There’s nothing wrong with discussing balance at any point, IMO. Though things may change as they add the various final skills/masteries for those classes that are missing them.
No, they’re trying to balance builds/skills around 300 corruption, not that that is a pinnacle that few should ever attain.
Yes, but “fun” is subjective and means different things to different people while a build being able to do x corruption is less subjective (though still a bit flakey as it could be player skill dependent as much as build dependent). For some, being able to efficiently (& personally I detest that word in the context of arpgs) clear x content is fun & if a particular build can’t do that because it’s underpowered then that build is not-fun for them.
Apart from not being able to use any of the right-half of the other masteries, or the mastery bonuses.
I could never say I’m against or for nerfing things. If I ever make a game I make baseline like “I want players to do between 140 and 150 dps while trash mobs have 500 HP” just to make some numbers up for the example. If a class only does 80 dmg I can buff it. If two classes do 180 dmg I can nerf them because I don’t want to buff all other classes and up the mob HP. I have a baseline I want to build on and some progression goals I want to keep so i don’t have dmg numbers like 38T dmg.
Yes and no. Why should I play content where I’m intentionaly weak? Where is the fun in that? The game isn’t starting at lvl 75 in Monolith X it’s starting on lvl 1 and all the way up to having 20 points in skills should be fun and engaging and not a slog that feel forced on me. Skills should be stronger in the end could even be complete different from what you start with but this should be functionality on top of working skills.
Well I think you have fun playing LE because you wouldn’t be here and write about this if you thought the game is unfun (well at least I don’t play games when I have no fun with them). Hack and Slash games are just stupid powertrips to farm items and I only know two kinds of people: people who like this kind of stuff or people who hate it.
That’s on the devs of said games. If they don’t say “That’s our audience and we strife to hold up our ideals against cash!” they are the reason why their game becomes trash. Look at Blizzard for the best example.
Sure but I don’t go in a EA enviourment withthe mindsetthat everything runs smoothly and is balanced. There is a ton of stuff that needs to be done.
Many skills are useless in high corruption. Compared with POE, LE has not many skills, but there are still many skills that are useless, and many skills have no linkage.
There are not enough changes in skills, and many changes have no corresponding damage to use.
In the case of limited skill points, regardless of whether the half is open or not, the changes are obviously not as much as expected. A build with earthquake as the main skill obviously will not spend too much skill points in the shaman profession.
Therefore, whether or not the other half is opened up will obviously not have a fundamental impact.
Compared with this, the most important thing to do is to change the skills that are not often used. More possibilities and more interesting constructions are the best. It is not like the current Blade Dancer. There is no damage without synchronous strike. Any construction is based on the skill of synchronous strike.
Corruption as a performance gauge currently is a bit vague, but I disagree. I essentially could make every skill I ever touched work in Empowered up to 200-250 corruption. Some skills need more work then others, but that’s just how it is.
Another disagree.
I never needed or felt the need to use sync Strike. And I used some of the least popular skills and made them work just fine.
So either you threshold for “viable” is a lot higher than mine or you never tried to make other stuff work.
High? Like 800+? Because if so then you are right. If we talk 300+ you can still make everything work if you try hard enough.
Old problem was never touched and I don’t want to even ask about it anymore because some people back then have been instnatly jumped to the defence of LE when you critiqued the game. Call me pessimistic but I think this will stay as it is even after release (at least for some time).
Shaman is a bad example! I don’t even know enough fitting swear words to describe how FUBAR the Shaman is and most likely everyone tries to get away with as little as possible points in it.
Sure why not? The nagain in the current state of the game and given the announced release this year I think we will enter another Beta release because there is to little time to balance or rework all skills and fix all bugs. Again call me a pessimist if you want .
Corruption of 400-500+ is necessary. At this level, you can quickly get enough stability to farm the boss. If you want to get a specific drop equipment from the boss, this is the most suitable height. It is fast enough and not to die frequently
Can’t imagine what heights Blade Dancer can achieve without Sync Strike, I’ve never seen any of his builds not based on Sync Strike, Flurry is an excellent melee ability, but doesn’t have enough gear to sustain the damage when a The build is able to complete one echo in 2-3 minutes, while the others take 5-6 minutes, there is no reason not to choose it
What makes me most pessimistic is that there has been no update for more than two months, and the BUG has not been fixed. The production team seems to be indifferent to the world. Even when POE and D4 are mediocre, they have not shown any intention of competing.
What you state as an optimal value for corruption farming is a value that only the top <=5% even play.
While it might be your personal experience, it’s very unrealistic for the majority of players.
Especially for something like Boss farming there are no real hard threshold, it is a very smooth transition and the difference between “150 and 200” or “200 and 250” is very marginal.
Yes between 200 and 500 there is a note able difference but everything in between is just as valid for some person.
Now you bring even more metrics into the discussion.
I don’t think that echo completion time is a good value to judge how good or bad a build is, because this also depends a lot on the playstyle of the player.
On top of that, there are builds that are really good at killing bosses, while echoing can be mediocre. Or there are builds where it is vice versa.
On top of that, there are builds that are objectively good, but not popular or wide spread within the community, because of how they play.
For example I made several Lethal Mirage 5-Flow Blade Dancer Builds, which are mechanically challenging to play(one miss click during the rotation and you loose massive dps).
But I never saw someone playing or using anything remotely similar.
But the build has mediocre echoing capabilities, but superb bossing capabilities, literally deleting bosses in a few seconds, including preperation/build up time for the combo.
You are making some serious generalisations here - especially for a beta game with a wide variety of builds and skill balance issues that affect the objective viability of builds and subjective enjoyment of players based on thier own subjective goals.
You think, subjectively, based on your favourite builds and playstyle that 400 to 500+ is neccessary. Some may agree, other will not - even the devs have said that they are aiming for 300 corruption as a target for build /skill balance of the performing builds etc.
From your comments I feel that you have a very narrow minded personal experience wrt to your own successes and failures in playing LE and imho, you need to understand that the game wasnt created specifically for your enjoyment but for a very wide variety of players - in arpg experience, skill set, understanding and ultimately differences in what they consider enjoyment.
When considered with a wider more open perspective, you may find that things are not as binary as you think they are.
The OP is kinda reactive & exaggerated in his speech but he does have some valid points.
Outside Sync strike and Shadow daggers almost everything else feels lackluster in terms of damage.
I guess it depends of what one consider viable but people will always compare to the better builds out there. I’m not talking about the top 10 meta S tier builds, I could make my own standard about the more than 50 builds capable of doing 500+ corruption. Or the builds who can kill T4 Julra.
I have nothing more than respect for all of your work and posts but I doubt you made the less popular skills of bladedancer work for high content in this patch.
The damage is simply not enough for a class that should have outstanding damage. If you try some skills against Julra she will laugh at your face of how derisory is the number
Debatable and I think some of the weaker skills would demand ultra investment in farming unthinkable gear and uniques.
Yes he’s making generalizations and as I said before overreacting, but I don’t think it’s all that subjective.
Bladedancer have a serious problem outside the main favorites skills and while I understand it’s beta and it may be addressed i future we can point these problems now.
Most of you are being really defensive about something that’s obviously stamped In the gameplay.
What is “high content” for you? T4 Dungeon? While that is the highest fixed difficulty content, I do not consider T4 dungeon to be particularly hard or good to gauge a build, because they simply rely on mechanical skills and not on the build you play.
Also this patch an even 0.9 doesn’t have to do much with a lot of builds, quite the opposite, some of the build variatiosn I played did even get massively buffed, even though they already worked before (For example Fulgurite Shard).
The Lethal Mirage Build I described at the end of my post worked fine even before 0.9 and got buffed qutie a bit.
I don’t particularly care for BD, its one of my least favorite classes. And I know there are some crazy strong build out there, that a lot of other builds comapre to.
But the question is, should all builds be on that level or should they bring down those overperforming builds?
Not sure if its defensive, stating my own experience and that I played multiple builds (with very unpopular/underused skills) and they just worked fine (subjectively for me personally).
We have low life shadow dagger doing 2000+ corruption
Other versions of shadow dagger can do 1000+ for sure.
Light chakram doing all T4 and high corruption
All these top builds use the same setup smoke bomb + sync strike to optimize damage output.
Anything that does not rely on this setup is generally hard to play or ultra gear dependant or damage lacking.
We end back to what one consider standard to be viable, and it will always be subjective to how one have fun from the game. To me I always try to achieve 300+, 500+ corruption and doing all t4 dungeons.
Trying to be a bit less subjective, I don’t think all builds should do T4 easily or 500 or 1000 corruption, but at least a fair couple variations of one extremely used setup should be viable to do very high end content. I think we should have at least 3 or 4 competitors to shadow dagger setup to be able to perform in high tier, to be able to do all dungeons and very high corruption.
And I don’t think these top builds should be brought down, because generally they are capped to the point of being trash And unplayable. It’s hard to have a middle ground.
Generalisations / Overreacting = Subjective imho. I am not saying he is wrong in his statements but he is not right in every interpretation or implementation thereof.
I am not being defensive about anything in the game itself, just referring to the tone & generalised exaggeration/hyperbole and how, based on the comments in this post & on other threads, they are limited to the persons own experiences and are not considering the wider factors at play here.
In my opinion, I think that if “all” builds could do all T4 and high corruption, then it would take away from the pleasure of finding the right combination of skills and passives to take you where you want to go.
I don’t take away from the thought that there needs to be more diversity in the capability of builds, as I think having it work that only one build per class/mastery can achieve the penultimate level of the game is a good concept. Then nearly everyone would be playing practically the same character for the mastery (every BD would be the same BD, every Shaman would be the same, etc.).
It’s just a matter of finding the right balance so that each class/mastery can have multiple paths to get them to the highest levels of success, and yes I know that can be very subjective but I think at least most of you know what I mean.
If you look at all the builds for each patch, and nearly all of one class use practically the same nodes in the same skills and nearly the same passives, then it doesn’t lend to build diversity. The rest of the skills, nodes, and passives at that point have no use and the time creating them is what I would consider a waste.
I do not agree with the premise that all skills for each mastery should be available to every other mastery of that class. I think they should be locked to provide identity for each mastery.
I came out with a more clear thinking these last minutes, and Ill try to explaing considering every point I kind of disagree around here. And in the effort of trying to put aside at least a little all the subjectivity the topic brings.
Who am I to dictate whats viable or not, whats high content or not, what works fine or not? I am noone to put the rules. But thats the catch, its not me, its not Heavy, nor Vapourfire, each one of us have different takes of the same subject. But the game itself make the rules.
I can only make assumptions based on what Im playing for the moment. If the game turn to be balanced around 300+ corruption, fine, we will discuss things around this later.
But right now we have many , a good variety of builds capable of doing 500+ corruption, maybe even lot of builds capable of doing 1000+ corruption. Thats the actual game and I see nothing wrong with it, I think its good to have such things. Also lot of builds are capable of doing T4 dungeons. Thats our standard. That will always be the goal, so subjetive or objective aside, thats the things many players will be comparing when talking that something is not well balanced, something is weak, something does not have diversity enough.
So emphasizing one more time, the game itself tell us what is being good or not, whats being strong or not. Even when something is “working” to do some kind of content you still can tell that its not strong enough, that it lacks damage. Perry made a bladedancer build around Shadow Cascade (actually he took the idea by other guy in discord I think), and it works to clear monos, it can even do T4 Julra, but when you see the game standards and compare it to the other skills you can observe that it lacks damage. Its hard to build around this skill. Its a great skill but by the game standards and by the bladedancer standards it should have a higher damage.
I can bring my druid up to 200+ corruption with the meme joke skill Tempest Strike. But its not a viable skill considering all the content of the game.
You can use almost anything and finish the game, but ultimately I really think there should be a fair amount of builds & diversity in a same class that can do the Higher Content. Its the game itself who will dictate whats high contet or not. I think we should have at least 3 different skills & setups per mastery competing who goes further in monoliths or who goes further in arena. Right now there is only one setup that rule the market with no contest. Ideally we could have shadow daggers setup competing against pure umbral blade damage competing against light shurikens competing against shadow cascade damage. That would be sick and great fun. Playyers trying different setups to se who goes further. Im not asking all skills to be in the same level. Im only asking a fair amount of diversity, its not too much.
And If you dont care about competition, totally fine. But it is this that will set a standard and will help to bring more diversity to the gameplay.
My main one (Bone Curse/Rip Blood/Retaliation Golem) got gutted in 0.9.1, before I’d even been able to farm the relic that gives ward on necrotic skill cast.
I am sorry, but if you really believe that this level of damage is necessary to not feel that “you are lacking damage” you are out of touch with a big majority of the playerbase.
These are outlier builds. Bringing all other builds up to their standard is absolutely unreansonable and not pratical at all.
I cannot comment much on shadow dagger builds, because I have no experience playing them myself (because I hate that archtype), but I genuinely believe that LE already is in a great spot in terms of build viability and diversity for builds reaching 300-500 corruption (which is the upper end of what I would consider reasoanble). Again Dungeon are really bad as a gauge for builds because you can do them with basically any build if you ahve the mechanical skills.
But having builds that can do some things easier or harder then other is just the nature of complex loot/build driven games and that is totally ok. How much time and effort players are willing to put into specific builds is also something that is very hard to balance around, because there are so many different player types.
But I love, when there are builds, even though they require huge amoutns of investment and time, can still work well if you put in the time and work. I don’t care fi they are objectively bad at the end of the day.
I couldn’t think of a worse example than PoE even if you asked me to think for a week about it. They literally let you mix every skill in the game with every skill in the game. The only thing you cannot mix and match is sub-classes, and you honestly don’t lose out much, mostly stats.
This game is super restrictive on what skills you can match with which skills, adding even more restriction with the class thing feels wrong. Let me throw meteorites with a flame spell-blade and let me transform into a bear as a storm shaman.
Lot’s of cool concepts arbitrarily locked by this, and the game could definitely do with more build variety.
It was a perfect comparison, what are you on about? I mentioned how powerful you could be to freely pick notables from different Dualist ascendancies, no different from being able to freely pick whatever you want in LE. Perfect example, user error on your end.
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at your face of how derisory is the number