What Do You Think Of AoE Scaling In Path Of Exile?

Posted by xietingting on March 26th, 2018

In PoE, one of the arguments for changing everything from "increased radius" to "increased area" was that increasing radius scales AoE quadratically. I think this is something of a red herring however because it's quite common to encounter mob packs that aren't really in a circular configuration.

In these cases it's really the linear extent of the skill that's more relevant than the total circular area. Having to get more and more increased area to get past integer thresholds on the radius feels bad too. Certain AoE skills with really generous base radius feel okay, but on the whole projectiles just seem to have much better coverage with minimal investment.

Its been time to revisit AoE since they revisited it for the rework. Its fine that GGG doesn't want collectors of poe orbs cheap just stacking huge AoE and making any AoE skill viable for clearing at the speeds of skills that have been designed for that purpose.

Whats not fine is making it impossible to trade damage for AoE, or defense for AoE. you simply get what AoE you are given with the skill and you can fuck yourself if you think its not enough.

There are so many different nodes in the tree and stats in items that increase AoE, but do absolutely nothing. the only real increase/decrease you can get for AoE are the gems and its only enough that you take it when the given skill AoE is literally unplayable without the gem.

One player said that his favorite part is that even before the AoE purge, projectile skills were still usually better just so you didn't have to invest so much into AoE and they cleared faster. Yet here we are, all playing projectile builds or RF/SR.

And one player said that nerf tornado shot and herald of ice bullshit that's combined with all the crazy room clearing ranged attacks. He'd even be okay with ranged users having superior clear speed if they didn't also have insane ST with barrage.

If you are serious about clearspeed and reaching endgame content quickly and efficiently, nothing in the game beats deadeye tornado shot right now. What's your opinions?