Porcupine Goliath spike damage is ridiculously over tuned...

There are definitely bugs with those monsters.

Like .... I got a character that "jumps" in and just instantly blow up the whole pack.
Usually, I take literally 0 damage from them ( like they don't touch me ).

If they move a bit after I got in the middle of the pack, and then blow them up .... I can easiy take 6k+ damage, like easily, this char hasn't ripped to them (yet maybe).

I also doesn't get that how melee has to always do more to stay alive than any other class.

You have to stack armor, -like it even does anything nowadays-, build up a huge life pool. Fortify. CWDT+IC, totem as well.

All this to just get to the point where other classes start.

Then after you realize that all this won't even keep you alive from monsters like f-ing porcupine goliaths.

This has to stop. Armor needs to mean something again. Porcupine goliaths need a check on their privilege for oneshotting just about every melee build.

I'm happy that all of you somehow managed to not RIP to them. It's not a pressing matter as I don't play HC since 2013, but I'd like to get on with my char without this irrational fear from porcupine goliaths.

Please also make sure that blue mobs don't get separated from the main pack and lure people to their deathtraps. It's the players who needs to enjoy this game not the mobs.

Please find a way to make monsters challenging in some other ways.

Thanks....

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Peterking72 wrote:

I also doesn't get that how melee has to always do more to stay alive than any other class.

Based on my own experiences: Ranged without shield and without fortify has more problems. Even using Basalt I need to stay away pretty far to be reasonably safe. But with tanky setup (shield, charges, fortify, armour, evasion, ...) I can just kill them all while being right next to the pack. But I have not played a 2H melee setup for a long time so I do not know about that.

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Peterking72 wrote:

but I'd like to get on with my char without this irrational fear from porcupine goliaths.

If you believe they are that dangerous - why call it "irrational fear". From your POV it is then a "rational fear"...

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Peterking72 wrote:

Please find a way to make monsters challenging in some other ways.

Yes to that. The biggest threats from mobs should not be the "after death" effects. I dont think Porcupines are as bad as you think but death effect mobs (volatiles and bearers) being the most dangerous mobs out there is not a game design I can agree with.

Bearers are the least dangerous. At least in their case you can get out of the blast radius.
In the case of the porcupine goliath on death spike attack the blast radius is virtually infinite. I'm certain that the projectile would be capable to traverse the entire length of the area/map if nothing stopped it. Like a wall or other terrain objects.

I called it an irrational fear because it is a fear that originates from a virtual environment. So rationally speaking I don't have to fear for my life. However, since the character I play is essentially my extension into the virtual world, I fear it's death to some degree as if it would be my own.
That is the fear I call irrational.

I can maybe best describe it with Voldemort and his horcruxes. He started to feel their loss and his mortality toward the end when there were only a few left: the closest ones.

So based on how close you are to the character you are playing is how strong this irrational fear can grow.

Another good example is when you were a child. I'm sure there were a game in your childhood where you feared to go to a certain boss-fight or engage a certain type of monster because you somehow had this irrational fear about it. You can't really explain why, but it was there.
For example when Jazz Jackrabbit 2 came out in 1998, (I was 12 at the time) I always feared to go to the Bubba Boss' arena at the end of the level. Fortunately I was able to overcome it and finally beat the game.

Back to PoE.

So about more challenge in other ways:

Here I can bring up Dungeon Siege 2: It has puzzles in it. They're not hard puzzles, but still add a bit more layer to the game. So PoE could use this and even make an elaborate puzzle that not everyone would instantly figure out.
Secret areas on the map that are only acessable after you complete a secret mission. For example you find clues in certain lore text to an NPC in a secret location. You collect the pieces of a map where you can meet him. He gives you a quest in a secret location you have to find. There could be hidden objects in certain map areas that aren't always there, so you would need to find the right instance.
Monsters that are only damageable by a specific/secret weapon. Monsters that could leech back the damage you dealt them as life if they hit you with an AoE based attack etc...

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Peterking72 wrote:

Bearers are the least dangerous. At least in their case you can get out of the blast radius.

Only if you can see them. Try the lightning (or cold?) ones in water with some other stuff going on. Or the fire ones if playing with HoA. With their "slow fading into existence" gfx they are designed to deceive the human eye. In combination with inevitable gfx spam it is sometimes very hard to spot them.

They may also be affected by the "invisible effect" bug - you leave area and come back later but the effects are no longer visible. But they still blow up.

Tight quarters with rubberbanding (happens with lockstep also) adds extra threat level.

It is also more difficult to spot the originating monsters - for some monster types the purple colorization is barely visible.

Furthermore it is much harder to build against them.

I would rank them: Volatile > Bearer >> Porcupine

Have anybody considered the fact that maybe ..... the porcupines projectiles might have the farshot modifier ?
I mean, the whinning I've seen on this forum so far are mostly cases of offscreen porcupine killing, or at least on range characters.

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Have anybody considered the fact that maybe ..... the porcupines projectiles might have the farshot modifier ?
I mean, the whinning I've seen on this forum so far are mostly cases of off screen porcupine killing, or at least on range characters.

Mine was on screen, at least the one I decided to attack was on screen. What I didn't know was that his buddies were so close behind him that my sunder got them too. I certainly did not expect a blue to die from just one blow. They're usually more tanky. OR they just "saw" a good opportunity fo "oneshoting" and they took it.


"On the court hearing of my case (All participants are revived for the sake of the case):

-Judge (to porcupine goliath): How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?
-Porcupine goliath: I am innocent! RNG made me do it!
-My character: That's a dirty lie! You will fry you bastards, you will fry in hell!!

---A loud banter brokes out.---

-Judge: Order, order!!! Calm down people!!!

---They ask for the witnesses---

Witness 1 (undead black guard soldier): The thruth, nothing but the truth, so help me GGG!

I was minding my own business, killing noob exiles when I heard a loud tremor, the ground was shaking as if it were to fall into pieces. Next thing I see was a fiery inferno of rocks, earth and helluva globs of lava coming my way in a straight line. On the other end of this inferno was a madman, laughing and cursing like a bar wench on fire... Then I was dead.

---The other witness hearings all go in the same manner with minor adjustments, sometimes favoring the victim, sometimes the accused.---

Judge: The jury will now retire and will return with the verdict in a short success.

After 2 hours of waiting...

Judge: All stand please.

The jury decided that the verdict is: Han shot first!!!"


There must be some truth to that far shot, because if I stand in point blank range to the porcupine, it's spikes do less damage than otherwise. In case of a group though you can't stand equally close to all porcupines and the cumulative damage would nuke you anyway. Death by a thousand cuts.

Anyway, I hope the devs make the right call.

Well I never had issues with my "melee" chars. Lacerate did fine with them, although this was because he hardly ever got hit by them, my Juggernaut with Groundslam had literally no issue with them (he didn't take any damage). And my Pathfinder also has no issues with them.

I had issue with my Chaosstorm Trapper and with my Deaths Opus Assassin, so maybe they do more damage over distance, but you can also avoid them and are hardly hit by many of them, even though my trapper took serious damage he was never really at danger of dying because they spread out so much over distance and he still had them on screen so he knew that they would explode. I had more issues with the Assassin because Barrage often killed them Offscreen due to Pierce, but again they are not dangerous enough to kill you. The only time I kinda died due to them was while fighting something else and got surprised by the damage but then again I actually died to the other thing, after taking heavy damage from the Porcupines and I could have avoided it by being more careful during the fight.

Long Live Thistlesage!

Can you tell us what kind of defenses you had and what kind of map it was (tier, damage mods like crit and added elemental)?

I can see them being nasty in a -max double or triple added elemental, but other than that... even with my 4.8k HP ranger I have no problem whatsoever with them, and they pretty much always die in one shot. In T13+ maps they also seem to not be very common. Nerfing them would just make the game easier, and make all-out-damage clearspeed builds even more prevalent, which would be bad.

With my Marauder back in the days I had even less problems with them, but I have not played melee in a long while.