Feedback After Getting 4th Ascendency As Bloodmage & Pathfinder

I’ll start with this: I’m confident that all the issues I will list are fixable, if not addressable, which makes me happy.

After finally completing the 4th ascendancy for Blood Mage and Pathfinder it feels neither were worth getting considering the difficult. Getting the final ascendency points for makes Blood Mage feel like half as capable as a Stormeaver, while for Pathfinder it feels purely like a quality of life improvement.

Blood Mage Feedback:

- It’s pretty clear: Sanguimancy being a requirement hampers specialization because players are tasked when sustaining life without a significant upside, breaking even at best. It will literally brick builds for new players and offers no benefit, given the scarce ability to increase life outside of uniques or high level gear. I still think chasing after remnants isn’t fun considering the risk of terrain effects or needing to stick close to bosses. It also makes taking Vitality Siphon feel like a necessity for bossing.
My suggestion is change Sanguimancy to be an inverse of Eldritch Battery that converts mana to life and halfs life regeneration rate. Alternatively, swap it’s position with Vitality Siphon or Grasping Wounds, and have the node itself either no cooldown, or grant bonus damage when picking up remnants. That way all builds are given needed survivability and it would be optional for builds that would benefit from life overflow. At bare minimum, reducing costs for spells should reduce the equivalent life cost.
-Vitality Siphon: Would currently feel better if life leech applied to overcapped life because average health pool is so small, currently it feels necessary unless I use “recover life on kill” jewels (which obviously does not help when bossing).
- Blood Barbs - this node has me the most curious; the low amount of physical spell support, the lack of bleed support on the witch side of the tree and the relatively low crit-rate on non-ice spells indicates there will be future support, but I just don’t see it currently. However, given that bleed is dot you can’t leech from, the life cost would probably invalidate such investment.
- Open Sores: I love the idea of open sores - but most the curses available benefit elemental builds.
- Gore Spike: Another node I love the idea of that the current state of the game doesn’t quite support adequately. The tooltip also doesn’t indicate whether it scales with maximum life or overflown life, or how it interacts with reserved life.
- Sunder The Flesh: my only issue with this node is that it extremely generic and does
- Grasping Wounds - flavorful and beneficial, I only wish it scaled with recoup.
- Crimson power: currently my favorite node - it adds survivability, rewards building energy shield while scaling well and syngerizes with Gore Spike/Grasping Wounds/Vitality Siphon. Chef’s kiss, lovely all around.

Pathfinder Feedback:
- I’m happy with Pathfinder as it is, with my only critique being that the Skill Speed and Relentless Assault Nodes feel extremely underwhelming.

General Feedback:

- I really, really miss the crafting bench - specifically the ability to unsocket granted abilities, or in this case, runes.
- Make the stun threshold/building visible. It’s visible with the “Raise Shield” skill, why not have it be visible by default? Also, update the tooltip to clarify it is based on maximum life.
- I like the idea of charms, but have no way to tell when they are active at a glance and the scale of the modifier effects seem weak. Also, I don’t know useful are resistance charms given if they are meant to mitigate damage from multiple elemental hits, given players are likely are going to be stunned regardless.
- Belts: why are charm slots are modifier? For instance, why would a double belt have 1 charm slot? Aside, from that I generally like the implicit modifiers they have across the board.
- Maps: they’re too big. Being able to teleport between checkpoints is highly appreciated (thank you!), but given the default size of light radius it’s incredibly easy to miss them, exits, or key items.
- I love the idea of default weapon skills not needing mana, but I really wish I could access a version of them that wasn’t locked to weapons. Specifically, Decompose is one of my favorite skills, but is locked to the Corpsewade boots, which only have 10% movement speed.
- Please implement a color blind mode and a mode to reduce the intensity of spell effects. I’m not colorblind myself, but I don’t occasional have trouble distinguishing effects/colors when hyperfocusing.
- Please increase the drop rate of Greater Essences. I have 3 characters who’ve reached endgame and seen literally 0 Greater Essences, which makes them rarer than divines. If they are meant to be acquired by reforging normal essences, please make that clear.
- Allow players to choose the level of a skill when cutting gems.
- Allow players to gamble from Alva in their hideouts.
- Allow players to mark items in a vendor to prevent them being lost when the inventory refreshes.


Ascension Feedback:

- Make the currency for the 3rd and 4th trials reusable like the 1st & 2nd ascendancy, or standardize their challenges exclusively for ascendancy seekers. I still think it’s genuinely a bit ridiculous having to rely on rng to even access the ascendancies or engage with trade (multiple times in the case of the Trials of Chaos). I don’t have major issues with the trials outside of balancing, but they don’t feel like an actual metric of player power, currently.
- I don’t think ascendancies should be as important as they’re apparently made out to be, partially because ascendancy points can be respecced once acquired. Considering the most reliable way to overcome the rng nature of both the current trials is too over-level or have someone carry you, what challenge there is solely because the rng. Nothing has been improved from the labyrinths of the POE 1, only made worse.
- In regards to the Trials of Chaos, I’d say most of runs have been ended by the Chetza, The Feathered Plague having attacks that are hard to read or the startup for tornado being too fast.
- Also, it would be very much appreciated if there was a stash placed at the end of the Trials of Chaos. I often don’t have space for rewards after picking loot during the trial.
- Regarding the Trial of the Sekhamas, this is very niche complaint, but as someone who likes to break pots, they are hard to distinguish from the background objects.

Delirium Feedback:

- Please lighten the intensity of the fog that covers the maps. It makes everything hard to see.
- I genuinely don’t know what causes the delirium countdown to end. Apparently the mechanic has a radius, but I can’t tell how big it is.
- Please change how mobs spawn from Delirium crystals; currently they will literally spawn either directly in front of the players, or surrounding them.

General Endgame Feedback:

- I don’t mind needing to kill all the rare mobs on a map, but given the size of said maps, receiving a movement speed buffs once the number of monsters reached 50 or below would do wonders, or have the rares come after the player.
- Given the size of maps, having an indicator for where objectives like ritual are would be fantastic, even if it’s a minor effect like breach to point to a general direction.
- Considering how hard it is to find Citadels, why doesn’t failing them lock you out considering every that’s not the case with every other map.
- Towers: why does it have built in blind spots and why don’t they offer any reward outside of the four chests that spawn. I feel the chest themselves should at least be put at the end, on the 2nd level. Currently I chuck a tier 1 map into them; they are speed bump without significance.

Strongbox Feedback:

- Currently strongboxes aren’t worth engaging with; terrain effects and mobs hard to see due to fog and the strongboxes themselves often have a mystery gimmick that may flat out kill players without any warning (like say lightning or chaos bolts). Mobs can also spawn rooms away in indoor maps.

Ritual Feedback:
- Rituals has the exact issues as strongboxes, except made worse by being confined to a tiny area - which can be made tinier if the ritual is in a room or adjacent to a corridor.


Map Specific Feed Back
- Mire: the quintessential example of bad map design! It’s a huge, the bridges are small that monsters often get stuck and is plagued by blind spots and areas don’t quite connect to the center so backtracking is a major pain!
- Augury: Please allow players to dodge roll out of the lever animation and make them immune to terrain effects like burning ground.
- Vaal Factor: other than being too big, it’s also a touch too dark in terms of lighting. This is the map I’ve been killed from off-screen from the most.
- Bloomfield: I’ve noticed with a lot of wooded areas that I’m either run into trees or hills because they look like passable terrain, and there are couple areas where huge swathes of the map are separated by roots.