List of problematic situations with Azmeri Wisps

Here are situations I see as problems, that happen while interacting with the Wisp mechanic. For context I am fully specced Wisps in the atlas tree and I try my best to interact with them every map, because I'm hoping to get a Rite of Passage one day in SSF.

- I kill the final rare and finish the map, only to see a wisp at the edge of my screen, now disappearing with no target to possess.

- I start a strongbox, breach, or other activity and then run into a wisp that wants to take me away from the activity I just started. Following the wisp means I lose the first activity OR have to backtrack to it. Not following the wisp means I risk forgetting about it, losing track of it, or potentially losing the wisp altogether.

- I am systematically clearing the zone in a route that makes sense to me, going down a shorter dead end with some rares so I can clean it out first, before I move forward to the longer main path with the rest of the map - but then I encounter a wisp and it starts taking me away from the dead end and towards the main path. If I ignore it and continue the way I was going to clear out the rares in the dead end, I could lose the wisp, or forget about it. If I follow the wisp, I then have to backtrack tremendously later to clear out the dead end.

- There are rares left on the map, but they're behind a doorway that the wisp thinks it can't path through, so the wisp just disappears. This happens in Augury even after hitting all pedestals and unlocking the center chamber.

- I'm following a wisp and another one appears of the same type, so it can't pursue the same enemy. I risk losing one of the wisps as they're going in different directions.

- I'm following a wisp and another one appears of a different type, but it doesn't pursue the same enemy for some reason. I suspect it's because my current wisp hadn't been hunting for long enough (like, it just respawned out of a possessed enemy I killed with the atlas passive) or wasn't close enough to the current wisp to "latch on" to its route.

-I'm following a wisp and another one appears of a different type, and pursues the same target, but takes a *slightly* different path that causes them to split up into different directions to path around a wall or obstacle, causing me to have to chase one for a while, then backtrack and grab the other one, so their paths converge again.

- I'm following a wisp and I'm trying to get some enemies to be Spirit-Touched by it so I can build up the rarity bonus, but because the wisp has to get so close to the enemies to touch them, and my attacks kill enemies very far away from me automatically, I can't actually get the bonus built up. The spirit also stops moving when it encounters an enemy, so I don't have the option to sit back and wait for it to move forward and spirit-touch the mobs at the edge of the screen before I attack; either I attack now, wasting most of the enemies without any buildup of the bonus, or I stand around doing nothing and wait for the enemies at the edge of the screen to come closer and get themselves spirit-touched. The second option is too dangerous in juiced maps, and I can't just walk away from the wisp and wait either because then it will despawn. So I am forced into option 1.

- I'm following a wisp and I want it to possess a rare. I can see the rare, it's on the edge of my screen now. But the wisp stops because it encountered some common mobs blocking the way. This is one of the biggest and most serious problems with the wisps. If I attack the mobs that are blocking the path, my attack will chain over, kill the rare, and now the wisp has nothing to possess so it despawns. This has happened countless times to me and there really is no alternative. If I just stand around not attacking, hoping the rare will come closer and get itself possessed, then I am taking attacks from juiced mobs that whole time, and that is simply too dangerous so I have to attack simply for survival's sake. At which point I lose the wisp because it couldn't get close enough to the rare to possess it before the rare was killed.

- I have a wisp possessing an enemy, but I accidentally kill the enemy a little bit too soon, so the wisp just gets released back out instantly with no possession - this is fine except that it resets the entire rarity bonus I'd built up from killing spirit-touched enemies! Even though the possession didn't actually happen!

- I've figured out kind of a trick that if you start escorting a wisp, and get it moving quickly through empty space, and then quickly run in the opposite direction of where it's going and blink away, it will magically keep going on its own IF you stay within about a screen distance from it. Get too close, and it'll start turning red and get "abandoned" and despawn. Get too far, and it will stop moving and hang out and wait for you to come back before its abandon timer resumes. There is a sweet spot where you can get it to move on its own. It's very hard to maintain this distance, though, as it's a bit out of range to see the wisp on the minimap, and other monsters or activities can get in your way. So this feels like a horrible clunky little dance that I unfortunately feel rather forced to do in order to get the wisps to actually possess something without an even bigger headache dealing with all of the above.

Thanks for reading.

Bumping this to re-assess these issues for rise of the abyssal league.

Every single point is still a problem with wisps with the exception of the three points I made about what happens when you get two wisps at the same time. That one's no longer a problem after 0.3.1 because after 0.3.1 you only get 0-1 wisps per map no matter what you do. lol.

Also adding to the list: even though map bosses can now be possessed natively, they almost always are not spawned in until you walk up to them and start their RP, so the wisps will just disappear anyway when they run out of rare targets even though the boss is not dead.

Bumping this to re-assess for fate of the vaal league.

Most of these issues are completely unaddressed still. The one thing that I am finding a little bit better with Wisps this league, is that Monster effectiveness now makes it so rares are a little easier to leave alive long enough for the wisp to finish its possession. If I run Abyss Monsters Have Increased Difficulty mod, especially then I can usually keep the rare alive long enough so that the wisp actually gets a chance to possess it.

IT's also very nice that we can see wisps on the minimap now even after were out of range of them. This definitely makes them much easier to control and manage your distance to them to prevent a despawn situation.

Otherwise, every problem on this list remains a problem with Wisps. Right now, most of my endgame complaints have actually been solved by the many updates thus far. This leaves Wisps as my now #1 complaint about PoE2. If I want a rite of passage in SSF I am forced to interact with this mechanic, and it has so many problems that I now consider it the primary barrier between me and having fun in PoE2's endgame.

I still don't see the point of them as it doesn't really noticeably impact rewards either besides rarely dropping certain things.

They move too slow, and they never give rewards.

They should posses you and should buff monsters around you