POE2 Feedback - Titan Warrior - Semi Casual

To start off with. I've been having a lot of fun with the POE2 early access but with its current state it just feels hard to recommend to people. Regardless, most design choices feel incredibly good, but with weak execution or odd bits that really drag down the experience. I feel there is a great amount of potential and possibly a genre leading game in there if it gets the polish it needs.Hence why im here writing a miniature novel as feedback.

In short my two main problems are the sheer amount of infuriating/unbalanced things that pop up every couple hours and the overly stressful vibe these create. More later, with examples and the main offenders.

My previous experiences for context. I'm a hobby gamer who enjoys a challenge but i still tend to consider myself casual in the more dedicated communities. I have a lot of hours in poe1 (~500) and got to most of the end game content over the years (low pinacles, exarch, eater, etc). I also have a lot of experience playing hack and slash games like Hades, which felt surprisingly relevant for the warrior i ended up playing. My usual focus points for a great game is , music and audio design(im musician/composer), storytelling, character and monster design , animation, strategic character building or combat, and second to second twitch action. At the time of writing this, i haven't finished the main game, im in the process of finishing the end of Act 3. ~45 hours of playtime.

The Good
There is much to like and more to love about this game. The music is much more upfront and has more focus. Which is something i adore. From the little touches of middle-asian flare in Act 2, to the occasional electric guitars poking trough. Amazing work from the team all around. Can't wait to hear more.
Very similar experience with the world building, and the visual presentation of it. VA work is top notch, and the writing is up there as well. The side notes and "cinematic areas" add a lot of vibe and mood to the whole experience. Like the notes stuck on the map of Act1's "made by the orders of the Duke" or Act 3's expedition notes. Really nice immersion touches, love it.
I could go for hours about it, like the very intentional blending of eastern cultures in Act 2. Armor sets inspired by old chinese pieces worn by the guard, Tibetian/Thai depictions and statues, mixed with indian and arabian architecture and building styles and egyptian jewelery. I could go on for literal hours. Its so good. And the same goes for anything i found in Act 1 or 3 as well. Every piece and map fragment feels like its made with intent and craft.
In short, it makes me feel rewarded for paying close attention to the world and the people in it. Which i think is the greatest achievement for an art like this.
An unexpected surprise was how detailed the main character was. I played warrior, and it felt very good to have an immediate confirmation with Blacksmith Dad. And from then on it felt really nice to go on a very classical hero's journey with the guy. Can't wait for the Karui section.

The combat and micro level play
One of my main issues with poe1 was that it often felt like by the time you entered the arena (or map) the fight was already decided and you could only change the variables with clever play by a few percentages. This is very much not the case here. It feels very fluid, and up close and personal. To a certain extent the stats are still there, its an RPG after all, but it feels much much better now. With a few exceptions (more later)
The skill gem recommendations are pretty great touch as well. It let me focus on learning the game first and interact with the meaty bits at my own pace. Most of the systems feel robust and well designed. And beyond that very fun to play. Im a sucker for "combo skills" in general. And so much of the new design seems to follow that. I focused on a heavy hitting hammer stun combo with nasty boneshatter hits to clear waves. Felt really good to set up the mobs and then have them explode. While i'm not 100% if that kind of position heavy gameplay is the fantasy of the character(Big Hammer Go Burr) but the design is very solid and satisfying.

The Bad
After the end of Act 1 the game appears to be hitting a very harsh difficulty spike while being extremely stingy when it comes to providing certain resources that lets you handle that difficulty jump ,and you are trained to use in the whole of act 1. The most obvious one is crafting mats. Specially regal orbs and exalted orbs. Blue items are plenty, but you NEED at least a couple high powered yellows to progress meaningfully. I got roughly 3 regals throughout the whole of act 2. (or at least it felt like it). We ended up pooling our regal and exalt resources with a friend i was playing with to let us have a chance to level up a nicely rolled blue item when one of us needed it.

An intended or unintended effect of this power spike was that the game ended up being about managing health pots during boss fight for me. What defined if i can kill a boss or not, was most often if i could hoard my hp flask charges to the last phase or if i could get a "generate X charge per second" mod. They did not one shot me, or killed me quickly. I just ran out of resources. While i like this kind of boss playstyle, it felt really odd for POE. Incredibly little flask generation with bosses. It feels like they generate decently from killed mobs, but barely anything from rare/boss hits like in poe 1. This also seems to happen with charms as well. (Charms are also near impossible to see when they turn on. UI improvements may be needed)

To summarize, this contributed to a stifling and oppressive gameplay experience. It kind of felt like playing a souls-like game. Managing Estus Flasks, and perfect dodging hits. Which can be very engaging and rewarding. But they are not the kind of game i will sit down to play after a long day at work. Which is where ARPGs like poe, diablo, and the like tend to sit. I had a similar experience with the elden ring dlc. The game focused so hard on making it hard and challenging, that it stopped being fun and ended up feeling like work to progress. This was specially present for me in the early bits of Act3, before i started getting my 2nd tier supports, 3rd gem slots and new gear. It felt painful to grind trough the jungle pack by pack. I was finding myself porting back to town just to refill my empty flasks.
Based on the interviews and previous statements this was not the intention of the team. And it should be manageable with a retuning of numbers and powerlevels. But if you want to stick this playstyle then we likely need some more tools to handle the challenges.

This whole situation was also exasperated by my chosen playstyle. In the early levels i went with a Earthquake + Shockwave totem based Jagged Ground set up, with Boneshatter and Rolling Slam as the burst. This worked great with packs, but i felt very weak with single target damage. Specially as most bosses walk about a lot, leaving my Jagged Grounds and Totem behind. While some made me near useless like the Act 2 Djinn fight where she dashes trough the room every 5 seconds. It didnt feel like i had a lot of options based on my mostly STR based setup.
After talking with some other players it seems i had less issues with Warrior than most. Lot of it seems to come from my experience with hack and slash games. For example i developed an odd habit of always dodging to a side after landing a bigger hit. Or trying to dodge the "auto attacks" of most bosses.
Just weird and abnormal play in general. Felt odd for an ARPG, but it worked ...?

The Ugly
(aka stuff that feels plain bad and i hope are gonna be changed in the full release)
These were not super common, but there are multiple per Act. It basically meant that my usual 2-3 hour gaming sessions either ended with or contained a "beat head against wall for an hour" segment or a rage quit. These tend to come in three categories. Stupidly overtuned bosses either in the hp, damage department or they just deviate from the powerlevel too much. One shot moves, intended or not. and various baffling and infuriating mandatory mechanics.


Jamanra (!) (Specially the Act2 Last Boss version)
Incredibly over tuned. Damage is very high. And HP is massively too high. Almost feels like halfing it would be fair. Makes the fight very long. And because of his high attack speeds and varied attacks its hard to actually DPS him. I ended up having to resort to cheese full defense whittling tactics to remotely take him down. Max resist, rolled a regening flask, leech runes on weapon, focused on only using my base weapon attack and rolling. This fight is atrocious in its current state. Needs immediate attention.

The Titan (Act 2 Fire Trial)
Overall really fun fight and incredibly cinematic. Has a few weird moments. Like the exploding wisp adds. They do massive explosion damage and freeze buildup for being an endlessly spawning "side add". And can cause problematic death spirals when they freeze you, then the Titan knocks you down and then the adds are on your again. Also appears to be near unstunnable for some reason?
The main problem is there is apparently a weird oneshotting move. One of his "knife stab and drag" moves. It doesnt even seem to be consistent. Sometimes just hits hard but doesnt kill. But on occasion it literally auto kills (Friend had over 1k effective hp with Ghost Wraps, still one shot). Almost feels like a bug to be honest.


Mektul The Forgemaster
Very odd tuning. So much hp and defense. And its also a very harsh dps check for the level. I do decent dmg and overlevel him but i can barely get him below 40% hp before i swim in lava.
Also has some odd design. What are you even supposed to do here? Very confusing
It seems like the intended design is to drag him away from the lava and then hit him hard before he runs back and has lower defense? But that stifles the dps in a tight check. I had more success with just draggin him a bit in front the lava and hitting him hard without him running back.
Just really odd and probably needs a significant redesign or at least some attention with fine tuning. Also had an Essence mob pack spawn inside the flute, dunno if thats intentional?...


The Mighty Silverfist
Stupid damage. Incredibly overtuned. You can literally find highlights of people getting oneshot by this guy. Specially the long front slam.


Health Regeneration Rare Modifier
This feels very bad. Super overtuned. There are cases when i literally couldn't take a rare's hp below 99%. (dual mini boss - the big buy , first swamp area of Act 3)

Temporal Field Rare Modifier
This is near death for melee. Very punishing. Specially so for a slow swinger like my hammer build was. I can see myself literally just avoiding mobs with this in maps.

The Water Hags in Act 3
The water orb drowning thing they do is incredibly punishing and oneshots too by the way it feels. In the tight confines of the city with so many mobs crowding the area its easy to get stuck in one. And its also VERY fast to kill you with massive range while the Hag stays the street over and keeps spamming it.

In general any one shot mechanic is baffling to me at this point. It feels like one step forward two steps back. Why? Why would any be in the game?


Both Ascendancy Trials.
Every time a mechanic opens up a central game features it needs to work well. They are mandatory basically. Neither of these trials work well. They play very differently from the main game in not a good way. In a way that the skills you need to do good in them dont translate back to the game or from the main game. Its a parallel skill set. Their sheer stupidly overtuned numbers also make it a miserable experience. When i enter one i can just feel myself switch modes from "im having fun, good game" to "God, lets gets this over with so i dont have to come back here for a while"

Trial of the Sekemah
I saw the patch preview with the honor damage reduction on melee just as i was writing this. Great step forward. But i dont think it fixes the underlying issues with the whole thing.

I still think honour or its Sanctum equivalent is a horrible mechanic, and should never be in an ARPG that is about getting hit. A lot. There is a reason why i barely touched sanctum even as someone who a, adores rougelikes b, played during the league c, loved the lore from it. I'm near perfect target audiance for it and i still hate it. And the honour mechanic has a lot to do with that.
Also Chalice challenges are incredibly punishing in comparison to any else. Because if you get a bad rare you cant kite it like in the timed one , you need to kill it. And if you get a bad one, you are basically done for. The sheer amount of aoe explosion style modifiers dont help either for melee. I end up sitting on the side whittling my thumbs a lot
The whole trial also has weird scaling for the level. But thats a smaller issue than the honor thing.


Trial of Chaos
Infuriating and Horribly Tuned. The sheer numbers in this trial are unplayable. Specially the modifiers. Most of these are run destroying. +40% enemy resist? What the hell. Ruin also goes too fast, as a slower attacker it stops me from every using a bigger slam. it would be hard even without any of the modifiers. I literally can't see myself ever beating this until im like at least +10 levels above it. Needs a great deal of attention before it will be remotely fun.


I may come across as rather bitter, specially in the last few paragraphs. But i would like to highlight that i would not be writing up a massive list for a game i dont care about. There is a massive amount of potential and a lot of amazing things in it. But it just doesnt feel great in its current state when every few hours i end up beating my head against a wall. I keep finding myself wanting to recommending it , and then rethinking it, and deciding to wait a couple months with that instead.

Still the artistry, craft, love and care, that is clearly poured into this game fills me with hope that with time and effort this will be one of the greats. And that i can enjoy playing it with my friends for years to come.



(I dont tend to post on this forum, so if i posted in the wrong place or something else. Please let me know so i can make the needed changes)