Why Are Spell Levels Broken (And How can GGG Fix it?)
Remove them. Give us supports and skill tree nodes that actually give us the power +levels create.
It’s less of a problem for spells. Even in PoE1 + levels are usually the better way to scale spell builds. But the fact that melee has to chase them too is the bigger problem. This isn’t the case in PoE1. In PoE1 the best melee weapon will usually have flat phys, percent phys, and hybrid percent phys. And it will almost always out damage a weapon made with +skill levels.
No spell has specific problem in poe2 because we are missing the flat damage recipe like poe1 where dps of equipment still can matter vs poe2 has literally no scaling without it
Yep, this is a huge part of it. On martial weapons, your weapon itself is only part of your flat damage. On spells, your spell level is the only source of flat damage (minus some specific outliers like a few specific uniques that are mostly low level). Casting weapons themselves have huge multipliers, but if you have no flat then the multipliers do so little they don’t really matter.
Meanwhile, martial weapons get rings and gloves, on top of the weapon itself, and the weapon’s local multipliers, to gain higher and higher flat damage, which then multiplies off of the skill gem’s own multiplier, making it significantly easier to get your damage up.
In every league, I’ve gotten endgame-viable Bow, Crossbow, and Quarterstaff builds without any +levels on the weapon. For spells, it’s absolutely mandatory. So mandatory, in fact, that I’m aiming to get Lv.30+ spells on most spells to get viable damage, because that flat damage is so necessary.
The one weapon build that’s an exception is Hollow Palm, but I guess you could argue that’s not really a weapon build in a certain sense lol
Hollow Palm has about the same scaling as spells do with skill level since it gains both the %damage effectiveness and the flat damage with skill level. The difference is that unlike spells it still has the ability to drag in even more flat damage from elsewhere. So I guess you could consider it the middle ground between weapon builds and spell builds currently, in terms of how it scales.
Of course, that’s just how spells worked in PoE1 in the first place so.. yeah. Nothing revolutionary here.
poe2 has literally no scaling without it
That’s BS and you know it. It’s literally just that the numbers on spell levels are too big vs any other modifiers. There’s plenty of other ways of scaling, increased and more multipliers, gain as extra, crit chance/damage, cast speed, some skill specific stuff like duration or proj speed… The numbers on spell levels are just multiple times higher than any of the other things you’d put in those slots.
Have you considered why the numbers are higher? It’s mainly because of the missing flat dmg scaling.
It’s just 15% more damage per level (roughly). You could replace +7 spell levels with 160% more spell damage and ignoring mana costs it would be the same result. It doesn’t matter that it functions by improving your base damage, it’s still just a multiplier like every other multiplier.
They could replace it with any one or a combination of dozens of different options. Going back to added flat from 1 is one option, sure, but they could also just buff the level 20 gems across the board, or just way increase some other modifiers, or add a spell damage equivalent to the still-kinda-weird dot multi from 1, or really any number of changes. They just happened to pick “put huge spell level numbers everywhere” over all of those other options.
Melee levels in poe 1 is pretty good tbh. Some skills get massive base damage multi
Good on amulet and other places other then the weapon usually. And there’s no source of +levels above 2 unless you reflecting mist a piece of jewelry. The +5,6,7 levels on weapons in PoE2 is just asinine.
There’s Admiral’s Arrogance in 1 that gives +3 to all melee skill gems so there’s that. But what’s different is that melee skill gem level is just a luxury in 1 since the better way to scale damage is just get a better weapon anyways, not counting skills that needs +levels to hit their next breakpoint (like Shield Crush for example)
I mean this league you can get a +11 helmet if you’re willing to forego support gems. And you can get a +8 ammy if you have a ton of cash to burn. I’m not actually disagreeing that there’s a problem with gem levels in poe2 but the problem isn’t really that the numbers are too high, the problem is that they made skills scale too well above 20⁄30
It’s good but remember that poe1 skill level is prefix not suffix means it competes with phys or ele rolls making it basically only usable for gems that get base damage like ele hit
There are other slots such as gloves and amulets no? I am not saying the power is at poe2 level. It’s just still powerful more than people think
outside of maybe +1 phys and +1 all on neck, but there are practically 0 poe1 melee builds that care about melee levels past that
Not realy, in poe1 best way to play spells is lifestacking with rathpit or int stacking with jibaquani or whatever the fuck this staff is called. +Level is mediocre and works best for pretty limited number of spells (like dot for example, but with foulbourne rathpith its not true already).
Ja Rule’s staff in PoE1; Ja Rule’s Medallion in PoE2
Completely agree with how the problem is explained. It makes spell levels far too important for damage scaling.
Completely disagree with the solution, or at least it would have to be very carefully done, to avoid it making even less items good enough. Also, other aspects would have to be balanced around to make casters not feel miserable in campaign.
To me the Solution sounds like it would create the same problem it tries to solve. Now rings HAVE to have this one stat if you are a spellcaster AND +levels are still by far the most important stat. It just gets an extra cost.
And like he already explained, it doesn’t really compete with other prefixes, so it’s just a garbage ring (for spellcasters), if it doesn’t have the stat.
Yeah, I feel like his solution is making the game more convoluted for newer and more casual players - we don’t need more stuff that is not obvious.
And having different levels of “prefix pressure” for different archetypes I think is good
if every archetype has specific mods that are better for them, an intentionally high-variety mechanic becomes a boring checklist
they should just remove +skills tbh. Maybe bake it into actual progression, kill an uber, get +1 on all skills or something
Ya just make it end game rewards and you have something to chase that has a meaningful reward because it’s the only way to get it.
Like corruption enchants, I started writing something about uniques and realized mid sentence if they scale the power appropriately then those uniques would just become meta.
Yes + spells every 2 levels from 90 to 100
No way, the grind after 95 is absurd. There’s no excuse to make that downright mandatory to do damage.
lol… anyone upvoting this or think this is a good idea has a horrible take, what would be the point of killing an uber just to get a +1?
sense of progression, milestones u know. Getting stronger but not ridiculously strong. Idk to me thats better than a random must have roll on all of your gear
ok so just remove the + skills and see what happens
what do you think will happen? besides us getting one step closer to a proper balance
well we’ll probably complain that the players are weaker now and killing monsters is not quickly as before.
We should be weaker. Any medium build can destroy all content without much of an investment currently. They have to bring our power down somehow. And even if they don’t, they could just adjust the monsters accordingly.
Turns out the guys who made PoE 1 knew a thing or two and added damage effectiveness to skills to have an extra axis to balance out issues like this—if only we could replicate such things.
Do you know how they addressed that in Poe2?
They dont.
I just want you to really try to think about the math of damage effectiveness and how it affects damage gained compared to extra damage as a stat in Poe2. I want you to think about a skill that deals 100 damage with 30% damage effectiveness. Lets say it gets +100 flat. It gets +30 damage. Right?
Another skill has 30 damage and 100% damage effectiveness. It gets +100.
So… Extra damage in Poe2… It is a percentage that is scaled to the base damage of a skill. Like… Damage effectiveness. Do you get it?
My lvl 3 ranger with all that extra damage as thanks you for clarifying.
General idea that in PoE2 we don’t have any sources of added damage for spells (except Flame Wall), only attacks have damage effectiveness, so there is clear distinction between attack and spell scaling from gear. Unfortunately this distinction it’s meaningless, because you end up just scaling gem levels on both archetypes anyway.
Extra damage is added damage with damage effectiveness factored in for legibility. The fact that it’s hard for people to understand this proves the reasoning behind the design choice. It’s immaterial to the discussion of added levels, since added levels are still too efficient. It’s just odd that people keep bringing up damage effectiveness despite the math not really being THAT complicated.
But again, it’s obviously complicated enough that the change confuses people to the point of anger, so I guess it’s unfair of me to say.
Yep, damage effectiveness in PoE1 is basically just a measure of “what scale” the base damage lives on. If you take any skill and divide it’s base damage by it’s damage effectiveness, you should get about the same number. They have balanced it this way to make added dmg be roughly as effective on all skills.
Examples:
Fireball lvl 20 avg dmg: 2050, dmg effectiveness: 370%. 2050⁄3.7 = 554
Blade vortex lvl 20 avg dmg: 175, dmg effectiveness: 30%. 175⁄0.3 = 583
Crackling lance lvl 20 avg dmg: 916, dmg effectiveness: 165%. 916⁄1.65 = 555
So for example any source of “100 added damage”, could might as well just be “18% added damage” (which doesn’t need dmg effectiveness), and things would work out roughly the same:
Fireball, 2050*1.18 = 2419, vs 2050 + 100*370% = 2420
Blade vortex, 175*1.18 = 206, vs 175 + 100*30% = 205
Crackling lance, 916*1.18 = 1081, vs 916 + 100*165% = 1081
Extra damage is added damage with damage effectiveness factored in for legibility
Yes, in theory, no, on practice. PoE1 don’t scale spell damage effectiveness past lvl 20 gem, so added damage become less effective with each extra gem levels. Because of this, added damage is alternative way to scale base damage of spells instead of gem levels. In PoE2 extra damage is not alternative to gem levels, it’s just another more damage multiplier as effective on lvl 20 and lvl 30 gem.
There is place for added damage in gem level discussion. Additional gem levels in PoE1 is always prefix and usually is just +1 for one affix. So you need trade two prefixes to have +2 wand or amulet. Added spell damage is also prefix on weapon, and in early endgame compete with added gem levels. We also have Anger aura, archamage/added cold/lightning damage support, abyssal jewels, Battlemage, Spellblade etc. all of them become less effective with gem levels, but pretty good scaling vector by itself.
Usually you get 21lvl from corrupted gem and +1-2 levels from other sources, to reach centrain skill breakpoints. At this point added damage is weaker, but still pretty effective.
Considering this, main way to scale gem levels is Empower support and + levels from corrupted body implicits, and +4⁄8 reflected amulets in ultra late endgame. At this point added damage become almost useless.
At the same time in PoE2 you can pick up +5 wand and +3 amulet with other useful prefixes from the ground/vendor. And get even more with right investments (Prism of Belief, runes, corruption etc.) and still fully benefit from extra damage.
As you can see PoE2 extra damage ≠ PoE1 added damage. So stop talking like nobody understand THAT complicated concept, you are being condescending.
Edit: wanted to add that I’m personally against addition of added damage/damage effectiveness to PoE2, this not solve any existing problem, but only complicate things more. Just move added gem level to prefix instead of sufix and lower maximum roll on each source or make scaling over lvl 26 less and less effective (not exact number, just example).
The guys who made PoE 2 are literally the same as the ones who made PoE 1.
Just get rid of +levels and buff other sources of damage. Some more interesting support gems and passion nodes would be nice and also more flexibility for the support gems.
I think, maybe, leave +1 as a possible corruption on gems, but even more rare and then make it a big jump to go from 20 to 21. Make it an endgame goal/grind. Or maybe make it so gems can only be corrupted via beating a pinnacle boss or even a particular pinnacle boss.
i’m gonna just copy past an old post a made to a similar post TL:DR the +gem levels are prob overtuned, however as an intentional semi exclusive “more” pool even if they weren’t they would still be mandatory as flat damage for attacks is mandatory since this is more or less the explicitly the design choice they were going for.
my old post:
So to be clear i don’t think +levels is in a perfectly balanced state
however,
No one ever seems to comment on the design space or actually address the “core” part of the mechanic
In poe 2 +gem levels as a design is +flat damage for spells, this has be explicitly stated by GGG, the goal with the change of having +gem replace +flat damage is twofold:
Remove “damage effectiveness” from spells
Add a recognizable core “damage” stat for spells on weapons like attack builds have (local damage on weapons)
The good: for most players playing most builds its now quite easy to compare how good weapons are. spells are now also easier to balance due to loss of damage effectiveness
The bad: Since +gem level is basically the sole source of flat damage it makes it quasi mandatory for any spell that wants to deal damage (by making it a effective separate “More” modifier), this pairs with the fact that since it increases mana costs it basically mandates that all builds must solve massive mana costs somehow.
My final thoughts: +gem levels accomplished what they wanted it to do and generally I like how the change “feels” since i don’t have to toss every item i find into POB to have a clue what it does to my damage, however they have introduced a new issue with the change, since without damage effectiveness being it the game, flat damage from other mechanics basically can’t exist meaning gem level will even if nerf’d into the ground still be basically mandatory as a stat tied to a unique more modifier and i’m not sure how to address this without walking back damage effectiveness which would require sweeping changes throughout the game fundamentally changing spell design
Simple. Just remove that mod from everthing but amulet and some uniques. Add some more interesting mods. Problem solved.
They could easily fix the low melee damage, modifing any of:
*Crit:
- Critical hit bonuses (melee only) from passives are added to the weapon’s base percentage.
- Melee skills have a base critical hit percentage.
*Weapons:
- Increased flat damage for slower weapons.
*Accuracy:
- Zero melee penalty.
*Support Gems:
- The “less” percentages on support gems (the red ones) are removed or halved.
*Skill Gems:
- Melee skills have flat bonus damage per level.
- Melee skills no longer have “less” penalties; they become “reduced” penalties.
*Armor:
- Increased armor effectiveness…
*Life:
- Why not % life nodes in tree??
But it seems to me that GGG’s management isn’t interested in melee combat ever being fun/competent.
A good video I saw from CrimsonCasts (a well known PoE2 Official caster and PoE2 racer) that I wanted to share that describes some of the problems with +to level of skills modifier
(I am not affiliated with CrimsonCasts in any way)
Just fit it with 17th order polynomial, duh…
How dare you exposed this madness! Now they have to nerf Melee builds furthermore because of this revelation!
On a serious notes: Spells have always been OP since PoE1 for the past 10 years.
I agree that this is the problem with spells/+ to levels but I’m not sold on the solution here.
The problem I see is that this new stat is tied directly to + to levels and inevitably results in these two stats being absolutely required at all times and in a worse way than the current system. In that you can’t really just get one, you must get both stats.
That said, this is going in the right direction. Spells do need some other scaler besides + to levels and it needs to be available on rings and gloves in the same way that weapons have access to flat damage on both.
No point in trying to balance the game, PoE was never balanced. Just give alternative ways to scale damage that are just as good as + levels for spells.
?? Melee and the other weapons aren’t even all out yet. Why nerf it if it’s working. They have plenty of time to do balancing when we start seeing a broader version of Poe 2. I like the slow combat the changes they made let them cook.
Just remove the thing, add a flat spell dmg affix somewhere
Just make the game harder
the game is already hard for the average player
What about having the spell caster weapons actually define the base damage of the spells? All spells base damage becomes % of weapon damage.
It allows for a dual scaling system the same as attack skills.
It allows for hybrid classes to scale their particular spells off of the melee/ranged weapon they are carrying with the downside of not having spell damage prefixes/suffixs.
It makes there be more crafting/design choice in what weapons you equip as a spell class.
Your spell casting prefixes and suffixes then have the ability to address either the weapons base damage or the spell’s multiplier or just global damage, creating more build choice and levers for devs to manipulate to balance spells/damage.
If the staff gives +level, and +level gives damage…. How does that not already meet your request?
I don’t think the +level should be in the mix.
I don’t think the +level should add straight damage beyond being a set multiplier of the weapon damage that scales up as your levels rise from the actual skill gem being levelled up.
+levels on equipment feels like a shit stay in general.
I also don’t want “the next best thing” to become the +levels either.
I do believe that beyond making +levels “equitable”, that the ability to scale damage should be viable on multiple paths. As a non-exhaustive list of examples:
Certain skills or combinations or passive tree nodes or uniques should exemplify individual selections of the options. Thereby increasing build diversity significantly.
The proposed solution of magical accuracy in the video is a cool option, I just, in my uneducated opinion, don’t feel it goes far enough. The system needs rework, not a bandage.
What if they made the scaling simpler and weapons/gear can’t roll +skill and +dmg modifier.
My solution would be. +1 to skills is +10% dmg. +2 is 20% ect.
So gear could roll +15% dmg mod which would be +1.5 to skills. But no item can roll both.
Someone could have a godly item that’s +8 to skills and someone else could have +80% and it’s the same in power.
Something like that at least. Tweak my numbers of course.
Why fix? give more power for low performing stuff