Act 2 Balancing around bosses, casual mob and DPS progress.

I'm streaming and recording my walkthrough the whole game, the experience is Amazing, I LOVE BOSS DESIGN, Mark "Neon" Robert nail it so good with every single boss, feels like a new challenge, a new experience each of those bosses.

I'm not against dying like 3 or 5 times trying to beat a boss, and things could be a bit less hardcore. I think, flask is a weak point topic, that no one is talking about, is not about the balancing around how much life you can recover, is more about the gain charges as a topic.

Some bosses are really Tanky, feels like a true epic fight, but once you hit around 20 to 30% of life, you almost 90% of the time get stuck out of flask, so happens what it needs to happen.

I will mention several of the topics about my experience in act 2, and the Flask's are one and almost the pillar in terms of several of many frictions that I have been able to see in the game, I have also been talking with many of the members of my guild who usually do 5 way service and more.

Act 2 Balancing and Feedback as Minion/Blood Mage

I will start by setting the following. I have nothing against spending 50 hours completing the campaign mode, I want you to understand that normally I love leveling characters over and over again, I have never had problems with the campaign mode and sometimes, I find it ridiculous when people says "dude I hate the campaign". You need the campaign to setup your baseline before maps, and without campaign, nothing make sense, But in this case, maybe campaign is a bit too much for the majority.

The whole game is hard, but in the Act 2 is quite something, feels long, the DPS as Witch/Minion skills scale not that great till you go SRS, the moment you make the switch is day and night, but I can't even tell if I try the game with basic Persistant minions.

Persistant Minions

They are not great, they are not amazing, skills looks like the same, lack of identity, the arsonist are the greatest art of all, but I really don't like the art design for everything to be kinda green + Skell fashion picture.

Lets talk about frictions with minions, Skeletons in general, have too low life, even if you invest more than 100% of life, they are like paper.

They tend to die with almost any mob, the fact that you can't summon them, that they die all the time, and that every time a minion dies "the counter time resets", the experience of playing with them makes you doubt whether you should continue playing with them even with 50% faster revive.

They have a DPS of a joke without a punch line, you can stay there, watch them doing nothing like Dragon Age Companions, and then, you start to do something else, something like casting a Cold Spell (to apply cc) because you want to stay alive for some reason.

Once you realize that the the only useful Skeleton are the Frost Mage and just because you have them for Freeze (Using Support gems like more projectiles and more freeze buildup), you start to look around, and try almost everything that could give you enough damage to beat the bosses.

Summon Raging Spirits, I think this is the only minion in the game that have enough DPS to enjoy the game, not even going fast or so, just to play the game, I've to be honest in this, I don't think that I would keep playing minions, if there is only Unearth and one Persistent Skeleton type or even one of each, they have no damage, they have no life, they are not doing anything in bosses.

Bone Cage & Bonestorm

Both skills are in the lower side of DPS, Bone Cage have more DPS but is harder to hit bosses with, extremely dangerous playstyle. Bonestorm is just a meme, sorry, I have a clip were I try to kill a rare monster that was stuck inside a tree and took me like 2 minutes to kill, no Phys reduction, no regen, not a single layer of defense.

Blood Mage

Critical chance and Blood Mage, right now the idea behind my "build" was Bone Cage, area Spell with duration life Firestorm or the spell that was remove, Lightning Storm to produce enough Blood charges from mobs. So right now I need to wait till get the next ascendancy to take life leech node, feels too punishing right now just because of flask charge generation, Blood Mage feels too restrictive at early game even with minions, just because the persistent ones have no damage.

Bone cage is not that good for critical (to sustain the Blood Generation) as I though, is not good for DPS too. So I'm right now at level 41 stuck with 1 passive (life node) of my ascendancy, I can't go with the first node, Life Remnants feels so bad with the reward for the cost.

First Ascendancy Trial

I go through the Trials too late, felt easy at that point, no rush, no problems, I'm not a Sanctum enjoyer, but its in a OK state, maybe the second Trial could be more challenging.

The gem progression is a bit too off, I feel that the new system does not allow you to improve when you get stuck trying to beat a boss, you have almost no room to improve without spending like 1 hour or so farming. This friction is killer for new players, I don't care about pro players, but thinking to balance a game around pro players, seems to me like a suicidal thoughts.

I only wish the best for POE2, and only the best. I hope it gets the greatest number of players of all RPG's in the industry, and at the same time satisfy the POE1 players, they are different games and they should be different, they should be ENJOYED, in their own different way.