Too hard even for veterans (or why I quit after making Black Cane build)

I've made some posts with my negative feedback before but then I decided to give it another chance. And as the title suggests it didn't go so well.

I play on and off since 2011 and consider myself semi-casual veteran. I dont have much time to do 40/40 each league with mirror tier gear, but I do occasional 37/40. The game becomes increasingly difficult, even more builds become unplayable with each league and in metamorph it's put to the absolute extreme. Who's the target audience for this, if even experienced players find it too hard and time consuming?

My starter was a lancing steel crit champion. Please, take a look at it in my profile. I was making it by myself, pretty hard to go wrong with phys skills right? I had layered defences with some armor, some evasion/dodge, fortify and block. In some leagues back it could've been a playable character, but in Metamorph I felt kile it was my weakest character EVER played. Red maps were impossible to play, metamorphs sometimes were so hard I wasted all 6 portals on them. Other mechanics were unplayable too (blight and even incursions) with the hp and physred buffs. It's hard to describe how demotivating it is to waste so mych playtime on something so weak.

But I know the melee and attack skills in general are pretty much unplayable today so I had it coming. For the mext character I tried to make something a bit more advanced. I made self cast Bladefall Guardian utilizing two new uniques- Black Cane and Crown of the Inward eye. PLEASE take a look at it in my profile. My thought process was this:
- Black Cane requires to have max number of phantasms so I chose guardian to have perma Onslaught and give minions ES with discipline and mana reserved conversion so I dont invest in minion life
- Herald of Purity gives phys to spells and further supplements the choice of Guardian ascendancy
- I go low life because I benefit from life and mana reservation conversion and it gives extra damage
- With Crown of the Inward Eye I also imcrease my damage a bit since having life, mana and es becomes a direct benefit for my damage and EHP.
- I use spell crit to multiply the flat phys added from the Black Cane.
- I have shied charge with fortify and constant 3 of all charges, the node for chance to block added as spell damage since I have occasional 75% block from guardian passive

Sounds reasonable, right? I used 3rd party resourses like PoB to plan it out for maximum point efficiency, I used trading to buy my gear, I have some knowledge of the mechanics and I didn't pick anything wrong or not beneficial to my build so it must work to some extent, doesn't it? WRONG, it turned out to be just a little bit better then my starter but unplayable on red maps too. The damage is lack luster, speed clear is also trash (I fail half of the blights and incursions, clear like the 1/4th if the legib monolith) and the self cast nature of it makes it even worse in the current state of the game where you have to dodge more then you have time to deal damage. Survivability is also laughably bad, I die to almost every metamorph.

That's why I quit the game. It discourages any creativity even tho "make your own build, so much to choose from" is the game's PR point. The difficulty is overtuned so it increasese the time and currency requirements on players making it stressful and unsatisfying to play. You're literally forced to play a dosed of meta builds and it's still hard, but unplayable otherwise. I thought I'm in the top, let's say 20% of the playerbase but if it's too hard for me, how is it for the average player? Where's the fking new player accessibility if it hard filteres even OLD players? I was able to kill Uber elder no sweat in previous leagues, but now with "we have to nerf players" approach I cant do red maps. I regret spending so mych holyday time on PoE and I lost all hope for PoE 2 with the way this game is going.

I think, this is a result of all the "Oh no, so much powercreep"-post from people, who aren"t even capable of killing shaper (or ever reach him). They saw all the awesome mirror tier items that were posted on reddit, knowing, that they will never ever make or afford something like that. They were angry and jealous, they cannot archive a few seconds shaper kill by themselves. To make this feeling go away, they start complaining. Writing a angry reddit post doesn't take the time and effort to dive really deep into the mechanics of the game and lern and study it for hundreds of hours. It is the fastest and easiest way to clear their anger.
But in their lack of foresight, they didn't calculate that - when GGG really deside to do something against it, - they wouldn't get any better or stronger themselves. Nerfing the top 10% of the players would make the game for the rest much more harder and perhaps even demotivating.

People are going through way too many hoops to justify their opinion while at the same time trying to appear to be just your average joe.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

People are going through way too many hoops to justify their opinion while at the same time trying to appear to be just your average joe.

So u accuse him of being a pro trying to appear casual?

What hoops?

What are you talking about?

Everyone in these forums (99% of the time) just throws out an opinion, including you and me.

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juyevon wrote:

I think, this is a result of all the "Oh no, so much powercreep"-post from people, who aren"t even capable of killing shaper (or ever reach him). They saw all the awesome mirror tier items that were posted on reddit, knowing, that they will never ever make or afford something like that. They were angry and jealous, they cannot archive a few seconds shaper kill by themselves. To make this feeling go away, they start complaining. Writing a angry reddit post doesn't take the time and effort to dive really deep into the mechanics of the game and lern and study it for hundreds of hours. It is the fastest and easiest way to clear their anger.
But in their lack of foresight, they didn't calculate that - when GGG really deside to do something against it, - they wouldn't get any better or stronger themselves. Nerfing the top 10% of the players would make the game for the rest much more harder and perhaps even demotivating.

Well, I bet you're already bored with the league having lvl 100 meta build on SC and lvl 90 meta build on HC. You will get the last challenge done and quit the league. Meanwhile I made two worthless characters and also quit the league. That is the current problem - the gap between top players and the rest of the playerbase is increasing drastically and it doesn't benefit anyone. You quit out if boredom and we quit because of the dufficulty curve (or Everest Peak rather). But on old leagues my skill level and knowledge was enough to have fun playing and finish the leagues with all content cleared and 37/40 done. Now the game loses players like me. Thats why I'm giving my feedback, to show why it's losing some players.

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Leninisalive wrote:

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juyevon wrote:

I think, this is a result of all the "Oh no, so much powercreep"-post from people, who aren"t even capable of killing shaper (or ever reach him). They saw all the awesome mirror tier items that were posted on reddit, knowing, that they will never ever make or afford something like that. They were angry and jealous, they cannot archive a few seconds shaper kill by themselves. To make this feeling go away, they start complaining. Writing a angry reddit post doesn't take the time and effort to dive really deep into the mechanics of the game and lern and study it for hundreds of hours. It is the fastest and easiest way to clear their anger.
But in their lack of foresight, they didn't calculate that - when GGG really deside to do something against it, - they wouldn't get any better or stronger themselves. Nerfing the top 10% of the players would make the game for the rest much more harder and perhaps even demotivating.

Well, I bet you're already bored with the league having lvl 100 meta build on SC and lvl 90 meta build on HC. You will get the last challenge done and quit the league. Meanwhile I made two worthless characters and also quit the league. That is the current problem - the gap between top players and the rest of the playerbase is increasing drastically and it doesn't benefit anyone. You quit out if boredom and we quit because of the dufficulty curve (or Everest Peak rather). But on old leagues my skill level and knowledge was enough to have fun playing and finish the leagues with all content cleared and 37/40 done. Now the game loses players like me. Thats why I'm giving my feedback, to show why it's losing some players.

You are absolutely right. My goal is 40/40 and than I devote myself to other projects. At some point, when you clime the wall you hit, the game gets easier. Once I hit level 100, the game ist more relaxed. I don't want to play a meta character, but it is almost nessessary. I deleted a CoC assassin, who was very fun to play, but bite the grass to often.
I think, that the game is intentionally programed, that not all people can archive everything with random characters they choose. I love the game for its walls, and to calculate ways to clime it. Even with playing a meta, it is hard enough.

But I am fully with you with all you wrote. I think that GGG should except, that some players are able to break to chains. But they should be aware, that the majority of players so want to have fun and motivation to play the game, and "nerfing" the top 10 % is not the solution. At this point I don't feel a nerf. Bosses take a bit longer, but that was it. But for more casual players it might be a pain and result in lack of motivation.
The is no more game to play, when GGG employees cannot pay their bills anymore, because they balance the game for a minority of players and lost the majority.

agreed, have no idea what the devs were thinking about when buffing mobs.
build diversity is non-existend if we are talking about an endgame.

Thanks for the positive reply. Good luck on that last challenge. Could you by any chance take a look at my characters and pick out some mistakes? I know the biggest mistake was not copying OP meta. But I tried to utilize two NEW uniques as much as my knowledge if the game allows me and I still can not believe how terrible it turned out. Is it me, or these items (frome new end game boss, none the less) are so useless when built with the direct approach? I suppose it's possible to find some hidden interaction with some legacy unique but this build is the limit for me. And it was really discouraging to waste my time on it.

I wouldn't call it too hard, just pointless and too thread-mill-like. Even if I make a character that has only occasional problems in high tier red maps, what do I really gain? Have another go at absurd RNG/grind challenges? Farm a few more exalted orbs?

Exp gain after 95 is so butchered, I've not bothered to level past that ever; its not like your build will improve past this point. For currency drops its better to run more maps than it is to run higher maps. End game drops nothing you can't easily buy (and in most cases nothing of value for your build anyway).

My main incentive was trying out another build in each new league. I have no wish to invest 50+ hours in something only to find out it just doesn't work. Even less so, to copy-paste something from the forums.

Overall my reason to stop playing is that PoE requires a huge time investment over a short period of time, with no payoff. What, make another character for another league and do the exact same things again? To prove what?

I did all sprint diamonds in Refracts Distance in under 300 hours. That gave me an immense sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, a feeling that I got good at something that requires skill. Every day I devote a bit of time to play some new community-made track. What did my 4000+ hours in PoE give me? Absolutely no wish to touch the game for more than an hour in half a year.

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For currency drops its better to run more maps than it is to run higher maps. End game drops nothing you can't easily buy (and in most cases nothing of value for your build anyway).

I disagree with this. Lower tier maps don't give you shaper/elder fragments. Low tier maps don't give you better metamorph rewards. Low tier maps don't give you good loot from conquerors. If you can clear high tier red maps comfortably there is no reason to run low tiers for maybe a couple of chaos orbs return per map.