please change the "lawn mower meta"

I don't know aout you guys but I am very annoyed by the current meta, where people just rush over the map and one shot everything.

I really find this ridiculing and removing many strategical aspects.
No drawn out fights sustainability is not as important in such a scenario. dps doesnt matter - truly Important is the burst. As a result one shot mechanics are in place to grant some slight diffculty.

To me this currently doesn't feel good nor fun at all :(

I'd rather fight a strong pack of mobs for 1~5 minutes having to manage my resources and sustainability accordingly.
instead of running into danger being one shot I wish there was less sustain and damage. So in order not to die I'd have to play consistently well along a more drawn out fight on each encounter.

ofc exp rates and drop rarity might need a look then but that should hardly be a problem...

this emphasis on speed just removes so much strategical aspects, is very stressfull, looks very surreal and exagerated and becomes veeeery monotone over time

You're late to the party. The game was like that in OB. No chance of it going back to that playstyle.

This is one of the reasons I often choose magic find builds.

Not cullers, that are useless alone, but builds with moderate investment into MF instead of dps.

Fights are slower paced, bosses need some thought. I have to actively be on my toes and stay alive as I chip away at the enemy.

The playstyle is more fun than lawnmower, and ends up being quite rewarding because of the extra rarity on kills!

"

Nick42 wrote:

This is one of the reasons I often choose magic find builds.

Not cullers, that are useless alone, but builds with moderate investment into MF instead of dps.

Fights are slower paced, bosses need some thought. I have to actively be on my toes and stay alive as I chip away at the enemy.

The playstyle is more fun than lawnmower, and ends up being quite rewarding because of the extra rarity on kills!

until you just make a mf lawn mower...

"

silumit wrote:

You're late to the party. The game was like that in OB. No chance of it going back to that playstyle.

yeah.. player damage is now like 10-20 times higher, while monster life havent changed much since OB.. except new content, especially bosses, or things like essence monsters, sure.. you can now get pretty far with really badly made builds, up to medium tier maps.. challenging content has been pushed up to highest red tier maps, where, due to triple difficulty scaling (monster level, map mods weighting, pressure on map item quantity - additional mods) you get one-shotted :/

Yeah, it's honestly crap, but it would take way too much work to fix at this point, I suppose the best they can do is nip at the worst offending builds a bit at the time. I'm also bothered by it to an extent, if a build is too simple and too powerful I get bored faster, playing underpowered crap solves the problem for me but I agree it doesn't work for everyone.

There was an interesting situation at the start of this league, by stroke of poor luck I did some 20-ish maps without encountering zana, got to T5-6 in atlas already and still no peep of her. And then I finally get her and she opens... wait for it... friggin Poorjoy, fuck my luck eh? Wasn't a Poorjoy but a killjoy, I was about to say nope but then went what the hell, that's why we play softcore, am I right or am I right? Anyway, it was pretty memorable, clearing one tiny room or hallway at a time, a small screwup and you're pretty much done with my meager and still self found life pool at the time. When it was done I went 'whoa, this is what PoE should be'.

Of course, I'm aware that's bullshit, I felt hella tired after the map, there's no way you can keep it up for ~100 maps it takes us to hit 90. It would take a totally different game before playing like that is viable and worthwhile.

@raics

yeah, nice story with Zana, frustrating? sure. but also memorable and somewhat fun, when the game laughs in your face, sayin: want Zana? fine, show me what you got :)

I understand, in order to grow, game has to open to wider audience, be more accessible.. But in my opinion it should be done by motivating players to improve (by giving them great fun in early game, but hit the wall at some point if the char is bad), not allowing every build to reach endgame. Also I think even early mapping should be somewhat challenging, it should not be possible to do it with crappy characters.. the map difficulty progress should start higher and be more linear..

What I can see in this forum section sometimes.. Have you seen the guy dw lvl 5 and lvl 15 weapons in late Cruel? with nothing useful in tree and a1n level of gear? Or the guy with main skill in basically 2L (and ofc poor life and resists) struggling in T5 maps? I think this should not be possible, the game should tell you at some point, that you are doing something wrong (= learn from mistakes earlier, before investing lots of hours in character that screams: re-roll)

3.0.0 is a great opportunity to significant overhauls. I hope many things will improve, but I also fear that the game will move even further this way, especially considering console players difficulty expectations (the "I win" button issues we talked about last time:))

edit: I personally "solve" this problem with making "weird" builds, around skills and mechanics people say they suck, completely ignoring what is popular, meta or what bullcrap, and not caring about what others do in general

Right, the story was a fairly extreme example, nobody would realistically expect Path of Souls where you kite a skeleton for half a minute. But yeah, when we see someone in here failing during levelling it usually means he's doing far more things wrong than right.

The reason I'm playing underpowered crap myself is pretty simple, I'm just being efficient with my time, you get more enjoyment from the game if 50% of it is challenging than 5%. And I'm not holding myself back by, say, unequipping items or gems, which goes fully against one of the main driving forces of the genre - making your character strong. I'm honestly trying to make them good and the bad concept is keeping them from getting too good.

Story made by mighty RNG

I do basically the same. I choose some synergy I like and find interesting and try to make a good working build around it. for low/medium cost. I also never min max the gear and gems, or buy upgrades after I gear it to my satisfaction for the first time, rather spend currency on other character. So I try to compensate for this with min max on theorycrafting. Sometimes it goes out great, sometimes not that really fun or strong as expected :)

I have a bladefall trapper that I'm leveling curently, but I've built it really badly and hit a wall where my dps isn't doing so well against enemies anymore. Just yesterday while running a t2 map, I had an essence rare spawn with a life regen mod that outstripped my dps and the damage it's doing made it hard for me to stand and fight.

I was going to leave it be, because I play hardcore and in HC, discretion is always the better part of valor.

But then Catarina spawned on the map as well, and her mission is one of those revive corrupted creature and bring them to her type.

So I cleared the rest of the map, revived as many of those corrupted outcasts as I can find and brought in an army of 12 of those as tanks. The mission failed because the whole lot of them got wiped out, but it brought the life of the rare down low enough that I could stand toe to toe long enough to finish it off while my flasks still have charges.

That fight was more memorable to me than anything in recent memory.

I would want more fights like that, where a certain degree of player smarts come into play.