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

I don't know I don't deny I could be just bad. That's why I described myself as semi-casual. And I should probably clarify the "can't do red maps". I can roll rare maps with alt regals and then corrupt hoping it would not change or unidentify, but with alc and go approach more maps would be unplayable then playable. I consider a tier unplayable if after a play session my exp is the same or lower and if I'm forced to skip current league machanic entierely and frequently fail old mechanics. Map bosses and trash monsters are obviosly not the problem, but influence mobs and league machsnics are. Metamorphs I consider unplayable if I have more "avoid at all cost" organ stats then playable ones and if I frequently end up wasting 6 portals on one. If im forced to skip content and reroll maps too much and lise exp- it's just too much value lost and little to no progress achieved in one playsession.

Can you tell me your build and describe your defences? My mibile browser boesnt show characters in profiles fir some reason. To avoid meta-nonmata talk, I'd say passive damage dealing is mandatory nowadays. The content is balanced around moving and dealing damage at the same time (hence summoner, dot, totems etc tec).

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Leninisalive wrote:

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Dr1MaR wrote:

The game is a much better place than before. The difficulty was increased. Before there was no difficulty. Too hard for you, as a veteran. Don't speak for others. Aside from some overtuned metamorphs I have no complains

I'm sorry, man but have you played high red maps enough? You only have 15 challenges done so mb you haven't had the time to test it? Yellow maps are somewhat comfortable, but it gets MUCH worse past t11. And I don't speak fir everyone, sorry if I made it seem that way (again, my english is not very good). I just provide my own feedback and ask people to point out mistakes in my build if there are any.

You have discovered the way to increase the "base damage" and succeeded.
You simply went for crit because Guardian is not too good at utilize crit modifiers and found out that you need base crit and more multiplier.
You used 2 sockets and picked assassins mark for the curse slot. Now you can't have different sets of modifier because you wasted all of limited slots "to fix your weak point" instead of "further abuse your strong point".

You need to reduce monsters physical mitigation if you want to have secondary layer of damage multiplier on top of primary damage modifiers to expand the limit of primary damage scaling. If you went straight forward on a primary damage modifier, you will have less and less efficiency at some point as you investing. It's nothing wrong but simply inefficient at some point. You will be limited by your own choice. And it's neither the fault of the game design. We have layered structure which can be picked at our choice instead of simple straight forward incremental structure. (if you only focused on an element in the game, it would look like incremental idling game.)

I could've used Assasin, but Black Cane requieres to have all phantasms to be active for it to work. That's why I thought Assasin might not be the best. With Guardian I have better survivability imo and better survivability for the phantasms. The curse is the rescent change, I was trying assasin's mark to see if it vould work better then vulnerability. I also tried maim on HoP, but added Arctic Armour to see if it would help with survivability (not only directly but also reserving literally all of my mana, leaving enough for continuous cast with arcane surge up). None of the changes made a noticable difference. And I know there's alot if room fir improvement gearwise, but I can estimate that the power increase wouldn't be enough.

I was also thinking about bladedall traps build with it and mb even bladefall totems. But phantasms kinda eat up a suppurt slot in that case, so playing pure bladefall traps or totems woulde better then with the Black Cane.

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GunFinX wrote:

The game used to be so much harder/slower/less drops than it now is.

Spoiler

For perspective only have to watch some old videos from before forsaken masters expansion.

All the boss fights have mechanics which can be learnt, not every build will be able to do everything equally this has always been the case.

Just comes across as another person whinging when their build sucks.

Idk, it's subjective but for me it feels just as I described. And I have played old poe quite a bit, but may be I remember it wrong in the perspective.

And I dont think I'm whining, it's just my feedback in the feedback section of the forum. And again, could it be that you didn't play enough red maps this league to fully realize the rescent difficulty increase? I know challenges are not the marker, but 14 suggests that you havent reached lvl 90. Sorry I cant see the characters on my mobile browser.

What builds? That's why I thoght challenge points are not the marker since many people put them off for later, I do it too sometimes. How did you feel about incursions, blights, monoliths and other league bosses and mechanics? I felt like the monster ehp buff was the most noticable there. As for bosses- guardians and synthesis bosses (for me for some reason) in particular.

The problem is the difference between PROS and normal players..
The difference is so huge, that spending the same amount of time in the game the PRO can make 10x more currency that the casual player... Now how to make the game appealing for both parties? Mission nearly impossible and today we can see the result of that.. It is "barely playable"...

Personally I have been playing for like ~3 years, I have never had more than 5ex of currency on me... PROS can farm that in half a day... When I see people selling items for 50+ex I cant understand how the hell do they even play this game to have that much currency on them...

There are 2 different worlds in this game, the one for who devote themselves for it and the one for those who play it on their free time. The speeds between these two are like day and night...
With current league the difference between these two became even greater completely impossible to reach certain goals for anyone who is not selling their life over this...

I wasnt even capable of reaching shaper or elder and I actually did 1 Atziri only in this league... I wasnt even rushing for those bosses, nor I had enough time to think through my build just to kill them... I was enjoying the grind and the versatility the atlas gave me back then... I knew those bosses were there and I couldnt care less about them since I could just buy any map I want and run it... Now I have to compete in this speed league to complete the atlas so I could do the same I did before...

Now I need to farm and sell my ass off just to reach those 20+ex builds in order to unlock all the atlas... This really feels like I am locked inside of the ACT 10 or Lab dying 30 times a day just to finally achieve that stupid acsendancy point...
This is not a game this is became a fucking torture...

As I see - alot of people feel that way. Top 1% controls the bloated market, while we do our chaos rescipe just to get buy. We farm splinters, sell it to them in cheap pricefixed rates so they can do Chayula and 5-way rotations for easy lvl 100, while we get stuck on lvl 90. At this point we should unite and sieze the means of production, rebuild the market with daily chaos rations according to the level. We do chayula runs collectively and share the sulphite equally. Rise up, gamers, it's time to turn the grinding gears around for the benefit of the regular players! Streamers will be put to trial.


But on the serious note, just came back to my PC and checked the profiles of people who see no problems with the league. One plays a necro and a Coc Cospri assasin, the other one doesnt have characters in the current league. That further strengthens my arguments.

No matter the ilusion of choice that exists, there are only four viable builds in PoE:

1- The builds that does Shapers/second DPS;

2- The builds that have 80%+ dodge or block with 7k+ EHP;

3- The builds that have 20k+ EHP;

4- The builds that automatic and instantly kill things (wo, minions, totems, etc);

There is too much incremental math going on(multipliers+auras+map mods+meta mods+damage variance+crits+debuffs), combine that with the screen clusterfuck and there is no room for a single mistake, this means you need a build that can win vs the math (really crazy defenses) or a build that doesn`t create opportunity for mistakes (crazy dps).

This leaves no space for selfcast build or "stop to attack" buildin todays PoE. There is simple no room for them unless they can achieve one of the 3 "viable options", and unsurprisingly more than half of the skills can`t achieve it no matter how much you invest in them.

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Mortyx wrote:

No matter the ilusion of choice that exists, there are only four viable builds in PoE:

1- The builds that does Shapers/second DPS;

2- The builds that have 80%+ dodge or block with 7k+ EHP;

3- The builds that have 20k+ EHP;

4- The builds that automatic and instantly kill things (wo, minions, totems, etc);

There is too much incremental math going on(multipliers+auras+map mods+meta mods+damage variance+crits+debuffs), combine that with the screen clusterfuck and there is no room for a single mistake, this means you need a build that can win vs the math (really crazy defenses) or a build that doesn`t create opportunity for mistakes (crazy dps).

This leaves no space for selfcast build or "stop to attack" buildin todays PoE. There is simple no room for them unless they can achieve one of the 3 "viable options", and unsurprisingly more than half of the skills can`t achieve it no matter how much you invest in them.

This is maybe the best way I've seen it put. Stupidly, I'm playing Storm Call selfcast this league, and with 8k EHP, fortify, and CWDT steelskin, I literally got 1-shot by a T13 Arcade boss last night I think...from offscreen.

It was T13 or T14, and one little fire explosion that was offscreen 1-tapped me when I shield charged towards it. Most metamorphs can shotgun or 1-tap me from T12 up, and learning dozens to HUNDREDS of Metamorph abilities and knowing exactly when they switch forms is ridiculous.

I've been relegated to farming yellow maps with Niko influence so I can just do level 100-150 delves all day to try and get money.

Mind you, I generally take down red map bosses in 3-4 seconds and metamorphs in under 10. But I've NEVER had a league where I get 1-shot so often and so hard.

I know I could get there. I could get 30ex of amazing gear and push into T16s and such, but I've got a couple hours a night to play at best, and I've made a total of 4ex so far, half of which went into 6L my chest.

I just can't be bothered knowing that IF I get lucky and get some gear for this guy, it'll be just soon enough for the league to end. Previously, I'd get 2-3 characters above level 90 and able to do at least Shaper.

Just my own experience, but yeah...it really sucks for us casuals.

So a couple of things.

1) Semi-Casual Veterans are probably not meant to be farming awakerner level 8 and really high-tier maps. It seems as if GGG is preparing us for a major rebalance in POE 2 where only the most optimized characters can do end game. (This is how POE was when it was originally released btw). NOTE: This is just the feeling i'm getting. This was not stated anywhere, but this is what I feel they are trying to do to slow the game down gradually and make it so that only the "extremely dedicated" playerbase gets to the ultimate end game.

2) I've created multiple builds this league and it is very true that some builds are getting placed out of being "good enough". The amount of defense required to survive this league is very high and not all characters can get that level of defense and do "good enough" damage to metamorphs, etc. This turns into a battle of attrition where if you don't kill the boss/meta quickly, then you inevitablely die due to attrition based defenses (i.e. you can only get lucky and dodge hits for so long before getting one shot).

3) Lenin, in looking at your character there are a few notes. First off, i don't think Bladefall is the best choice for what you are trying to accomplish. If you are trying to buff the phantasms and yourself, the only real choice for physical spells is Blade Vortex and maybe EK nova. There is also the option of converting all of the physical damage to another element and trying to exploit things like herald of ice or penetration to get more damage. Blade vortex is probably ideal because you wouldn't be wasting a link on spell echo with a little bit of cast speed (which also affects your minions) on the tree.

Your links in your chest indicate you are going crit. You simply have to understand what is going on with the item you are building around.

Some notes:
1) You are crit, but you probably are not crit capped. You aren't using a diamond flask either (which would help tremendously)

2) Based on the black cane, I do think you have to decide whether you are dealing the damage or the minions. I think going hybrid will just hurt you.

3) Going low life requires MUCH more investment including at least a couple of enlighten 4s, and maybe even more reservation reduction in the tree. Simply put, running things like herald of purity is fine, but it only buffs you. Ideally if you are using brutality, you would want to run pride. Also running a holy relic might also be a nice buff. You are running low life, but you have so many aura's focused on your defense that the minions just don't have enough damage due to lack of supports and auras that benefit them.
Pride, Zealotry, A curse on hit setup with Vulnerability (maybe). TLDR: I don't think you are investing enough to make a strong lowlife build.

4) I think that you should buff your phantasms and maybe even try and dual wield canes. I would consider your spell damage secondary. The big issue here is that you will basically be stuck on bosses where there are no ads so Awakener would be out of the question.

Just some thoughts.