I trust GGG

admittedly, I only played The Awakening for a few brief hours.
a weekend player I am for almost 1.5 years now, and that will not change any time soon.
though I'm also a Forum addict. a PoE community addict. each week between two log-ins to the game, I read this forum. watch Youtube videos and Streams. read Wiki.

so here is what I learned, being a weekend player and community addict, in the week since The Awakening went live:

• the game as it is now, is less technically stable, than it was before. I read this, saw it online, and even experienced it myself: weird glitches (Guild Stash, anyone?). crashes to desktop. process lock-ups. uncaught exceptions. things I last remember happening in Beta, and I'm not talking about the Awakening Beta (which I wasn't part of).
  still, the good side of the coin is Desync is all but dead. my character froze in his tracks, the only time I tried setting mode to Lockstep, because of absolutely horrible ping, but Predictive Mode never felt so smooth and so in-tone with the Server, even with said horrible ping.
• the game is harder, but not for the right reasons. it seems the Dev Team in their quest for more challenge, pushed the numbers dial more than a bit too far. the grim reality of one-shots, defence that looks and feels utterly useless, and overall ridiculous damage output - is back. stronger than ever.
  it was evident, when Normal Malachai hit my level 80ish Mapping character for over 50% HP in a single slam - but he is not the only culprit. far, far from it. absolutely everything got pushed to the max, it seems. I'd like to see it maxed in a different way. risk via "super moves" you can see coming, and impressive AI, means a lot more to me as a player, compared to just normal attacks suddenly dealing unthinkable amounts of damage.
• Jewels. I was wrong. I thought Jewels will bring RNG into my precious Skill Tree. ruin the only place in the entire game wild, unchecked RNG hasn't ruined yet.
  they do bring RNG to the tree, but at the same time they are just so much fun! and I got some from Quest Rewards, so part of the RNG venom has an antidote, I suppose.
• Act 4 content. absolutely stunning. let's just ignore the glitches and damage scaling. heck even the bit-of-rushed Lore towards the end. just look at it. the NPCs - both friend and foe - and their voice-overs. the monster and area design. the music (even though I still love the old Oversoul/Lunaris tunes + Acton's Nightmare better). the atmosphere is exactly where it should be.

overall, I think it would be fair to give GGG some time to stabilize it all, before passing actual forum judgement.
heck, I'm usually the most impatient of the lot - but this time... this time I trust GGG.
I trust them, because they put a hell of a lot effort into this. because they have the right idea even if it can - quite frankly - be implemented in an utterly abysmal way, at times.
and most of all, I trust them because something keeps making me go back and click that PoE Icon on the Desktop for two and a half years. years during which, the people behind that Icon no doubt learned a thing or two about coding a game. their game. so now it's just a matter of nothing but time, until they code it right.

Brain: Uninstall Apathy
Me: uh later
Brain: Lets play
Me: didn't we say we were going to uninstall?
Brain: Were over it lets go back
2 weeks later - > Nerfs

Brain: k nvm lets uninstall
Me: later later

- Repeat for a year.

"

In GGG we trust, LOL @ I_NO, and it is nice to see you admit you were wrong about "wall street" and its jewel system.

All is well.

it's still "Wall Street", really. just wait and see the Exalts fly. and RNG is already building its throne right there in the middle, next to the Scion's starting area.
but at least I received some as Quest Rewards, to experience just how cool Jewels in the Tree can be as a concept.

Yep the mob damage currently is ridiculous, GGG was trying to make melee viable with Fortify and what not and then they completely negated all that with this ridiculous damage and the nerfs to leech. I had a HC Ice Crash Duelist at 1.8k hp 40% phys reduction,3 endurance + Fortify and all max res and he was getting destroyed by everything in act 4 normal and eventually got annihilated by Piety's adds in less than 1 second.
Only way to play HC atm is with a ranged or a totem spec.

Dangit! BMB1 on probation!?! Sure... he deserved it... but really? Not going to be the same without him.

"

Bikalo wrote:

Yep the mob damage currently is ridiculous, GGG was trying to make melee viable with Fortify and what not

I love this one.
They changed Reduced Mana because it felt mandatory.
Yet they add "Mandatory" support gems like Fortify.

My sides are completely gone.

They changed reduced mana because they didn't like how every single character was running at least one aura... many times more.

Auras shouldn't be required. In fact, they shouldn't even be used most of the time. Traditionally, (d2) you had to select a class to be able to use one, and then you were limited to one.

Then came "Aura-dins" that used more than one aura... but they had to sacrifice pretty much everything else.

D2 aside, PoE pretty much assumes that every character will have one or two auras running. I guess I'm ok with that, but it would be nice to see them more specialized.

jk

The removal of old EB functionality is a step toward that reality Shagsbeard. I can't tell you how many hideouts I've gone to, or how many ppl have come to mine and they're only running one aura. I think now that auras are at so many different reservation tiers, it has become a pretty good choice that players get to make (and have multiple right answers).

For me, I can drop clarity, swap out fire pen for red mana, and run any of the purities along with my determination. Or I can swap defiance for two heralds, and then use either clarity or a purity. I like that you have to make meaningful tradeoffs now more than ever as you go into maps and consider the mods, the boss, and the mob types.

While I think Piety deserves some adjustments, Malachai is fine (if your machine can handle it). All his techniques are avoidable easily, and the ones you tend to not avoid are manageable. Although I can be biased because I played a melee tank (Templar, 2L Ice Crash and 4L Glacial Hammer, with less than 1.5k HP and some armor, lvl 43). I died just once. I guess that it should be looked up for evasion and ES characters with the constant damage with so much shit on screen.

Piety has the problem that is unintuitive and unforgiving. Once you get it, it's not that much trouble. I wish the fight started a little more slow so one can learn it (also, there should be a way to get an antibleeding flask, >_<).