Combat is annoying me

Ahahahaha ... -die-

Holding shift during combat might alleviate some of your issues.

While I share a lot of the sentiment posted before me, I have to agree w/ the OP to a certain extent with "targeting". There are many, many, many times that I'll click directly on an enemy and yet either my char does not respond or attacks elsewhere. I've been playing since April and this has been a consistent issue. However, I have been playing since April and have well gotten past that aspect of the game. I generally have no issues killing monsters here, and when I do it's either my fault or the dreaded desync (I recently lost a level 48 HC Ranger to desync while fighting Fidelitas, I was not happy).

The health bar issue confuses me though... there are health bars.... right? I distinctly recall watching as I drain my enemies energy shields and life from them. Sure the health bars/energy shield bars do not always stay up, but geeze I would hate if they did! When I have a pack of monsters 16-20 deep, the last thing I want is a ton of health bars all in my way. I think at that point I'd start complaining about targeting.

And to another poster that talked about early FPS games... I've been playing Doom for the past 20 years, and I'm pretty sure it has aim assist. Just saying :).

While i dont hold with much of what the op says, he makes one point ive experienced far too much not to agree with:

"

Imbalanxd wrote:

In this game, 30% of my clicks don't stick.

Likely just another symptom of the poor netcode, which hopefully gets fixed soon.

"

And to another poster that talked about early FPS games... I've been playing Doom for the past 20 years, and I'm pretty sure it has aim assist. Just saying :).

I've only played Doom once, but... you're kidding. Doom does not have aim assist.

https://www.google.com/search?q=doom+1+aim+assist&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS469US469&oq=doom+1+aim+assist&aqs=chrome.0.57j61j60j62l3.3410&sugexp=chrome,mod=16&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&safe=off&tbo=d&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS469US469&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22doom+1%22+aim+assist+-BFG+-%22Doom+3%22&oq=%22doom+1%22+aim+assist+-BFG+-%22Doom+3%22&gs_l=serp.3...9802.10937.1.11075.2.2.0.0.0.0.57.104.2.2.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1._wew_wJ0Ygo&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=6cac8731b3eaff51&bpcl=39650382&biw=1600&bih=728

No results found. Don't troll me.

Aim assist has only ever existed on this-gen console shooters. As far as I'm concerned, it's the very antithesis of playing a game about shooting and it's the kind of mindset that the OP is propagating that it even exists or is tolerated let alone celebrated in recent FPSes.

Floating combat text and health bars** were never considered to be default features of PoE. And with fairly good reason - they're worthless. Things die when you click on them. You obviously know what to kill. HP bars and floating text just clutter the screen and serve no purpose.

The only use floating text even has is for debugging the game or doing theorycraft. All they'd need to do is put a combat text log somewhere you can toggle on and off for that sort of thing.

Spells/skills should not have "auto-aim". Even suggesting the thing is troll-tier talk. This game is supposed to be about aiming and skill, unlike most FPSes of this generation, let alone ARPGs.

I think the OP is trolling, given his apparent love of D3 and his apparent statement than "ARPGs take no skill" in the same breath he's advocating for the dumbing down of POE. What kind of nonsense is that.

The only legitimate complaint he could maybe raise is that latency and sync issues introduce some amount of lag-based inaccuracy with your attacks, which is something that is "to be fixed" and more a bug than a design flaw.

If he really thinks ARPGs aren't about skill and if he really loves D3 then he can go there and not ruin this game for us.

**What the OP really means by "health bars" is "bars of health floating above enemies"; currently you need to highlight an enemy to see its health

"

Imbalanxd wrote:

Two issues with combat that are really beginning to annoy me. They have come up a few times, but I can't believe they've dropped so far off the front page without being addressed by now.

First off, targeting. I'm primarily an FPS player, and I can't target mobs in this game to save my life. Either they are obscured by a hundred different props, move too fast to be clicked on, or just don't get targeted even when I do click on them. This isn't a game about fast click aim, so lets give some leeway. If I use an ability somewhere, just target the nearest mob if it is within an acceptable distance. And if I use attack ground, don't target anything. And if the location I click on is within range, then use the ability where I stand. No need to run up to the location...

The second point is health bars. Oh sweet baby Jesus does this game need health bars. What little micromanagement an ARPG has vitally needs to be streamlined. If I can't tell which enemy has the lowest HP, how am I supposed to effectively prioritise them? If I don't know what health my enemy is on, how can I use abilities like dominating strike effectively? I would go so far as to say that this game is almost unplayable for me without visible health bars. Every RPG has them, it really should have been the first thing in the game.

I agree

If you are missing that often you need accuracy, or you need to learn how to click on the mob. Its not very hard at all.

If you think there is a need for a mob health bar, you are not building your character right.

You click, they die.

Try making an RT marauder with a decent 2h weapon for reference.

"

Toltie wrote:

You really, really, REALLY do not need health bars in an aRPG.

Why you might ask?

It's simple really. Play through normal, and you know how tough every single monster in the game is.
You know what they do, you know what they don't, you know how hard they are to kill.
Also, finishing Ruthless, which is also a cakewalk, you know what abilities works best against what.

You know full well in Merciless that you don't give zombies a moment's thought in the Ancient Pyramid if there are constructs or mages nearby, you know the casters die fast, you know you oughta nuke'em.

This is even more true in group play, people should -by the time it's needed- know which ones to gang up on first, and which to leave behind.
A group will know better than to leave adds alone on Oak, unless their combined DPS is wtfomg.

...and so on, and so on.
ARPG is about knowledge, and creating really, really simple tactics from that knowledge, and then be mediocre enough to pull it off and loot.

'nuff said.

I can very much agree with a lot of this. In a game like POE it is important to know before hand exactly how tough the mob you are fighting is, and also just as important to know how much damage each of your attacks do. This will give you a good time frame of how long it will take to kill, and will inform the decisions you make throughout the fight.

The problem is, there is absolutely no feedback regarding crits or misses. Now I think I'm pretty good at gauging health and damage, but I'm not omnipotent enough to know when crits and misses will occur.

Also, the idea of health bars reducing skill requirement is laughable. The information is already available, it is just a nightmare to access it. Its design 101 that you do not introduce difficulty through the interface, but rather the mechanics.

Sounds more like "I wish this game was noob proof"

All of these ideas should never enter the HC league ever.

If you want these combat logs, HP bars, and auto aim put it in the default league where those types of players will be anyhow.

I only started playing this game last week, and for the first few days I seemed to not be able to target any of the mobs, spent a lot of time running around in circles. It seemed to happen on those sand spitters every time, and mostly on melee characters.. funny watching me doing circles arounf the thing I am meant to be hitting.

I have adjusted to it now, I have tried all the classes so far and have gotten used to how game works. I think I just had to slow down.

I am not a noob to ARPG, just having a break from Torchlight 2, it lacks the depth this game seems to have.