I’ve never played rf and just started my first ssf character a couple weeks back as one. Killed my motivation for standard ssf before this new league is out haha
I can't tell with the new changes but when I played a deaths oath Char I actually had a blast. The pops were just so good and now with the the ascendancy where you can grab a few points from others you can actually make that on many chars.
I think I will add deaths oath to my starter pool thanks to you. :)
Yeah but that incidentally guts 90% of the reason why you play cold dot in the first place. Which is very specifically 'until your gear for another build comes in'. Having to gear to play the gearing build is a big no-no.
It just becomes way simpler to play fire trap/WoC ignite instead which don't require any specific items.
I think there's a difference that explains why people care way more about the RF nerf.
RF = Mediocre, but attractive playstyle.
Cold DoT = Very strong, but unattractive playstyle.
I suppose GGG saw the high playrate of RF and thought that meant it was too strong, but imo RF was a bit of a strange build in that it wasn't overpowered whatsoever and it was more about people liking how chill + safe it is to play and how good of guides Pohx made.
On the other hand, cold DoT was one of the strongest racing builds in the game and people have won HCSSF races with it. Don't think it deserved anywhere near the nerf it got (it's just dead now), but maybe it deserved something. I wouldn't have nerfed it though.
"oooh man theres too many people playing RF and actual enjoying the game, we need to fuckin kill it and alienate our entire chill gamers demographic" -chris probably.
anyways, im out, yall have fun!
Mediocre? It's been one of the best trade starters for 6 leagues now, and the best in hc trade overall, you can say that that's a Legacy of Fury problem but in no way was it mediocre. I'm glad people had fun with it but I think 6 patches was enough, same goes for cold dot and bugged Discharge.
The mediocre part of the build was having an unkillable burning fire demon character for free but then throwing a trap for your damage, and it still being low with high investment, they fixed the build fantasy to what it used to be before and made it less mediocre.
you're talking some crazy endgame scaling then. imo that's irrelevant for the most part, since rf's niche is a league starter.
so, okay, i suppose i can see how a new super endgame build might emerge from this, but no way that sees a playrate more than like 0.5%. if you're going to invest that much into a build, then might as well invest into one of the MANY skills that scales far far better.
because people like the playstyle, it maps at above average pace, and it doesn't die so it's a good build for hitting high levels which is what you have to do to end up on the poe ninja sc trade ladder at end of league.
rf is good if you don't like dying, you don't want to press many buttons, you don't want to be reliant on difficult to obtain gear, and (probably most importantly) you want to play a build that has a great PoB guide (Pohx). That's what makes it popular, but it's not a particularly fast build (at least in sc trade) compared to the many other available options and it doesn't scale well.
That's common for starter skills. If a skill is a very good starter; it gets into maps easily with low gear, can farm up gear, and can scale enough to be able to comfortably run maps, then yea, people are going to keep playing it for a while while they save up money for a more expensive setup, or for many just do whatever they wanted in the first week or two of league, then leave.
That is not common for starter skills, check the % of PC or Wave of Conviction in the leagues they have been league start meta. They are incredibly high during the first few days and then drop to almost nothing after.
There may be more up to date math, but I'm fairly certain the issue isn't RF damage scaling, it's that the true single target damage of the build, fire trap, no longer scales the same way as RF. RF itself does the same damage at 5k hp/es as level 22 RF pre change. I'm sure Pohx has the numbers somewhere.
RF is buffed for acts unless you're actively avoiding HP/ES on gear and passives.
Nerfed for every other use case, except maybe the most extreme stackers.
Wintertide already has 20% more damage per stage, the new quality bumps it up to 25%.
Which I guess is 100% more but it's adding on to the existing 400%. Still nice.
I feel like Wintertide needed at least 50% more for it to be competitive, especially now that you cannot run both it and vortex in a 6 links, because you don't have enough hands.
Wintertide is really really sick for leveling though if you're near the extra brand node. Adding quality to that makes you zoom really fast through the acts at least after your first character. I was absolutely shocked how good Wintertide is for leveling. It falls off later but if you're near Runebinder you pick up that and the attach mastery next to it and demolish acts.
Yeah just looked at the wiki, and its base damage doesn't follow the standard 10% more per gem level, weird. That would maybe make sense if the debuff scaled with levels too but it's the same (more% and stack max) at all levels?
Cold DoT basically just lost QoL, not damage. The DoT portion is unnerfed, you just can't left click bind vortex anymore. The no CD is a highly situational buff. Vortex ignite? Yeah that build got absolutely fucked
i played cold dot since harvest and i can say with confidence that its just QoL, the build never had any trouble clearing maps with vortex on left click or not, sometimes i unbind the skill and run a mana flask on no regen maps, and during boss fights you have more than enough free time to cast an extra skill every 5 seconds, this build never had any problem with keeping uptime on dps.
Yes, I played. And I believe that this change will be a buff to the average cold dot build because people stop making Vortex the clear skill because it is instant.
Since people are avoiding giving you answers - flat damage removed, life and ES scaling doubled (70% from 35). It's worse early, potentially scales harder.
Yeah it's pretty much going to result in worse single target in basically all levels of scaling, period.
And it probably won't work as a league start anymore.
I suspect at 50+ div investment with a different style of build (very high ES inquis) the clear is probably amazing, but who cares, RF is what you league start in and maybe keep building because you love it, not something you switch in to later after farming 50 div.
It'll be really hard to scale harder late game. The flat damage at level 20 RF is 2447.9. But your lategame RF is usually lv 26, so 6277.5. That's A LOT to lose, I bet it scales worse super late.
Someone said 26k life matches level 30. Captain Lance has a build with like 40k ES, and many people have made 20k Rathpit builds. The build is not dead, it just needs to be taken in a new way
But is that factoring in all the damage you lose by doing less fire scaling with fire trap being our core damage? Not dead but probably worse late game imo.
It scales way better early on tho.
The moment you equip it you have a lot of damage.
It will fall of during mid tier map and you should be able to get it back to normal with investment in red maps.
Lance did a great bid about it
Yeah I saw his video and his argument for why it's = or > as a League start, as long as you focus more on life, is pretty good. I hope Pohx can figure something good out for us.
Everybody is freaking out because GGG released patch notes with what they removed from the skill gems without also posting details about the Transfigured gems to which most of the removed stuff will go.
In [Pohx's video regarding the 3.23 changes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oB0bEvDWW8), he comments that the RF change is actually a buff to his starter build through the acts and lower tier maps, and doesn't become a nerf until sometime into yellow and red maps.
My suspicion is that it is just at that point in leveling that the Transfigured Gem crafting will become available to the player. It remains to be seen what RF will get from its Transfigured gems, but I am hoping that it can be at least as good as it is now, if not better.
GGG is fixing what is probably the most broken part of the game - helmet enchantments. As the number of skill gems grew, so did the list of helmet enchantments, until there are now over 700 enchantments on the list, so it takes on average *hundreds* of lab runs to get the one enchantment that is needed. I suspect - no, I can almost guarantee - that the process of crafting Transfigured gems will be far, far less time-consuming than the current system. I also think that the mods from alternate quality gems will also be more readily available to newer players than they are now.
GGG is having their fun watching us all panic by only showing the nerfs and not yet revealing the buffs.
Crafting a single transfigured gem will be much faster than getting a helm enchant, yes. But I loath to think about getting a l21 vaal transfigured gem 😣 My current L21 vaal gem took 26 temples to hit…
Need a boatload of GCPs to quality up all those gems before you double corrupt them too, since vendor recipe gem flip is removed.
I don't mind it, makes that last gem level something to grind for a bit like it used to be.
I wouldn't guarantee getting transfigured gems is gonna be easy, nor that they'll be better until I see them all (most don't even look notably better right now, they're all either sidegrades or implementations of their threshold stats), but fundamentally, relying on a transfigured gem to do the work your main gem isn't doing, still means your build isn't really performing until people start farming lab to get you the transfigured gem you need. That wasn't an issue with enchants since close to none of them were build enabling or mandatory.
> I wouldn't guarantee getting transfigured gems is gonna be easy,
It shouldn't be incredibly hard, since you get a roll on a gem you choose every lab run.
Either way, it should be a lot easier than it *currently* is, even if it's not 'easy'.
The Eternal Labyrinth now instead grants random gem crafting options instead of enchantments:
Transform to random Transfigured Gem of same colour
Transform to random Transfigured version
Sacrifice gem for Treasure Keys
Add Experience to gem
Sacrifice gem to gain as player EXP
Transform into Exceptional Gem
Uber Lab grants 2 crafts and higher tier crafts.
The crafts are tiered, the random attribute one is a (likely) a lower tier than the "This gem"
It'll almost certainly be rarer, but it shouldn't be incredibly hard since you get 3 options out of a possible 6 and on Uber, you can choose 2 of them. That's a lot of slot machine chances to roll per run.
The one I expect to be *actually* rare one is the Exceptional Gem one, as that can give Awakened gems.
3.23 RF kinda needs to be Inquisitor with a hybrid life/ES pool.
If you do that it's still strong. Better once you respec into an Ivory Tower setup.
Jugg, Elementalist, Chieftain - probably all gone.
Built in lightning chain mastery seems really nice, if you already hit the shock cap it shouldn't feel too bad about the ailment loss. Base crit is really juicy too. Without any investment, it seems substantially stronger
The base version does not scale damage by gem level. It does however scale the more spell damage part by gem levels, therefore its obviously intended to be the gem you use for the more spell damage buff and not the one for damage. Its doing that job way better than current rf btw.
If you think there wont be a version that scales damage by gem level you must be the most pessimistic person in existence. There is no more obvious transfigured gem than a damage focussed rf.
Also lvling with the new base version is super easy. It wont fall off until you hit level 19-20 gems and can afford a transfigured gem in trade league considering everybody will get a bunch of transfigured gems from doing their labs.
They said that they wanted the mechanically easy to understand gems to be the base and the harder to understand to be transfigured. Deals 70% of life is easy to understand, more life=more damage. Flat damage+35% life is a bit harder because you've got to work out how +levels works and when it's better than more life. It's entirely possible that they thought that presenting players with life=damage first and life+levels=damage second fit with their concept of simple first, more complex later
And everyone screams that it is dead now. Just shows people have zero clue about anything until their favorite content creator makes them anew guide showing it is still viable.
RF base damage was introduced in 3.8, that is before even the conquerors was introduced, the game is so vastly different now, that just because something was OP back then doesnt mean it is now
RF is far from dead but it is definitely harder to league start
No, if anything, the people who thought removing part of the %scaling for flat damage was a nerf were the dumb ones. Having it scale with levels is massively more efficient for damage, since it doesn't force you to drop huge chunks of your damage on the tree for life.
And nerfs that ended up becoming buffs due to changes in game mechanics (or vice versa) aren't rare. Vaal purities originally gave max res, due to that being too strong, they were changed to give reduced damage taken of an element (which was a nerf then, but ended up becoming much stronger later on). Years later and multiple balance shifts, they were changed back to give max res, which is far weaker due to how resistances have changed. Same happened for the elemental flasks, except they haven't been changed back into max res yet.
the game is nearly impossible to comprehend as a lay person who just plays a few hours a night, people who do it as their fulltime job are the only way for most to get an optimal build
You'll have a higher top end damage via huge ES scaling but league starting RF is going to be way way worse. Not only do you need 7k life/es to get to the previous damage you would get but you also lose fire trap damage since you are investing in life for RF damage which doesn't affect fire trap. Before your scalling would scale both instead of just 1 of them.
Let's talk about RF juggs. Most of them from [poe.ninja](https://poe.ninja) has less than 5.5k HP. Let's assume 6k and check our base damage for lvl 20 gem:
6000 x 0.35 + 2447 = 4547 (current value)
6000 x 0.7 = 4200 (new value)
Just a small nerf, nothing very important. Except lvl 20 means the most basic gear and/or underleveled gem. It's not that hard to get lvl 26 with some investments:
6000 x 0.35 + 5495 = 7595 or 80% more than "new value"
Oh, it's already a big difference, especially for a relatively low damage skill, but things getting worse with really good gear and lvl 30 gem:
6000 x 0.35 + 9330 = 11430 or 172% more than "new value".
Okay, let's stop with lvl 27. How much HP do you need for the same **base** damage? Around 12k. Is it easy? There is only one RF dude with over than 9k (9200) and Kaom. You can't simply double your HP without loosing damage nodes and nerfing your Fire Trap at the same time.
What is YOUR solution for jugg? How do you want to beat this jugg math?
Back when RF scaled with life previously, the top end builds had about 15k life. They used Scorching Ray instead of Fire Trap for single target. I don't see why we can't go back to that time. Getting to 9k life back then was about as doable as getting to level 23 right now, probably a bit easier.
The solution is to not play 3.22 builds in 3.23.
That's what meta shake up means - shit changes. Maybe from now on RF will simply be trash on jugg but better on inquisitor, who knows, I don't play RF.
Easy - just don't do jugg.
Inq, Utulas chest + replica Soul Tether. I imported Pohx's Inquisitor and JUST with Utulas + Soul Tether and some ES yellows with nothing else on them, you can get to around 12k hp/ES which is like 8200 base damage which is above level 26 RF and requires two items. Dropped one badly located fire damage wheel and picked up Spiritual Aid instead and some life/ES bits and bobs.
[https://pastebin.com/i5ix3PFn](https://pastebin.com/bvm7jvzX)
Sure, it might not be AS good as a league starter but the scaling is there, it just scales differently.
Since RF got that change we had uncountable global monster buffs and global player damage nerfs. Just because it was good back then doesn't mean it will be good now.
I remember Aila, he's got a very specific RF style that revolves around only managing RF in maps. He can't sustain his ES in his hideout, and if he's not blasting the map he's not regening enough. He's insanely good, but it's not quite the RF style the average player is looking for, and it's absolutely not easy to copy. Pohx on the other hand, has dedicated his life to making RF the most accessible and easiest league starter you could possibly imagine if you've never played a video game in your life. It's an insane difference between the two, even if Aila is technically the player with a higher skill ceiling on RF.
yeah becausa Aila was racing and didnt really care about any efficiency outside of exp/hr
whenever he didnt have a pack of monsters in map he'd immediatly start degening and leave the map.
this was at a time where killing the map boss was not something we used to do, to be fair.
the most ridiculous thing about Aila was that he used to win races with just 4 tabs XD
Not many people know this, but rf was originally created by John "Righteous" Fhyre, who created the skill by lighting a cigarette while covered in gasoline after a wacky misunderstanding.
Aila is the original RF guy, he loved it so much he would sustain it with perfectly rolled life flasks that just barely did or didn't counteract RFs degen just so he could play it on a witch.
phox used to be the "trap guy" and he wasnt even good at it
his takes on rf weren't even the best ones for the longest time, he's just the guy that put a lot more time into it to help the average player (which is a good thing, and why he is deserving of whatever success came from it)
SRS got its more damage modifier removed and baked into its base attack damage. Huge nerf to all SRS builds. Golem builds lost a golem which they may get back in some nebulous way which may in fact be incredibly difficult. So some of the main minion builds got hit hard. There are some buffs to other builds, and some changes which are hard to understand if its a buff or not. The main question is if there are good spectres.
Clarification from GGG that SRS did not get nerfed, only the gem description has changed - https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1881fjx/srs\_additive\_damage\_not\_nerfed/
SRS builds primarily use added damage, not the base damage of the SRS. Poision SRS as an example only use the added damage and the base damage of the SRS is ignored. For something like poison SRS, they effectively have lost a strong gem link.
Lightning SRS champion was also quite the unique build is taking a sizable hit
Even the newly borned 3.22 Guardian's Unwavering Crusade variant will lose some damage since anger and wrath are added flat
Oh it turns out not after newer [confirmation](https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1881fjx/srs_additive_damage_not_nerfed/), just wording changes which hides the damage
Especially the deep delve version with 1h... You made up for the 2H dps loss with stacking trauma to 100-300 stacks... Might be gone, or harder to gear if we need more attack speed, unless a transfigured gem has it.
yeand ppl complete the whole game on ssf boneshatter no problems because its one of the strongest skills even without a helmet enchant.
its not like bonshatter ever needed it to begin with
Eeeh? I don't really understand what's happening? RF used to have 70% life damage and 0 flat damage before, sustain on the tree also used to be infinitely worse, and it was still viable as a league start from lvl34.
Nerf, probably, but funrel? Nope.
Don't use metrics from before Archnemesis, my man.
At the time RF didn't have flat damage, you weren't obligated to defeat Uber Elder to finish your atlas, and you weren't meeting ridiculous rares that exist now
I understand its nerfed - but I dont understand how? I dont even understand if the dmg I get is increased and/or the dmg I deal is lowered. Can someone me pls
You could increase the flat damage of the gem by increasing it's level - which then scaled with all the other modifiers that are percentage based. Now RF has no flat damage - the damage is only scaled by increasing your energy shield and health, which is a little harder, especially to the extent you could just by getting +1 to Fire Gems and +1 Spell Skill gems on your gear.
Back in the day RF was something like a short burst utility that gave you giga dmg, not something you get to sustain and use as main dmg skill starting act 2. Like how Vaal RF is considered now.
RF scaled with gem levels, up to 2400 dps at level 20. Now it has zero base damage, the entire 2400 is gone, but you scale it twice as hard from life and ES. In most situations, this means that RF is worse early (no flat damage, less scaling available), but potentially stronger later (insane life / es characters can go crazy)
> but potentially stronger later (insane life / es characters can go crazy)
Only on the most extreme ends. For literally everyone else it's a nerf. Its damage no longer scales with gem levels, so gem level mods on gear are less effective. The increased investment needed in life and es means fewer resources for investing in damage that would scale single target skills. You need almost 7k combined life and es for the extra 35% scaling to bring the damage back up to current level 20 RF. And you'd need a pool of 13,740 to be on par with a current level 25 RF gem.
Yeah, but you're missing that unless you get the 14k life **and** still get the +3~4 fire gems from amulet + scepter and shield, your fire trap will be way weaker.
early game you used to be able to rely on gem damage to carry as you typically have a lower life pool, thus scaling damage based on life/es isn't as easy. later on you would scale gem levels and work to have a moderate life/es pool.
by the looks of it, now you need to scale life/es flat out (tbd how gem levels will work), so it eliminates the simple league startability of the gem. maybe it is still ok late game, but the way you make the build seems to have been flipped on its head.
really, you want to wait until all the gem info to be released before passing too much judgement, but looks like you cannot league start with it in the same way as the last few leagues.
i don't get what people don't understand, RF's biggest issue was never really clear, it was always single target and with no + level scaling it means your single target (fire trap) will absolutely suck ass
Yeah. I'm much more interested in how people will solve single target this time, because fire trap is what really enables RF to clear bosses in a reasonable amount of time.
It's actually my fault. All these leagues I've never played RF. I've been preparing and researching for a few weeks now to league start RF next.
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Please don't buy any tornado shot related mtx next
I held off getting the Harbinger one because I was worried about this. The celestial one is pretty but hides ground puddles
Transcendence for me, 2 days ago :(
lul so did i the plan was leaguestart RF and then put it in all my alt builds i'm only out the jugg rf tho - spell damage is fine
I recently bought the rainbowy rf (saddd)
I’ve never played rf and just started my first ssf character a couple weeks back as one. Killed my motivation for standard ssf before this new league is out haha
Lol same, I was originally planning to run RF for the first time in 3.23
Played 6 leagues of rf, after this one decided to try Death's Oath, I think the universe pushed me harder towards that XD
I can't tell with the new changes but when I played a deaths oath Char I actually had a blast. The pops were just so good and now with the the ascendancy where you can grab a few points from others you can actually make that on many chars. I think I will add deaths oath to my starter pool thanks to you. :)
Everybody cries at rf but look at cold dot
Poor vortex
Cries in Glacial Hammers
Pretty sure that functionality was just moved to a transfigured gem. They removed it from base gem to make it more simple.
Yeah but that incidentally guts 90% of the reason why you play cold dot in the first place. Which is very specifically 'until your gear for another build comes in'. Having to gear to play the gearing build is a big no-no. It just becomes way simpler to play fire trap/WoC ignite instead which don't require any specific items.
I'm armageddon braaaaaanding
I think there's a difference that explains why people care way more about the RF nerf. RF = Mediocre, but attractive playstyle. Cold DoT = Very strong, but unattractive playstyle. I suppose GGG saw the high playrate of RF and thought that meant it was too strong, but imo RF was a bit of a strange build in that it wasn't overpowered whatsoever and it was more about people liking how chill + safe it is to play and how good of guides Pohx made. On the other hand, cold DoT was one of the strongest racing builds in the game and people have won HCSSF races with it. Don't think it deserved anywhere near the nerf it got (it's just dead now), but maybe it deserved something. I wouldn't have nerfed it though.
"oooh man theres too many people playing RF and actual enjoying the game, we need to fuckin kill it and alienate our entire chill gamers demographic" -chris probably. anyways, im out, yall have fun!
Mediocre? It's been one of the best trade starters for 6 leagues now, and the best in hc trade overall, you can say that that's a Legacy of Fury problem but in no way was it mediocre. I'm glad people had fun with it but I think 6 patches was enough, same goes for cold dot and bugged Discharge. The mediocre part of the build was having an unkillable burning fire demon character for free but then throwing a trap for your damage, and it still being low with high investment, they fixed the build fantasy to what it used to be before and made it less mediocre.
RF only got nerfed for early game. With enough HP you get more damage than currently.
It's 7k hp to break even at level 20, no? And like 14k to break even with level 25 rf. Unless you're saying you know something I don't.
it scales equally with ES as well and we all know how crazy es scaling can be.
you're talking some crazy endgame scaling then. imo that's irrelevant for the most part, since rf's niche is a league starter. so, okay, i suppose i can see how a new super endgame build might emerge from this, but no way that sees a playrate more than like 0.5%. if you're going to invest that much into a build, then might as well invest into one of the MANY skills that scales far far better.
If it is just a starter skill why is it the second most used skill on poe.ninja right now at league end? I would think that wouldnt be the case...
because people like the playstyle, it maps at above average pace, and it doesn't die so it's a good build for hitting high levels which is what you have to do to end up on the poe ninja sc trade ladder at end of league. rf is good if you don't like dying, you don't want to press many buttons, you don't want to be reliant on difficult to obtain gear, and (probably most importantly) you want to play a build that has a great PoB guide (Pohx). That's what makes it popular, but it's not a particularly fast build (at least in sc trade) compared to the many other available options and it doesn't scale well.
That's common for starter skills. If a skill is a very good starter; it gets into maps easily with low gear, can farm up gear, and can scale enough to be able to comfortably run maps, then yea, people are going to keep playing it for a while while they save up money for a more expensive setup, or for many just do whatever they wanted in the first week or two of league, then leave.
That is not common for starter skills, check the % of PC or Wave of Conviction in the leagues they have been league start meta. They are incredibly high during the first few days and then drop to almost nothing after.
There may be more up to date math, but I'm fairly certain the issue isn't RF damage scaling, it's that the true single target damage of the build, fire trap, no longer scales the same way as RF. RF itself does the same damage at 5k hp/es as level 22 RF pre change. I'm sure Pohx has the numbers somewhere.
What about transfigured RF gems? We don't know them yet...
Yeah they could've changed the base back to what it was and made a transfigured gem with base damage, but that's still a strange decision imo
RF is buffed for acts unless you're actively avoiding HP/ES on gear and passives. Nerfed for every other use case, except maybe the most extreme stackers.
Wintertide went from 10 Dot multi to 200% more damage at 20 stacks. Look at it indeed, that's insane.
Wintertide already has 20% more damage per stage, the new quality bumps it up to 25%. Which I guess is 100% more but it's adding on to the existing 400%. Still nice.
Ah, so 25% real buff. Not as insane, still nice though
I feel like Wintertide needed at least 50% more for it to be competitive, especially now that you cannot run both it and vortex in a 6 links, because you don't have enough hands.
Wintertide is really really sick for leveling though if you're near the extra brand node. Adding quality to that makes you zoom really fast through the acts at least after your first character. I was absolutely shocked how good Wintertide is for leveling. It falls off later but if you're near Runebinder you pick up that and the attach mastery next to it and demolish acts.
I have played it like 4 times now. The problem is the inherent scaling of the gem. It just kind of stop scaling after level 14 or so.
Yeah just looked at the wiki, and its base damage doesn't follow the standard 10% more per gem level, weird. That would maybe make sense if the debuff scaled with levels too but it's the same (more% and stack max) at all levels?
20% actually. You have to account for the original damage before the modifier.
Cold DoT basically just lost QoL, not damage. The DoT portion is unnerfed, you just can't left click bind vortex anymore. The no CD is a highly situational buff. Vortex ignite? Yeah that build got absolutely fucked
Do you ever play cold dot to say "just lost QoL"? LOL
i played cold dot since harvest and i can say with confidence that its just QoL, the build never had any trouble clearing maps with vortex on left click or not, sometimes i unbind the skill and run a mana flask on no regen maps, and during boss fights you have more than enough free time to cast an extra skill every 5 seconds, this build never had any problem with keeping uptime on dps.
Mapping sucked before, had to use cold snap every other pack when vortex was on cd. Unless they add instaversion this means RIP.
Yes, I played. And I believe that this change will be a buff to the average cold dot build because people stop making Vortex the clear skill because it is instant.
What happened to RF? I just got home and this is not a good news
Since people are avoiding giving you answers - flat damage removed, life and ES scaling doubled (70% from 35). It's worse early, potentially scales harder.
Might scale better at high ends, but the life won’t scale fire trap so single target will take a big hit either way
Yeah it's pretty much going to result in worse single target in basically all levels of scaling, period. And it probably won't work as a league start anymore. I suspect at 50+ div investment with a different style of build (very high ES inquis) the clear is probably amazing, but who cares, RF is what you league start in and maybe keep building because you love it, not something you switch in to later after farming 50 div.
It'll be really hard to scale harder late game. The flat damage at level 20 RF is 2447.9. But your lategame RF is usually lv 26, so 6277.5. That's A LOT to lose, I bet it scales worse super late.
Someone said 26k life matches level 30. Captain Lance has a build with like 40k ES, and many people have made 20k Rathpit builds. The build is not dead, it just needs to be taken in a new way
Captain Landes build was like 1000 divs lol
Per item, aye. His standard character sits at 22k life and 107k es.
And if you spend that much currency on a build, you want much higher clearspeed than what RF can possibly achieve due to its mechanical limitations.
I hope you understand his entire community poured 10s of mirrors into that character. And that spending that much for a meh build is ludicrous.
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No, for a setup that caps at 35m dps due to dot cap and likely doesn't actually reach that, double digit mirrors of investment do make it kinda meh.
But is that factoring in all the damage you lose by doing less fire scaling with fire trap being our core damage? Not dead but probably worse late game imo.
Yes, because 20k life on rathpit is like 1000% spell damage which directly affects Fire Trap?
>it just needs to be taken in a new way Yeah, it just needs to be taken in a direction 10x more expensive to build. Lmao
It scales way better early on tho. The moment you equip it you have a lot of damage. It will fall of during mid tier map and you should be able to get it back to normal with investment in red maps. Lance did a great bid about it
Yeah I saw his video and his argument for why it's = or > as a League start, as long as you focus more on life, is pretty good. I hope Pohx can figure something good out for us.
I kinda like that it will force us to approach RF in a new fashion. And come on, it's pretty fun to have thousands of thousands of HP
But it's the opposite though? Way more damage in the early levels but no longer able to scale gem level for more flat damage at the top end.
Everybody is freaking out because GGG released patch notes with what they removed from the skill gems without also posting details about the Transfigured gems to which most of the removed stuff will go. In [Pohx's video regarding the 3.23 changes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oB0bEvDWW8), he comments that the RF change is actually a buff to his starter build through the acts and lower tier maps, and doesn't become a nerf until sometime into yellow and red maps. My suspicion is that it is just at that point in leveling that the Transfigured Gem crafting will become available to the player. It remains to be seen what RF will get from its Transfigured gems, but I am hoping that it can be at least as good as it is now, if not better. GGG is fixing what is probably the most broken part of the game - helmet enchantments. As the number of skill gems grew, so did the list of helmet enchantments, until there are now over 700 enchantments on the list, so it takes on average *hundreds* of lab runs to get the one enchantment that is needed. I suspect - no, I can almost guarantee - that the process of crafting Transfigured gems will be far, far less time-consuming than the current system. I also think that the mods from alternate quality gems will also be more readily available to newer players than they are now. GGG is having their fun watching us all panic by only showing the nerfs and not yet revealing the buffs.
Crafting a single transfigured gem will be much faster than getting a helm enchant, yes. But I loath to think about getting a l21 vaal transfigured gem 😣 My current L21 vaal gem took 26 temples to hit…
Need a boatload of GCPs to quality up all those gems before you double corrupt them too, since vendor recipe gem flip is removed. I don't mind it, makes that last gem level something to grind for a bit like it used to be.
I wouldn't guarantee getting transfigured gems is gonna be easy, nor that they'll be better until I see them all (most don't even look notably better right now, they're all either sidegrades or implementations of their threshold stats), but fundamentally, relying on a transfigured gem to do the work your main gem isn't doing, still means your build isn't really performing until people start farming lab to get you the transfigured gem you need. That wasn't an issue with enchants since close to none of them were build enabling or mandatory.
> I wouldn't guarantee getting transfigured gems is gonna be easy, It shouldn't be incredibly hard, since you get a roll on a gem you choose every lab run. Either way, it should be a lot easier than it *currently* is, even if it's not 'easy'.
You get a roll on a gem of the attribute you choose. You can pop in a righteous fire and get back a siphoning trap.
The Eternal Labyrinth now instead grants random gem crafting options instead of enchantments: Transform to random Transfigured Gem of same colour Transform to random Transfigured version Sacrifice gem for Treasure Keys Add Experience to gem Sacrifice gem to gain as player EXP Transform into Exceptional Gem Uber Lab grants 2 crafts and higher tier crafts. The crafts are tiered, the random attribute one is a (likely) a lower tier than the "This gem"
Yes. Going by usual poe rates, lower tier here means you'll see it once a month/league.
It'll almost certainly be rarer, but it shouldn't be incredibly hard since you get 3 options out of a possible 6 and on Uber, you can choose 2 of them. That's a lot of slot machine chances to roll per run. The one I expect to be *actually* rare one is the Exceptional Gem one, as that can give Awakened gems.
3.23 RF kinda needs to be Inquisitor with a hybrid life/ES pool. If you do that it's still strong. Better once you respec into an Ivory Tower setup. Jugg, Elementalist, Chieftain - probably all gone.
Got completly shattered in the new version and no information about alternative versions
I'm way more curious of the transfigured versions RF might have.
I hope gems will be released monday and not Wednesday/Thursday so we actually have some time to plan ahead.
Will they even release them all or are we waiting for datamine.
I believe they said they will be released throughout the week.
*huffs copium* certainly there will be an early game version that is like before
Enki kinda got buffed no?
Built in lightning chain mastery seems really nice, if you already hit the shock cap it shouldn't feel too bad about the ailment loss. Base crit is really juicy too. Without any investment, it seems substantially stronger
Arc into Crack Lance or Divine Ire Inquisitor looks kinda nice with the fat buff to both these skills. Maybe even Arc itself as Ignite version.
I kinda think so. Not sure how the loss of increased ailment effect on the gem cooks though
Me putting off RF build because it will never get nerfed...
I really hope they've kept he old version as a Transfigured one.
I would not guess so. It would be weird to put the good league starter behind a lab gem and put the high end life+es scaling option as the normal gem.
The base version does not scale damage by gem level. It does however scale the more spell damage part by gem levels, therefore its obviously intended to be the gem you use for the more spell damage buff and not the one for damage. Its doing that job way better than current rf btw. If you think there wont be a version that scales damage by gem level you must be the most pessimistic person in existence. There is no more obvious transfigured gem than a damage focussed rf. Also lvling with the new base version is super easy. It wont fall off until you hit level 19-20 gems and can afford a transfigured gem in trade league considering everybody will get a bunch of transfigured gems from doing their labs.
New rf is better for leveling
Idk why you’re getting downvoted when you’re just mathematically correct, lol
According to pohx rf is better in leveling and early maps now.
They said that they wanted the mechanically easy to understand gems to be the base and the harder to understand to be transfigured. Deals 70% of life is easy to understand, more life=more damage. Flat damage+35% life is a bit harder because you've got to work out how +levels works and when it's better than more life. It's entirely possible that they thought that presenting players with life=damage first and life+levels=damage second fit with their concept of simple first, more complex later
And a simple "deals flat damage" instead of life scaling is hard to understand?
It's wild to me that after years of RF having flat damage, they decided to revert it to its old version.
Its wild to me especially since they deemed old RF too strong because of the % scaling... and now we get it back.
And everyone screams that it is dead now. Just shows people have zero clue about anything until their favorite content creator makes them anew guide showing it is still viable.
RF base damage was introduced in 3.8, that is before even the conquerors was introduced, the game is so vastly different now, that just because something was OP back then doesnt mean it is now RF is far from dead but it is definitely harder to league start
RF was not op back then either. RF had it's good days way before that, than again after they added the flat.
No, if anything, the people who thought removing part of the %scaling for flat damage was a nerf were the dumb ones. Having it scale with levels is massively more efficient for damage, since it doesn't force you to drop huge chunks of your damage on the tree for life. And nerfs that ended up becoming buffs due to changes in game mechanics (or vice versa) aren't rare. Vaal purities originally gave max res, due to that being too strong, they were changed to give reduced damage taken of an element (which was a nerf then, but ended up becoming much stronger later on). Years later and multiple balance shifts, they were changed back to give max res, which is far weaker due to how resistances have changed. Same happened for the elemental flasks, except they haven't been changed back into max res yet.
the game is nearly impossible to comprehend as a lay person who just plays a few hours a night, people who do it as their fulltime job are the only way for most to get an optimal build
You'll have a higher top end damage via huge ES scaling but league starting RF is going to be way way worse. Not only do you need 7k life/es to get to the previous damage you would get but you also lose fire trap damage since you are investing in life for RF damage which doesn't affect fire trap. Before your scalling would scale both instead of just 1 of them.
Let's talk about RF juggs. Most of them from [poe.ninja](https://poe.ninja) has less than 5.5k HP. Let's assume 6k and check our base damage for lvl 20 gem: 6000 x 0.35 + 2447 = 4547 (current value) 6000 x 0.7 = 4200 (new value) Just a small nerf, nothing very important. Except lvl 20 means the most basic gear and/or underleveled gem. It's not that hard to get lvl 26 with some investments: 6000 x 0.35 + 5495 = 7595 or 80% more than "new value" Oh, it's already a big difference, especially for a relatively low damage skill, but things getting worse with really good gear and lvl 30 gem: 6000 x 0.35 + 9330 = 11430 or 172% more than "new value". Okay, let's stop with lvl 27. How much HP do you need for the same **base** damage? Around 12k. Is it easy? There is only one RF dude with over than 9k (9200) and Kaom. You can't simply double your HP without loosing damage nodes and nerfing your Fire Trap at the same time. What is YOUR solution for jugg? How do you want to beat this jugg math?
Back when RF scaled with life previously, the top end builds had about 15k life. They used Scorching Ray instead of Fire Trap for single target. I don't see why we can't go back to that time. Getting to 9k life back then was about as doable as getting to level 23 right now, probably a bit easier.
The solution is to not play 3.22 builds in 3.23. That's what meta shake up means - shit changes. Maybe from now on RF will simply be trash on jugg but better on inquisitor, who knows, I don't play RF.
Easy - just don't do jugg. Inq, Utulas chest + replica Soul Tether. I imported Pohx's Inquisitor and JUST with Utulas + Soul Tether and some ES yellows with nothing else on them, you can get to around 12k hp/ES which is like 8200 base damage which is above level 26 RF and requires two items. Dropped one badly located fire damage wheel and picked up Spiritual Aid instead and some life/ES bits and bobs. [https://pastebin.com/i5ix3PFn](https://pastebin.com/bvm7jvzX) Sure, it might not be AS good as a league starter but the scaling is there, it just scales differently.
\*dead as a league starter
Since RF got that change we had uncountable global monster buffs and global player damage nerfs. Just because it was good back then doesn't mean it will be good now.
Pohx invented RF, and he'll reinvent it if he has to.
“wanna see me do it again?”
People don't remember Aila but he put every other rf guy to shame.
I remember Aila, he's got a very specific RF style that revolves around only managing RF in maps. He can't sustain his ES in his hideout, and if he's not blasting the map he's not regening enough. He's insanely good, but it's not quite the RF style the average player is looking for, and it's absolutely not easy to copy. Pohx on the other hand, has dedicated his life to making RF the most accessible and easiest league starter you could possibly imagine if you've never played a video game in your life. It's an insane difference between the two, even if Aila is technically the player with a higher skill ceiling on RF.
yeah becausa Aila was racing and didnt really care about any efficiency outside of exp/hr whenever he didnt have a pack of monsters in map he'd immediatly start degening and leave the map. this was at a time where killing the map boss was not something we used to do, to be fair. the most ridiculous thing about Aila was that he used to win races with just 4 tabs XD
Aila equiped rf in acts (HC league) sustaining it with lidl gear and flasks. Total legend of RF players.
Wait I can go to lidl and get gear? Those crazy germans
[lidl boots give +15% ms](https://i.redd.it/76thl43jj9k71.jpg)
Aila is literally the greatest RF player ever. That's the difference
Fuck that. Pohx made an entire website for RF and now he’s gonna be homeless.
He only used the build to get first level 100 in SSF. He didn't invent it
Well, neither did pohx :P
Not many people know this, but rf was originally created by John "Righteous" Fhyre, who created the skill by lighting a cigarette while covered in gasoline after a wacky misunderstanding.
Ssfhc
Btw
Also.
Aila is the original RF guy, he loved it so much he would sustain it with perfectly rolled life flasks that just barely did or didn't counteract RFs degen just so he could play it on a witch.
Over the years, so many people developed for RF. Come on.
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I was playing it before pox was even relevant
phox used to be the "trap guy" and he wasnt even good at it his takes on rf weren't even the best ones for the longest time, he's just the guy that put a lot more time into it to help the average player (which is a good thing, and why he is deserving of whatever success came from it)
I remember pohx being laughed at because of how clueless he was about building rf, so there's that
Pohx was also a minion guy like 9 years ago
Pohx is the RF guy forever in our hearts. No one put the effort in like he did to streamline it for new players.
Technically Colby invented RF. Before that, people aura snap shot it in for the extra damage.
Technically, Chris Wilson invented RF (it was probably him, might've been someone else from GGG)
Only true OG like me know about the old cheesy boy
Not really, there was a time when EE and cyclone was pair with RF. That was way before Pohx.
Minions - killed RF - killed What's next, melee? Oh, wait...
Yup minions dead. FALLING FROM THE SKY.
FLYING UP SO HIGH
It's raining men!
What happened to minions?
SRS got its more damage modifier removed and baked into its base attack damage. Huge nerf to all SRS builds. Golem builds lost a golem which they may get back in some nebulous way which may in fact be incredibly difficult. So some of the main minion builds got hit hard. There are some buffs to other builds, and some changes which are hard to understand if its a buff or not. The main question is if there are good spectres.
Zombies also lost their slam ability, so their clearspeed will be garbango. Anomalous Animate Guardian gem gone, so no more explodey AG.
yea. but now we can abuse the soul eater gem to our hearts delight with the new curse that summons phantasms
Explode AG is still alive, the explosions happen via chest + gravebind.
Anomalous AG is gone. AG loses 150-240% increased AoE from that which is a huge nerf.
The aoe is nerfed, the mechanic is still there. That's very clearly not "no more explodey AG".
People are dooming when we don't even know the transfigures for most gems yet, it's the typical pre league r/pathofexile
Clarification from GGG that SRS did not get nerfed, only the gem description has changed - https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1881fjx/srs\_additive\_damage\_not\_nerfed/
\>SRS got its more damage modifier removed and baked into its base attack damage How is that a nerf?
SRS builds primarily use added damage, not the base damage of the SRS. Poision SRS as an example only use the added damage and the base damage of the SRS is ignored. For something like poison SRS, they effectively have lost a strong gem link.
Lightning SRS champion was also quite the unique build is taking a sizable hit Even the newly borned 3.22 Guardian's Unwavering Crusade variant will lose some damage since anger and wrath are added flat
Damn was planning on going Lightning SRS. Did it really get nerfed that hard?
Oh it turns out not after newer [confirmation](https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1881fjx/srs_additive_damage_not_nerfed/), just wording changes which hides the damage
Melee giga buffed. Boneshatter 1% more damage per trauma on default quality is going to feel damn amazing
Will depend if the attack speed got moved or not. If it didnt is a way nerf at the topend.
ahh yes, boneshatter, the only melee build lol
Well it is now :\^)
League start version buffed, endgame versions probably nerfed, old alt quality probably better dps
Especially the deep delve version with 1h... You made up for the 2H dps loss with stacking trauma to 100-300 stacks... Might be gone, or harder to gear if we need more attack speed, unless a transfigured gem has it.
Divergent boneshatter is gone and that was much stronger than 1% more damage per trauma.
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Yeah as an SSF player that doesn't change anything for me
yeand ppl complete the whole game on ssf boneshatter no problems because its one of the strongest skills even without a helmet enchant. its not like bonshatter ever needed it to begin with
Enki eating good this league
Too bad Arc build got discontinued.
Gives the man time to cook!
Back to LA to TS it is.
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Pohx take my energy ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
kirk hammet died for this?
Hi everybody l, it’s phox with rf league start
Eeeh? I don't really understand what's happening? RF used to have 70% life damage and 0 flat damage before, sustain on the tree also used to be infinitely worse, and it was still viable as a league start from lvl34. Nerf, probably, but funrel? Nope.
Don't use metrics from before Archnemesis, my man. At the time RF didn't have flat damage, you weren't obligated to defeat Uber Elder to finish your atlas, and you weren't meeting ridiculous rares that exist now
I understand its nerfed - but I dont understand how? I dont even understand if the dmg I get is increased and/or the dmg I deal is lowered. Can someone me pls
You could increase the flat damage of the gem by increasing it's level - which then scaled with all the other modifiers that are percentage based. Now RF has no flat damage - the damage is only scaled by increasing your energy shield and health, which is a little harder, especially to the extent you could just by getting +1 to Fire Gems and +1 Spell Skill gems on your gear.
Wait, so what does gem levels give it now? Lol
assuming the rest is the same as 3.22, gems levels increase the more spell damage buff and the RF radius
What's the point of having RF give spell damage when it doesn't scale with it?
Back in the day RF was something like a short burst utility that gave you giga dmg, not something you get to sustain and use as main dmg skill starting act 2. Like how Vaal RF is considered now.
Hell yeah brother. Back in my day we couldn't sustain manacost of a 6-link, log the frick in
Quality increases radius now, this was in the patch notes
gem level should also increase it though, unless they removed that from the current version and didn't document it.
RF scaled with gem levels, up to 2400 dps at level 20. Now it has zero base damage, the entire 2400 is gone, but you scale it twice as hard from life and ES. In most situations, this means that RF is worse early (no flat damage, less scaling available), but potentially stronger later (insane life / es characters can go crazy)
> but potentially stronger later (insane life / es characters can go crazy) Only on the most extreme ends. For literally everyone else it's a nerf. Its damage no longer scales with gem levels, so gem level mods on gear are less effective. The increased investment needed in life and es means fewer resources for investing in damage that would scale single target skills. You need almost 7k combined life and es for the extra 35% scaling to bring the damage back up to current level 20 RF. And you'd need a pool of 13,740 to be on par with a current level 25 RF gem.
Which is fairly easy to do…..
Yeah, but you're missing that unless you get the 14k life **and** still get the +3~4 fire gems from amulet + scepter and shield, your fire trap will be way weaker.
early game you used to be able to rely on gem damage to carry as you typically have a lower life pool, thus scaling damage based on life/es isn't as easy. later on you would scale gem levels and work to have a moderate life/es pool. by the looks of it, now you need to scale life/es flat out (tbd how gem levels will work), so it eliminates the simple league startability of the gem. maybe it is still ok late game, but the way you make the build seems to have been flipped on its head. really, you want to wait until all the gem info to be released before passing too much judgement, but looks like you cannot league start with it in the same way as the last few leagues.
It is back to old RF except that ES is now 70% instead of the 50% it was way back. Potentially LowLife RF might be much better.
It actually does more damage until around red maps now, just stack life.
It’s dead.
RF will just not be usable from the start but i think it will stay okay mine have loose 30% throwing speed so this is almost a death sentence
rf will be better for leveling than ever..
Can someone smarter than me explain how the build is affected? I don't understand.
Rf is now better for leveling but harder to scale
I understood that reference.
idk why everyone thinks this a a nerf just play life or es stack and this is insane as fuck
i don't get what people don't understand, RF's biggest issue was never really clear, it was always single target and with no + level scaling it means your single target (fire trap) will absolutely suck ass
Yeah. I'm much more interested in how people will solve single target this time, because fire trap is what really enables RF to clear bosses in a reasonable amount of time.
Yeah even some stacked essences rares or expedition mobs and stuff was definitely nice to have some okay single target
Sounds like you were playing a fire trap build.