At my wit's end with Syndicate one-shots

"

Shppy wrote:

I'm right there with you, this league isn't fun at all, and it's entirely because of the shitty balance and eye cancer.

I don't like taking deaths much, but when I do I can usually either just laugh about them or look at them a few minutes later after the immediate frustration ends and say 'that was ultimately my fault'.

This league, I can't do either. There's nothing fun about the way the syndicate members kill you, i can't just laugh and say 'well, i screwed that one up', cuz... that would imply i could have ever done anything.

Most of these fights are blinding with excess particles and endless mobs and there's plenty of shit that offscreens you all the while... so many hits come from where you can't see and can't really do anything about it but run around and hope. And to make it worse the syndicate's damage is so unforgivingly high that 2 consecutive hits is pretty much death (if you're lucky enough to survive the first).

A couple days ago Haku in act 10 hit me for over 2.5k vs capped res just with his little untelegraphed shotgunning mortar-toss (not even the giant telegraphed hits, they actually did less damage than that).

Janus has gotten me several times from offscreen (and even though walls) with his bullshit spikes that kill in 2 hits in under half a second, despite the fact that I intentionally keep him at no rank and no items. And sure, it's "telegraphed"... if you can actually see him. But you can't, cuz he doesn't mind sitting offscreen and even if he's onscreen there's so much other garbage in the way that his own movements are way too hard to distinguish.


So yeah, you'll get no white-knighting from me. Despite how great the rest of 3.5 is, they did a completely trash job of designing and balancing Betrayal encounters, and it feels like they released it without even testing it a single time, cuz anyone with even the slightest experience would've caught how bad these fights feel.

"

Hausser_0815 wrote:

Just do immortal encounters until you get the lab, and run past it, no other encounter will spawn.

"

whengreg wrote:

I've had to scrap two characters this league because simply getting through the campaign wasn't working. Each and every Syndicate encounter killed me. (Bow build, and consecrated path.) I think I've died more times this league than in Delve, and almost all my Delve deaths were from me taking stupid risks in the darkness.

I'm on my third character now, (arc trap) and the weird bit is that the Syndicate works with this one. Encounters are difficult but possible, where they were consistently killing my other characters. This is despite me ranking up members at every opportunity where before I would keep ranks at 0 whenever possible, and the character on paper being a bit squishy.

My point is that the difficulty in Betrayal is almost entirely build-based. A great many builds that are otherwise fine simply do not work with Betrayal encounters. This troubles me because one of the strengths of PoE to me is the diversity of builds. Someone who has a decent understanding of the game should be able to either pick an existing build, or make their own, and be able to at least get through the campaign with it, even if it struggles with end game content. That is no longer the case with Betrayal.