feedback 25 - 30 hours in, merc / witchhunter, currently at t14-15 maps

My take on the dumpster fire of feedback goin on... The game is certainly more unforgiving in the current patch. I think you need to take some more time on the character, unless you find some OP stuff that just blasts through story or some not-very-balanced one-button build. I had fun so far, let them cook.

I used Merc for 0.2.2 since I heard that there were some buffs to Crossbow and I haven't tried the class yet. The early game was pretty smooth, but as many noticed, the currency drop rates certainly felt worse. I sold most of my gear instead of salvaging for regals, only identified blues and yellows, and got most gear from the store honestly. I had to farm a bit in the first two acts (I repeatedly ran Manor and Dreadnought) since I was missing skill gems and damage.

It was certainly more fun to me than my last two runs through the story as Deadeye and Infernalist in the last patch, since it felt a bit more challenging. I guess that’s a bit because of my Souls-like mentality. When I failed a boss, I just spammed the previous area until I had all the gem upgrades and maybe a lucky drop. But it was fine since I only rushed the content once I had the upgrades.

I made it through all of it in roughly 20–25 hours, I think. I don't have an exact time because I didn't switch off my PlayStation over the weekend (all of it pre-patch).

I get the criticism—at least most of it—but as a dev, it’s certainly difficult to distinguish valid points (like Ziz talked about in the podcast) from some bullshit takes like “make everything OP.” There should be challenges in early game too—if not, people won't learn about the game mechanics.

Item progression will hopefully get better as soon as they add more content, but currently it sucks. You get to maps using 2-stat items. Maybe get lucky and add a third, and that’s it. There isn't a good way to farm items with 3 good stats, honestly. (since drop rate of regals is low af and early you don't have much to disenchant)

I would make it so that we can choose something like Expedition early on. Transmute spam on high-level bases to get one or two good stats, then use recomb to get the third. If I had such an option, I could target-farm something like boots with 3 good stats and use Exalts for the fourth stat.
Essences are also meh, since you can only use them on whites and 2-stat items. They made them drop far more commonly—especially greater Essences—but I would push the drop rate down again and make it so you can target-add stat 4 and 5 with Essences. 4-stat items will carry you to T15s, and it should be pretty easy to achieve... so we’d actually have a strat instead of just gambling.
Also, Annuls would actually be worth something, since you could target, like, a lightning mod while removing a random stat. Still a chance to brick the item, but it's better than chaos-spamming on a fractured item like currently.

Atlas:

Towers are better now, i like the new respawn and the map cleared banner but I am now at t15's and I just don't like the thing that we have to target corrupted nexus for the atlas points instead on focusing on endgame content. My current strat is to spam t13's and t14's to move fast through the atlas for atlas skill points instead of focusing on challenging maps with better loot. Like giving the chance to spawn a corrupted nexus boss on t15's to quickly get the leftover points.

t1-5 feels like wasted time honestly, you could just remove it and put like one or two tiers to the end of each act. Make it so that you can just run through these maps instead of story for twinks. Put the Bosses in the end of each map to skill check players. This way players who don't like story could do twinks much faster and you could make it so that early maps only drop in endgame to force people to play story at the new seasons.

Ritual still has some annoying shit, like these purple explosions, which spawn random around the area. Maby make these easier to see or reduce the damage.

For the Points mentioned in the interview:

- I never had any problems with monster speed, probably because i set up traps with my grenades, If monsters run faster towards me they just got blinded and clustered together to get blown to pieces

- I like combos but for mapping I decided to use the two button build with galvanic shard and shock burst rounds. Feels just better since there is so much to look out for. Maby it would be better for endgame to split up combos in group play.

- i had the same issues with currency

- I like the idea of moving certain stats to implicits or a new prerolled category which is visible before identifying like +skill gem items, movement speed etc but it wouldn't be as much of a problem if actual crafting was implemented

- I like the idea of scaling defence, my trials for third ascension, the chaos trials and t15s bosses were just easier to do after scaling offensive items. But most of the issues I had were poorly telegraphed atacks which could be outplayed if i had seen them, or had the ability to move out of the way. Temporal chains just makes the game horrible early in atlas.. I would add an item like flasks or charms, maby call it trinket which overrides dodge move or adds another movement skill (I know you guys hate thoose but i didn't understand why) to help in those sticky situations.

- overall movement speed feels wonky. As soon as you pick up 30% ms boots the whole game gets easier. No MS is annoying, no MS and temporal chains is just horrible

- i have no opinion on armour break / armour in general. Just didn't play any armour based classes and most witchhunters i stalked on poe ninja were ev/es.

- large zones aren't the problem, doing content which isn't rewarding is. What i mean with this is: If I have a goal, I don't mind grinding through a large area... like getting all the higher lvl skill gems before moving to the next boss, or going through the zone killing any rare mob for good crafting bases, or going through multiple areas. The problem is similar to open world games where in evenly spaced areas there is story stuff or sth like a small bandit camp. Make the area more interesting.

- lowering the amount of alch's / regals make it hard to add mods to maps. I'm seriously question if it's actually good to make maps yellow under t15/16

- I certainyl got frozen quite alot in t15's but my belt is shit so i guess if i could craft a belt, i might have the option to actually do something against freeze etc. Had no luck with gambling so far.