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[krameriffic]

That doesn't bother me. Its that every time we have these discussions, there are some that are seemingly incapable of understanding someone that doesn't like PoE. A lot of us.... don't. And its just an opinion, just like they don't like plenty of games, but they get so defensive about it and start calling names and shit. This isn't an OP, so people are free to speak their minds about the bad shit in D3, PoE and any other game in the genre.

I think people who want to talk about it expect the same level of complexity and depth to your argument for why PoE is bad as has been given to the D3 is bad argument. Hundreds of diatribes, thousands of pages, millions of words, analyzing every little stupid design decision and asinine implementation that culminated in the shit sandwich that was Diablo 3. These people are dissatisfied with the argument of "some of us just don't like it".

 

[Cipherr]

These people are dissatisfied with the argument of "some of us just don't like it".

No they aren't. Look above you, and stop assuming that these same conversations haven't happened in past threads over the last year in more depth and detail.

Those people aren't dissatisfied with the amount of detail in the argument, they are dissatisfied with the fact that we don't like the game, and no amount of 'detail' given about the things that we don't like will 'help' them understand.

 

[inky]

The skill tree is harder to learn and the immediacy of its presentation to the player is overwhelming to someone who has no idea what they're looking at. After a while, you learn how it works and where the skills are and why it makes sense, but its never presented to the player as anything more than a big, incomprehensible web.

Well, it's probably just a choice of words thing, that is why I asked what he meant by 'mess'. To me mess would mean that its placement makes no sense, or it's cluttered without any logical progression after you had time to examine it, but that is hardly it.

If it's talking about how they drop you on the deep end with no tutorial, well that's another thing. After leveling a couple of characters to like level 20 you get the idea of how it works anyway.

 

[Artanisix]

If you could combine POE's item/skill system with D3's combat, you'd have a match made in heaven.

 

[V_Arnold]

Nope, D3's value is practically hinges on the legacy of D2.
Anyone who hasn't play D2, look at my above post.

And you probably never played D2 if you say that D2 does not have the same combat problems. It's THE SAME COMBAT SYSTEM!

Now we are entering hilarious territory, imho. As I did not mention combat system - even though they are not EXACTLY the same. For example, faster cast rate was not analogue in the way it is in POE

There are so many great skills in Diablo II that have yet to appear in PoE, or even anything similar. PoE is sitting in the generic "fire/ice/lighting/poision/physical" for now, nothing similar to the Druid's transformations, or the bone/spirit skills of the Necromancer.

But most importantly, offline/LAN Diablo II combat shits on POE both in precision and in responsiveness. For quite obvious reasons.

why don't you shit on that dev then? Diablo 3 is already satisfactory to you and he is potentially threatening the integrity of it

Binary thinking, man. It is either "satisfactory" or it is "unsalvagable"? Why? I uninstalled Diablo III a few weeks ago, because I only play PoE for the time being. That does not make Diablo III a bad game, or a disaster. I still love it, and I am looking forward to what it brings to the table with the expansion and the next major content patches. Constructive criticism = good. "Go back to be Diablo II.5 HD instead" =bad. Imho, ofc.

 

[Dorfdepp]

If you could combine POE's item/skill system with D3's combat, you'd have a match made in heaven.

Except for those horrible hitboxes D3 has.

 

[krameriffic]

I honestly can't believe that anybody would compare PoE's combat favorably against D2 or even D3 in here. PoE's current metagame is the following:

1) Pick a skill. If it's not ranged, try again.
2) Add some gems to it to make it do more damage in the long run. These are the same gems everybody else is using.
3) Add some auras and possibly a curse or totem
4) spam that skill you chose in (1). Nope, don't use anything else. Just that skill.
5) On the passive tree, grab as many HP/defensive nodes as possible, ignore everything else.

I like PoE but don't let the jokers in here fool you and think that the combat is "amazing." Because it's not, and the combat is something that D3 mostly got right.

http://www.twitch.tv/nl_kripp - Kripp's melee manmode race. No ranged spells here, all self-found gear, and its in a race so no usage of his immense amount of accumulated HC wealth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLBeEomNBMk - Invalesco's righteous fire templar. Very few people will have the wealth or ability to put this one together. Sort of fits into your paradigm of "spam a ranged spell", but not really. Much more complicated to play properly in HC especially.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8wrfkmS5ns - Invalesco's melee/crit CI dagger build. This one uses about 5 different active skills and is remarkably difficult to play properly even in really good gear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKyQFwTln20 - Dual curse, dual spark totem build. Just one of a number of variations on the totally viable dual totem builds. They all work and the keystone that makes it work makes your character incapable of dealing spell damage AT ALL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QmGHmemC2Y - Summoner build. Just one of many variations that probably exist. Again, no dependence on "pick a ranged skill and spam it".

I could probably find a lot more, but I think you get the point. And unlike Blizzard, GGG has not stubbornly committed to their current set of skills. They plan on adding new skill gems once per week (seems optimistic to me) once they get into their regular development-release rhythm. PoE's combat is rough around the edges in terms of polish and feel, but there's variety to be had here if you're willing to not just build a freeze pulser or lightning arrower, and these other builds are not completely unviable.

 

[Kalnos]

Diablo 3 wasn't a bad game but I really don't understand the appeal of continuing to play it. PoE has races and a ladder system which are two things Blizzard *really* needs to look into to increase the longevity of their game.

 

[V_Arnold]

Except for those horrible hitboxes D3 has.

...which is simply not true. It is not an issue with hitboxes, it is an issue with attacks having "tracking" properties. There are many, many easily avoidable attacks with proper hitboxes. If they were to somehow "port" PoE to Diablo III engine, they would simply not have to toggle the tracking checkbox on attacks and make the hitboxes as they are in PoE (assuming a not so laggy night ), and it works.

http://www.twitch.tv/nl_kripp - Kripp's melee manmode race. No ranged spells here, all self-found gear, and its in a race so no usage of his immense amount of accumulated HC wealth.

...the point being to that is Kripp understands how underpowered the melee in PoE is, and in anticipation of the melee buffs, he calls for players to stop thinking in Breads and butters Which is a great initiative - (my main is a lv71 softcore melee templar with sweep/infernal blow as main attacks), but let us not ignore the sorry state of melee in the game

 

[Lain]

The game doesn't need to be salvaged.
Diablo 3 is pretty awesome and Blizzard has kept improving it.
Now, if they removed the online only thing that would make it an even better game, but all in all it's still la pretty cool game.

 

[MysticX]

no, the game is complete trash, should´ve been given a different name since almost nothing of this game can be connected to the diablo series

1: Tristram
2: Diablo

done, frak off stinky game!

 

[orznge]

"Go back to be Diablo II.5 HD instead" =bad. Imho, ofc.

I agree, that would be bad; it's a good thing that I mentioned that a satisfactory Diablo 3, to me, would have been a game that deviates from Diablo 2 while retaining the same level of complexity and depth as it, something which Diablo 3 failed to do (despite the fact that it can be kind of fun! I swear I'm not trying to invalidate your fun! I swear I'm not judging you for liking the game!)

 

[Dorfdepp]

...which is simply not true. It is not an issue with hitboxes, it is an issue with attacks having "tracking" properties. There are many, many easily avoidable attacks with proper hitboxes. If they were to somehow "port" PoE to Diablo III engine, they would simply not have to toggle the tracking checkbox on attacks and make the hitboxes as they are in PoE (assuming a not so laggy night ), and it works.

Yes it is an issue because it is a stupid design decision. They acutally said dodging isn't fun so they added this to stop players from dodging stuff.
So if you say you dodge attacks in Diablo 3 you're playing the game wrong in Blizzards eyes.

 

[Cipherr]

Yes it is an issue because it is a stupid design decision. They acutally said dodging isn't fun so they added this to stop players from dodging stuff.

Boy oh boy, I think I had a mini stroke/meltdown in the thread where they said that crap. I can't remember if it was the OT, or a Gaming side thread, the official forum or all 3. But I about lost my damn mind at how fucking stupid that was. To this day my blood boils trying to understand the logic behind that shit.

 

[JWong]

Now we are entering hilarious territory, imho. As I did not mention combat system - even though they are not EXACTLY the same. For example, faster cast rate was not analogue in the way it is in POE

There are so many great skills in Diablo II that have yet to appear in PoE, or even anything similar. PoE is sitting in the generic "fire/ice/lighting/poision/physical" for now, nothing similar to the Druid's transformations, or the bone/spirit skills of the Necromancer.

But most importantly, offline/LAN Diablo II combat shits on POE both in precision and in responsiveness. For quite obvious reasons.

Just because you can't get cast rate as fast as it was in D2 doesn't mean it can't be done.
Kripp is already casting at the speed of light, and I've seen bow builds firing 3 attacks per second without Quill Rain.

And what are these skills you are talking about? Druid transformation is just a hybrid of other classes, and a lot of Necro's skills are in PoE. Nothing WOW other than turning into a bear or something.

Offline? OFFLINE? AHAHAHAHA! Enjoy your hacks and dupes. Offline destroyed Torchlight 2.

 

[Miletius]

http://www.twitch.tv/nl_kripp - Kripp's melee manmode race. No ranged spells here, all self-found gear, and its in a race so no usage of his immense amount of accumulated HC wealth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLBeEomNBMk - Invalesco's righteous fire templar. Very few people will have the wealth or ability to put this one together. Sort of fits into your paradigm of "spam a ranged spell", but not really. Much more complicated to play properly in HC especially.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8wrfkmS5ns - Invalesco's melee/crit CI dagger build. This one uses about 5 different active skills and is remarkably difficult to play properly even in really good gear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKyQFwTln20 - Dual curse, dual spark totem build. Just one of a number of variations on the totally viable dual totem builds. They all work and the keystone that makes it work makes your character incapable of dealing spell damage AT ALL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QmGHmemC2Y - Summoner build. Just one of many variations that probably exist. Again, no dependence on "pick a ranged skill and spam it".

I could probably find a lot more, but I think you get the point. And unlike Blizzard, GGG has not stubbornly committed to their current set of skills. They plan on adding new skill gems once per week (seems optimistic to me) once they get into their regular development-release rhythm. PoE's combat is rough around the edges in terms of polish and feel, but there's variety to be had here if you're willing to not just build a freeze pulser or lightning arrower, and these other builds are not completely unviable.

How many of those are viable/playable to people without insane wealth or are just fucking around for the sake of fucking around? Out of those I'd say summoner. Just because you can cherry pick 5 builds where people are using skills that aren't ideal doesn't mean that 99 percent of the game isn't running with Freeze Pulse, Lit Arrow and EK. On top of that, none of those builds invalidate the idea that the passive tree is mainly just a place to pick up HP/Defense (aside from the 1 exemplar, summoner).

If all builds were like the summoner I'd have no complaints. As it is, the game is horribly imbalanced towards ranged and also incentives building around one super skill at the expense of any gameplay variability.

 

[ZombiePlatypus]

10 million copies sold. I don't think Blizzard is in a hurry to salvage anything. It's unfortunate the PS3/4 will give them more sells.

If D3 doesn't ever address fan complaints, I really wonder how D4 would sell down the line.

 

[-tetsuo-]

Diablo 3 is fine. Just needs that PvP and some ladders.

 

[Won]

Boy oh boy, I think I had a mini stroke/meltdown in the thread where they said that crap. I can't remember if it was the OT, or a Gaming side thread, the official forum or all 3. But I about lost my damn mind at how fucking stupid that was. To this day my blood boils trying to understand the logic behind that shit.

I was just the easy way out of a design problem. A common theme among all D3 design decisions. There isn't really much more to it, sadly.

 

[orznge]

If D3 doesn't ever address fan complaints, I really wonder how D4 would sell down the line.

it will sell an insane amount of copies because Diablo's brand equity is still insane

 

[dave_m123]

I believe it is over 12 million sold now

 

[inky]

I honestly can't believe that anybody would compare PoE's combat favorably against D2 or even D3 in here. PoE's current metagame is the following:

1) Pick a skill. If it's not ranged, try again.

The game is skewed towards ranged right now, but other than that I disagree with your post. There is a reason to pick some support gems (synergy, mana costs, etc.) over others for certain abilities; same deal with auras which are costly and mostly depend on the enemy you are facing or the debuffs on you if you are doing maps, where you have to also account for enemy affixes like reflect (so it's not as simple as just put every support gem you find into your one ability). There is much more emphasis on resource management which adds to the complexity, and there's absolutely a lot of variety to builds where you don't have to pick only HP nodes.

The combat is pretty involved in PoE and that's what makes it good. D3 is touted to be superior due to the feel, not necessarily due to its wealth.

Yes it is an issue because it is a stupid design decision. They acutally said dodging isn't fun so they added this to stop players from dodging stuff.
So if you say you dodge attacks in Diablo 3 you're playing the game wrong in Blizzards eyes.

Don't worry, there's going to be a dodge ability for everyone in D3 console version. It's only right when you are playing with a controller apparently.

 

[V_Arnold]

Just because you can't get cast rate as fast as it was in D2 doesn't mean it can't be done.
Kripp is already casting at the speed of light, and I've seen bow builds firing 3 attacks per second without Quill Rain.

And I made a ranger with 0.3 or even smaller attack time on his shoots and 200%~+ projectile speed. That was not my point. Point was that the combat system is largely similar in paper, but due to the differences of offline/online AND 2d animations/3d rendering, D2 combat system is still different. My example was the breakpoints with FCR, which does not exist in PoE. Or the way PoE has different mainstat- combat stat conversions which obviously changes things around. I do not recall Dex improving block - even slightly - for shadows, if I am correct, for example. Or the totally different way the dodge is built into PoE but you needed skills for that kind of evasion in D2. (Or I am just misremembering, but I doubt that.)

And what are these skills you are talking about? Druid transformation is just a hybrid of other classes, and a lot of Necro's skills are in PoE. Nothing WOW other than turning into a bear or something.

Totally lame, generic summons for Skeletons and Zombies are not great. Even vanilla D2 had the skeleton mages come out in different magic types randomly, for example. That is the much-needed flavor for me Not to even mention golems. The spectre concept is cool though.

Offline? OFFLINE? AHAHAHAHA! Enjoy your hacks and dupes. Offline destroyed Torchlight 2.

Lack of ladder and an official, protected bnet-equivalent destroyed Torchlight II - and no ambition to have a real endgame. That is not a danger to PoE, so... again, offline D2 should not exist so you can argue that laggy PoE is almost as good as D2 online was?

 

[Nokagi]

If D3 doesn't ever address fan complaints, I really wonder how D4 would sell down the line.

The sells of the expansion pack when/if they release one should be a good indicator as to how many people still care about Diablo.

 

[Dorfdepp]

Boy oh boy, I think I had a mini stroke/meltdown in the thread where they said that crap. I can't remember if it was the OT, or a Gaming side thread, the official forum or all 3. But I about lost my damn mind at how fucking stupid that was. To this day my blood boils trying to understand the logic behind that shit.

I just had to look it up again. Read at your own risk lol.

 

[orznge]

I just had to look it up again. Read at your own risk lol.

hahahahahahaha

 

[Miletius]

The game is skewed towards ranged right now, but other than that I disagree with your post. There is a reason to pick some support gems (synergy, mana costs, etc.) over others for certain abilities; same deal with auras which are costly and mostly depend on the enemy you are facing or the debuffs on you if you are doing maps, where you have to also account for enemy affixes like reflect (so it's not as simple as just put every support gem you find into your one ability). There is much more emphasis on resource management which adds to the complexity, and there's absolutely a lot of variety to builds where you don't have to pick only HP nodes.

The combat is pretty involved in PoE and that's what makes it good. D3 is touted to be superior due to the feel, not necessarily due to its wealth.



Don't worry, there's going to be a dodge ability for everyone in D3 console version. It's only right when you are playing with a controller apparently.

The point is that everybody is using the same support gems, not that everybody is using every support gem in every build. Yes, there is some amount of switching out at high levels (including maps) but overall people build around the same set of gems and just sub in their skill of choice. It isn't the exact same gem set for every build, just as it isn't the same aura set for every build, but most builds use the same set of auras and gems and there's very little reason to deviate from that combination.

I respectfully disagree with the passive tree as well. The vast majority of HC players stick to HP defensive nodes unless absolutely needed. The most successful builds are those that can minimize the amount of offensive nodes you take and concentrate on defensive nodes, especially HP. It puts the burden on the skill/gem combo to produce DPS which further exasperates the problem.

 

[Wafflecakes]

Eh.

The game could be improved but I feel I got my $60 worth so I have a hard time complaining.

I found the journey through inferno to be entertaining enough.

 

[JWong]

And I made a ranger with 0.3 or even smaller attack time on his shoots and 200%~+ projectile speed. That was not my point. Point was that the combat system is largely similar in paper, but due to the differences of offline/online AND 2d animations/3d rendering, D2 combat system is still different. My example was the breakpoints with FCR, which does not exist in PoE. Or the way PoE has different mainstat- combat stat conversions which obviously changes things around. I do not recall Dex improving block - even slightly - for shadows, if I am correct, for example. Or the totally different way the dodge is built into PoE but you needed skills for that kind of evasion in D2. (Or I am just misremembering, but I doubt that.)

What the hell does stats have to do with combat? What makes D2 and PoE's combat is you have 1-2 skills, see a ton of mobs, you spam skills and kill everything.

Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOoLAHgWXXk&hd=1&t=6m25s

None of that D3 cooldown, combo, high res skill bullshit.

Totally lame, generic summons for Skeletons and Zombies are not great. Even vanilla D2 had the skeleton mages come out in different magic types randomly, for example. That is the much-needed flavor for me Not to even mention golems. The spectre concept is cool though.

Uh yeah, spectres. You just killed your own argument.

Lack of ladder and an official, protected bnet-equivalent destroyed Torchlight II - and no ambition to have a real endgame. That is not a danger to PoE, so... again, offline D2 should not exist so you can argue that laggy PoE is almost as good as D2 online was?

No, loot is the ultimate goal of a loot game. Everyone just hacked the hell out of T2 because it was so easy to. No competition even between friends.

Then, once people hacked all the best gear onto themselves, they move on. Community dead.

 

[Perkel]

I just had to look it up again. Read at your own risk lol.

I just puked a little. Never saw that.


In comparison different take on "rush" in PoE: Monster get additional hit chance if you are running past them. On lower def it is rather easy to do but on higher def you don't want to end up stunlocked in middle of crowd.

D2 ofcourse didn't have any debuf to counter that.

 

[Cipherr]

I just had to look it up again. Read at your own risk lol.

All those posts that say "Deleted post by XXX" are people losing their minds at what they had just read. $10 says they got banned or mods deleted them.

Absolutely ridiculous comment. If you are going to make a shitty design decision, or half ass something, at least own up to it.

 

[dog$]

Sorry, but I just want to respond to this post:

I quit playing once torchilght 2 came out and touched briefly on it last week and I'm not sure if I'm just not up to speed on how the economy of the auction house has evolved or what but what I'm finding now is that my lvl 40~ish characters have no real answers for gear on the auction house because the prices of even the garbage items has risen exponentially.

I can look back on my AH purchases back when I initially put the game down and the price of similar items has increased ten fold yet the game does not drop 10x the amount of gold to allow me to continue to buy stuff I need the way I used to be able to.

I find this completely impossible to believe.

There's no item sink in the game. Everything that isn't perfect BIS gear is falling in price by the day. Items which I used to sell for a million or two now sell for five digit gold prices. This is all the more true as of the latest patch, because the new crafting has rendered more items as undesirable to be found from the AH.

One issue, though, is that you are pricing Level 40 items, which are never posted now because 99% of the players aren't finding those drops, and the remaining 1% who are raising their last unplayed alts are just blazing through sub-60 in mere hours.

So right now, that is a HUGE turn off for me because it basically means that if I am not getting gear drops to help me progress, the gold auction house isn't an option and I am NOT going to start dishing out real money only to continue to be frustrated at how I'm being screwed by shitty drops and a gold economy that is out of control.

I'm really curious if you are truly struggling that much to progress in the game after it has had so many general difficulty nerfs. A few weeks ago, I brought a new barb from 1 to 60 in hours and blazed through Normal and Nightmare on MP10 without any sort of impediment.

Post your tag in the OT. There's still people who can help you get up to speed if you really care to do so.

While I'm posting here, I just want to chime in to say that I still dearly love the AH.

Bartering with assholes is a gigantic waste of time. The entire player base competing with each other to give me the lowest price is directly beneficial to me. Being able to search across millions of postings for exactly what I want is ideal. Not having to piss hours away in looking through forums and chat channels to find interested sellers and buyers is a good thing.

Also, I personally use D3's AH to carve out a niche and get a taste of the bot action. I know what they want. I sell what they want. I profit from it. Two weeks before the 107 patch I spent 340M gold down to 40M (raising the DPS of my three 60s from ~100K to ~140/150K in the process). I'm back up to 320M as of right now. I never sold a single piece of gear for more than 55M. I can only imagine how long this all would have taken on a bartering system.

Is there a bunch of extremely high priced gear on the AH? Yep, there is. Do I need any of it? Not in the least. I'll accumulate wealth in the meantime.

Now resuming POE superiority talk.

 

[King Boo]

they sold so many copies to fools like me. it's too late, the damage is done. d3 won't be saved.

 

[V_Arnold]

Uh yeah, spectres. You just killed your own argument.

In black or white world, yeah. In real world, no. Just because spectres are good, that does not make the bland zombies and skeletons go away

No, loot is the ultimate goal of a loot game. Everyone just hacked the hell out of T2 because it was so easy to. No competition even between friends.

Then, once people hacked all the best gear onto themselves, they move on. Community dead.

Again, you talk in absolutes, leave no room for subjectivity in order to absolutely invalidate others viewpoints.... why?

 

[Perkel]

All those posts that say "Deleted post by XXX" are people losing their minds at what they had just read. $10 says they got banned or mods deleted them.

Absolutely ridiculous comment. If you are going to make a shitty design decision, or half ass something, at least own up to it.

This is where lie problem and why combat is so smooth:

post from same thread (which is confirmed already):

The system only exists to allow for fully animated attacks to look smoother.

Basically, every melee attack in the game is *instant*, giving us consistent expectations for all melee combat for balance/anti-abuse/gameplay/design reasons. They just wait for the animation to complete before applying the damage to give it a smoother look. This may give you the impression that it is lagged if you're specifically trying to abuse the long animation, but in reality, you were already attacked back when you were next to or running past the monster.

it is straight MMORPG design.

 

[Decado]

It's troubled areas are already fixed in part with the latest work, .

So there are actually some meaningful character development choices now? From what I recall before, character development was so so linear you may as well have made it auto-levelling.

 

[thetrin]

People who play a loot hack for narrative and show disdain for the actual meat of the genre need to check their homes for gas leaks, because something funny is going on.

Pretty much this. I'm not entirely sure you're playing the right genre if this is how you look at Diablo style games.

 

[Gaylord Sweetwood]

I personally don't think it will be, but the expansion will be the litmus test.

If I see them add more character customization, better itemization (scrap the MMO-inspired itemization system), and change the game from a COD campaign bore-fest back to randomly generated areas, then just maybe I will give it another shot.

 

[JWong]

In black or white world, yeah. In real world, no. Just because spectres are good, that does not make the bland zombies and skeletons go away

Got totems. Got traps. Got traps that can spawn totems that will then spawn skeletons.

Diablo has something as cool as that?

Again, you talk in absolutes, leave no room for subjectivity in order to absolutely invalidate others viewpoints.... why?

Because it is absolute. It is what defines the genre. It's the core feature. The game is built around the cores.

 

[KKRT00]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLBeEomNBMk - Invalesco's righteous fire templar. Very few people will have the wealth or ability to put this one together. Sort of fits into your paradigm of "spam a ranged spell", but not really. Much more complicated to play properly in HC especially.

Yeah, thats what i'm doing currently as Marauder, but not a mage, but a char that relies on damage from Righteous Fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBoX7xylNpw

 

[Tallshortman]

The problem is there is not enough incentive to group up (unless you're playing with friends) unlike diablo 2 wherein it was actually encouraged. I played all the way through act 1 of inferno without really grouping. When I actually did it was a lot of chinese players and people dropping in and out. On one hand I got a ton of play time out of it and it was enjoyable so I can't complain about paying full price but on the other hand I was really expecting it to be a game I would still be playing like BF3.

 

[spirity]

I honestly can't believe that anybody would compare PoE's combat favorably against D2 or even D3 in here. PoE's current metagame is the following:

1) Pick a skill. If it's not ranged, try again.
2) Add some gems to it to make it do more damage in the long run. These are the same gems everybody else is using.
3) Add some auras and possibly a curse or totem
4) spam that skill you chose in (1). Nope, don't use anything else. Just that skill.
5) On the passive tree, grab as many HP/defensive nodes as possible, ignore everything else.

I like PoE but don't let the jokers in here fool you and think that the combat is "amazing." Because it's not, and the combat is something that D3 mostly got right.

Grinding Gear are aiming for one new content patch per week, and with each patch they'll be adding one new skill + 3 legendaries. That may (or may not, who knows) change things up a bit.

I disagree with your run down of PoE's combat, I tend to mix things up a bit. But I know plenty of people choose to play that way.

On the passive tree - saying ignore everything except hp is really selling it short. Yes, picking up health is a very good idea, but the keystone passives (blood magic, unwavering stance, minion instability, chaos inoculation, ghost reaver etc) are really what helps to define builds and makes for some interesting play.

I don't think PoE's combat is amazing. But I don't think its bad, either. And its going to get better.

 

[krameriffic]

How many of those are viable/playable to people without insane wealth or are just fucking around for the sake of fucking around? Out of those I'd say summoner. Just because you can cherry pick 5 builds where people are using skills that aren't ideal doesn't mean that 99 percent of the game isn't running with Freeze Pulse, Lit Arrow and EK. On top of that, none of those builds invalidate the idea that the passive tree is mainly just a place to pick up HP/Defense (aside from the 1 exemplar, summoner).

If all builds were like the summoner I'd have no complaints. As it is, the game is horribly imbalanced towards ranged and also incentives building around one super skill at the expense of any gameplay variability.

Dual totem builds are renowned for working on shitty gear. I also built Invalesco's CI/crit character from scratch and had an easier time leveling him than pretty much any other class because double strike is really strong and I knew what I was doing (on my third character). The only one in there that requires insane wealth is the righteous fire build. Kripp's freeze pulser is incredibly viable on mediocre gear, and as their manmode race is clearly showing, melee is perfectly viable.

I think, after the variety of different builds and playstyles I've done in PoE, that people vastly overestimate the "ranged advantage". Melee is harder and worse, nobody would debate that, but it's nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. Many of the caster builds play like a melee would. Freeze pulser, EK, hell even the lightning arrow builds thrive off of the survivability they offer through dealing damage, not through simply offscreen cheesing and kiting. And disregarding all that, saying 99% of the game is running EK, FP or LA is ad hoc, untrue bullshit.

No they aren't. Look above you, and stop assuming that these same conversations haven't happened in past threads over the last year in more depth and detail.

Those people aren't dissatisfied with the amount of detail in the argument, they are dissatisfied with the fact that we don't like the game, and no amount of 'detail' given about the things that we don't like will 'help' them understand.

But those people will not cease their offensive until its been articulated what's bad about PoE. There's no commonly accepted reason why PoE is bad except that people don't like it. It doesn't have the laundry list of stupid retarded problems that D3 has. People don't like how it "feels", or they don't like how it's got a barrier to entry for new players. I've yet to see a really good argument against its core mechanics from a player who has played a significant amount of the game. Most people who don't like it simply "couldn't get into it".

People don't like that your dislike of the game seems to be based on never giving it a chance or really investing into the game any amount of time or effort to learn about its systems. And I know what that's like, because when I got into the closed beta about a year ago I felt the same way about it. It was in a far more incomplete state back then, and has only gotten better since, but its not like most modern games that spoonfeed you everything on your way in and are piss easy right from the start. It's again similar to Diablo 2 in that sense; a slow burn at the beginning, with unintuitive systems that are insufficently explained to the player who is unwilling to either trial and error their way through it or research it on the internet.

 

[Miletius]

Grinding Gear are aiming for one new content patch per week, and with each patch they'll be adding one new skill + 3 legendaries. That may (or may not, who knows) change things up a bit.

I disagree with your run down of PoE's combat, I tend to mix things up a bit. But I know plenty of people choose to play that way.

On the passive tree - saying ignore everything except hp is really selling it short. Yes, picking up health is a very good idea, but the keystone passives (blood magic, unwavering stance, minion instability, chaos inoculation, ghost reaver etc) are really what helps to define builds and makes for some interesting play.

I don't think PoE's combat is amazing. But I don't think its bad, either. And its going to get better.

Correct about the keystones. Ultimately I'm not trying to be overly harsh on PoE -- I am playing it now, probably played it just as much as any of the diehards in here, and I like it. But as a point of comparison it's hard to say the combat is objectively better than D2 and possibly D3. Subjectively, it's a step down from me from D3. The best I can give it is that it has potential, which is what most people will acknowledge. Sure, more skills will help that. But the game needs changes that encourage a better mix of offensive and defensive play. I've played builds with more offensive choices in the passive tree too -- they were horrible and heavily relied on gear. I'm not using that as a point though. Take a look at the builds that work well @ maps and high level play and that is what I use as a point of comparison.

D3, on the other hand, has been panned in many areas but most people subjectively seem to feel as though the combat mechanics are good. The problems with D3 lies in it's itemization, linear game play, and MMORPGification.

 

[Teknoman]

If the game was too challenging early on, then it was a challenge imbalance.

; ; no one cares about the first time run through on normal?

 

[IHaveCandy]

I was thinking, maybe they could add some depth to the gem system. So far it just feels like a pyramid scheme of crafting better gems, with the cost becoming exponentially more costly. The attributes of the gems stay the same, just enhanced. Why not have unique or legendary gems that can be found or crafted that give special affixes to weapons/armor?

 

[Yoshichan]

I remember when I was complaining about the monster melee range super early into the game, and how game-breaking it was... and no one believed me, and made fun of me

 

[Catchafire2000]

Seriously, D3 wasn't built around the concept of longevity playing. There's no ladder system, no map randomization, and no worthwhile endgame concept. These aren't new features either. Based on what D3 is, I have little motivation for supporting them financially or on day one release.

D3 was a good game, but I beat it already.

 

[FloatOn]

my thoughts on this and loot game in general:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=518775&highlight=

I'd love to see you guys weigh in on this.

 

[Catchafire2000]

D3 Budget: BIG BIG BIG Time bucks
POE Budget: Kick start project

D3 Employees: A lot of damn resources, and knowledge
POE Employees: ONE ANIMATOR

Bottom line, we are comparing the two seriously... That alone tells me that D3 fell extremely short of what I had imagined it would be. It IS a good game, but there's nothing to it.