Farewell for a while. Some feedback from my experience.

Hey guys. I hit my wall today in PoE, and I wanted to give a little feedback before I peace out.

I made a LA ranger in warbands, got her to lvl 93.8 -- was a lot of fun until I tried to get into 76+ maps. Evasion Just isn't there in terms of mitigation. too many 1 shot mechanics for evasion to be attractive (50/56 dodge, 56% evasion, 6218 health) After that, I made a tanky cyclone marauder lvl 94.5. The marauder hit his wall at 79 maps (village ruin boss) (7049 health, 7 endurance charges, fortify, arctic armour, enough resist to cap with ele weakness (without endurance charges))

I'm the kind of player who doesn't skip content. One of the main reasons I don't play HC in PoE (I play HC in all other ARPGs) I like to overcome challenges. If I can't I'll stick on them until I do. I love that PoE is hard, but things should be a little more even among the map pool if map drops are to be how they are. I'll use village ruin as an example. (malformation for my LA ranger) I HAVE to do my village ruin maps if I want to sustain 77+ maps. I can't combine them unless I get incredibly lucky (not sustainable) I have to get 100+% IIQ with some pack size which more often than not (without spending an EX worth of chaos) I'll get a mod that will make the village ruin boss EXTREMELY difficult if not impossible for a very tanky character with high end gear.

I love that this game is hard, however I feel forced to roll a map with > 100% IIQ with magic monsters and pack size, kill 100% of mobs, open all chests, kill the boss if I hope to possibly, maybe, someday sustain 77-79 maps. Certain maps bosses are 10-50x harder than others of the same level, and can be impossibly tedious to kill.

In a nutshell I feel like this game would have a lot more longevity for me if I didn't feel like I had to dump a fortune into every 79 map I found (20ish chaos on average) to make it doable with high (ish) probability of a refund, or at least a -1 map.

I look forward to reading the patch notes in the future when map drops are relaxed to the point where maps up to 79 or 80 can be sustained without spending a fortune, and the new 2.0 content bosses are tuned down to comparable levels to the others in their tier. This seems like the very logical path GGG will take, I just hope it doesn't take them long, because I really do love this game.

I'm not sure about one shot mechanics. Palace dom and a few higher boss like abyss area can one shot me otherwise it's more like 2-3 shot mechanics and I play pretty much 4000 life glass cannons. I prefer the kill them before they have a chance to kill you school of thought. kinda yolo sure.

Village ruin is definite sick though maybe overturned once they enrage. My dumb ass went back for more 3x on that map @ lvl 94 and 75% exp.:( Now sitting at 45%

But the enraged chicken still never one shotted me. It was like two shot from RoA.

4200 life with only 22.5% mit from taste of hate.


on maps - cant agree more:)

"

Village ruin is definite sick though maybe overturned once they enrage.

I enjoy to see some harder bosses than usual ( hopefuly it will become more common ).
For this boss you can just down their life and then cull both at the same time. Work really fine.

"

Drunkhydra wrote:

I'm the kind of player who doesn't skip content.
(...)
I feel forced to roll a map with > 100% IIQ with magic monsters and pack size, kill 100% of mobs, open all chests, kill the boss if I hope to possibly, maybe, someday sustain 77-79 maps.

I think these two statements mark the underlying problem. You are forcing yourself (unnecessarily) into a playstyle you do not enjoy.

You _could_ simply skip bosses you can't do, and still get all of the map drops except the one the boss might or might not drop (it doesn't actually happen very often that bosses drop useful maps in my experience). You also _could_ simply sustain lvl 76 maps, and take the occasional higher level map as a bonus, without sinking a lot of currency into it for a questionable gain.

Question is, why don't you?

Regarding map bosses: I don't think they will, or should, be brought to equal difficulty. Exploring the map system, and finding out which maps are good for getting experience, which provide quick and easy boss kills, or which are good for farming specific stuff, is what GGG wants us to do (and enjoy).

Regarding Village Ruin in particular, I really like this map, because it provided a challenge which could be overcome with a little tactical thinking. The first time I went there, the bosses killed me outright. The next two times, I lured Gnar away first, killed him, and then faced the chicken alone, which was doable, but still extremely dangerous. Then, over time, I developed a tactic that allowed me to clear the map relatively safely:

1. I take the quickest way to the bridge where the bosses are. On the way I kill enough enemies to charge my "Vaal Summon Skeletons" skill, which is my main weapon against dangerous bosses.
2. I tiptoe onto the bridge, carefully summoning regular skeletons at increasing distance, until I aggro Gnar
3. I lure Gnar away from the bridge, and into the area I already cleared. I summon the Vaal skeleton army the first time when I have him alone in an otherwise clear area.
4. I run away, raise zombies (Gnar usually kills the existing ones quickly), and fight through another part of the map to charge the Vaal skill again.
5. I return to Gnar and give him the skeleton army for he second time. I repeat this as needed until Gnar is at perhaps 10% health, then I leave him alone.
6. I recharge Vaal skeletons and tiptoe carefully on the bridge again. I summon regular skeletons to lure and occupy the chicken. I take care to always have a meat wall between the chicken and me, so even if it hits me, it usually won't target me immediately after, while I'm unable to move.
7. I send my Vaal skeletons against the chicken, then recharge ths skill elsewhere on the map, and repeat this 2-3 times until the chicken is dead. I kill it first so that I don't have to face it in its enraged form.
8. I recharge the Vall skill one last time and finish off the (now enraged, but still already almost dead) Gnar.

Now, I'm not describing it in such detail because I think you should copy it, but to show that it took quite some time to develop that strategy. And that was precisely what made it so enjoyable. I started from thinking "wtf, how is my squishy character EVER supposed to survive this fight?!", and eventually arrived at a strategy that allows me to do this map reliably and with little risk to myself. Seeing the strategy work once I had fully developed it, and killing both bosses without ever having been in danger, felt immensely rewarding.

And that's why I think bosses of one map level should _not_ be equally hard. I want some easy bosses that enable me to do some high-level maps early on, and I also want tough bosses that require elaborate techniques ans feel incredibly rewarding once you figured out how to beat them.

Personally, I do not simply sustain lvl 76 maps because I have not found any way how to. If I found one, I would use it.

"

Aim_Deep wrote:

I'm not sure about one shot mechanics. Palace dom and a few higher boss like abyss area can one shot me otherwise it's more like 2-3 shot mechanics and I play pretty much 4000 life glass cannons. I prefer the kill them before they have a chance to kill you school of thought. kinda yolo sure.

Village ruin is definite sick though maybe overturned once they enrage. My dumb ass went back for more 3x on that map @ lvl 94 and 75% exp.:( Now sitting at 45%

But the enraged chicken still never one shotted me. It was like two shot from RoA.

4200 life with only 22.5% mit from taste of hate.


on maps - cant agree more:)

Maybe if you are running white maps or avoiding damage modifier maps (expensive)


1 shot mechanics don't exist for my high armor / endurance charge marauder, but they sure as hell do for my LA ranger (6k health 3 endurance charges)

marauder has 16 deaths at lvl 94.5
LA ranger has over 60 at lvl 93.8

A lot of those were careless, or due to some ISP issues i was having a few weeks ago.

"

Heli0nix wrote:

"

Village ruin is definite sick though maybe overturned once they enrage.

I enjoy to see some harder bosses than usual ( hopefuly it will become more common ).
For this boss you can just down their life and then cull both at the same time. Work really fine.

I do agree that challenging bosses are fun, and I like that they exist.

I think the village ruin boss might be a little more manageable if the different mechanics were easier to spot. The poison cloud from the chicken is very hard to see, I haven't noticed it until I see my health dropping. Gnar's charge could be a little more noticeable too, he does a foot stomp, but maybe he could faintly glow red as well as hes charging?

Theres a difference between a fight being challenging and a fight being tedious. If I die to a boss fight because I did something wrong, that's ok. I'll learn from that and do better next time. If I die to a boss because the stars aligned, and had an unavoidable death -- that's when I have a problem