PoE Constitution is not as rewarding as it should be

My complaint about constitution is that -at least for some classes- it may have become relatively meaningless. You can easily trade it for other attributes and get better benefits. Curious, because in case of chanters, Con is tagged as a 'recommended' attribute within the game, which is misleading.
The developers said that the players could allocate the attributes the way they wanted and they wouldn't get broken characters, but this claims was also misleading, since for classes such as wizards and priests and even classes that may rely on melee combat such as ciphers and rogues, increasing Con (which means sacrificing other attributes) does not make any sense.
I may have played as a rogue or cipher if Con was a little more meaningful, but sadly I am not, and I constantly contemplate my choice of allocating 16 points to my chanter's Con.
I agree that they tried too hard to appease D&D fans whereas they could have gone with better and more meaningful choices and this is not simply a case of combat or gameplay mechanics. Even the aesthetics, the game interface suffers from that. I constantly struggle with the game interface to be able to control my chanter (casting spells is needlessly bothersome) and other characters. They could have gone with a better interface with toolbars and other features, but they settled with something that is nostalgic but not very functional. Inventory is another example, I always hated IE games' inventory system, with those small icons and weird control mechanics, and now it is back.

For the chanter, it depends on the play style. It can be oriented toward invocation or to add muscle on the front line once the engagement is made.

Invocations (at least the early ones) really seem to most benefit being on the front line, with their cone AOEs, unless all you use are the summons.

blackcanopus said:

My complaint about constitution is that -at least for some classes- it may have become relatively meaningless.

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I'm keeping CON at 10 for all my PoE characters so far. If I want a big Health pool, I'll just pick a base class accordingly.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing too. May not be optimal for my Cipher but so be it.

blackcanopus said:

The developers said that the players could allocate the attributes the way they wanted and they wouldn't get broken characters, but this claims was also misleading, since for classes such as wizards and priests and even classes that may rely on melee combat such as ciphers and rogues, increasing Con (which means sacrificing other attributes) does not make any sense.

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It's not misleading at all. A character being "slightly below optimal" is not the same as being broken. In fact, the overall bonuses (not just Con) are so low that they're irrelevant. 3% give or take in terms of damage? Marginally higher deflection or saves? It's completely irrelevant.

There is only one stat that truly makes a difference: Intelligence, for any class that relies on AoE spells/abilities. Having that increased safe zone makes spell usage a lot easier.

The rest are all bollocks, as the % are too low to really make a difference.

So high attribute values seem to be first and foremost relevant for dialogs options.

In hindsight I should have spent 2 more of my chanter's Con points into Int and Res.

Yeah, as it turns out - the stat values are somewhat underwhelming. I wouldn't say irrelevant, but it's definitely too small a difference for me. I prefer making hard choices that really matter - and I don't mind making a tough sacrifice if I get something great in return.

With this system, it doesn't feel as if any stat division is that much better than another. Obviously, if you completely ignore your vital stats - it will be bad for you, but it really should be a catastrophe.

Not how I would have designed it, but I guess it's good for keeping the player on a leash. I don't like that kind of attempt to control players - just like I don't like the no XP for combat thing, which also feels like an attempt to control player behaviour.

I don't play games to be told what to do, I play them to have fun. This system gets less and less compelling the more I understand about it.

3% is just too conservative. 10% is more my style.

For my 4-character party I did the following:

- put MAX in Might, even for my tank, since it's a non-stat in my eyes
- put MAX in two stats that were recommended
- put 6-9 points in the remaining three stats.


Resolve is mostly only a tank stat for some reason, which makes almost as little sense to me as Might. They opened up more stat options for classes, but at the same time they closed others that would feel better from a role-playing point of view. A pity.

CON is mostly relevant for characters that get attacked a lot in melee, I guess, both as a buffer in order to be able to heal up in time and with larger heals, and because of the endurance/health relationship (more CON let's you fight longer without resting). I suppose actual damage mitigation or avoidance might be more important in the grand scheme of things (DR, deflection, reflex), but I prefer to have my characters specialized.

From those four classes, the one that could probably go with the least amount of CON is the Ranger, because she is usually so far out of harm's way that she only gets hit when she's the last one standing. Then again, her pets dies the most often.

Personally, I really like systems with small numbers and large modifiers. SPECIAL from Fallout is a great example of a system that's both logical and easy to read, yet full of diversity.

I like D&D, but that's mostly because I've got an obscene amount of experience with it. By itself, it's not very balanced and too many things don't fit a computer game.

But it has a LOT more diversity and interesting choices than PoE, so far.

I get that they've created a more grounded game with some neat trinity mechanics, but the result is also a less fun game system.

Guys take into account that each 5% bonus in PoE is worth +1 in D&D (or IE games).

Except for Constitution bonuses and damage bonuses, this conversion does not work there.

DArtagnan said:

I have a feeling the system would be less opaque and much more playable if they'd simply invented their own from scratch.

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Yeah. Either going from scratch or even using D&D 3.5 would've been better, I suppose.

It really is interesting how it turned out. It seems like a major design goal was to make it so that all the stats are important and useful, with no dump stats. By and large, they've met that goal, but it seems that an unintended consequence of making all stats important is that you've also made none of them important....

Fantasm said:

It really is interesting how it turned out. It seems like a major design goal was to make it so that all the stats are important and useful, with no dump stats. By and large, they've met that goal, but it seems that an unintended consequence of making all stats important is that you've also made none of them important….

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Which is a very common result when you favor balance over fun.

Fantasm said:

It really is interesting how it turned out. It seems like a major design goal was to make it so that all the stats are important and useful, with no dump stats. By and large, they've met that goal, but it seems that an unintended consequence of making all stats important is that you've also made none of them important….

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And they didn't really make it so. Tanks need 3 stats and DPS need other 3 stats.
Operation successful. Patient died.

Maylander said:

It's not misleading at all. A character being "slightly below optimal" is not the same as being broken. In fact, the overall bonuses (not just Con) are so low that they're irrelevant. 3% give or take in terms of damage? Marginally higher deflection or saves? It's completely irrelevant.

There is only one stat that truly makes a difference: Intelligence, for any class that relies on AoE spells/abilities. Having that increased safe zone makes spell usage a lot easier.

The rest are all bollocks, as the % are too low to really make a difference.

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The point is, it is misleading because they claimed that you'd get different benefits by investing points in different attributes. As if investing points in Con made any significant difference (especially for ciphers, which unlike wizards, are supposed to fight).

I have played the game for a while now and I can confirm that in combat, Con does not make a huge difference (for Ciphers, Wizards, Chanters and Priests it is negligible and almost non-existent). Out of combat, attributes make a huge difference in dialog, and even in dialog, Con is practically useless. In other words, for more than half of the classes, anything that you invest in Con goes to waste.

You get different benefits, the context to exhibit them does not exist.

They went the permanent health path, the opportunity to manage health as an asset to eke out does not come.

Same goes for spells and their number. That is the same problem.

In this game, fights can be taken one by one. Do one fight, rest in camp, do another fight, rest etc Once camp supplies are gone, move back to town.
No random encounters along the road, no respawning, travelling back is safe.

Spamming the same sequence of spells is possible as spells can be used to fight one fight only, without bothering about another fight that might come.

The resource management is low in health and spells alike. Everything is fully regenerated through rest.

Resources can be burned on one fight and one fight only. The isolation that is supposed to make limited resources and their management meaningful simply do not exist.
The party is on its own for one fight and one fight only.

Difference in health do not show up, they cant show up as you can afford to lose 500hp out of bar of 500hp.

All the stats become important, depending on how you want to build your character. It is an endless playground of experimentation and exercising your own ingenuity in how you want to build your characters and party. It's very open and free.

All stats have the potential to be important. They are not given the context to express that importance.

Constitution is just one of the impacted features. Increasing the number of spells a spell caster can use when levelling up is also useless.

The problem is that the running numbers crowd cant take it that this game calls for optimatization by playstyle and not statistical optimization.
If they could take it, they would have noticed that con is just one feature among others.

All stats have value, yes. Important? Less so than in similar systems.

Better? Not to me, it isn't. I like stats to have more impact.