PoE for average players?

I absolutely agree with the OP and her comments regarding game difficulty and the average player.

I have been playing this game since early days before the first Atziri challenge was added to the game.

1. Let's take some of these Opposing views on the average player. I had always heard the average player craps out when hitting maps. I think everyone in the thread agrees that someone picking up the game is a newbie. I would say someone that has played 3 or 4 leagues is probably an average person depending on how much outside support they get with builds, trading, free gear etc.

2. Let's now talk about builds. All builds can potentially get you to yellow maps but not end game content. Thing about builds is that GGG is constantly changing and nerfing skills, gear, skill trees, etc. So the wonderful easy build of last league (which there never is one by the time the average player finds it) has usually been nerfed.
Also, the people that write builds/streamers have a wonderful habit of bragging about their latest gear, but like most/all build writers and streamers, exactly how they came into said gear is never explained rendering the build idea worthless.

3. IMHO no one can succeed in this game without learning how to trade and to amass game wealth. This takes time to learn and goes hand in hand with at least understanding some crafting. Many things can be said about game experience, but to hit end game you have to have a certain ability/familiarity with trading and crafting.

4. One thing that hasn't been discussed is that one needs to learn how to beat certain maps and bosses. You can have the best gear in the game, but without the knowledge of how the map/boss actually perform, the player is doomed to keep dying until the necessary experience is gained. Conversely those with a bunch of experience can wear sub-optimal gear and perform exceptionally well under certain conditions.

5. The difficulty of this game is significant due to its plethora of different sub-games: Delve, Heist, etc. If I hadn't been playing so long I don't think I would take it up again. This coming league looks like it has a ton of changes - best of luck to all players.

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Elhazzared wrote:

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

Spoiler

This is absolutely not true and has literally never been true at ANY point in PoEs history.

If you can't clear white maps with under 5C invested per equipment slot your build is unbelievably bad, full stop.

Here's the gear I had when I hit level 90 in HCSSF, when I was clearing tier twelve and thirteen maps to test out SRS Guardian before recommending it to some friends who are playing the game for the first time this league:

And this is HARDCORE. You could use far worse gear than this in a softcore league and be fine.

Does this look like multiple divines of gear to you?

Admitedly no, but I doubt I'd be clearing red maps with that kind of gear. The SRS are only on a 5L (granted a cheap corrupted 6L isn't hard to get) and with that kind of gear I expect your ability to survive is mostly limited to your minions drawing aggro because you have low HP, around the 3K and capped elemental res. What that would mean for me is that if the enemies chose to ignore all my minions and attack me, I'd die very fast. If the enemy has AoEs or attacks with penetration and so on, good chance they will be hitting me too which means I will die rather fast.

Maybe it's ok for you to die every now and then or maybe you're good enough of a player that it never happens, in my case I'd be dying every now and then at very least and that is not really fun, it definitely saps the will to keep playing if I keep dying. The occasional but very rare death is fine, dying every now and then isn't. This is why I used to love playing freezing pulse totems, they would freezing everything they attacked if not outright oneshot anything they attacked and since i had a combined mana and HP pool I could still take the ocasional hit which would make the build very sturdy. Of course that is now in the trash with all spell totems save for ice spears which has horrible clearing and even then that requires archmage.

So first and foremost: I do not have low hp, and I do not die "every now and then" because this is a HARDCORE SOLO SELF FOUND character, which you can see if you mouse over the items.

Here are my defensive stats:

4900 life, 1000 ES
74% attack block, 75% spell block
Immune to freeze (Brine King), Immune to shock (Tempest Shield)
23k Armor, 10k Evasion (without flasks)
35k Armor, 13k Evasion (with flasks)
Over 1200 net life regen per second
Global 28% less damage taken from hits (Radiant Sentinel)

I've got those defenses, with those terrible items you could get for 1-2 chaos each in a trade league, and enough damage to easily clear early red maps.

That's what me and Felix are trying to tell you: the things you are saying are objectively untrue. And it's okay to be wrong! But when it's pointed out to you, and not just pointed out but PROVEN, you need to stop saying the things which you now know are untrue and go arm yourself with knowledge before you continue to spread disinformation.

I'm not trying to flame or start fights here, but it's extremely important that you understand this. Based on everything you've said in this thread, you do not have (in your words) "significant knowledge of the game systems." I would say you have substantially below average game knowledge, because the things you "know" are not true. I don't know who told you the things you believe, but they were not correct and unfortunately they have really set you back quite a bit in your understanding of this game.

Have you played Necropolis 4 months?

The gear I am talking about is for RED maps. NOT white maps. You are referring to it as - quote - "need 100c to 1diving just to start mapping". No you do not. You need 10c to start mapping because all you need are close to capped resists and some damage.

You need around 1 div to survive and be able to complete red maps on a decent build.

If we assume you have found at least one good item on the ground (which chances are you have) it will cost you around 1 div to craft the rest of the items to be able to map in red COMFORTABLY. If you get to red maps without at least one divine (not necessarily pure div) you are doing something wrong.

Just from chaos recipe alone if that's your only revenue stream you should be able to get this amount going from white to red.

There are other factors, sure - if you're gonna do T11 on a lvl 65 char you're prob gonna have a bad time on 1 div gear (just an example). But overall, if you have the most absolutely basic knowledge of the game and crafting (again, MOST basic) you will be able to run red on a very low budget.

Going to your example - you wanna buy a fractured T1 strength, that's gonna cost you. Go for a T2 instead. Or go for a benchcrafted strength roll on 2 items with open suffixes. All you need for red maps are:

1. Capped resists
2. Decent life (3.5K if you're ok to die at least 1-2 times per map, 4K+ to comfortably survive)
3. Decent dps (to be very honest I'm not sure what a good number would be here, but I'd say a decent meter is you need to kill trash mobs in less than a second on a T16. Anything less than that is bad)

Some defenses are always nice, but you'll passively get those anyway. Spell suppression is by far the best defensive layer, but also the most expensive, however you can do with 50% in red (here is a assuming that you get at least that from gear and tree, which most builds will have if you're following a guide that isn't total trash)

What my point is here, is you do not need as much as you think to run red maps. Very likely you are focusing on the wrong things, which are also expensive instead of trying to go for cheaper items which give you more value even if you don't see it. I'm gathering this from your analysis - 4 good high tier stats on one item is MORE than you need in red maps. 3 is enough. You either get 2 + 1 benchcraft or 3 + 1 benchcraft max. You try to fill what's missing from jewels for example, or skill points - if you, say, lack 20 dex for an important skill gem and can't get it on items, respec something that's relatively useless and take a +30 dex temporarily.

You need to be able to adjust and adapt. I don't play on steam but I can add you in game when the league starts and I'll be happy to help you wherever I can.

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Elhazzared wrote:

Coming back to the present, you have 40 to 50% player loss in the first week alone and it's all down to average players being unable to progress.

You’ve got this “40-50%” from concurrent players data. It means amount of players who play at the same time. People start playing, let’s say 8 hours a day, down to 1-2 hours a day: that means less people play simultaneously, but it doesn’t mean half of them quit. They continue to play in different time.

So your assumption about “average players” is false.

Anyone who wants to, can utilize his brain to get past yellow maps.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

So first and foremost: I do not have low hp, and I do not die "every now and then" because this is a HARDCORE SOLO SELF FOUND character, which you can see if you mouse over the items.

Here are my defensive stats:

4900 life, 1000 ES
74% attack block, 75% spell block
Immune to freeze (Brine King), Immune to shock (Tempest Shield)
23k Armor, 10k Evasion (without flasks)
35k Armor, 13k Evasion (with flasks)
Over 1200 net life regen per second
Global 28% less damage taken from hits (Radiant Sentinel)

I've got those defenses, with those terrible items you could get for 1-2 chaos each in a trade league, and enough damage to easily clear early red maps.

That's what me and Felix are trying to tell you: the things you are saying are objectively untrue. And it's okay to be wrong! But when it's pointed out to you, and not just pointed out but PROVEN, you need to stop saying the things which you now know are untrue and go arm yourself with knowledge before you continue to spread disinformation.

I'm not trying to flame or start fights here, but it's extremely important that you understand this. Based on everything you've said in this thread, you do not have (in your words) "significant knowledge of the game systems." I would say you have substantially below average game knowledge, because the things you "know" are not true. I don't know who told you the things you believe, but they were not correct and unfortunately they have really set you back quite a bit in your understanding of this game.

Well, to be fair I actually tried to look at your character and it said profile is private so I couldn't actually look it up, so I estimated the average HP that would have from my own characters, whether necromancers or hierophants which generally have access to the same HP nodes as they use trees that go over similar areas and the HP present on the gear. That I estimated around 3 to 3.5K If you have 4.9K with that gear, I'm not sure how or all of those defensive layers with that kind of gear. I would like a PoB to that so i could have a look cause it looks a bit too good to be true with that kind of gear in the current state of PoE but I am willing to happily admit I'm wrong if shown how it is being archived.

That being said I do think it is disingenuous to say someone's knowledge of the game is bellow average just because they couldn't guess what your HP value was based only what what they saw on the gear when in all fairness, the majority of builds using that gear and going after the usual HP on the tree which normally is, everything you can get your hands on maybe skipping 1 or 2 less valuable nodes at best.

I did admit my crafting knowledge to be lacking but almost no one has crafting knowledge in PoE, that is something a tiny fraction of the playerbase has because it is incredibly hard not to mention you need an equal amount of market knowledge to fully make use of your crafting knowledge. I am however well versed in most PoE game mechanics.

@Felix44

The gear you talked about for red maps is technically the minimum gear for white maps. We're talking about gear that covers resistances, covers stats, covers a bare minimum HP gain and some movement speed so I don't feel like walking over a tar pit. Actually movement now may be a lot easier with the new bandit quest rework since it's only 1 point trading for 8% movement speed.

Now the reason I'm saying that there is a gear wall is because generally minion builds and totem builds with this level of gear (80 life on most gear, 60 on rings, probably nothing on chest cause I always assume the chest to be tabula or equally bad in terms of affixes corrupted chest for the 6L) I get around 3 to 3.5K life at the absolute best and that means even on yellow maps I'm dying far more often than I am confortable with. And this is already using the gear that you consider good enough for red maps.

@wkernel

No I don't got this from concurrent players data. This is number of players that played the game that day and to go further than that. Steam only care if you clicked the play button. It doesn't cares if you actually played or if you were even in the game fore more than a second. It is total players on a day by bay basis.

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Elhazzared wrote:

Now the reason I'm saying that there is a gear wall is because generally minion builds and totem builds with this level of gear (80 life on most gear, 60 on rings, probably nothing on chest cause I always assume the chest to be tabula or equally bad in terms of affixes corrupted chest for the 6L) I get around 3 to 3.5K life at the absolute best and that means even on yellow maps I'm dying far more often than I am confortable with. And this is already using the gear that you consider good enough for red maps.

I am so confused, Did you get no stats in the tree? Do you have no res on anything but rings, are you trying to use the tabula through maps? I have made a ton of spell totem builds that make it to endgame on 50c or less, typically my most expensive piece is the spirit shield with +1 totems, but I am at tier 13 to 16 before I get it.

I been saying it for a decade already. PoE need a difficult setting. People like us who just want to kill stuff and loot stuff, and dont have the required 17 hrs a day to git gud.

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Marinxar wrote:

I been saying it for a decade already. PoE need a difficult setting. People like us who just want to kill stuff and loot stuff, and dont have the required 17 hrs a day to git gud.

The game wasn't made for people like yourself.

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Elhazzared wrote:

No I don't got this from concurrent players data. This is number of players that played the game that day and to go further than that. Steam only care if you clicked the play button.

All the websites and Steam itself only show concurrent players data.

https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed - concurrent and peak concurrent

steamdb - “As a reminder, the concurrent player count comes directly from the Steam API” (from their FAQ)

STEAMCHARTS - “An ongoing analysis of Steam's concurrent player”

steambase - “ Concurrent Players Steam Chart”

Provide your source or your whole thread is just wrong.

In any case, if poe starts targeting stupid players, as many other games do, I quit immediately