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

The biggest part of difficulty to new players is the passive skill tree. Sure it is easier for vets of arpgs. But still you have to actually think about what you are doing. Further for some paths their might be more than one way of getting the job done.

But the biggest curve and the part with the most depth is the end game where maps come into play. Here if you want to truly min/max your character to get the most damage and survivability possible. That could take even more planning than just planning a straight up build that chews through stuff.

Something i wanted to mention:
-The last boss (dominus) does not deal any chaos damage. (except of one of his whipping miscreations before you actually face him)
-You think that chaos resistance is important, but it's actually irrelevant in the early game and if you know what you are doing, even in end game.

Some tips so that you can keep saying that this game is easy:
-Keep all chromes, fusings and jewellers for end game. You will need them.
-Resistance and armor is fine, but life and/or es is even more important. Aim for 150-200% hp from skill tree at 80lvl.

One other problem that no one mentioned is your skill of choice. the chain lightning is very noob-friendly and a good starter, but also very boring. You don't even have to target. Assuming you don't go crit with it, you won't even be afraid of reflect that much. Try some different skill, if you want hard/interesting. Better yet, try melee :)

But all in all the game just starts to be hard at Merciless, before that it's mostly a filler. And maps and end game would be hard, if you don't have a decent gear and build.

normal is potato

PoE is not hard but RNG gated like crap to keep you addicted.

You don't need chaos resistance for the last boss. I've killed him multiple times with negative chaos resistance. Just stay in the shield during the rain. Chaos resist is most helpful in merc+ when you have -60% chaos resist and there are (a very few) mobs that do heavy chaos damage. Even then, you still don't "need" it as long as you play carefully.

You're asking why people consider it hard yet you've died on normal mode. Normal mode is very, very easy compared to merc mode, and merc mode is very easy compared to maps. Early maps are very easy compared to the later maps. These maps are easy compared to uber Atziri. Keep all this in mind, and imagine playing through all of it WITHOUT dying. Also, go play some races when the new season starts.

You understand basic concepts like specializing your build and maxing defenses to avoid dying. Okay? Welcome to pretty much every RPG. It's always been better to specialize than having every character be "a jack of all trades", because you can only perform one action at a time. With that being said, PoE DOES have many different builds. There are physical damage casters. There are elemental ele builds. There are righteous fire builds. Crit builds of all kinds. DoT builds.

Anyway, the difficulty in merc+ comes from YOU making mistakes, and you will. Maybe you upgraded your flasks and forgot to get a staunching flask. You run into a pack that applies a bleed when they die. Dead. Maybe you forgot to identify that strongbox, and it's a very tough one. Dead. Maybe you got a new piece of gear and lost some lightning resist, but got fantastic upgrades in every other area. You fight a totem pack with spinning lightning totems. Dead.

Thank you very much to all posters for all the kind responses and advice.

The basic answer to my question that I've gleaned from all the responses is that different people have different definitions of what constitutes "beating" a game.

My definition is that if you "beat" it on normal, you've "beaten" it one time. If I'm interested enough, I'll "beat" it the second time and the third time, but I'm rarely that interested, and I never get super focused or obsessed with a single rpg. I like to play lots of games, and I'm not up for making a "job" out of what should be a fun pastime. I guess I'm the very definition of a "casual player".

Other people define "beat the game" as "beating" it the full three times. This group divdes into softcore and hardcore. The softcore group is okay with some deaths along the way, while the hardcore group will not accept a "beating the game" that includes any deaths at all.

There seems to be a third group that will not accept any definition of "beating the game" that does not include multiplayer raiding and pvp competition, with "climbing the ladder", extensive trading for min-maxed gear, and achieving some notoriety among the total community of players as being an "expert".

So, the disconnect in discussion about how "hard" or how "easy" PoE is, or any other arpg is, comes from the discussers not agreeing beforehand on the definition of "beat the game", or perhaps worse, they are assuming that there is a common agreement of the defintion of "beat the game", when there is not.

All that said, I have been taught by some very kind posters that I was wrong about what kind of damage the final boss does in his final form. Could someone tell me in a nutshell? That's getting into the area of the gameplay forum, and I'm sure there's a wiki or something where I could look up that kind of answer for myself, but if it can be answered in one or two sentences?

I'm talking about the red stuff that fills the whole map such that you can't get out of it, or else I didn't see a way, and once he activated that skill, I had maybe 3 more seconds before death. When I tweaked my gear to get more chaos resistance, I was able to kill him before I died, so I assumed that was it, but I might have inadvertently raised my damage output.

I've been assuming any time you see a deep red area attack, that was chaos damage, but apparently I'm wrong.

Again, thank you so much for "teaching the noob". When I said "educate me" in the thread title, I meant it.

The blood rain applies the corrupting blood debuff, which is a physical degen, mitigated by armour. You counter it with immortal call or a staunching flask.

I still don't get why people consider dark souls 2 to be hard , i beat that game at level 15. difficulty can be a subjective thing.

@Vesuvius079, thank you! I found and read Dominus' wiki, and it didn't have that particular information in it.

It did say that he has a shield bubble to protect himself from his own blood rain, and that you can avoid the rain by staying close to him to get the protection of the bubble.