I now realise I'm probably not going to be able to face the Arbiter
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Let me just preface that I would consider myself a casual player. I haven't been playing many games the past years due to low interest and many commitments. The fact that I've found the time to play Poe2 for 150+ hours (60 of which is in endgame) is just awesome. The game is so good that I find time I didn't know I had.
Now I want to get into what doesn't feel so good. The past week I've been working may way toward the three citadels - with the goal in mind to experience the Arbiter fight on the lowest difficulty at least once before the league reset. After the changes to citadels in the latest patch I felt I had a meaningful chance to make it. Arriving at the citadels, I used some safe t15 way stones (not more than 2 things on them) and refunded the nodes on my boss atlas tree. I wasn't interested in the rewards here, I just wanted the Keyes to the Arbiter. For context, I have a lvl 88 Arc Sorceress using MoM+EB as my main line of defence, sitting at 3.2k mana and 1.3k health. It's not a lot but it's been fine up until this point. All resistances are also capped at 75%, and I'm carrying a shield with 39% block. Regular map bosses at +3 difficulty go down in less than 20 seconds with this build, but I wanted to play it safe at +0 vs the citadels, since I only have one go at it. I made my way to Doryani and felt I had dealt with him reasonably well, up until his transition phase where he becomes immortal for a considerable amount of time. He shot a beam to my face (that I hadn't seen before) which nuked my 4k "life" in about 0.5 seconds. Getting virtually one-shot in an immortal-phase felt kinda cheap, but I thought, ok I got another stone citadel lined up that I'll be able to path toward with another hour of grinding. No biggie, I'll just clear the other citadels in the meantime. Now, the Iron citadel was short-lived. I got caught in a corner by some swarming mobs and that was that. Now I am locked out of that one for a while, as I can't see any blue beam of light in the fog for the next Iron citadel. Last chance. Copper Citadel. I made it to the boss easily. Pushed him through the transition where he chops the dreadnought in two, only to get instantly killed by his first attack afterward. And I'm thinking, fuck this. Over 10 hours of work to get to those citadels, which took me a week, and now I have to do it all over again, just for another chance. This is not fun for me, and I can't fathom how people stayed motivated to do this before the patch changes were made. Right now I can't find the motivation to continue playing endgame content, with the time-investment required just to attempt the lowest tier of a pinnacle boss. I might attempt this again if/when the citadels feel a bit less punishing to play. I kinda think the one death per map is a good philosophy in general, but for citadels I wish it was much less time consuming to fail. I have faith in you GGG, so I'm sure you'll improve the endgame in many ways in the future, and I'm looking forward to it! Last bumped on Jan 22, 2025, 4:29:22 PM
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yeah, same. 232 hours in. got one shot by copper citadel boss. ran out of mana flasks the second time, then on the third attempt i had an anchor drop on me from an essence monster. copper citadel is just dumb.
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find exalted orbs in maps - or chaos - trade up - buy the required items you need to face arbiter.
Would be much faster |
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" I did look them up, but the fragments now cost over 100-150 exalts each. I don't even have 100. Prices are ridiculous now. I don't see how people can farm that many exalts, let alone hundreds of divines. |
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" im hardly hardcore - im a dad and get to play maybe 1 hour a night if im lucky. Though over xmas break i had a lot more time. I got lucky and found a build that allowed me to get to t15 maps (chaos witch with hexblast). Before I got to the last quest for t15 maps - i got a perfect jewel drop, giving me 2 or so divines. 1 drop - and It was enough to lead me up to around 8/9 divines at this point. Alternatively - farm the chaos trials. If you beat it, you are given a 10-40 exalt currency item (a fragment) you can trade through Alva. It takes 15-20 minutes or so to complete. So at the bare minimum you can make 30-120(extremely lucky for 120) exalts an hour. |
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" I had forgotten about the trials. Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out! |
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Has been like this for a long time now. Ever since Shaper and Elder:
1. Grind for several hours to get an attempt at pinnacle boss 2. Die because you have never seen the fight before (sometimes cheap deaths) 3. Repeat #2 six times and lose your attempt If you find the motivation to try one more time, it takes so long to grind for it that your next attempt almost feels as if it's the first. Very little knowledge carried over from the previous fight. It's even worse if you're an adult and has responsibilities. Sometimes it's 1-2 real life weeks between attempts.
Spoiler
Inb4: watch a tutorial on YouTube. As if closing the game and spending an hour learning a boss fight before even seeing it for the first time is actually a valid game design choice.
Last edited by _rt_#4636 on Jan 22, 2025, 4:16:32 PM
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" I've kind of accepted that. After I noticed that the endgame of this game is made entirely for Streamers and people who use trading bots, I just dropped it. Diablo 4 killer? More like a fun-killer, solo player-killer. The loot in this game sucks, just like the entire endgame geared towards streamers and bots. |
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