Massive difficulty spike?

So I loved the early game a lot. Everything felt fair or a bit too easy and the I never really had any trouble with the game. Out of nowhere the difficulty just spikes once you get to Malichai, who has an overwhelming battle arena and attacks that can kill you then less than a second. After that, the game goes completely down hill for me. All the enemies in the Templar Temple could 2 shot me and I'm forced to use cheap tactics like kiting and getting enemies stuck on geometry just to defeat them. I have an evasion based character but it seems to me a lot of their attacks negate evasion and hit you regardless. Averius/Innocence was probably one of the worst boss experiences I've had in a game. I don't hate difficult games, I've beaten all the Dark Souls games many times and played many classic CRPGs but this boss was utter bullshit. Almost every single attack could one shot me and you get very little reaction time. If you''re not in the exact right spot to dodge his attack you're dead. The worst part about the bosses in general is that your victory rarely feels earned. If you die you can just get right back into the fight, with the boss having the same amount of health as when you died and with only an exp loss. This makes fighting a difficult boss feel worthless and victories never feel like you earned them. I think the game was at its best in the Ascendancy Labyrinth dungeon. If you died there you have to restart the entire dungeon and the boss felt hard but he didn't one shot you so you could make mistakes. Loot was risky to get, but the payoff is worth it. That entire dungeon is what the entire game should be IMO. If you die you lose dungeon progress but the enemies and bosses are fair. Act 5 is the exact opposite of this and is ruining an otherwise fantastic game for me. Is this difficulty spike normal, or did I do something wrong? Also do these problems get fixed once you make it to endgame/late game? If the entire game is like this act from now on I don't think I can play it anymore.

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OddJars wrote:

Is this difficulty spike normal, or did I do something wrong?

Both.

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OddJars wrote:

If you die you can just get right back into the fight, with the boss having the same amount of health as when you died and with only an exp loss. This makes fighting a difficult boss feel worthless and victories never feel like you earned them.

Killing a boss without dying means you earned it. You lose A LOT of exp loss end-game when you're level 80+ and that exp means a lot when you're trying to hit 100. It can be a huge waste of time to die even once in maps.

Though its fun to traverse the game with your own ideas, you won't be able to progress to end-game if you don't reconsider your build. Not only are you extremely squishy but you don't have the damage to trade-off your lack of defence.

Don't try HC - Ive died 17 times this Harbinger season ...

I know exactly how you feel OP. I too experienced this for the first time as I got into act 5 and then managed (through persistence more than anything else) to get past final act 5 boss and into act 6 w/ a new character). I know enough about the mechanics in the game to have an idea at least why my build may be struggling (already made one adaptation that worked beautifully against the first boss I fought in act 6). PoE unfortunately does give very good feedback as to why you just got rekt when it happens. The other thing that plays into this is that, without fairly extensive knowledge, you might end up with very inadequate gear for your level (and not know it) if you don't stop and re-run areas to farm for better gear from time to time (also, knowing what makes for good gear is also not so obvious to newer players). I wasn't doing this with said character and still somehow managed to get into act 6.

All of this said, if you want to try and salvage that character (or try a new character and 'do it right' this time), here are some general guidelines that may help:
What to look for on gear (for most builds):
+ Maximum Life mods
+% Resistance mods
+% (and flat) mods to Armour/Evasion/Energy Shield (whichever of those you intend to run for defense)
+% (and flat) mods to damage of the type(s) your build deals (most common on weapons)
Utility flasks:
For non-armour focused builds at least, Granite Flasks can be amazing to avoid being 1-shot by physical damage at higher levels, especially if you can roll a +% armour during flask effect mod on it. (Builds that focus armour are probably pretty safe from 1-shots at least if they have a properly large life pool, but that's not to say that a granite flask isn't still helpful).
Ruby/Sapphire/Topaz flasks (for maxing elemental resists when facing dangerous enemies with elemental damage; knowing what damage type a dangerous enemy does can sometimes be hard to recognize a priori, but once you figure it out, the relevant flask can help a lot because of the +% to max resist effect).

The skill tree:
This is something I think a lot of people struggle to do well in PoE. Making a decent skilltree isn't actually that difficult IF you understand some basic principles and are familiar with what stats are effective for the build you intend to run.
The golden rule is this:
Avoid pathing long distances over the tree to get desirable node clusters, instead take what's relevant to your build and 'at your fingertips' being sure to strike a balance between offense and defense.
You will also want to have an idea what type(s) of damage and method of delivery for that damage you are going to use, as well as what defensive stats you're going to run in mind before planning out your tree. Get the nodes that are nearby and work with what you're running.

Finally...if you decide to start a fresh character, and want something that should be able to handle anything the game throws at you, I will suggest the following (basically a tank build):
pick Marauder, and run a 1h Mace+pure Armour based shield and pure Armour gear otherwise. Use an Aoe skill like Ground Slam for most mobbing, maybe have a single target skill for dealing with bosses and other hard to kill enemies. Work to get your elemental resistances capped ASAP and keep them capped as best you can from then on. I have such a character and he has only ever ripped once and that was entirely my fault (a momentary lapse of attentiveness in the labyrinth around one of the floor traps...I was pissed at myself for that one....)

Without being able to view your character (as your characters tab is not set to public), it's hard to say anything specific, but I would assume a lot would be solved with the generic advice of more life and, if relevant, resistances.
I would have to imagine you're low on at least one of them, as my experience with those parts of Act V were pretty much the opposite - the guys in the Templar area felt like complete fodder, and Avarius/Innocence didn't do any real appreciable damage. There was one point in the fight where Innocence had just summoned minions, which resets the statues to the corners. The very first thing he did after that was the bullet hell attack, immediately followed by the beam - while the shots from the previous attack were still around. Even though there were no statues to hide behind and I took some hits, this was unable to kill me. Since that's probably about the worst thing he could do to me, suffice it to say that I generally didn't feel threatened.

TL;DR
Probably get more life and if relevant resistances. A lot of newer players undervalue life. Perhaps more specific pointers can be given if we could view your character.


And yes, if the entire game was an endless version of the Labyrinth, that would be amazing.

the game is complex and we have all been there. there are main approaches:

1) you like the game and complex games in general and want to get familiar with mechanics to make your own builds - make different characters, find relevant stuff on gems and mechanics on wiki, maybe watch some beginner videos to get into basics fast. If looking at guide, try to get inspired there (and making your version of the build) rather that blindly following it. The more different characters you make, the better they are and the better your overall game knowledge. Also Path of Building is great tool that helps understanding how things work (before similar complex tools you had to have some "light" version of it in head:)). Although I suggest not using it before you know the basics.

2) you want to have "instant" decent character without having to care much about how stuff works, for example because you have not too much time to play - follow a guide (found in class forum sections) that has beginner and/or cheap tags. try to figure out what makes the build good. But dont expect to reach the same performance as seen in guide videos. Even following the guides successfully requires some knowledge.

when you get some experience, acts 1-10 (with the exception of final boss) are "only" leveling. Can be done very fast. All you need is to prefer gear with life and resistances, and pick up all Life passives near you. if using attacks always look for better weapon. have your main gem setup properly linked with 3 suitable support gems, have your life flasks appropriate to your level.. Making a build to perform well in high maps is much more challenging (requiring much more things to be done correctly)

In PoE build and gear are very important. If you dont build/gear efficiently then good mechanical skills (like what you implied in your post) wont save you.

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Frightning_Lightning wrote:

pick Marauder, and run a 1h Mace+pure Armour based shield and pure Armour gear otherwise. Use an Aoe skill like Ground Slam for most mobbing, maybe have a single target skill for dealing with bosses and other hard to kill enemies. Work to get your elemental resistances capped ASAP and keep them capped as best you can from then on.

If doing that I would add a 4link 'Ancestral Warchief'.


Edit: spelling

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OddJars wrote:

I think the game was at its best in the Ascendancy Labyrinth dungeon. If you died there you have to restart the entire dungeon and the boss felt hard but he didn't one shot you so you could make mistakes.

You must not have played labyrinth at release then.

You're not alone; they nerfed my old tank build to the ground with the changes. I cannot even take more than two hits at level 80 from level 73 monsters with almost 80% DR, 50% block, 40% evasion and 25% spell block with a 6% chance to dodge and top-notch unique items.

Not really the game for me any longer.