Too many deaths to be fun

I've been playing ARPGs since the original Diablo.
I spent many years playing D2, and then D3.
I've played Torchlight 1 and 2, Grim Dawn, and may other ARPGs.
What I'm saying is, I know ARPGs, they are almost exclusively what I play.
I enjoy POE, yet I hate it.
I really enjoy the game when I'm not dying. I rarely die in other ARPGs. I don't push high rifts in D3, as I really hate dying.
I've been playing POE on and off for a few years, and quite a lot in the past year.
I think I finally have understood how not to die *all* the time, but I just find the game very frustrating.
The recent changes for Betrayal seem to just be weirdly hard.
The encounters are difficult, and then around act 5 (if I remember correctly) the assassins start turning up, mid-fight with other mobs.
Is it just me that thinks this game is too hard for the average player?
I'm not clueless at these games. I have invested lots of time trying to understand what I need to do to survive longer. I always use builds from people that are known in the community, and always the beginner builds.
I'm about to give up this league, as I just can't take the deaths anymore.
I'm only at Act 7. My resistances are above 70% (and have been since the very start of act 6, as I overcapped them before the end of Act 5), my health is 1.5k (which I think is acceptable).
I'm mostly not dying on the boss fights as I know placement is very important in this game.
My characters DPS is stupid high (GC Miner).
But I keep thinking, "Maybe if I just avoid the betrayal fights" (which you can't for the assassins of course.)
I can accept the deaths before Act 6, but knowing I'm losing XP just makes it unbearable (terrible mechanic in my opinion).

It's frustrating, as I like playing the game....but I really hate dying. So I think I may just give up on this game, as I don't see my frustration getting any better from here on this league, and I probably won't come back again if I don't finish the league.

POE has so many good things, and that is all ruined by it being too hard, with no way of adjusting that.

"

Kerrin wrote:

My resistances are above 70% (and have been since the very start of act 6, as I overcapped them before the end of Act 5), my health is 1.5k (which I think is acceptable).

1.5k life is on the very low end in act7. Try to stack about 300hp per act to deal with regular content comfortably.
Syndicate members are clearly stronger than the regular content, so you´ll have a really bad time encountering them.

Stacking more life will help, but thats not the only thing to consider.
Try to stack many different layers of defense. Just a huge lifepool wont cut it.

You could utilize defensive curses (either selfcast or linked to cast when dmg taken or linked to blasphemy to turn curses into auras), a cwdt + immortal call setup, a tiny bit block, armor, evasion, dodge.. whatever can be utilized with the least investment.

Layered defenses are important, because if you push say block to max (75%), you´ll feel very strong most of the time - until your block fails and you get rekt.
If you have some dodge as well, that might save you in case block fails.


best of luck and feel free to ask

1.5k life is absolutely nothing.

"

Orbaal wrote:

1.5k life is on the very low end in act7.

At first I thought you were listing the problems for the OP and were saying 5k life is the low end. I was all like whaaaa. I've got 3k and 1k ES with maxed resists.

So yea, 1.5k life is drastically low. I spent ~4c last night on gear getting my life up.

If you're not spending 2/3 of your passive points on life nodes and pathing to them, you're doing it wrong.

Welcome to path of oneshots.

Instant logout ruins everything.

"

Kerrin wrote:

My resistances are above 70% (and have been since the very start of act 6, as I overcapped them before the end of Act 5), my health is 1.5k (which I think is acceptable).

`

Your gear has almost no life on it at all.

Helm: 0
Chest: 26
Glove: 17
Boots: 22
Amulet: 12
Rings: 0
Belt: 85

There`s a huge amount of room to increase your life with better gear. And on the passive tree you have prioritized dps instead of extending out the tree to all the life clusters you will be taking.

Levels come fast and easy in the early game. That is when you need to get the skeleton of your passive tree built. Then later when passive points come more slowly, every point spent is significant because all the dps and life you are taking does not require any travel to reach.

You are going for density early on, filling out all the traps clusters fully and taking the crit clusters. That`s a mistake. You should be extending out and reaching all the important stuff, and grabbing more life early on then ramping up the dps later, when it is actually needed.

1.5k life is right around what I like to have when I do the lab. And that is usually done on arrival in Act 4. And I`m not talking about tanky Marauder builds.

That is exactly what my life was at the start of act 4 on my Elementalist Witch when she did the lab.

The Betrayal mobs certainly can be dangerous. But I`m not seeing the difficulties some people are describing.

In your case, you are literally playing a glass cannon. No surprise that you are dying.


I`ve also played the Diablo games, and Torchlight, and Grim Dawn. One thing all those games do is pretty much hand survivability to you. You don`t have to actually `build for it` the way you do in POE. That is what you are missing in your thinking.

"

Orbaal wrote:

"

Kerrin wrote:

My resistances are above 70% (and have been since the very start of act 6, as I overcapped them before the end of Act 5), my health is 1.5k (which I think is acceptable).

1.5k life is on the very low end in act7. Try to stack about 300hp per act to deal with regular content comfortably.
Syndicate members are clearly stronger than the regular content, so you´ll have a really bad time encountering them.

Stacking more life will help, but thats not the only thing to consider.
Try to stack many different layers of defense. Just a huge lifepool wont cut it.

You could utilize defensive curses (either selfcast or linked to cast when dmg taken or linked to blasphemy to turn curses into auras), a cwdt + immortal call setup, a tiny bit block, armor, evasion, dodge.. whatever can be utilized with the least investment.

Layered defenses are important, because if you push say block to max (75%), you´ll feel very strong most of the time - until your block fails and you get rekt.
If you have some dodge as well, that might save you in case block fails.


best of luck and feel free to ask

What he said! +1

I fucking cant stand it anymore that people come on the forums and cry about how hard the syndicate members are..when i then check their skill tree and see no defensive nodes taken and 2k life i am just scratching my head.

Yeah, the syndicate members are hard to fight and thats good. It's a challenge everytime you step up to them and you gotta be careful. A welcoming change for me in comparision to the mindless steamrolling of mobs in maps.

If you dont want to get melted by syndicate, think about improving your defensive layers and stop crying about this awesome league content.

When i play dark souls I died a lot but I still have fun, really not the case in this game.

the devs in GGG want too much in this single game, if I want to have mechanical chanllege I won't think to play this game in the first place