I believe Path Of Exile offers less build diversity than it advertises.

So personally I'm finishing up with my last build of the league. Made about 15 builds this league and only 2-3 I kept because of the below things I'm going to bring up. The point of my post is to question if POE is truly as diverse as a lot of people claim it to be. This isn't suppose to be a hate thread or GGG sucks or anything like that, so lets get that out the way.

I'm only one person but I do make a lot of builds, and I do understand there can be different objectives to accomplish with certain builds. You could argue that my statement supports a game with possibly an unlimited amount of diversity but this isn't specific enough. So let's set the bar with builds that can do all content, minus Uber Elder because that can be related to a lot of player error. There's also another factor I wish to include but I can't exactly use it as a supporting claim because it's something solely based on the person playing the build. I do feel like it's worth mentioning though and this can be how comfortable/easy a build can feel while playing it.

There are builds that can do an absurd amount of damage but can feel extremely clunky/slow while mapping. Other builds require too much to be considered feasible, enemy needs to be shocked, need maximum power charges but can only generate them through throwing traps (Jaw's of Agony), and/or requires all flasks to be up or an extremely rare crafted item is required. This is an extremely small sample of a build being non feasible.

Now I'm trying to not make this extremely long because I don't want to bore anyone and I don't think this thread will generate a huge discussion, so I don't want to waste much more of anyone's time. The only statistical proof on what I mention here is on POE Ninja (small sample). Arc Trap is the number one played skilled so far, and if you were to look at the different variants they will all look practically the same. No, lets not nerf skills because there good, popular, or the "OP" argument, this is just an example. You can get a clear indication of what I mean overall though by checking POE Ninja.

There are 221 active skill gems in the game, I could be a bit off but that's a huge number of skills in the game. Only 23 Active skills are being used that are at least meeting 1% of the users on POE ninja, and that's pretty low. I believe the term "meta" would be used here but I don't think meta is the best description and this is what I want to argue. Is this really a "Meta" thing or more of a lack of diversity that's being offered in the game to make more thing's feasible to play, aka different skills.

Personally, I've made a TON of builds work, but this doesn't make me feel like POE is diverse. Most of the builds are wonky, a pain in the ass to play, which can leave someone frustrated which is no fun. There have been ones that require too many mechanics and later on can bring a build to a halt because making or finding the items needed is near impossible. I think I've found myself halted or done with a build because the mechanic's of POE just isn't as diverse as it appears to be at first glance.

Last, there is a streamer I've watched here and there that can support my claim to a certain degree. If you ever watched Woolfio, he does essentially what I do all the time. Test different mechanics, put this together with that item, see what works, what doesn't etc. I think he's a great dude, and has an amazing understanding of the game despite a lot of people bashing him. I've seen him time and time again get frustrated when using or trying something different. Many times the builds wont work, or if it does work it's just a pain in the ass to play. If he were to use a skill that many other people use and try to do something different with it, it will probably work. If you were to use a skill that is barely used, and try to do different things with it, most likely it will fail or be a a headache to play.

Claiming a game is diverse because you can use a few different skills many different ways does not make a diverse/customizable game. POE has a huge amount of different mechanics but many of them are barely usable outside of very specific circumstances and some are just not used at all and I would consider those mechanics "garbage".

Thoughts?

Have seen Mathil builds? Takes literally any skill and turns it into uber elder killer.. Are all builds budget viable? No.
With enough investment the game has alot of builds available, but every game has a Meta where some are more powerful.

PoE is fairly diverse, some people just try to compare any given skill to the most smooth and powerful build of the current generation.


What is the baseline for what can be considered a build? Based on who you ask, you end up with between 500 or 5 builds in the game.

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lurker14ownz escribió:

Have seen Mathil builds? Takes literally any skill and turns it into uber elder killer.. Are all builds budget viable? No.
With enough investment the game has alot of builds available, but every game has a Meta where some are more powerful.

I would say alot of his builds are the same thing over and over and over. The only thing that really changes might be the skills but even then it's the same few skills.

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ZACHWILDCAT escribió:

Thoughts?

I think PoE is very diverse. Of course, the higher you go, the more bottlenecked your choices will become. But for there to be good choices, there has be be bad choices. That's sort of the core of an RPG, be there an A in front or not.

"Diverse" isn't just about viability, but also about builds/skills FEELING different. You may view something as "clunky", others may view it "fun". If we start using clearspeed and "smoothness" as criteria for balancing, soon all builds would feel (even more) alike than they do now. Is that diversity? I think not.

GGG aren't looking for equilibrium. They never have, they never will. Chris even said so himself (and I'm paraphrasing here): ..."Some skills aren't meant to be as good as others, and that is part of the learning curve". That may just be a lazy man's way of saying that they're not even trying to balance skills, but is also a sign that GGG wants there to be good and "not so" good choices.

A fairly good player can kill everything up to (and including) Shaper with every skill in the game. No matter how you look at it, that is diverse.

I'm not saying that some archetypes aren't underpowered. I'm not saying that some skills don't suck. I'm just saying that if every skill in the game would be just as good, smooth and fast as every other skill, we'd have less diversity - in a way.

But a guy, playing since 2013, basing his statistics on PoE Ninja, that only takes level 96-100* into account, may be looking at this from a very narrow point of view.

* I don't know this, it only seems lik it. I don't use PoE Nina that much, and I might be mistaken here.

O_o All build are viable, and it's pretty easy to make meme-build for all content.

Someone already proven it and this guy is GGG's worst enemy:
https://www.youtube.com/user/eirikeiken

1) Need currency to make build viable? It's easy, just play the game and do contents. You'll get ton of currencies when you do contents.


2) Need a way to make build more op? Spend more time think about the build. It's like getting to know the girl you like. Once you know her good and bad side, u're good to go

3) Wanna be diverse? Try to become mathil.
Here's someone already become the 2nd version of mathil
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW-1B0xPUdx4ss5YZ-UNEtQ

4) Wanna have some pizza and beer with me? No problem. Just give me a pm and we'll contact each other for some pizza and beer.

I assume most skills are viable with enough gear. The bigger problem is that many skills feel the same gameplay wise.

PoE has content that challenges most builds. That's good. But players who feel entitled to beat every aspect of the game can't. That's good too. Sucks to be them, but that's the way we like it.

It's not that there's "less build diversity". It's that you can only play the game on rails or you fail. That's on you... not the game.

Sorry... meant "you" as in particular, not general.

There's still a LOT of different ways to build any particular skill, just look at all the stuff you can do with cyclone. Pure cyclone hit damage, poison, bleed, inpulsa chain explosions triggered by cyclone, CoC, ngamahu cyclone, cyclone with rat cage-eye of innocence combo to trigger VMS... there's a TON of variation.

Also, someone already beat uber elder with freeze mine. F***ING FREEZE MINE.

So yeah, you can probably make just about any idea work, but not all work equally well. But that's a given, considering all the mechanics we have. Also, wouldn't it be incredibly dull if anything and everything would perform exactly the same?