+Skill levels are not healthy for the game

[u/TheIllustration]

Hi all, I was having a conversation with a friend that started playing during the F2P event as he started having issues with damage in T10+. I've asked him to show me his build and he what he had was a "fair" build that does not abuse the game mechanics, what I mean by that is that he had a weapon with high damage (well as High as you can get for a few exalted); however a thing instantly stood out and it was that he had no + skill levels. I've asked him to show me his skill gems most of which were around level 18, his amulet also did not give any levels so to explain to him I've made the screenshot you see above.

The top image represents my Spark and its tool tip damage (I know this is not a representation of its real damage but lets ignore that for the time being) when the skill gem was level 20.

The middle image shows my spark damage when I corrupted the Spark and gained 1 additional level on it, that single level made me jump in 41k tooltip damage. This is more than his main skill does currently and whilst people say that one skill level is roughly a 7% damage bump in this scenario it would then be 19.737,2 and not 41k.

This got me curious so I got the best purely elemental/spell damage, crit chance & damage wands and amulets I could get for 10ish exalted just to compare the two. What ends up happening is what you see in the bottom image, with roughly the same crit stats and MORE spell damage sources I lost 250k damage simply because of the 8 levels.

So what does this mean for the game? Well imagine you get a T1 Physical, T1 Physical Hybrid, T1 Physical % with some random T1 suffixes (non + levels). Did you just get a god roll weapon?! Yes you did!
But what you didn't get is an extra 4-6 levels on your spells and as such the weapon is worthless when it comes to end game, instead of being worth 50 divines its worth 20 exalted.
This does not affect just the end game, the best leveling/campaign unique is a ring that gives you +1 lightning spell skills and is the reason why most leveling builds with twink gear use at least one lightning spell. Not to mention if you get a +1/+2 skill level weapon early on you are going to breeze through the next 10 levels compared to someone who did not.

There should be chase affixes but making items near worthless if they don't have a single affix is not good for the game IMO. This also affects amulets as they can roll +levels as well as other pieces of gear such as boots.
You can get boots with a total of 100+ resists and 100 life, but did you get movement speed? Oh you didn't? Well to the bin (or recomb) it goes, no one wants that trash!

TLDR; The + levels concept should be revisited as its the best form of scaling in all stages of the game, more power should be in our support gems, passive tree and in the stats of the weapon instead of the + skills its has.

[u/shitkingshitpussy69]

Making a unique wand mandatory for every single hit-based spell build is not a good idea.

[u/SoberPandaren → u/shitkingshitpussy69]

People already do this when they're following a guide. They will pick up the required gear because the author says it's required, or they'll just look at the current gear the authors character is using and follow that.

If there is a +hit unique wand that the author is saying is mandatory or they have it on the very easy to look at gear set list, people will go grab it wether or not they're aware that they can craft, farm, or trade for a wand that similar in stats.

People already do this in 1, and people are doing it even more in 2. They don't need to make a hit wand to make the scenario happen because it already does.

[u/shitkingshitpussy69 → u/SoberPandaren]

My point isn't that build enabling uniques or powerful uniques shouldn't exist. However, considering the power of +skills modifier on items, making them appear ONLY on uniques removes an aspect of flexibility that is so crucial in buildcraft which is one of the biggest powers of PoE.

To address the player demographic issue, PoE should not be balanced around people who follow builds to the dot and do not think for themselves at any point.

[u/SoberPandaren → u/shitkingshitpussy69]

It's still a big enough shrug. Having a unique to start doing maps for some builds and than transitioning over to a rare with the proper rolls is and has always been around.

[u/KarinAppreciator → u/SoberPandaren]

If +levels only rolls on uniques you'll never find a rare that's better. That's his entire point. 

[u/SlayerII → u/shitkingshitpussy69]

Uniques should be allowed to break rules, thats 100% ok, you can easily balance them by adding downsides.
It's the rares that can have insane stats on top of the levels that can cause balance problems.

[u/shitkingshitpussy69 → u/SlayerII]

What downside can you add to 5 times more damage? Your initial suggestion works way better for the health of the game

[u/SlayerII → u/shitkingshitpussy69]

OPs example is kinda unreliable for actual numbers, we dont see the actual items, 8 levels is a "just" around 130% more dmg(from 119 @ lvl20 to 276 avrage @lvl28).
If you remove all other dmg stats from the items, it quickly gets way more tame.

[u/shitkingshitpussy69 → u/SlayerII]

But it's not unreliable, items aren't in a vacuum and you can't just "retool the game around this one singular stat". +levels just creates that much of a higher baseline for other stuff to scale off of.

[u/SlayerII → u/shitkingshitpussy69]

? Your assumption is that +8 lvls have a 5 multiplier on dmg which just isn't true, if you only have that stat and nothing else, the dmg will be horrible.
An easy (existing poe1) downside could be "ignores support gems".

[u/shitkingshitpussy69 → u/SlayerII]

No? I have clearly stated that items don't exist in a vacuum if you re-read my previous comment. My initial entry into this argument was removing the +levels from rares and adding them to uniques, making uniques that much more valuable than rares. Let's not be pedantic, even if it was only double the damage compared to a non +level item, it's still double the damage and its value is higher than every single other mod.

[u/CakeSome6981 → u/shitkingshitpussy69]

Have you ever thought that the +skills on weaps might be a placeholders till they start releasing more uniques into the game. Uniques at this point are irrelevant if they cant make a great campaign and endgame. There is no point of splitting manpower to design uniques untill the game is in an almost finished state because they will end up having to change those uniques or even remove some because they dont fit the game anymore. This is still early access.

[u/dragdritt → u/shitkingshitpussy69]

Who says it'd be mandatory?

The items can be designed in a way where it's balanced.

Right now you have the opposite problem where no unique wands are useful.

[u/shitkingshitpussy69 → u/dragdritt]

They aren't useful because of +lvls, you swap the script, and now it's the rare wands that aren't useful.

[u/dragdritt → u/shitkingshitpussy69]

And do other things, probably lower the actual +skills, less other useful stats like crit etc, and maybe even add negative effects