Just a suggestion. As someone who plays poe and loves theory crafting and spending a bunch of time in POB, I know a large number of poe players that might be on the fence coming over to LE would do it if there was a pob style build creator / calcultor for LE.
I read another thread on this and understand that concept of POE being bloated and LE, therefore, not really needing it. That makes sense, but pob is used for more than just tying to make your build work / be viable. It is also, very heavily used for theory crafting an idea you have and getting a projection of what that build would be like before spending a huge number of hours a lot of players donât have.
That aside, there is a third subset: ppl who are just addicted to dinking around in pob and play it, quite literally, as a game in itself and then POE is just sort of a secondary thing to test out you thing.
If anyone from LE feels the same way, Iâd be willing to contribute however I can to helping create a pob style tool. Heck the pob creators have made it all open source and would probably be willing to help create a version for LE.
Not that i think it would be a bad thing, but the fact that you canât really create a reasonable build in PoE without PoB is one of the many reasons I find it to be as annoying as F these days.
Again, itâs a perfectly reasonable idea, in part because iâm a little fuzzy on how some of the affixes are applied to damage, but iâm not convinced that it will bring that many people over.
People who (still) like PoE are unlikely to switch simply because thereâs a good build calculator.
Having a platform to theory craft, save and pitch your own ideas to fellow community members is awesome.
But having too much details within that platform (in form of dps, eHP etc.) is actually something that I do not want to see.
I think not having every single detail about a game is fine, we donât need to know how much attack or cast time a skill has and if x amount of cast or attack speed improves our dps by 1%.
A game should be played based on how much a given build feels and not because Build A does 2% more dps than Build B.
Things like this will become the only factor build are judged upon by the community, which hurts the game overall.
So I would argue that what we already have with the current level of data mining and insight into some game mechanics already is too much and I definitely donât want even more.
I feel very strongly that this attitude is a negative and inevitable result of POE being so dominant for as long as it has been. The reality is that POE is excessively complicated, full of traps, extremely unforgiving of mistakes, and punishing to casual experimentation. In that environment, it is only natural that people would avoid learning and growing through play, rather than spending hours dicking around with spreadsheets and third party tools. IMO, the fact that POB and heavy theorycrafting are considered so important (if not outright mandatory) to succeed reflects very negatively on POEâs design.
Personally, while I still get a broad general idea using LastEpochTools, LEâs design has made me feel safe in experimenting with build concepts directly in the game. For example, Iâve never once gotten into a situation where I full on bricked a character because my build turned out to be ass but I couldnât afford to spec out of it. Meanwhile in POE, without a massive stockpile of Regrets, you run that risk any time you donât POB yourself into a coma.
Iâm not saying that to say somebody shouldnât make a POB equivalent for LE, but rather that itâs important to recognize that LE could afford people who have POE-TSD an opportunity to remember how to like playing games without a spreadsheet telling them in advance that theyâre going to succeed.
Also:
PathofBuilding for LE would bring more POE players over
Iâm not convinced this is as desirable as it is sometimes made out to be.
Have you guys contacted them over on their github community fork page? If not, Iâll write them and ask if theyâd be interested. Maybe even throw them a few bucks or if there is a programmer here who thinks theyâd be able to work with the open source pob code, Iâd be one to contribute some $$$ for your work and time.
Yeah I hear what youâre saying. And actually to add to your point, iâll point out the stupidity of the poe ninja ladder website (main poe ladder) importing from pob feeds is super jenky and a very bad way to develop a global ladder with literally just 2 sort features. Eg. Summoners arenât ever, one single time imported correctly.
That said, it is still one of the coolest gaming 3rd party programs Iâve encountered and LE would probably attract a ton more players with their own version of it.
I really respect what youâre saying here, and understand.
I agree that poe just let bloat get too far out of hand, and theyâve also made a system with a bias to only increase bloat further. For example, how they had evasion and dodge. It is really the same thing, but they explained the difference to have things to do with âthings being multiplicativeâ and math order of operations stuff rather than any intuitive explanation. I mean I understand poeâs rules, and find them to be fine personally, but I can totally see how it would be horrendous if you hadnât played the game for 15 years like me so I do think I agree with what you guys are doing more than what poe is.
Trying not too be too negative about your suggestion. i think the current calculations could be, and should be improved. Iâm very annoyed with particular weapons decreasing my tooltip when i think they should increase it.
However itâs a scale thing. Something that is of the scale of PoB is definitely to be avoided, and it comes from a very philosophical place about what kind of game I want LE to be.
@BroncoCollider mentioned experimentation. i think thatâs critical. i can screw around witha build and have fun with it pretty much into 90s monoliths, recover from mistakes, farm gear, and generally just do what i think is ârightâ and it will work, more or less. iâve had a couple of ugly failures, but goes with the territory
Buzzy, I think that if LE specifically wants to avoid that, as a company, then yes, a tool that could lend to further complexifying / bloating mechanics as I originally suggested wouldnât be wise.
No, not at all. Donât worry about that. To be clear, I honestly just didnât know LE had this game philosophy as a company, and it makes complete sense to me; and also, I understand why a pob sort of tool wouldnât be wanted.
Still, if as a company you were interested in getting those poe players right now that are pissed with the 3.19 league, it would be a great method from a business perspective
The build planner is just about everything I need when I want to theorycraft a bit. This usually lasts 30 minutes max on some of my work breaks.
I donât get the skill damage, DPS and EHP in detail, but I also donât need it.
Thereâs not such a thing of optimization near PoE level, all the optimization you will ever need is:
Load you actual character into the planner.
Find the best possible bases in combination with the desired combat blessings. There are on average 4 viable bases in each slot, and we have only 5 blessing sources to play with (combat-wise). Thereâs no BiS per se, not even per class, or build, as many T6-T7 affixes if youâre lucky, match the blessing magnitudes so you can change them for other effects. And very few bases feel mandatory.
Then check out what special affixes you have for you class in chest/helm/weapon of choice, and relic, the other slots have generic affixes you will learn what is possible and what is not. Put whatever you want.
Round it up with idols.
Finally tweak your skills/passives if needed, you will try those in-game, withing a few monos, so you donât need to set them in stone. You can come back later.
Also there is some interesting information in for some decission-making without going too in-depth: your melee/throwing/spell/bow increased damage of any damage type, your total flat damage, your crit multi, and a breakdown of all sources for resists, health, attributes, dodge, armour, crit, etc, if you hover over the calculated values.
I dont think this is necessarily a good thing. PoE needs PoB because the game has become so bloated and obtuse. I feel the app has made the game loose a lot of charm in exchange for seeing how to absolutely optimize your build.
I should clarify, this is more in regard to trade than SSF, because even if you find a really cool item on the ground in trade, if it doesnt align with the mirror tier item you made in PoB, you will just throw it in a tab to sell. That, imo is no fun, and is a reason why I play SSF. PoB is much more of a utility to gauge where I am in SSF, rather than an item simulator where an item that realistically isnt obtainable is the only âacceptableâ item to slot.
Its fun to just play and adjust your build accordingly when you find an interesting item on the ground. PoB warriors dont operate like that.
Ive used PoB a fair bit and honestly its great for knowing if âxxâ Wand is an upgrade before you spend currency or optimising tree pathing or squeezing out another aura from reservation - for ESTABLISHED builds
But overall its toxic as hardly anyone tries things out, they âPoB itâ and think âhmm only 5m DPS its shitâ not even potentially knowing how the skill functions internally. Spend 5 hours PoBing unobtainable builds and even posting their creations online which arent even fleshed out but have gear they will never see and some people pad their PoBs with conditionals they cant ever have ie âkilled recently/not killed recentlyâ at the same time
If you post a guide it has to contain a PoB, someone will go through it and tear it apart, the problem again is because the program has every single calculation basically you can spend hours playing around in this tool and not the game at all
I resemble resent that remark, some of us enjoy dicking around for hours with spreadsheets. But I agree, PoEâs design is a significant evolutionary pressure towards something like PoB, which is not always a good thing & IMO, not a pressure that exists in LE at the moment. But I would also like lastepochtools to be able to calculate all skill damage.
Or, and this is just a wild idea, when MP is launched & @EHG_Mike can get back to finishing off the updated character screen, maybe that will help significantly. shrugs
But I generally agree with what youâre saying. Apart from the bit about spreadsheets, they are your friend & they love you.
Yes & no, while discovery is awesome, so is being able to find actual stats/data/mechanics out about a game.
I think it would, I agree, but âthe metaâ will (& has) developed without a PoB-like tool.
Youâre wrong & Iâm fine with that.
I donât like GitHub, itâs overly confusing if youâre not a software nerd.
Personally Iâd like to see what Mike has in store for us before somebody starts a load of work on something like PoB. Plus Dammittâs build planner does most of the work for us, diminishing the need.
I think part of that is that PoE players have been conditioned for years/decades by PoEâs ever growing bloat & complexity to need PoB, so if thereâs a game that doesnât have it that gives them an unpleasant level of anxiety. Iâd also kinda agree with Heavy that I donât think itâs needed whether people want it or not.
But that is exactly my point. Not being able to tell if Build A or Build B is âbetterâ will lead to bigger tolerances within the community.
Yes there still will be top tier meta build, but it will be a lot more debatable which ones are âthe bestâ
If you compare two builds and canât tell a big difference in practical use they are more equally judged.
But if you could tell with too precise tools that Build A deals 1000000dps and Build B deals 900000dps people might not even look at Build B even though in practice you might not even be able to tell a difference
I donât think it will be used exclusively to find the highest damage build, maybe if people are bored. I think it will be more like: âI like this skill and itâs gameplay, what does it take to make it viable?â in my perception PoB is used for that purpose, not to find the most broken build to be promoted as the meta. Also the build has to deliver ingame, there doesnât help any calculators DPS number. That would just be bait.
If you arenât using any putative LE PoB to min max then having the damage calculations are irrelevant and the build planner is more than sufficient to create a build and check that you have everything you need (defences). The only reason to have damage calculations is to min max which pushes you towards playing the most âefficientâ build possible.
Or to make informed decisions. âHow much % increased damage does the build need to start investing into crit multi?â Questions like this/ min-maxing arenât hard to answer for people with knowledge and the patience to work with spreadsheets. DPS calcs in a planner would help making this more accessible.
Regarding OP, i think dammits planner is great and i think damage calcs are planned for it. But donât know if there is a local offline version planned or if he accepts contributions to make it more PoB style.
Edit:
also regarding Heavys 1mil vs 900K damage example. Imagine you have one spare point for sigils. Do you put it in damage node for 1mil and clunky play style or do you prefer QoL to get sigils on kill, but only 900k dps?
