[POE] Building Better Builds: Forum Posts, Part i

I've become interested in making my Path of Exile builds better.

One way to do this is to see how other players are creating their builds. Since this is a pretty big topic, I'll first focus on passive skill tree choices by players.  I'm particularly interested in these because many players post guides to their builds - including passive skill trees - on the forums. (Data time!)

I grabbed the 600 most recently updated threads in each class forum and extracted build links on the first page of each of these threads. Because PoE's passive skill tree is constantly changing, I removed builds that are no longer valid with the current skilltree or were less than 80 points. Because sometimes authors post multiple versions of a build, I selected only one build from each thread (the build closest to 100 points). This left me with 914 valid builds.

	Duelist	Marauder	Ranger	Scion	Shadow	Templar	Witch
valid builds	101.0	106.0	144.0	123.0	166.0	112.0	162.0
all builds	707.0	540.0	657.0	732.0	633.0	591.0	615.0
average posts	68.8	79.3	47.7	68.2	49.1	58.8	80.6
average views	25071.7	33006.9	17866.2	18892.1	14617.9	15087.8	32962.1

Curiously, Templar has the least build options to chose from, combined with relatively few posts / views for each thread. I'm curious whether this will lead the developers to consider rebuilding the templar starting area.

Defensive specialization: 
Whether in a hardcore or softcore league, one of the biggest challenges in Path of Exile is simply staying alive. For this section, I'll focus on player choices to get life, energy shield, armor, and evasion. When evaluating life- or energy- based builds, I omitted any build with less than 50 of that stat (because, well, death).

A few observations:

• Life-based builds tend to get around 200 life, with marauder builds getting slightly more life than the other classes. I'm actually surprised at how many builds get less than 200 life, which I considered an absolute necessity. 
• Rangers and shadows tend to focus on evasion, while duelists and marauders focus on armor. 
• Of all the classes, only witch has multiple builds getting a 'reasonable' amount of energy shield for CI / low-life. 

There is, of course, a potential problem with this data. The wide range of life / energy shield values suggests some of these builds simply aren't viable. For example, a large number of builds from new or inexperienced players might tend to undervalue defensive stats. To correct for this, I weighted the data by the number of posts in the thread (on the assumption that high-quality builds are more likely to get attention).

While weighting the data did remove a large number of the low-defense builds, the basic story is unchanged: players tend to get at least 200 life, energy-shield based builds are uncommon, and strength-focused classes get armor while dex-focused classes get evasion. It is notable that a few high-attention builds (like cyclone marauder) tend to dominate the data.

Weapon specialization:
Turning to offense, here I looked at whether a build grabbed a damage specialization node (+damage with a weapon type / spell).

A few features that stand out (to me):

• Wow, caster options are popular (even omitting elemental damage builds).
• Ranger is overwhelmingly the most popular choice for bow builds. The lack of a bow-templar makes me consider running one.
• One-handed builds are more popular than two-handed builds for all classes.
• Swords are slightly more popular than axes, despite the focus on soultaker in the current meta, though this is potentially due to buzzsaw builds. 
• Specializing into wands / staves are remarkably uncommon options (2.6% and 1.4% of builds, respectively). Staves make sense - other than Pillar builds, not many characters go for a staff (they're also devilishly hard to roll). But wands? I seem to remember everyone trying wander early in the league.

Thoughts:
I'm frankly a bit surprised at how few defenses many builds grab, particularly given the common refrain that 200% life is a bare minimum for PoE. I'm equally surprised at how many builds choose to specialize in a weapon, given how that limits purchasing options at endgame.

There are plenty of places I'm considering taking the analysis. I'm definitely going to look at keystones. I'm also interested in some general descriptive-stats for the passive tree (shortest paths, nearest clusters) and how this influences the build meta.

So many fun data adventures to be had.

[POE] Maps, Levels, and Quantity

I love maps in Path of Exile. But I've always been curious about the details of the map drop system. Does it get harder to get higher level maps? Exactly what does quantity do?  What about the desirable mods (pack size, more magic monsters, more rare monsters) - how much quantity are they worth?

As usual, the forums have an abundance of speculation about these answers. But I wanted math.

So I started to collect data on the maps that I've been running in PoE. Unfortunately, this kind of data gathering takes time, so I was only able to gather data on around 500 maps. Which just isn't enough data to study processes that are based on rare events.

To take this further, I combined my data with a few other projects that had collected data from maps into one, larger, spreadsheet of doom. (Note: all of these sources were gathered since 1.0, which substantially changed the mapping system.)

• My data - link
• /u/dansenMONSEN - link
• /u/jddogg - link
• /u/IcyRespawn - link
• /u/Shadowclaimer- link
• /u/pyrodan2 - link
• /u/Skyl3lazer - link

This gave a total 4076 map runs, covering a wide range of map levels and map quantity.

From this data, I can take a look at the basics of map drops.

Map Level

One finding is painfully apparent for anyone that runs maps in PoE: it gets harder to progress your map pool on higher level maps.  For every increase in map level, the average level of maps dropped increases by 0.71. For 66 maps, the average drop is an increase in map levels (66.5).  By level 70, the average drop is only 69.1, and by 78 maps the average drop is down to 74.6. Maintaining a high level map pool gets harder with each level.

Map Quantity
Declining average drop level makes getting high quantity critically important for maps (since higher quantity means more maps, which increases the odds of getting equal-or-higher level maps).

On average, I estimate that every 100% quantity increases the number of maps dropped by 0.85 maps. (Results from a negative binomial regression - full table after the break.) This, in turn, improves the chance of getting a higher level map.  The same 100% quantity increases the chance of getting a higher level map by around 20%.

Pack Size / Magic Monsters / Rare Monsters
But what about the desirable mods (pack size, magic monsters, rare monsters) - what effect do they have on map drops?

• Pack Size: aids in getting both more and higher level maps. However, the data suggests that pack size isn't as game-breaking as others suggest. From the models, every 2% pack size is worth about 1% quantity. So a 20% pack size roll is worth only about 10% quantity - less than the other available suffixes that could roll on a map.
• Magic / Rare monsters: have no effect on the number of maps (or, whatever effect is there is lost to noise / too small to estimate). Rare monsters increases the likelihood of getting a higher level map (it is likely that magic monsters does too, just that the effect is fairly small).  Again, the mod is about half as valuable as quantity.  So a low rare monsters roll is equivalent to about 13% quantity.

Thoughts
These results are... surprising.

While I've always been told to roll for the desirable affixes, these results suggest that they may be overrated. Of course, there is one caveat: some maps - like tunnel - don't have much room for large packs to spawn, diminishing the effect of the mod. I'll try and gather more data to evaluate this claim.

I'm really surprised that the magic monsters mod didn't show any statistical significance, no matter how I looked at the data. I'm thinking this might have to do with selection effects. The problem is how highly the mod is rated: if players immediately run a map with +magic monsters regardless of the other mods, this would result in +magic monsters being associated with worse maps and fewer drops. I'll try some quasi-experimental methods out to get around this problem.

I'm also surprised that 1% quantity doesn't equate to another 1% chance to get a map... this makes me think something else may be going on with the models, so I'll take another pass at the topic soon.

So very excited to have data to play with!




For the stats nerds:  full table after the break.

[POE] Hardcore

Time for some ARPG shenanigans.

I've been playing Path of Exile.

Its probably the best game I've picked up in a years. I could write pages and pages on why I love this game. The races. The skill trees. The complexity. But this blog is about being a video game data nerd, not persuading others to play awesome games. So instead: a video.

Great, now that everyone is playing, here comes the data.

Like most ARPGs, Path of Exile has a hardcore league. A single death kicks you out of the league, and into default. Since staying alive gets comically difficult, the hardcore league is super competitive. Players speculate on the best builds, watch the top characters, and get global announcements when a top 25 player dies. They debate whether duelists are viable, marauders overpowered, witches death-prone...

Of course, the best way to answer these arguments would be to track the progress of characters through hardcore, recording when they die, how quickly they gain experience, and whether class choice matters.

Fortunately, the PoE website lists the top 15000 characters in the hardcore league. By periodically recording this information, I can get a timeline of characters, as the league progresses.

Classy Breakdowns
Here is the breakdown of default and hardcore characters, by class:

While witches are the most second-most popular option on default, they're the second-least-popular class in the hardcore league. Hardcore is dominated by Templars, Marauders, and Rangers. Duelists, who have the weakest starting position, are the least popular class in both leagues. (They've recently been buffed, though.)

But why are there differences between the two leagues?  Is hardcore just harder for some classes? Are witches just too squishy? Or do players just prefer some classes over others?

Changing Classes
Minimally, if hardcore was harder for some classes, you'd expect to see dramatic changes in the proportions of each class over time.  So, if witches were really weak, at the start of the league there would be a ton of witches, they'd die, and the result would be fewer witches over time.

Here is the distribution of classes over the past month.

Over the past month, there have been small changes in the class distribution of players. Witches have increased their share, while duelists have steadily declined. Marauders have fallen in popularity, only to rise again. Rangers and templars have remained remarkably stable at the top.

Overall, though, class proportions have remained fairly stable. This suggests that whatever imbalances exist, they are small, and being amplified via player choices.

The Final Death
Another way to look at difficulty across classes is via deaths.  If POE is harder on some classes, then those classes should die more. In particular, if a class is harder in the mid or late-game, then there should be relatively more deaths for those classes at the higher levels.

Here, I'm looking at the average chance a character dies for every 15 minutes that they're online, by level and class.

Overall, gameplay becomes less lethal as characters level up. Characters in the 60s are less likely to die (per minutes played) than characters in the 40s.

While *slight* differences exist between the classes (witches die more frequently than rangers, for example), they're relatively small, and not large enough to explain overall class divisions on their own.

There are, of course, other ways to look at differences between classes: experience gains, survival analysis, etc... but for the moment, I need to keep leveling in merciless difficulty. =D