PoE desperately needs an option to turn down spell effects

I7 2600K o/c'd to 4.2 Ghz
Radeon 7970 (Catalyst 13.1)
8Gb ram @1600 Mhz 8-7-8-22
X-fi Fatality titanium
Windows 7 64 bit

Machine is tweaked, unnecessary services are disabled.

Using Radeon Pro to force high priority process, triple buffering + disabled tesselation, max frames to render ahead=0.


The game is barely playable in act 3 merciless. I can get dips to 5-10 fps in parties running the docks, when there's a lot of aoe involved.

Sliders are not the solution. The code needs to be adapted to take advantage of ATI shaders technology, not just NV.

I dont know if this is an ATI related issue, but i'm not "upgrading" to some gtx 680 card for the purpose of running a f2p game correctly, especially when it's supposed to run on "budget" machines.

I run this game on a 6 year old core2 duo @ 3.2 and an 8800 gtx, Win Xp with 4 GB ram. ( yes 3.5 effective ) It plays fine with the graphics at medium or high in solo or with another friend ( both melee) but yeah, in groups with lightning arrow or poison arrow, or totems spamming it can become a slide show.

I myself use Lightning Strike and don't lag at all by myself or even if there's 2 other people using it, but..

Lightning Arrow, Poison Arrow, Voidbears Fire, or Spamming Totems Ice Shot ect destroys framerate.

It's somewhat to be expected with my machine, but honestly, the spell effects need thinning out not just for performance, but for game playability and enjoyment. My friend has a much better computer and he doesn't lag in groups or anything, he just complains he can't see anything and that it's just a strobe light show, and un-enjoyable. He was in a map yesterday and couldn't really do anything as a Murader cause he couldn't see anything but white flashes of light. I concur. As Shadow it gets to where i just back out and stand off screen while totems are blasting and lightning arrow exploding all over the place. It's just not worth dying over because you can't see anything.

It's also not hard to thin them out, they almost assuredly have Dev switches for debugging ect that thin them out, turn them down or off completely.

In groups i usually play with loot on the ground off, and shadows off screenshake off everything turned low, ( turning shadows off does help to differentiate in large groups as it makes everything a bit brighter and more prominent)

This is why games like Diablo3, LOL, and other Isometric games where there is a lot of action go for the cartoony look. Even though people complain they don't realize that people have sat in rooms discussing these things for years when in designing it and play testing it. It's actually a good design decision based on the fact that it's easier to see what is going on with all the stuff happening on the screen at once. LOL is a very good example of this, as well as WOW graphics and style was a great design decision.

But i do like the graphics in POE, and am happy they went for the look they did.
Back when Doom 3 came out, a friend and i were thinking man if they made a Diablo game that looked like this it would be so sick. It's great for solo play or like 1-3 people, as is, and simply thinning out the spell effects in larger groups or having an option for it is a good design decision. No matter if you think your GTX690 is what everyone else should have in their computer.