My personal Ice sorc experience as a new player wasn't fun. Path of Rolling Build

Disclaimer: Wall of text from an Average player. I accept I am practically a noob to PoE Universe, 2nd account not many hours into PoE1, never used a build guide, viewed many videos, posts, wiki etc to learn about the many aspects of the game. I accept my builds suck, I am no cookie cutter. My challenge/reward comes from seeing how far I can get in this world alone. I do not expect to clear maps and one button smash bosses. My biggest achievement is struggling thruough t12 maps on a completely random broke-assed build. In reality, I understand that I am still learning that game, I have a long way to go. But I managed to get through all Poe1 Campaign relatively easily and unscathed, and managed to make things work for the most part, and really enjoyed both the campaign and the lower tier of end game I experienced, despite being essentially clueless. I state this, to provide a differing perspective from those of you who are advanced at the game, and the people who may be as new to this as I am. FWIW it's probably all been said before, but I'm new here so feel free to disregard this post as necessary. The only expectation I had going into this, was getting some enjoyment out of it. I heard it was hard. Turns out, it's damn near impossible for me on this particular character.

I had not played or even looked at PoE2 until the Dawn of the Hunt release. I had no expectations really. Heard a lot of good stuff about it. Totally green asf, I roll a sorc pick up a staff of firebolt and off I go. 5-7 points of fire damage.. My first thought is 'Ewww..' First few zombies go down ok. Trying to get used to dodge roll mechanic and key binds, I start progressing until the first pair of wolves appear at the edge of my screen. I fire a couple of slow assed projectiles in their genereal direction, and they out manouever, out run them and close the gap on me. I roll back to dodge the oncoming hit and they bite me in half. I'm dead. Restart, take it a bit more cautiously, and I kill them. Move forward and reveal a pair of zombies and 4 wolves. Start firebolting. The wolves are on me in no time. And so it begins..

I now play Path of Rolling. I never seem able to roll clear of their on coming attack, the delay before my skills fire off after a dodge roll is painful asf. They are are now actively pushing me back. Everytime they attack I have to roll, because I can't clear enough space between me and the mob to setup a safe counter attack outside of their attack range. Everytime I cast a projectile my character practically comes to a stop. Couple this with low dps relative to mob hps, and I end up spamming in a futile attempt to kill them, but in actuallity I am just tickling them while they swarm me and bite me in half. It's ok, I am in the starter area, I am weak as a day old kitten. I will get stronger..

I feel like everytime I roll its a wasted action. Whilst it dodges the immediate attack, it is useless really. As mob movement seems unrestricted, I am still within range of their follow up attack when I roll out and have a weird delay between my own attack (relative to animation ending? out of sync?). So I am essentially in the same position as I was before I rolled. So, what was the point? The dodge roll prevents me from, attacking so I waste the opportunity to damage them. The miniscule ammount of damage I do is inadequate to kill the 4 wolves and 2 zombies with the lousy firebolt, within the time frame it takes for any one wolf to kill me in 2 bites.

So I repeat this process over and over, reveal wolves half a screen away, and then proceed to dodge roll backwards for about 2 screen lengths before I can kill them without being chomped on. This is where I 1st notice a difference between POE 1 & 2. I spend more time going backwards than forwards in this game. I decide to get brave and try and run past a few mobs, in the hope i get to a less densely populated area and can kill a few at once. Nope, swarmed and obliterated. I picked up a firewall gem and I start to see the bigger picture of combos, however, I still feel weak and powerless. My projectiles are slow and weak. my dodge roll is to slow, and too short in travel distance to be really effective. It really feels like a slog just killing these white mobs. I press on and get to The first boss in the section. The Bloated Miller...

After the first 20mins he had me ready to kick my fucking T.V through the front window. Seriously... Not joking.. LMFAO.. I have never ever had a more infuriating and frustrating tutorial encounter in 30 years of gaming. it was the single most rage inducing encounter I have ever had. I get it, I am learning the mechanics and such, but this fight felt like it was futile for lvl4 sorc. I felt like a 2yr old. I have absolutely zero defenses, I can't move fast enough and the dps output was so weak I wondered why I even bother. I had picked up one staff, and 3 magic items, all lack luster. Fire wall, firebolt, dodge, firewall, firebolt, firebolt, dodge. repeat for 10mins until I die and the boss is still has 25% health. I repeat this 7 or 8 times. I am wondering what have I done wrong. What can I do to change it. I mean I already thought I sucked at PoE1 but I really do suck at this. At this point it really doesnt matter where I have spent the first 4 points that I got so far, because 4 points increase in damage or energy shield is meaningless as it isnt enough to kill the wolves before I am swarmed, or mitigate the damage they can do before I kill them.

I rage quit and rolled a warrior. just as a comparison. Picked up a generic wooden club and a pair of crap boots, and clubbed my way thru to the same boss in considerably less time. Biggest problem with this character are the absurdly long windups for every attack. I clubbed him in down in no time at all. It was like night and day. Couldn't believe it. I noticed that staying close to melee range was an advantage for this character, where as my caster needed to stay clear and therefore spent more time running around doing bugger all, due to projectile speed being so slow that the boss was never left standing in the same spot from when i fired the shot, to when it arrives at his location. Kept missing.

I delete and reroll the sorc. I get a few more gems. I wanted to play an Ice sorc, so switch over to Frost bolt, frost bomb. Things seem to improve and I am now able to actually start moving forward in the map. Getting the hang of it now, I see the 'combo vision'. Pick up a few more rare items, but still feel blah. Devourer taunts me to kick my T.V again. I am full blown losing mah shit in epic fashion. Fuck this clown. The fight just becomes groundhog day. I am struggling to dodge the split second mechanics, and concentrate on setting up a 3 button combo, all while walking slow asf around the arena and its obstacles. I realise that I am spending more time fighting my own fucking character than fighting the boss. It won't move when I want it too, won't hit when I want it too.. If i cast and tumble it cancels the cast, If I tumble and cast theres a delay. Boss moves before the frostbomb detonates. Its just frustrating and absolute garbage IMHO. I try different approaches, tactics, timings. All irrelevant. It seems like its just a dps check before I run out of flasks. After a day of this crap I'm out. I have never felt more useless in all my gaming experience lol.

That was Day 1. I check some reviews of the update on Youtube, and am glad to see that I am not the only one struggling. Some mixed reviews, mostly all saying similar things. It made me feel a little better knowing that some of your best streamers were struggling to make things work, given all their combined knowledge and experience. I had become so angry at this that I already decided that it was no longer worth my time, but TBH the interviews, feedback and potential, cooled me down a bit. After the 2nd patch I tried to go back in with the mindest that it is still EA. Its easy to forget when the game does look so damn good, especially with the known potential of what PoE1 has become. I will admit, I forgot the Early access state.

I progress through struggling to deal with the faster moving enemies, but get through to the cemetary. Asinia and Dragen destroy me over and over and over for hours on end. i eventually make it to the manor. ZOMFG...4 hours of my life disappeared on this one fight alone. Count Geonor... I am now lvl18. I still have no socketed gear, I still havent found any real decent gear.the vendor has 4 staffs of same level ligthning bolt, and 2 of freezing shards. I have one unique boots drop, i have virtually no currency and can't upgrade anything. I think I have about $4k gold. After 2hrs I watched a few video guides of the fight. I wasn't missing anything really, just had to be a little quicker on some of the the cues. The main problem that I had with this fight was when the mist would encircle me it was game over. I would end up losing flask charges instead of building them as I could not kill the wolves effectively.

I have the following skills frostbomb- 147dps, frostbolt-36dps, orb of stoms- 18dps, cold snap- 634dps. For me to kill the wolves in this section of the fight I have to rely on dropping a frostbomb and wait for it to go off with its delayed timer. I have it slotted with fast forward support to lessen the duration. Meanwhile I am rolling around all the wolves trying to avoid them while i wait for it to detonate. which of course moves them out the AOE as they chase me. Of course I can spam a 36dps frost bolt and try and explode them with the cold snap, except the delay between the 2 interacting skills doesn't work together very well. If i frost bolt and cold snap too quickly, they cancel each other out and i am left standing there doing my best Harry Potter impersonation spamming a wand repeatedly with no action at all being taken, resulting in slowed movement speed and a wasted action. the quickest i can seem to activate a cold snap after I frostbolt, sees the projectile pass beyond the mobs directly on top of me, and explodes behind them without affecting them, which defeats the purpose of firing it at them in the first place. the delay is too long in that regard, so I can never seem to kill those ontop of me with it. Of course I try to avoid them using circular patterns as I cast, but every time i cast, I virtually stop, allowing them to continue attacking me.

3am, I was determined to beat him but was worn the hell out. It just seemed needlessly tedious for me. I tried switching the few gems i had equipped around, recheck vendors etc Nothing. Farmed another level, still no difference.. The only reason I beat him, was after I removed all the support gems. Go figure... 50% less damage from scattershot, and 20% less cast speed seems like over kill at this level imo. The extra shots were completely useless, as I couldn't use them to detonate coldsnap on the mob, so i was just spamming literal snowballs at them. Well I got him in the end. Gotta admit, that was an epic fight. I love the visuals and effects, absolutely stunning GGG's. I was pretty excited when I finally got him. But it wasnt worth the time investment. I was physically shaking my head at that point, it just seemed silly really. Out of proportion?? I can understand A map boss to be that difficult, but not the 1st boss in a starter area. Player to mob/boss power is far in favor of the enemy.

With my recent triumphant victory under my belt I move onto the next area glad to be finally done with Geonor. Only to find myself quickly struggling to complete a rotation and delete the oncoming random mobs before I am swarmed, and resort to Path of Rolling in a futile effort to clear a bit of distance and reset the fight. /repeat Ad nauseam. Im just tired, and worn out now TBH. I am realistically unable to kill more than 4 fast moving mobs at a time sufficiently. Add an extra group or throw in some off screen projectiles, maybe some trash obstacles littered on the floor to trip over and get trapped in, and I am well and truly fucking over it eh? Patience is completely sapped, the will to live is gone. My character may as well just be the mouse cursour, for all the added defense and dps it brings to the map. My boss fights just amount to rolling around waiting for the delayed timer on a frost bomb to detonate, while the boss moves in and out of it constantly frustrating me to no end.

I imagine the skills are balanced with combos in mind, but makes some of them useless outside of that particular combo. Why should I spend mana on a frost bolt for 71dps at a single target, when i can just use frost bomb and actually kill the whole mob? The price is still the cost of one action, regardless of mana spent. in this instance i would waste time casting 2 frost bolts to equal the one blast from the bomb going off and could still only kill 1 enemy. Add in scatter shot and I now have to launch 4 bolts to equal that damage. I may as well just wait for the bomb to go off and not bother casting them, as they just slow my movement down, and don't really contribute significantly to the dps. It seems like i do more dps by not casting them thereby avoiding slowing myself down, allowing me to avoid the mobs encircling me more easily, and using less flask charges. I just have to wait out the fuse and try and contain them within the circle all at the same time without taking damage..

I think this may be key to the issues raised between not just the player bases themselves and the 'vision' of GGG. Why the top players who have the hours and experience to handle the game at its upper levels still manage to struggle in some aspects, and why new players are completely destroyed and pissed off in seconds. People like me wanting to play a particular character a certain way, finding out that it won't work, and not wanting to give up at such an early stage. Its why some are saying they love the game, while others are saying they hate it and why some builds work and others are just complete trash. Combo synchronicity and Time delays. Some skills work together, for fast and satisfactory effects, others are either too cumbersome or just dont work at all. Many of them are just useless on their own. The trick is finding out which ones work and which ones don't. I can only assume that melee has a direct advantage here.

I may be off with this assumption but I believe the 'vision' is to immerse the players in combat scenarios whereby the enemies all move in real time without restriction, for fast paced combat action which culminates in a Dark Souls like Epic Boss Battle. Which sounds cool asf, I am down for that! I would love that game! I want it NOW! Probably just not in the starting area while my character is weak as a day old kitten.

However, every single action the player takes has a detrimental cost in its application, that directly impedes the character unfairly in some way, shape or form. It just makes for an unpleasant NPC-sided experience, which is most likely exacerbated in the early game. I am sure all of these actions speed up and smooth out in later levels where you have aquired the gear and passives that allow you to compete more on an equal footing with the mobs. Whether that is base walking speed, tumble speed/distance, cast/attack time, recovery time, delay times etc.

Quite honestly, I don't think I'll ever get that far to find out. I am currently at lvl20 and all i wanna do now is put my PC in the Trash and kick my TV through the window as I shake my fist and curse GGG's name to the Loot Gods.

I can't seem to kill them quick enough
I can't seem to avoid them at all
I can't seem to barely move forward
I can't mitigate their damage at all
Everything I do is delayed to what seems like ridiculous lengths in relation to mob actions
Everything they do demands instant attention and avoidance.
Support Gems I have used so far weaken the already weak ass skills too much.


All I can do is

Keep Rolling
Rollin'
Rollin'
On

Until they swarm and I can no longer Roll through them.
Then I die and think whether or not I can be bothered to try again.

After all that, Im not really interested in trying out other classes now either TBH. If swords or axes were in game i would probably try a melee character but clubs and maces don't excite me.

I can't play a turn based character in a real time action combat scenario. It just doesn't work. This is the disconnect between the 'vision' and reality as far as I see it. Watching Streamers whip out the Anvil and start a 4 second smithing demo in the middle of combat is just the icing on the cake imho. Let's just be honest, its fucking ridiculous. It may well be a cool concept that defines a class, but I would cancel the whole smithing action and just have him dip his weapon in a pot of chemicals that magically appears next to him in a split second and instantly allows you to get back into the action. And its all for what? For 3 or 4 more lousy yet still slow asf hits?

Talk about disconnects...

I want to see this game work, but I doubt they will ever go far enough in removing the impediments to allow us to compete with mobs on an equal footing. If you want us to enjoy your 'vision' in this environment, then you need to give us the chance to succeed by removing all our shitty little minimum delay periods. That is the only way that the combo style gameplay will ever feel smooth enough for players to enjoy without feeling like you are physically trying to wrestle/pilot a mechwarrior on screen. My throat is rawr from raging at the stoopid little fucker on my screen that won't do as he is fucking told. My RSI is killing me from constantly dodge rolling. Theres way too much, or maybe not enough of a pause between it, they attack so fast.

Do I really also need the 0.8 sec cast time on a frost bolt that takes 4 days and a packed lunch to cross to the otherside of my screen and do 36 points of damage? Then do I need the delay on the cold snap? the delay on frost bomb? Probably not.... all of those delays add up, before I can delete a mob with a 'simple' combo. Meanwhile I get bitten in half with 2 bites in 0.5secs, cause I am already 2 steps behind their first attack.

Just an uninformed opinion from a failed Ice Sorceror who would really like to see this work.. Sure I am still lacking gear, and a functioning brian. Again, I need to remember its EA, The bones are there, they look good man. I gotta say it! I love how the multi effects interact with each other, it really looks awesome guys. Just gotta stop holding us back. Unleash us in all our glory so we can put you guys back on the pedestal you deserve, and show the gaming world what can be accompolished.

No, I don't expect the game to change to conform to my liking. Maybe it is just me. Maybe its just sorc, maybe its just ice based spell skills. Maybe its lack of gear. Maybe its Power balance or speed between boss and player at certain levels. All I am doing is providing a perspective on what is required for me personally to enjoy the game in its current state. This was not an enjoyable experience for me personally, fwiw. Its not my game, they have no obligation. Nor do I. I just wanna to play and enjoy it, not feel like Im constantly pushing shit up a slippery hill in a leaky wheel barrow whilst working in a sweat shop for them. That's what is killing the fun at least for me. It is more Arduous than Adventurous in what should be a 'classic dungeon' setting.

One thing I have learnt, is to try and pay more attention as to what is ACTUALLY killing me, ie. standing still Harry Potter Spamming nothing into the void, and realising the errors in the panic of the moment. Perhaps identifying these instances will do more to help improve the game than just randomly ranting and telling GGG they suck and can't make games..

Now, please excuse me whilst I consider whether my sanity can withstand the thought of rolling another character and putting myself through this starter area again, in an attempt to go 'git gud'. The mind is willing but my flesh is weak. Feel free to use my character to kill Geonor for me, and show me where I was going wrong with what I had available at the time. I certainly won't be using her anytime soon.

Looking forward to the next patch. At least there are changers being made, which indicates things may not be as inflexible as the player base may have believed. Anyway, apologies for the rant. Despite being thoroughly pissed off, I have faith...