Why don't YOU play HC?

This game has some of the worst netcode in history. I'll never touch a HC league until latency and desync problems are fixed (which will probably be never). IMO latency issues are worse than desync.

I preferred HC for a long while, especially the challenge leagues, but I've started moving everything over to SC for a number of reasons. The biggest reason I'd say is that I want to consolidate all of my gear into one league and remove what little trading I used to do from the game, especially now that FM is out (I've never been a fan of trading). Having my gear split between leagues is just counter-productive.

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VictorDoom wrote:

After getting 90 in invasion it kinda of wore off for me, been playing HC and SC both for a long time, but HC is just.. neverchanging, after playing it for so long and after so many resets and passive tree changes its still just the same thing.. Build tanky, dont die, always pay attention, max out your defenses and try to get some decent dps.

Invasion was the most fun i had in HC, but i think im gonna stick to SC from now on, gave all my hc stuff to a friend and killed the level 90 witch, im done with it, getting 90 there was incredibly boring and the desync is just horrible, the only fun part was the possibilty of getting 1 shot by invaders.

In similar fashion, I leveled a character to level 91 in invasion. In the early part of that league, it was quite frustrating but over time became enjoyable as I found cool people to play with and appreciated their builds. As I approached higher levels and from level 80 to 91, it became quite apparent that I was playing in a ghost town. That annoyed me a lot.

Now, as of today, I chose to play in the new Rampage league for a few reasons. The first reason is that as a new father, I simply do not have the time to go through the early cycle of build-rip-build. My time is precious. The second reason is that I've accomplished a lot in prior HC leagues that I really have nothing to prove. I know what it takes to make an HC build survive to level 80 and higher:

1. Avoid added content; i.e. master quests, corrupted areas, atziri
2. Avoid early game content where possible; i.e. pay for your hard kills, like vaal.
3. Safety in numbers.
4. Stack defensive properties; i.e. lots of life, arctic armor, etc.

In Rampage, it feels like a totally different playing experience. The early/mid economies are different and people are a little more brash so to speak. What I do like is that at higher levels:

1. The 10% xp penalty is real. You can only play high DPS builds for so long that negate any survivability.

Overall, I am finding Rampage to be a lot of fun. I don't have to worry about losing progression and I have more time to enjoy with my kid. The only negative is that I see myself losing interest at a much early period in the season.

Just the thread I was looking for haha. After coming break from a long break and losing my HC char from nemesis by getting owned from a FM quest lol, I've been contemplating just moving to SC. I feel like I don't have the time or patience to play HC anymore, the worst part for me is trying to find gear via poexyz and for those players to be on when I'm on. I remember waking up at 5am to buy something from someone because they were in a different part of the world :P

I used to solely play HC. And then 3 deaths in a row at 85+ forced my hand to solely play Standard and I don't regret my decision.

1. Desync ( sad but true, and I was mad mostly because I knew what I was doing was a bad idea ). Whirling blades indoors ... oops.

2. Disconnect death. Yes and sadly still to this day you can disconnect from the server and it does not remove you from the instance. You will kill your POE process after a while( because you can't logout ) come back and you are sitting in standard, without even a hint as to what happened to your character....other than it got killed of course.

3. zone load death. Yep don't play HC during the start of a new league. Lesson learned. Surely I can't be the only one that the zones "sometimes" take forever to load during the first week or two of a new league and the safe timer runs out.

All in all HC is fun as hell until the server decides you are dead, sometimes when you aren't even connected.

1. I Like solo, HC is sticking with parties and avoiding foes like a chicken.
2. Defensive style gameplay, I like dynamic gameplay.
3. I don't like to stock milion of items "in case I die".
4. I don't trust game mechanic. You can desync or die stupidly. I opened strongbox with ice nova and desynced to death in 1 nova (what the hell?).
5. I feel like people there are assholes with ego in the skies (no offense really), sticking in party hiding behind each others back. Also not facing hard content and using alt+f4. Seriously what's so hardcore if you avoid risk?
6. Nothing funny to start over and over again really..

Because desync.

No way I'll never touch it, unless they fix it, which probably won't ever happen.

Desync and game freezing for seconds. That's all there it is to it.

no time. I barely have time to play a standard type league. Not everyone has the time to 'just reroll'. That is thrown around so nonchalanty.

For me, the biggest difference between myself (playing a standard league) vs hardcore players is free time.

As you mentioned, 99% of builds don't work. Whatever you pick, it has to stack the S**T out of health/ES and other defenses. This is somewhat a problem in SC as well but nowhere near the same degree.

Losing 30-60min of work due to desync, random off-screen deaths, etc. is painful. Losing DAYS of my life would be enough to make me think about uninstalling the game, throwing my monitor at the wall and worse.

Truth be told, I can't imagine a sane person doing this to himself by his own accord so I tend to avoid communicating with hardcore players.