Daresso's Dream & boss difficulty scaling

Is your definition of "fun" to zerg arena gates by rare/NORMAL mobs +20 times?

Sorry but as a new player this makes me not want to play the game at all.

And whats up with the fact that you can zerg bosses and they never reset...it doesnt feel like you actually deserve the kills and its more an issue about how good you are at zerging than actually defeating your foe skillfully.

Do you guys just...cope? Is this fun to you?

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infinity123 wrote:

its more an issue about how good you are at zerging

'Being good' and 'zerging' don't really compute, the boss will fall sooner or later no matter what :)

Extra difficulty before endgame is mostly welcomed by veterans, but I can imagine newcomers hitting tough times as early as act4 normal. It will probably get toned down somewhat as time passes, it always does.

My biggest personal gripe is the game feels a bit too long now even with content shavings and difficulty graph turned into an even more prominent sawtooth than it already was, it was a good time to drop one playthrough, I think.

pretty much everyone I chat with and posts I see on the net people say the same...Act 4 arena is stupidly broken.

The reason I came to poe over Diablo is exactly its difficulty...but this...this is just..not fun at all, sorry. And my build is even researched, I know how mechanics work and about the most crucial skill gems.

What a bunch of whiners.

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infinity123 wrote:

pretty much everyone I chat with and posts I see on the net people say the same...Act 4 arena is stupidly broken.

The reason I came to poe over Diablo is exactly its difficulty...but this...this is just..not fun at all, sorry. And my build is even researched, I know how mechanics work and about the most crucial skill gems.

what is broken in act 4?
i have finished all of the game except malachai in merciless mode and haven't found anything broken. and this is in a new league with a fresh charachter starting with nothing.

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kompaniet wrote:

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infinity123 wrote:

pretty much everyone I chat with and posts I see on the net people say the same...Act 4 arena is stupidly broken.

The reason I came to poe over Diablo is exactly its difficulty...but this...this is just..not fun at all, sorry. And my build is even researched, I know how mechanics work and about the most crucial skill gems.

what is broken in act 4?
i have finished all of the game except malachai in merciless mode and haven't found anything broken. and this is in a new league with a fresh charachter starting with nothing.

Sigh...

But are *you* a new player?

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infinity123 wrote:

Do you guys just...cope? Is this fun to you?

I liked Daresso's Dream. I found it to be the best part of Act 4. Best atmosphere, best gameplay. Best everything except the boss fight, which was just as disappointing as all the other major boss fights. I just plunked down my unlinked Flame Totem and ran in circles, because standing still while using my 4L Frost Blades was just asking for a lot of pain, and I'd run out of flasks while accomplishing very little. Maybe all those fights would've been a lot more fun if I'd found a decent wand in Normal difficulty. But I did not. They all seem to have 'damage to spells' now instead of regular elemental damage.

Okay, so there was one thing that really annoyed me in Daresso's Dream: The stupid swordsman would start monologuing right before I was attacked, so I couldn't hear his ghostly voice going on and on about whatever he was going on about. I could read the text afterwards, but that's just not the same. Did no one in the beta test get annoyed by that? What is even the point of triggering stuff like that when monsters are attacking right at the entrance?

Also, for any new player: Did you get enough life nodes in the skill tree? I didn't do that the first time, because the easiness of the game was teaching me that I didn't need that. But in Act 3 Normal things started getting dangerous, so I started taking various defense nodes (Evasion and Energy Shield). Which was mostly a waste, because life nodes is the best and most basic defense. I find this game is very, very bad at teaching me anything about what I'm doing wrong. Have to read the forum for that.

@Gillsing: Well most boss fights are much easier when you can just slam down a totem to do DPS, while you get to focus on running around and dodging stuff. Its quite different experience as melee character though. Or anything build that uses skills other than the cookie-cutter ones.

I play a Flame Surge caster (lvl 59) and didn't have much problems with the arena itself. Although I did find Daresso a bit tricky. Some of his attacks are difficult to avoid. My main problem with most act 4 bossen on cruel is that the damage is so bursty. You dodge most and then get hit by an attack you instantly drop by like 80% (with 2k health and max resists).

I must admit that during the Malachai battle in phase 2, at some point gave up trying to avoid stuff that would instant kill me (or close to it) and instead went for zerging him down. I didn't find it much fun at all. You are forced to move around so much that you don't have a lot of time to cast stuff. Plus, the guy has a lot of life. This causes the battle to take for ages.

Melee characters can use unlinked Flame Totems too. They should have the Strength and red sockets for that. It just does less damage if they have no elemental damage nodes. But they should also be tankier while running around, and take much less damage from minions.

And Frost Blades is melee. Granted, melee with +14 weapon range, and three projectiles shooting out of the target, but in a small arena with any of the major bosses I didn't feel that it mattered if I was trying to attack the boss directly or trying to attack the boss indirectly by shooting those projectiles from one of the minions. It was the 'standing still and using a skill' part that was too dangerous for me to keep up for any length of time.

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Gillsing wrote:

Melee characters can use unlinked Flame Totems too. They should have the Strength and red sockets for that. It just does less damage if they have no elemental damage nodes. But they should also be tankier while running around, and take much less damage from minions.

Well, if a melee attacker build needs to use spell totems to kill a boss that would be a huge design fail.