Rare Monsters still feel inconsistent

Prior to the introduction of Archnemesis modifiers into core, Rare Monsters had been power creeped out of relevancy. Outside of league mechanics or other modified content the difficulty of each encounter was essentially flat.

Most of the challenge came from what random mechanics you ran into during your maps, which were further multiplied by your map tier, affix rolls, delirium level, scarabs, etc.

This lead to a very consistent experience, if you knew what your build was capable of, you could put in just enough 'juice' to min-max your rewards versus safety/clear speed. And rewards scaled very closely to how many additional modifiers you put onto your maps. The game felt a lot smoother, and it also allowed players to enjoy builds that weren't as powerful/popular by tailoring the content they were running with it.

Ever since the first rework of rare monster affixes, it's felt like more of the gameplay experience is out of the players hands. The variance of difficulty between monster packs even within the same map can be extreme. It's not uncommon to have random monsters much more difficult than the unique boss of the area, and sometimes harder than pinnacle atlas content, even in maps that aren't the highest tier or with difficult affix rolls. This pushes players to stick to the meta if they want to have a smooth gameplay experience.

The problem is many of these rare packs are still completely ignorable, while occasionally you'll run into ones that are inappropriately difficult relative to where you're running into them. And the rewards do not feel like they appropriately scale with the difficulty.


Suggestion: Increase base monster stats across the board and lower the amount of multipliers that come from random affixes, instead focusing on mechanical differences that make the monster feel more unique. E.g. Damage conversions, additional abilities, etc.

The goal of this would be to smooth out some of the difficulty spikes, increasing the power of otherwise ignorable encounters while toning down some of the extreme cases. Finding a happy medium between the old system which was extreme consistent, and the current one that feels a little too random.


Additionally, I think the affix pool could use another pass. Soul Eater has been exceptionally bad this league, particularly in places like Blight/Expedition/Delve where monsters can already be difficult and you don't always have the luxury of running away or focusing single targets. It looks really cheap when a monster is attacking so fast it breaks animations, and it leads to massively unfair enounters with little counter-play. (Perhaps Soul Eater buff should have a timer that you can dodge and reset?)

Regen mods and consecrated ground have also been annoying with the extremely tanky crucible monsters as they heal for a percentage of a massive health pool.
Even running Frost Bomb to swap in, some of these encounters take longer than encounters that should be harder like Exarch/Eater/Elder/Shaper. It feels like we need more tools to deal with high regen other than 'more damage'.

And if you're unlucky enough to roll regen on a monster that frequently runs away/dives (Like devourers, or the harvest bugs) or with other defensive mods like rotating defenses, they can be downright unkillable unless you're overpowered relative to the level of content you are running. (Could add some rules so multiple powerful defensive modifiers don't roll on the same monster?)

I double this. Made a similiar post which was much less friendly and constructive than yours; so...

+1

In b4 3.22/poe2 -

We have reworked map and pinnacle bosses to be stronger than rares in maps now. You should regularly encounter map bosses with the Soul Eater, regen/leech and Trickster affixes. We have now added hundreds of unavoidable trash mobs to their respective boss rooms to make these encounters in line with regular map rares.

Soul Eater has seemed somewhat to insanely out of control, and subjectively something odd has happened to its spawn rate, increasing it dramatically. I like the podcast suggestion of putting each Soul Eater stack on an individual timer. At least then one can play around it.

This league in particular I'm just skipping any obnoxious rare, which is quite a lot of them. I'd rather not do this, but it's preferable to spending minutes whittling down a bulletproof rare. Those few which do successfully pursue can die to proliferation/explosions/RF etc. amongst later packs. If they prove lethal en mass, or I can't get rid of a Soul Eater, I'll just leave the map.

I don't think increasing drops from rares would encourage me to whittle them down, since the increase would have to be so startlingly immense to feel worth it that it would be entirely over the top and likely cause economic upset.

I'd like to see a greater proportion of mods (existing and/or new) which are just fine or fun to fight, whilst keeping variety. Defence checks (bleed/shocks/poison etc.) or interesting mechanics like the -Touched mods. Interesting mechanics being those suited to Path of Exile's world, or the individual monster type, not something from an '80s arcade game.

Then far less (ideally none, honestly) of the mods which are tiresome to fight and/or visually or auditorily unpleasant and/or seem at odds with the gameworld, such as heralding minions, siphoning, the many damage reduction and on death effects, etc. And far, far less of the mods which are both tiresome and lethal, like the enrages/overwhelms/crits/prevents recovery/Soul Eater.

A rough subjective split of mods by the above categories is in the spoiler below.