300 hour endgame player feedback

Update; all feelings of this post are even stronger since passing 400 hours.

I have played PoE since beta and d2 since release. I very much love the franchise, and am a very avid supporter of the games, so preliminary disclaimer that I am super biased in this feedback. ARPGs are my crack.

After putting 300 hours into the game, most of it in endgame, and given my rich history on PoE1 on this account and other accounts, I figure I can dump my feedback here.

TLDR: I have a litany of feedback to for my gripes about the game, but a lot of it stems from a fundamental issue: PoE2 feels like two different games, and I prefer one of them much more than the other.

rant: I have spent 200+ hours in maps across multiple characters, done whatever the game has to offer. The remainder of my time has been on rolling alts and getting them at the very least to t15s.

Each character has their own set of stash tabs for progression, the only shared pool is for currency and gold. I am GSF, I do not care to interact much with the economy, never have. (You can check my profile)

Act 1 feels amazing. The pacing and combat feels deliberate and fun. Act 2 feels like a huge improvement, the first time doing sanctum feels awesome on a character, even before the nerfs (player buffs). I had a melee witchhunter and it took 2 or 3 tries to finish the barya for the first time but man it felt amazing. Learning every trap, every move. The boss was a little spammy but manageable even if it was several minute long bossfight.

The combat just feels amazing and punchy. Even on warrior, with the moments it gets frustrating to be melee (which I think can be cleaned up easily), it just has moments it feels so damn good.

I repeatedly commented to the guild voice call as I was onto my 4th character to maps, "Man if PoE2 was just the first three acts I'd play it over and over again forever." (FWIW, I love the d2 campaign and even loved the poe1 campaign before Awakening. The first time I walked into aqueduct.. ugh. I could do that forever.)

The painful part of my issue: The power fantasy kicks in way too hard. As you move up to maps is just mindless zoom poe1 doom blast session. It starts some time in act 3.. and only on some builds. I've been running t15s on all my characters, done the new bosses, and genuinely the most fun I have is in act 1-2 rolling a new alt, or running 4 floor sanctums. Throwing my build at a 4-floor and finding where it falls short, losing the progress, starting again has been really fun for me. I actually burn through the baryas I find! Absolutely adore the trial of the sekhema, especially the 4th floor.

Even on titan there's blasting screens. I'm sure it feels really cool for some, but I just dont pay attention to rares (until its some accursed mod combination and its too late). I pop them for a handful of exalts and move on. Same with bosses. It just feels like more PoE1, and I wanted something a little less mindless. I've done the zoom and boom on PoE1 for years now. I wanted the deliberate combat. Even Ruthless felt a little better tuned, but PoE1 was a huge game with lots of complete features to build off of. Frankly, I think ruthless did a lot of things RIGHT and the community gave it a bad reputation for being "Hard" when it was really just a big reset button for GGG, which is what PoE2 should be, and totally is for the first few acts.

The monsters are as fast and spammy to compensate for how fast and spammy you are. Deadly ground effects hidden under shrubbery, swathes of monsters. Same issues PoE1 had, and GGG continued to hand players speed/power.

I have no idea how GGG can un-open pandora's box. Taking away player power and speed was hard (nearly impossible) for them to do in PoE1. I have no idea how they strike a balance for something like this, and I am not even sure what to suggest.

Either way, I will continue to play the game because I am presently enjoying this much more than PoE1. I just wish the rest of the game felt like the first two acts.

I have withheld most feedback in favor of completing what I feel is most of what EA has to offer first. I am still working on getting all ascendancies to 85+, but this one thought has been bothering me every time I start the map grind on an alt. Lord forgive finding enough boss attempts to try on each alt.

Almost complete agreement with you here. While I do enjoy deli (but the fog goes away way too fast, only infused maps is really worth it) and the general feel/concept of the atlas the rest... yeah, it's not the same as the first few acts. You can tell that the first 2 acts had the most play testing out of everything, it feels the best.

I do love the viper fight though, painful but completely doable and fun.

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Valsacar#0268 wrote:

Almost complete agreement with you here. While I do enjoy deli (but the fog goes away way too fast, only infused maps is really worth it) and the general feel/concept of the atlas the rest... yeah, it's not the same as the first few acts. You can tell that the first 2 acts had the most play testing out of everything, it feels the best.

I do love the viper fight though, painful but completely doable and fun.

Viper is nifty in that you almost never have to roll in that fight. It blew my friends minds when I walked most of that fight.

I love fights like that, where you only sparingly have to roll. Dark Souls were pretty similar, you can walk a lot of the fights, skill issue players just spam roll.

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Kaboinglefop#0955 wrote:

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Valsacar#0268 wrote:

Almost complete agreement with you here. While I do enjoy deli (but the fog goes away way too fast, only infused maps is really worth it) and the general feel/concept of the atlas the rest... yeah, it's not the same as the first few acts. You can tell that the first 2 acts had the most play testing out of everything, it feels the best.

I do love the viper fight though, painful but completely doable and fun.

Viper is nifty in that you almost never have to roll in that fight. It blew my friends minds when I walked most of that fight.

I love fights like that, where you only sparingly have to roll. Dark Souls were pretty similar, you can walk a lot of the fights, skill issue players just spam roll.

Yup, first few times I tried to roll every round and got smacked for it. Then I learned.

My last time (as a T16 map boss) I did go splat hard, but immediately knew why... waystone, crit. Checked, yup shouldn't have used that mod on a boss that I know I need to fight through their phases and risk getting hit.

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Kaboinglefop#0955 wrote:

The monsters are as fast and spammy to compensate for how fast and spammy you are. Deadly ground effects hidden under shrubbery, swathes of monsters. Same issues PoE1 had, and GGG continued to hand players speed/power.

I have no idea how GGG can un-open pandora's box. Taking away player power and speed was hard (nearly impossible) for them to do in PoE1. I have no idea how they strike a balance for something like this, and I am not even sure what to suggest.

Either way, I will continue to play the game because I am presently enjoying this much more than PoE1. I just wish the rest of the game felt like the first two acts.

I hear you on reigning back the speed and power that players are already reaching but honestly the game just released in EA and now would be the best time to start doing it and setting a vision. They already nerfed the "cast on x" screen clearing gems so I'm hoping they just keep going hard in this direction.

I agree very much that Act 1-2 on normal are the best parts of the game and right now I'm more interested in playing that over and over instead of mapping.

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Ripto#7716 wrote:

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Kaboinglefop#0955 wrote:

The monsters are as fast and spammy to compensate for how fast and spammy you are. Deadly ground effects hidden under shrubbery, swathes of monsters. Same issues PoE1 had, and GGG continued to hand players speed/power.

I have no idea how GGG can un-open pandora's box. Taking away player power and speed was hard (nearly impossible) for them to do in PoE1. I have no idea how they strike a balance for something like this, and I am not even sure what to suggest.

Either way, I will continue to play the game because I am presently enjoying this much more than PoE1. I just wish the rest of the game felt like the first two acts.

I hear you on reigning back the speed and power that players are already reaching but honestly the game just released in EA and now would be the best time to start doing it and setting a vision. They already nerfed the "cast on x" screen clearing gems so I'm hoping they just keep going hard in this direction.

I agree very much that Act 1-2 on normal are the best parts of the game and right now I'm more interested in playing that over and over instead of mapping.

Absolutely agree, but I don't think they will commit to it. Conjecture, but I really believe GGG will have to give us Ruthless and PoE3, seems they already sealed the deal with PoE2 by releasing EA without a new PoE1 league and letting the early endgame slide out in its current state.

You think characters are too powerful? Man, I'm having the opposite issue. It never feels like I'm powerful, feels like I'm just barely keeping up with every increase in difficulty. I don't have 300hrs into it though.

I don't think characters are too powerful outside of a few skill interactions

I think there isn't enough variance currently to give players something else to chew on so if they nerf the top performing builds without balancing up other skills or classes in tandem, there will be uproar

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Strangehill#1736 wrote:

I don't think characters are too powerful outside of a few skill interactions

I think there isn't enough variance currently to give players something else to chew on so if they nerf the top performing builds without balancing up other skills or classes in tandem, there will be uproar

For memes I made mace strike from zero to hero and its insanely strong.
Mace strike.

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Kaboinglefop#0955 wrote:

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Strangehill#1736 wrote:

I don't think characters are too powerful outside of a few skill interactions

I think there isn't enough variance currently to give players something else to chew on so if they nerf the top performing builds without balancing up other skills or classes in tandem, there will be uproar

For memes I made mace strike from zero to hero and its insanely strong.
Mace strike.

Yup I got this too on my double 2-h bonk warrior. It's just slower than other classes on clear speed but kind of crazy that the regular mace attack is better than some of the skills that warrior has.