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[nenjin]

First post-release update (1.0.1) comes tomorrow.

I really hope you haven't been enjoying your Cast on Damage Taken gems too much.

Because it's getting the nerf stick taken to it. At max, it's going to take something like 2500 damage before it will proc. The gem that's supported by it can also not be a higher level than the CoDT gem itself.

The numbers make little sense to me. Even on my beefiest characters, I don't come anywhere near that kind of health.

Purity is also getting the nerf bat taken to it. Now it will only increase Maximum Resists. Three new resist gems have been added to the game to handle the three Elemental resists individually.

So if you were enjoying better resists while playing solo.....say g'bye to that too.

I think I've played enough PoE to say.....I hate their interpretation of how resists work. Resists in every ARPG are the end-game height test..."You must have X resists to proceed." Elemental damage and resists or the lack of them become how most games manage difficulty. So in order to play you have to shoehorn resists into your gear, or your build, somewhere.

Except in PoE, that's not enough. No, we need to NERF your base resists in higher difficulties, so you have to stack MORE resists to get the same benefit, requiring excellent gear or significant sacrifices. And once you hit Merciless? Guess what. Even THAT isn't enough, now you need extra maximum resists to get the damage down to a manageable level. It makes soloing at the higher levels just get insane, as your build and your gear end up trying to do 4 different things at once, and not doing any of them particularly well. Late game your choices feel like:

"There's damage, resists and HPs. Which one would you like?" When the truth is you need all three to not have significant fights take 10 minutes, and hinge on lag and/or 1 crucial misclick. There are Uniques in the Scepter of God that basically require you to cheese them with LOS because they're so incredibly nasty, and there is no avoiding their attacks.

I made it to Act 3 Merciless before they nerfed it to make it more beatable. But post-release, I'm worried that I won't even be able to get to Act 2 Merciless, the way Act 3 Cruel is shaping up.

[Aklyon]

The gem that's supported by it can also not be a higher level than the CoDT gem itself.

The level requirement of the gems can't be higher than the one for CoDT, not the gem levels themselves.

[nenjin]

Oops. Yeah. That.

[Descan]

Uhm, Diablo 2 had your base resists driven down by 75 points from each difficulty. Unless you meant something different.

[DemonOfWrath]

While the resist penalties for higher difficulties have been in ARPGs for ages, I do agree that the devs have a rather terrible concept of balance. Seems to me they have a specific idea of how the game should be played (tanky) and then when people come up with alternate ideas they make them seriously unviable. Doesn't help too that the official forums are quite the circle-jerk in support of them. Also they balance around people 'cheating' and using stuff such as alt-F4 to escape death, which is really unfair to those of us who play without using crap like that.

Can't tell you how big a pain trying to run a glass cannon is, which SHOULD be a viable, if not terribly practical build option, and require a decent amount of skill and positioning to pull off, and it is in every other ARPG I've played, but not this one. For context, I played in closed beta, then quit for basically all of open beta, upon which I started releveling my glass cannon fireball witch. Only main differences in build are I've had to move from dual shock nova totems (those were fun, but took me ages to figure out how to make them work well) and manually raising minions, to skeleton totem which is much more boring but practical, although I'm at the point where I can experiment with other stuff to see what works.

And the game has changed significantly to make my life harder, mostly release stuff to be honest. Closed beta I could run maps no real problem, although I did run into a situation where a map boss had enough damage modifiers to 1-shot me with flicker strike which was pretty hilarious. So much of the new stuff in release takes a massive dump on my playstyle. Lightning thorns and those bubble minions in scepter are irritating as all hell, and don't get me started on the Dominus fight's last stage. Something seems off to me when the design of that fight includes "You should build your character to face-tank the final boss". Although I did find out in merciless that if I drag him all the way to the entrance of the arena then he becomes really easy since I don't have to worry about the rain or adds anymore, just make him face away from me with skeletons and hold the fireball button down. I won't say how many deaths that took to achieve though.

To be honest all the new stuff except the damn bubble mobs (they'd be fine too, if they didn't have their huge aoe long-range spell) is alright and after seeing them a bit I've found ways to deal with them without too much difficulty, it's just the dominus fight on top of that is so rediculous that it shows the devs need a wakeup call that there are multiple ways people want to build characters beyond what they consider.

Oh, and desync makes me cry.  I was really surprised to come back after a year and find it was just as bad, possibly worse.

[TherosPherae]

Purity is also getting the nerf bat taken to it. Now it will only increase Maximum Resists. Three new resist gems have been added to the game to handle the three Elemental resists individually.

Other way around, actually. Purity will add to your normal resists until you hit 75%, then it'll stop adding unless you've got Elemental Adaptation, one of the other elemental resist auras, or a few certain uniques running. The new single-element auras are the ones that add to your maximum resistance, letting you go above 75% resistance to that specified element while adding a significant amount of resistance to that element to boot.

That said, I'm pretty sure the most-used one is going to be Purity of Lightning, because of a certain wonderful unique called Lightning Coil.

[nenjin]

Heh, got most of the big points wrong didn't I? Most of that stuff is still pretty above my head anyways. I have CoDT, but no where near enough HP to make it worth it, even with the unleveled gem.

[Seriyu]

I've recently been running a hardcore two hander dualist with flicker strike and double strike, along with cleave for huge mobs, and maaaan, I steamrolled weaver, which has given me trouble on literally every other character so far. Only had to go back to town once against merveil with no cold resist.

Life leech is so good, and I seem to have gotten it on a lot of gear, along with a life gain on hit support gem. I'm feeling unstoppable. I'm sure the Act II boss will show me how it's done, but until then I'm gonna be happy.

EDIT: Natch. Sparking mages in the chamber of sins, spark gets pretty rediculous in a small room. Oh well!

[kcwong]

Yeah, as a melee you want Topaz flask, or better yet, Fairgrave's Tricone for those. Shock stack kills really fast.

[Seriyu]

Good to know! I might also port out and grab the resistance rings I've been stashing but never using when my health almost bottoms out the FIRST time.

Never assume it's a fluke kids!

[nenjin]

Uhm, Diablo 2 had your base resists driven down by 75 points from each difficulty. Unless you meant something different.

If it were just a nerf I'd feel like that's alright. But with PoE then there's the cap too, and the skill points and gear traits to raise the cap.....and that's mostly what I don't like. There's like, a gameplay sub-system for resists, which are basically the one part of ARPGs I like the least. They're always something you have to sacrifice for, and they don't give you the enjoyment of your defenses like blocking, dodging, having more HP or more armor do. So PoE doubles down on a mechanical part of ARPGs that I wish was less important, and less extensive.

[aristabulus]

Uhm, Diablo 2 had your base resists driven down by 75 points from each difficulty. Unless you meant something different.

If it were just a nerf I'd feel like that's alright. But with PoE then there's the cap too, and the skill points and gear traits to raise the cap.....and that's mostly what I don't like. There's like, a gameplay sub-system for resists, which are basically the one part of ARPGs I like the least. They're always something you have to sacrifice for, and they don't give you the enjoyment of your defenses like blocking, dodging, having more HP or more armor do. So PoE doubles down on a mechanical part of ARPGs that I wish was less important, and less extensive.

For the record, Nightmare was -40 resist all, Hell was -100 resist all.  You'd feel it if you had a negative value in a resist, but as long as you were moderately positive in everything it generally wasn't a big deal in D2; the way combat was structured + instant potion consumption didn't put a ton of focus on keeping your resists maxed.

I do agree that PoE has issues with how resists are used, but I think that's just a symptom for the underlying math of combat (which ties back into the balance issues DemonOfWrath spoke of), combined with potions that aren't instant unless you give up a lot of capacity.

-----

On other notes, anyone planning on doing race events?  There are occasionally party-focused races; while it's unlikely that my schedule will allow for joining in, I thought I'd throw the idea onto the table for the greater good.

[Aklyon]

I might, but it mostly depends on when they are and if I feel like it, since the races are hardcore leagues and I don't have the best of performance.

[nenjin]

Last boss spoiler/tip:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you're having trouble with all the bs going on in Phase 3 (and on Cruel, I was. Dead in seconds most of the time.) You can lure Dominus down the stairwell, where you enter from the tower. Trust me, he fits down there Completely negates all the adds in the fight. I imagine it's hell for casters, but for melee it was a godsend. I imagine this will be changed at some point, it's very exploitable.

And ye gods, I died no less than 50 times to Dominus Phase 2. His damage is insane, his shields regenerate insanely fast and if one of this zombies happens to explode on you after he's just blasted your face off with lightning.....poof.

Merciless is going to suck.

[kcwong]

Last boss spoiler/tip:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you're having trouble with all the bs going on in Phase 3 (and on Cruel, I was. Dead in seconds most of the time.) You can lure Dominus down the stairwell, where you enter from the tower. Trust me, he fits down there Completely negates all the adds in the fight. I imagine it's hell for casters, but for melee it was a godsend. I imagine this will be changed at some point, it's very exploitable.

And ye gods, I died no less than 50 times to Dominus Phase 2. His damage is insane, his shields regenerate insanely fast and if one of this zombies happens to explode on you after he's just blasted your face off with lightning.....poof.

Merciless is going to suck.

It would suck for casters in any case.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dominus' insect form deals bleeding status if you are outside of the red doom surrounding him. You just have to stick real close to him, and tank his melee attack (which he will use from time to time), as well as killing his minions. If you got caught in the blood rain, use a staunching flask.