Defense - What can GGG learn from this based off of average complaints

I'm committed to gaming and this game is a commitment, especially on good defensive prioritization, theory and practice vs the End Game, especially higher tiers.
I bet the average player is struggling to cope after slogging through the campaign and still have mixed thoughts about what to prioritize based off of their loot/vendor luck and their personal needs for a playstyle.

I believe GGG need to:

- Make a very early End Game side quest to Instil your first necklace.
The game doesn't clue up players at all to the existence of this and it needs to happen.
This is an incredible buff which the player can use for even offense if they choose but its so important for my defense because it raises my Evasion by 100% for 4 seconds when I'm hit (Escape Strategist).

- Make more quests through the campaign that warm players to dangers of Chaos damage and reward them with things such as a Chaos resist rune and a new HP omen that activates to fill your HP to full if Chaos damage would of killed you.
Additionally a quest to reward the player with an item that completely refunds their passive points.

- Warn players (if needed) from Cruel difficulty and beyond.
The game should warn you when you're about to enter an instance:
"you are about to enter with extremely low resist/armor/evasion/ES values, continue?"
"You have unused spirit points, continue?" (80% or more unused lets say)

- Suggest Spirit Skills (from reading players stats ideally)
I believe Spirit skills aren't being appreciated by the average player (I wouldn't be anywhere without Ghost Dance!) and I think they need to implement sly suggestions into the gem selection page that recommend X spirit skill based off of your defense prioritization/class, like how they support stones for your skills.

I don't think what I'm suggesting is heavily hand holding players or taking anything away from the games difficulty level and its just a way to make sure users aren't completely in the dark on some things when they may feel the game wouldn't be so harsh on them after doing the first 3 normal campaign acts.

"

TrunktenUK#3407 wrote:

- Make more quests through the campaign that warm players to dangers of Chaos damage and reward them with things such as a Chaos resist rune and a new HP omen that activates to fill your HP to full if Chaos damage would of killed you.
Additionally a quest to reward the player with an item that completely refunds their passive points.

I can't understand why they put so many chaos dmg mobs on act1, specially on Freythorn. Also, volatiles during campaign, when you don't have much source of chaos resist, deal far too much damage. They should reduce its damage at lower levels. I consider myself a veteran so it wasn't a big deal for me, but I think it might be really hard for new players to handle that.

"

- Make a very early End Game side quest to Instil your first necklace.
The game doesn't clue up players at all to the existence of this and it needs to happen.
This is an incredible buff which the player can use for even offense if they choose but its so important for my defense because it raises my Evasion by 100% for 4 seconds when I'm hit (Escape Strategist).

I made a topic of this... or more about what is the progress path and how confusing it is.

Because when you start mapping you get the tangible goal of "do T15 maps"
While there's no giant markers on them, and not sure how many people actually go through the WHOLE atlas tree, but you can read how to get the first special atlast points, but even those are confusing.
Ie:
"what the hell is a logbook?" You get that randomly from expeditions.

"da hell is a twisted domain?"
Becase breech stone splinters will create a breech stone.

At least delirium and boss is straightforward because the shards and the zone name matches.
And bosses just say beat a lvl79+ boss. It will take a while why doesn't it just say do a t15 waystone because you can juice up and corrupt stones too...

For this topic sake I just googled how to do the ritual guy, and I feel sorry for SSF players now...


So, all these goals are semihidden.

But here is the bigger problem. You start to hit a brick wall. Loots don't drop too well to improve your gear.
And we seen from the interview that players don't even do the campaign as the devs intended.
To be specific it is intended to sell drop items early. You learn that is too time costly, but still worth to disenchant it to get rare items of your own.
But a LOT of people only pick up currencies and devs realized people made their own life harder with loot filters approach. :D

So... now you're a player like me. Semi SSF (not ssf, but the idea of trading doesn't appeal in its current form, so you're an honorable ssf player)
Beating maps your combat experience is the following:
a. sleepwalking
b. "what? my hp goes down fast, keep potions up"
c. "DAFUQ DID JUST DESTROYED MY HEALTH?!"

RNG is not in your favor. I am still wearing low level items and I am BURNING currencies.
So you check the endgame content extra. And now consider the following perspective:

Delirium neck enchant
Needs high level distills. But you cant get them. So you assume its a superendgame content.
Unless its expected to reforge literally 10 thousands if ire-s!
Btw... how many people know you can reforge delirium currencies?
And if you know you can find skill recipes on the skilltree?

So delirium wont help[ you if you stuck around t10...


Rituals?
Not sure. Each time only the omens were worthy, most items are trash. Not even sure why am I torturing myself with rituals...

Breech?
I still do them, but extremely disappointing. You got swarmed, cant even take a look at drops, because you're in a mad rush.
Adn the first thing you identify you need 300 splinters! You will get 1-4 early stages.

Keep in mind, you're stuck around t10... Imagine grinding literally 100 maps to be wiped the floor with...



Expedition?
The NPC in the hideout offer you ilvl63! Thats downgrade. Youre more than likely have better gear from finishing cruel campaign.

Ok... recombinator introduced.
Grinding like 30 expeditions (4 different currencies)
just to see a 2% chance of success?

Wisps?
Cleansed maps for fracture orbs?
Man... even if they will 100% guarantee a drop, it wouldn't be enough.
Maybe I am unlucky, but done like 30 cleansed maps and a SINGLE fracture orb so far.
If that would be a guaranteed pick stat it would be fine, but 1/30 just to get a 1/7 chance to lock my desired stat?!

TBF I have no clue whey divines are so valued either?
It just randomize the numbers on your items. I wouldn't even wear them if the numbers would be bad at them. I would say... 7/10 values. So using a divine have 2:1 chance to make the numbers worse! :D

Oh... and now I remember there's a full corruption crafting mechanic, but again... the game doesn't teach you what it potentially does.
At least a crafting window could come that shows the outcomes.

I didn't even dare to corrupt my current gears due to the fear of making them worse. It was already hard to find the ones I have.

"

I can't understand why they put so many chaos dmg mobs on act1, specially on Freythorn. Also, volatiles during campaign, when you don't have much source of chaos resist, deal far too much damage. They should reduce its damage at lower levels. I consider myself a veteran so it wasn't a big deal for me, but I think it might be really hard for new players to handle that.

I have to say I am warrior biased.
Played both patches as thorn warbringer, so I went full balls deep masochist mode.

The volatile plants you learn to dance around. Kite -> trigger -> charge rare.
Its only an issue in endgame where a single one can wipe you off, and 3 of them chase you at once.

The chaos damage itself however scales with weapon, and as a warrior armour is good, because if the attack damage is reduced you get reduces chaos damage too.
This is something I just learned recently from the interview, and I was thinking "how the other classes leveled up then?!"

But lets say in 0.1 warriors were the most underrepresented class and now everything else was nerfed to warrior level...

"

Kraivan#1745 wrote:

The volatile plants you learn to dance around. Kite -> trigger -> charge rare.
Its only an issue in endgame where a single one can wipe you off, and 3 of them chase you at once.

I'm not saying you can't handle volatiles, I'm just saying that it is too much for beginners, who are still learning the game. They can find them too early in the game, and with a high frequency.

Anyway, on endgame, when you start to find volatiles mixed with other contents, even veterans can have problem to deal with them. They are fine when you see them alone and you can take your time to "make your dance", but they can be hidden by many things that people usually aren't aware of, like shrine effects (specially the cold one), big monsters (specially those gigantic worms on cleansed maps), fog from shroud walkers, etc. There are many situation on the endgame that those visual effects aren't clear anymore.

"

Kraivan#1745 wrote:

The chaos damage itself however scales with weapon, and as a warrior armour is good, because if the attack damage is reduced you get reduces chaos damage too.
This is something I just learned recently from the interview, and I was thinking "how the other classes leveled up then?!"

You're talking about poison, which is just one type of chaos dmg. Poison can be applied by physical dmg, so what you described is right for that situation. But that is not what I'm talking about. There are many mobs that deal chaos dmg directly. Those Cultist Archer on Freythorn, for example, deal a lot of chaos dmg (not physical -> poison), so armour is useless against that.

"

I'm not saying you can't handle volatiles, I'm just saying that it is too much for beginners, who are still learning the game. They can find them too early in the game, and with a high frequency.

Early game its not a problem, because you KNOW its dangerous but enemies arent that many either.
Its "balanced" around delay.
Volatile plants explode like 2 seconds after its triggered.
Tha archers poisong bubbles take 3 seconds too.

Endgame is more about stack mechanics that can be a death sentence.
Who doesn't like a good
- volatile plant
- temporal bubble
- temporal chain
- cold damage
- regeneration
wombo combo on enemies? As melee.

With screen full of death sentences and visual cancer?
Evoiding a volatile plant isn't an issue.
The issue is when you are chaced by 3, dozens of golitah type monsters preparing their oneshotting slam attacks (which is physical, yet a shield wearing warrior tank cant handle it)
casters casting meteors
archers slowly stretching their bows up for their armor penetration snipe
another pack is casting runic nukes
while you shield charge and somehow cant collide a single enemy in that swarm, so you just aggroed the next screen and you realize its another juiced up rare with
- speed
- immortality aura
- explosive corpses


*sigh*
Yeah... its not a volatile plant that cause problem.
Its that ANY of those stuff singularly are easily avoidable but deadly.

The game is seemingly balanced around that in a 1v1 its punishing, but telegrpahed well.
But then you get them as swarm mechanic... -_-

Well said, OP, but there are all just symptoms of the problem. The problem that GGG is too afraid to make PoE into another Diablo3/4 and as a result they overshoot in the opposite direction by intentionally not rewarding the player.

"

Kraivan#1745 wrote:

Early game its not a problem, because you KNOW its dangerous but enemies arent that many either.
Its "balanced" around delay.
Volatile plants explode like 2 seconds after its triggered.
Tha archers poisong bubbles take 3 seconds too.

If this game didn't have body blocking, it would be one thing, but many times roll dodge unexpectedly fails and you end up getting hit. Even with some improvements, there still are many non-intuitive situations that new players can have problem.

It is specially true for Freythorn, which has a bad layout, due to those narrow bridges and multiple obstacles on the round areas. It is clearly a zone that shouldn't be in act1 normal.

"

Kraivan#1745 wrote:

Endgame is more about stack mechanics that can be a death sentence.
Who doesn't like a good
- volatile plant
- temporal bubble
- temporal chain
- cold damage
- regeneration
wombo combo on enemies? As melee.

With screen full of death sentences and visual cancer?
Evoiding a volatile plant isn't an issue.
The issue is when you are chaced by 3, dozens of golitah type monsters preparing their oneshotting slam attacks (which is physical, yet a shield wearing warrior tank cant handle it)
casters casting meteors
archers slowly stretching their bows up for their armor penetration snipe
another pack is casting runic nukes
while you shield charge and somehow cant collide a single enemy in that swarm, so you just aggroed the next screen and you realize its another juiced up rare with
- speed
- immortality aura
- explosive corpses


*sigh*
Yeah... its not a volatile plant that cause problem.
Its that ANY of those stuff singularly are easily avoidable but deadly.

The game is seemingly balanced around that in a 1v1 its punishing, but telegrpahed well.
But then you get them as swarm mechanic... -_-

I don't get your point. It's like you're saying that volatiles are less problematic on endgame because there are other problematic stuffs. Makes no sense to me.

I really think that things you can't see clearly is worse than things that you can, but I don't want to go offtopic and discuss about a "ranking" of what is more problematic, so I'd rather left this subject aside.

"

I don't get your point. It's like you're saying that volatiles are less problematic on endgame because there are other problematic stuffs. Makes no sense to me.

Volatile plant in the endgame is the same danger level as early game. It oneshots you... :D
By itself, 1v1 its not an issue.

But when an actual horde comes at you its hard to identify what is THE hazard?
In my scenario everything kills me. Because there's also 15 other thing that can also oneshot you.

I think the worst combination so far Ive had position perspective when an essence unique map had volatile plant, hammer of god, bone circle, electric "donut".
The boss that was chosen to be RNG juiced up was the core guardian with his laz0rbeams

Donut expect you to stand in the middle because the ring is deadly, center is safe.
Everything else expects you to run out.

All those mechanics stacked up however made the boss unkillable, because I couldn't oneshot it in that 4 seconds of brief time and regenerated his massive ES...
The stupid bone circle on the other hand blocked my shield charge and leap slap... it was a "fun" fight.
60% xp loss and a unique map failed...

Separated neither them was hard.
But when its stacked up you can just get a technical game over.

On the other time you can get "lucky" mods.
Like that "prevents you to recover above 50% hp".
Does it matter if anything oneshots me or kills me 3 time if I got hit? :D

"

Kraivan#1745 wrote:

I think the worst combination so far Ive had position perspective when an essence unique map had volatile plant, hammer of god, bone circle, electric "donut".

That is not what I'm talking about. Try, for example, a map on a corrupted zone with delirium active while you have double shrine meteor + freezing, then say if you can identify well anything going on on the screen.

I can only survive that because of the rules "don't stay in the same spot" and "don't come back to the spot you were before", while having enough DPS to deal with anything fastly, but it is not a good design for a game for sure. I wouldn't be alive on red league yet if I was relying only on what I can actually see.