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 don’t get the skill damage, DPS and EHP in detail, but I also don’t need it.
There’s 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). There’s no BiS per se, not even per class, or build, as many T6-T7 affixes if you’re 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 don’t 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 “acceptable” 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 ‘xx’ 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 ‘PoB it’ and think ‘hmm only 5m DPS its shit’ 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 ‘killed recently/not killed recently’ 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, PoE’s 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 you’re 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 “the meta” will (& has) developed without a PoB-like tool.
You’re wrong & I’m fine with that.
I don’t like GitHub, it’s overly confusing if you’re not a software nerd.
Personally I’d like to see what Mike has in store for us before somebody starts a load of work on something like PoB. Plus Dammitt’s 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 PoE’s ever growing bloat & complexity to need PoB, so if there’s a game that doesn’t have it that gives them an unpleasant level of anxiety. I’d also kinda agree with Heavy that I don’t think it’s 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 “better” 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 “the best”
If you compare two builds and can’t 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 don’t think it will be used exclusively to find the highest damage build, maybe if people are bored. I think it will be more like: “I like this skill and it’s gameplay, what does it take to make it viable?” 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 doesn’t help any calculators DPS number. That would just be bait.
If you aren’t 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 “efficient” build possible.
Or to make informed decisions. “How much % increased damage does the build need to start investing into crit multi?” Questions like this/ min-maxing aren’t 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 don’t 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?
Hey man, you’re talking to a guy who used to write combat simulators for the MMOs I played. We are both of us preacher and choir.
Sure, and that’s totally cool! People should feel free to dick around in spreadsheets as much as they want if that’s how they like to engage with the game. But nobody should feel like the risk of making a build that’s garbage is so high that they have to become a spreadsheet lord just to enjoy the game.
But that is exactly what I want to avoid, people calling certain skills “viable” and other not based of some arbitrary number thresholds.
I totally get the idea of wanting to min-max a build and without such tools it sometimes is a lot trickier to figure out if setup/item A or setup/item B is better.
But the potential negative effects outweight the positive effects IMO.
If you want to know if a certain skill is good or bad, just play it and test it.
You think that doesn’t happen already? That horse has already bolted, won the Grand National, sired many equally exceptional horses & been made into glue & Findus hamburgers.
Right now its very ambiguous (in a good way) if you compare different builds with each other, because there are very few good metrics to measure performances.
Once we get a couple more things that can be used as metrics (more pinnacle bosses with fixed scaling), that will be enough to serve how good or bad a build is IMO.
I agree with everyone, including the op.
I like POB, I don’t have a problem with it but now I just want a sheet to save my char offline, without needing to save a url on a internet favorites
There is a lot of assumptions that PoB is the reason that “Minmax” is so sought after and that people just use it and dont play builds if a build isnt up to snuff.
And while thats true, even I do it. I wont play a build if its PoB numbers are bad. but the caveat is how you use the tool. I look at the build with no gear on, if it can reach acceptable damage before I put on gear, then it means I have a starting point. I also plan my builds only up to say level 80, which is 1-2 days of play.
After that, the real fun of PoB starts. Where you are level 94, import and start looking at how you can respec to get some damage or defense etc. Pulling items from trade to go “oh if I get this ring I get 10% dps AND can respec 5 points out of health while keeping the same hp” etc.
I think if someone boots up pob, creates a level 97 minmaxed character with all gear and goes “oh yikes only X dps” they are using the tool wrong and getting jebaited by the numbers.
A lot of the problem is as arpgs age and there is more minmax/content its not really as simple as “just try out skill X to see if it works” because then you get players who try skill X have a terrible time, and just give up after 50 hours of floundering. if they can see how to make skill X atleast viable to start with at a ground level, they are more likely to try and stick with it to make it work.
Tools dont have to be the be all end all of builds, as tbh its already for LE really easy to calculate the dps of a given skill, or EHP without the tools. And build makers already use catchy thumbnails and “le gasp 2mill dps!!!” etc.
Tldr; A tool is what you make of it, and more tools never hurt.
This is the point entirely and seemingly contradicting yourself, if you looked at my Lake of Kalandra Inquisitor on poeninja you would say my DPS was extremely low (500k) but im using Blazing Salvo which damage is per projectile and shoots 9 and also isnt taking into account other calcs like Brittle/Sap
The first part you took it out of context. I plan my builds with no gear, if my character cant scale with basically just life res gear damage wise out of the gate, or with a cheap unique weapon, that means I as a player most likely wont find it fun. for example if I boot up a self cast arc character who with two crafted +1 lightning wands and no influenced gear or big purchase uniques has like 200k dps, its probably not gonna be a fun build to play.
This is significantly different then booting up a min maxed 97 arc self caster with 50 divines of investment, seeing it has 3m dps and going “disgusting my explosive trapper would have 500m dps, why would I play this trash?”
I want atleast 500k with league start gear, if not its just gonna be wayyyy too hard to league start that. I mostly play one character a league now, so I really dont wanna have to be stuck or god forbid be forced to reroll because im getting owned in white maps cause I picked a dog water starter.
As for the second part, thats just people not knowing how to use the tool, just like how some people go “look at my 500m dps build” and tick a bunch of random shit they dont have or is situational at best like turning on all your 5 unique flasks 24/7 with pinnacle boss tagged.
I guess if it was that easy, then in-game DPS would be 100% correct for any given skill in any situation… So this is just a completely baseless statement.
Machines have to make certain assumptions, but those assumptions are easier to make by hand.
obviously this gets a bit more sketch when we talk about ailments, but for hit based skills? its pretty straight forward.
DPS is a generic value even under the best of math because that does not account for dps uptime.
if you can do basic math, you can get into a ball park of what the dps of a skill given standing there and casting it is.
Tooltip dps also does not account for “debuffs” which is usually why its lower then real dps. because again, the game has no idea what debuffs are at any given time, but we as humans can assume conditions.
Which is why something like PoB can give you nearly perfect values, because we are able to insert all the conditions we can feasible get.
Yeah I know, thats why its a weird statement, his own build website is able to calculate the simple things like meteor dps. Because its a really simple function.
Whats most important to dps a lot of the time is things that just cant be easily assumed automatically, take a skill that overlaps like say meteor with multiple meteors, assuming its dps on say a random skeleton is probably hard, its a very small target. But on something like abomination its much easier for us to assume its dps because we can more easily account for multiple meteors hitting, in some cases even being sure X will hit assuming you aim correctly. Which again, a generic dps machine cant assume player skill or positioning.
Im not saying everyone is out here doing napkin math to prove their dps, but as a math nerd I know ive done dps math by hand for games with more complex formulas then LE or PoE.
What PoB/LEtools are best for is getting your values sorted so you dont have to tally them by hand
