PoE2 Act 1 - 2 Notes

I just finished Act 2 and at first I thought the game was too hard, but after fixing resists, there are times where it feels too easy. I think that it would help initial players to set the expectation that you should be playing or replaying through zones more than once if you need items - after I did so, I basically giga buffed my build and feel like I am steam rolling content that was crushing me a few hours ago. So, what happened? I re-specced from totem and ignite nodes to flat damage nodes. I got earthshatter and began using inspiration on my warcry. This made it so I did not need to be in melee range and solved most of my mana issues. I crafted a flask and realized how important gaining charges per second is. I applied some sockets to decent to rare gear to fix my resists. With all of that being said, there were times where I would have had more fun in Act 1 if I had more mid level gear drop and also would have had more fun if I had less good gear drop in Act 2. There are currently a lot of skills that do not feel worthwhile to be using because they mess up positioning (rolling slam) but they are the skill you have access to early. The game is super fun and I do not want it to be any easier, but I do think that pacing of the acts needs to be dialed in. I can not see a way to elemental resist cap any resistance in act 1, but so many enemies have access to elemental damage that it feels mandatory. More gear or more gold in act one and then having loot drops plateau seems like it would have made progression feel like I was struggling but showing progress for the entire play through vs getting stomped at the start and then stomping on content after getting 1 good item or one good skill.

Feedback: During a lot of the pre-release videos, there was an emphasis on crafting items, that there would be fewer items drop, but there would be more crafting currency drop. That hasn't really been my experience, but because that is what I thought it would be, I just was burning through my currency making items that were not upgrades. In reality, I should not have been disenchanting items into transmutation orbs because most of the bases that have been worth crafting on have either been boss loot (from replaying zones) or have been purchased as magic items with 2 good mods that I regal to hope for a good third mod. Most of the time, the regal gambles have not been paying off. I like where loot is at, but the expectation of loot being one way made me play in a way that was not working. So, I think there just needs to be expectations set that to reasonably solve character survivability early on, you will need to replay zones. That, or there should be fewer rare items dropped and to compensate just shower players with more raw currency orbs (transmutes, augmentation, regal, and alchemy) and more normal items with rune slots that I can either craft on or junk towards an artificers orb (which is really the thing that is helping to solve my resists right now). Instead, I just sell everything I pick up, identify rares to equip, sell, or disenchant, and then I use that gold to buy items that do have rune slots on them to junk into artificers orbs. I would not have had the gold to do that unless I stopped disenchanting. I think there is a missed opportunity happening because I 100% thought the right thing to do was to disenchant but it seems easy enough to get transmutation orbs or it seems like me crafting is not going to out progress a boss drop so what is the point in crafting if the things I actually need are vendor gold locked? It is cool because I have dropped exalts and chaos orbs as early as Act 1, but they are not helping me solve early resists and being under the resist cap makes content way harder than it actually should be. On the flip side, I am now resist capped and now content feels so much easier that it almost feels too easy (I might regret saying that as I move into future acts). A lot of the game feeling easy or hard has to do with damage, but certain monster damage scaling vectors seem to get out of hand more quickly than others. There are monsters that move slowly and hit hard but they are so slow that I am not getting hit by them, but if I do get hit by them, I should really feel it. Monsters that move quickly end up being way scarier (maybe because their damage numbers are not balanced) that I end up ignoring big/slow monsters and entirely focus on things that can swarm. The slow stuff should hit harder and have bigger damage numbers or should go like 10% faster than current and the fastest stuff should hit either as hard or less hard but apply slows and debuffs.

Overall, fun release but there were definitely times that felt more frustrating than fun. Those moments are all solve-able with leveling or providing more consistent itemization opportunities. I think that my second character will be much easier because I will kind of know what to look for, how to progress, and when to double back to improve gear before advancing. However, that took me 20 hours - 25 hours of gameplay and I already have all of my gameplay experience from poe1 (but maybe PoE1 is a detriment because I normally just do not care about elemental resists until act 2 or 3, can solve resistances on the passive tree, and also look to solve resistances through rings and bench crafts which all seem to be much easier to get access to in PoE 1 than they do in PoE2). The first 13 - 20 hours of me struggling through boss fights and gameplay were almost going to make me reroll to another class or quit, but I do not want the game to be easier I just want to have hitting that wall come at the 20 hour mark, not the 5 hour mark. Earlier campaign stuff should maybe be a bit easier and later campaign stuff should be a bit harder, but the average difficulty level is good.