The new improvement over the Monolith looks great and I sank a bunch of hours there already. However, nothing kills my desire to play more than losing several maps worth of progress after one death. The last straw was Lagoon at the end of the L80 timeline. At about 20% health left, he one-taped me with from full to zero despite having capped physical resistance (the report said the killing blow was physical). Reading that I have lost 4 timelines, meaning that I have to clear 3 maps now to get a chance for one-shot again, made me put the game away.
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They massively nerfed the penalty on death after they implemented the monolith quest echoes. Previously you would have to restart from timeline 1. IMO, there needs to be something to prevent people just zerging bosses & loosing a few timelines is a reasonable way round it.
What wouldyou prefer as a death penalty? everyone talks about how much they hate EXP penalty in PoE. I personally think the current one is okay, maybe not even punishing enough
I think its in a sweet spot right now. I canāt really vouch about how much one shot are occuring, but I feel like having the current penality is the best option.
To be clear, Best =/= Perfect. Right now, it is in a sweet spot between punishing without being rage inducing.
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So, possible other future death penalties aside, i think the current one is really not THAT much pof a penalty.
Just because you lose 4 echoes, does not immediately mean you have to do another 4 timelines to trigger the boss quest echo, depening on how early you spawned the boss.
Only physical attacks Lagon is doing are both of the āmashesā, which are relatively weak compared to all of his other abilities and on top of that really easy to dodge(he will always lift up his arm before smashing)
Being one-shot by that ability HAD to be a critical strike, no other way around that, which means you have not capped critical strike avoidance.
This is one of the less lethal attacks, meaning if you die by that your build is not really tanky.
This death penalty is really not as bad as many people describe it, some patches ago you lost 7-8 echoes, which was fair to IMO and even before that you lost ALL progress in that timeline, which some people also did find adequate.
Donāt get me wrong, i do respect any opniion different than mine, but i think you should try to improve your builds before complaining about that stuff.
On no build i have ever played did the physical smash from lagon did more than 50% of my health.
What penalty would I prefer? I donāt think this is the right question in a game. A game is to entertain. Difficult is not the same as punishing. The prior version of the Monolith would kill all progress. This is why I moved on after a short while.
Sneaking hardcore elements in a softcore game mode s not my cup of tea. Grim Dawn did this with the ārogue-likeā areas and Iād put up with it but did not like it. Hence I played other games more.
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They arenāt particularly hardcore elements though. In GD (& PoE & D2) you loose xp on death (though in GD you can reclaim some of it), D3 slowly damaged your items, but they all had some form of death penalty to punish the player for failing in some regard (being it skill, building the character, gearing it, etc).
If there is no cost of failure, then we might as well just press a button to generate loot & level up.
IMO the current death penalty we have is a good combination of punishing you for failure but not requiring you to do too much extra work to get back to where you were (kinda like GDās death penalty).
With all due respect, there is ALWAYS the cost of failure. Time, effort, and resources spent in the wrong way always result in less progress. What I have a problem with is the artificial, additional cost. The insult what you seem to want to tb added to the already existing injury.
What game benefit does losing several maps worth of progress after death bring to the game as opposed to having to repeat the last map, which is still quite a thing sometimes? One you define the benefit, are there any other ways for that benefit to be achieved?
That was Heavyās question though, what would your preferred cost of failure be?
I personally donāt hate the death penalty in this game. Take PoE for example- Iām level 92 in the Heist league, the highest Iāve ever been, and I canāt seem to get through to the next level. Every death you lose 10% xp. Itās awful. Iād pick being sent back 4 timelines any day.
That being said, Iām not a fan of so many one shot mechanics. Iām playing an arpg, not a mmo; not fighting a mythic+++ raid boss. I donāt think perfect gear, all capped resists, armor, glancing, dodge, etc should be required to enjoy MOST of the game. The end of the end game, sure. I feel like this game does require perfection far too early, but I mostly still enjoy it.
I feel like the death penalty in PoE is too steep too. Losing xp in Grim Dawn (or most arpgs) was never too big of a deal, but on the other side of that, the little money you had to pay in D3 was really trivial. At least in any of these games, you can DE-level. . .there are games that exist in which you do!
Iād take this to PoE as wel 
My best in PoE was 96, but I am staying away from that game right now. I hated avoiding content or having to grind 2 months to just unlock one attempt at a rare event. To each their own. Grim Dawn did it right in the campaign, there you could go back and reclaim most of the XP back. Plus, getting to max level was never an insurmountable task.
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How about not having beat the boss and having to do it again?
So you just want to zerg the boss until it dies? Thatās not a cost of failure.
If the boss meets you at 100% health, you either can win the battle or not. If you are undergeared/underlevelled, no amount of repetition will help.
Thatās not true though. Iāve gone through all of the monoliths & was always underlevelled (by 20 on the final one) & killed them all (including the first time Iāve ever killed the Dragon Emperor). And either @Tibone or @LizardIRL has done the monolith bosses nekkid but for a staff (for damage), boots (movement speed) & a belt (for potions), so with sufficient skill you can do the monoliths without (almost) any gear.
And what percentage of the player base is that? We are now in the area of arguing over playersā preferences. I am sharing my feedback, just as you do. If you can beat end boss naked, this is more of a design issue than difficulty.
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What did your other defenses look like you need more that physical resistance.
Physical was capped and I had a little over 1K health. Tough fights are welcome. Having to do uncalled-for repetition of several maps, not so much.
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In a lvl 80 monolith you also accumulated alot of modifiers before being able to face the boss, those also make up alot of the potential extra damage the boss is doing.
As @Llama8 said, you being āundergeared/underleveledā is no execuse, if you can learn the fights.
Those ānaked killsā are not only made by the top% players, those are fairly easy with some practice, you donāt even need like ninja reflexes or so.
Yeah that depends on what modifiers you took health and physical resistance isnāt enough. You need armor, dodge or block, 1k health isnāt a whole lot. You want to stack.more than that. Also did you have any support skills or damage reduction anywhere from skills or passives? There are ways to face tank these bosses to. But ymif you are fighting say lagon with his beam. You just have to learn the fight and move out the way.