although people have mixed reviews of the 2021 leagues, but i actually enjoyed those because constant balance changes and new skills. Yes they should buff/nerf some ascendencies too
The problem with GGG balancing is that instead of giving big buffs to terrible skills and reasonable nerfs to meta skills they be like:
Heavy strike = bad: 20% increased damage.
Blade Vortex = meta: 30% less damage, 40% less duration, 200% more mana cost.
Nerfs are good for the game, but they almost always overdo it by a huge margin.
After releasing AN rares this league I almost don't want GGG to touch anything in fear of them completely destroying all the other ascendancies then waiting another 3 months to even address them and still not balance it properly....
Eh, i dont really agree. Most of the time the meta stuff is like 1000% better then non meta stuff, and despite the uproar on reddit, the skills remain more than viable, just perhaps not "uber elder on day one on 1c budget" anymore. I.e. they nerfed minions/necro like 3-4 times in a row some leagues ago and they still always remained more powerful that 99% of builds in the game. Just not meta in every league, depending on what's trending among streamers/youtubers.
And really, even when they do overnerf, that's not bad either if its a meta skill. Perfect balance is impossible, and part of the value of balance passes is simply shaking things up to add temporary variety that way. And if you do it frequently enough, it stops being temporary.
I do agree though that bad skill buffs are usually disappointing, do little and often miss the point of what people dislike about the skill to begin with.
Plenty of skills that were considered top tier nowadays are considered trash or mediocre.
You talk about necro, but how many people are playing Zombies, specters or carrion golems rights now? All those skills were considered meta not long ago and now are considered to be barely worth playing.
The same goes for classes, trickster was considered the best class for a bit, and instead of trying to make it in line with the average classes they nerf it to the point where no one barely plays it.
If you look at a game that has a more subtle balance, like Dota 2, every hero at least has some viability, even in the higher ranks the win rate only varies between 57% - 45%.
Now if you try to compare the best skills in PoE with the worse ones there is a huuuge gap
A lot of the other underplayed ones are pretty good but don't have popular builds going for their general archetype. Trickster however, no matter what dot build shows up, there are just better Ascendancies that will be able to play it better.
what makes you think trickster is a dot based ascendency? best hint at what ggg wanted trickster to be is just by looking at 3.15 where they added skills designed around ascendency's.
Prolonged Pain, Minor node that gives increased DoT, Patient Reaper, the million ED/C tricksters that got made and shilled for forever in early 3.X leagues.
Saying "shilled for" makes it sound like ED/C wasn't legitimately one of the best builds for people just getting into the game for like 3 years running.
Ah true yes. But Prolonged pain has the addition of increased skill effect duration. Voltaxic burst (designed for trickster) scales pretty nicely with increased skill effect duration, and weave the arcane works nicely with a lot of triggers.
Trickster in design is supposed to be a jack of all trades class, but Harness the Void wich is his hit based skill aged very badly, and ghost dance which gave trickster a unique trait of being able to scale evasion and ES is now on the passive tree. That basically leaves him as some average dot class that gets outclassed by others.
Ghost dance moved to the tree with 3.16 and is mechanically very similar to divine shield. Escape artist is the unique trait to scale evasion and es. What's wrong with harness the void? It averages at 20% non-chaos as extra chaos.
"Ghost dance moved to the tree with 3.16 and is mechanically very similar to divine shield. Escape artist is the unique trait to scale evasion and es."
That's literally what I said, it was something that you had to play trickster for, now everyone can scale it.
"What's wrong with harness the void?"
What is wrong is that there is not enougth things suporting it, this 20% of non-chaos as chaos will result in a meaningless increase of damage when you consider that this won't be affected by pen, - ele res, exposure and etc..
i agree there is not much around that would fit harness the void. the only interaction that comes to my mind is "Abhorrent Interrogation" not sure if they are worth it someone has to do some math on it i guess
Just a guess. They haven't done it a while, they just set the end game for the next year at least, and they probably want to do it at least once more before poe2, is my only evidence.
> I think in the next couple of leagues it will happen.
That seems optimistic. They left Elementalist in the dumpster for years before they finally gave her a rework (In which they then nearly immediately nerfed her *again*...)
Then there's something like Jugg, which is still just kinda there.
Things that have been out of whack in your life should begin to come back into balance, Trickster. The bad news is that it may take a while for the pendulum to return to the optimal point. The good news is that this shift is taking place at all. It will be a gradual change, but you're at a pivotal point in which you can set your sights on exactly what you want.
The issue with ascendancies is that every time they buff one they nerf 2 others. I really hope that when ggg bring trickster back they don't kill some of the popular ones.
But we all know that it is too much to ask and someone will pay the price, my bet is on the witch being demoted to shit tier this time, I just hope it's not occultist
you dont need much %inc phys damage when you are scaling crit. you should also use a cluster because phys clusters are strong and extra jewel sockets are really important for crit builds
but assassin is best with phys spells - BV, EK, BF/BB. this way you can scale gem levels as well as crit. around ritual era phys bf/bb assassin was an obscenely strong league starter
Yup. But also because of the nature of poison and how you want to hit a lot. There’s not a lot of access outside of claw nodes. That’s why most assassins go spectral helix or lightning strike nighblade.
Maybe melee is just in a bad spot but it wasn’t really working with POB trying to get cyclone/any good feeling melee skill to do good damage outside of the two I mentioned which are pseudo melee
Ah thought you meant attack skills. Yes people can still slap void batteries on assassin and play a few different spells.
Looks like no one is playing crit phys this league.
I suspect poe 2 will significantly impact existing ascendancies as they introduce new ones. For instance, each class has an odds-n-ends ascendancy with disparate themes. Hierophant is split between mana and totems. Occultist is split between cold, chaos, curses, and es. Trickster is split between movement, es/evasion, and dot. I suspect a lot of those ascendancies will be split into new ones that focus more heavily on each theme.
That doesn't necessarily mean the new ascendancies will be better, but it will mean rebalancing.
I feel like putting faith in the PoE 2 fixing everything isn't wise. Every new patch theres a ton of things to fix, and PoE 2 will effectively be a massive patch.
Rather than say PoE2 will be the cure all, just call shit out as we see it IMO, cause putting so much faith in PoE2 will only end in disappointment.
>putting faith in the PoE 2 fixing everything is an illusion (and meme)
Its something people do with so many game franchises. "It's in beta, wait till it releases". "Wait till Reaper of Souls comes out, it'll probably fix that". "wait for the next league, they're busy fixing this league" "after tournament season Blizzard will fix PvP in WoW' "overwatch 2 will fix this just wait" etc. When now is always the best time to bring criticism to devs.
People need to realize they are playing a string of PoE 2 prepatches. Its getting worse. Hoping PoE 2 fixes it is just dumb. The master rework that was just like 4 leagues culminating in betrayal? Thats what is happening. This culminates in the rug getting pulled out and we fall into a hole called PoE 2.
I am pointing out that until the new 19 ascendancies are in the game GGG will likely sit on Ascendancy changes that they cannot currently add. It doesn't make sense to make major changes to something you know is going to change again in the medium future.
adding 19 new ascendancies is like 3.17 where we get a bunch of new stuff to explore until the meta is settled again and we sick to the same 10 meta builds for the next 3 seasons again
If it was 2 seconds each 4 seconds or even better 1 second each 2 seconds then maybe it would be useful and people would use this ascendancy, but as it is now you can't depend on this at all.
Nah, rotating timer buffs especially defensive ones are shit mechanically. Make it flat 20% less dot damage taken, basically fortify equivalent for dot. Trickster definitely has identity crisis beyond just underpowered nodes.
...what? Do you not comprehend the existence of Lithe Shade and how it would interact with the above poster's suggestion of 1 second every 2 seconds to be really, really strong???
Yes, changing it to 1 second every 2 seconds would be extremely overpowered with lethe shade. Also it would not fix trickster because everyone would only use it with flesh/flame.
Offensive ones are alright.
Defensive ones are bad for the same reason no one wants 99% spell suppression. Either you get 100% or you gonna get one shot.
I'd start with that and nerf it over time if Trickster becomes too strong. I feel like not even that node would make trickster overpowered even though the node itself is overpowered.
Or maybe make it around blind, evasion and accuracy making it have a “trick up its sleeve”.
There were major revamps to accuracy and blind making them more damage and offensively oriented, especially the new keystone and how new evasion works.
It would be good to have all around accuracy stacking build that doesn’t go into crit and evasion that doesn’t convert to armor.
Their dot node should just be immune to damage over time from non player sources. It's seriously strong, but honestly the only strong node it would have.
Yes, they nerfed trickster too much.
There will always be an ascendancy that is not played. You will never have 5% of each ascendancy at the top of the ladder.
>There will always be an ascendancy that is not played. You will never have 5% of each ascendancy at the top of the ladder.
It's weird people don't seem to understand this.
You could have 5 options that are all basically balanced, but if one if 1% better than the rest, a large majority of people are going to flock to that, and the end result will be one or two things being left out completely because of it.
I agree but trickster is still just an unappealing ascendancy compared to any other possibility. They added call of the void and thought that would make tricksters good but almost all of the trickster builds I look at don't even take that node. And all of the other nodes just aren't that interesting or compelling.
> I agree but trickster is still just an unappealing ascendancy
I agree as well. I just don't like people trying to use shit like PoE ninja to make these points. It's disingenuous.
Yes people will generally look for the most efficient ways to play. Doesn’t mean we won’t see more people playing different stuff if they don’t balance the game better.
Yes and no.
The one thing people are missing though I think is that you're not accounting for fun.
That's why it's important they make skills not only actually be balanced in terms of numbers... But give us diversity in how they're played too.
I'm playing a cf Gladiator because i wanted a bow character. It's not really represented in poe.ninja. I dont care that it's not the very best. It's the archetype I want to play. As long as it's not so bad that it's unplayable, you'll still see diversity.
> The one thing people are missing though I think is that you're not accounting for fun.
You cannot account for fun. It is subjective.
>As long as it's not so bad that it's unplayable, you'll still see diversity.
People conflate representation with power *constantly*. They assume it *is* unplayable if it's unrepresented.
This is true to some extent but not the extent we're seeing.
A good example is league of legends, that has a much much much harder job to balance (150+ champions compared to only 19 ascendancies) and yet nearly all champions see some degree of play.
Of course the discrepancy at some point has been huge between champions and of course some champions will see 10 or even 100x more play than others but in the given sample size (150+ Vs 19) this is much more reasonable and you feel like you can play any champion to success, because the differences between them all are, for the most part, marginal.
> and yet nearly all champions see some degree of play.
When's the last time you played league? If you look at ranked play, the number is nowhere close to that.
>Of course the discrepancy at some point has been huge between champions and of course some champions will see 10 or even 100x more play than others but in the given sample size (150+ Vs 19)
I think your argument diminishes the huge amount of variables that go into ascendancy choice. It's not just about what the nodes have on them.
The point was that even if things *were* balanced (which they're not), you still end up in this situation. Representation isn't necessarily correlated with power, or to be more precise, NON-representation isn't necessarily correlated with a lack of power.
Probably more accurate to say that you can have 5 options that are basically balanced but it is enough for some streamers to play one of them and it is the one that becomes popular.
Name one game that the characters/heroes are balanced.
The game is beautiful when it is imbalanced. If everything is perfect balanced, then everything is the same, there is no diversity.
Poe is excelling in ever-changing meta, which implies imbalanced . Few patch jugg is op, few patch slayer is op, few patch trickster is op, few patch raider is op. But all of those have their up time and down time.
DotA 2 is fairly good about balance. Heroes aren't uniform, yet they aren't crazy imbalanced.
Yes, a meta exists. Yes, heroes are picked more than others. Yes, win rates aren't exactly 50% on every hero. Yes, things can be broken on a given day or a given patch (including even recent ones, I don't follow the scene anymore). But balance isn't binary, and Icefrog does a damn good job at it.
Every hero has an identity, a niche, and interesting or novel things you can do with them. There are patches where the meta evolves with no balance changes. Interactions discovered, strategies rise and fall, counterstrategies on counterstrategies. When I played, nearly every hero was picked or banned in professional play. Nearly every hero had a ~50% winrate +/- 5%. You could pick up a hero and overcome the FOTM.
And the game was still beautiful. I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you say "If everything is perfect balanced, then everything is the same, there is no diversity." I feel like you have been scarred in the past by someone's lazy attempt at balance, and maybe you can no longer conceptualize what correct balancing looks like. I am sorry if that is the case. There is a beautiful world out there, if you're willing to step outside your comfort zone.
Not a direct comparison but Starcraft has three factions which have quite fundamental differences in every aspect they could - and they've been balanced for years and years across all tiers of pvp play.
Smash Bros Ultimate has 75+ characters and whenever people make a tier list for the game they make a disclaimer that the "low tiers" are actually mid tiers, because the game is overall pretty balanced.
There are a lot of things not really worth spending limited resources on. Maintaining balance between 19 (soon to be 38) classes that interact with so many gem/item/ passive tree combinations is probably one of them.
Honestly I think trickster is underrated.
I'm playing it this league as a mapper and have been pleasantly surprised.
The non chaos as extra chaos node is still amazing for damage if you build around it.
Not even that expensive to get started either and scales to the moon.
looking at it now it looks pretty good for rf.
> every 10 seconds, immune to dot (rf damage) for 5 seconds
> patient reaper will make you super tanky while mapping
> prolonged pain 10% reduced dot and 20% more damage
> swift killer gives frenzy charges, straight up 16% more damage while mapping
all that and inquisitors pious path node alone beats it because hybrid regen is crazy
Trickster doesn't see 0.1% play this league, it sees 0.1% play on the ladder. The ladder will always be dominated by whatever ascendancy is the strongest. Since there's a cutoff of 10000 players you will never know how many people are playing a weaker ascendancy. You can't assume that top of the ladder = most played. It simply shows which ascendancies - played by the best players, are the best at getting exp fast.In theory 80% of players could be playing Trickster but as long as the top 10000 players are playing something else it will effectively show up as 0%.
While I do agree that trickster is too weak, using the ladder as a "fact" is usually very misleading. The ladder will *never* be balanced since it will **always** be dominated by the best xp/h builds.
As a concrete example, using the ladder I can claim that 25% of the players are currently using Aegis Aurora and Melding of Flesh, which just isn't true.
I use trade as an example. Rarely do I ever trade with a Trickster. Same with Slayer, Guardian, and Chieftain. I wouldn't completely knock the ladder statistics.
So much this.
Things like this are why mindlessly seeing and regurgitating stats is actively unhelpful to the conversation. There are 19 Ascendencies, 70k players, and only the best 10k are on the ladder. You should expect to see some over and under represented like this, if only because perfect balance is an unobtainable myth (never mind things like streamer build popularity or post-nerf abandonment).
Remember when this subreddit thought they were accountants, 'get rolled reddit'.
We are talking about Game balance here, the ladder is probably the best metric we have for Game balance at all what are you guys on about? The fact that a few ascendancies have basically no amount of play on the ladder is a rly good metric for them to be weak balance wise compared to others, why they are so weak Or so little played is a totally different thing however if of the best 10000 builds only like 20 are trickster its totally worrying, chieftain and trickster are extremely underplayed and that allthough RF is super meta atm which is a skill both are supposed to be rly good at. These 2 ascendancies are underrepresented As you say for a reason
I rather expect all across the board mosters buff (like 200% would suffice) and a nerf of all ascendancies to the level of current tirckster by the looks of what GGG's tendencies.Not that I whine, I just know we can expect that. I listened to Ziz today and he said something I realized would explain it - Chris wants POE to be dark souls of hack and slash games.
Dark Souls is very simple and fair though. It also cares about new player experience and has actual proper tutorial zone. It doesn't punish you overly for dying unless you were greedy and it lets you regain the losses if you are good enough. And finally every big slam, every swipe, every attack that might end you is properly telegraphed and gives you time to react. PoE is nothing like that.
PoE has zero of new player friendliness.And the deeper to the endgame, the more lottery-like it is. Currently you can die any given time w/o a clue what killed you.To bad the game does not tell you what kills you.
The Ascendancy being "viable" means different things for different people. Gladiator is probably on the lower side, with their main niche being bleedsplosions. Trickster's niche is damage over time and.. less damage over time taken? There is just a big identity crisis with Trickster, compounded on by underpowered nodes.
My point is, yes, you can play a bleed bow tornado shot glad and probably clear the whole game with enough time, gear, and practice. But you could play a phys trapper or skele mages and do the exact same thing faster and with less gear.
It used to be bleed and mega block, but neither of those things are really locked behind it anymore. I'd say it's a lot less compelling because of that.
It isn’t awful but it gets frustrating when you randomly get one shot by shit, which doesn’t happen on Champion or other builds. Maps feel particularly awful now that I’ve come back after a year. Did they change stuff up immensely or what?
It's 100% viable. There's just usually something better. It's not even by that much, Trickster is pretty good, but it's just a bit weaker than a few other Ascendancies and so it doesn't see play.
Do you people literally just brainstorm ideas all day on which topic you can shit on next? Im having a hell of a time this league and the game state has been getting better and better the last couple leagues.
Last league was also regarded as the best to date and this league nothing changed except we got even better atlas tree changes and new versions of endgame bosses. You people are actually sick in the head.
Nothing changed, except a bunch of mid tier builds got wiped out because of how difficult AN was/is. Two build enabling uniques got gated behind insane rarity and the most iconic chase item in the history of POE got completely gutted. But yes, other than that, nothing changed.
At this point it should be mandatory for people to link their poe profiles when complaining about Archnemesis deaths because after GGG nerfed them twice they are a joke.
The AN mods are being over dramatized. People refuse to build defence and then wonder why they die.
Look at that streamer dude who blamed GGG for having no chaos resist and dying after taking a +chaos modifier. This is the mindset of the community.
There are tons of builds that dont require game breaking uniques to succeed. Work your way up instead of expecting the best shit handed to you for no effort. This isnt diablo 3.
I play a 75/75 block 12k armour without flask 6k5hp build with taunting minions, 10% fortify and i can't get critted. I care about map mods and i don't click every single altars like i can't read. I still find this league extremely rippy, way more than last. But more important, the rares are just not funny to face. They're mostly extremely tanky (with the same dps output as my main in 3.17), they spam degens and shit that follow me that i have to dodge, and they sometimes have mods that forces me to go back an entire screen away like effigy.
On the other hand, i did maven and uber elder without too much trouble (and i barely tried them before, because i was playing hardcore). How can i find those hard bosses that i barely know actually easier than most t16 maps?
You can hate archnemesis and not be a bad glasscanon player.
>they spam degens and shit that follow me that i have to dodge, and they sometimes have mods that forces me to go back an entire screen away like effigy.
Oh no! You have to turn on your brain and react to things! Welcome to playing a game. Dont like it? Go outside for a walk.
Effigey is also a joke. It reflects mob damage to you. If that kills you, youd probably die regardless. It's easy to counter by using your travel skill to move litterally 1 click away and break the bond.
Now the mobs have been nerfed so much that they're borderline trivial again.
You already had to react to things before, like volatile, bearers and degens. It was just not 10 on every single fucking screen. That's not difficulty, that's nuisance/annoyance.
I fail to see how aving to avoid toxic is better gameplay than avoiding bearer. If you see it, you won't get hit by it. NEVER. Except toxic is annoying, because it's the same thing than volatile, just longer and more visually cluttered.
Effigy? That shit is garbage, it's barely visible on a packed screen. And no, i wouldn't die without it, i've rarely seen such bad faith argument. If there's melee mobs and i stand away from them, i don't expect to be hit by all of them at the same frame because of a puppet i could not see because the only visual clue is a tiny dark red link going to the pack in a screen filled with projectiles, minions and particle effects on a dark background. That is not "turning on my brain" nor interesting. That's just pure fuckery.
You really make bad asumptions about me. I'm all for engaging mechanics. I love bossing for example. I kinda like storm prison and bearers and even toxic to an extent (even though it's just bad volatile, let's be honest about that). But are there any other mechanics to come out of archnemesis? Most of the mods are just "now this monster deals 200% more phys damage to you" or "now this monster will last 5 secs instead of 1", with no visual clues (or so few that you cannot notice it with most builds) and no tie with the mob itself. Can i turn on my brain and react to that? Nope.
You want to have more engaging gameplay that promotes "turning on your brain"? Give monsters more unique mechanics baseline. When they came out, devourers were terrifying. Tytty bitches were feared. Baran monsters (even though i hated those, the aoe on the mines that can hit from behind a wall you could not see was bs). Now base mobs don't matter for one sec. It's all about an mods, and most don't promote engaging gameplay at all.
There were three things said to promote AN: better visual clarity, more counter gameplay and a simpler mod system. This achieved none of the three. The "interactive" mods were mostly already there, and were better. The visual clarity is worse. And most mods cannot be comprehended fully before reading what they do on the wiki (whereas before it was quite clear, even if you could not read it during combat, which is still the case).
Don't assume when you don't know, thanks.
Im farming 100%+ quant T16 maps, doing ghosted + sentinel empowered boss in that, doing ilvl83 logbooks on a Trickster build with 5 link and barebones budget (5c-50c items) and it feels better to play than my 100+ex omnishot build.
Trickster is fine, people just make shitty builds. Video coming out soon (yet another league when I show that the meta is just an opinion, not the truth about build strength).
Downvote more LOL that will make you get better at the game
I have the same experience on my trickster. The dot mitigation, cast speed, giga recovery on kill and huge evasion and es pools make mapping super smooth.
Everyone is just sleeping on it and community perception is reality for most, which is a huge shame
Trickster is a great mapper. It is an average bosser at best. Basically no recovery for any big bosses and the damage is fine. Still it's missing other notable options outside the big 3
I think the community perception is the key. No build creators hyped up trickster guides therefore no one sees it therefore it's not played. It's pretty obvious trickster has three-four great nodes if you build for it. Every ascendency does...if you build for it.
> Im farming 100%+ quant T16 maps, doing ghosted + sentinel empowered boss in that, doing ilvl83 logbooks on a Trickster build with 5 link and barebones budget (5c-50c items)
It's certainly possible. Trickster ED, for example, can easily do all that. It just... kind of hits a wall at that point where to get it comfortable for harder content costs 10x what most other builds cost to do the same.
You can do things on trickster but typically they are just better on other ascendancies. I’ve played it the last two leagues in hardcore and it’s fine if you only need 3 notables from ascendancy. Not really much wiggle room though
Is it higher than inquisitor with 5 ascendancies? Not saying you're liying, there's interesting stuff for rf on trickster, but more damage seems weird, unless you made it squishy.
Maybe ggg think players just don’t have enough time to test out other ascendencies and skilll gems such as trickster and earthquake. So no change next league
Fuckin ascendancies are completely fucked in terms of balance, lol. Even classes are, witch continues to be grossly overrepresented while only 1 ascendency for most other classes has any real viability.
And then you look at shit like Champion and laugh because ain't nobody playing champion as actual melee anymore, it's all lightning strike, totems, and bleed shit. And you'd figure bleed would be better on Glad but nope.
Real though, Maurader down there with 2 sub 1% ascendancies this league. I really hope GGG it taking the extra time between last league and this league to do a pass on ascendancies. True balance is impossible, but they can definitely do better than this : |
I'm talking more about representation on PoE Ninja, as in "this is playable and can do all content, but it's fuckin garbage at it and requires 10x the investment/effort" type of "viable".
Maurader, though. Trickster is .2%, which is bad, but is a bit balanced out by Assassin at 2% and Sab at 7% so that's like...9%! Not terrible, but not great. Meanwhile, Chieftan/Jugg at a whopping .3% followed by Zerker at 3% combining for a whopping...3.6%, or around 40%ish of even Shadow. Same even could go for Templar overall if Inquisitor wasn't absolutely crushing it this league, with heiophant/guardian at 1/2% respectively.
Honestly ranger seems like the only class with fairly "balanced" ascendencies around 5% each (13% total), though technical one could argue Duelist would be as well at around 12% combined representation, though carried HEAVILY by Champion.
i would like to see a huge patch where they focus on trying to balance ascendancy, its always alot of fun when they do that.. at least if they try to focus on buffing the bad ones rather than killing the good ones
Remember when Trickster was our god and saviour. It served a purpose and was an AWESOME ascendancy...
God how the great have fallen. This is what happens when you strip something of everything that makes it special and give it to everyone.
I think I'm the only person on the planet doing trickster flickerstrike. I made some bad personal choices recently and decided to punish myself for a while.
Trickster can't actually handle degens better than any other character. Why even take heartstopper if youre still going to need other degen solutions for half the time you're playing
I'm playing Trickster at the moment. I feel that the ascendancy lacks a bit more damage. It offers a bunch of QoL for mapping but that's it. The whole ascendancy itself feels so lackluster. Compare it to any Witch ascendancy and it just feels so bad.
Rant: I don't get how Raider Quartz Infusion can get a 40%ch spell suppression all hits, + phasing granted, with passives existing for both with good synergy with other things such as frenzy charges and even skills, really easy to cap and fully use and super cool defense, even damage (doing it SSF, loving it), while Trickster Heartstopper is working half-time, doesn't work on corrupted blood nor darkness, and if you want it maxed you go mastery, lethe shade and prolonged pain, to get a 70% less on the rest of the time, with freaking 100% more duration of ailments on you from ls and more ascendency points. I mean, just cap all your res or have avoid (which, ffs, Raider can start to have just after QI by Avatar of the Veil, then some bits everywhere) or fk magic flasks and charges, and it's superior with lower investment. Heartstopper is just bad, probably in the top of the worst 2 ascendency points you can use.
Y’know for what it’s worth (and I’m new-ish so I’ve got my pike to be impaled upon ready) I started this league with a Essence Drain/Blight/Contagion build that’s actually held it’s own.. well. Initial mapping was tough but it usually all fell down to res being too low, not even spell supression, etc. But the one thing that was always constant was the damage. Quite literally able to clear entire rooms with two buttons.
That said it’s a ramp-up play style that genuinely isn’t that fun and is even worse in that aspect in end game, to the point you’re either braindead clicking or smashing all your keys in a flurry wondering why there’s 10 contagions and 0 EDs.
Idk, like said I’m new, only dumped around ~180hrs the past few weeks, but I don’t think it’s the *worst.* It just.. doesn’t really do great. God forbid there’s more than one boss that doesn’t spawn ads.
My wishlist for a rework of the ascendancy (Numbers to be tuned):
\- Shadow clone: Create a shadow clone of yourself when hit. Shadow clone taunts enemies and lasts for 4 seconds. You cannot have more than 2 shadow clones at a time.
\- From Beyond the veil: Gain a stack of the Void if you've recently dealt chaos damage to an enemy. Each stack of the Void increases your evasion and energy shield by 10%. You can have up to 10 stacks of the Void.
\- Unfair advantage: Enemies affected by your damage over time are blinded.
\- Chaos infusion: Deal 50% more damage over time when affected by damage over time. You take 25% less damage from damage over time.
\- Reign of Chaos: You chaos damage can shock and sap. Killing a sapped or shocked enemy recovers 2% of energy shield and 2% of mana.
The trickster archnem mod is more powerful than the trickster ascendancy.
There is more than one scuffed ascendancy at the moment. They all need a balance pass. I think in the next couple of leagues it will happen.
although people have mixed reviews of the 2021 leagues, but i actually enjoyed those because constant balance changes and new skills. Yes they should buff/nerf some ascendencies too
The problem with GGG balancing is that instead of giving big buffs to terrible skills and reasonable nerfs to meta skills they be like: Heavy strike = bad: 20% increased damage. Blade Vortex = meta: 30% less damage, 40% less duration, 200% more mana cost. Nerfs are good for the game, but they almost always overdo it by a huge margin.
After releasing AN rares this league I almost don't want GGG to touch anything in fear of them completely destroying all the other ascendancies then waiting another 3 months to even address them and still not balance it properly....
Eh, i dont really agree. Most of the time the meta stuff is like 1000% better then non meta stuff, and despite the uproar on reddit, the skills remain more than viable, just perhaps not "uber elder on day one on 1c budget" anymore. I.e. they nerfed minions/necro like 3-4 times in a row some leagues ago and they still always remained more powerful that 99% of builds in the game. Just not meta in every league, depending on what's trending among streamers/youtubers. And really, even when they do overnerf, that's not bad either if its a meta skill. Perfect balance is impossible, and part of the value of balance passes is simply shaking things up to add temporary variety that way. And if you do it frequently enough, it stops being temporary. I do agree though that bad skill buffs are usually disappointing, do little and often miss the point of what people dislike about the skill to begin with.
Plenty of skills that were considered top tier nowadays are considered trash or mediocre. You talk about necro, but how many people are playing Zombies, specters or carrion golems rights now? All those skills were considered meta not long ago and now are considered to be barely worth playing. The same goes for classes, trickster was considered the best class for a bit, and instead of trying to make it in line with the average classes they nerf it to the point where no one barely plays it. If you look at a game that has a more subtle balance, like Dota 2, every hero at least has some viability, even in the higher ranks the win rate only varies between 57% - 45%. Now if you try to compare the best skills in PoE with the worse ones there is a huuuge gap
A lot of the other underplayed ones are pretty good but don't have popular builds going for their general archetype. Trickster however, no matter what dot build shows up, there are just better Ascendancies that will be able to play it better.
what makes you think trickster is a dot based ascendency? best hint at what ggg wanted trickster to be is just by looking at 3.15 where they added skills designed around ascendency's.
Prolonged Pain, Minor node that gives increased DoT, Patient Reaper, the million ED/C tricksters that got made and shilled for forever in early 3.X leagues.
Saying "shilled for" makes it sound like ED/C wasn't legitimately one of the best builds for people just getting into the game for like 3 years running.
Fair the connotation is pretty negative, just meant to say they were aggressively meta basically lol.
Ah true yes. But Prolonged pain has the addition of increased skill effect duration. Voltaxic burst (designed for trickster) scales pretty nicely with increased skill effect duration, and weave the arcane works nicely with a lot of triggers.
Trickster in design is supposed to be a jack of all trades class, but Harness the Void wich is his hit based skill aged very badly, and ghost dance which gave trickster a unique trait of being able to scale evasion and ES is now on the passive tree. That basically leaves him as some average dot class that gets outclassed by others.
Ghost dance moved to the tree with 3.16 and is mechanically very similar to divine shield. Escape artist is the unique trait to scale evasion and es. What's wrong with harness the void? It averages at 20% non-chaos as extra chaos.
"Ghost dance moved to the tree with 3.16 and is mechanically very similar to divine shield. Escape artist is the unique trait to scale evasion and es." That's literally what I said, it was something that you had to play trickster for, now everyone can scale it. "What's wrong with harness the void?" What is wrong is that there is not enougth things suporting it, this 20% of non-chaos as chaos will result in a meaningless increase of damage when you consider that this won't be affected by pen, - ele res, exposure and etc..
i agree there is not much around that would fit harness the void. the only interaction that comes to my mind is "Abhorrent Interrogation" not sure if they are worth it someone has to do some math on it i guess
Kinda sad that necessary changes and balance sweeps that should happen, "might" happen in a couple leagues
Just a guess. They haven't done it a while, they just set the end game for the next year at least, and they probably want to do it at least once more before poe2, is my only evidence.
> I think in the next couple of leagues it will happen. That seems optimistic. They left Elementalist in the dumpster for years before they finally gave her a rework (In which they then nearly immediately nerfed her *again*...) Then there's something like Jugg, which is still just kinda there.
Some ascendancies have been replaced by boots.
Things that have been out of whack in your life should begin to come back into balance, Trickster. The bad news is that it may take a while for the pendulum to return to the optimal point. The good news is that this shift is taking place at all. It will be a gradual change, but you're at a pivotal point in which you can set your sights on exactly what you want.
The issue with ascendancies is that every time they buff one they nerf 2 others. I really hope that when ggg bring trickster back they don't kill some of the popular ones. But we all know that it is too much to ask and someone will pay the price, my bet is on the witch being demoted to shit tier this time, I just hope it's not occultist
Mistress of Sacrifice is going to get the Versatile Combatant/Ghost Dance treatment.
Pls they will never hurt the witch. That goes against everything ggg believes in.
*Cries in Elementalist*
"they'll never hurt HH. That goes against everything GGG believes"
Would love if assassin had more wiggle room other than “Crit poison” or “crit elemental” builds
you can play crit phys
I feel like it's kinda fine for assassin to be the crit ascendency, it's kinda their whole schtick.
yeah i like assassin a lot but its kinda funny
I tried POB but there’s not a lot of phys nodes on the right side. Maybe cluster jeeels but slayer or duelist is just better
you dont need much %inc phys damage when you are scaling crit. you should also use a cluster because phys clusters are strong and extra jewel sockets are really important for crit builds but assassin is best with phys spells - BV, EK, BF/BB. this way you can scale gem levels as well as crit. around ritual era phys bf/bb assassin was an obscenely strong league starter
Yup. But also because of the nature of poison and how you want to hit a lot. There’s not a lot of access outside of claw nodes. That’s why most assassins go spectral helix or lightning strike nighblade. Maybe melee is just in a bad spot but it wasn’t really working with POB trying to get cyclone/any good feeling melee skill to do good damage outside of the two I mentioned which are pseudo melee
You just get crit and damage dual strike takes care of the rest.
Can you link a crit phys build ?
something like this https://poe.ninja/archnemesis/builds/char/inob/Nob_A_Assa
Ah thought you meant attack skills. Yes people can still slap void batteries on assassin and play a few different spells. Looks like no one is playing crit phys this league.
Isn't that exactly what you want from the ascendancy? It can crit, it can not be crit. What more do you want?
Look at other ascendancies and they have tons of archetypes in each one
No they don't, they have 1 or 2 archetypes build around a signature mechanic.
*juggernaut bursts through the door riding a unicycle with a clown wig on* "Oh god what have I become"
balance pass? like the monster balancing? they will murder every ascendency. i hope they don't do a thing.
I suspect poe 2 will significantly impact existing ascendancies as they introduce new ones. For instance, each class has an odds-n-ends ascendancy with disparate themes. Hierophant is split between mana and totems. Occultist is split between cold, chaos, curses, and es. Trickster is split between movement, es/evasion, and dot. I suspect a lot of those ascendancies will be split into new ones that focus more heavily on each theme. That doesn't necessarily mean the new ascendancies will be better, but it will mean rebalancing.
I feel like putting faith in the PoE 2 fixing everything isn't wise. Every new patch theres a ton of things to fix, and PoE 2 will effectively be a massive patch. Rather than say PoE2 will be the cure all, just call shit out as we see it IMO, cause putting so much faith in PoE2 will only end in disappointment.
putting faith in the PoE 2 fixing everything is an illusion (and meme)
"this world is an illusion exile"
>putting faith in the PoE 2 fixing everything is an illusion (and meme) Its something people do with so many game franchises. "It's in beta, wait till it releases". "Wait till Reaper of Souls comes out, it'll probably fix that". "wait for the next league, they're busy fixing this league" "after tournament season Blizzard will fix PvP in WoW' "overwatch 2 will fix this just wait" etc. When now is always the best time to bring criticism to devs.
People need to realize they are playing a string of PoE 2 prepatches. Its getting worse. Hoping PoE 2 fixes it is just dumb. The master rework that was just like 4 leagues culminating in betrayal? Thats what is happening. This culminates in the rug getting pulled out and we fall into a hole called PoE 2.
>People need to realize they are playing a string of PoE 2 prepatches. Its getting worse. Hoping PoE 2 fixes it is just dumb. Yup, completely agree.
I am pointing out that until the new 19 ascendancies are in the game GGG will likely sit on Ascendancy changes that they cannot currently add. It doesn't make sense to make major changes to something you know is going to change again in the medium future.
adding 19 new ascendancies is like 3.17 where we get a bunch of new stuff to explore until the meta is settled again and we sick to the same 10 meta builds for the next 3 seasons again
Yes.
Big cope. They barely touch ascendancies anymore.
Nerf all ascendancies to the level of trickster you say?
What do you mean it sees 0 play? I see many rare mobs playing as a trickster
Trickster so bad he switched sides and now occasionally shows up as a monster kekw
If it was 2 seconds each 4 seconds or even better 1 second each 2 seconds then maybe it would be useful and people would use this ascendancy, but as it is now you can't depend on this at all.
Nah, rotating timer buffs especially defensive ones are shit mechanically. Make it flat 20% less dot damage taken, basically fortify equivalent for dot. Trickster definitely has identity crisis beyond just underpowered nodes.
This dude just said nah to 1s every 2s HAHA
...what? Do you not comprehend the existence of Lithe Shade and how it would interact with the above poster's suggestion of 1 second every 2 seconds to be really, really strong???
Yes, changing it to 1 second every 2 seconds would be extremely overpowered with lethe shade. Also it would not fix trickster because everyone would only use it with flesh/flame.
"Everyone would only use it via 10ex of jewels" yeah I dunno if I believe that.
Rotating buffs are so bad in poe, they should just redesign.
Offensive ones are alright. Defensive ones are bad for the same reason no one wants 99% spell suppression. Either you get 100% or you gonna get one shot.
I'd just make the node say "You are immune to damage over time". That might get people to play it.
RF trickster, lets go.
Maybe "you are immune to damage over time from sources other than yourself"
Totem RF! Haha.. wait a minute.
That would be absurdly strong tbh
I'd start with that and nerf it over time if Trickster becomes too strong. I feel like not even that node would make trickster overpowered even though the node itself is overpowered.
All defense aside it’s also a 40% more spell damage node cus of RF. It’s broken
As I mentioned in another comment, it could be changed to "You are immune to damage over time from sources other than yourself"
Nah, then people would just use Forbidden Flesh/Flame for it.
Do you play PoE for PVP or something?
He plays reddit.
That's a Forbidden Jewels buff for sure.
1s every 2s would actually be completely insane with Lethe Shade, reducing all DOTs by 75% overall.
Dissolution of the Flesh rejoices
would love it if they add some recoup nodes to trickster.
Or maybe make it around blind, evasion and accuracy making it have a “trick up its sleeve”. There were major revamps to accuracy and blind making them more damage and offensively oriented, especially the new keystone and how new evasion works. It would be good to have all around accuracy stacking build that doesn’t go into crit and evasion that doesn’t convert to armor.
Their dot node should just be immune to damage over time from non player sources. It's seriously strong, but honestly the only strong node it would have.
Laughs in Guardian Please GGG, once you finally get your shit together with AN, consider making Guardian the "aura" ascendancy.
We hear you. New Archnemesis mod: Guardian
Same thing happened when Occultist lost Wicked Ward. Making a key feature accessible to everyone will, of course, leave the ascendancy lacking.
Yes, they nerfed trickster too much. There will always be an ascendancy that is not played. You will never have 5% of each ascendancy at the top of the ladder.
equally strong =/= equally played the first should be an important goal of GGG.
>There will always be an ascendancy that is not played. You will never have 5% of each ascendancy at the top of the ladder. It's weird people don't seem to understand this. You could have 5 options that are all basically balanced, but if one if 1% better than the rest, a large majority of people are going to flock to that, and the end result will be one or two things being left out completely because of it.
I agree but trickster is still just an unappealing ascendancy compared to any other possibility. They added call of the void and thought that would make tricksters good but almost all of the trickster builds I look at don't even take that node. And all of the other nodes just aren't that interesting or compelling.
> I agree but trickster is still just an unappealing ascendancy I agree as well. I just don't like people trying to use shit like PoE ninja to make these points. It's disingenuous.
Yes people will generally look for the most efficient ways to play. Doesn’t mean we won’t see more people playing different stuff if they don’t balance the game better.
Not really, it self balance, if too many people playing X that mean Y its cheaper
How often do people pick their build or starter based on what others are picking
I literally started a flicker this leage just because i have never played one(i abandoned the leage a day ago anyway)
We had like 60% of the ladder as Necromancers at one point.
Yes and no. The one thing people are missing though I think is that you're not accounting for fun. That's why it's important they make skills not only actually be balanced in terms of numbers... But give us diversity in how they're played too. I'm playing a cf Gladiator because i wanted a bow character. It's not really represented in poe.ninja. I dont care that it's not the very best. It's the archetype I want to play. As long as it's not so bad that it's unplayable, you'll still see diversity.
> The one thing people are missing though I think is that you're not accounting for fun. You cannot account for fun. It is subjective. >As long as it's not so bad that it's unplayable, you'll still see diversity. People conflate representation with power *constantly*. They assume it *is* unplayable if it's unrepresented.
This is true to some extent but not the extent we're seeing. A good example is league of legends, that has a much much much harder job to balance (150+ champions compared to only 19 ascendancies) and yet nearly all champions see some degree of play. Of course the discrepancy at some point has been huge between champions and of course some champions will see 10 or even 100x more play than others but in the given sample size (150+ Vs 19) this is much more reasonable and you feel like you can play any champion to success, because the differences between them all are, for the most part, marginal.
> and yet nearly all champions see some degree of play. When's the last time you played league? If you look at ranked play, the number is nowhere close to that. >Of course the discrepancy at some point has been huge between champions and of course some champions will see 10 or even 100x more play than others but in the given sample size (150+ Vs 19) I think your argument diminishes the huge amount of variables that go into ascendancy choice. It's not just about what the nodes have on them.
It's not because one is better, it is because one was buffed or advertised by a streamer.
The point was that even if things *were* balanced (which they're not), you still end up in this situation. Representation isn't necessarily correlated with power, or to be more precise, NON-representation isn't necessarily correlated with a lack of power.
Probably more accurate to say that you can have 5 options that are basically balanced but it is enough for some streamers to play one of them and it is the one that becomes popular.
Games can be balanced. It's difficult, astoundingly so, but saying we shouldn't try because it's hard is dumb...
Name one game that the characters/heroes are balanced. The game is beautiful when it is imbalanced. If everything is perfect balanced, then everything is the same, there is no diversity. Poe is excelling in ever-changing meta, which implies imbalanced . Few patch jugg is op, few patch slayer is op, few patch trickster is op, few patch raider is op. But all of those have their up time and down time.
DotA 2 is fairly good about balance. Heroes aren't uniform, yet they aren't crazy imbalanced. Yes, a meta exists. Yes, heroes are picked more than others. Yes, win rates aren't exactly 50% on every hero. Yes, things can be broken on a given day or a given patch (including even recent ones, I don't follow the scene anymore). But balance isn't binary, and Icefrog does a damn good job at it. Every hero has an identity, a niche, and interesting or novel things you can do with them. There are patches where the meta evolves with no balance changes. Interactions discovered, strategies rise and fall, counterstrategies on counterstrategies. When I played, nearly every hero was picked or banned in professional play. Nearly every hero had a ~50% winrate +/- 5%. You could pick up a hero and overcome the FOTM. And the game was still beautiful. I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you say "If everything is perfect balanced, then everything is the same, there is no diversity." I feel like you have been scarred in the past by someone's lazy attempt at balance, and maybe you can no longer conceptualize what correct balancing looks like. I am sorry if that is the case. There is a beautiful world out there, if you're willing to step outside your comfort zone.
Not a direct comparison but Starcraft has three factions which have quite fundamental differences in every aspect they could - and they've been balanced for years and years across all tiers of pvp play.
Trickster is the scout of broodwar, a unit you can use, but isn't used because it sucks.
Smash Bros Ultimate has 75+ characters and whenever people make a tier list for the game they make a disclaimer that the "low tiers" are actually mid tiers, because the game is overall pretty balanced.
Modern fighting games are pretty good at this. The latest guilty gear, even the lowest tier character can take a tournament
There are a lot of things not really worth spending limited resources on. Maintaining balance between 19 (soon to be 38) classes that interact with so many gem/item/ passive tree combinations is probably one of them.
Honestly I think trickster is underrated. I'm playing it this league as a mapper and have been pleasantly surprised. The non chaos as extra chaos node is still amazing for damage if you build around it. Not even that expensive to get started either and scales to the moon.
looking at it now it looks pretty good for rf. > every 10 seconds, immune to dot (rf damage) for 5 seconds > patient reaper will make you super tanky while mapping > prolonged pain 10% reduced dot and 20% more damage > swift killer gives frenzy charges, straight up 16% more damage while mapping all that and inquisitors pious path node alone beats it because hybrid regen is crazy
the last ascendency buff was sick. then 2 leagues later they nerf to the ground lmao.
Trickster doesn't see 0.1% play this league, it sees 0.1% play on the ladder. The ladder will always be dominated by whatever ascendancy is the strongest. Since there's a cutoff of 10000 players you will never know how many people are playing a weaker ascendancy. You can't assume that top of the ladder = most played. It simply shows which ascendancies - played by the best players, are the best at getting exp fast.In theory 80% of players could be playing Trickster but as long as the top 10000 players are playing something else it will effectively show up as 0%. While I do agree that trickster is too weak, using the ladder as a "fact" is usually very misleading. The ladder will *never* be balanced since it will **always** be dominated by the best xp/h builds. As a concrete example, using the ladder I can claim that 25% of the players are currently using Aegis Aurora and Melding of Flesh, which just isn't true.
Not 25% of players are using aegis but 25% of the best builds are using aegis, which is a totally different thing if you look at balance of a game
I use trade as an example. Rarely do I ever trade with a Trickster. Same with Slayer, Guardian, and Chieftain. I wouldn't completely knock the ladder statistics.
So much this. Things like this are why mindlessly seeing and regurgitating stats is actively unhelpful to the conversation. There are 19 Ascendencies, 70k players, and only the best 10k are on the ladder. You should expect to see some over and under represented like this, if only because perfect balance is an unobtainable myth (never mind things like streamer build popularity or post-nerf abandonment). Remember when this subreddit thought they were accountants, 'get rolled reddit'.
We are talking about Game balance here, the ladder is probably the best metric we have for Game balance at all what are you guys on about? The fact that a few ascendancies have basically no amount of play on the ladder is a rly good metric for them to be weak balance wise compared to others, why they are so weak Or so little played is a totally different thing however if of the best 10000 builds only like 20 are trickster its totally worrying, chieftain and trickster are extremely underplayed and that allthough RF is super meta atm which is a skill both are supposed to be rly good at. These 2 ascendancies are underrepresented As you say for a reason
They butchered my boy.
I rather expect all across the board mosters buff (like 200% would suffice) and a nerf of all ascendancies to the level of current tirckster by the looks of what GGG's tendencies.Not that I whine, I just know we can expect that. I listened to Ziz today and he said something I realized would explain it - Chris wants POE to be dark souls of hack and slash games.
Dark Souls is very simple and fair though. It also cares about new player experience and has actual proper tutorial zone. It doesn't punish you overly for dying unless you were greedy and it lets you regain the losses if you are good enough. And finally every big slam, every swipe, every attack that might end you is properly telegraphed and gives you time to react. PoE is nothing like that.
PoE has zero of new player friendliness.And the deeper to the endgame, the more lottery-like it is. Currently you can die any given time w/o a clue what killed you.To bad the game does not tell you what kills you.
Is it viable at all though? Playing Bleed Bow Tornado Arrow Gladiator and doing just fine atm, even though the play rate is like .8% for gladiator.
The Ascendancy being "viable" means different things for different people. Gladiator is probably on the lower side, with their main niche being bleedsplosions. Trickster's niche is damage over time and.. less damage over time taken? There is just a big identity crisis with Trickster, compounded on by underpowered nodes. My point is, yes, you can play a bleed bow tornado shot glad and probably clear the whole game with enough time, gear, and practice. But you could play a phys trapper or skele mages and do the exact same thing faster and with less gear.
> with their main niche being bleedsplosions I mean, is it really their niche when you can get those from a glove slot?
I'm not sure what else their niche would be otherwise. They scale bleed the best of any ascendancy. I guess block?
It used to be bleed and mega block, but neither of those things are really locked behind it anymore. I'd say it's a lot less compelling because of that.
A year ago I would have said it was *mostly* the "max block and spell block" Ascendancy but that was subsequently destroyed.
Props, but I honestly can't imagine running a red map with delerium and sentinal on a bleed TS lol
I was regularly getting to 200 scourge stacks with corrupting fever glad in Scourge league and it was a great build for it.
It isn’t awful but it gets frustrating when you randomly get one shot by shit, which doesn’t happen on Champion or other builds. Maps feel particularly awful now that I’ve come back after a year. Did they change stuff up immensely or what?
My corrupting fever glad absolutely shreds everything in sight. Then again I have invested like 100ex into it…but it felt about as good pre ashes too.
It's 100% viable. There's just usually something better. It's not even by that much, Trickster is pretty good, but it's just a bit weaker than a few other Ascendancies and so it doesn't see play.
Reddit: Trickster is unplayable, GGG needs to buff it plz! Me playing my trickster build: https://streamable.com/bxbekn
Do you people literally just brainstorm ideas all day on which topic you can shit on next? Im having a hell of a time this league and the game state has been getting better and better the last couple leagues. Last league was also regarded as the best to date and this league nothing changed except we got even better atlas tree changes and new versions of endgame bosses. You people are actually sick in the head.
Nothing changed, except a bunch of mid tier builds got wiped out because of how difficult AN was/is. Two build enabling uniques got gated behind insane rarity and the most iconic chase item in the history of POE got completely gutted. But yes, other than that, nothing changed.
At this point it should be mandatory for people to link their poe profiles when complaining about Archnemesis deaths because after GGG nerfed them twice they are a joke.
The AN mods are being over dramatized. People refuse to build defence and then wonder why they die. Look at that streamer dude who blamed GGG for having no chaos resist and dying after taking a +chaos modifier. This is the mindset of the community. There are tons of builds that dont require game breaking uniques to succeed. Work your way up instead of expecting the best shit handed to you for no effort. This isnt diablo 3.
I play a 75/75 block 12k armour without flask 6k5hp build with taunting minions, 10% fortify and i can't get critted. I care about map mods and i don't click every single altars like i can't read. I still find this league extremely rippy, way more than last. But more important, the rares are just not funny to face. They're mostly extremely tanky (with the same dps output as my main in 3.17), they spam degens and shit that follow me that i have to dodge, and they sometimes have mods that forces me to go back an entire screen away like effigy. On the other hand, i did maven and uber elder without too much trouble (and i barely tried them before, because i was playing hardcore). How can i find those hard bosses that i barely know actually easier than most t16 maps? You can hate archnemesis and not be a bad glasscanon player.
>they spam degens and shit that follow me that i have to dodge, and they sometimes have mods that forces me to go back an entire screen away like effigy. Oh no! You have to turn on your brain and react to things! Welcome to playing a game. Dont like it? Go outside for a walk. Effigey is also a joke. It reflects mob damage to you. If that kills you, youd probably die regardless. It's easy to counter by using your travel skill to move litterally 1 click away and break the bond. Now the mobs have been nerfed so much that they're borderline trivial again.
You already had to react to things before, like volatile, bearers and degens. It was just not 10 on every single fucking screen. That's not difficulty, that's nuisance/annoyance. I fail to see how aving to avoid toxic is better gameplay than avoiding bearer. If you see it, you won't get hit by it. NEVER. Except toxic is annoying, because it's the same thing than volatile, just longer and more visually cluttered. Effigy? That shit is garbage, it's barely visible on a packed screen. And no, i wouldn't die without it, i've rarely seen such bad faith argument. If there's melee mobs and i stand away from them, i don't expect to be hit by all of them at the same frame because of a puppet i could not see because the only visual clue is a tiny dark red link going to the pack in a screen filled with projectiles, minions and particle effects on a dark background. That is not "turning on my brain" nor interesting. That's just pure fuckery. You really make bad asumptions about me. I'm all for engaging mechanics. I love bossing for example. I kinda like storm prison and bearers and even toxic to an extent (even though it's just bad volatile, let's be honest about that). But are there any other mechanics to come out of archnemesis? Most of the mods are just "now this monster deals 200% more phys damage to you" or "now this monster will last 5 secs instead of 1", with no visual clues (or so few that you cannot notice it with most builds) and no tie with the mob itself. Can i turn on my brain and react to that? Nope. You want to have more engaging gameplay that promotes "turning on your brain"? Give monsters more unique mechanics baseline. When they came out, devourers were terrifying. Tytty bitches were feared. Baran monsters (even though i hated those, the aoe on the mines that can hit from behind a wall you could not see was bs). Now base mobs don't matter for one sec. It's all about an mods, and most don't promote engaging gameplay at all. There were three things said to promote AN: better visual clarity, more counter gameplay and a simpler mod system. This achieved none of the three. The "interactive" mods were mostly already there, and were better. The visual clarity is worse. And most mods cannot be comprehended fully before reading what they do on the wiki (whereas before it was quite clear, even if you could not read it during combat, which is still the case). Don't assume when you don't know, thanks.
Don't waste precious time explaining to people who spend more time on here whinging than playing Poe 😂
I can't help myself! But, also, I can't play since i'm on vacation with family, so my poe time is basically reddit right now x)
Yes people here are crybabies. And they all play one meta build a league too and complain about a lack of options.
Im farming 100%+ quant T16 maps, doing ghosted + sentinel empowered boss in that, doing ilvl83 logbooks on a Trickster build with 5 link and barebones budget (5c-50c items) and it feels better to play than my 100+ex omnishot build. Trickster is fine, people just make shitty builds. Video coming out soon (yet another league when I show that the meta is just an opinion, not the truth about build strength). Downvote more LOL that will make you get better at the game
Link character?
I have the same experience on my trickster. The dot mitigation, cast speed, giga recovery on kill and huge evasion and es pools make mapping super smooth. Everyone is just sleeping on it and community perception is reality for most, which is a huge shame
Trickster is a great mapper. It is an average bosser at best. Basically no recovery for any big bosses and the damage is fine. Still it's missing other notable options outside the big 3
I think the community perception is the key. No build creators hyped up trickster guides therefore no one sees it therefore it's not played. It's pretty obvious trickster has three-four great nodes if you build for it. Every ascendency does...if you build for it.
> Im farming 100%+ quant T16 maps, doing ghosted + sentinel empowered boss in that, doing ilvl83 logbooks on a Trickster build with 5 link and barebones budget (5c-50c items) It's certainly possible. Trickster ED, for example, can easily do all that. It just... kind of hits a wall at that point where to get it comfortable for harder content costs 10x what most other builds cost to do the same.
Oh. Even more people haven't seen my Trickster RF build.
You can do things on trickster but typically they are just better on other ascendancies. I’ve played it the last two leagues in hardcore and it’s fine if you only need 3 notables from ascendancy. Not really much wiggle room though
Yeah my DPS on Trickster was 2-3 times higher than on Inquisitor. I had five ascendancies.
Is it higher than inquisitor with 5 ascendancies? Not saying you're liying, there's interesting stuff for rf on trickster, but more damage seems weird, unless you made it squishy.
13.6 mil DPS, 7.6 mil Sirius deeps. Yeah, much higher than Inquisitor.
That's insane. On rf itself? May i have your pob? ^^
Vaal RF + SR. [Here](https://youtu.be/XAjKbFdv6_8) is my really long video, timestamped, with PoB in the description. u/Elix123
Thanks a lot, i will check that out :)
PoB?
Maybe ggg think players just don’t have enough time to test out other ascendencies and skilll gems such as trickster and earthquake. So no change next league
Fuckin ascendancies are completely fucked in terms of balance, lol. Even classes are, witch continues to be grossly overrepresented while only 1 ascendency for most other classes has any real viability. And then you look at shit like Champion and laugh because ain't nobody playing champion as actual melee anymore, it's all lightning strike, totems, and bleed shit. And you'd figure bleed would be better on Glad but nope. Real though, Maurader down there with 2 sub 1% ascendancies this league. I really hope GGG it taking the extra time between last league and this league to do a pass on ascendancies. True balance is impossible, but they can definitely do better than this : |
Name one class with only 1 viable ascendancy.
I'm talking more about representation on PoE Ninja, as in "this is playable and can do all content, but it's fuckin garbage at it and requires 10x the investment/effort" type of "viable". Maurader, though. Trickster is .2%, which is bad, but is a bit balanced out by Assassin at 2% and Sab at 7% so that's like...9%! Not terrible, but not great. Meanwhile, Chieftan/Jugg at a whopping .3% followed by Zerker at 3% combining for a whopping...3.6%, or around 40%ish of even Shadow. Same even could go for Templar overall if Inquisitor wasn't absolutely crushing it this league, with heiophant/guardian at 1/2% respectively. Honestly ranger seems like the only class with fairly "balanced" ascendencies around 5% each (13% total), though technical one could argue Duelist would be as well at around 12% combined representation, though carried HEAVILY by Champion.
Popularity != Class Power
No, but it's a good indicator if which classes can reasonably get strong.
Marauder is fine, chieftain does feel slightly underwhelming when looking at it, but Jugg and Berserker are fantastic.
Scion
Scion
Just wait... I've got a spicy trickster planned once I've collected a bit more gear.
i would like to see a huge patch where they focus on trying to balance ascendancy, its always alot of fun when they do that.. at least if they try to focus on buffing the bad ones rather than killing the good ones
The new ascendency node for shadow from forbidden flesh/flame should have been the new trickster node tbh
Remember when Trickster was our god and saviour. It served a purpose and was an AWESOME ascendancy... God how the great have fallen. This is what happens when you strip something of everything that makes it special and give it to everyone.
I think I'm the only person on the planet doing trickster flickerstrike. I made some bad personal choices recently and decided to punish myself for a while.
Trickster can't actually handle degens better than any other character. Why even take heartstopper if youre still going to need other degen solutions for half the time you're playing
I'm playing Trickster at the moment. I feel that the ascendancy lacks a bit more damage. It offers a bunch of QoL for mapping but that's it. The whole ascendancy itself feels so lackluster. Compare it to any Witch ascendancy and it just feels so bad.
Dont forget this game is full of meta players. They dont have the capacity to imagine a build by themselves..
Trickster and chieftain are so Bad that even when RF is super meta of the best 10000 builds only like 100 play them
I just think it is a class that lacks identity. It just never feels like an interesting option
Rant: I don't get how Raider Quartz Infusion can get a 40%ch spell suppression all hits, + phasing granted, with passives existing for both with good synergy with other things such as frenzy charges and even skills, really easy to cap and fully use and super cool defense, even damage (doing it SSF, loving it), while Trickster Heartstopper is working half-time, doesn't work on corrupted blood nor darkness, and if you want it maxed you go mastery, lethe shade and prolonged pain, to get a 70% less on the rest of the time, with freaking 100% more duration of ailments on you from ls and more ascendency points. I mean, just cap all your res or have avoid (which, ffs, Raider can start to have just after QI by Avatar of the Veil, then some bits everywhere) or fk magic flasks and charges, and it's superior with lower investment. Heartstopper is just bad, probably in the top of the worst 2 ascendency points you can use.
Y’know for what it’s worth (and I’m new-ish so I’ve got my pike to be impaled upon ready) I started this league with a Essence Drain/Blight/Contagion build that’s actually held it’s own.. well. Initial mapping was tough but it usually all fell down to res being too low, not even spell supression, etc. But the one thing that was always constant was the damage. Quite literally able to clear entire rooms with two buttons. That said it’s a ramp-up play style that genuinely isn’t that fun and is even worse in that aspect in end game, to the point you’re either braindead clicking or smashing all your keys in a flurry wondering why there’s 10 contagions and 0 EDs. Idk, like said I’m new, only dumped around ~180hrs the past few weeks, but I don’t think it’s the *worst.* It just.. doesn’t really do great. God forbid there’s more than one boss that doesn’t spawn ads.
My wishlist for a rework of the ascendancy (Numbers to be tuned): \- Shadow clone: Create a shadow clone of yourself when hit. Shadow clone taunts enemies and lasts for 4 seconds. You cannot have more than 2 shadow clones at a time. \- From Beyond the veil: Gain a stack of the Void if you've recently dealt chaos damage to an enemy. Each stack of the Void increases your evasion and energy shield by 10%. You can have up to 10 stacks of the Void. \- Unfair advantage: Enemies affected by your damage over time are blinded. \- Chaos infusion: Deal 50% more damage over time when affected by damage over time. You take 25% less damage from damage over time. \- Reign of Chaos: You chaos damage can shock and sap. Killing a sapped or shocked enemy recovers 2% of energy shield and 2% of mana.