Burning/cursed ground discussion - With solution suggestions (long read, sorry!)

In this post, I will use the word "patches" when referring to Burning Ground, Chaos ground, poison clouds, and all other Area of Effect Damage over Time static environmental (or monster-bound) damage types.

I'd like to start out by saying:
I never really played PoE 1, so I don't know if it's always been like this. I'm also new to the forums. This is my second post ever.

Obviously there's a skill issue!
Don't worry, global chat has reminded me many, many times, when I've tried to open up a discussion about this. But the skill level required seems very high, considering this will be a problem (relatively) early on in the game. I'm trying to be objective here. I think a lot of new players and/or casuals like me, will be very frustrated by this mechanic, and might just abandon the game. The on-death penalty is already very harsh. Losing XP, waystone, map modifiers (and citadel), and whatever items are on the ground.

Players abandoning the game because of the skill issues can become a problem.
Less players means less revenue from microtransactions from the playerbase.


Problem - Patches are hardly visible:
This is a fast paced game. There is so much going on, and the screen is covered with so many monsters, corpses, minions, spell effects, projectiles, whatever, it's impossible to see the "ground", where the real problem is.
As a melee based character positioning is very important. But I don't know if I'm throwing myself into certain death because I'll dip my toe into patches, hidden by several layers of various visual effects.
When playing with spellcasters and minion-players... Forget about it!
Also, it can be very tricky to tell the difference between fire effects from allies and enemies. Maybe your ally made it, maybe it'll kill you.

Solution suggestion:
Make patches more visible. Maybe make layers stacked on top of the patches transparent to a certain degree. I'm not a game designer, I can't really come up with a good solution. Maybe add some transparency to spells/minions from allies, to make it easier to distinguish good from bad.

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Problem - Lacking indication of actively taking damage over time:
Just like I've written above, it's a fast paced game. That's good. It's amazing actually! But the patches disrupt the flow of battle. I need to be able to focus on positioning, skills and monsters. But I'm forced to run around like a headless chicken, in order to avoid any patches scattered across the battlefield.
Yes, health bar over character is enabled... But haing to lock eyes on a health bar, only because I need to see if I'm standing in a patch just ruins the fun, and makes it much harder to plan my moves, to keep up with what's going on the constantly changing battlefield.


Solution suggestion:
Maybe add a visual edge-of-screen effect and/or a sound effect, that indicates you're actively taking heavy damage over time. Burning DoT could have a sizzling sound effect for example. And it needs to be a bit louder than whatever else is going on so it's noticeable. The other sounds are great, and very finely tuned, I enjoy those a lot too, but those don't kill me, like the patches do.

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Problem - Elites with fixed melee-range patches:
These are horrible. I have to get within melee range, get 3-4 hits in, run away, heal and repeat. If I'm lucky the elite has no HP/ES regeneration and will eventually die, provided I have enough charges on my health flask. Otherwise I have to go to town, if I'm fast enough.
Sometimes the monsters move so fast, they can easily outrun me (I have +35% movespeed from items). And when I die from the patches alone within 4 seconds, I have no chance other than to either quit the game, or die.
This is a huge problem for melee players.

Solution suggestion:
Reduced potency of fixed patches on elites.

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I've traded a lot to make my character as stron as possible, but it feels like no matter what I do, the patches still kill me way faster than (probably) intended.

Here's some information about my main character:
Class and level: Monk level 87
HP/ES: ~2000/~1000
Evasion: 22779 (89%) ("...and protect me from harm" passive chosen)
Armor: 461 (84%)
Resistances: Fire/lightning/cold/chaos: 75/75/75/75
Defensive always-on skills: Ghost Dance, Wind dancer


I've been searching the forum for threads and posts, and it looks like I'm far from the only one. However, in my opinion, a lot (not all) of the other threads/posts are not very constructive, so here's my attempt at starting a constructive discussion about this.


Don't get me wrong, I love this game so far!
It's amazing to think this is a beta. It blows Diablo 4 and similar games out of the water (and it's just a beta!), and I feel like I've been missing out for years since I never really played the first game. It just felt too complicated to jump into. But the learning curve in this game is much better to me.
I can't wait to play through all acts, and see what the full game has to offer. I haven't had this much fun with an ARPG in over 20 years, when Diablo 2 came out.

I'm hoping we can come up with some good ideas to try and balance it out. I don't think patches mechanic should be removed, it just needs a bit of tweaking.


Thank you.