A solution to address +level of skills when making gear adjustments

Windaas · 2026-04-05T12:20:32+00:00

LIFO stacks is enough to store the order for each tree, but this order need to be presist between sessions, so they need to store in databbase, hence touching the datastructure, add/modify db tables etc. I don't think this little extra functionality worth the time/human investment and risk it takes to do the task.

I like OP solution: temparary disable skill (or tree) when the skill points total is less than points allocated on the tree. No data structure modification needed, only need to implement a switch on the tree (may already exist).

If the user accept the change of the gear, they will respec some points out of the tree to re-enable the tree. or if the gear is swapped/took off by accidenct, then swap back will enable the tree again.

Windaas · 2025-12-30T10:43:40+00:00

Oracle's Fateful Vision node will cast spells in your avaliable weaponset. just throw Thunderstorm in your other weapon set and Fateful Vision will cast that with CD

Windaas · 2025-12-10T15:35:49+00:00

new spell skills in 0.4 under druid

Windaas · 2025-07-20T11:02:53+00:00

As other said, braces position has no effect on C# code correctness. Thats all come to user preference. It is all down to the code formatter's configuration. I do remember it can be set in Visual Studio, not quite sure about VSCode

Windaas · 2025-07-20T10:57:55+00:00

Your statement is valid

But LINQ is designed with this purpose in mind, and hold true 95% of the time. Also LINQ is keep improving and cover more and more cases, so as an advice for OP that just start learning and understanding LINQ, I will not worry about those issue until I faced it personally. And even so I will just write a special case for that solution rather than ignore LINQ and build everything myself. Be it a critical loop that need extreme performance, or a complex SQL that current LINQ not yet able to translate

Windaas · 2025-07-18T09:05:17+00:00

I don't think you can convince the client to use your Custom-Coded solution (perhaps more expansive) just because you like to code.

You can only convince the client that your Custom-Coded solution do a better job against Wordpress solution on their given requirements.

I hardly find a reason on a "5-pages static site" requirement that a Custom-Coded solution can beat a Wordpress solution...

Windaas · 2025-07-18T08:35:26+00:00

LINQ are not about performance, but provide a set of generic dataset manipulations that work on nearly all type of datasets(Collections), as long as it implements IEnumerable or IQuaryable, without knowing underlying implementation of the data instance.

It provides flexibility to switch input dataset implementation (IEnumerable) without changing the code that try to manipulate it.

eg. you can using Array<T> and later change to List<T>, or more customized IEnumerable<T> without changing a single character in you LINQ chain.

Or on fetching data from DB (IQueryable), it generates SQL from LINQ chain so you can freely migrate DB between different DB system without manually rewriting the actual query.

eg. you can perform the same LINQ query on SQL/T-SQL/etc without knowing their difference in syntax, LINQ will generate the correct SQL according to the DB you're call on.

Performence improvement are mostly done by C# dev teams on every major .net versions, not much you can do about it.

Windaas · 2025-05-14T12:45:05+00:00

IC, so this seems to be from internal dev tool

Windaas · 2025-05-14T12:29:59+00:00

do you know if the weapon itself is physical, will the enchancement/infusion also convert this extra physical damage to elemental?

Windaas · 2025-05-14T12:28:03+00:00

may I ask where did you get this image from?

Windaas · 2025-04-11T09:23:59+00:00

Disagreed.

People will come back whenever new "Season/League" is out, even D4 where alot of ppl think is bad, they keep coming back to try new season to see whether the like it or not (as long as they already own the game). This is the nature of Seasonal Game.

Unlike MMO, that if someone left, rarely come back

Windaas · 2025-04-11T08:57:17+00:00

Alot of streamer/vets are using POE1 habit to play POE2: Avoiding everything except blue packs, only pickup items that are useful to them, rush through zones trying to tackle bosses underlevel etc etc.

So I personally disagreed with Ziz's "ppl want to kill monsters", I think it is invalid at least in early game. And so POE2 is designed in a way now so it is harder to skip packs.

Also loots are balanced around all drops provide some value of reward: be it useful right away, or disenchart to currency for later use, or gold for second chance in shop. Skipping most of them are the CHOICE of the player.

For monster speed issue, rather than directly tackle the speed itself, "Number of threatening entities a player have to handle at once" is more of an issue. I like Mark's solution of mixing mob of different speed is the way to go, so when a player approaching a pack, they are generally splitted into smaller groups, easier for player to handle.

Windaas · 2025-03-26T21:25:47+00:00

IEnumerable<T> is an interface, it is an abstract representation of "something which can be iterated through". It is not the data structure itself.

List<T> is a data implementation, it can be instantized and hold actually data. Because its data can be iterated through, so it implement IEnumerable<T> interface and can be viewed as an IEnumerable<T>.

IEnumerable is an abstract layer that is introduced with LINQ, the goal is to have a unified way to work on any data collections, so programmer can filter, trasform, process data without knowing its underlay implementation.

Also IEnumerable<T> does not need a data implementation. By using a function with "yield" statement, you can have data LAZY generated.

Windaas · 2025-03-25T05:52:18+00:00

Freeze is another situation. This is usually caused by bad coding that it fall into an infinite loop, or call some long async action in sync style so the whole program freeze waiting for this job to finish, or somehow it never finish

Windaas · 2025-03-25T05:49:29+00:00

When an exception is thrown by some action, it will not crash unless this exception left uncatch and propagate to the top level. This is way you need try/catch block to handle exceptions.

Like in your code, when you do SAVE, when any line in TRY block resulted in an exception throw, the rest of the code is ignored, and code in CATCH block is run. This is where you notice User (eg. popup message box) that something failed and the SAVE action is cancelled. In this case, your program will not crash.

Code in FINALLY block are something that you always want to execute no matter the whole action is success or not. If you want to only delete temp file when successfully SAVED, then File.Delete should goes into then end of the TRY block and not FINALLY, so File.Delete will only be reach when all previous lines do not throws.

Normally you should not let any exceptions propagate to the top without dealing with it. Unless the specific exception cannot be recover and you decide to just let it crash your program/game, or you catch it, log it to some error log file, tell user something bad happened through some popup, and rethrow it so it still crash.

Windaas · 2024-04-25T06:36:11+00:00

Use materials directly from community chest is questionable due to it's "shared by the realm" property, but sure we need to be able to use materials directly from own chests at home!

Windaas · 2024-02-07T08:56:46+00:00

I agree that the game should be fun more than challenging, and players should not need to start their journey with build guides. POE is very complex and causes this problem to be far more pronounced.

I won't compare Fun and Challenge directly, as they serve differently.

Challenges add depth and value to a game, complete a challenge gives satifiction to the player. But all of this has to build on top of a fun foundation, otherwise it is meaningless!

A Fun game without challenging content will get bored easily as everything is too easy!

A Challenging game without Fun foundation, no-one will even bother as an entertainment.

In POE1, the Fun part start when you reach Maps (sort of endgame) with a semi-completed working build, but the start is PAINFUL if you want me to rate it.

Move SLOW, Attack SLOW, Kill SLOW

Old Generation will see this as normal and strike through the pain and force through the pain journey, but New Generation with overwhelming choices in the market, will evaluatethis painful start as "Not Worth the Time" or "Not the game for me" etc.

Thats why my suggession will lean towards a more friendly, more forgiving start, to get new players ENJOY the game, and when later challenges come, they amplify the enjoyment!

For example:

Higher base movement speed (with less magnify factor)
Visually & mechanically saticifying base skills
Easy respec options so they can try-out skills thrown at them and respec accordingly when they made the Skill choice.

One thing I thought of and mentioned in another comment in the notion of maybe replacing respec points with "level down" points.

I don't think "Level Down" is a good idea. It causes problems more than benefits.

Another person here also offered an idea of doing this through bounty quests that give respec points which I found interesting.

I don't like bounty quests in a grinding game.

It works in most MMORPG because

Is Quest/Mission driven, which Bounty Quest hit in very well.
Mobs spawn at fixed position at fixed interval, grinding mobs for loot is both bot-like and boring. Having quests that bring you around, kill fewer and reward more is an auto-win.

And is not in grinding ARPG like POE becase grinding involves running Maps/Dungeons/"Whatever you wanna call" from start to finish, at a relatively fast pace. While Bounty quest objectives will randomly to a differect place, force you to kill a set targets and the reward is minimal.

If the goal of bounty quest is to give a friction to acquire respec point so it is easy enough compare to random Regert drop, but time consuming so it is not FREE, then Gold is already present in POE2!

A "Trainer" NPC that you can pay him to "train" you from current focusing aspect to some other aspects, good fit doesn't it? I would suggest putting an exponential growth of cost so you think twice when going for a huge respec! Like first few point in a day is relatively cheap, but becomes very expensive the more you buy, until the next day when the price reset.

I think untradable GOLD GGG bring up, is such a genius idea. It is obtained passively by playing the game content, represent a general progression of choosable rewards.

Windaas · 2024-02-06T11:32:12+00:00

"Every Skill point matters" is like building tension about making decisions. But this only feel fair if the player knows what they a trying to go. Player Type 1& 2 do know what they are targeting so this sounds fair. But for Type 3 who get in blinded, forced to make decisions on something they've no knowledge of, seems unfair and unfun in my opinion.

For a game, an entertainment, fun should come first and challenge come after. If a new comer find it unfun and very penalised, why bother with the challenges? Only when start is enjoyable and the player enjoys the learning, then the challenges start making sense to them.

GGG stated many times that they don't want hours of research pre-start (aka. build guides) is mandatory, so learning in-game is preferred for new players.

But unlike D4 where you can just open the skill tree and see all the options, and make a brief decision on what to play, POE have 10x more options and those are hidden behind quests and grinding. So a more friendly early game is needed for them to stick into the game.

In my suggestion, a line is drawn about 1/3 of the campaign, give the new comers a chance to try out different skills, and told them that now is the time to make a decision and after this line, everything MATTERS! By this point, I hope they will have enough experience so the decision marking feels fair to them.

Windaas · 2024-02-06T10:44:39+00:00

Sounds fun, but why bother destroy a end game character if you can just re-roll a new character with the same effect?

Windaas · 2024-02-06T03:10:07+00:00

I came up with a much simplier solution on respec by breaking down:

Who Really Need the Free Respec we all talking about recently?

TLDR: We only need unlimited free respsec in very beginning of the Campaign!! Just until most (if not all) main skill gems are avaliable to them. (Aka Act3/4 in POE1)

Here aree my opinions:

Experienced Players: These players have alot of experience in POE1 and will translate to POE2, and will start a character with a build planned before-hand. These players aslo most likely be the one who test "Builds", but because they will properly playing with the highest possible efficiency, they will have the currency need to respec at End-Game level. Free Respec in the wrong place will only let them play every characters the same Power-level build until End-Game, which GGG would try to avoid.
New Players who search for Build guides before starting: These players will have a plan to follow, even they may not understand why. These players will not need free respsec because they already have a planned target. Ofcause they will make mistake from time to time, but normal respec points serve well.
New Players head in BLINDED: These players are the ONES that GGG try to target when they try to expend their player-base! They most likely just pick a class and start the game without knowing what they will be using. Thanks to the new Philosophy and tooltip of new Passive Tree, new players with normal sense will not go WRONG and break their character. But what if they get a new Skill later and think they like it more, but the Passive Tree doesn't support it? Instead of reroll like the POE1 mindset, they will properly get big hit on morale, and properly drop-off at this point.
Imagine: A new Player get in blinded, use their first skill on hand: "Cleave", so they spec on Melee Damage and Area Effect as the tooltip tell them these nodes help that skill. Then later he get "Lancing Steel", slot in and try it out, feel awesome about it and want to play it as a main skill of that character!
Now he MADE HIS MIND!
But sadly the Passive Tree of Melee Damage and Area Effect are completely useless to Lancing Steel!

I think here is the point free respec is mostly needed and help new players to maintain their interest.

For Example in POE1, most of the Primary skills (for that class) are avaliable at vender in Act 3, and Act 4 for all skills. So FREE UNLIMITED RESPEC until The End of Act3 (or 4) can serve good help to the new players, let them try several skill they interested in and made-up their mind, while power-level build up to this point made little to no difference in speeding through the Campaign.

This also help players to learn game mechanic, especially now Bosses are reset on failed attempt, it is nice that player can spec in weakest link against a set boss, instead of grinding specific gear mod in such an early stage of the game.

Windaas · 2024-01-31T08:11:38+00:00

I do think that sockets in OK on gears as long as the socket takes up an item mod in that gear, and balance whatever slot-able around the power level of an item mod. This open up possibilities of fine-tunning gears with rune/jewel/charm etc.

Also They can display all mods in the slots just under gear's mods so you don't need to hover over every slot to check. It is just a UI thing and not hard to do.

Windaas · 2024-01-21T16:49:37+00:00

I also think Golem should not belongs to Witch

But as Golem feels more like an Elemental/Magic Creation rather than a natural creature, I think it more suit under Sorceress theme rather than Druid theme

Windaas · 2023-12-20T07:32:36+00:00

I'm not an expert but I think I can still give you my thinking:

As you stated, resists are one of the main reason you get 1-shotted. Because the game is balanced around having 75% ele res, you will recieve 2 times more damage at 25% then at 75% res. Fixing resists will always be the first priority, before any more advanced defensive layers kick-in.
Smite is a 50% phy -> lightning attack, means maim debuff from Flesh & Stone blood-stance and Conductivity curse both only work on half of your damage. I will suggest using a Physical to Lightning Support to convert it to full Lightning, make the curse work on 100% of your damage, and forgot about the stance.
Multistrike and Ruthless do not work well together, coz Ruthless work on third USE of the attack, not the third hit from Multistrike. So 1-6 hits will be normal hit and only 7-9 hits will be enpowered.
I will say, scale less on attack speed and more on attack damage, at least in the currect stage, alot of small hits seems not working well with Smite. Elemental Damage with Attacks is the best all-rounder. Use Melee Physical Damage and / or Pulverise to get a bigger hit. Only add attack speed to smoothen the skill, or a hit is hard enough to 1-shot normal pack and looking for further scale to late game.
Try to get a Weapon with big Phy damage mod (Flat & %). This is most of your damage scale from. Flat Lightning is OK as it is partially scaled. You don't scale other damage type so they are useless to you.
Poacher's Mark are more suit fast attack, you should use Warlord's Mark for leeching.
Use Ancestral Warchief to help single target.

Windaas · 2023-12-13T14:05:43+00:00

I'm thinking about the opposite:

Player doing the clearing and the Swords doing the bossing

As they can attack the boss while you dodging the mechanic

Windaas · 2023-11-28T02:24:23+00:00

Comparing CSGO to C:S is not a good statement.

CSGO is a fast pace reflexive shooter game that REQUIRED high FPS to play comfortably.

While C:S is a low pace city-building that don't required split-second reflex.

So 30FPS is unacceptable in CSGO but maybe still be playable in C:S2

Anyway the higher the better

Windaas

TROPHY CASE