Trial of Sekhemas: from a new player warrior perspective and logging off for a while.

I have been having a ton of fun playing up until tonight. I started Saturday, hit level 25 on my first warrior and was excited for the trials in act 2.

I got all the way to the end boss after figuring out honor and the map, and died as a warrior.

Was this not tested at all for melee? I see two months of rage posts on reddit and worry that this seems to be content not designed for me, so I may hang up my hat on POE2 for now (POE1 alpha tester here).

I then went to town, found a random crossbow for the first time I could equip.

With 0 skills, the basic crossbow attack of a weaker rare item, is stronger than my entire totem + shield wall + resonating shield build.

I take almost 0 damage just pinking monsters off from a distance. No dodging every 3 seconds like its American Gladiator. Instead of doing 1000 damage with a setup, rolling around for 20 seconds then trying to get 3-4 skills off again, you can just stand far off screen and shoot.

Signing off for now. Will give it ago later but that was a bummer. Fun stopped knowing that content is gated unless I play "sonic the hedge hog" and roll around for 30 minutes which my old man hands can't do nor desires to do.

Even monster hunter has strategies. There is no strategy here, it is not fun. This is one of 100s of similar posts.

I know its possible, but it was not designed for fun at all for melee and that is a bummer. Making content for beta is fine, I am a developer myself. However seeing the same posts for a few months and lack of polish makes me think I am too early to enjoy my time.

Time is precious, just like the hour glass quest for some reason. I am really not sure an "immersive" as a roleplayer reason, why as a warrior am I doing "sonic rolls" through trials for some reason or why as a gamer would I want to waste my time on this. I don't even know why I am at the trial or why rolling around is considered a fun past time to get off a skill before rolling away.

Game is really neat, has some quirks like broken skills , gems etc. Hope it gets fixed. As a non-season player I just want to play and grind and have fun, not sign off after hitting some silly design systems. I do not want to simply cheese content.

After playing for a while, everything just feels the same. Each area, monsters, fighting and dodging a sponge boss, cheesing content with walls or dodging until 20 minutes later anything dies from doing 50-100 dps (low) but rolling around .


Thank you! Signing off sonic rolling simulator for a while.

Were you ssf or standard trade? Just curious. Anyways farewell. I’ve cut my time back to like less than an hour a day. It was great there for a hot minute but with each new patch they exchange one issue for another. The birds in the tower that got remodeled have been broken since they fixed the birds from one shotting us. Now they pause our motion, disappear from the screen then reappear. I think you’re right, I’m just to early but then I read comments that poe1 is something they copied for this game and many of the designs are decisions to not be corrected. They’ve taken some hard lines here and that’s a shame. At some points the gameplay is incredible but much like the game Anthem gameplay only gets you so far. Maybe we are too early. Maybe.

Thanks for feedback

Warrior player here :) (currently level 84)

Out of curiosity, how experienced are you with PoE, and was this not just "your first warrior" but also your first character?

Aside from less than 10 hours in PoE1, I'm also new to the game. Let me tell you, there was a lot of mechanics I didn't understand leading me to die a lot to things experienced players would never die to. I'm not blaming you for not knowing them, The game isn't exactly forthcoming about how the core mechanics work (although I do see they are trying).

If you think you're going through a similar experience as I did, and enjoy the game but feel too frustrated to continue. Maybe try some short videos that briefly explain the mechanics and take a look at your build?

Personally, I found this 12 minute video quite helpful to understand what I was doing wrong when I was getting one-shot by even some magic mobs during the campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsnj3QJBxs0

Hope it helps!

I also understood the gimmick of the fourth layer and prepared to take on the challenge, but unfortunately the hourglass was placed in the exact opposite position and I died instantly. 1.5 hours became pointless and I logged out, exhausted. I think I'll play again when they improve it.

@JJ

IMHO many builds just are not functional for ACT 2 trials due to the close range you need to be + sheer amount of rolls needed to dodge everything and "do small amounts of aoe damage because melee is dumb at close range with honor point system"


I will take a break, play civ7 early release and check back on poe2 when major overhaul patches hit.

If we just get new "distraction content" like new classes, weapons etc... that won't solve the core issues.

I can easily cheese this boss, i have no desire to.

i played maybe 200 hours poe1 alpha, 200 hours poe1 beta, and 200 hours after release. Mostly level 30-80 chars.

POE2 started off amazing, i suffered through some boss rolling cheese due to many skills not working with resonating shield (aoe effect works, aoe damage does not), having to then grind to get gold to rebuild character 3-4x, better than the old orbs type system but still wasnt super fun.

got my skill tree + gear overhauled, started act2 which was a breeze, started the trials which were not too bad until the boss cheese at the end with the honor system.

i love "monster hunter now" boss type fighting and UO Outlands mmo where you need to telepath and learn monster moves, dodge or kite, counter attack etc. That is fine. However the trials boss in poe2 act 2 was not fun design with the honor system completely require changing my skills, gear etc just to grind it out (not fun for me, fun for others with good gear/combos)

skills should work, if there are partial-parts of a gem that doesnt work with a skill it should be highlighted in red (AOE damage does not work with resonating shield) or fixed (AOE Damage is it a bug? is it a feature? why does aoe range scale from aoe effect?, why isnt that fixed after 2+ months?)

so for me it seems unpolished and lacking development speed at this time although i am not super familiar with current development goals i imagine most time is spent on new features or many bugs/features would have been tuned by now (this is fine, not anger, its just not for me, good development takes time let them cook).

UO Outlands tackled it by having different modifiers for defenses for one making content more difficult and two for having more tanking abilities for melee to master such as ignore bleed/poison/disease damage vs reduce total damage aka total defenses boost, vs parry chance against melee, magic resist, armor etc.. it makes it so i go "ok if i need to be better at xyz then get xyz", not "xyz is broken so skip xyz so you can use abc to do xyz instead" that is just something i dont have time for.

this sounds really nerd ragey lol, i mean well. I think poe2 gave me the best diablo2 like experience right out of the gate, although i dont remember any of the characters/plots at this time. i think this game will be great, i just hit a wall in 3 days, and don't really have the desire to cheese it for now. i can wait.


i like the totem+resonating shield + shield wall with 150AR shield (almost max possible at lvl23) , it only does 100 dps , but the three stacking is like 300dps+ which is similar to 300dps of mace or 300dps if i used a bow with 0 warrior skills other than the physical/attack tree boosts and mod gems.

that part burnt me out. with 0 build, i was taking 0 damage with a bow, no dodging, no running, half my tree not helping the weapon, no skills just basic weapon attack > my last 3 days of playing. killed my desire to continue.

why does the shield not block fire or other effects at all, while range with a bow the same warrior standing on edge of screen takes 0 damage. at least give some more options to play that style . ahhhh

ok update:
a. the relics to boost honor in various forms helped

b. switching to dropping 2 totems, kiting and picking them off with heavy xbhow with 0 gems and only skills related to damage boosting was way way way more effective than resonating shield + totem + shield wall

just kill them off screen when you can, use totems to distract, kite.


idk how to feel about this. each mace skill was useless at level 23 for this compared to base bow.

it bewilders me why the shield is ineffective in this scenario as an arpg .

"

jerger#3410 wrote:

@JJ

IMHO many builds just are not functional for ACT 2 trials due to the close range you need to be + sheer amount of rolls needed to dodge everything and "do small amounts of aoe damage because melee is dumb at close range with honor point system"

Care to specifically state which builds?


Would like to see something tangible rather than speculation.

The trials are meant to be hard so you should always be 10 to 20 levels above the content to do them.

Basically don't do it at level 25. Come back later and do it.

Or do a 7 trial trial of chaos I think.

On my warrior I did 1 and three floors of trials of Sehkemas. It was very difficult but rewarding.

You want a shield for the 3rd set of points

For the first set, you want to have honor resistance and max honor relics. Buy them.

It takes some skill to do the trials. You learn.

And like I said if you don't like sekema just do trials of chaos.

I got my 4 set of points at level 90 when I beat the trial master.

And I think you really only need 4 points to do most content (strength and passive bonuses).

I got the stun ascendancy as 3rd set.

I Flip back and forth between area of effect and 50%+ body armour for the last set.

It's also a general POV of mine that most characters need 4 ascendancy points. After that, the rest don't do as much.

Also consider a ghostwrithe or hybrid armour ES build because I think all defenses matter.

The Trials are very anit-melee, its very disappointing