront and barracks. Just a bunch of winding bridges from entrance to entrance.



Make it like level it level 63-64. This to me would be perfect.



Most of my feedback will be generally addressing end game stuff as I don’t personally enjoy earlier stuff. It’s not that it’s bad it’s just for me the game doesn’t start until after Peity in merci is dead. Also there’s alot of time put into balancing earlier content, it shows, but doesn’t seem to be much put into end game which gets corrected based on how many complaints come in.Ok, this is already long as all hell so rather than picking out little things I’ll just stop here. I really don’t have much desire to keep playing. I feel I’m MFing so I can play the game and playing the game means playing a build very similar to 5 others I’ve done with some different nodes here and there maybe a few different skill set ups. Then I get to maps and between rolling them and trading for gear I end up with nothing to show for 2-3 weeks of MFing.I do think this game can be great but you guys have gotten away from diversity and pushed more into everything being similar.edit: seems adding "I quit" overshadows the points I'm trying to make. Let's assume I play 20 hours a day.Edit 2: the replies are coming in and there's some good stuff that will probably end up buried so I'll add some of the ones I like here. Finished 17th in Rampage - Peaked at 11th

Finished 18th in Torment/Bloodline 1mo Race - peaked at 9th

Null's Inclination Build 2.1.0 - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1559063

Summon Skeleton 1.3 - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1219856

Last edited by Moosifer on Mar 21, 2013, 9:31:00 PM