Early Mapping feedback ~50+ deep

In the current state of the game mapping is sadly not very fun.

Reached lvl 75, dying a few times here and there, but all in all while I will say it is tuned to a rather hard state this is not the issue I am facing...

I will first illustrate a few points that I would strongly assume anyone currently mapping would agree with and then put the more subjective things at the end:

1)
Currently every single rare mob in maps has this sort of explosion-animation that does absolutely nothing to your character and is just a way to show that you completed one of the mapobjectives I guess (since u have to kill all raremobs to complete a map).
This is extremely annoying because if the mob actually does an explosion that harms your character it is really hard or next to impossible to see. Thus I just ended up running away from every single raremob I killed until the animation is done before going in to loot - this is just bad and very disruptive on the overall gameplay experience.

2)
Directly linked to above, I do not know what triggers the raremobs being shown as little icons on the minimap but sometimes this does not work even if only 1 is missing and 99% of the map is cleared - so you just end up running around backtracking the entire thing multiple times to find that one rare mob hiding in a corner...
This is the sort of thing I kinda expected for EA but still very annyoing and needs a better solution asap.

3)
Mana-sustain in maps is arduous.
I find myself leaving the map for flasks an average of 2-3 times or so to grab new charges. For context, I am playing a Deadeye with a bow and already have A LOT of mana on my gear by chance due to how my items rolled, getting like 250 extra maximum mana on gear which results in a pool of 650. Additionally I already specced the mana flask sustain on the passive tree with almost all notes available and rolled a good manaflask so it is usable 11 times with full charges.
After all that still having to grab charges multiple times a map is very disruptive... maybe this should be the state with 0 invest on manasustain but not after you already spec everything available in that part of the passive tree.
Again, very disruptive on the gameplay experience itself.

Subjective things:

I strongly believe that the game is a just bit too hard right now in the wrong places. PoE has always been known to have things that can 1-shot you, ok all good.

Yet, considering myself on the more top-end side of things (always pushing limits in PoE1 and also went to sleep at #1 on the SSF Softcore Ladder, now #7 after waking up again), while I can deal with most of what is thrown at me but I feel like the vast majority of people will hit brick walls in mapping due to the 1-death policy that consumes all portals.

Before starting the game me and some friends were kinda hard-memeing the "bricked atlas state", but honestly if maps still went red and blocked on death (GOOD thing that did not make it into the final game btw) I would probably not have a lot of paths left myself at this point.

Breach/Ritual actually have too much density for most builds to handle in this gamestate - whenever I touched these mechs I died more often than not due to being swarmed.

Also, while I did not do the greatest of gameplay while being tired, only having 4 ascendancy point at lvl 75 feels weird and both trials feel extremely hard to complete even on a decently geared character right now - maybe the mapping being hard woul actually be in a lot better situation if we had access to those points in a not-so-overtuned state of trials.

This seems a fair assessment. For me the two biggest things so far have been sustain and difficulty.

The limitations on flask charges and the lack of sustain in the tree (especially if you can't leech from hits [casters]) have definitely made my experience playing less enjoyable. It's tedious, not challenging.

The difficulty scaling has been an issue from start to finish where you enter a new zone/act/map and the damage done by enemies has just jumped massively, but your chance to build defenses with gear has not - because items aren't dropping and currency to build items isn't dropping enough to match that jump.

Good feedback tbh.

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Ozyorkbourne#5783 wrote:

This seems a fair assessment. For me the two biggest things so far have been sustain and difficulty.

The limitations on flask charges and the lack of sustain in the tree (especially if you can't leech from hits [casters]) have definitely made my experience playing less enjoyable. It's tedious, not challenging.

The difficulty scaling has been an issue from start to finish where you enter a new zone/act/map and the damage done by enemies has just jumped massively, but your chance to build defenses with gear has not - because items aren't dropping and currency to build items isn't dropping enough to match that jump.

Good feedback tbh.

So in other words the issues you have in the early game in terms of lack of sustain persist into late game, thus making it almost impossible to make a tanky build.

Well the sustain for mana is an issue - life not so much and u can just improve gameplay to deal with it either way.

I do think you can build a tanky build for sure and I also did not want this threat to be another about difficulty or whatever - just wanted to get some much-needed short term feedback on some of the most unpleasant things currently in maps.

Nice feedback.

But mana wise are you using any "on kill" stuff?
The flasks have a "gain charge on kill" % stuff and there's "on kill gain mana" for equipments.

I am only getting into mana problems when i spamm too hard on bossfights. Cause outside of that i get more mana back per skillshot, then it costs. Haven't gotten around to mapping yet, but there should be enough mobs to farm mana off?

Worst case... socketing mana leech into a weapon will do?

"

Nice feedback.

But mana wise are you using any "on kill" stuff?
The flasks have a "gain charge on kill" % stuff and there's "on kill gain mana" for equipments.

I am only getting into mana problems when i spamm too hard on bossfights. Cause outside of that i get more mana back per skillshot, then it costs. Haven't gotten around to mapping yet, but there should be enough mobs to farm mana off?

Worst case... socketing mana leech into a weapon will do?

Hey there - well sadly socketing mana leech does exactly nothing cause i tried; granted a lightning ranger converts a good amount of the phys to lightning so it gets less effective but honestly at the rate I got mana from it I would argue it does not even feel good on pure phys - pure speculation though cause I got noone to ask.

On kill stuff is good if u get a lot of it - unfortunately got none on my items atm.

As for a comparison... Here is mana cost on my abilities right now:

Lightning Arrow: 56
Rain of Arrows: 122
Cast on Shock: 69

Full manapool: ~700 atm and 1 flask-use is full mana pretty much instantly

Issue is I chuck manapots every like 2-3 seconds when dpsing and even whitemobs are far from oneshots lul

Mostly agree just to bump, also for some reason I'm stuck to only getting tier 1 waystones. (Yes I empty the vendor regularly)