This is going to be a long post, but if you can bear with me to read, I think you should eventually come to agreement that this is a very good idea and something that should be brought to the developer’s attention as something serious to consider which would positively impact almost every area for the game in a huge way.
Some background about me. A bit over a year ago I was the first to popularize the ‘Earthquake Chargebear’. I streamed it and pushed it to over 700 waves to take Rank 1 on the arena ladder. Shortly afterwards, it became a flavor of the month as everyone else played it, including other big streamers like Steelmage and co. Binashole continued the build and brought it to new levels of power as a low-life variant with more damage again, and pushed over 1k waves to continue to retain rank 1 in coming months. But now I come back to the game a year later, I see the earthquake chargebear archetype is essentially dead, a shadow of its self, after being hit with a massive nerf that build archetype- A 5 second cooldown on its main damage.
I am most likely about to repeat the entire process again when the ladder comes up next month, except this time as I bring out and showcase the power of a Spriggan Form shaman utilizing totems, ward and freeze, and I don’t want to see the same result of spriggan form being chopped off at the knee and another cool build archetype lost in the name of ‘balance’.
I started out by trying to create what I had done with the earthquake chargebear, but realizing the extreme limitation of a 5-second downtime window for my main damage every 5 seconds, I came to the conclusion that the build would not be competitive in the endgame environment and temporarily shelved it. The weapon nerf was too big to overcome. Even earthquake itself got some cooldown nerfs on its biggest nodes, hurting the earthquake builds across the board even though they weren’t particularly powerful or popular, as most people could not overcome the extreme mana costs on earthquake. For this reason, as it stands, we will likely not see many or any earthquake chargebears in the endgame, nor will we see anyone playing Earthquake as a main damage skill (in human form).
The nerfs, which seem like an extreme kneejerk reaction to a ‘problem’ have effectively ‘killed off’ the earthquake werebear variant. A 5 second duration where you cannot deal your main damage, every 5 seconds, over and over all the time, is effectively a death sentence for the build in high arena. On top of this, there are now +2 and +6 second cooldowns added to the best nodes in Earthquake- collateral damage effectively weakening an already scarcely played skill because the skill itself was too mana intensive to be played as a main skill anyway. Earthquake itself got hit as collateral damage when it was an already underrepresented skill- almost nobody was playing earthquake (without werebear). Almost nobody will continue to play Earthquake in its current state (human form/beastmaster etc).
Ultimately, the result of this approach has removed what I thought was a very cool build archetype from the game. And its a shame, because its one less build archetype for players to enjoy.
GGG and PoE has taken this approach for years- every 3 months at every new league they go across all the most powerful/most played meta builds, and apply nerfs, until those novel, enjoyable builds become either too weak to enjoy, or they become inconvenient or fustrating to play, and fall out of the meta. Then the players move back to the boring ‘meta’ builds everyone plays, and become clones of each other, essentially playing the same builds. However, they never go across all the weakest, underplayed skills that everyone knows are terrible, and make buffs/adjustments to them. This results in a stale, boring meta where everyone plays the same stuff to be able to enjoy the game; you can play non-meta skills if you like, but you will endure difficulty and struggle for no fault of your own other than the skill itself is too weak or has fundamental problems that get in the way of enjoyable gameplay.
The result of GGG’s approach to balance means that ultimately PoE has 200+ skills, but only 5-8 meta builds that everyone plays. And everyone plays them and becomes a clone, there is no build diversity, and it is BORING. I have 6k+ hours in PoE, and I have played the same boring powerful meta builds for years because they work; I’ve also tried repeatedly to play what I WANT to play and enjoy (a bow archetype ranger using something like ice shot) and fail over and over again. I have 10+ rangers that I class as failed characters (half of which are dead in hardcore without even scratching the endgame). Its simply not viable to play those skills so I am pushed back to the boring ‘meta’ builds that everyone else plays or I struggle and fail on a skill I WANT to play but cannot because it is exceptionally weak, no matter how well I play, build or prepare for the content. I fail and die on those builds in Tier 1 maps, yet I have completed T17 maps/most endgame bosses and even survived to level 100 in HC on a ‘meta’ build.
I am concerned after seeing the Bhauldor’s Wrath / Earthquake skill changes that this similar approach to balance will be applied to Last Epoch and it will result in the same thing in time; a reduction in build diversity, possibilities, and eventually we will only have a few ‘meta’ builds that everyone plays, because playing ‘non-meta’ builds will be suffering for the reason that those skills are simply too weak/fundamentally inconvenient/ not fun to play, or are simply ‘not possible’ to be competitive because of too many limitations.
Of coarse, the most powerful builds will need to be addressed and ‘brought in line’, but they don’t need to be knee-capped and leveled to the ground like the Earthquake Werebear was. When that happens, we lose one more enjoyable build and have less possibilities for people to play with and group alongside. Group build compositions will become less diverse.
The priority approach should be that the weakest, least played skills should be constantly given attention, adjusted or buffed so that we have more build diversity and more options for people to enjoy.
For reference, human Earthquake has never been a popular build- the mana cost restraints are simply too big to overcome, and very few people would play it for this reason. Now with the extra cooldown on its best nodes, it also has to contend with damage downtime in combat alongside its mana constraints- I don’t see many people wanting to play a build that has to wait several seconds to do anything. Tempest strike also is extremely weak and rarely played by anyone, same with volcanic orb- it has a bland, uninspired skill tree and is a weak skill no matter which way you build it. Same with acid flask, I had a viewer say that he wanted to create an acid flask build. I had to sadly say tell him that I don’t think an acid flask build would be possible because it has no way to scale up the damage. Same with cinder strike, an extremely underpowered skill without any ‘oomph’ to make it feel good, regardless how you build or utilize it. These skills should be the priority to receive adjustments and buffs, the priority shouldn’t be going across the top builds that feel good and nerfing them. Bring up the weaker skills to become alternatives to the main meta builds first.
Those skills have stayed like this for years, never receiving adjustments or small ‘buffs’ to make them more appealing; they all have extreme fundamental problems (Earthquake’s insurmountable mana cost, for example) or weaknesses that are too big to overcome with player effort, skill or gear. In their current state, if it stays that way, nobody will play these skills, ever. They essentially suck, when compared to the other skills that are on offer which are far more fundamentally convenient, enjoyable and powerful- Glacier offers far better damage, clear, mana recuperation and control compared to volcanic orb- Why would anyone want to play volcanic orb over glacier? Nobody will, and its a shame.
This should be in my opinion, the #1 priority- always adjusting and buffing the weakest, underplayed skills every patch, until they show up in peoples builds and get played. This is what is going to lead to amazing build diversity and possibilities with hundreds of viable builds. Nerfing top builds should be a secondary priority, as it only results in less build diversity.
Sure, we should be curbing the overpowered skills too, but realize we don’t get much from this other than negatives ultimately, we usually lose a build variant or we make what is a novel or enjoyable build less enjoyable or convenient to play alot of the time when the nerfs are too harsh. And it should not be the main focus, the main focus should be to bring up the weaker skills until they rise to a point of being able to match those meta builds, or at least provide an alternative option for players to consider.
I am theorycrafting many, many builds and exploring many interactions, and I can tell you that there are some skills that I simply won’t bother with entirely because I have looked in detail at their skill trees and I can tell you that they have no build potential or options overall to be competitive, so I simply stay away and don’t touch those skills. It should be very obvious which skills those are, and skill playrates over the population will likely tell the same story. A skill that has 0.01% playrate most likely has some glaring issue that need to be addressed.
So it is my suggestion, and why I made this post, was to start a conversation that hopefully the devs pay attention to which is a solution I came up with - creating a balance committee. A balance committee would be a private group of 200-300 people, handpicked perhaps, of all the most passionate and loyal players, the best players, streamers, people that have thousands of hours in the game, etc. A private discussion group on discord, in liaison with the developers, that would discuss issues in the game together, like skill/class/ item balance, game direction, and bring to attention issues to the developers that they themselves may have overlooked or neglected if there wasn’t a committee pointing out things like this to them. Nothing changes for the dev’s development process, however they have access to very quality information constantly from which they can draw upon when it comes to making decisions and continuing to build upon the game.
At the end of the day, the dev’s time is valuable- would you rather them sitting around ‘theorycrafting’ for half a day on how to nerf some powerful build like Earthquake werebear in a suitable way, or balance some specific unique item interaction, or buff some weak skill, or rather spend that time IMPLEMENTING new content instead, when they would have sourced those solutions and ideas already from the committee, who would provide very high quality ideas to problems across all areas regularly. Similarly; while the developers are making the skills, a developer who might have 25-50 hours played in a class in LE as opposed to some guy who has 3k hours on that class played, whos input would be more valuable for overall class direction?
Some guy who played the game for 3k hours playing only primalist, all the primalist builds, skills, knows every tiny nuance, interaction and mechanic inside-out, would know exactly what makes a typical primalist player happy and what frustrates the primalist player. Their insight would be infinitely more valuable for what direction the class should be steered in, an insight that a developer simply would not have time to ever acquire because they are busy developing the game; they don’t have time to play every primalist build and experience every interaction from the player’s POV for thousands of hours. But a committee player does, and the developers can draw upon this insight if a focus group like this. And 200-300 diehard experienced players who have these insights across many builds, skills, interactions in the game with a combined hundreds of thousands of hours played overall, would provide invaluable game design insight and direction for the developers to utilize and create the best game ever.
I think that if this suggestion were to be implemented, the result would be that the game quality would SKYROCKET in every facet. Eventually, over time, constant great changes to build/skill tree balance / item balance, meaningful solutions to curbing overpowered builds without destroying entire build archetypes, meaningful adjustments and buffs to underplayed skills, and thoughtful, astute and eloquent endgame league mechanic direction with player enjoyment as a main focus would result in an amazing game with limitless possibilities, exorbitant build diversity, great balance and everyone happy as a result.
Precious developer time would be less spent on theorycrafting solutions and more on implementing content, eventually resulting in far more quality content for the players to enjoy. How much time is wasted figuring out solutions to nerfing/balancing overtuned/undertuned skills/builds/items, time which could be spent IMPLEMENTING new content and skills instead? The devs making a shortlist of issues and putting it to the balance committee to discuss, vote upon and respond with meaningful suggestions would save SO MUCH time for the devs and vice versa, when the committee could make a shortlist of important issues to be looked at for the devs. Meaningful, ingenious solutions to these problems would become a regular occurrence. It would streamline everything. The committee could provide short, one-page summarized writeups every week to the devs and it would save them so much time.
Can we get a discussion on this? Yes, we already have regular ‘suggestions’ from everyone across forums and discord, from the average player, here and there on forums/discord. This is the same concept except in a far more focused, organized and precise manner and from seasoned, experienced players who will discuss and vote upon proposed changes together before handing their well-deliberated ideas to the devs, in general agreement and unison as a whole, giving the devs the ammunition every week to quickly make genius design decisions across all areas of the game and saving them alot of time having to think up those solutions themselves.
So, what do you guys think?