Path of Exile - In Defence of the Purposeful Harbinger Nerf

Purposeful Harbinger provides 50% buff to all auras in exchange for a high setup cost

- Counterintuitively, this wasn't just aura gems and similar auras that aren't gems like Envy, but was counting all sorts of other silly things, like the Guardian node Time of Need.
- This in conjunction with stacking -mana reservation allowed players to stand in Sirus storms, achieve 90% to all resists including physical reduction, physical damage to spells via Phantasmal Might on the Black Cane unique, incredible action speed with Tailwind, but most broken of all, 100% or more to the effects of many Headhunter buffs and to the effect of Shaper's Presence from Solstice Vigil.


What was the problem?
- This allowed gamebreaking amounts of offence and defence at the same time. Facetanking Shaper beams, Sirus storms and other really easy to avoid, really lethal mechanics - on characters that kill bosses with a sneeze. This didn't mean you couldn't die, it meant that you wouldn't die unless you actively tried to.
- I didn't run this build because it straight up looked like cheating. Remove the potential to fail from a game, and it ceases to be a game. It ceases to be interactive entertainment, and becomes something more like a movie or TV show. Those can be fun - if they play to the strengths of their medium. Path of Exile's lore is solid and could even support a film or TV series - but only if the pacing was changed to much faster than lore is delivered in game.
- Ultimately a god mode character removes any sense of accomplishment form the game.
- Breaks the economy of trade leauges. Like in Legion, we are seeing an economy that is extremely hostile to more casual players, as everything they are likely to loot is devalued, while the few legitimately rare items are extremely expensive. Headhunter, Bottled Faith, Saviour, Awakened Multistrike, explody Nebulis, Awakener's Orbs and Paradoxica are more out of reach than usual, and the reason is the small minority seriously abusing Purposeful Harbinger have enough currency to throw around that they can impose their market power over the whole league economy.


My thoughts:
- The threshold for a mid-league nerf should be lower. PH was probably the most broken build of all time, combining the defensive power of pre-nerf Fortify Effect stacking Juggernauts, with the offensive power of pre-nerf Dex stacking cold Tornado Shot. I feel the line for 'nerf is needed mid league' lies somewhere more powerful than Synthesis-era Winter Orb builds, and less powerful than Legion era HH Cyclone.
- Nerfing PH will make the game more fun overall, and as such is a hugely positive change.
- It was a mistake when GGG stated the node wouldn't be nerfed mid-league. But it would have been a bigger mistake to refuse to go back on that word. There should be no 'firm promises' like that. If egregious balance issues are making the game less fun, they need to be addressed sooner rather than later.
- Some people got burned economically. They were playing with fire. This is a risk you take when making speculative purchases anywhere in life, and better to get burned in a video game than IRL. I've had this happen to me badly in other games, in EVE Online I made speculative purchases of 1500 of the Vexor Navy Issue spaceship only to be sitting at work when I heard a nerf announced. By the time I sold out of my position, I was down thirty billion ISK in value, enough to buy about 18 months of game time in that game. However, that nerf was for the betterment of the game, and so I support it despite it hurting.
- Next league should see changes to -mana reservation as a stat. I believe items with "-x% mana reserved" should change to "The first 2x% of your mana that you reserve is free".
- This would be stronger than the status quo on most builds, and weaker on builds that stack lots of if.
- Finally, the builds are still really, really strong. They may even remain the most powerful builds of the league.

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