PoE2 Feedback from a non-Nolifer

Hey ya'll.

So, I've picked up the PoE2 EA 2 Days ago. I have played my fair share of PoE 1 though nowhere to the nolifing extent that other individuals have gone to. I played it on and off for god knows since when - most certainly since the game only had 3 Acts, as far as I can remember. I have also played various ARPGs basically since Diablo 1. So I think I am capable of giving some Average Joe levels of Feedback. But enough about me.

I am currently somewhere on the later half of Act 2 playing a Sorceress, because I thought it would be a fun character to roll. (Oh boy, but we will get to that...)

Initial experience within the first 2 or so hours has been some great fun. I really liked the initial impression of the deliberate movement that PoE 2 had, being mobile while casting, the dodge roll, overall the far reduced speed of the game. Felt a lot like coming home to Diablo 1 in modern clothes - and the first 2 or so hours felt good. Like, real good. The Gem system felt decently streamlined and the initial look at the passive tree, while nothing revolutionary, felt very path of exile'ish.

But after that something started to slide amiss. Initially having been specced into what I found a good concept (Ice Sorc and capitalizing on freeze status by various means), a bit on the lower DPS side of things, but a lot of survivability inherent - frozen monsters can't make no hurts after all. This escalated. Way, way, way into the wrong direction. By mid of Act 1 my damage was so incredibly lackluster, it was no uncommon occurence to take upwards of 10 minutes for a rare. 20 - 30 minutes for a boss/midboss. It felt so incredibly slow. The final boss of act 1 was a teethgrinding experience of patience.

Okay, well said and done, PoE has always been a vastly different game off-meta vs on-meta. So I decided to pick up one of the current highly praised leveling specs (Firewall-Spark'ing during my low level) at the start of Act 2. It was pretty nice to easily be capable to respecc, even if at a moderate gold cost, relatively speaking. With a fresh build and some good vendor gear I found, I felt ready to continue my adventure through Act 2. Holy shit have I been had by these feelings.

As I approached somewhere around the mid point of Act 2, the game just became increasingly sluggish - at an exponential rate. To the point it felt like running the 300 yards through a tar pit. Even though touted as a blazingly fast experience, the Spark build has also been mindnumbingly slow. And then my expectations started to shift, in a really bad way.

Except of being excited I started to absolutely dread any and all raremobs, even worse bosses. The time it took to take them down was just such an atrocious feeling. Even worse if you took one slight misstep and died in the process. Time to do it all - over - again. Combat against the vast majority of enemies has devolved into dodge rolling about 80% of the time and the constant stress of maneuvering in fear of getting blocked in by a mob of angry beasties. I have never before felt so stressed playing through the leveling/story experience of an ARPG.
There was just no fun involved in the vast majority of my time through Act 2 so far. A certain boss at the top of a certain gate in act 2 completely destroyed any remaining hope I had to find any joy in the game at all. Holy hell was this entire fight a miserable experience.

Not because the fight itself was so bad, no.

But because it took me upwards of 30 attempts NOT to get boxed in by the sand scarabs at the end of it and die, having to reattempt the entire fight. Well, nevermind. Even before that. It felt so miserable dodge-chaining this... can you even call that arena? Most people have living room carpets larger than this pinnacle. This was one of the most unengaging experiences I have had in PoE2.

Afterwards, I thought okay, Level 22, suggested level 22 - lets attempt the trial. All good and dandy. Until I died at the final boss due to a stray hit by a volcano due to low honor. Then it dawned on me. This game is so unbelievably obsessed with its movement system, its entirely designed around this whole attack-and-move and dodgerolling. But not in a good way. See, it is very obvious PoE2 took quite some inspiration out of the soulslike genre. But it misses a huge point. Exploitability. Every boss, no matter how hard and fast, has some clear designed weak points, openings in their combos, etc. The vast majority in the souls games, you fight a couple of enemies at most. The amount of times you fight 5-10 enemies at once, much less more is few and far between (and even then, the couple of times it happens in the entire series are notorious for their bullshitry - think bonewheels f.e.) - so, even there it didn't work out. I have no idea how the conclusion to draw from these is 'Yes, lets make EXACTLY that!'. It just doesn't work at all, when there is more than 10 enemies on the screen - much less if all they have to do is hug you hard enough until you die.

In the end, ARPGs have always been a power fantasy. Sure, one can design that one excessively - that is a problem in its own rights. But I have never in my life before played an ARPG that had so little action in it, so little RPG matter, and left me feeling the polar opposite end of a power fantasy - a weakness dread.

Imo theres a few adjustments that would vastly elevate the game:

- Remove the dodgeroll. And the overdependency of the game of overusing it. That includes reworking boss encounters to better telegraph. Yes, if I would want twitch-reaction gameplay, I'd be playing a competitive shooter.
- Remove the On Death Area Restart system. This works - in a soulsgame... where the entire area consists of about the same amount of enemies as on the first screen of any given area in PoE2. This system is just a huge middle finger to the time investment of players.
- Slightly lower the creature amount if opting for the beefy HP route - or do the opposite, but reduce creature HP to less teethgrindingly slow levels.
- Reduce average creature movement speed. It feels totally great to be completely incapable of adding distance between you and a manaleeching rare as a sorceress because they just crawl at you at about 1.5x your speed.

I think I am about done with PoE2 for the time being. Sad I couldnt even finish my first playthrough, but I just cant bear it any longer. I'll keep a watch on the games progress and maybe down the line it will become less of a culmination of 'everything wrong with soulslike and arpg mechanics', as rough as this sounds.

Sorry for the wall of text, and thank you for your time reading this.

Cheers! o7

Sad to hear you are running into problems.
I am not sure of your build or how sorc scales cold dmg but I’d suspect your weapon needs to be upgraded.
Typically on a lot of builds as you level new base types of weapons become available and each new ‘tier’ has higher base and potential mods rolls, in short the wand you got in act one is more than likely too weak for act two and you need an act two wand. Quick route, look on trade (use the requirements section to limit results to your lvl,int,Str,dex and look for something to suit your build. If there are too many results or specific mods you know are good for your build you can enter them individually as stars at the bottom before the search button.
Hope this helps get you back on track and having fun.

I had pretty decent upgraded gear as I was restocking mostly out of the vendor in act 2 when I respecced. So that is not the issue. Given I had been reading and watching guides on the specc, basically all newbie pitfalls were being taken care of. Like Gem levels etc.

And your suggestion in all honor about browsing the trade. It was, at that time, a level 18 toon. Playing through its first story run. If 'Trading mandatory' is the solution, it would just underline the problem.

Thanks for your effort and interest in helping out though, I do appreciate that. :)

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igKillerhamster#1708 wrote:

I had pretty decent upgraded gear as I was restocking mostly out of the vendor in act 2 when I respecced. So that is not the issue. Given I had been reading and watching guides on the specc, basically all newbie pitfalls were being taken care of. Like Gem levels etc.

And your suggestion in all honor about browsing the trade. It was, at that time, a level 18 toon. Playing through its first story run. If 'Trading mandatory' is the solution, it would just underline the problem.

Thanks for your effort and interest in helping out though, I do appreciate that. :)

I would not call trading a mandatory thing, but a good quick fix in such a circumstance. For the game as a whole it’s definitely advantageous to use trading and if your not I’d suggest trying the solo self found option during character creation which many consider a triumph to play.
And always happy to try (not always successfully) and help polite players such as yourself :)