I need to start by saying I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all my time so far in game and also on the build planner. Its been really fun testing builds and theory crafting on the planner. This is exactly what I want to believe is what a lot of players are looking for in an ARPG. Tons of customizations etc. Lots of variations and options with loot and blessings to make your build “work”. However I feel that it can be partially misleading, and frustrating, for some reasons out of players control.
Before reading further, this is my first post, and my opinion. I went into this game blind, without following a guide or reading any reviews. I’m not the person to say “2k hours on PoE blah blah”…
My first and foremost area I find frustrating is the monster scaling. Honestly, the game is a walk through until empowered monos. The Majasa fight at level 56 or so can be difficult if you choose to do it then. This is particularly frustrating, there is an idea of character progression. However I don’t believe its entirely there. There is a facade what your doing is working until empowered monos. I would personally like to see a little bit more of a progressive ramp up in difficulty so you can experience what works and what doesn’t. Or some type of player feedback…
Here’s my experience, I wanted to make a cold version of detonating arrow with some items I found. After playing for a while and having players pop in my stream and say, yeah you need to go lightning. That’s frankly disheartening, and appears to be somewhat true at the stage I’m at. I was asked “why do you want to convert it to cold” The answer is because I wanted to pair it with cold uniques I got, specifically the Reign of Winter bow, and Raindance boots. I also liked the idea of using freeze rate multiplier and cold/freeze as range…sounds reasonable? Well, there are specific mechanics such as lighting tendrils from detonating arrow count as an additional bow hit to proc the ice shards from the bow. This usually wouldn’t mean too much, except for this unique bow, and skill it does. – Easy answer “use a different bow”… any suggestions?
Example #2. I made… a fire smite/judgement build. Come to find it the old Lightning is the preferred option because it again can chain to enemies. Additionally the amulet Holy Devotion, and the paladin passive Holy Precision make it almost impossible not to want to go lightning for smite. There will always be “Meta” options but this seems very favored towards lightning again. I may suggest changing items such as Holy Devotion to a more generalized smite/skill buff, to allow more build variations.
There is a lot I don’t know, and there are more examples that I have. I’ve already blabbered too long. Be kind, restore my faith to continue the grind =)
You got some valid points here but I don’t agree on Smite. If you go the Lightning route you will lose some valuable damage and crit nodes in the south-east branch of its tree and that is a huge loss. Also Void Smite is pretty viable too.
This is not to downplay your feedback on the whole just to point out one thing I don’t agree with. Thanks!
The problem is that in every game there will always be a Meta build wether it is in an ARPG like POE / LE or Warzone for instance. You can try to balance all the builds which is nearly impossible but nevertheless even then there will always be a “best build” for instance in terms of clearing / bossing etc.
The question is not how balanced they are, but how unbalanced they are. How “meta” is superior to the rest.
If, for example, one assembly takes 1000 waves, and another 900, this can be called a balance. And when one is 1000 and the other is 500, this is already bad.
On the other hand, now it is too early to talk about balance, because not even all classes are introduced into the game, skills and other game entities. To change the playability of a particular assembly, it is enough to introduce one new unique item or one new skill.
А это мы видим практически в каждом крупном обновлении.
Of course, and meta builds will always exist, and they should. I just get concerned when i see skills acting very differently simply based on their element. Some changes are okay, and i agree with such as lightning striking multiple targets. But other elements should have a fair playing field. especially for a skill deep in the marksman class that totes all element types. its actually listed on the detonating arrow skill that all added bow damage is directly converted to lightning… it should be to the skill itself. One thing i have not figured out yet is if you convert the element type if this skill tooltip will add to the new element. From my testing it did not look like it did, however i cant be sure.
But it does. Damage conversion is always local to the skill with 1 exception (the Fire Aura conversion in Flame Ward and that states that it’s a global effect).
Not quite sure what you mean, the tooltip will use what ever relevant damage modifiers to calculate an approximate dps. So if you convert Lightning Blast to cold the tooltip will use your % cold modifiers.
I agree with the TS about the difficulty scaling. The very hard Lagos fight was still doable but the Majasa fight is an oneshot festival. When not getting the exact fitting items in the game the player is lost.
It’s very build dependent. Gear can help ameliorate some of the difficulty by “brute forcing” things, but I had a Void Knight Smite build that breezed through it with low level gear & uncapped resists, so it does very much depend.
I honestly do not quite understand what the problem is with Majas. I remember when I passed it for the first time, I probably died 5 times, but the problem was not in the difficulty of the Boss, but in the fact that due to the light company, the players are pumped into almost full damage, ignoring the survivability.
In my understanding, Majasa prepares the player for higher difficulty later on, forcing him to create a more balanced build.
I have a minion necro build. But the character get oneshotted all the time. If I do increase resists and HP on the character then the minions will be weakened quite strongly.
I fully agree by the way. I’ve said this in the aforementioned thread already, but I just want Acts to get progressively harder. It would help new players get adjusted to the crafting and building there character “properly” without suddenly getting steamrolled in Act 9 or later mono’s. And it would make the game feel a lot less “on rails” and a bit more exciting to do the campaign.
Keep in mind, I’m not asking for the entire game to have the PoE Act 1 treatment, which honestly isn’t that hard either, just tedious. Just give it a good gradual bump in difficulty going through the acts.
But be aware, this take is controversial in the current state of LE. All you get in response now is: “just play masochist mode”. Which isn’t even regarded as an official mode by the devs nor does it alleviate beginners feeling frustrated in Act 9 or Empowered Monos.
I’m sure a lot more will ask for this increase upon either MP or 1.0 release.
Any source on them acknowledging that? I regurlarly watch their dev streams and somewhat keep up with Discord posts but I haven’t seen any about the difficulty being in a bad spot.
