Mapping is too easily bricked.

So I literally pick up and sell everything magic I find, disenchant all of my rares. Currently I am at a point with maps (Tier 7) that even with using regals on my maps and getting +200% waystones (along with atlas points all towards more and better waystones) I have ran out of Tier 7+ waystones. I ended up making two earlier just to keep progressing but that is not financially reasonable. It literally takes like 400k gold just to make a Tier 7 waystone, not to mention the tedious time it takes turning all of those 1's into 2's and so on. At this point I can maybe get one or two more waystones, and if I don't find another in those maps I am completely bricked from mapping at all. I want to also add that I am literally full clearing every map I am in just to make sure I have all possible chances to get another waystone. At this point there is just no point to any of the endgame. Mapping gets bricked, Trials are overtuned and unfun, guess I make a 4th character to maps and quit them too? We really need an emergency hotfix to up the waystone drop rate for lower tiers (I hear this isn't as much of an issue at 13+?).

You're definitely doing something wrong. I can't tell you what based on your post, but there is absolutely no shortage of waystones. I'm at the point where I find so many T15 stones that I don't even bother looting T14 stones anymore. All the way from T7 through T13, the T6 and T7 stones were the ones I had the most of, and I was constantly upgrading them and still never running out.

This is 100% a you problem. Make sure you're progressing towards towers and putting tablets with "waystone chance" in them. Run breaches. Make sure your maps are rare with at least 100% waystone odds.

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Shammikaze#5042 wrote:

You're definitely doing something wrong. I can't tell you what based on your post, but there is absolutely no shortage of waystones. I'm at the point where I find so many T15 stones that I don't even bother looting T14 stones anymore. All the way from T7 through T13, the T6 and T7 stones were the ones I had the most of, and I was constantly upgrading them and still never running out.

This is 100% a you problem. Make sure you're progressing towards towers and putting tablets with "waystone chance" in them. Run breaches. Make sure your maps are rare with at least 100% waystone odds.

As I said before, 13+ I hear isn't a problem. As far as you saying T7 and higher you had enough, it is all RNG based. Almost every waystone I have used is 100% waystone increasing (most being 200%+) and I will go multiple maps without even getting a single waystone drop, and when I do it is T2-4 on average. So no not 100% a me problem. This is also an extremely common complaint a lot of people have had, including a lot of the big POE streamers. Many have said that they have been bottlenecked with maps until later maps.

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Shammikaze#5042 wrote:

You're definitely doing something wrong. I can't tell you what based on your post, but there is absolutely no shortage of waystones. I'm at the point where I find so many T15 stones that I don't even bother looting T14 stones anymore. All the way from T7 through T13, the T6 and T7 stones were the ones I had the most of, and I was constantly upgrading them and still never running out.

This is 100% a you problem. Make sure you're progressing towards towers and putting tablets with "waystone chance" in them. Run breaches. Make sure your maps are rare with at least 100% waystone odds.

You can definitely go on losing streaks. Don't be so audacious as to blame players for this, it's not even a statistical anomaly. Even a 50/50 coinflip can have long runs of a single direction.

Moreover, with the current system in place it is in fact rather daunting to progress if you lose one or multiple maps, which is definitely both possible and reasonable considering the system essentially goads you into fairly extreme difficulty spikes. For instance I had a bug which ultimately resulted in me losing the higher tier waystones purchased from Doryani, with a compounding complication of losing several maps in a row due to unpredictable mechanics, the end result was running far too many low tier maps and spending way too much time dallying around.

Fortunately, somebody did a bulk trade with me which helped to get a running pool of T5 maps.

Anyways, the replacement rate varies by both build, tier, and complication - gating actual character progress behind this consumable modality is, and has been a pretty annoying system and has shunted my interests more than once in PoE1.

I'm in the t10/t11 category, and I've not had too much issue with Waystones. The bigger issue I have is that I tend to get higher category maps than I'm currently on, probably because of my Atlas perks, so I have a nice quantity for when I finish the current Atlas tier quest.

Now if only I could get my monk's resists and ES sorted...

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Shammikaze#5042 wrote:

This is 100% a you problem.

Your take doesn't particularly helpful. let's keep the discussion constructive.

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Amorencinteroph#4321 wrote:

I'm in the t10/t11 category, and I've not had too much issue with Waystones. The bigger issue I have is that I tend to get higher category maps than I'm currently on, probably because of my Atlas perks, so I have a nice quantity for when I finish the current Atlas tier quest.

Now if only I could get my monk's resists and ES sorted...

Good luck! I'm in T13, and my ES and resist are still relatively low, so I need to crawl through the map, afraid of being one-shotted.

Most of the time, I only run maps that are +100% to +200% of my waystone where the boss icon exists on the map. This helps a lot with map sustainability. Almost every boss drops a map of the same level or higher (though this might just be RNG). Also, because of this, I end up running more maps than I should, as I always save all my current stones for bosses.

Hope this helps!

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Xevaus#7576 wrote:

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Shammikaze#5042 wrote:

You're definitely doing something wrong. I can't tell you what based on your post, but there is absolutely no shortage of waystones. I'm at the point where I find so many T15 stones that I don't even bother looting T14 stones anymore. All the way from T7 through T13, the T6 and T7 stones were the ones I had the most of, and I was constantly upgrading them and still never running out.

This is 100% a you problem. Make sure you're progressing towards towers and putting tablets with "waystone chance" in them. Run breaches. Make sure your maps are rare with at least 100% waystone odds.

As I said before, 13+ I hear isn't a problem. As far as you saying T7 and higher you had enough, it is all RNG based. Almost every waystone I have used is 100% waystone increasing (most being 200%+) and I will go multiple maps without even getting a single waystone drop, and when I do it is T2-4 on average. So no not 100% a me problem. This is also an extremely common complaint a lot of people have had, including a lot of the big POE streamers. Many have said that they have been bottlenecked with maps until later maps.

So, it is a you problem but a very solvable one. When I first got to T7 maps I also ran out of them, and I had (stupidly) reforged everything I had up so I was really back at 0 maps.

Bought what there was from the vendor, and luckily a guildmate gave me some T3. Then, before I did anything, I sat down and actually thought about the problem and options. Turns out, using my T7 maps on ever node was where I was being stupid.

Don't use your top tier maps all the time, if a node doesn't have good bonuses then use a low tier map on it. Don't go straight to the good nodes, go around them to hit every tower in range. Put tablets in those towers, +waystone drop rate is a great one but most mods help with sustain in some way.

If you're really low on higher tier maps, save those for map boss nodes (after your towers have boosted them more). Otherwise just use those on nodes that have good +waystone drop chance and/or + level (irradiate and corrupted).

Also, run with the waystones rare if you can. I like to set aside any that rolls with a really high waystone chance on it to use on one of those big juicy map boss nodes.

After that, my problem was solved and I'm swimming in waystones (multiple quad tabs... give us the map tab!).

POE2 Atlas is very different from POE1, half of it is about the strategy of which nodes and what order. Actually running the maps is the rest. So don't just blindly throw your best waystones at every map, think strategically.

Hi everyone, I have around 250 hours in PoE1, including endgame content (I know that it's NOTHING compared to you guys), and I’ve been diving deep into PoE2. I have a lot of experience across various genres and wanted to share my thoughts.

As an ex former community manager for an EA game and a guild leader in many MMO, I currently have over 150 active members in my community, ranging from pros to newbies. Based on this, I can say that if you approach maps the wrong way, they can turn into a nightmare.

I’m personally doing fine at the moment, but many players who tried tackling high-tier maps right away are struggling. Between the game’s bugs, freezes, crashes, and lost maps, even skilled players are finding themselves stuck. They’ve run out of Tier 5 maps and are forced to go back to Tier 1 maps, grinding without earning experience just to try and drop more maps.

Of course, if the game crashes and they die, they lose the experience from 5 Tier 1 maps, which is incredibly demotivating. As a result, players are slowly starting to quit.

**Suggestion**: The vendor should sell one map at one tier lower than the player’s highest completed tier after every death. Maybe make it corrupted and unmodifiable, but selling Tier 1 maps to players who are running Tier 7 doesn’t make sense. And upgrading maps is out of the question because you’d need to be a millionaire to afford it.

The beauty of PoE1 was the speed of doing everything—you had 2 minutes, you’d log in, map, and log out. Here, the gameplay is fantastic and requires focus, so I don’t think there’s any need to add mechanics that slow it down even further.

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Valsacar#0268 wrote:

Don't use your top tier maps all the time, if a node doesn't have good bonuses then use a low tier map on it. Don't go straight to the good nodes, go around them to hit every tower in range. Put tablets in those towers, +waystone drop rate is a great one but most mods help with sustain in some way.

And that feels bad. Running T15 at least gives XP. Without stacking rarity XP is the only thing I get and therefor look forward to in maps.

I have a feeling that dropped map tiers are also influenced by item rarity, so maybe I just have to start stacking it too like everybody else does. Just feels bad the way it is.

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Valsacar#0268 wrote:

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Xevaus#7576 wrote:

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Shammikaze#5042 wrote:

You're definitely doing something wrong. I can't tell you what based on your post, but there is absolutely no shortage of waystones. I'm at the point where I find so many T15 stones that I don't even bother looting T14 stones anymore. All the way from T7 through T13, the T6 and T7 stones were the ones I had the most of, and I was constantly upgrading them and still never running out.

This is 100% a you problem. Make sure you're progressing towards towers and putting tablets with "waystone chance" in them. Run breaches. Make sure your maps are rare with at least 100% waystone odds.

As I said before, 13+ I hear isn't a problem. As far as you saying T7 and higher you had enough, it is all RNG based. Almost every waystone I have used is 100% waystone increasing (most being 200%+) and I will go multiple maps without even getting a single waystone drop, and when I do it is T2-4 on average. So no not 100% a me problem. This is also an extremely common complaint a lot of people have had, including a lot of the big POE streamers. Many have said that they have been bottlenecked with maps until later maps.

So, it is a you problem but a very solvable one. When I first got to T7 maps I also ran out of them, and I had (stupidly) reforged everything I had up so I was really back at 0 maps.

Bought what there was from the vendor, and luckily a guildmate gave me some T3. Then, before I did anything, I sat down and actually thought about the problem and options. Turns out, using my T7 maps on ever node was where I was being stupid.

Don't use your top tier maps all the time, if a node doesn't have good bonuses then use a low tier map on it. Don't go straight to the good nodes, go around them to hit every tower in range. Put tablets in those towers, +waystone drop rate is a great one but most mods help with sustain in some way.

If you're really low on higher tier maps, save those for map boss nodes (after your towers have boosted them more). Otherwise just use those on nodes that have good +waystone drop chance and/or + level (irradiate and corrupted).

Also, run with the waystones rare if you can. I like to set aside any that rolls with a really high waystone chance on it to use on one of those big juicy map boss nodes.

After that, my problem was solved and I'm swimming in waystones (multiple quad tabs... give us the map tab!).

POE2 Atlas is very different from POE1, half of it is about the strategy of which nodes and what order. Actually running the maps is the rest. So don't just blindly throw your best waystones at every map, think strategically.

All of my 200%+ waystones were used on bosses and breaches. Everything else was used on no reward maps, and I did use lower tiers on blank maps. My point still stands on the early tiers needing a boost. There should be no chance to brick the primary endgame mechanic with little to no way to fix it, that is bad design (which EA is for this type of feedback).

To give an example of how bad RNG can be, I had a T6 waystone with +345% increased waystones, 70%+ quality of items, 70%+ quantity of items, (like 2 other mods I think that buffed mobs?), had a +10% quantity/rarity from the tower, and had 30% or so waystone increase from atlas. The map in question was breach and a boss. At the end of it I had gotten one T1 magic waystone and a T3 rare waystone.

Like how does that make sense? add in any extra deaths for random one shots from overtuned chaos damage, spell effect clutter, bad damage rng, and it becomes so easy to run out of waystones. And before anyone says "git gud" my character has effective HP of 2.5k, with max resistances (outside chaos atm), and 87% evasion rating. The amount of times I have released those frozen Essence rare mobs and got one tapped instantly is insane.