Everything is faceroll untill it's not?

Anyone else feel like the game offers very little challenge and then just blows you up suddenly? I like to try and make my own builds, so obviously I'm never as fast or OP as the meta builds, but even then most of what the game throws at me feels like it's about as hard as opening a lockbox for random loot. Then suddenly from time to time my character just falls over and half of the time I don't even know what caused it. The other times it's usually me standing in stuff I shouldn't be standing in, or face tanking stuff my face can't handle.

Seems like every league I get to this point where I'm facerolling most of the content and the next step in difficulty seems surreal to survive. I'm fine with knowing that my homemade builds won't ever do enough damage to kill shaper, but it feels wrong that I can blow up all content without any resistance up until him. The thought of having to farm content that offers no challenge just so I can then try the next step in difficulty seems beyond boring. I can only imagine how boring it must be to play those amazing builds that can take out stuff like uber elder who might not even struggle with him.

Guess what I'm longing for is more of a linear difficulty where you can always fight challenging content to get you into ever more dangerous content instead of having to grind crates to be able to kill the worldenders at the end.

Nevertheless I keep coming back to PoE every league and really enjoy it up until that point, so maybe I should just enjoy the ride till that point and not worry about the mindless grinding other people need to do to get past it.




Not really sure why I wrote this, guess I just had to vent somewhere :p

Do you blow up content including his Guardians? Because they count as up to him. If you do than Shaper should be absolutely no problem. He is most time easier than his map modded guardians.

Shaper is a mechanical fight and quite easy with practice and a decent single target skill.

If by blow up content you mean clearing packs in maps than you can't really compare with killing a boss. One requires AOE and the other strong single target. The two are very different. There are some build that make use of the same skill for both situations but those would be those meta builds you don't play. They are meta for a reason.

Cleared all guardians in several past leagues, so far in incursion I've only reached and killed hydra on the atlas. But isn't that just the same thing as I described? Going through maps and their bosses without any opposition and then at the end of a guardian map suddenly having to fight the one thing that is several difficulty grades higher than the content before it? Obviously a boss should be harder than his minions before him, but I feel like the gap should be smaller between the two. And I don't mean make bosses easier, make the fights leading up to the boss tougher.

I know this won't happen by the way. I don't think the PoE system allows for well enough balancing where you won't have a few builds that dominate all others. Just saying that I personally would enjoy it more the way I explained.
I remember back in breach league I was playing a HoWA build and it was the highest dps char I had every had, breezed through everything, then when I finally collected enough Chayula splinters I couldn't even kill the adds fast enough to reach Chayula. Guess this was the first time I realized just how big the divide between the top builds and the others was. And as disheartening as it was to fail the breachstone that badly, it was kinda cool to know that there was challenging content out there for even stronger builds than mine. Just wish I wasn't walking through everything before hitting that Chayula wall. Not sure if I'm explaining my thoughts well enough. Imagine walking over a flat field and suddenly the next thing you need to traverse is a sheer cliff, I'd prefer to go over the field and bit by bit have it become steeper and steeper. If I fail climbing up the hill long before I get to the sheer cliff I won't mind, but atleast I'll be able to grind on some incline instead of walking over the field without any challenge. Does that make sense? Feel like I'm rambling :p



On a side note, isn't the shaper also a dps check? I mean there's no enrage timers or anything on his guardians, but I remember getting swamped by those AoE zones last time I tried him solo because my dps was lacking. Of course this probably also has to do with my very limited experience with him ;)

This is by design. GGG have said in numerous interviews that they want the game to be extremely easy most of the time so you can play while watching TV, then have the occasional difficulty spike through combinations of mods.

i killed corrupted 8 mods vaal temple map in like 5 minutes as arc trapper :D
i was like WTF its supposed to be one of the t16 most challanging map

nope. traps blowned up these bosses in half second

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Hemmingfish wrote:

This is by design. GGG have said in numerous interviews that they want the game to be extremely easy most of the time so you can play while watching TV, then have the occasional difficulty spike through combinations of mods.

That seems like a poor (and bad) way to scale damage. We all know power/speed creep over the last few years has screwed up the balance and Incursion is the pinnacle of GGG giving up on any strategy and just saying "oh hell... if Bestiary caused this much commotion because beast encounters slowed down zone/map progression a little then we'll make the next challenge league be a speed league". But making 99.9% of the content pretty much a walk in the park for most builds (sure you can make a weak ineffective build but why?) until you hit that rare champion/unique/boss that is a death trap is not the end goal path to "fun to play". Of course I'm only a "filthy casual" so I don't have that stats (player and financial numbers) that probably tells GGG that what they are doing with PoE is netting them (pun intended) a larger player base and thus a higher revenue stream. They follow the money trail as all "for profit" businesses must do and it must be working well even if it makes for mob pack obliteration most all the time with the infrequent one-shot death trap.

I'm not entirely happy with the current playing state of PoE. Mob smashing is good for awhile and then it gets repetitively boring punctuated by a "WTF!" moment when you are blindsided one-shot from off-screen damage or something rushes/jumps on the exile from off-screen. I know the move toward this kind of play style has caused many top players to quit in frustration over GGG's coding decisions. Also this kind of play style is just feeding many players gaming addiction.

Ppl forget that the main reason of death is not sheer power of monsters, but incompatibility of your defences with their attacks. You just suddenly run in these situations from time to time and rip. It may be more or less often depending on the nature and strength of your defences, but it happens.

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Zebedin wrote:

i killed corrupted 8 mods vaal temple map in like 5 minutes as arc trapper :D
i was like WTF its supposed to be one of the t16 most challanging map

nope. traps blowned up these bosses in half second

Vaal temple only has one real threat, Tittybitch as shes widely known if she kills you immediately your gonna have a tough time, if you kill her immediately you did it congrats! Pretty much a dps check or a phys reduction check depending on your map mods/approach.

I wouldn't say its the hardest T16 but it can be if you add enough damage to the trio.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

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Zebedin wrote:

i killed corrupted 8 mods vaal temple map in like 5 minutes as arc trapper :D
i was like WTF its supposed to be one of the t16 most challanging map

nope. traps blowned up these bosses in half second

Vaal temple only has one real threat, Tittybitch as shes widely known if she kills you immediately your gonna have a tough time, if you kill her immediately you did it congrats! Pretty much a dps check or a phys reduction check depending on your map mods/approach.

I wouldn't say its the hardest T16 but it can be if you add enough damage to the trio.

The dual striker is pretty dangerous too if you have a fast hitting build.

I remember that someone from friend list invited me to t16 vaal temple to kill boss... already mentioned titbeach was the last boss,as i clicked at entrance of arena my 9k hp was 0 instantly

Dude somehow managed to get her hardest hitting stuff right at entrance

When I run it i do this
>go in
>look for woman with bow
>instant kill her with flurry
>kill other 2 bosses that deal 0dmg

uber elder is pretty challenging
if you want it to be really fun get full party in
(sadly no more double uber elder)