[Megathread] Path of Exile

[KrayZ33]

No, the cost of respec has nothing to do with it. The people that go look up a build guide do it because they don't like math, they don't want to bother learning how things work, and/or they're just lazy. Go look at pretty much any RPG that allows for character build customization. World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 1 & 2, City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxy, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Diablo 1/2/3/4, heck even pen & paper RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, etc. all have build guides because some people just can't be bothered to do it themselves. If respecs were free, none of this would change.

It's certainly not the only reason but I agree that it has to do something with it as well.
I can't afford to go into a completely different direction anymore, I'm just not rich enough to respec.
3 nodes take 10% of my gold (10k out of 100k) Ascension perks are even more expensive.
I even have to respec attribute nodes frequently due to gear restrictions. I actually ended up bricking myself once and if the respec wasn't there, I would've lost access to my weapon. If I had gambled my money away before, I would've had to borrow money, lol.

For some reason you can unequip gear if it makes other gear unavailable.
And that's problematic because that gear can have stats too and you go into a "death spiral."
I unequipped gear A, which made gear B not work anymore, gear B hat stats for gear A, which meant I couldn't reequip gear A anymore and thus lost access to half my slots.

Sometimes I also didn't notice that I lost access to one of my skills when I equipped a different chest or something.

I can understand anyone who just doesn't want to mess with this a whole lot when they get penalized for taking a wrong step.

I also started looking at guides exactly because I didn't want to waste more gold, especially since I don't understand all the mechanics yet and I'm not sure if talent XY actually works like it "should".
If I could just respec I'd try it out and see for myself if two handed weapons works for bows, or if the the ailment% increase makes it feel different from not having it.
Stuff like that.


It's kinda awkward to say that they "don't want to learn how things work" when the gold costs is part of why they can't just try out things like they want and learn how things work.
It's the same deal with skill gems btw.. The materials used for creating a new spell with enough links is at the very least problematic when it comes to "testing stuff out" and "learning how things work".

[Nzx]

The people that go look up a build guide do it because they don't like math, they don't want to bother learning how things work, and/or they're just lazy.

Please tell me how I'm supposed to determine whether I should take 15% elemental penetration or 3/3/10% skill speed in this game? I have 51% fire penetration already, I get exposure from one of my abilities, but I have a tri-ele weapon and some bonus damage inflicted to enemies per ailment they're suffering, so it's in my best interest to also deal tri-ele damage. The skill speed will impact on my ability to sustain mana as well, so help me figure out how much leech resistance at-level mobs and bosses have so that I can figure out whether I need insta-leech, faster leech, slower leech, and/or increased leech to help me sustain.

While you're working that out would you mind also figuring out when the optimal time for me to swap to crit would be? I have access to a variety of crit chance and crit damage bonuses but many of them are conditional and some of them reduce my crit damage or chance as well. Given the math is super easy, you like it, you're not lazy, and you're bothered about learning how things work I assume this won't take you too long and it'd be awesome if I didn't have to spend 50k gold every time I need to respec 10 points.

p.s. Any chance you want to tell me how much accuracy I need at 6.9 metres to ensure my grenades always hit? There's a couple nodes here that give me 60% increased accuracy at close range which I don't think I need but if you could explain the formula and determine whether the "30% reduced penalty to Accuracy Rating at range" node is worthwhile that'd be wicked sick.

Look forward to your response bro I can't wait to save myself some gold.

[Cyclone Jack]

Respec cost is an issue... why shouldn't people be allowed to build their own spec without having to resort to looking up some cookie cutter build? At 25'ish it costs 500+ gold per node, which is just obscene... that should be the cost for a full respec.

I'm not saying the cost of respec is where it needs to be, I'm just saying that removing the cost of respec entirely will not change the fact that a lot of people use builds guides instead of making their own build. A lot of people just don't care about making their own build, they just want to play, and freespecs won't change that.

I'm personally of the feeling that gold drops need to be bumped up a bit (~10%) and respec costs need to be dropped by an equal amount, since gold is also used for buying/gambling gear (which is another way of helping a bricked character), and is also shared across all characters. So respeccing one character, or trying to get some better gear for an under-performing character, depletes the gold of all characters. However, they need to do this is small increments, because its always easier to increase drops than to decrease them. They just need to find that sweet spot, which will take time and iteration.

- - - Updated - - -

Please tell me how I'm supposed to determine whether I should take 15% elemental penetration or 3/3/10% skill speed in this game? I have 51% fire penetration already, I get exposure from one of my abilities, but I have a tri-ele weapon and some bonus damage inflicted to enemies per ailment they're suffering, so it's in my best interest to also deal tri-ele damage. The skill speed will impact on my ability to sustain mana as well, so help me figure out how much leech resistance at-level mobs and bosses have so that I can figure out whether I need insta-leech, faster leech, slower leech, and/or increased leech to help me sustain.

While you're working that out would you mind also figuring out when the optimal time for me to swap to crit would be? I have access to a variety of crit chance and crit damage bonuses but many of them are conditional and some of them reduce my crit damage or chance as well. Given the math is super easy, you like it, you're not lazy, and you're bothered about learning how things work I assume this won't take you too long and it'd be awesome if I didn't have to spend 50k gold every time I need to respec 10 points.

p.s. Any chance you want to tell me how much accuracy I need at 6.9 metres to ensure my grenades always hit? There's a couple nodes here that give me 60% increased accuracy at close range which I don't think I need but if you could explain the formula and determine whether the "30% reduced penalty to Accuracy Rating at range" node is worthwhile that'd be wicked sick.

Look forward to your response bro I can't wait to save myself some gold.

While this is for PoE1, I'm sure there will be one for PoE2 at some point: https://pathofbuilding.community/ That'll help you fine tune just about any build you can think of. I used it extensively for my DW Melee Elementalist, Whispering Ice, Death's Oath, and my Pocketmancer builds. However, the majority of my characters just wing it, so to speak. If I find that if some nodes aren't working out as well as I intended, or if I feel that something else might be better, then I'll plan on swapping those out within the next few levels. I've never run into a scenario where I needed to make sweeping changes to a character, though I have had plenty of characters that were just bad designs overall.

Also, I'm not a fan of "swapping" builds half-way through the game, so I'd build for crit from the start rather than swapping to crit later on, but that's just me. I'm willing to state that I would not be a good judge of when to build swap because I don't have any experience with it; I never understood its purpose. I just build for what I'm going to play.

Now, I do believe that GGG should grant out freespecs when they make sweeping changes, such as in the case of the "Cast on" nerfs, and it should have been granted to all characters that had a "Cast on" support gem socketed in their character at the time of the patch. That's on them.

Also, I believe that 6.9m is well beyond the "Close Range" metric and as such the close range accuracy would not be of any benefit. In PoE1 Close Range was about twice the range of melee, or so I recall. Edit: Now, if you were in close range, I would say they would definitely be worth getting, especially if you're using Flash Grenades.

[Fencers]

Time to do the respec, and gear. Why do you need more?

To have a sense of weight to the action. Lifting a feather is different than lifting a dumbbell.

Would you not say that greater freedom to actually experiment and figure out a build yourself instead of just copy/pasting a build from a guide is a worthy trade-off?

Sure, and that is both the design intent and expression of the Path of Exile 1 and 2.

POB doesn't exist within POE. Awakened POE Trade doesn't exist within POE. Jungroan's build guide or Zizarian's league starter is not within POE. They exist outside the game as meta-knowledge, videos and optional tools.

Because that's what reality is for a ton of people, precisely because they don't want to lose money on trying to do it themselves and having to respec.

Sure. Many people look up the solution to puzzles in The Pedestrian, walkthroughs for Elden Ring, or cheats for Red Dead Redemption, etc. Few developers design a game for cheaters.

That "friction" is an artificial barrier, and just because it can be overcome doesn't automatically mean it should exist.

That is the way games work; they are a system of rules and artificial barriers. "Do Not Pass Go", "Move 3 Spaces Forward", "Draw A Card", etc.

Limitations are gameplay. You are free to look up many GDC talks where developers from boardgames to video games talk about this in depth. Chris Crawford's lecture on the dragon is highly recommended.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say with this. In some games, you can. In this game you... can't.

Technically, we can refund in POE1 and 2 in two clicks, two clicks in D4, and one click in Undecember. However, I was making a point that having a barrier or friction to choices lends more psychological weight to player actions.

Remove friction and the only cost of that action is the mouse click. Many developers and I disagree with that parity of action as being significant.

I am actually shocked you'd so grossly miss the point here. The point I'm making is that people do this because of the respec cost. People perceive a barrier as too high and therefore seek to circumvent it; and your response to that is ah well people will always circumvent anything no need to investigate if maybe the barrier is a problem.

No, I fundamentally disagree with your notion. It is merely your feeling people look up guides because of the respec cost. Your anecdotal evidence of this idea is no better than my anecdotal experience in this regard; a guy in our discord looked up a build guide for Settlers, it was his first time playing the POE1. He had no idea of respec cost or what barriers existed to rearranging a build before playing the game. He looked up a build because he felt he was new and wanted to play alongside the other folks jumping in on Settlers at the time.

The cost of respec is perceptive and subjective to the player. Players can look up guides, cheats, tools, and mods for all sorts of reasons that are not inherently the cost of respec. There is no reason to assert that impulse(s) are driven by the market price of Regrets or gold.

Can you appreciate how many people do not? And why?

Sure. But people dislike many things about games. Game design is creative- I don't love all the design choices of my favorite games. That doesn't change the choices they made as developers.

And how GGG themselves are concerned about this, given their proactive measures against too much guide/build publicity and the community calls for easier import functions?

I am not sure what you mean here. Johnathan, Mark, and Chris have all said that 3rd party tools are a player's choice. GGG has stated that they do not and will never allow players within the game the same degree of simulation or foresight as 3rd party tools recently as the Kaoko Games interview.

It's evident that a lot of people do this; I'm sure you could go and check the hits for build websites and see just how prevalent using build guides is in this community. Or how many PoE content creators primarily focus on build guide content.

This is, again, not a notion I agree with you on as it is your speculation.

There are many factors why build content is more numerous in ARPGs compared to other ancillary game content of other genres. Especially in POE1/2 which are the most enthusiast-centric ARPGs in the current market.

And you think that if respec cost was removed, it somehow wouldn't be "part of your build"? You think people wouldn't choose a different build based on the gear they have or the part of the game they're at?

This wouldn't apply to the multi-phase tree build I was referencing. I think you misunderstood or don't know how that works in POE1 or Last Epoch because your question here doesn't make sense. Not sure what you mean.

And there isn't in PoE either

Feelings are subjective. I feel it does. You feel it does not. Your feeling isn't more right than my feelings or GGG's on the matter.

because most people don't "work hard" on any build

Totally disagree. Every day someone is posting on the forums and Reddit their build proudly, multiple subreddits exist just for people to show this off. Multiple websites, in fact.

- they don't want to, because it costs them money.

Totally your assumption/opinion. No evidence exists that this is the primary driver of seeking a build guide. I have not seen GGG state this is the case either. That is your personal take.

- - - Updated - - -

edit: I realized that this sounds like a personal attack, but I'm not actually attacking you as a person but your current standpoint.

No offense taken.

Nah, that's simply lying and shows how delusional you are in that regard.

I am lying about my eyesight? I don't know what to tell you here.

You are struggling to face reality if you think that there "is no such thing as objectively bad game design"

This is narcissism and ignorance on your part. No creative work is objectively good or bad.

By your logic, that would mean every game deserves a 10/10 rating.

I do not agree with the notion 10/10 is a hallowed rating or standard delivered from Moses on down. Every rating of a creative work is a subjective measure of the person handing out the rating.

If you like a game greatly and wish to say it is 10/10, that is fine. It is totally your subjective opinion. No "10/10" rating of any game, record, film, book, TV show, etc, by any person is objective.

It's really, really pathetic and the reason why we can't have nice things. Apologists like you are representing right now really just hurt the gaming community. Obvious mistakes and learned game design approaches this industry survived on are being ignored here.

I don't even know what you are talking about here.

POE2 is currently in beta. A lot of the game isn't even fully available yet - from classes to skills, weapons, acts, the endgame, tooltips, in-game art, et cetera. It seems unreasonable to think an unfinished beta would be unchanging during its testing phase.

It's 100% clear to see that there is a conflict appearing when you have to DODGE things to not DIE, but CAN'T SEE these things.

That's not really how dodge works in POE2; it doesn't make you invulnerable. It actually slows you down compared to walking. That is a mechanical error on the player's part. You don't have to dodge roll to avoid attacks. You dodge roll to cancel YOUR OWN attacks.

That distinction is important when you are talking about the mechanics of combat in POE2. Most stuff is visible in POE2; stat-based defense is the primary defensive mechanism in POE 1 and 2.

There is absolutely, objectively, nothing good about this design approach.

This is your opinion. Not an objective fact.

It's just logical that it isn't and again, requires no more than 2 brain cells to see.

But it seems you do not understand the game mechanics or have actually played any of the high-tier maps to make these assumptions and claims. You even said earlier that you are not even going to play the endgame because of a video you watched... I mean, logically.

Do you honestly think otherwise? For what illogical reason should game design be exempt from something that is true everywhere else.

I don't know what you are talking about or points of comparison, frankly. "Everywhere else"?

No game designer would intentionally make this design decision, there is simply NO WAY.

Pretty Solider Sailor Moon, Vampire Survivors, Rondo of Blood, Samurai Ace, Gana Blade. These games had intentionally obscured enemy attacks.

You enjoying projectiles is one thing, that has nothing to do with the problem at hand that I was mentioning.
If this game were meant to be a "bullet hell" you might had a point, but this is clearly not the intention when you include game mechanics such as dodge rolls.

Again, that is not how dodge rolling works in POE2. It's not an iframe trigger, it's a self-attack cancel. There is a penalty for standing up from a dodge roll.

Man, every "Cast On X" seemed like it got gutted.

I changed my mind on the patch adjustment! It did brick my Forst Sorc, so I began working more on my Ranger. The energy accumulation changes worked out well for bosses when using multi-hit and salvo-type skills. Using Freezing Salvo and Barrage with Retention and Impetus can 2 tap Candlemass.

[Edge-]

Rofl, you can now dodge roll off the caravan in A2

Spoilers

No, the caravan doesn't actually move, just the terrain underneath it. There's static terrain and a little area off the side

[Fencers]

I think the drop rates for uniques have been increased as well. I am not sure if it's a stealth buff or I am just pushing faster on Ranger.

I reckon I could finish an act in about 5-6 hours or less in normal. In cruel, I will likely be able to blast this shit at like 3 hours.

I got a 2 slot rare bow with 6 juicy mods. Using snipe at the start of a fight drops bosses like 2/3rs hp then salvo deletes the remaining HP.

Lightning Rod/Arrow into packs and I clear maps before I see most mobs.

[Volatilis]

Unique drop rate was definitely buffed. I got more in one evening than I have since launch.

I knew when I saw the birds in the forest maps I was gonna like this game because little details like that tell me alot about how much care went into creating the environments but when I was in act 3 forest and a primate busted out of a cage I was like just give it goty already.

Not to mention they have already changed more in a few days close to Xmas than other developers did with 3 months with thier arpg. I can't see these guys going 1/4 of a year to fix a game breaking bug like resistances not working.

[Edge-]

Made a witch and merc as I'll tinker around with hem on the side. Between having some knowledge and not being totally new and them both being ranged the first zone was hilariously easy compared to my fuckin warrior holy shit lol.

[Fencers]

There is a D2 mod that makes it more like POE1, I forgot the name of it. I would love to play a game that was set in the Diablo universe that played something between Demon Souls and Path of Exile 2.

The move away from mods in the ARPG genre able to overhaul the game in favor of live service has been kinda sad for me. I greatly enjoyed a lot of D2 survival mods or Uber Diablo on every other map and so on. I would love to play a POE2-like game where that kind of danger is wrought by the community's imagination.

The structure of POE2 is very much to my enjoyment so far. Though, I should also say again that I am an OG Ruthless enjoyer.

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post54093647

[Cyclone Jack]

The move away from mods in the ARPG genre able to overhaul the game in favor of live service has been kinda sad for me.

This hit me right in the feels. There have been some amazingly good ARPG mods throughout the years. D2 had a bunch (I even made a few smaller ones myself waaay back in the day), Tchernobog for D1 was fairly solid when I messed with it a few years back, TQ and GD both had some really good mods as well (GD: Reign of Terror is pretty impressive). The genre moving more towards SaaS has bummed me out as well. I was hoping that Leagues in PoE1 would allow for a bit of customization, like picking and choosing which League and Race Modifier effects you want active, but Leagues ended up being a pretty huge let down for me.

[Fencers]

This hit me right in the feels. There have been some amazingly good ARPG mods throughout the years. D2 had a bunch (I even made a few smaller ones myself waaay back in the day), Tchernobog for D1 was fairly solid when I messed with it a few years back, TQ and GD both had some really good mods as well (GD: Reign of Terror is pretty impressive). The genre moving more towards SaaS has bummed me out as well. I was hoping that Leagues in PoE1 would allow for a bit of customization, like picking and choosing which League and Race Modifier effects you want active, but Leagues ended up being a pretty huge let down for me.

Well, I love the POE1 seasons. That is undeniably a major factor in growing POE1's popularity. It keeps the game fresh in a way no other ARPG previously was able to do. Most ARPGs since POE1 established the idea in the genre have copied the idea of robust season content.

I thought POE1 private leagues were going to be modular. But they are just a paid lobby and that disappointed me.

I have great memories of playing D2 and Titan Quest mods late into the night with my friends & family.

[KrayZ33]

The sentence by sentence quoting really sucks btw, especially if you can't even keep the discussion intact and are completely missing the points being made because of it. Either way, since we started doing this:

I am lying about my eyesight? I don't know what to tell you here.

What do you mean?
This was not about your eyesight.
If you are implying that you can see the effects that are happening below your spellcast animations then I guess yes, you are lying, as it's physically impossible to do so since these effects are overwritten.

What I actually said however was that you are lying when you say games can't have objectively bad game design.
It's just wrong and it's also wrong to assume that "creative work can't be objectively bad".
I'm not sure what this feely-mushy-whatever thing you are implying games are, but it's not the reality.
You may as well argue that a car that breaks down every 2 meters, is not objectively bad. If even that example isn't enough to show you that design choices can be bad, then you are irrational.
If you design your car to work like this on purpose, it's bad design.
If you designed it to be different, it's a mistake that should be fixed.

This is narcissism and ignorance on your part. No creative work is objectively good or bad.

See the point above, it's simply the truth. Games aren't 100% art, this issue we are talking about has nothing to do with art either.
You are wrong. Sadly, you are just ignorant about it yourself.

I do not agree with the notion 10/10 is a hallowed rating or standard delivered from Moses on down. Every rating of a creative work is a subjective measure of the person handing out the rating.

If you like a game greatly and wish to say it is 10/10, that is fine. It is totally your subjective opinion. No "10/10" rating of any game, record, film, book, TV show, etc, by any person is objective.

Again, this isn't just art. It's not a picture you are looking at.
Yes, if I wish to say it's a 10/10 then it's my opinion, but once again that's not the issue. You are missing the point dramatically here.
There may be situations where poor work can be used as an artform or whatever, but that is clearly not what you are looking at.

I don't even know what you are talking about here.
POE2 is currently in beta. A lot of the game isn't even fully available yet - from classes to skills, weapons, acts, the endgame, tooltips, in-game art, et cetera. It seems unreasonable to think an unfinished beta would be unchanging during its testing phase.

That is because you are ignorant to what you yourself are saying it seems, which is weird but actually happening here right now.
You describe poor quality as an artform in the context of this game.
If we go that route we may disengage from discussing anything because it's pointless to point out flaws in this game.
The second sentence here has nothing to do with the what is being argued.
Never did I imply nothing will change, nor do I expect that nothing will change. The issue at hand however is, that the gaming industry has established rules you are allowed to move away from, but in the end are there for a reason.
Again, creating games isn't 100% art, technical knowledge is included and system are established for a very good reason.
There are reasons why they avoid or do certain things in a specific way and it's not because of "art".
Yes, I'm being very vague here but I can be specific too, and I already was.

One shot mechanics that you have to dodge, but can't see, is bad game design. This is the design equal to "a car that breaks down every 2 meters" mentioned earlier.
This is logical, everyone who is honest can agree on this. Yes, that means, as I even mentioned it before, any "opinion" that differs from that point of view can be disregarded - that is the example of saying "eating shit is great" or "genocides are fine". They sound absurd, I know, but that's just how absurd it would be to disagree with this. The fact that you tried to handwave it away again by saying "hey they are all kinds of kinks" is disturbing btw and shows that you are unwilling to be honest or logical about this.
Yes, 0,00001% may disagree, but - they - don't - matter nor should they have received any platform to even argue this.
This game is NOT intended to be the most frustrating experience ever. A car is not intended to be slower than walking etc.
This game is INTENTED to be fun for more than the 0,00001% that disagree on the bolded claim , do you disagree here too?
Then lets just stop arguing because this has no purpose anymore as we are unable to move forward.

Btw, if you disagree because you are saying that no such mechanics exist, then that's different from what I'm getting at.

That's not really how dodge works in POE2; it doesn't make you invulnerable. It actually slows you down compared to walking. That is a mechanical error on the player's part. You don't have to dodge roll to avoid attacks. You dodge roll to cancel YOUR OWN attacks.



That distinction is important when you are talking about the mechanics of combat in POE2. Most stuff is visible in POE2; stat-based defense is the primary defensive mechanism in POE 1 and 2.

What do you mean that's not "really" how it works.
PoE2 Dodgerolls has i-frames, at least against most attacks.
But that doesn't even have to do with anything that is being said. You roll away from an attack, that you have to see to roll away from. What's your point?? If you don't you are too slow, so you roll, right? This isn't a matter of I-frames, it's what the dodgeroll is for.
You don't just think you use dodgerolls to cancel animations for more DPS, do you? Isn't it so that you also think that you use dodgerolls to dodge stuff and attacks, especially WHILE you are doing attacks and animations?

This is your opinion. Not an objective fact.

No, it's a fact that if you *have* to dodge attacks, you should be able to see it or have some way of knowing that they are coming. Visual cues, voice, sound, whatever, but an attack that just removes your HP to 0 that you can do nothing about is bad game design.
This is the point I'm talking about for a while now.

But it seems you do not understand the game mechanics or have actually played any of the high-tier maps to make these assumptions and claims. You even said earlier that you are not even going to play the endgame because of a video you watched... I mean, logically.

Bold claim, I have no idea why you think I need to play and not just "see" it with my own eyes though.
I've watched streams of screens that are mostly blue. So blue, that you neither see the players nor monsters anymore, for sure you can't see the abilities.
In fact, during these streams, you have people constantly not seeing stuff.
I'm also not saying that the game is unplayable or anything like that, I'm saying that timing your dodges / dodging attacks becomes impossible if you can't see the attack. Why would you dodge if you can't see what's happening, especially if you - as you said, don't have iframes and get penalized for it.
Yet the game actually expected you to dodge it. Do you think that is my opinion too? That the game expects you to dodge things or certain attacks?
Okay, perhaps? But then I've got to say that once more they did a really bad job at explaining that to the player - since they did the opposite when you start this game. But perhaps this is just "art" too or something?

I don't know why I should believe you more than Krip or other streamers though, that seem to share his opinion about this.
It seems to me, that not only do they have way more experience than you too (which seems to be important for game design choices as you are implying here), but they are also quite a bit more honest about the whole thing in general and actually not scared about talking about bad game design choices.
They don't try to make silly arguments about how this is "art" and how that can't be bad etc.

I don't know what you are talking about or points of comparison, frankly. "Everywhere else"?

Pretty Solider Sailor Moon, Vampire Survivors, Rondo of Blood, Samurai Ace, Gana Blade. These games had intentionally obscured enemy attacks.

Can't say I've played everyone of them, but in what world do you think Vampire Survivors designed itself on dodging the attack if you can't see it?
Keep in mind that this is based on what Krip is saying in the video.
He said he is a fully built defensive character, that dies in 0,2s because of an attack he couldn't possibly see and react to.
Vampire Survivors doesn't have this. There aren't "timing based" attacks either, so a completely different approach.
I never said that game designers don't make bosses which have obscured or harder to see attacks btw. You are are constantly missing the point and the point I made isn't actually as hard to spot than enemies in PoE2 btw. I can only assume that since you keep ripping apart posts sentence by sentence, that you lose sight on what is actually going on in that discussion you are having (I'd include me and say "we" but I'm feeling like I have a different discussion)

Again, that is not how dodge rolling works in POE2. It's not an iframe trigger, it's a self-attack cancel. There is a penalty for standing up from a dodge roll.

Again that's just wrong, it's an iframe trigger, the rest is true, including the self-attack cancel, but that doesn't matter.
But if it's wrong, perhaps then the wiki + every PoE2 site should actually change it and remove the part where it says that it provides iframes at the beginning against most attacks, don't you think?


And btw, yes, everything can change, this is EA. I'm not denying that.
I even implied that I look forward to changes before I'll keep engaging with the design choices.



For the sake of everyone, including you and me, I'll however leave it at that, obviously I'm not denying you your statement, if you want to give one, but I'll not engage with it anymore, because I feel like everything has been said here. So I'll leave the last word on this discussion to you, if you want to have it that is.
Thanks though

[schwank05]

Witchhunter mercenary for me,going to try out the new wasd controls

IMO the game plays perfectly and almost seems designed for a Controller. I couldn't play the game with click to move and wasd has never worked for me so I grabbed my PS4 controller, and it is actually playable now.

[kranur]

IMO the game plays perfectly and almost seems designed for a Controller. I couldn't play the game with click to move and wasd has never worked for me so I grabbed my PS4 controller, and it is actually playable now.

Think it needs target lock for controllers. On ranged chars, given the amount of movement needed I frequently find myself shooting spells in a different direction

[schwank05]

Think it needs target lock for controllers. On ranged chars, given the amount of movement needed I frequently find myself shooting spells in a different direction

I have only played Mercenary and not really had an issue.

[Fencers]

The sentence by sentence quoting really sucks btw, especially if you can't even keep the discussion intact and are completely missing the points being made because of it.

Sentence quoting is a technique to speak to and from the point one quotes. I am sorry if you dislike this technique. Forums have been around for decades and this is a common method of addressing someone's post.

I am not missing your points. Fundamentally, I do not agree with your view on video games or game design based on your posts.

I do not honor the player's enjoyment over the artistic intent of a work, in this case, a video game.

In developing a game, a game design is making a creative work. There is nothing objective about a creative work or one's enjoyment of it.

What do you mean?

I mean you can not suppose what I am seeing on my screen and the ability to recognize the mechanics in game. I am in the endgame, I am clearing maps 12+. I am not dying all to invisible effects, obscured effects, and so on.

If you can not see those effects, which you admit you have no experience with at endgame, that is unfortunate. I do hope a high contrast mode is added at some point.

What I actually said however was that you are lying when you say games can't have objectively bad game design.

I did not say this. I said there is no such thing as objectively "bad" game design. "Bad" is a subjective feeling.

It's just wrong and it's also wrong to assume that "creative work can't be objectively bad".

No such thing in human history exists.

Games aren't 100% art, this issue we are talking about has nothing to do with art either.
You are wrong. Sadly, you are just ignorant about it yourself.

If a game is being made by a human, it is art. The expression of a creative idea or skill is art.

The issue at hand however is, that the gaming industry has established rules you are allowed to move away from, but in the end are there for a reason because they are overall clearly there for a reason.

Nonesense. Totally your personal feelings. No game developer receives a handbook of these rules.

What is the committee or organization that hands out these rules?

Again, creating games isn't 100% art, technical knowledge is included and system are established for a very good reason.

That is an art.

One shot mechanics that you have to dodge, but can't see, is bad game design.

In your opinion. This is not in POE2, btw.

What do you mean that's not "really" how it works.
PoE2 Dodgerolls has i-frames.

You only have an i-frame at the start of the animation for the roll. You do not have an i-frames through the roll itself and will still take damage from AOEs while in the roll animation. Further you can phase through projectiles that are in flight, but some projectiles have compounded effects that are both a singular action and AOE; this allows you to phase through the projectile as it travels by you would still take damage from the payload.

Dodge roll is slower than walking. Movespeed and Blink both can modify the dodge roll as well. Neither gives additional i-frames outside of the dodge roll animation start.

If there is an AOE under your feet, dodge roll is not necessarily a good idea. It's often a net loss mechanically and incurs an animation disadvantage in getting up from the floor. Dodge roll to break your animation cycle and start movement is a player advantage. It'

The one-shot mechanics you are concerned about in POE2 would not necessarily be negated by dodge roll. Especially the ones that are (hypothetically) spawning under one's character and we otherwise can not see. That doesn't happen and even if it did, the dodge roll mechanic isn't designed to save you from this type of attack.

The primary defensive layers in Path of Exile 2 are stat-based; Resistance, Armor, Block, Energy Shield, Regen, Recoup, and so on.

No, it's a fact that if you *have* to dodge attacks, you should be able to see it or have some way of knowing that they are coming. Visual cues, voice, sound, whatever, but an attack that just removes your HP to 0 that you can do nothing about is bad game design.
This is the point I'm talking about for a while now.

That exists in POE2. Not in all games, and a game doesn't have to do it one way or another. There is no right or wrong in how a game chooses to apply threats to a player within its rule set.

Bold claim, I have no idea why you think I need to play and not just "see" it with my own eyes though.

I wouldn't value the input of anyone who hasn't engaged with the gameplay expression themselves directly. It is a complete non-strater. Video games are about gameplay, player engage with gameplay directly. No direct engagement with the gameplay is literally not playing the game. No matter how stream you view - someone else's experience of the gameplay and gameplay expression can not be your own.

I don't know why I should believe you more than Krip or other streamers though, that seem to share his opinion about this.

You shouldn't. I am just a regular person playing the game like anyone else. In talking about the game and sharing my experiences as a player all the same. We are all merely adding to the conversation around the game. You are free to trust whomever you wish- I neither seek approval nor consignment in that regard. I am not your mother.

They don't try to make silly arguments about how this is "art" and how that can't be etc.

This is a fundamentally different view between us. I view games as art primarily and firstly. I do not care about the commercial viability or my own enjoyment more than the art of media.

Can't say I've played everyone of them, but in what world do you think Vampire Survivors designed itself on dodging the attack if you can't see it?

The game design of VS allows players to become a disco ball of effects that overwrite all other effects on screen. Enemies, especially DLC bosses, and environmental objects have ground and projectile-based attacks players have to move out of the way or correctly solve to progress the stage.

Both these things, disco ball effects and location-based threats & triggers, are in the game by design. One can, I certainly have, die due to these two deliberate design choices in Vamplire Survivors. There is often a timer tied to these choices as well.

Again that's just wrong, it's an iframe trigger, the rest is true as well but that doesn't matter.
But if it's wrong, perhaps then the wiki + every PoE2 site should actually change it and remove the part where it says that it provides iframes at the beginning, don't you think?

It is wrongly stated and interpreted. The dodge roll, as explain by Mark and Johnathan, does not provide i-frames throughout the roll or phasing. It is only the start of the animation that has an i-frame and players will take damage throughout the roll animation; nor does it provide phase through collision except in instances where projectiles in flight have a single point of collision. There isn't a lot of about the mechanics of POE2 written down yet or necessarily current as Johnathan and Mark's podcasts.

Here are a few pages that discuss the dodge roll.
https://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Dodge_roll
https://www.sportskeeda.com/mmo/path...system-iframes
https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/guides/dodge-roll

Here is a clip of someone explaining in the roll:
https://youtu.be/s8VPAs_8YRA?si=l64Zlj2sEjGP23Kc&t=623

[tikcol]

Finally got my third set of ascendacy points at the trial after failing twice at the last bloody room before the boss and it is actually a pain in the ass dealing with all those minor afflictions by the 3rd boss. It was satisfying though, I hope they don't nerf it.

Now I wonder if I need a level 80+ key for the last 2 points, I'm level 82 so I guess it's dropping soon

[KrayZ33]

It is wrongly stated and interpreted. The dodge roll, as explain by Mark and Johnathan, does not provide i-frames throughout the roll or phasing. It is only the start of the animation that has an i-frame and players will take damage throughout the roll animation; nor does it provide phase through collision except in instances where projectiles in flight have a single point of collision. There isn't a lot of about the mechanics of POE2 written down yet or necessarily current as Johnathan and Mark's podcasts.

Here are a few pages that discuss the dodge roll.
https://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Dodge_roll
https://www.sportskeeda.com/mmo/path...system-iframes
https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/guides/dodge-roll

Here is a clip of someone explaining in the roll:
https://youtu.be/s8VPAs_8YRA?si=l64Zlj2sEjGP23Kc&t=623

Since this isn't just part of what we discussed earlier and a question about the game mechanic, even though you are kinda still missing what I actually said about the dodgeroll and what you use it for:
I still don't get you.
You said it has no iframe, now you say it has iframes but still it's wrong to say it has iframes?
I know that it only has iframes at the beginning, it was never implied otherwise.
So... what is it now.
It's a dodge with iframes (against most attacks), isn't it - what's wrong then and how is it not exactly how it was stated?
I'm confused because 99,9% of games don't give invincibility throughout the whole animation, so this was a given to me.
Or is it the "not against AoE" part that you wanted to point out?






Different question.
If you play poison builds:
Can one skill apply poison multiple times if you increase the maximum amounts of running poisons? Or do they have to come from different sources? i.e. skill A + B and autoattack C or whatever.
And are weaker poisons overwritten with stronger ones automatically? Or do they basically prevent me from applying a stronger one until they run out?



btw:


you tell me if there is something beneath here or not
we all know no one knows. (there are multiple things below it btw. one hostile one beneficial) but my question regarding this:
would each poison cloud from a grenade add up the poison to the maximum amount I can stack (for example)?
Perhaps even from the same skill use if I use multiple projectiles, as is common?

[PACOX]

Rofl, you can now dodge roll off the caravan in A2

Spoilers

No, the caravan doesn't actually move, just the terrain underneath it. There's static terrain and a little area off the side

The terrain in interesting. Had a character run up a wall on a little room. Actually stepped up there until the game said "hey, you're not supposed to be up there"

[Nzx]

While this is for PoE1, I'm sure there will be one for PoE2 at some point: https://pathofbuilding.community/ That'll help you fine tune just about any build you can think of. I used it extensively for my DW Melee Elementalist, Whispering Ice, Death's Oath, and my Pocketmancer builds. However, the majority of my characters just wing it, so to speak. If I find that if some nodes aren't working out as well as I intended, or if I feel that something else might be better, then I'll plan on swapping those out within the next few levels. I've never run into a scenario where I needed to make sweeping changes to a character, though I have had plenty of characters that were just bad designs overall.

Also, I'm not a fan of "swapping" builds half-way through the game, so I'd build for crit from the start rather than swapping to crit later on, but that's just me. I'm willing to state that I would not be a good judge of when to build swap because I don't have any experience with it; I never understood its purpose. I just build for what I'm going to play.

Now, I do believe that GGG should grant out freespecs when they make sweeping changes, such as in the case of the "Cast on" nerfs, and it should have been granted to all characters that had a "Cast on" support gem socketed in their character at the time of the patch. That's on them.

Also, I believe that 6.9m is well beyond the "Close Range" metric and as such the close range accuracy would not be of any benefit. In PoE1 Close Range was about twice the range of melee, or so I recall. Edit: Now, if you were in close range, I would say they would definitely be worth getting, especially if you're using Flash Grenades.

This response was earnest, so I'll give you an earnest one back.

Relying on other people to do the math for you and create PoB is one step removed from just using a guide, and also requires the PoB devs to know/interpret things about the game that it is not reasonable to expect a human being to understand in game. For example, the DMG displayed to you on your skill sheet in PoE2 for Explosive Grenade will go down if you remove a generic more elemental damage support and replace it with 30 fire pen, but you actually have no idea if it's gone up or down or stayed the same. We don't know how much elemental resistance mobs have, it's not displayed as a number anywhere in the game, so the 30% fire pen gem you socketed into your ability may do literally nothing given pen cannot go below 0% any more.

That's the easy example, where you just plug and play a support gem. What's much, much worse is when you path six or seven points out of your path to spec for ele pen, have no idea if it's working or not, and eventually spend ~1hr's worth of playtime in gold to respec it and you STILL don't know if it ever did anything for you.

Not wanting to build swap is fine, but crit builds are almost always worse than non-crit (or even resolute technique) builds until the late game. You can't know this in-game though until you spec all the nodes and get the gear, because there's no in-game planner and there's no fucking way you're doing the math and getting it correct for 80+ passives and all the variables in gear (and you still don't know how much armour/res/evasion mobs have) on a napkin.

The last paragraph is the perfect example of what I'm speaking about. How the fuck are you supposed to know before you start pathing towards it what "close range" is, or what exactly the penalty is for range on accuracy, in order to determine whether it's worth taking or not?

GGG supposedly want you to experiment, but then they punish you for doing so. They want you to experiment, but they deliberately obscure critical variables. They want you to experiment, but getting it wrong means using a scuffed build to farm gold for hours to respec your choices, which means you can't use the currency exchange or buy gear or maps. They want you to experiment but there's no way without an external, non-GGG development team making interpretations of the rules on your behalf and building a program outside of the game to figure out whether 12% increased elemental damage is better, worse, or the same as 12% increased elemental damage taken by enemies who are afflicted by elemental ailments, or even right now what an enemies leech resistance or ailment threshold or whatever the fuck actually are and whether it's worth you speccing to reduce those things.

Yes, when PoB exists these problems are massively reduced. But PoB is just choose-your-own-adventure build guides, and it's a complete cop out on GGG's behalf to expect you to download an external program to save yourself in-game gold. I've homebrewed my Merc entirely and ended up in the Ranger side of the tree with what feels like some cool nodes - but there's no way for me to know, short of spending hundreds of thousands of gold/hours of playtime, whether I should've gone for the fire nodes on the other side of the tree instead. It's just badly designed and unfairly punishing for players.