Overall Feedback that likely just be ignored. Did my part, wrote a book,and made my peace.

What's the whole point of PoE2?

What I heard was about slowing the pacing of the game, right? Was even added a dodge rolling in the game.

What I understand from that it's simple. You want the freedom of PoE builds, but a pacing of a souls like game. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the essence I got from all the footage pre release, and I felt that was what it was sold for me at least.

So I starting questioning to myself a few question during my gameplay with the mercenary:

1. If the game wants to be more slow, why a pack of enemies has to be so big? I'm feeling getting punished by actually having a strategy than just spamming an AoE attack. This forces me to use only AoE attacks all the time (ice bolt + herald of ice).

2. Why the dodge is so slow? When 10 enemies jumps on my face at the same time, the dodge is worthless. When 10 enemies has an AoE attack, the rolling will not save you 70% of the time. Better to just hold your ground and kill them. When a boss attack, usually their AoE attacks is too big. Even when I think I manage to dodge, I receive the damage. Many times bosses and enemies attacks without visual feedback, or a too much fast visual feedback. I honestly don't feel awarded to dodge them, I feel punished for not studying the builds that just clear the whole screen in a second.

3. Why should I learn the mechanics? When I reach the endgame I find just a few bosses, at the point I forget their mechanics. Even if learn their pattern, many of their attacks hits you anyways, making you lose a lot of hp. And you got just one shot on each map, making you learn even less. I'm seeing no player actually trying to learning the bosses, I see players just killing the bosses in a second (And they are right, bc is faster to loot, and too risk to learn how to properly fight)

4. If I should not learn the mechanics, and just make a build to kill everything in the screen, why should I learn to dodge their attacks?

To be honest, really fucking blunting honest. GGG, you have been balancing you game for players who makes builds to break the game. For the players that kill bosses in one fucking second. And not for the players who just appreciate a good challenge.

I think you know that, because when I really try to do the mechanics, nothing works properly, and a lot of mob attacks just feels like they were made to guarantee to hit you, to check your stats, so you probably just expecting the players to have insane clearing fast build at some point. Anyone can say its a skill issue, but I'm a guy who actually beat the act 1 without using no gear, naked, just with a crossbow equipped, so on average I better mechanically than other players. I'm not good at creating builds, but I'm good at dodging and other mechanics. I'm doing T15, and manage to get 4 boss points on atlas already. But I'm sure I'm probably incapable to do any special bosses, because they are doable based on a million DPS build for having such insane HP, not to your skills as a real life person. Its just a wall to check if your build are worthy the rewards that actually value something in the market.

There is no fight challenge in killing a boss really fast, that's a brain challenge, not a reflex challenge. I see that when I a see a bullet sponge boss that has 10 million hp.

My take is that, and I think is a really important one if want to have a good action game:

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If your game has any segment impossible to do a NO HIT RUN, then that segment does not value player skill, and ppl will buy, exploit, and follow a build that they don't understand deeply in order to overcome that challenge. And the drops of these segments will be very expensive at the market
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After 190 hours in game:

- I Enjoyed and loved the campaign a lot (Act 1-3, not Act1-3 Cruel, because its easier, and doing all over again hits hard when you just want to get to the endgame).
- I Loved the bosses, but I Hated not having a boss on each map as an objective (Bosses was supposed to be the main content of the game)
- At the same time I loved the bosses, I got really frustrated that many of their attacks its impossible to dodge 100% of the time, some are nearly impossible to do so. because some has no visual clue, other just happen too much fast for human reaction, and AoE attacks have a INSANE area. I'm sure the roll is smaller than the average dick size of the exiles, and the boss AoE attack radius is bigger than the whoever has the fucking Guinness world record for that.
- I loved mercenary, but i think grenades should not bottleneck the attack speed of projectile attacks, this makes you use only grenade builds or projectile build, they should work simultaneous to have a really good synergy.
- I start enjoying a lot game after getting 100%+ rarity on my gear, since it start to become common exalted orbs, allowing me to actually try to craft stuff, instead just getting scare of loosing.


If you want the game to become PoE1, keep doing what you doing. Its a great game, but not for me. BC I personally hate one shots, I hate the zoom that hides every attack offscreen, And mainly, I hate being punished because the game balance itself on builds that breaks the game, and everyone that did not manage to get GOD DPS get pushed out of the content. I recognize and respect the players who manage to do those builds. because they are clever to pull those builds, but I respect my insanity to not play a game that forces me to that.

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For me, a action game (regardless of genre) you should be able to do two things, otherwise something got really bad:

1. Being possible to avoid any damage just by being really good at the dodging mechanic (In the case of PoE2 is rolling). At current state you need to be an special AI from the year 2100 to pull this off rolling and actually avoiding damage consistently.

2. To make ANY boss doable with the straight forward resource we have in game. On endgame bosses for instance, with level 70+ rare gear, but because of the gear and gem combination, not because you need to find G spot with the right combination of passives and skills to make 10 million damage per second to actually see the special bosses HP coming down. If a special boss is impossible to do using a single gem, with 5 sup gems, without some crazy synergy with other gems, you already gatekeeping these bosses for players who know how to create builds with 10million DPS, and will be a must for players to study their content and spreadsheets to be minimum able to play your game endgame content.

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If you really want a new game slow paced, and that ppl who loves a good fight challenge, in my opinion you can do that (Usually players just complain. But I'm trying to show solutions here based on my experience in game):

1. Stop balancing the game according to players that creates builds that breaks the game with a million DPS. They will never leave you. You can balance the gems they use, but if you balance the mobs and bosses difficulties expecting their builds, you dooming a whole player base, and gatekeeping the content everybody wants to try out. They will break, exploit, create a insane farm strategies, but this always was present, will never change. Instead balance these bosses to have much less hp. This will at least allow more players to try the bosses without consulting a build from someone on internet. This encourage players to enjoy more their builds, and the market will probably be more healthy, since some endgame items will not be exclusive for those who really understand the game.

1. Increase 20% of the rolling distance, because AoE attacks in this games are insane, and many situation you just don't have distance to avoid them. Or at least bring roll modifier to gear as well. But is less exploitable if you just change the distance directly to maintain a consistency.

2. Make All your bosses doable by using a single spell. What I mean is:
For example, on the last of last boss, the pinnacle boss or whatever you call, Try to find a statistic to find out the average DMG of normal players, expecting them to kill the boss in 4 minutes with that DPS. And create another independently mechanic to increase the difficulty of these bosses, instead restricting their access due the lack of GOD DPS. Like a delirium waystone craft, but for bosses. But don't create loot specific for these dificulties, and instead improve the odds to drop what is hard to drop. You can make every boss more epic with this independently mechanic, allowing players to craft their own challenge.

3. Makes the currency drop feels like there is a bonus of 100% rarity to everybody. That actually a straight forward number, not a abstract suggestion that something needs to be done but nobody says what must be done. Rarity is a issue currently, and I feel it will be nerfed, but if you remove rarity affecting currency, at least make the currency base drop feels like 100% rarity increase from the current game state. I have 200% on my build and the game feels much enjoyable crafting viable.

4. Reduce the enemy amount and makes them more scary instead with more hp and more loot. It's really dumb getting rushed by 10 mobs that launches 10 AoE attacks forwards jumping offscreen or slamming a hammer on the ground, and getting hit even after rolling back. I feel many off their attacks you are suppose to side roll instead back roll, but you need to remember that choke points on bridges or doors is very common in the game. Side rolling or back rolling should be enough to avoid any AoE damage, unless the enemies is charging at you with a strait line attack. Instead 10 sledge hammer guys grouped, Increase their size by 1.5, increase their hp, make them more slower and dangerous, and put one with another 5 common soldiers (That's an example how to make a specific mob more special even being a normal mob). Or instead just slow their attack time to let us realize there is an AoE coming, easy and faster solution. If every common mob it's like a boss in terms of having an AI to create a strategy to attack you, the need of having a billion mobs on each pack will be gone and each enemy will be more meaningful. If the players wants more mobs, the atlas passive tree is for that.

5. Normal mobs currently have instant attack, and we need to see them starting an attack. Usually if you see is because you don't have time to dodge rolling anymore, bc you lose the time frame noticing that. All mobs should be revised their melee attack times. Did actually the developers played against every mob to see how visible is their attacks? Because if I was the testers, I would reprove 80% of them, because normal players will simple not recognize and learn their pattern. They will just prefer to kill before even have the chance to understand, witch leads to weird situations where they don't understand why they died.

6. Implement a dmg feedback after death. MOBA like dota and LoL have this, and helps A LOT. On dota you can even see how much of the damage came from a specific player, witch spell he used and how much damage which spell did. This will guide us to adjust defensive layers and getting a better understanding of what type of damage or attack is killing us, making us improve as players.

7. Allow us to zoom out more, or reduce the enemies attack range to be less than the half of the player screen height. We need to see shit if we are expected to dodge roll all the mechanics. It's very annoying getting one shotted from a offscreen mob, like the Doryani something that shoots a blue ball, and after a second they shot and pierces everything on it's path. On this example, many times you see the ball and the mob stay offscreen, but sometime you don't see the direction the orb come, or the orb stay behind a wall hidden, making you lose track of where this sniper is. The animation must be revised to show a blue line light before the shot hits you for example, or something else like being able to ZOOMING OUT THE CAMERA (because its a very common potential hit kill attack). The zoom is easier to fix all of this, because it's not just a one or two mob issue, it's a lot off mobs issue. And to be honest, zoom out camera does not give us that much advantage. The only competition on PoE it's who makes the most overkill fast farming build, who craft the better gear, or the speed running on the begging of a new league. This not a PvP game. Zooming will only increase the value of this game.

Great feedback, well written, no rant.

"

6. Implement a dmg feedback after death. MOBA like dota and LoL have this, and helps A LOT. On dota you can even see how much of the damage came from a specific player, witch spell he used and how much damage which spell did. This will guide us to adjust defensive layers and getting a better understanding of what type of damage or attack is killing us, making us improve as players.

We've been asking for this for years in poe1 and they never delivered, sadly.

Great points, op.