Nemesis Mod Feedback

This is all personal experience-based. Not claiming official factualness here, but from what my builds experienced.


1. Factured is fine up until late cruel. Ten leaping frogs that all leap or artic breath at the same time? Or how about ten discharges? Depending upon the monster that gets this mod may determine whether you run past it or not. Killing one of these things is like opening a pinata of death. It's not that bad if you're a bow-user who can snipe from far away, but it really screws melee characters over.

2. Corrupted Blood is mysterious to me. It doesn't seem to be on enemy hit, but on MY hit, that it's applied? Either way, this mod requires you to have a bleed flask in cruel+. You simply cannot survive in HC without one with this mod lying around; stacking health won't save even the bulkiest of Marauders from this debuff.

3. Vile Touch does absolutely nothing.

4. Volatile Blood is scary, but with max resistances it's fine. It feels like this mod screws over only melee, as ranged users can just kite outside the damage range.

5. Random curse seems pretty dumb - they change so fast the worst thing that happens is you get silenced for half a second.

6. Lightning Herald (or whatever it's called) seems fine at the beginning of cruel, but ramps up to ridiculousness by the end of it. If there are rares clustered together with this mod, you simply cannot fight them, even with maximum lightning resistance. If you have a bow or ice spear or something though, it's managable. Yes, I always have max lightning resistance (who doesn't these days?).

7. Summon Skeletons seems fine - it doesn't seem powerful at first, butu the skeletons can hurt if you don't constantly clear them. They can trap you if they surround, too.

The rest are varying levels of "Eh? That was it?" to "Balanced".

If Nemesis mods will be installed into PoE in some permanent capacity, I think they should be reserved as a specific (big bonus) map mod - you can make sure they're all nice and powerful and then let players decide if they're worth the risk to deal with. Or, if they become more common, the power of some of these need to be scaled down, as I think they will cripple the ability to create certain builds. Yes, you can just run past them most of the time, but how many players will do this consistently? It's certainly a test of your patience and greed, to potentially let so much loot pass you by.

I like how you skipped the most OP nemesis mod(souleater). I guess I'll give some feedback and answer some of your questions on each from the perspective of someone who has mapped extensively in nemesis.

- Factured: This is easy for anyone with AoE. Usually the fractured group dies instantly after emerging(or in the case of infernal blow as soon as the elite dies). The only real danger is fractured devourer which pops 10 devourers right under you which you can't avoid.

- Corrupted Blood: This is based off the enemy hit. Elite mods such as extra damage, extra cold damage, physical aura all enhance it. Vulnerability/map mods also enhance it further. It bypasses armor and immortal call so only a bleed flask can save you. This is easily one of the top most dangerous nemesis mods due to its stacking ability. Characters can take up to 2k per second against certain elites(giant skellies,golems..etc) so beware.

- Hexfont: This makes a curse immunity flask mandatory(qs/granite flask give 4 second immunity). Not too dangerous.

- Lightning Herald: This works the same way as corrupted blood in that it stacks off the elite mods and map mods. This means that it can scale very high and can instantly kill the best geared players in rare circumstances(minus max, fleet, extra dmg, extra lightning dmg map with a herald golem = instant death).

- Volatile also works like corrupted and herald. In high maps this can onehit players. It's infamous for killing cocky high level players who underestimate the power of volatile. Avoid volatile giant skellies especially.

- Soul conduit can be really dangerous if you're not paying attention. It can revive other elite enemies so getting surrounded is easy(although no nemesis player falls for this by merciless..).

-Shroud Walker: This makes crit builds a pain to use due to blind. In rare circumstances this can greatly augment very dangerous elites by making them very hard to dodge(a teleporting devourer fr example).

- Souleater: This can make elites become more dangerous than bosses. A fully buffed giant skelly with moderate mods can go through 6k hp in a few seconds. It can also make regen elites unkillable when grouping. Beware of this mod.

The rest are a combination of cursing nemesis mods and some pretty weak ones.

Your points are fair and I don't have enough experience in Merciless yet, but Fractured can be scary under the right circumstances - I have a line AOE, so it's not easy for me to quickly kill them once they spawn.

Souleater isn't too bad provided you see it ahead of time and kill that rare before everything else.

I forgot about Shroud Walker - I could see it being really annoying for pure melee fighters, but unless it's on an already super dangerous enemy it's just annoying, not scary.