Weird PoE Interactions ft. @Surgeon_General | Paltalk #8 | PoE 3.25

[@Palsteron]

If I ever said "Sargeant General", that's 100% a deepfake added by my editor.

[@Surgeon_General]

@@Palsteron that’s my twin brother, he enlisted.

[@epyjacek]

LOL

[@Surgeon_General]

Thanks for chatting Palsteron, it was a blast! I’ve followed the channel for a while and really appreciated getting a chance to swap some ideas and get your perspective on the build making process. Correcting one of my mis-speaks, I meant to say 4K evasion when referencing a small but meaningful evade chance and it came out as 40K (which is quite a bit of investment!).

[@Nazemi96]

I love your content man.. love the build ideas..

[@morfea123]

Tried Falling zombie brand build this league in SSF. Skill quality is hard to come by in SSF but still had ton of fun with it!

[@UncleJay69]

You're an insane source of inspiration man, also massive respect to your editing skills actually, it's not flashy but super super clean.

[@lenelie3051]

Really have enjoyed your content over the years, thanks for doing it!

[@dreamcore_gg]

Great talk! Surgeon makes some incredibly informative content, love me some of that 👍

[@ElicatrothTV]

Dreamcore and Surgeon

[@tomblank8124]

Pal these mini podcasts are freakin dynamite dude, thank you for uploading these! 👍

[@TheGabrielbowater]

This is one of the best build making chats I've listened to

[@whyismyhandleshown]

Cool Talk. Always like to hear them while blasting some maps. Nice talking points and I agree on most of the points. Can't really agree on the "we don't need target dummies" take. Currently people already minmax and try to chase numbers in PoB and the game doesn't have a great way of letting you know if you've actually gained 10% damage or even lost some damage. Especially regarding bugs. Captain lance recently did a video about bladefall negatively scaling with volley. I think we should be able to see these kind of interactions earlier.

[@semihamf1385]

Thanks for these podcasts for me to listen to while blasting maps

[@dalwand]

This video made me realize: I'm a mathematician working at university, I look for beauty in structures. Why do I then suck so much at poe? Now I know: you need to be an ENGINEER.

[@Billy4321able]

As an explosive trap expert I'd like to point out that the negative effect of aoe scaling is wildly overstated most of the time. You only benefit in a make-or-break way when you get down to extremely low amounts of area of effect. Bosses like Maven (not the brain) have such small hitboxes that the base gem with only concentrated effect and no increased aoe end up being about the same damage as using a level 4 empower and 100% increased aoe. Now once you start stacking sources of reduced area of effect and get the explosions smaller than Maven's hitbox it does end up as a lot more damage, but that's pretty terribly to play as it requires the enemy to stand still 100% of the time. Any slight movement nukes your dps, and if you had enough dps to insta-kill maven with super low area of effect, then you probably had enough damage to kill her with normal area of effect or even larger. There are very few situations in the game where you can cheese out dps via mechanics like less aoe and have it feel good to play.

[@Surgeon_General]

Ye, I deep-dived Firestorm and updated a calculator to figure out hit rate on -of Pelting (pre-rework Firestorm) and you need so much - AOE for it to actually make a meaningful difference that there's no way (imo) that it's worth it. You're better off settling for a 45% hit rate and actually be able to clear maps :) For Firestorm specifically, the reduction in hit rate is pretty minimal (like 45% at base AOE to like 40% at 100% increased AOE) and large AOE just feels so much better to play

[@JTD472]

Loved this one. Only saw a couple vids from this guy once upon a time but I’ll be subbing now. Good shit, keep these type of vids coming please

[@dreamscapepilgrim]

This is an awesome series Palsteron, keep them coming

[@chandlergordon8878]

palsteron is a dude who pays attention.

[@Keshro]

More! I need moooooore! I love this series of videos. Learning so much and getting to know content creators I would otherwise never have heard of!

[@Pharmacopium]

15:39 I don’t want to backtrack to loot - it’s the worst part of the game for me. So I play tanky builds so I can loot as I kill.

[@taylon5200]

That's actually a good point. I play a trickster doryani flicker this league, and it's tanky as all hell just because I have to stop flickering to loot eventually and it takes longer than clearing the map with flicker did. I don't wanna say auto loot, but damn there's so much clicking after a beefed out t17

[@Surgeon_General]

This is a really good point. If I think back, most of my league start builds at like end of week 1 might be tankier than my 500div budget rerolls - this is probably because subconsciously by the time I’m rerolling, my filter is strict enough that I don’t “feel” like I need to stop to loot as much and I lean more towards speed and dps. Interesting thought.

[@Pharmacopium]

@@Surgeon_General For sure! I notice that when I stop caring about leveling up and when I make my filter stricter, I can be less tanky and still feel comfortable. There is a component to interacting with league mechanics and other content with monsters around, as well. I can read an altar. I can grab the covetous shrine before killing the mobs around it. Stuff like that is the hidden QOL that is kind of overlooked in the conversation sometimes. Last thought - potentially excessive layers of defense are QOL, too. Don’t need block because you have a lot of evasion? Can’t click the -6000 evasion altar. Stuff like that is less obvious than overcapping resistances, but you notice in end game when you have not properly diversified your defensive layers.

[@diddykangable]

minmaxing the fun out of something really doesnt refer to build creation in path of exile, it refers to other games where minmaxing aspect runs perpendicular to the fun aspect of the game. An example would be monster hunter where some players will scream at you until they're red if you play certain weapons or include skills that dont directly affect damage in your build. Or in games like ESO if you want to full clear a dungeon and do the quests because its your first time through but the other 4 players are already on the second boss. Or any situation where you hear people say something like "theres no point doing x, because y is way more efficient" In poe it would be like saying "there's no point running ritual, strongboxes are way more money"

[@JayM928]

I agree with you, but to be fair, a couple of those examples are because of game design choices. For example, in ESO, you have to do a dungeon like 20 times to get that item you wanted. So, the first time is cool and interesting, but the 6th... 10th... 19th... Not so much. (Haven't played that in years, so that might be an outdated experience) Definitely agree though. It took me a while to stop feeling like I was "playing wrong" and just start thinking "screw those guys" when I do things like "waste my time" picking up chaos orbs. Playing POE is the biggest waste of my personal time, so being maximally efficient at the expense of fun is just some arbitrary psychological shortcoming (imo). If I wanted to be maximally efficient and not having fun, I should work on maximizing my productivity and bank account and minimizing my vacation time.

[@h0lykn1gt75]

I have to admit that if I have the choice of instantly killing bosses or being able to just face tank everything, I’d take face tank everything every time. It’s so satisfying laughing at bosses (or hundreds of enemies) while they try to kill you and absolutely can’t.

[@codhcod4949]

17:28 I hope ggg adds loadouts for characters as well like they did with atlas tree

[@epyjacek]

That would be interesting, but it may be counter to their previous choices. I hope so though, the atlas loadouts have been a game changer for me.

[@JayM928]

That sounds like it would be awesome. It also sounds HORRIBLE when I think about how complex builds would be ... "Ok, here are the loadouts you need to make this work... you want to use loadout 1 for this... Loadout 2 when this..." 😧

[@codhcod4949]

@@JayM928 it would be more efficient, 1 build for bossing and 1 for mapping, 3rd one could be for specific farming of something or experimental

[@jvepps]

Currently I really dislike T17 implementation. Id like to see some more changes. Very interesting talking points.

[@salihkizildag]

popularity of the builds doesn't mean much in a game where 80% of the players copy paste whatever their streamer is doing

[@epyjacek]

I get your point, but is the number that high? I play my own builds or wild variations of old builds most of the time. That has been true for the last 4 years for me at least.

[@salihkizildag]

​@@epyjacekobviously impossible to know the exact number but I'm pretty sure it's very high. I've only did that once when I started the game and been playing my own builds since then, but even the most experienced players I know just play whatever everyone's playing

[@Kuzka_]

Why reinvent the wheel? I do play my own builds quite often, but they never end up good, because they don't use meta damage mechanics. The chance to actually come up with something new that works is really low.

[@Prizzadar]

What a great conversation, i would like to see more 😊 you should think about some type of colab from time to time

[@NatiiixLP]

18:48 That may not be a great example, because if you play Svalinn, you want to stack avoidance, so that you can then run maps with 0% PDR and negative resistances from altars in softcore. Not very hardcore-viable, of course, and also not too good for content like Ultimatum, but block + evasion is totally busted in 3.25 for mapping.

[@JayM928]

15:10 I don't need to facetank (though those builds are great), I just have a cruelly ironic life. I will never die after I level and there's zero risk other than using a portal. I will die to some random thing when I'm level 95.9 then again at 95.7 and next thing I know, I'm back to where I was several days ago. Ironically, in this regard, you need some tankiness to get to the end, but don't really need it when you get there. Also, POE is designed such that most content is trivial and dies in one hit, and some of it is crushing and one-shots you. I'm either bored at no risk of death or I'm clinched up trying to hammer down life potion and running for my life in a span of 100 milliseconds. There's not really any in-between. About the only time I casually hit a life potion is in the twilight strand before reaching Hillock.

[@bryansans2564]

finally these two collab!

[@kalebglenn5279]

Wait... the less damage multiplier doesn't affect minion damage? So ballista totem with Blink Arrow will, 200% cooldown, and a bunch of totem duration should constantly summon full damage minions? I'm pretty sure the less attack speed applies though... at least that's what it felt like to me.

[@SageUndead1]

I literallz made a Triggerbot Raise Zombie of Falling Build and it was so much fun. I need to check his out to see how ti compared to mine. Mine used Kitava's Helmet to trigger more Fallign Zombies was hella fun not really good though.

[@epyjacek]

I think defenses depend on a lot of things, even stuff outside the game. Just look at some of Mathil's builds, they are definitely squishy but he plays well enough it doesn't matter that much.

[@JayM928]

I don't like one-button builds OR "skill rotations". I think both are extremes and something in the middle is better. Side note, what POE players call "one-button builds" often actually use 2-4. Even RF walking-simulator builds will have a movement skill. Sometimes something for bosses as well. (I also remember playing before flask enchants)

[@davidnnn6986]

I disagree with melee over-buff. If that sword enchant does not exist. Melee only evenly matches a post nerf tornado shot. Bow gets a free off-hand for no reason, and gets much better clear with little or no need to invest in defensive stats because of their play style. If in melee range, lightning strike is doing 450*2 base damage while tornado shot is doing 160*7*0.8. At mid range, ls does 450, tornado shot is doing 160*5*0.8 at least. They are on the same power level.

[@linemat7887]

23:00 forgot Viper Strike of Mamba.

[@EnderElohim]

24:20 i still think cyclone buff was not enough and mana increase from i think 2 to 3 is huge. Also removing add physic and removing physic tag sux

[@numedrake]

i am happy with my self made necro dom blow of inspriering staff build i hit maybe 10 mill dps full cook know its not a meta take on the skill but i am having fun

[@wh0reb0t]

Did they not have to buff Lightning Strike cuz they removed totems? Great Pod dude enjoy these.

[@Jbravo408]

I must have a suicide gem equipped because I get random deaths regularly

[@slaughterin-allbbnb8766]

Honestly the map Portions of t17’s are pretty easy this league compared to last so a lot more people and builds can a get through the maps , but there are still a lot of really bad mods that will brick most builds and the bosses are still insanely overtuned so most people still have no hope of being able to even try fighting Ubers or getting their 6th map slot without paying for a carry which is prettt ridiculous

[@Fertizis]

big like

[@ramschasar7654]

The problem with endgame characters and higher difficulty is that it can lead to very specific builds that are required to do it and that is bad. I played ruthless in necropolis league and most people who did all the t17 there either played or got carried by some dd character. I dont want a lategame that only the most broken builds can do. I love goofy builds like falling zombies and so on. I dont need to be able to do all content like delve, ultimatum and so on, but dont exclude me from an entire maptier pls xd

[@Mineral4r7s]

i want to press my main skill button once every 5 seconds and nothing else. wrist issues wooo

[@ZomgLolPants]

Weird how people make builds that can do billions of damage per second when enemies are capped at 2.1 billion hp

[@_ByteBlaze_]

You forget that enemies have resistances and sometimes additional layers of pure damage reduction. The builds aiming for billions of DPS aren't doing regular maps. They are doing pinnacle bosses and deep delve.

[@ZomgLolPants]

@@_ByteBlaze_ i mean i get that but it's still, conceptually, a little silly to me. delve does make a lot of sense though, I'm at around depth 300-400 and things are starting to get thick

[@voodoo1069]

I feel like I agree the you don't need really high defense when you are doing t16 but that isn't taking into count all the freaking alters that shit crap on your chest if you don't have way higher defense when you other wise would for that content. Sure you could read but this is PoE I don't want to sit and read in the middle of combat when stuff is far to likely to off screen you if you stop moving. Also I can play 2 or 3 times more if I am just in the zone not thinking then if I'm stopping and reading non stop. Big reason why I can't stand expedition and in that league I quit after hit 40/40 which I almost never do.

[@ceckoangelov7449]

all good its just crafting is to expencive so none dares to even try 12:37

[@xanosche]

You can spend hours upon hours pobing a build, has everything you want in theory with solid numbers all around then after leveling and putting it together you realize its tuh rash 🤣

[@ahsen3100]

yeah, i always look for new/creative build its much cheap and enjoy the game. Multi-mirrors build pwn the game? hmmm what so special

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

I still dont understand why people complain about t17 maps being difficult. What about valdo maps, why no one complains about them? They are even worse and much more rewarding. And there are like a handful of builds that do them. Picking and choosing is not healthy imo. And overall, it makes no sense.

[@vyntarus9618]

I think what it comes down to is that they're locking uber bosses and a bunch of uniques that used to be in the core drop pool behind T17 maps. The result is several more gates to pass before you're in the 'true endgame' like they said in the video whereas before you only had to allocate an Atlas node to take a shot at the uber bosses. Valdo maps are pretty specifically built as a challenge that rewards you a target unique if you can overcome it, not part of the main path of progression for a character.

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

@@vyntarus9618 You actually have a good point. They seem very similar but you highlighted the diference. I do consider both as challenges, but yeah t17s get in the way.

[@bryansans2564]

Valdo's are far away from META, if they were meta, they would have many complaints.

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

@@bryansans2564 I think most mods on valdos are unreachable for a lot of ppl, maybe thats why we dont see an outburst. Plus yeah like the other guy said, there is nothing locked behind them like frags, you simply get an item. But at the same time... when you fight an uber, you also have the potential to get an uber drop. So they are extremely similar. T17s, valdos, ubers, even sims are all challenges.

[@Surgeon_General]

I'll just give you a build-maker's perspective: I've had people nope out of what I think are interesting builds cause it can't face-tank T17 Catarina or kill her in under 30 sec or run 95% of T17 mods. That's fine if that's what they're looking for, I have no problem with that, but the design of T17s highly incentivizes players to focus on that content because of the PoE community's current hyper-focus on div/hour. This is one of the contributing factors to the vast majority of players playing slight variations on a small number (like 3-5 different) of builds. That said, most of my builds suck regardless of the design of T17s LMAO

[@daibaandtheghostmachine8952]

that is exactly the title I want to see for a POE video. Time to cook. LOGIN

[@Unh34ler]

Totally apart from the video, which is really really great... wtf your youtube feed (?)

[@myrkshideouts6020]

the game is just unbalanced u cant play ur favorite build cause other builds are stronger and are only voption for hardest content ( 100% delirious t 17 ) frostbold hiero and ls builds or mosoz builds are s+ tier u have billions of projectile which can easily proc billions of things like life gain on hit or mabye wither from unholy might so u can get full stack and tons of other thinkgs like vaal pact and leech from projectile oh and paochers mark is toooo op im playing smite strrg stacker rn and sometimes i die at simulacrum wave 15 i hav 300 mil dps and 220k ehp with 88% block and 68% spell block + fortify + end charges + ail immune meanwhioe budget ls player easy survive cause the got life gain on hit XDD and billion of dps

[@Kuzka_]

No spell suppression? That means 32% to die from spells. EHP doesn't matter, I had 60k ehp on a character and it was tankier than a 200k ehp one. I assume you're using replica Alberon's so unless you also have original sin, smite doesn't really sound like a good skill for you. It has more common use as an aura rather than a convenient way of dealing damage itself (especially for armor stackers). I looked at lightning strike characters. There's only one with billion damage. But look at his gear. No wonder it has that much. Even has 100% effect adorned. And 33% chance for triple damage.

[@myrkshideouts6020]

@@Kuzka_ btw im building the 1billion build rn alrdy got the dagger and the 100% adorned and chest

[@IllNacs]

skill rotations? ew this isnt wow, and atleast in wow we are allowed to make a macro that does the rotation for you if you just spam 1 button, POE2 will be dead on release if theres mandatory skill rotations with their very anti-macro stance.

[@PokemasterSD]

There are a lot of people out of the PoE community that love the sound of it. Promotes a more involved and deliberate playstyle that is more true to form of an action game than a 1-button masher. PoE2 will be it's own thing, PoE1 will still exist and doesn't need to be cloned.

[@_ByteBlaze_]

I'm fine with skill rotations/comboing in the sense of "using the right tool for the job", but the issue I had with the take on skill rotations in this video is the "piano" aspect. I don't want to wear out my hands to deal damage. I don't play one button builds because I'm lazy. I play them because I don't want my hands to cramp and get injured doing something that is supposed to de-stress me. They need to really nail the controller implementation, or it's going to be a terrible experience for a lot of us who have dexterity problems when using a keyboard. I recently tried using my controller to run a map to help with looting. The current implementation of controllers is horrendous. The same button to interact with objects is also used to loot. So you can be picking up currency and suddenly open a strongbox because the focus shifts off the loot labels and on to the strongbox. The inventory controls also don't feel intuitive. They need to give us per-button/trigger binding of various actions, or it's going to be miserable. So to get back on topic, if they are going to expect us to "flicker strike" our keys in PoE2 the way it feels in PoE1, the controller gameplay needs to be a million times better than it is now, or I won't be playing anything that isn't a one-button build.

[@eshannumin]

This could be great, except GGG is chemically addicted to killing you with unavoidable or wildly overtuned damage. This doesn't mix.

[@horyzons91]

Have fun in poe1!!

[@Bengista]

First

[@batschi12]

fourth

[@emilm8603]

Who are these hypothetical people being gatekept from the endgame? Yes, t17 maps can be very hard, and require some investment, but that has always been true for the "end game" to some extent. There has always been some superior end game strat that was more difficult and required more investment both in terms of character and running costs. T17s is such a good soloution for aspirational content, and the fact that people keep bitching about it being too hard drives me up the wall. You can reroll as much as you want, heck, you can even use scarabs to remove half the mods. Fubgun just did a zero to hero run where he went from completely fresh account to blasting t17s in like 2 days. Yes, he is an exceptionally knowledgeable and sweaty player, but if he can do it in less than half a week, it's just retarded to act like there is some great barrier keeping people out.

[@ivolakit]

I personally don't mind the current state of T17's due to the builds I enjoy playing having the ability to run them. But consider an average player NEVER kills elder in the entire league. And from that point they see people doing t17 content and making 30-40-50 divs per hour and are looking at their own currency stack sitting at like 20c. 99% of complaints I've found have been newer players or those who don't understand how to scale their builds into an endgame state.

[@zfeazcesd1047]

Ben cleared that insane affliction gauntlet in a week SSF hardcore, it doesn’t mean that tuning is even remotely reasonable for everyone else just because the top players can do it.

[@tmultt]

Do people find t17 hard? This is my first league playing since they've been added. My first character was an under 10 div righteous fire. I could run any mod that wasn't less regen. Never died once. Thought T17 were underwhelming actually. Second character is close to a mirror molten strike zenith and I one tap/phase the map boss. Again underwhelmed.

[@emilm8603]

@@zfeazcesd1047 First of all, gauntlets are their own kind of beast. That being said, Ben being able to clear it like he did did in fact prove that it was possible to do it with enough practice, skill, knowledge and investment. Which is like... exactly what you want from a game. Why people seem to have an expectation that all content should be accessible to everyone, with hardly any required effort, investment, skill or knowledge is just beyond me. Can't do max juiced t17s? Then fucking don't juice them to the max, or improve your build. Compromises are fun, they make choices have meaning.

[@zfeazcesd1047]

@@emilm8603 The point is that what top players can do has almost no bearing on how the game is balanced for the general population so your example of fubgun speed running through t17s easily is worthless. I’m not saying everyone should be able to do them, but more than current. Many people can’t do them for a variety of reasons and they are much more limiting in terms of build viability. Yeah, if u have a lot of time and turn ur brain off and follow an OP build it’s easy, but I don’t think telling a SSF player who enjoys off meta builds to just play trade and follow a build guide is a good solution. Regardless, like they both said in the video, the reward tuning is completely whacked which further leads to people who can’t do them feeling badly.