Please educate me, why does anyone consider PoE to be "hard"?

I've beaten normal level with my lightning-arc using templar. It was very, very easy. I am now very curious about why so many people say this game is "hard"?

If it has to do with the skill tree, I must say that I found it very, very intuitive and easy to understand. My templar was offered a path of intellect and focus on magic, and a path of strength and focus on melee. It was a no-brainer to me that I needed to pick one and stick to it. Successful "jacks of all trades" do not exist in arpg's. Experienced arpg players know this as an axiomatic, obvious truism of the genre.

So, I built my templar to be a lightning god, and that is what he has become.

There are a few other arpg elements that are also truisms. I discovered that maximum elemental resistance was 75% each for fire, cold, and lightning. So, I chose gear to get 75% resistance to fire, cold and lighting. That's a no-brainer for any rpg, right?

I also discovered that I wanted physical armor of about 1000 or more to not have to worry much about physical damage.

I discovered, after getting killed in two or three shots, twice, by the final form of the final boss, that the fourth resistance, "chaos resistance" is very, very rarely employed, and mostly only in optional dungeons and the final boss fight, and also very, very hard to build, but that, because of the final boss fight, (or desire to gear and xp grind in optional dungeons), that finding and taking some skill tree choices (I discovered one hidden circle of chaos resistance organically by following my chosen build along the tree), and that finding and hoarding armor that gives chaos resistance, which is very, *very* rare to drop, is imperatively important.

So, I would be very interested in any insight anybody who's played can give me as to why this game is "hard"? I've found it much, much easier than Diablo 3, Sacred 2, or Titan Quest.

The other thing, is that I want to gush again about how much I'm loving this game, but, I'll express that by saying, there is no need to either trade (for a single player) or ro pay real money in any way for PoE. It is absolutely free to play, with no "pay to win" involved at all.

But I found a lot of the "pay to look awesome" choices kind of irresistable. I started by paying $30 for a set of golden angel wings to go on my templar. Then, I noticed how awesome a blue-glowing crown would look on my templar, who also has blue-glowing auras from two of his main lightning build skills. So, I paid another $10. Voila, I've now spent $40 for Path of Exile, just as I might for any AAA release, and I could have played it with the same effectiveness absolutely for free. Their game is so awesome, I just *wanted* to pay them for it, $40 for nothing in game but two aeshetic enhancements to my character.


My templar is like a super paladin with Thor's lightning, and he's everything I ever wanted to play as a "Holy Roller". This is the first time I've ever played any game where my first toon attempt was so perfect to what I want from one of my D&D characters, that I've had virtually no temptation to restart.

Now, if only I could have a black cat familiar to follow me around. Oh wait, I can. But it costs $20. Hmmm, temptation, temptation.

Oh, and I'm finding "cruel" difficulty to be even easier than normal difficulty so far, near the end of Act I. Again, I'm really wondering why anybody would consider Path of Exile to be "hard"?

Are people just saying that because of multiplayer stuff and the post- "three times around the roller coaster and then more" game?

The difficulty curve sucks. You won't run into any difficulty until around Merciless and even then, it isn't that bad. Generally you won't start hitting any major issues until Act 3 Merciless. That is around when a really poor build or awful gear won't cut it anymore. Even more so into maps.

I don't agree with this curve, by the way. I think the game should start out more brutal and continually kick your ass throughout. It is getting an overhaul with the big Act 4 expansion.

You're basically judging this game by its tutorial. Which takes some time, indeed.

Getting to "end game" is easy (end of merc). It will not be easy for everyone though, but that is down to individual players.

Once you hit maps the game can stay easy or become as difficult as you want to make it! That is the good thing about being able to craft "difficulty" onto maps :)

Do that at Level 71 and if its still easy your right.

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CliveHowlitzer wrote:

I don't agree with this curve, by the way. I think the game should start out more brutal and continually kick your ass throughout. It is getting an overhaul with the big Act 4 expansion.

I think GGG add little things all the time to this effect, but us more experienced players simply can't easily put ourselves in the shoes of a newbie anymore to understand the effects. Take for instance the changes to Brutus and Merveil. I personally think that those fights became more difficult for newbies, but it is hard to be an accurate judge since I'm more experienced and too far removed from the days where many things were considered more difficult and I wasn't just plowing through content as fast as I could.

Play Hardcore...

Interesting. So, from my first couple of responses to my thread, do I infer correctly that most discussion and generalizations that get expressed in the forum, are by people who have already completed normal, cruel, and merciless, and who find themselves either happy or dissatisfied by the post-game "maps" game, or else, only play arpg's for multiplayer, and have little experience with single-player arpg franchises like Sacred, Fate, Torchlight, and Titan Quest?

It's "hard" because if you just play without thinking too much, or without developing skills, you'll die. You'll get to a point in the progression and just have to stop.

Normal isn't hard... pretty much any build with any player can beat it.

I've had characters that can't make it past Cruel Vaal, but I play Solo/self-found/HC... so there's an artificial difficulty imposed there.


A lot of players here are solo players from Sacred, D2, TQ:IT et. al. But there are also players from a more WoW mentality looking for raid bosses and group kills. The forum is biased... it doesn't reflect the players well.

hey mate! good job buying some microtransactions, its awesome to hear that you supported ggg. up until merciless, the game is pretty easy. but overall, this game is definitely harder than diablo 3. i see you've made it to level 44, congratz! keep smashing through the content and i think you'll see the difficulty really start to ramp up.

have fun yo