Feedback Request: Tempest League

Tempests feel impactful when they buff enemies, but it's rarely worthwhile to try and take advantage of the buffs yourself. Standing in the circles wastes time and will often lure enemies into the circle to get buffed up alongside you, not a very appealing proposition. Either the buff duration should be increased to make them worth the wait or they should be applied the moment you enter the circle.

Honestly some of these tempests are a little bit unbalanced and frustrating.

for example, rejuvenating tempest in the Weavers chambers means she never dies. they just spawn far too regularly in that small area and when she comes back after half health she just heals back to full again. it doesn't seem very fair considering her dmg.

Another one is the Tempest that gives all the charges, I was getting almost one shot by this buff when mixed with a sub phys or extra dmg rare.

A)Are the Tempests impactful?
I find them boring and I am just there to get the challenges done.

B)Are they scary?
Yes they are but its time consuming as well

C)Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?
Not really as I just get the challenge and that is it.

D)Are they better at higher or lower levels?
Well they are too boring for me to really care about it.

E)Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?
No not really as people are just doing it for challenges and after they reach level 82 they are switching to warbands.

F)Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?
No just for challenges.

G)Did you play Warbands when you normally would have played Tempest?
I would prefer warbands as it seems more fun and interesting. I get bored of things in hardcore leagues that takes too long to progress and having to look out for this or that. You have to stand in circles for a buff or avoid the tempests, it's rather boring to do such things.

I prefer the old philosophy of GGG that we can just move fast from pack to pack without having to look out for things that slows our progress.

I mean I am not against challenging contents just it gets boring having to look out for things every time and slows the progress.

Are the Tempests impactful?

Yes. Some make me stop to wait for a buff that runs out before I find any mobs to attack with it. Some make me run in serpentine patterns to avoid them. And the Vaal Ice Nova killed my first character in act 4 cruel so... glad to see that gone.

Are they scary?

Some. But very few for me so far (half way through merciless).

Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?

So far the only item-affecting ones I've seen are transmogrifying and animating I believe. And while kinda funny, I wouldn't say they're in the least bit rewarding.

Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?

No. I thought Warbands looked more interesting.

i only play the hc temp leagues like many people .. so the day you badly design a hc league im out =D

hasnt happened yet

Hello Chris,

Seeing how Challenge leagues are meant to test mechanic for the base game, I find the storms to be too chaotic for a permanent addition to the core game. I would focus on trying to get interesting LOLZ-y time storms and focus on the balancing and testing "new-esque" map mods through the tempest system. The rip factor is nice. I like how the league seems non-intrusive to the HC experience. Waiting for storms is boring though and adds a psuedo-pacing to slow players down. Focus more on the feedback to the map mods and make the storms more worth to wait for.

"

Chris wrote:

I worked closely on the Tempest League (with our designer Dan) and have been looking for feedback!

Are the Tempests impactful?
Are they scary?
Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?
Are they better at higher or lower levels?
Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?
Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?
Did you play Warbands when you normally would have played Tempest?

1. Are they impactful ?

They are, even at low levels, but it's quite obvious the potential of the mod is focused on high level content/maps.

2. Are they scary ?

Some of them are, but I never found myself avoiding a zone because of a Tempest for example, which is I think what you want to know by asking if it is scary. I guess it won't change as the gear of players become better in the league over time. A big problem about the scariness of tempests is that they are for the most part rewrapped content/mod that we already know. To put it briefly, most of them are Nemesis/Bloodline/other HC mods put on the ground.

3. Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding ?

They feel special and fun, but not rewarding.

4. Are they better at higher or lower levels ?

At high levels, it's clearly there that Tempest League reach its true potential.

5. Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?

I started to see people discussing the location of specific Tempests on global 820 last night, so I'd tend to answer "Yes".

6. Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?

That's an important question for me, because the answer is no. I play Tempest because it's the HC league, but Warbands sound way more interesting than Tempest, at least on paper. Overall Tempests are pretty "meh" for me.

7. Did you play Warbands when you normally would have played Tempest?

I considered going Warbands first this time (I always play SC in the end for the league specific challenge) but I finally went for the HC league as usual. But as I said, I went for Tempest because it's the HC challenge league, surely not because of the Tempest mod.

Are the Tempests impactful?
Yes. They are impactful and overall fun.

Are they scary?
Some are. The poison on hit and Vaal Ice Nova were deadly.

Do the ones that affect items feel rewarding?
No. The transmogrifiying tempest is massively powerful but picking up a billion shards just isn't worth it.

Are they better at higher or lower levels?
Higher levels. Maps especially, although sometimes I am forced to auto leave my maps which is a good thing in a way. Also, me and my friends found 2 Coward's Trials and got the corpse devouring tempest :) Not as fun as beyond league CT but still fun. Also, looy filter on CT is amazing.

Do people share information about what Tempests are running right now?
Not outside of my friends list and guild.

Did you play Tempest because you thought it was more interesting than Warbands?
No, just because it was HC. Although Warbands looks funner, with some tweaks and improvements I feel like Tempest could be one of the best leagues yet.

To give some background on myself, I have been playing PoE on and off since early beta. Since release, I have played in every hardcore temporary league and leveled 1-3 characters up to Merciless/maps to experience the new content. I generally don't like grinding-based games, so I would typically quit soon after I got to maps and would wait for the new leagues.

Thus far, I have leveled two characters in Tempests. One a zombie/skeleton summoner (that I leveled as a pure summoner from level 2) that died at Malachai. The second was a sword/shield ranger that just entered Cruel yesterday evening.

Tempest has been simply okay.

"

Are the Tempests impactful?

No, not in the early game. While playing my ranger, tempests never affected my decision of what content to do except when deciding whether to go to Kaom or Daresso (with one caveat, I will discuss later). As a summoner, the story was a little bit different in the very early game in that I ran though zones with ghastly/molten/battering tempests quickly. Once I picked up a 1.5% minion life regen node, started running purity, and had minion life nodes/support gems, I stopped caring about them as well.

I would argue that this probably isn't too bad for normal difficulty. It would be frustrating to have to progress through a certain zone while really wanting to avoid some tempest, especially since leveling is so fast at that point.

I think the main problem is that in their current state, Tempests are somewhat at odds with how people play PoE. In the last few years, the game has become faster and faster. Most well-built characters will kill packs of blue mobs in 2 seconds or less, unless they are really struggling with gear. Since Tempests only spawn near the vicinity of your character, that means you will have killed everything on your screen before a single tempest even pops. Even if you don't, the chances that a tempest will hit mobs/you is rather low since it is so small.


Basically,
- If the tempest is harmful, you will probably position yourself outside it to begin with.
- If a tempest buffs you, you lose more time waiting for it to pop than you benefit from the 8-second buff itself.

When you are really struggling for gear, the story changes. I was using a level 24 weapon when I hit level 40. In fact, by the time I was at the point to move forward to the final bosses of Act 4, all of my armor/jewelry were still from early Act 2. I spent 5 alchs, 3 chaos, and about 60 transmutes trying to roll something and managed to get a small upgrade for my gloves and shield only. I ended up killing Malachai with a 180 tool-tip DPS spectral throw, and tempests were quite impactful at that point. When it takes you 10 seconds to clear a blue pack, grabbing a tempest that buffs your damage really helps out. Any life-regen rare was nearly impossible to kill unless I had the help of a tempest in some form. I would actually spend time kiting mobs into tempests or grabbing them myself because my atrocious DPS made it worth my time. I assume this is how it was originally intended.


Edit: In thinking some more, the early game of Tempests (I can't speak for late-game) has been mediocre. I absolutely loved Invasion league (and to a lesser extent, Nemesis) because I would spend each zone looking for the Invasion boss and desperately hoping that I could avoid it. Even in the "easy" zones, I was still afraid of what I would find in the next room and relieved when I got to the end of the level without meeting the boss. Tempest doesn't give me any of these emotions in the early game. A tempest popping up does not make me scared or excited. It's just there. Maybe I'll move because it showed up. Maybe I'll farm another zone because I want to avoid it. In any case, there's no emotional reaction. There's no excitement or fear.

Tried to do daresso in cruel, while there was the freezing tempest going on...

Daresso got the buff and with his wave attack combo would freeze me on the first hit, forcing the rest to also hit me because I don't have infinite anti-freeze flasks on me.
Being frozen is one thing, but that combo (not the one where he summons clones) did over 3k dmg on me. I've got 3,7k life luckily so I didn't rip, but goddamn. Had to give up trying to kill him cos if he crit on that combo I'd die.