is delve unbalanced or its just AN?

So i tried play ssfhc delve event with jugg rf i was level 68 i was 3800hp 18k armour with granite 79 fire res 77 cold 77 lightning 1k hp regen jugg ascendy ailment immune stun immune and yet i was almost dying constantly at my level monsters without any damage mods until i just died to blue pack instantly i dont get it how is this even possible surely it has to be overtuned AN?

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Gopstop22 wrote:

So i tried play ssfhc delve event with jugg rf i was level 68 i was 3800hp 18k armour with granite 79 fire res 77 cold 77 lightning 1k hp regen jugg ascendy ailment immune stun immune and yet i was almost dying constantly at my level monsters without any damage mods until i just died to blue pack instantly i dont get it how is this even possible surely it has to be overtuned AN?

AN certainly changes the dynamic in Delve. This is harder than the last delve event and I think AN is the biggest change since the last one. Auras are dramatically different now in terms of reservation also.

I'm having a hard time judging because the RNG gods have decided fire resistance isn't necessary. I've ID'd so many rares just searching for a decent fire res roll on anything. I just now managed to max it out. I wish they would add the crafting bench.

Also, HC in this event is unfathomable for me. One Rhoa nest early would be the end unless I got lucky with some armor really early. 68 is impressive still.

I found the issue.

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Gopstop22 wrote:

i was almost dying constantly at my level monsters

"Make sure to overlevel the leveling zones by solid 2-4 levels or more depending on how confident you are..." Tip by -Marcin90

Delve is obviously harder than leveling zones, so it is defintitely your own mistake.

Missing pantheons can hurt. Exiles sure can punch harder now if you don't have a blink skill.

And yes AN being AN in confined spaces can also mean death in 0.1 seconds without specialized flasks.

I have noticed one thing with archnemesis - exposure. Exposure debuff on player is almost always active.

But delve.. there are probably more things killing us. I have played this endless haste just now to lvl 59, and dmg seems high (frequently getting hit for 1k at 55-59lvl, like that lava area with dogs and golems spawning, or that skeleton roah area is super deadly when auras starts to stack), some mobs are extra tanky, density is high and god forbid if there is fattened soul eater behind you :)

League Delving when your character is well developed and geared is horrible with AN. With the Delve event where you have no crafting bench, no pantheon and likely a character with deficiencies, it's brutal. Not in a good way of "wow, that was a fantastic challenge" but brutal as in "I just got ruined because RNG said it was my turn to get ruined".

AN is just badly executed game design which breaks so many aspects of the game, including all the bloat mechanics from past leagues like Delve, Blight and Heist. I still think that 3.20 will see AN being a bad fit for the game because, you know, "extensively tested". It should have just been moved to the Atlas where those that love it could spec into it, and everyone else can just pretend it doesn't exist.

Delve is probably the most pertinent example of AN mods weren't practical for the base game. A confined space under constant time pressure was deadly enough the farther you got down given the darkness and modifiers on the paths.

I remember doing a few test runs before any significant adjustments were made and I'd just suddenly pop. Given all the screen clutter things like heralding minions (before they set a cap) could make entering the next room or cave instant death.

It's AN. Last year I did Endless Delve with a Volatile Dead Spellslinger with a 4 link chest and got to depth 145. This year I found a 6 link chest half way through and couldn't get past depth 80 with the same build.

What's worse is the randomness that AN adds. You can attempt the same path four times and get oneshot by an AN mob 3 times then on the fourth attempt you get lucky and no AN mob spawns and its trivially easy.

Delve is just fine, same as AN in delve.
The real issue is the wrong build within the wrong place.
The lack of proper gear/bench crafts, or simply bad luck with drops causes a lot of issues with most builds. Just how it is

Delve difficulty scales infinitely and exponentially with depth, unlike maps and other (more-or-less) fixed-difficulty content, which is most of the game...and that difficulty scales much faster than it used to, which was a change implemented prior to the introduction of AN.

So, if there is a problem with the current version of AN, it is most easily illustrated (for builds of all power levels) within the Delve environment. It seemed to me that Delve content did become much more difficult with original AN (which got crazy in deep delving) and that difficulty has been toned down with subsequent patches, but it is still considerably more difficult than it once was.

I am interested to see how the upcoming replacement for AN compares to both AN and nemesis.

edit: That said, I think the AN system is a good one at its core, but that it has possibly been over-applied. AN could easily coexist with a less dramatic mod system...such as its upcoming replacement...as an option, atlas passive, or uber-rare spawn type and add a lot to a game that already has a great deal of variety. I will be sorry to see it disappear entirely.