Labyrinth is still not fun. It's horrible content

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Fruz wrote:

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Chadwixx wrote:

Lab is like the worst thing ever for ppl who dont use the "legal" add on or farming chants with a char built for its inconsistencies.

If by "char built for its inconsistencies" you mean "char that is build to fail at the endgame of PoE", then there might be some truth in what you just said.

Else, it's simply BS, gross overgeneralization, as usual around here.

The add on part also falls in the same category.

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Chadwixx wrote:

specs have to be a certain ascendancy to be best

like everywhere else in the game lulz, good one.

I do maps fine, this is my 4th time doing uber lab on my 4th char. The only time you come out of a lab feeling good is if you got the 1:98798798 chant you wanted on your helm. Or ele pen on boots.

I dont understand you 2nd statement. You have a 2013 join date, were you playing? We started with a class to get closer to the pts on the magnificent tree, not for 8 big pts. It made the game trivial with "get the hp nodes" lab has your dps covered.

The game has been a mess for a while now, i hate speaking about power creep but its amplified by what we get from lab, both in chants an pts.

Multiple multiplicatives becomes hard to balance

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Chadwixx wrote:

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Fruz wrote:

"

Chadwixx wrote:

Lab is like the worst thing ever for ppl who dont use the "legal" add on or farming chants with a char built for its inconsistencies.

If by "char built for its inconsistencies" you mean "char that is build to fail at the endgame of PoE", then there might be some truth in what you just said.

Else, it's simply BS, gross overgeneralization, as usual around here.

The add on part also falls in the same category.

"

Chadwixx wrote:

specs have to be a certain ascendancy to be best

like everywhere else in the game lulz, good one.

I do maps fine, this is my 4th time doing uber lab on my 4th char. The only time you come out of a lab feeling good is if you got the 1:98798798 chant you wanted on your helm. Or ele pen on boots.

I dont understand you 2nd statement. You have a 2013 join date, were you playing? We started with a class to get closer to the pts on the magnificent tree, not for 8 big pts. It made the game trivial with "get the hp nodes" lab has your dps covered.

The game has been a mess for a while now, i hate speaking about power creep but its amplified by what we get from lab, both in chants an pts.

Multiple multiplicatives becomes hard to balance

Fixed up Chadwixx's above post that had a missing close quote.

^
thx for cleaning it up.

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Chadwixx wrote:

I do maps fine, this is my 4th time doing uber lab on my 4th char. The only time you come out of a lab feeling good is if you got the 1:98798798 chant you wanted on your helm. Or ele pen on boots.

I dont understand you 2nd statement. You have a 2013 join date, were you playing? We started with a class to get closer to the pts on the magnificent tree, not for 8 big pts. It made the game trivial with "get the hp nodes" lab has your dps covered.

The game has been a mess for a while now, i hate speaking about power creep but its amplified by what we get from lab, both in chants an pts.

Multiple multiplicatives becomes hard to balance

If you character cannot do lab fine, it's pretty given that he cannot do hard/high maps any comfortably either, not without dying.

Lab is only one tiny tiny part of the current power creep, the change to the asendancy specs that have been done in recent years also has nothing to do with why people dislike the lab around here.

I understand your reaction about power creep, that's one of the reasons why I'm not playing anymore, the game has became stupid in many ways, partly because of all the power creep and the terrible balance decisions that have been taken over the past recent years.
But that's not a problem inherent to what the labyrinth is, especially since many ( most maybe ? not sure ) have been asking to get the ascendancy points without the lab for a long time already.

To be honest, I think I misunderstood what you said with my 'second statement', I though you were implying that you need to be speced in a particular way to be "best" at running lab ... which is a logic that can be extended to pretty much the whole game.

I respectfully disagree Fruz.

I can think of plenty of cases where an end game build can crush content outside of lab and struggle in lab.

I don't think the problems with lab are necessarily about being able to do the lab , but rather .. doing the lab enjoyably.

Even most of the people complaining about it here have successfully completed it.

But its pretty much an objective fact.. the lab is kind of not fun.

You have to face boss with multiple invulnerability phases that can bug out if you accidentally taunt him. A boss that punishes you for having too much dps and coverage by reducing rewards (which directly conflicts with an arpg power fantasy)

We have a lab with unkillable and unleechable traps that can sometimes ( not often but some times) line up and kill you when 199 out of 200 times you are fine.

The lab crashes constantly for some reason and handles this problem very poorly since it consumes a limited and tedious to farm item.

The enchant system is arguably one of the most time consuming rng gated catastrophes in poe history.

Even farming offerings is considered so horribly inefficient that nearly all mappers ignore the portal in maps.

Again, none of this is saying the lab is impossible.. its not about not being able to do it, its about not wanting too; its about not having fun with the content. lab is without a doubt the TALISMAN of the core game content.

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

I can think of plenty of cases where an end game build can crush content outside of lab and struggle in lab.

Care to show some of those builds who can "crush endgame content" (including most bosses, delve respectfully apart from some exception like animate weapon maybe), but yet cannot run uber lab ?


I was not talking about the fun factor here, I was merely pointing out that claiming that you need a char that is built for it to run it without troubles is bullshit.
I've ran uber lab countless times with a very wide range of different characters (evasion based, dodge based, armour based, MoM, CI, hybrid, minions, archers, casters, melee), and there was not a single time where I ever thought "this character is really bad for lab ..."

Because lab is very similar to the main game for most things.
A few differences make some player not enjoy it, alright, there is no arguing against that, but overall characters "properly" built for endgame can go through the lab without troubles, as long as the player is not doing obvious mistakes in there (the skillcap isn't high though).

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

A boss that punishes you for having too much dps and coverage by reducing rewards (which directly conflicts with an arpg power fantasy)

Why does it "directly conflicts with an arpg power fantasy" ?
Because you decided so ?
No, there is no such thing actually.

And actually there have been mechanics to punish players with too much dps from the beginning of the game, mechanics do not make any sense in the current iteration of the game anymore because GGG isn't capable of dealing with it (yes, I'm talking about reflect and the old lightning thorns, they existed in the game way before the lab).

Minion builds might be at a disadvantage for full keys runs, but those are pretty much the only ones actually, if you have "too much dps", you don't have to deal izaro for certain mechanics until you completed the requirements, and you burst him down after.

There are also monsters that punish "too much coverage" to a certain extends outside of lab, it being betrayal encounters where you want to bring the members down at a similar pace because you don't have the dps to kill them all in a few seconds ( and killing one might not give you enough time to get the others before they run away ), or the canyon boss where you want to kill them at about the same time and therefore adjust your damage to not kill either too quickly, or simply soul eating mobs ....

All of those things are outside of the lab.


The rest is completely irrelevant to what I said, some of it is also of bad faith in my opinion so I won't mention any of it, sorry.
I probably should not have answered that second part to begin with, I was simply points some fallacious claims out.

Agreed.

Honestly wish GGG would add instance way points after each Aspirants trial or something. Can go away after a hour and once you complete the specific lab run, so it can't be used to skip the damn thing, even though that would have been great, but having to do the whole thing over if you die/crash/DC is completely sucking the fun out of it, if possible.

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Fruz wrote:

Spoiler

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

I can think of plenty of cases where an end game build can crush content outside of lab and struggle in lab.

Care to show some of those builds who can "crush endgame content" (including most bosses, delve respectfully apart from some exception like animate weapon maybe), but yet cannot run uber lab ?


I was not talking about the fun factor here, I was merely pointing out that claiming that you need a char that is built for it to run it without troubles is bullshit.
I've ran uber lab countless times with a very wide range of different characters (evasion based, dodge based, armour based, MoM, CI, hybrid, minions, archers, casters, melee), and there was not a single time where I ever thought "this character is really bad for lab ..."

Because lab is very similar to the main game for most things.
A few differences make some player not enjoy it, alright, there is no arguing against that, but overall characters "properly" built for endgame can go through the lab without troubles, as long as the player is not doing obvious mistakes in there (the skillcap isn't high though).

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

A boss that punishes you for having too much dps and coverage by reducing rewards (which directly conflicts with an arpg power fantasy)

Why does it "directly conflicts with an arpg power fantasy" ?
Because you decided so ?
No, there is no such thing actually.

And actually there have been mechanics to punish players with too much dps from the beginning of the game, mechanics do not make any sense in the current iteration of the game anymore because GGG isn't capable of dealing with it (yes, I'm talking about reflect and the old lightning thorns, they existed in the game way before the lab).

Minion builds might be at a disadvantage for full keys runs, but those are pretty much the only ones actually, if you have "too much dps", you don't have to deal izaro for certain mechanics until you completed the requirements, and you burst him down after.

There are also monsters that punish "too much coverage" to a certain extends outside of lab, it being betrayal encounters where you want to bring the members down at a similar pace because you don't have the dps to kill them all in a few seconds ( and killing one might not give you enough time to get the others before they run away ), or the canyon boss where you want to kill them at about the same time and therefore adjust your damage to not kill either too quickly, or simply soul eating mobs ....

All of those things are outside of the lab.


The rest is completely irrelevant to what I said, some of it is also of bad faith in my opinion so I won't mention any of it, sorry.
I probably should not have answered that second part to begin with, I was simply points some fallacious claims out.

The lab is actually even more hilariously easy this league than ever before due to the Enduring Cry rework; you can literally ignore 100% of all traps now.

If I had to pick a build that's as bad at running the lab as possible, it would be a vaal pact aspect of carnage/rite of ruin dancing dervish berserker wearing an abyssus. But said build would be absolute garbage for Sirus and Uber Elder as well, so it's still not a situation of "this can do everything except lab"

I must say that I agree with Salty and others when they say that there are builds that have an extremely hard time in the Lab, despite being probably among the strongest outside of it. Usually these builds revolve around some kind of ES pool and little to no armour as a result.

I've played these builds myself and I'm usually rather comfortable in the Lab, as I've done it many many times and don't dislike it, but when I go through it on these kinds of builds, I poop every colour of the rainbow all the way to Izaro, simply because you take so much damage from everything and you know there is nothing to fall back on. You just have to not take damage to recharge ES, so any other spike, dart, sword, touch of a saw or blade could send you packing. This does not apply to the build outside the Lab, because you can easily sustain yourself with leech or recovery there.

However... with all that understood, said and agreed with, I still don't think it's fair to say the Lab should change or worse, be removed, just because some builds can do it with their pet cat on their keyboards and others need clean underwear after. That's just the way the game works. Pros and cons to every build.

A build that is extremely good in Lab, say, Nebuloch Juggernaut, has problems of its own outside the Lab. It cannot progress bosses, because it doesn't have any damage of any kind. It can map, but that's it. That's the price you pay. So if you're going to change the Lab for the builds that can't run it, what about everything else outside of it? You can't just play favorites like that in a game like this.

Improvise, adapt, overcome. Yes, it's a meme, but it's also true. Just think of the rewards at the end; ascendancy power creep and 1/512 chance at the helm enchant you want. What's not to like?


TL;DR
Lab is a part of the game, has been and will be. Players are tasked to overcome the hurdles set for them by the developers and find their own ways to build their characters, for what they find most important. As per decent balance, compromises must be made. Lab unfortunately is one of those hurdles that takes players out of their comfort zone and gets flak for it, but it's not alone in that and it's not out of place.

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Turtledove wrote:

You have my empathy and condolences. (Oh and congratulations, MrsDeath, for the joy and amusement you've gained from Gibbousmoon's suffering.)


Regarding client crashes, this seems to be happening to me more. When I'm AFK for a period of time the client seems to sometimes go into a strange disconnected state. I can move and attack and cast spells and hear the action occurring but the visuals for the client is completely frozen I can only hear the sound. I couldn't figure out how to get the game to start working again without stopping and restarting the game. I just wanted to mention that the last time this happened to me I went into the task manager and then just returned to the game and it started working properly again. I don't know whether or not entering and exiting the task manager will reliably work because I haven't seen another occurrence since.

I just wanted to mention that I got another client graphic hang. I went into task manager and then simply exited task manager and the client was restored to normal function.

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Some other examples of builds that are treated vastly differently by trap mechanics versus regular content is a high life regen character makes labs completely trivial but could be shit against high level content if the dps is shit. A vaal pact high life leech evasion character is extra irritating to run through trap gauntlets but can be very strong against high level content.

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Turtledove wrote:

...

I don't mean to diminish your experiences, but have you considered whether you might be burning yourself out? If I were tasked with ascending someone else's toons in addition to my own, and if I had to spend an entire day ascending, I would hate doing labs a lot more than I do. :p

Here is my advice, should you care to have it:

Don't try to do all labs in one day! Although the concept of finishing them quickly is attractive, you will burn out. Take your time, and take breaks or you will go insane. Trying to rush through them will get you taken out on a stretcher, and just lengthen your torment.

My stomach turns inside out whenever I have to ascend, and always has (even though it is more manageable now), but I manage it by limiting my time in the labyrinth.

Also, as someone else has said, you can wait to ascend after you've leveled. The trap damage scales with you, so you'll have a relatively similar experience with traps at any level, but for bosses and regular enemies it's less nerve-wracking to level first.

I hope you can find peace within the lab!

TL:DR version: Give yourself time to truly enjoy *NOT* being in the labyrinth.