Do we know why they gutted the Pathfinder ascendancy?

Too many players were saying that it was fun.

GGG made it sound like they were excited about buffing Pathfinder in 0.2.

That didn’t work out as well as they imagined, obviously.

But I do think the ascendancy will actually be in a very good spot if they revert some of the massive concoction nerf.

Probably just a result of the nerf everything vision. I don't think they gave much thought on every single nerf. They just went, yeah let's tone down everything across the board.

They want the game to be more player friendly. If pf was good new player will have a hard time deciding between deadeye and pf. The only reason you would want to pick pf is poison.

To do this they incentivize player by

1. make sure herald of poison is stronger than the ascendency. This way if you want to play poison you will want to use the herald even when you pick this node making it a point with zero benefit.

2. Make sure concoction is bad to use.

3. give a 4 point passive (for poison) a downside

4. movement speed penalty node can easily be replace by riding rhoa. In 0.1 they notice that they couldn't finish the rhoa thing yet and it was a 2point ascendency. This league they make sure to turn this into a 4 point to incentivize player to use rhoa.

Clearly, this shows us that they are providing a clear option that push player to play deadeye.

I read that there is a grenade variant for PF that is somewhat decent. As a PF main, I feel your pain.

Herald of Plague actually does a better job at proliferation poisons. It proliferates at 1.8m spread which is 20% better then the pathfinder ascendancy points. Plus it hinders when it proliferates.

That essentially makes the first ascendancy have a value of 30 spirit.

It's boring and has no identity at all.

Honestly i dont think they gave this patch that much thought. They just went in and nerfed everything to the ground becasue players were able to do all content very fast, as a result they would get bored of the game and not spend as much time in game which leads to less mtx purchases. Well they went too hard on nerfs to the point that many people stopped playing all together. Also trying to finish developing poe2, addinf stuff for a new league and working on poe1 might be a bit too much for their current dev team size.

And then you learn that herald skills don't work with unarmed, making every conconction unable to use any heralds

because it was built with flask in mind. if that gone, the entire class is gutted

Ya I don't really get how certain changes went out for pathfinder there. It makes no sense at all. Empty hand for conc is fine, that's how it is with poe1. But clearly no one actually made a pathfinder and played the game. So few auras work without a martial weapon

I've been playing a Poisonburst Arrow Pathfinder that can do T16 maps and some earlier tiers of pinnacle content. It has great clear but it is a bit slow on single target.

they completly gutted concoctions , if you try to scale magnitude , instead of going crit does 0 dmg also they nerfed to +5 flask charge use , so you need shit ton of flask generation to even sustain

i’m playing pathfinder and it’s pretty nice in maps, rapidfire/flash grenade build for clearing and explosive grenade for bosses. Plus is temporal chains doesn’t do anything to you

Pathfinder here, chemical warfare ranger. Gas arrow is a good clear, damage for bosses a little low but can be done if you're able to dodge around decently. General survivability is quite alright too.

I really like it.

All builds at the top of the totem pole got nerfed to the ground, that's why. This isn't helped by the fact that about 200% extra damage is derived from the bugged bow/quiver interaction.

Especially the poison variant, it is particularly effective vs single targets. Now, the play style is janky and not particularly good at clear. The cold/lightning variants are better at clear though not as good vs single targets, but only because of the HOI/HOT interaction. But it doesn't matter to GGG.

Had fun playing pathfinder with grashing sash and bursting plage uniques.

The belt only makes sence on PF with life flask not removed Node and is pretty strong with the ring.

Concoctions are now more of a supportive skill than a main skill witch is in line with other classes.

It was my planned league starter for 0.2, due to being able to function without much gear at all. It has never been OP in the first place compared to spark or stat stacking in 0.1, just fun and functional. Needless to say, after reading the patch notes, I decided to skip 0.2 altogether.

Idk why their idea of balance is nerfing the skills that worked right. If they wanted to make players play different skills then they should buff alternate options to the skills, if the most one is nerfed now every skill in that category is bad so why even bother with using any of the skills, this will just push players to find the new meta to use and then they will eventually nerf that too until the entire ascendancy is just plain boring and unfun then that's when they decide, "Yeah the class is now balanced."

Nerfing the best option is the worse idea for balance.

Kill joy

people were having fun which is not allowed in poe2

It isn’t gutted, I leveled one till 87 and everything melts with BConcoction, at level 90 with lvl 20 and the last socket is going to be brutal, in SSF and my gear isn’t specifically mirror tier.

The usage of widowhail was broken, that needed a nerf, but the change to the spirit gems needing a martial weapon I don’t understand it and is a bit annoying, because till the highest level you don’t have useful reservation skills.

Isn't pathfinder like the best acendancy for crossbows? Much stronger compared to other stuff than last league.

The movement from it is just insane.

Some have written that this ascendancy is one of the best in survival

No need to worry. Ggg decided to make and support two very similar games at the same time. So we can look forward to the staff stretched thin trying to balance two games at the same time, resulting in poor balancing and longer wait times.

I think that in 0.3 they will revert majority of these nerfs even spark

Jungroan, the snitch!

Nuke everything at once until its unplayable, than buff it back slowly to make players happy. Classic ggg strat.

If it’s not already obvious, they have never played their own game ever, not even a single minute

They got us dumb shits to PAY to play test their game for them

Concoction sustain was fine. Lots of players didn't take the flask sustain point as it was only to access the life flask point. The choice there is totally fine by me'.
My issue is they rebalanced skill DMG without telling us. Basically some skills like Essence Drain get a huge sneaky buff, and Concoction got a huge sneaky nerf.

concoction = 1 button build

they want you to parry, rotate 360° no scope generate frenzy, melee, lightning spear, disengage rake, then you can use a concoction to one tap your pack

Because concoctions was op, they don't want us to have fun, that's it. it was clearing too fast and too good with poir investment.

They should litteraly make a new items for concoctions, like a bag or something because there IS nothing for unarmed people 

Pathfinder is not that bad of an ascendancy imho.

That they basically deleted Concoction wasn't necessary and the Herald of Plague and subsequent poison node are not that great as they seem at a first glance.

Beside that the ascendancy actually offers a lot utility and generically nice things.

Travellers Wisdom: 6 Passive Points is huge.

Practical Remedies: Being Freeze Immune seems not that big for an ascendancy point but its nice qol for mapping

Sustainable Practices: Actually a good defensive node. With a good amount of evasion you take noticably less elemental damage from all sources.

Relentless Pursuit: Being slow immune is huge. A lot of things (map mods and mobs itself) slow you.

So the ascendancy is bascially like right side smith of kitava for me. It only offers defense and QoL.

The pathfinder ascendancy is currently a mess, most likely caused by the removal of utility flasks.

Wasn't just concoctions, they nerfed the fart cloud boots as well :(

I'm having a bit of fun on my pathfinder but I agree, she doesn't feel like she used to. I can say that about all my favourite classes though.

Poison conc was just really easy to scale into late game. It was impossible to make it completely op, but getting good widowhail with quiver was all you needed to clear endgame up to +2/+3 bosses. But as always instead of making it a bit harder to scale they gutted it completely.

Thought bleed concoction with new herald sounded fun and played a few hours before realising i could no longer use heralds with unarmed. Immediatly bounced.

Because people were having fun, and that is not allowed.

Because it's GGG, and since PoE2, they started to hate seeing their player base have fun.

No fun allowed. Since tecent bought ggg they have become part of the new axis.  

Has anyone played pconc in .2? It was my favorite build last season but the nerfs had me switch to lich in .2

Is pconc in any way viable? I would love to return

VISION

I tried to play Bleeding concotion this patch and it felt pretty good. The only thing that I don't like is that you can't use Heralds with concotion skill without weapon swapping or something silly like that.

Actions speak louder than words. They said they wanted to bring the power of builds up to the ones that were doing good.

Then they nerfed everything. Several times.

No fun allowed. You will walk at a snails pace, take 30 seconds to kill a white mob, your character have random heart attacks, and like it.

Because they have no idea what they are doing and don’t play test their changes

Not sure why they gutted infernalist either

Making concoctions not work with widowhail is totally fine since it locks them into that weapon and kills build diversity, but locking them into requiring no weapon has the same problem but even worse than before.

Want to use some cool weapon mod despite said weapon not scaling concoctions themselves? Nope. Want to switch between a bow and a spear for utility? Sorry, have to keep your other set empty. Oh, you want to run heralds/wind dancer with those concoction skills? Lmao. 

Either fully make them strong utility skills that you rarely use outside bosses, or let people use them as a main ability. As they currently stand they are trash for both use cases when you can just slap exposure support on any other skill and other skills also do more damage without requiring insane sacrifices to maintain mana flask charges.

Not being able to use bleed conc with herald of blood is crazy.

I think they just nerfed whatever was in the "what's a cheap build that can do all the content" threads.

It was fun. The skills were mediocre but fun. Really that's it. They dont want their game to be fun.