MadDemiurg

Fighter seems pretty balanced now actually. It still has some great abilities and even the nerfed abilites (charge, cleaving stance) are quite good for their level and what they cost. Just not gamebreaking. Some fighter abilities could use some buffs e.g. inspired discipline is trash for 4 cost. There's maybe a reason to use clean sweep now, it's imo a really good ability for 2 and the only thing making it bit suboptimal is 2h being inferior to dw and it's a primary attack. Paralyze 25% is imo ok, its main selling point is hard CC, but I think they need to upgrade petrify to 50%, it has nothing over paralyze atm and abilities that grant it are much more high level. Chanter is a great class, it never needed a trump card. Most of the chants and invocations are top notch, with some exceptions. The Bride invocation is pretty bad now, but perhaps it could be buffed later. Maybe if it granted t2 of all inspirations it gives instead of t1 it would be pretty interesting (t2 perception is great and t2 intelligence is decent).

Most changes do look good, apart from a few things I don't agree with (e.g. I think body attunement was overnerfed a bit, could go back to like +3). Obviously there are a lot of trash abilities that need buffs, but I think fixing gamebreaking stuff was higher priority. Hopefully they'll get around to balancing them next. It's hard to fix everything at the same time. I think I can do a 2nd full playthrough now to provide further feedback.

RE: Consumables. I didn't bother using them even solo cause I didn't feel the need to, but looking at them they're completely broken too. RE: Stealth abuse and damage out of combat. That deserves its own entry, however fixing it would be up to Obsidian as it's a complex coding issue. I agree that it's a problem though. Let's see: Mercy and Kindness - +100% heal is just way too good. This is a party game in the end, the chanter can be paired with a paladin, priest or druid healer. How would you feel about +100% damage chant? It's not supposed to be a buff balanced just for Chanter's personal heals. Chanter is the easiest solo class anyway, and nerfing this won't change it. At +50% it would still be an extremely powerful chant, almost a no brainer compared to a lot of alternatives. Unbending - a) I only suggested to change the upgrade, which never even existed in PoE1. b) PoE2 is a vastly different game in terms of healing because of no health, I feel like a lot of healing abilities need revision for this reason. Suggested changes are reasonable even without accounting for Mercy and Kindness combo. Priest - "many of the suggested changes remove power from some of their only decent spells " - I only suggested ONE change (devotions) and I've explicitly said I'd prefer that it comes together with buffing their trash spells. Devotions was OP in PoE1 too. In its current form it can be easily moved to PL9 if you really don't want to nerf it. The only "sledgehammer" changes in the OP are for stuff that feels way out of line. Like meteor shower and inner death, but they are freaking scary. And anyway, it's up to Obsidian to decide whether they need a nerf and how much of a nerf they need. I'm just pointing out stuff that feels way too OP. Unbending would be too weak with only 50% healed back (like it was in PoE1)? Or paladin would suddenly become trash tier with 16 instead of 21 max def from faith and conviction (pretty much the same as it was in PoE1 where palas were almost untouchable when min/maxed anyway)? Speaking of combos that completely break the game, it's not too hard to come up with changes that nerf the combo without gutting the abilities. E.g. let's say barring death door at 2/encounter is balanced, but we want to make it balanced with current brilliant (which deserves a huge nerfhammer for many other reasons, but let's presume not). We can make character under "Can't die" effect immune to "Can't die effects" for equal duration after it expires - no more chaining. Let's say we want to balance Unbending with +100% mercy and kindness - just change unbending to 50% damage resist. It makes no sense as a heal in PoE2 with no health pool anyway. Maybe it's even a better solution. 75% would still be too strong and +100% heal chant is also still to strong tho.

Fighter has penetrating strike, disciplined strikes and confident aim (+devoted bonuses if you go there). Tbh I think he has better single target too. It's not to say barb is bad, but I think it's outclassed by fighter in almost every way possible. Devoted + penetrating strike is almost guaranteed overpen on a lot of enemies.

Yeah, It's definitely better than PoE2 with its oneshots and CC immune immortals. I would just say that these things need careful consideration and experience with each class and its combos. This is why I'm not willing to tackle any buffs in this thread, especially for all classes at the same time. I'll do some class specific ones when I'm more comfortable with my understanding of all abilities.

Yeah, beta FoD for 2 zeal would be OK. Overall reasonable suggestions, although I don't mind current FoD for 1 zeal either.

You don't even need to "Land". You just need to graze with it and the next one gets a guaranteed hits. TBH, PoE CC war was more tedious than hard. "Oh hey this one has a fampyr Ima use my Anti-Dominate and laugh". "Oh wait, I'm out of casts! time to rest and laugh at them for the next 4 encounters." Perma CC war is some of the most boring and cheap illusion of difficulty you can find in a turn-ish game. If anything, I prefer the game has careful comp that can break the standard "1-2 Front, 1-2 Mid, 1-2 Back" comp. Back to the day of Ragnarok Online in its prime. You have skills that create a defensive zone that block all melee attack. You have defensive zone that negate range attack. They can't stack and you can push enemies out of them., You also have curse zone that silence all casters in that area. The game already has sigil and silence debuff. Utitlize them and design hard critical encounter with them. Paralyze is against will and only debuffs deflection, so it's not guaranteed to land after graze by any means. It wasn't too difficult to counter with priest, but at least it added an extra layer of complexity, and it was also harder to deal with or land solo. Again, not saying it was perfect, but it was better than it is now. But it still suffers from the same case of "We can counter it but enemies don't" which is the same issue we're facing. We have the tool. Enemies don't have the answer. This is the core of everything wrong with PoE II beside the "lolinstakill". I wouldn't mind if they rework Druid Maelstorm into a DoT-heavy not burst heavy while still keeping the damage potential. At least give the enemy priests a chance to heal and enemy fighter to turn on unbending. Well, at least some enemies had high enough saves to not get perma CCd unless you min/max and buff like hell. Even then, let's say fort save of Thaos buddies wasn't easy to breach although you could confuse them. Plus they added some perma immunities later. Again, not saying this is perfect, but you couldn't really perma CC every fight, especially solo when you don't have access to all the acc buffs in the world. Overall I think having diminishing returns on CC would be the best course of action. I'm skeptical about enemies having "anti CC" abilities in every fight, doesn't sound realistic in terms of encounter design. CC durations should also not be as long as PoE1 for the most part, but they shouldn't have cast times of PoE2. It's silly when single target CC has identical duration and cast time. And yeah, I'm not sure about the best changes to let's say maelstorm yet but making it more of a DoT is an option.

You don't even need to "Land". You just need to graze with it and the next one gets a guaranteed hits. TBH, PoE CC war was more tedious than hard. "Oh hey this one has a fampyr Ima use my Anti-Dominate and laugh". "Oh wait, I'm out of casts! time to rest and laugh at them for the next 4 encounters." Perma CC war is some of the most boring and cheap illusion of difficulty you can find in a turn-ish game. If anything, I prefer the game has careful comp that can break the standard "1-2 Front, 1-2 Mid, 1-2 Back" comp. Back to the day of Ragnarok Online in its prime. You have skills that create a defensive zone that block all melee attack. You have defensive zone that negate range attack. They can't stack and you can push enemies out of them., You also have curse zone that silence all casters in that area. The game already has sigil and silence debuff. Utitlize them and design hard critical encounter with them. Paralyze is against will and only debuffs deflection, so it's not guaranteed to land after graze by any means. It wasn't too difficult to counter with priest, but at least it added an extra layer of complexity, and it was also harder to deal with or land solo. Again, not saying it was perfect, but it was better than it is now.

Most classes are balanced poorly. E.g. rogue is not a weak class by any means... Single target damage potential is there, if you don't compare to broken stuff. But most active strikes are bad. Let's say I think FoD or Fighter's penetrating strike are a good benchmark for a balanced 1 pt ability (I don't like how much full attacks favor dw, but it's a different topic). They give you solid returns without doing ridiculous **** like chain self proccing 1000 times. Then we have barbaric blow for 2 which is in many ways worse... or rogue trash attacks for 3. PS: XCOM2 is actually a paragon of balance compared to PoE2 atm, pls don't even mention it). It's actually an enjoyable tactical experience on Legend/IM, I would very much want PoE2 to be on that level, even PoE1 wasn't.

I agree that most CC abilities need a buff in PoE2. PoE1 had some OP CC that could use a nerf too, although it's wasn't really easy to stack enough accuracy to reliably CC toughest enemies.

I do get tired of repeating that In a Dps contest, you are either first or you are last. You brought up why play barbarian when you can play fighter for AoE. THat's the exact situation. All class is currently viable. Some are just more viable and it will stay that way if you keep having them overlap in roles and moments. You might as well ask now why I would play a Wizard if Druid has way better AoE damage when Wizards do get nerfed? Is it the CC? The self-buff? Not important enough in the current game. More damage = win. Set them apart if you want them to all be viable without overshadowing the other. It's not the dps contest, or at least it shouldn't be. Like, let's say Ability 1 deals 20% more damage. Ability 2 deals less damage but also has a debuff. You know, a debuff that's actually relevant because neither of these abilities oneshots enemies. They are not the same, but supposedly at least (roughly) balanced. Wizards should not have inferior damage to druids. Wizards should have better alpha damage, self buffs and actually useful conjured weapons. Druids should have heals, as well as better DoTs/sustained damage + shapeshift. You know, like it was in PoE1. I feel like I shouldn't be explaining such basic game design stuff. It has been proven multiple times in games like this where action have interval, that it's far better to kill and prevent damage than to allow damage and deal with it. Once your damage go above a certain point, you can trivialize the game combat. This was also the thing in PoE 1. I always play Druid and I like Hiravias. I got through 90% of the contents in PoE on PotD using 2 free-cast hailstorm at every fight. AoE so large and damage so high only the tankiest monster remain alive and you have to me in WM II for the lowbie to get to fight.. until I use the 2nd set of Hailstorm. Unless you make enemies strong enough to be worth CCing, there's no point to CCing. Right now, the only damage threat in enemy team above level 10 are wizard because they scale with levels while the fighters and rangers are still using low-level gear and never dealing more than 30 damage a hit unless they crit. There's no need to CC. There's no need for immortal buff. THere's no need for devotion. You drop the wizards, you win because every other type of enemies are both weak and braindead. The only other somewhat threatening one are the fampyr because they can charm and that's it. CC was perfectly viable in PoE1. And as I said, I'm all for enemy buffs too. I'd say fixing outright gamebreaking stuff is the top priority. Fixing just OP stuff is about the same priority as buffing trash. Yes, Cipher has a lot of spells in need of buffs, especially at lower PLs, probably deserves its own thread. Empower for restoring resources is fine, allows you to do more stuff in boss fights. Empowering abilities gives too much alpha and is a bigger global problem than any spells I agree. Spell internal balance is still bad. Mind you, I would also buff a lot of trash spells. Some are not even worth it over auto attacking right now.

Well, beta never really had "good" PoTD, it just had one difficult fight and since it was much lower level range a lot of the currently broken stuff wasn't even there or didn't get so OP in that level range, so yes, it felt better overall.

I do get tired of repeating that In a Dps contest, you are either first or you are last. You brought up why play barbarian when you can play fighter for AoE. THat's the exact situation. All class is currently viable. Some are just more viable and it will stay that way if you keep having them overlap in roles and moments. You might as well ask now why I would play a Wizard if Druid has way better AoE damage when Wizards do get nerfed? Is it the CC? The self-buff? Not important enough in the current game. More damage = win. Set them apart if you want them to all be viable without overshadowing the other. It's not the dps contest, or at least it shouldn't be. There's also a difference between "this ability/class is a bit better" compared to "this ability/class does 3x damage of comparable abilities/classes". Like, let's say Ability 1 deals 20% more damage. Ability 2 deals less damage but also has a debuff. You know, a debuff that's actually relevant because neither of these abilities oneshots enemies. They are not the same, but supposedly at least (roughly) balanced. Wizards should not have inferior damage to druids. Wizards should have better alpha damage, self buffs and actually useful conjured weapons. Druids should have heals, as well as better DoTs/sustained damage + shapeshift. You know, like it was in PoE1. I feel like I shouldn't be explaining such basic game design stuff.

Damage numbers need to be consistent. Like, there should be some min-max damage range for let's say PL9 aoe. Then all the classes will be viable, not "the next OP one". Again, the point is not gutting abilities 1 by 1 but bringing them all to some consistent power level (that also does not oneshot enemies). I played through it once... but I had no desire to replay it because of how broken it was. I stuck around for a while, but no fixes in sight. After a couple of years I decided to check it and it seemed much more balanced but I've only brought myself to play a bit because I was occupied with other games already.

Reducing classes power gap is a good start to make the game more enjoyable. If some classes are way powerful that the rest, how a designer should balance the encounters? Oh sorry I forget, as Zeitzbach, just make the game both easy for strong and weak classes, leave hands from mouse and keyboard and let AI play it There will awlays be weaker and stronger class, best weapon/spell etc. Nerf one, another one takes it place. What you are saying is gaming utopia never achieved in any game even with biggest studios. There was, is and always will be "Meta". There is always strongest build and weakest class. That's how it works. And I am 100% sure Obsidian do not have both time and manpower to balance the game the way you want. And by the time they will- most players will already move on. It's impossible to achieve "perfect" balance, but it's quite possible to achieve decent balance. Obsidian did, in PoE1. I have faith they'll do it again. They had the time and manpower too apparently. Even Tyranny got the worst offenders like material enchant stacking or volcanic weapons fixed, even if it took a long time. Tyranny already "died" at point when they did fix Volcanic weapons. I managed to finish game 3 times and then there was quite some time before that even happened. It's not online game where you have to constantly worry about balance. It likely died because it had 0 replayability because of terrible balance. PoE1, in contrast, did not. Obviously it's you that didn't give any concrete suggestion to make the game more challenging here. That's really a problem with you not reading anything to begin with. Figured why you left the game at chapter 3 because it has texts instead of easy numbers and pictures. I think it is not a problem only for me, many players didnt finished the last chapter because it is plain compared with the first two chapter. And I did read your points earlier. It is you that ignoring others points. We are talking about nerf the gamebreaking things here, never said to balance the game based on POTD, this game will be still easy without these gamebreaking one shot everybody things. Actually, only 40% finished the first chapter, lol. I think it's normal for these games. Personally I replayed it like 4 times I think.

Reducing classes power gap is a good start to make the game more enjoyable. If some classes are way powerful that the rest, how a designer should balance the encounters? Oh sorry I forget, as Zeitzbach, just make the game both easy for strong and weak classes, leave hands from mouse and keyboard and let AI play it There will awlays be weaker and stronger class, best weapon/spell etc. Nerf one, another one takes it place. What you are saying is gaming utopia never achieved in any game even with biggest studios. There was, is and always will be "Meta". There is always strongest build and weakest class. That's how it works. And I am 100% sure Obsidian do not have both time and manpower to balance the game the way you want. And by the time they will- most players will already move on. It's impossible to achieve "perfect" balance, but it's quite possible to achieve decent balance. Obsidian did, in PoE1. I have faith they'll do it again. They had the time and manpower too apparently. Even Tyranny got the worst offenders like material enchant stacking or volcanic weapons fixed, even if it took a long time.

Btw, saying that nerfs are bad for casual players is also false. In fact, an Average Joe probably picks abilities semi-random. Average Joe 1 picks some OP ability, thinks "wow, combat in this game is so boring" and doesn't even finish 1/3rd of it. Average Joe 2 picks trash abilities, thinks, "wow, this game is no fun" and doesn't even finish 1/3rd of it. Internal balance is good. This game wan't made "more casual". It's just a rushed release and they didn't manage to balance everything + it was a lot harder to do with multiclassing. During beta there were tons of nerfs, you'd probably protest all of them too. Do you know FoD used to be +40% lash and +20 accuracy? And "chain lightinig" type of spells used to proc all their jumps on a single target if no jump targets available? Doesn't that make you feel bad, lol? And what the hell is wrong with numeric nerfs? If something is numerically too strong, it should be brought in line with balanced stuff. Numerically. This just means we need more nerfs .

You do realize that "balancing around solo play" makes no sense in terms of bringing difficulty up. Solo play is more difficult, so balancing around difficult situation makes it easy for a party. Let's assume the game would indeed be balanced around solo play. Then the expectation would be the party play (which is a lot easier) would be ridiculously easy (like, 5 times easier). Fun thing is, game is too easy even solo now, let alone with a party. Currently it's already balanced around something like 0.5 character play. It's like that because enemies can only deal damage or soak damage. No other options. It's like going into a rock paper scissor fight where enemies can only play rock and paper. You need to give your enemies scissor, not take away your own scissor. You do realize that there's also internal balance, right? Why should I take barb when fighter is tankier and has better AoE? Why should I ever use spell X (e.g. concelhaut's corrosive skin) when spell Y (e.g. meteor shower) does 5x the damage and in AoE on the same level. I'm all for enemies getting smarter etc, but it won't fix internal balance and it won't fix inherently broken combos that just can't be fixed by smarter enemies. You could of course argue that all the stuff that does not do 2k damage should be buffed and then all enemies should be buffed on top, but that's just stat bloat. There's no real difference between these buffs and nerfs, except that nerfs are way easier to do (It's much less work to nerf the smaller number of outliers) and "feel bad" for some people.

You do realize that "balancing around solo play" makes no sense in terms of bringing difficulty up. Solo play is more difficult, so balancing around difficult situation makes it easy for a party. Let's assume the game would indeed be balanced around solo play. Then the expectation would be the party play (which is a lot easier) would be ridiculously easy (like, 5 times easier). Fun thing is, game is too easy even solo now, let alone with a party. Currently it's already balanced around something like 0.5 character play.

What you completely miss is nothing the self-proclaimed hardcore gamers said actually makes the game more difficult. It only makes it fights longer. If you think your victory is 'hard-won' because you were able to sit in front of the screen watching that bunny's hp drop 1%/hit, while think a properly built character just blows it up in 2 seconds, the problem isn't with the game, it's with you. Making the fights drawn out and boring by either inflating enemy hp or scaling back player damage won't make the game hardcore. It will make it just boring. I'm pretty sure giving enemies at least a chance to do something is a good start, lol. Then we can maybe do some better tuning. If you think the suggested changes will drop damage done to 1% hit, I don't even know what to tell. Even if I double the nerfs I suggested most party fights would still be over under 20 sec. Yet I don't see anywhere even one suggestion that actually lets the enemy do something. Why don't I see you wanting the restealth glitch fixed? Or sniping enemies off screen that just stand there? Or abusing the conversation system to do things you are not supposed to do? Maybe having an actual working AI instead of the enemies just charging you? The game has little challenge due to the fact that the AI is dumb as bricks. To cover that PoE player damage was nerfed to the ground to 'make it hardcore' yet it was just incredibly boring. Enemies were just standing blocks of hp and stats without any use of tactics or randomness. If your character matched certain stat checks throughout the game you could sit a goat in front of the computer and it would complete successfully. To put it in other words you want to fix something which isn't broken and send the game down a lane which PoE went, and it's an incredibly boring lane which resulted in the first game having 0 relevancy in the long run. Imagine if the game actually had a working AI. That randomly enemies have precloacked rogues waiting to blow up your backline. Or if some caster actually buffs their fighters. Or stuff like that. That would be challenge. Making fights longer is not. You're welcome to add any other suggestions, I can't cover all the broken stuff. Precloacked rogues or casters with buffs won't help so long as you can blow them all up with 1 hit while being impervious to damage. PoE1 aged very well, a lot of players played it pretty much till release of Deadfire, because it was actually fun and balanced.

POE1 OSA barb was also completely fair and not at all bugged, right? You can't balance the POTD without nerfing gamebreaking stuff that cant be balanced. And the number of super OP abilities is not that huge compared to total. There are also a lot of perfectly normal and balanced abilities. To create meaningful choices between these and the OP stuff you would have to buff them all, which is way more work. Btw, if we're balancing the game for an "average player" that would pick abilities at random, current situation creates highly unbalanced experience. E.g. Average Joe 1 uses cleaving stance on his fighter and facerolls everything. Average Joe 2 thinks conquerors stance sounds more cool, but for some reason faces much more difficulty. But apparently some people just can't stand the idea of nerfs because "but muh OP build".

What you completely miss is nothing the self-proclaimed hardcore gamers said actually makes the game more difficult. It only makes it fights longer. If you think your victory is 'hard-won' because you were able to sit in front of the screen watching that bunny's hp drop 1%/hit, while think a properly built character just blows it up in 2 seconds, the problem isn't with the game, it's with you. Making the fights drawn out and boring by either inflating enemy hp or scaling back player damage won't make the game hardcore. It will make it just boring. I'm pretty sure giving enemies at least a chance to do something is a good start, lol. Then we can maybe do some better tuning. If you think the suggested changes will drop damage done to 1% hit, I don't even know what to tell. Even if I double the nerfs I suggested most party fights would still be over under 20 sec.

And therefore you should not balance it for minority hardcore powerbuilders, but take casual approach to this game. How many players do you think actually have balance issues vs those who just play game now and enjoy it, probably already beat it? I've already beaten the game once. I have no desire to do it again before the fixes. I see a lot of other people being disappointed by the current state of things. Ok, tell me the number of those people and I will compare that to Steam playerbase playing game today and over weekend or just over people being happy with game on forum. I beat game twice almost, preparing for my 3rd solo with Zerker/Fighter. People playing the game do not indicate they all think it's a fun experience. E.g. I was one of the people playing it, so what? All people who think the game is too easy played the game... that's how they know it's too easy, lol.

And therefore you should not balance it for minority hardcore powerbuilders, but take casual approach to this game. How many players do you think actually have balance issues vs those who just play game now and enjoy it, probably already beat it? I've already beaten the game once. I have no desire to do it again before the fixes. I see a lot of other people being disappointed by the current state of things.

"Hardcore" and "PoE2" do not belong in one sentence at the moment. This here, I agree totally. Like how many people in this thread are constantly posting for nerfs. It's like what... 5-10 same Users, which most of them just theorycraft most broken builds instead of playing? I am sure game should not be balanced according to them but actually 99% of rest of playerbase. About as many as the ones protesting the nerfs really. It's good to know you're 99% of the playerbase. There are tons of other threads complaining about game being too easy or OP stuff as well. I remember you as the guy going out of his way defending OSA barb bug in POE1. It was fixed). Don't think it would be any different this time.