GG, about TOTA

First off, I personally think trial of the ancestors is a cool idea, and could be a potential nice addition to PoE. A lot of people may dislike it, like 80% of all league mechanics, but PoE is a choose your own adventure game really, and it's what most of us can really appreciate.I'm personally in favour of any mechanic that is different and provides a new way of playing the game. Many people enjoy heist, sanctum and delve for example, as it is something different to do, something you can really specialize to if you want to. I played this on multiple characters to high rating, most of whom wasn't originally designed for the mechanic, but some that were as well.

I'm not going to whether it's rewards are good or bad, personally I don't think that's the most important aspect of a league mechanic, but I'll add that tattoos are cool and awesome. Most discussion is around this, but I don't see the reason for it, as both rewards and tattoos being too good or not good enough can just be tinkered with in terms of numbers, so I have no interesting in going into that.

Before I begin some constructive criticism, focused on how it could be made better, I think there is an open question first:

Is TOTA meant to be a mechanic where we actually fight the ancestors, and win out a tug of war, or something where you use more obscure, utility focused mechanics that usually dont shine to win? (cheese the mechanic, as people often refer to)In other words, were we meant to fight the warriors, kill them, channel down a couple totems, then rinse and repeat until we whittled down their base? Or were we meant to evade them, keep them occupied with totems, stuns, freezes, knockbacks, petrification etc. while we sneak attack their base?

As the scaling of health, damage is, and the abilities of the ancestors, lenght of 'death draw' stun, as well as how quickly enemies respawn, it all suggests we were never meant to fight them at all.Thus I'll have to continue with the assumption that is what it was meant to be. An alternate way of playing, where utility and sneaky strategy is promoted, and you are NOT meant to be able to do it just on any well round character.

I'll try to separate this into a few sections, beginning with base mechanics I take issue with:First off, **Rating.**The way it scales life and damage means it's simply not viable to play mitigation based builds as opposed to avoidance. Simply put, no matter how much you reduce the damage, if its in the millions, it doesn't matter anyways. You could argue, like in most cases in PoE: "Just don't fight at such high level, the problem is your expectation that all builds should be able to do all content"And generally I agree with that sentiment, but in TOTA, you dont control the level of content you engage with. The way you get and lose rating is quite frankly utterly flawed. Even when you are hundred of rating above where you can handle the content, you still gain a slight positive rating at the end of a tournament. Meaning you keep losing out on the final reward, but you are still advancing.This mean you are actually really bummed out, as you are getting way less out of the mechanic than you have before, at the level where you could handle the mechanic.You can't reset or decrease this in any way, except for deliberately spamming losing rounds. Which is boring, time consuming, expensive and just overall silly.Please change rating gain so that it keeps you at rating where you can handle the mechanic, or give us some way to instantly, deliberately derank. Give Navali some trinket "of humility" or something, like a book of regret, that tanks 100 rating, idk.

Second, innate mechanics.

Death draw is horrendously buggy. I understand you needed a second stun type, but you need to fix it. Some times you can still use your skills, and even change your location via blinks, but not movement, while your character is visually somewhere else, still stunned. Sometimes you keep getting stunned while it is still expiring, literally getting double or triple duration death draw.It seems exceedingly buggy on block especially.It seems a missed opportunity to not have armour/mitigation reduce the duration of this stun. Would stand to reason that avoidance gets to skip it, mitigation gets to reduce it, but alas, avoidance is just strictly superior.Then there is totem channeling itself. I cannot understand, from the very first round I have ever played of TOTA, how there is not a button to "channel nearest enemy totem", instead of left clicking, as an option. Namelocking is the weakest point of path of exile, as anyone interacting with lockboxes or strike skills knows. Moving around totems can be extremely frustrating by accidentally channeling them, or not being able to click the totem in the heat of battle, especially with higher movement speed.There is no way this couldn't have been implemented better. The only option being to have movement and totem channeling on the same button, that stuns you forever if you get interrupted, is baffling to me.The last base mechanic of course is shopping itself. Another reason to go full out movespeed build, and why your slower, bulkier characters will not join in. The huge loops you have to run between round are one of the most cited reason people dislike playing mechanic. Clicking each guy individually, clicking their "buy warriors" button, then run to the next. Since you get 3-4 different types each round ,you basically have to run and click a full loop every round. Very tedious, very tilting.

Now, onto Units.I'm happy to say most units have a place and are both useful, as well as counterable. Even the often hated consuming kunekune is better than nothing, and can actually be decent in some places, although I'll definitely trade it in for almost any unit of the same tier.The only unit I never buy is probably the moon dancer. Just so random and slow. Firebreather and the tawhoa shaman is quite pricey for what it does as well, but it's something.

Now to the outliers:First the couple that are just about right, despite being better than the rest.Goliath of night. Out of this world damage, fairly cheap, another good reason to go block and evasion.Trawler. One of my personal favorites. Spams hard to see traps, does really good damage himself, and is fairly good on basically every position. Honestly one of the more fair high priced units. Strong but not unbeatable, useful to get.Onto the problematic ones: Titanic shell, Death's guide, Caldera ravager.

The titanic shell is obvious. It protects totems, including its own for some godforsaken reason, and is nearly impossible to kill on higher ratings. The problem is not winning necessarily, but the fact that it turns a round into a boring slugfest that drags on for an incredibly long time.Even moving the turtle to the other side of the arena doesn't remove the protection, as its not even based on an AoE effect, it just protects the totems, no matter what. The respawn system also means it respawns seconds after being downed, dragging out the game even more if you dont find and channel its totem down immediately after killing it, or get stunned doing it.This problem is further increased by the fact that the titanic shell totem, despite being one of the most important to spot, is completely unremarkable. I can tell whether a totem belong to the bird, a kunekune, a caldera ravager or a riptide just by its looks. They are all either taller or visually distinct. Not so with shelly. Add onto this that you also dont see the names of totems while they are protected for some reason...All around really badly designed, boring unit. If you want a quick fix, make it not protect its own totem, or make it respawn a lot slower, or only protect a few totems around it.

Death's guide and Caldera ravager, my complaint might be something you dont expect. It's not the damage, or annoyance. They can be played around and countered. It's more a visual clarity issue. The terrifying death aura is a barely visible shimmering circle on the ground. It needs to be way more clear.With ravager, a similar issue, if you have one on your team as well, you can have a bunch of these going on, covering half the arena, and you dont even know which one is enemy and which one isnt.This goes for the units in general too, I'd welcome some friend or foe colouring of units in general for easier distinction.

Onto chieftains:Well made ones: Maata, Utula, Akoya, Tawhanuku, Kiloava, Rakiata, Kaom, AhuanaSome of them are stronger or weaker, but they all have fairly well telegraphed attacks. You could make the argument for Ahuana or Akoya being a little on the frustrating side, but generally you can deal with them, and they can all be fairly fearsome.

Chieftains I take issue with: Ikiaho, KahuturoaIkiaho is just very very annoying. Her basic attack that leaves a cold dot area is not very good looking and doesn't even match to the damaging area very well. Her orb is massive and really make the already bad visual clarity a lot worse. She also doesn't really do much, while being annoying. Since she spams attacks while standing still, she often just sits in her base. Overall boring opponent.

Kahu, the worst of them all. He spams his abilities at a rapid pace. Much more so than others. Not only that, but his attacks are wider than the screen for some inexplicable reason. His cone attack can hit you in the middle of your base when he casts it from his. It's insanity. He is one of the reasons you can't go the mitigation route. You WILL be hit by his aoe. Clever dodging doesn't even do you much good because of his attack speed.

Overall, I think this could be an awesome part of PoE, but boy does it have some issues that make people frustrated.I quite like that most things can be overcome by your unit choices and items. That is something GGG did achieve in this mechanic.

PS: Special love goes out to Sunset sages, best flankers in the entire damn thing.

Addendum: A 2 second grace period on respawning would be welcome, with the massive AoE chieftain attacks, getting oneshot just as you respawn isnt exactly fun.
Also, there are some units that seems to be especially buggy and just freeze up and do nothing often. Spear dancers and jade crafters seem quite prone.

I agree with a lot of the above.

• Better rating control.
• Better Death-draw syncing.
• Prevent Titanic shell from drawing out the game unnecessarily.
• Grace period on respawn.
• Totem targeting
• Easier way to reroll rewards instead of having to relog.

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LicktySplit wrote:

I agree with a lot of the above.

• Better rating control.
• Better Death-draw syncing.
• Prevent Titanic shell from drawing out the game unnecessarily.
• Grace period on respawn.
• Easier way to reroll rewards instead of having to relog.

there is grace period on respawn just don't move or use any skill or flask

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CAPSLOCK_ON wrote:

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LicktySplit wrote:

there is grace period on respawn just don't move or use any skill or flask

You are correct. There appears to be about a 1-2 second grace period after death.

Good post. This league needs some attention. The balance is brutal and there's no way that it was intended to be this bad.

One little patch early on is pretty sad, followed by absolute silence.

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there is grace period on respawn just don't move or use any skill or flask

How it is usefull to not move if Kahu and his 3 goliaths are sitting on my totem ready to reoneshot immidiately after resp?

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BambulaGTS wrote:

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there is grace period on respawn just don't move or use any skill or flask

How it is usefull to not move if Kahu and his 3 goliaths are sitting on my totem ready to reoneshot immidiately after resp?

play damage avoidance build then

The balance in this mode is so bad that we could have had 1 HP, without chaos innoculation, and it would have played out pretty much exactly like it does now with 6000 HP or whatever (plus the usual 17 layers of defense).

It's pretty galling to get oneshot from some minor mob looking sideways at you. Then, while staring at your corpse for 30 seconds, waiting for a revive, you watch two AI-controlled units bash each other's head in again and again and again, with barely a move in their respective health bars.

Actually thought the mode was pretty fun early on, when it was possible to engage meaningfully with the mechanic. But when you get to play dead most of the time, at least in certain matches (looking at you Mr Kuru), it just becomes infuriating at worst, or boring at best.

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play damage avoidance build then

Okay. I play avoidance build then, but turtle behind their backs makes my avoidance useless.

Now what?

It isn't terribly hard to fix most of what is broken.

A: a fixed icon above totems to click to channel a totem so we can actually click the damn thing when there are walls everywhere.

B: Titanic Shell can't make it's own totem invincible. How that make it past QA is mind boggling to me. Better yet, if that is too damn hard to code, then just make the shield result in a 25%-45% decrease in channeling effectiveness.