3.9 has ruined path of exile for me personally

let me start off by saying I actually do support changing the game to make it a bit harder. in fact, up until t14 maps everything in the game feels pretty okay. (some bosses and metamorphs are way overtuned though)

ive been playing this game for years and decided I would finally try a super safe pathfinder/herald of agony starter for this "bow" league. I did everything in the game perfectly fine until I got to around t10 drox where I could not outdps the banner spawn time with just the agony crawler on a 5L at lvl 19.

so I went back to the drawing board, changed a bunch of shit and turned my char into a poison scaling scourge arrow build. my poisons were doing 1.5million shaper dps each, and my agony crawler was hitting for like 150-200k shaper dps on attacks. got back into progressing, got to red maps. at like t15 drox I could BARELY outdps the banner spawntime, and I noticed a HUUUUUUUUUUGE increase in resists/regen/life/damage from t12-13 mobs/bosses/metamorphs and t14-t16. its like t14 shit gets a 500% increase to all defences/damage from t13. I also was a dodge based build, but I had so many layered defenses I really did not die much at all with like 4.5k life as long as I didn't play like an idiot around bosses.

so yet again I had to reevaluate my approach. I decided I would "adapt" to the super overtuned boss league and roll a super cheesy golemancer. and let me just say at t12 maps my golems would INSTANTLY delete a metamorph, like kill it before it even spawns the 2 waves of adds. and once I get to t15, yet another huge ass wall. the spike in the tankiness of stuff jumps so hard I think it proves that ggg did not test the changes at all or at least not in high red maps. but I am able to kill a bunch of t4 elderslayers pretty easily so I just farm my watchstones.

I unlock sirus at awakening lv5 so I decide to give him a try to see if I can get a judge on my damage/tankiness.at lv86 with 4k life/2k energy shield/34% phys damage reduction/fortify/blind/dread/steelskin/1k life regen I got him to last phase first ever try. I literally only died to the tornadoes and never felt threatened by anything other than the tornadoes and entering the stupid ass arena again.

now I am at the point where I have 0 motivation to create a new build, since any progression I make in dps or tankiness is completely negated at t15 and t16 maps where everything roflstomps you regardless. I have 0 motivation to do the sirus fight again, since it was a buggy boring waitfest and gives shit rewards. I have 0 motivation to just say screw it and make a delve char, because delve rewards have been nerfed apparently and I don't enjoy delving anyways.

I really wanted to like this league and I think at this point im just done. the overtuning of stuff has completely ruined the game for me. fighting a 50million hp hydra and having to dodge stuff actually does sound fun, but when you do it and hydra also gets a mega boost to resists and damage as well, it turns into a giant slog where you have to dodge everything for an extremely long time while the super tank boss can hit you once or twice and youre dead. the atlas changes were weird but whatever. however when mathil is running builds in yellow maps because of all the overtuned nonsense then you know something is wrong.

i'd say your problem is not actually playing and optimizing your build. you hit t10 maps and went wah wah wah so you changed everything instead of upgrading.

then you say you have like 2m shaper dps and can BARELY outdps the banner phase of drox, yet here i am with about 500k dps caustic arrow taking him on with EASE. sure, it takes a little while, but i like that.

boss mechanics are not effective when the boss fight lasts only 3 seconds. when it can last 3 minutes though, its a lot more fun. its still easy enough to dodge all the things but you gotta do it like 50 times. this is what i like most about these new boss fights and extended fights, including vs the metamorphs.

so im sorry you have zero motivation to grind on and make things work. you say you've played the game for years and if thats true then im surprised you haven't quit long ago. it seems like you only like things that come easy

personally i think the game has a great progression now. there can be a bit of a lag at yellow maps, and theres often a bigger lag at red maps now. this is a gear and level check more than anything. it forces you to upgrade. however it isn't game breaking. it isn't like a JMMORPG grindfest for 7 months on a tier12 dungeon to get gear to fully upgrade again in order to do the t13 dungeon. it feels appropriate

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i'd say your problem is not actually playing and optimizing your build.

I did optimize my build....and then again when I hit a wall...and then when I hit yet another wall I rerolled a new character and optimized an even better build.

you saying you are doing drox with 500k dps I can believe. but you doing the highest tier drox with 500k dps I simply do not believe at all. btw on my latest char all the elderslayers are jokes and I can simply run in circles in the arena while they die.

also from what im seeing from youtubers/on the forums/streamers it seems im not the only one, the huge spike in tank/damage at t15 and t16 maps is just ridiculous.

These heavy mechanics bosses dont feel good for me on arpg. Some mechanics like atziri were fine (perfect boss in my opinion) but after that they kept including invul phases, one shot mechanics that I get a feeling Im playing world of warcraft with so many bs ground effects that I need to "dodge" or worst Dark souls...

They say that this game is a sucessor of diablo 2. Well guess what there is NO such bs mechanics on that game and people stay play to this day even without ANY single update in almost 2 decades...

Problem with this heavy mechanics bosses is that they invalidate all the defenses of ur character. Its simply get out or die no matter if glass cannon or full tank.

If only the endgame bosses had such thing but now a lot of map bosses have this too (10k+ damage one shots)

People will say, its possible to survive blabla with x build and xy items. I know this and this make build diversity non existent cause u dont have much freedom to chosse what skill u want to play cause building up defenses this high and still kill some endgame bosses is not very easy and a couple of skills can scale this high (skelies...)

All my opinion ofcorse. Hoping they fix this mess after the holidays. Till there not spending 1 cent and suggest others to do the same.

Agree with your post even though I havent reached maps yet. I'm a bit of an alt-o-holic.

I feel like harder bosses are fine, but the ramp up from face-rolling content to being wrecked by a boss is not right at this point.

I hate using this cliche, but it does feel like things are a bit overtuned in the current state just from a metamorph and act bosses perspective.

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IHellBoundI wrote:

They say that this game is a sucessor of diablo 2. Well guess what there is NO such bs mechanics on that game and people stay play to this day even without ANY single update in almost 2 decades...

Diablo 2 was pathetically easy after you did it once or twice though. It's why 90% of people still playing it are playing mods to make it more like this.

Median XL absolutely destroys everything in regular Diablo. And it's stuffed with bullshit bosses like these that people suck too much to enjoy.

"

lalalazila wrote:

you saying you are doing drox with 500k dps I can believe. but you doing the highest tier drox with 500k dps I simply do not believe at all.

doesn't matter to me.
maybe you don't have as much damage as you think you do then, i dunno. i don't have awakener level 8 yet, but im at 5 and doing these guardians just fine. takes a couple minutes for drox, he's definitely the longest fight out of them all but still no issue.

oh ya im SSF too btw, so no buying my way into anything.
though once i get a chin sol drop i'll be rolling a different build capable of a LOT more damage

I have similar sentiment as OP so I named my latest character thematically Subjective Ambivalence.

I am also an altoholic, thus 4 chars 85+ in this league already, + 3 deleted 60+.

1. Fire Trap Ascendant - dot dmg
Leveling was fine, clear speed fell off and i wanted a bit more zum zum playstyle

2. Alternating Ele Hit EE abuser Golemancer - hit a wall since the single target is horrible despite hitting 21/23 Ele hit on my first Double corruption
It is not tanky, it is not performing well on single target. Yet it is clearing god! so I cannot dislike the build, yet

After that I attempted Sirus, without any investigation, i died 6 times without ever spawning the boss to the ground

3. Brutus sPringles - Ascendant Warchief Totems - so I went the slow and tanky way. Strenght stacking is popular this league so i was kinda horrified about the item prices, yet i managed to complete the build (without jewels) under 3 ex. Decent helmet, shoes i had, 6L for 1ex and i basically played - cleared map in under a minute, relog and kill morf + boss (in t14+) with finger up my nose

Then I've met Haunted Mansion boss + his metamorf - MASSIVE CHAOS DMG so i lost 20% xp on my wander and 40% xp on my bosser :D

I attempted Sirus for second time with some investigation, got fucked twice in last phase by staircase since i was unable to start the last phase on different spot. So complete rip at around 10%

4. my latest - Ass CoC CI. So apparently Chaos dmg this league is a thing, so i was looking for some way to get Chaos res under control. Nothing more simple than CI.
It seems like CI Vortex has not enough dmg to actually do anything in the Sirus last phase since he is teleporting all the time and I do not want to play Essence Drain.
So far despite my hate toward the new atlas where i got stuck trying to spawn 4th stone on one region, apparently the guardians have "queue" and you cannot skip one in favor to another one - so i did 30+ maps for no reason, then after shuffling stones in my atlas and doing random maps, i managed to spawn Drox or what's his face in a corner where he was available.

From that point i am kinda enjoying my hate against this league. Wasting all my currency on trying to craft CI gear and reading forum more than mapping. Avoiding Reddit actively as the circle jerk of redditors is annoying after a while. Maybe I will be even able to kill Sirus till end of this league.


so TLDR
- league sux because it is possible to make wrong choice
- there are many bugs and unclear mechanics added and it is no fun to figure our stuff by failure since you do not have unlimited amount of attempts on things in PoE
- too many changes at once (difficulty buff, atlas change, skill nerfs) are harsh on me because I got used to the game for past 2 years and enjoyed it.

You didn't even touch on the worst part.

The game is garbage and will be going forward, they won't simply revert changes.

The game is crap and it will be forever now. And they will sit around and wonder why they have 7 people playing next league.

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Thornwalker69 wrote:

You didn't even touch on the worst part.

The game is garbage and will be going forward, they won't simply revert changes.

The game is crap and it will be forever now. And they will sit around and wonder why they have 7 people playing next league.

LOL, yeah we have never heard that before.