What difficulty scaling?

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silumit wrote:

If that was Triskeriaki then you rage is 100% justified.

Hahahahaha this guy should replace hillock

Ok, characters unhidden for those who were asking to take a look.

My issue isn't so much just getting used to what attacks they use and how to avoid them. My issue is that it is almost impossible a vast majority of the time. Piety on Merciless hits with that stupid lightning attack before she even gets on your screen. Even if I do happen to dodge it 9 times out of 10 - that 10th time will 1-shot me. I suppose I could completely redo my gear and stack more resists, but I feel like that would majorly gimp my DPS and thus make boss fights last longer (increasing the changes I will get 1-shot by the one attack I don't evade / dodge). I duo a lot with a friend of mine who is playing a Witch, and it seems like he doesn't have to sacrifice offensive stats to stack resists. He blows through maps faster than I do (higher DPS) and never seems to have a problem surviving. The main difference is how the characters are designed... As a Witch he has a solid health pool supported by an even larger Energy Shield. The Ranger gets evade / dodge instead, but they seem worthless in the boss fights.

I don't need the game to be "easier". I just want it to make sense. It drives me crazy that the game is either a cake walk or 1-shot death spam. Losing an hour of leveling progress because of one attack from one stupid boss mob just frustrates the crap out of me.

Furthermore, most of your items are really low base types. Sharkskin Tunic is level 53. Fencer Helm is level 43. Lioneye's Paws are level 30 (I guess you have them for the str/dex). Snakebite at least is level 58 and is an actual build item. Death's Harp is level 32 and yours isn't even the upgraded version.

Upgrading your items will easily double your damage and at least double your survivability. Most likely triple or more if you get life rolls on your items as Vipermagi suggested. You should also use pure evasion items when possible since your tree has no support for armour or energy shield.

You barely have any resistances either. Unless I missed something important they are all negative? That's a recipe for disaster. By that point your elemental resistances should be capped at 75% and chaos resistance should be at -20% or more, preferably over 0%.

It is really appealing to grab lots of damage but the reality is you need to focus at least equally on defense. Remember, a dead hero deals a lot less damage than a live one. I started doing a whole bunch better when I got my defenses worked out. And don't worry about keeping up with anyone else's clear speed. Play at your own pace. It is your own exploration of Wraeclast that will teach you what you need to know to survive. That and asking questions here.

Practical matters:

Get life and resists on every non weapon piece of gear until all resists are capped (75% in merc zones or 135% in your hideout). You should be aiming for no less than 65 life on any piece of gear you plan on keeping for low level maps. That is a bare minimum. You need more than that to go further.

Plan your tree to hit all nearby life and on the way to build defining nodes. Fill in with damage increases.

Your main source of damage is the synergies of your build. If losing a few percents here or there gimps your build, then your not building correctly. In POE you MUST learn to build or you'll keep hitting a wall. The more you understand the further back that wall will be pushed.

Get move speed and a movement skill and use them. Never stop moving. It is better to hit and move than to keep still and hit repeatedly. (Melee is often an exception to this, but I digress ). The best way to avoid taking damage is to not be where the damage is. Tentacle miscreations are a great example of this. They shoot repeatedly in a single direction, then turn and shoot in a single direction. And they usually do it as a pack. If you move just as they start shooting, you should never get hit by them.

Never underestimate the power of good flasking. I'm terrible at this but I'll share something I've been doing lately. For my evasion characters, I have ditched by quick silver flask and rolled a jade flask of adrenaline. I use it like a quick silver for the move speed. If you kill quickly enough you can keep it up all the time. IT will help you manually dodge attacks and give you extra evasion as a bonus. Then I also carry a a jade flask of reflexes. AS soon as I see a pack I pop that one. I alternate between the two jades while fighting trying to overlap them. For armour characters, I do the same but with a basalt flask of adrenaline and a granite of iron skin. OH, quality them to 20% before you transmute them. Just something I've been doing lately.

Hope this helps.


Wolf

I would argue that there is bad difficulty scaling, but pretty much the opposite of what op says.

There isn't much difference between t15 map or t11 map mobs. a decent to good build facerolls mobs in those maps and even t15 bosses are fairly squishy nowadays. imo t15 mobs should be quite scary, as they are part of the higher content. instead, its only made that only guardians and some map bosses are for
people who want to face off against hard shitl

and then theres the gap between t15 bosses and guardians, which is quite immense. even a white map guardian is quite more dangerous than most t15 bosses.

as a result, the map system yet again ends up like an iceberg, where only the tip is challenging.
out of 16 tier of maps, only one last tier is truly challenging and a lot of those tiers pretty much blend in with each other. why cant regular mobs hit like in poorjoys at t15 ?

this is best exhibited when playing either a subpar build or fotm op build.
whereas subpar builds can somewhat do high tier 15 maps with ok mods they can and a lot of times get absolutely wrecked against guardians.

same with fotm, places where you can go absolute glass cannon and faceroll shit with instant leech, now you are facing real one shots vs guardians, especially with nasty map mods

I take it almost as an insult GGG only thinks a 16th of all tiers should be challenging and truly endgame for people who want to tackle endgame content.

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rade0n wrote:

"

silumit wrote:

If that was Triskeriaki then you rage is 100% justified.

Hahahahaha this guy should replace hillock

Hey, have mercy on that 50% of players, let them at least reach Brutus :\

"

Hope this helps.

Wolf

Your post had a lot of good suggestions. Thanks for that! I think I'm going to take a break from the Ranger and try another class for Breach. I'll see what happens for my next attempt at POE.