sudden death

Me and my friends stopped playing this game because of all the sudden deaths. Every single time we died on hardcore it was sudden and unexpected. My friend had a witch, the energy shield was dropping very slowly and all of a sudden it went to 0 and so did the health points. That's just an example because this kind of thing happened many times. They started playing Diablo because these things don't happen there, but I couldn't bear with the skill system in that game. I was hoping that in Awakening these sudden deaths won't be there anymore, so that the deaths are expected, and happen on the heat of a battle. Not just drop dead all of a sudden like it always happens on this game. I really like this game and hope to get my friends playing it again, but I guess only if it's not unfair anymore.

Without specifics about these "general" deaths, it could have been any number of normal, well-known game mechanics that are easily handled with proper preparation.

Calling the game "unfair" and throwing around very general and unsubstantiated complaints will lead may to think that you are just tossing around gripes because you can't figure out a way to survive during hardcore mode.

I have burned several dozen hardcore characters - almost all of them because I got too full of myself and went charging into a situation I should have take more cautiously. Mix in the occasional one shot death (yes - they happen to even the most experienced players) and I can honestly say that I have never died from something that I would consider "unfair"

So if you want to elaborate a bit on the parts you think are unfair, I am sure there are many who would be delighted to help you understand and avoid the situations that got you killed.

General "the game is unfair - plz fix it" posts tend to not get much attention or discussion.

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JuniorHakensheath wrote:

Without specifics about these "general" deaths, it could have been any number of normal, well-known game mechanics that are easily handled with proper preparation.

Calling the game "unfair" and throwing around very general and unsubstantiated complaints will lead may to think that you are just tossing around gripes because you can't figure out a way to survive during hardcore mode.

I have burned several dozen hardcore characters - almost all of them because I got too full of myself and went charging into a situation I should have take more cautiously. Mix in the occasional one shot death (yes - they happen to even the most experienced players) and I can honestly say that I have never died from something that I would consider "unfair"

So if you want to elaborate a bit on the parts you think are unfair, I am sure there are many who would be delighted to help you understand and avoid the situations that got you killed.

General "the game is unfair - plz fix it" posts tend to not get much attention or discussion.

Well here we go: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1218098
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw7yFdgWBIo (0:47, see how he starts losing magic shield then all of a sudden his magic shield and health bar goes to 0. 1:32 his health just drops to 0 instantly)

So there, I gave you some examples. And there are many, many more hardcore deaths I can't remember anymore. But it was all in a blink of an eye...I didn't see any of them coming. You might think it's the player's fault, but I saw my friends playing Diablo, and this kind of thing doesn't happen there. The health and magic shield lost is expected, you don't just drop dead like it happens on PoE. I like poe and want to get back playing it, but like I said every time I died it was like that...in a blink of an eye. How can I play it like that? My tornado shot build...I followed the tutorials on the subject, I wasn't doing anything wrong. You think it's fair that a bunch of frogs can instantly kill the player without giving reaction time?


Don't wanna sound like I'm just whining. I really think this game is unfair. I think all deaths in this game should be expected and all threats should give the player enough time to react...clearly in poe that doesn't happen.

PoE has a tendency of insta-killing you when the different mechanics and the planets align.

Put simply, what you don't know or didn't pay attention to kills you. Powerful crits are one such mechanic. What you described sort of sounds like a bleed.

If your friend didn't get life behind the ES, then it will explode effectively instantly.

I actually know most of what killed every player in that reaction vid. And some of the time the player wasn't being attentive and knew it. (Literally a "derp" moment.")

I'll list them.

- 1st was corrupting blood with a fast attacking skill. Preventable with a staunching flask. I think the player knew it but wasn't paying attention.
- 2nd player died to Hailrake crits, which is actually likely since he used to have Ice Spear. New toon with no cold resist, so not too surprising. Not much of a loss though since he was literally in a1n.
- 3rd player played before monster damage was rebalanced, the game was much harder then. He was in a map with the vulnerability curse which, among other things, increases degeneration damage from bleeds. Currently, it's almost standard practice to run around with staunching flasks because of corrupting blood. If he stood still, he'd also have taken less damage from puncture, as it's intuitive for most people to run when they start taking damage. But in this case, it was absolutely the wrong thing to do.
- 4th "Panko" That looks like Bloodlines league. He's standing on shocked ground with a bunch of the Herald of the Obelisks warping around on top of him. Not surprising really. Just one of those things alone are enough to make me uncomfortable. His life was on the lowish end at 3900 and he was playing melee. All it takes is all the warp totems to sync up on him maybe combined with a crit.
- 5th TH3DON died to desync, which was legitimately bullshit. Desync gets fixed for 2.0.
- 6th I actually need specifics on that one. But it really looks like a reflect mod on the map. 137 "Magic Shield" is nothing by the way. He had 5000 life by comparison.
- 7th Heh, this one is funny. But pretty straightforward and requires no commentary.
- 8th Kripparian's death here is well known. He died to one boss Detonating the corpse of the other. You still occasionally get people dying to the Vaal Corpse Detonation from boxes.

Every death except the desync was preventable by knowledge.

@DeviantLightning
That wouldn't be a problem if the game showed you what you were doing wrong before insta-killing you. The problem with poe is that you're playing and everything seems perfectly fine, and then suddenly you get one shot. You don't have time to react, that's the problem with this game. And I really much want to see this kind of thing fixed to get back to playing it. But I won't right now because I know exactly what's going to happen if I do :p.

You think you don't have time to react. People have asked for a death recap as a feature, which I wouldn't mind.

But it's far from the truth that players couldn't have seen their death coming. That's the problem with assuming that things are safe and that you know what is happening just because it's always worked before. It's bad to judge your safety based on the ideal scenario, because you don't die when things are ideal.

It's true in POE, but it's true in life as well.

A commonly known fact amongst veteran players is that armor is less protective against large physical bursts. A new player that stacks armor might assume he's invincible, and usually he's right because the common packs can't burst him hard enough to overwhelm his armor.

Other common mistakes I see is that players don't stack enough life on gear. Armor or evasion is no good if you don't have hp to back it, since being two-shot gives you more time than being one-shot. And if you don't know how evasion works, you can't know how to use it, because it has strengths and weaknesses.

In the heat of moment, it's also very easy to lose sight of what you are doing or to ignore environmental cues. Especially if you're tired, as some of the top players sometimes are wont to be. Auras are a perfect example of a visible environmental cue.

I implore that you change your mindset on this. I wouldn't grieve to see more critical thinking and introspection amongst people. Take the time to learn more actively and think carefully about how mechanics interact with one another.

Get a logout macro if you don't feel that's "cheating." GGG considers it kosher, but some players spurn it as being cheap.

Also hard hits can stun you and since you can't do anything except flasks while stunned, you might think you are desync'd or lagged or the game is somehow bugged. Stun is based on the percentage of max life a hit takes, so the more life you have, the harder it is to stun you.

@DeviantLightning

Thanks for all the pro tips. I really want to play poe again. I probably will eventually. Sadly I don't think I'll be able to convince my friends. As I've seen so far, no one actually thinks the game has a problem. So I guess nothing will get fixed. It's always the players' fault. Considering how many times I've died on hardcore the way I did, even when following the available tutorials, I really don't think I messed up. I'm always so careful, I'm the one to tell my friends "hey you should invest more in HP otherwise you will get killed. Get a totem or you'll get killed. etc", but even so I can't even reach merciless. The farthest I went was act 2 or 3 in cruel. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I always try to play with a ranger. Never tried anything else, because I love archers. Anyway, I won't be playing Diablo with them...sure it's fairer but has terrible skill mechanics...

@mark1030
Thanks for the tip.

Not to toot my own horn, but I did make it well into Merciless with a bow ranger, and it is a lot of fun. Suffice it to say, if you take a balanced approach to her, a lot of things click. It's rather generic by now, but so many things work so well together that this cookie-cutter is a genuine pleasure to play. I'm not trying to be an ass, but part of the reason I know how to do that is because I spent a lot of mental energy learning how threats could materialize and how I could counter them.

I should mention that guides and tutorials are only as good as the person reading them. They can't substitute for experience and guides cannot know what your lived experiences are and give you responsive advice.

I've seen a lot of players read guides, but not have them necessarily understand basic things that the writer either took for granted or didn't think to write down. A guide on bow ranger, for example, can't teach you about flasking and may not go into how to game evasion mechanics. He may not even explain for example, that a Slitherpinch is a good leveling unique.

Or that you need to grab life on gear. I met a player in the Bloodlines league who made it into mapping phase, but played so defensively because he was squishy. Apparently all his gear were uniques. Some of these were Rat's Nest and Maligaro's Virtuosity, which are understandable for bow builds, but the rest were just junk uniques. I was genuinely puzzled as to way he was playing so cautiously until he explained himself. Given his level of gearing it was a little odd that he only had around ~3k life.

When I started out, I didn't even understand the importance of having a 5-link by Merciless and hadn't even yet begun to grok how to calculate and account for skill costs. And that slowed me down immensely overall.

There's a lot detail to the game and listing it all here wouldn't be of any service to you. If you want to PM me here or in-game, then I wouldn't mind answering specific questions.

I here bacause these sudden deaths start annoying. I'm playing solo-discharge build. I can absorb every kind of damage etc. Almost immortal 'till map tier11. I was in cell T8 map. It wasn't first time but suddenyly I'm dying and there wasn't mob around me. I realized there is some kind of cubes underground like mines. If there is hidden mines troll killing us? GGG should do these nonsenses.

BTW, I'm playing on blue maps. 'cause after a year I return to play and saw it's too much harder than before. So why I choice discharge with high defensive stats. Nothing kills me easly except those troll sudden death that couldn't give a clue what killed me.