Love the Game / General feedback+Feedback on Arbiter Fight

So first, I will say how delighted I am with POE2. I have about 15k+ hours into POE1 and I have watched it become faster faster moving over the years. I have the following feedback to offer after the first month of play:

1. I loved the pace of the campaign where every fight mattered and the bosses were interesting. The rebalancing of rezzes to matter incrementally rather than jump to a 75% requirement for play I also thought to be well done.

2. I perceive the choice to remove a significant amount of power from the skill tree and place it in items. I don't know that I am particularly for or against that, it is just an interesting choice.

3. I enjoy the mapping mechanic as an interesting cross between old mapping and Delve. Would love to see a slightly higher frequency of bosses, as I find them to be the most entertaining part of the game, but that may be a matter of taste.

4. I have fewer complaints about balancing armour than I have seen elsewhere. At least for warbringer, when you combine 3k+ life with 9k+ armour, get resists up to 90/90/90 (which is reasonable for warrior given the part of the tree we start on) and add in wooden wall and Jade Heritage for ~28% base damage reduction, Endgame mapping is very reasonable. For a warbringer, all I feel is missing is a better way to deal with incoming crits on the tree. I also note, as map mods go, that the 25% ele pen seems disproportionately punishing compared to any other mod, and there doesn't seem to be a good way for a life based build to mitigate that effectively. That may be the intent that this type of mod favors a high ES pool. If so, nothing to fix. All that said, I am not sure how balanced armour is for classes without that extra 28% damage reduction off the top. This may be worth considering.

4. I love the Xesht fight. Challenging enough while still feeling fair on all 5 levels.

5. Simulacrum is fun and challenging and seems reasonable at least levels 0-3. I perceive my deaths on 3 to be a result of needing a little more upgrade in gear/playskill rather than a problem with the encounter. I think once the bug with the level 21 corruption of skill gems is fixed, that might provide enough added damage to finish at least level 3. I'll have to see after y'all get around to that one.

6. The Arbiter fight is problematic in its current state. I have beaten levels 0 and 1 only because the insta-death mechanics did not appear in the fights. And I will say that I thought the level 1 fight with all of the -other- mechanics was interesting and fun. The truth is I actually like the insta-death mechanics as well, I only want them to be fair. Which is to say that it should be mechanically possible with a normal human reaction-response time of 250-500 ms and 35 movespeed boots (reasonable for doing pinnacle content, though 25 might be a kinder starting place) to always be able to move to the next safe spot after the explosion on the first one. I have attempted those sequences more than 10 times now (because I am stubborn). I have sometimes gotten through the long corridor phase, though occasionally even one of those will spawn completely out of reach of my character within the time permitted. I have not once gotten through the meteor phase without a spawn that did not appear to be within reach of a normal reaction time and 35 ms boots, even if I knew where the next spawn would be. This could be the best fight ever if the parameters for the long corridor and circular safe spawns were altered just a little to make sure they are always possible without blink or movespeed from the tree (which are not really available to all classes).

Haven't done Olroth or King in the Mists yet, so nothing to add about those. Really a largely excellent job--much appreciation.

-Orion

I take back what I said about the Arbiter fight. It is fair. Just HARD. another 20 or so tries later finally got it down and beat lvl 4. Really well done fight!

Thanks for the game,

Orion