Feedback regarding Pathfinder's Concoctions and why they are too restricted.

Having played concoctions in 0.1, 0.2 and now 0.3, I have tested pretty much all versions of it and tried minmaxing these as much as I can in the past (still working in 0.3)

But I simply find that the skills are too restricted in several different ways.


Persistent buffs


There are simply too many cases where concoctions and by some extension, unarmed as a whole is restricted from using certain gems in the game, for what I can only perceive as being no good reason.




Heralds: Why can't the various versions of the concoctions utilize their respective Heralds? I cannot see a single reason why this would be the case. It seems almost designed perfectly for exactly that use. You have a Fire, Ice, Thunder, Blood and Poison herald to go with your Fire, Ice, Thunder, Blood and Poison concoction - but they cannot be used because these require a martial weapons.


Wind dancer: Why exactly does this persistent buff need a martial weapon to grant evasion? This one especially feels odd, considering that you are a pathfinder and therefore more likely to want to be investing into evasion, yet you cannot utilize this while playing the concoctions.



The cost: After 0.1, Concoctions got hit with multiple major nerfs. However one of the most problematic remain the cost of mana flasks going from 3->5

This means that if you want to invest into playing Concoctions, you need to start spending significant passive points on the passive tree, down different paths you likely wouldn't ever engage with otherwise on a pathfinder, simply to pick up extra sources of flask charged gained per second and %increased flask charges gained and even then, I have constantly found myself needing to portal back and frustratingly using the well to refill my mana flask to utilize it in mapping DESPITE spending all of those points on having it more reliably back as a resource.


The consequence of this is especially felt in endgame bossing- where you simply do not have access to enough mana flask charges to reliably use the concoctions as a source of damage unless you plan on waiting around for a minute (I timed it to 59 seconds) to refill my charges from 0->75



Now this wouldn't necessarily be so bad if not because of....


The (lack of) Scaling: Ever since the 0.1 nerf, in response to a bugfix, where Concoctions were notably benefitting from attacks with bow skills modifiers on quivers, strangely, GGG choose to entirely remove Quivers as an option for scaling additional damage AT ALL on concoctions, since you now require the main-hand to be free and thus cannot equip the quiver for extra offensive scaling -- this is particularly nasty because Quivers and bows were able to still benefit your unarmed scaling via access to projectile levels - but now you no longer have access to that.


This leads me currently with my explosive concoction, into needing to instead utilize Sunsplinter unique buckler, with corruption for +4 fire skills, with no other offensive scaling from that buckler besides levels.


Otherwise, you'd need to do, as I did in 0.2, and do something like utilizing Crown of Eyes, to instead be able to equip a focus and try scale of spell power and % increased fire damage. But this is frankly not very helpful either, as it harms your defenses even further and leaves you with no option for skill levels on your offhand or mainhand.



So in short, you don't have a mainhand to scale off. Your offhand is extremely limited in what it can provide.


So where is the damage supposed to come from?


In 0.2 I tried a full on crown of eyes, irongrasp spell power scaling Bleed concoction build, and it just hard hits a wall, because it doesn't have any means of scaling its base damage further than the very few sources it has available to it, like rings and gloves, which doesn't come CLOSE to giving you enough additional firepower to scale into the endgame.



Explosive concoction in 0.3 has sadly started to feel the same. While I can at least clear t15 maps, I have started reaching the point where I need multiple concoctions for even just magic monsters, never mind map bosses that require me often to stand around hitting the opponents with a weapon swap to fill the time between my mana flask charges replenishing.


Additionally, I frankly feel that this skill could have its base damage doubled at the later stages of its gem levels and it STILL wouldn't be close to usable for bossing, since you simply don't have access to scaling in any meaningful way, and axis like attack speed is limited by your access to flask charges.



I simply don't see how this skills design is intended to be this bad in terms of scaling options - ESPECIALLY for an ascendancy skill that you are spending 2 of your 8 points on.



My feedback suggestions:

1) Reduce the cost of flask charges again or consider at least significantly buffing the passive tree nodes that give you flask charges back, so that they are actually not leaving you with constant gaps of not being able to deal damage while speccing into utilizing that exact problem.


Either I need more attacks through my mana flask or I need to actually be properly rewarded for speccing into these charge replenishing nodes.



2) Do a pass on the skills that really have no reason NOT to have unarmed in there too. It seems more unintentional than a deliberate choice when I cannot use something like Herald of Ash with my explosive concoction.


3) Reconsider what options Concoctions should have for scaling. I don't want to suggest you to simply re-enable 0.1 state of concoctions to scale off projectile levels, but there needs to be SOME way for Concoctions to help scale into the endgame, as it stands, I cannot imagine someone even trying to take on a tier 4 endgame boss with the current state of scaling and not have it be a 30-40 minute fight from you constantly have to wait to replenish your flasks on top of your lacking damage.



If someone bothered reading this. I thank you for your time. Have a nice day.

Everything is too restrictive. That's what GGG wants out of the game. They hate creativity and interacting systems now for some reason.

The best example right now is Incinerate. The new version of Incinerate uses "fuel". Fuel doesn't exist anywhere else. There's nothing on the tree that affects fuel, there are no other skills that build or utilize fuel. There are no support gems that modify fuel. It's just some unique bullshit that makes the skill clunky as hell and a worthy candidate for deletion now.

With every patch there is less and less of an underlying system in this game where you can take a piece from here and a piece from there to make an interesting build. Everything is getting locked into its own little way of doing things that has no influence or effect on anything else. This is not a direction that I want to see the game continue in.

+2

GGG wants Concoctions to be skills that apply exposures or ailments, not direct damage. But why would I use Concoctions to apply exposure, when I can just reroll another ascendancy that will deal more damage, even without concoctions debuffs?

They took concoctions out the back and fired 4 shots. Removing the "spell" tag from Marks also nerfed concoctions because you could self replicate marks with CoA or CoC, so the AoE is extremely lackluster without sacrificing alot of damage or defenses

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RickyDMMontoya#7961 wrote:

Everything is too restrictive. That's what GGG wants out of the game. They hate creativity and interacting systems now for some reason.

The best example right now is Incinerate. The new version of Incinerate uses "fuel". Fuel doesn't exist anywhere else. There's nothing on the tree that affects fuel, there are no other skills that build or utilize fuel. There are no support gems that modify fuel. It's just some unique bullshit that makes the skill clunky as hell and a worthy candidate for deletion now.

With every patch there is less and less of an underlying system in this game where you can take a piece from here and a piece from there to make an interesting build. Everything is getting locked into its own little way of doing things that has no influence or effect on anything else. This is not a direction that I want to see the game continue in.

Sadly they are deleting the way incinerate works with gernades...another cool build deleted. They only want you to play it a certain way and if some people find ways to make it better using some cool tech, it gets deleted. Like the lich xbow with last lament. Fun detected, fun deleted. In a single player game that resets every 4 months lol imagine that.