Is syndicate grossly overtuned?

You can easily paint yourself into a corner during the leveling rush when you're just mashing whatever choice seems to get more loot, and then the system abruptly does a 180 and just skull fucks you when everyone has irreversibly become friends and is multi-star and the only way to possibly undo your mistake is to win a fight you can't possibly win until you're not just in level rushing gear, or reroll to whatever this season's banal meta is. Something involving totems or traps with Arc, I'm sure.

Since I've painted myself into a corner for the time being, my "strategy" basically is to avoid everything and just take the moment to stand up and stretch if there's a gank - sorry, "Intervention" - since dying makes them go away faster than trying to run, which turns out is not an option, or fight back, which just delays the inevitable til they use whatever their shotgun move is to cream me.

Due to its wild difficulty spikes I've always felt bad for the masochists that play Hardcore in PoE, but at least they'll be put out of their misery early in this league.

But to answer the thread's question - some specific encounters are absolutely overtuned. Fortress trash spawn rates are out of control considering they can shit out champions and rares. Trash in general needs a pass, whites fight like zone champions and it just gets worse from there. A couple of the named members a overpowered - Haku feels like the primary offender here with his 100-to-0-in-two-autoattacks, but Leo's also got some strange hyper-damaging attacks with little telegraphing. And one of these guys, I'm not sure who, can shotgun 12 grenades in a perfectly tight pattern in like a quarter of a second. That's silly, unless the expectation is for leveling players to keep max resists.

From easiest to most difficult

normal exiles
rare mobs
yellow beasts
alva incursions
red beasts
campaign bosses
syndicate fortifications
syndicate lab bosses
syndicate escort train bosses
syndicate assasins

based on damage dealt.. one shotting and sustain.

Playing with totems so its easy to notice how much op betrayal mobs are. Its challenging, cool.. but probably hell for hc :D

They're basically like Red beasts in the first couple days of Beastiary (stupidly tanky with dps higher than act bosses). I'm sure they'll do a balance pass shortly.

I'm at level 23, haven't run into a problem at all yet. Morb witch with junk gear. I'm far from elite and I don't truly understand the mechanics, but 95% of my choices have been for "interrogate".

It seems that the other choice give you an unidentified item, but it may power up the syndicate members or allow them to form more relationships.

When in doubt, resist immediate gratification (new item) in favor of the long game (interrogate).

I did fail on a train once by about 2%. I would say that the encounters are tuned perfectly, but that may be because I've been choosing interrogate almost exclusively.

in HC they are really fun, ripped 2 time to them already. I hate this fucker with his AOE round shit ont he floor doing automatic damage.

remind me of invasion league pre-nerf. I really like it.

I am still on my first run at 43 now.
I did kill almost all of the encounters I had. And cleared one base.
However, I had several moments during these encounters, you don't wanna have on Hardcore.
And I play a Totem build, meaning I don't even have to be stationary.

After the last one, I begin to think I should start skipping those.
You usually face two bosses, which have multiple chain AOE abilities, and they all freaking fast too.
I'd say that Syndicate is clearly overpowered for what it is.

Certainly a challenge, playing arc traps for the first time which is OP for levelling, apart from syndicate fortresses, which are super dangerous. Makes for a fun fight most of the time, but have died several times aswell, just aswell I'm playing SC.

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levko150 wrote:

And I play a Totem build, meaning I don't even have to be stationary.

Yeah, playing point blank shattering steel meaning I need to stand at nose length to get good damage on single targets. Encounters can get pretty messy so trying to do that and avoid everything can be tricky, can't recommend.

They are a bit more doable now at 50+ but up until now it was totally inaccesible due the steep gap between weapon based builds and spell based builds for the first 50 levels.

I really can't fathom new players and refugees from war torn diablo-land having a good time unless they are copy pasting the 3 most meta builds at the moment.

Incursion seems easier than in its own league or maybe the Syndicate folks are overtuned?.
There is a thread on reddit of someone that left Incursion league because it was too hard to beat the timer, He/She must having a terrible experience with Betrayal.
Its being a great league so far , I like it.