Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Jaedar]

I'm sorry to say this but if thats how you experience the game, you suck at making melee builds. You can facetank A8 sirus beams with proper builds, and still have good dps. And no, it doesn't require insane items or investment of currency.

The fact that you make 15+ exalts in 4 days at league start probably puts you in the top 0.1% of players in terms of skill/playstyle/currencymaking or what have you. So I am not sure your experience translates to "ordinary" players.

 

[Saark]

The fact that you make 15+ exalts in 4 days at league start probably puts you in the top 0.1% of players in terms of skill/playstyle/currencymaking or what have you. So I am not sure your experience translates to "ordinary" players.

Doesn't mean it's impossible. Just means it might take a more casual player longer to get there. If someone as mentally deficient as Quin69 manages to kill A8 Sirus and Uber Elder with a flickerstrike build on HC, then you can do it too. And if people aren't good enough to make a build that is capable of dealing with some of the most difficult encounters or content in the game, then that's fine by me, because I don't want PoE to be a game where every village idiot can succeed.

 

[Perkel]

You are still talking about specific builds and power treshold not about core values. Why write A4 on that ? I already said i can build anything i want and beat sirius. It has nothing to do with that.

I am talking about how fucking shite melee gameplay is in just ACT2 and you here talk about Sirus builds.
I don't give a flying fuck if Scourge arrow is better than Lighting arrow. In fact i like asymetry. That is not the point.

Here is another good example of problem. There is no reason to use 2-3rd nd skill. Mana doesn't exist as mechanic in POE period.

Another - Monsters don't mean anything, you either die or live and anything in between doesn't matter. All special abilities, monster types and their skill don't matter beacause they kill you and they die in split seconds.

Wheat Harvest simulator has more gameplay than POE right now.

 

[Saark]

I complain about core of game that is shit regardless if you do Act 2 or end game.

I am talking about how fucking shite melee gameplay is in just ACT2 and you here talk about Sirus builds.

Then maybe be more specific? If you talk about how it feels shit all the time, then I talk about how it's actually not shit, and you change the goalposts of what you were talking about, then yeah sure you got a point. Although I'm still unsure what exactly your point is. What makes melee FEEL bad while leveling? It's not like spell builds or bow builds feel great while leveling either. You often have to cast into packs multiple times, DoT builds dont start ramping up in power until act 4-6 either. The entire purpose of the game is to gain power, improve gameplay feel by adding support-gems whenever you gain access to them, and packsize increases as you go through that process. You think any spell feels great when you dont have LMP or GMP yet? Think ED/Contagion feels nice with shitty aoe? That fireball is great as an ignite spell at lv1, when you dont even have proliferation? They're not. They suck. Same as melee.

So what exactly is your point? Cause you completely fail to describe what exactly the issue is, you just keep trying to hammer home the point that melee in particular is bad. Not just bad, but almost unplayable, especially compared to non-melee. But WHY?

Here is another good example of problem. There is no reason to use 2-3rd nd skill. Mana doesn't exist as mechanic in POE period.

This is just factually untrue. I literally just mentioned multiple builds that use multiple skills? Or are you talking about using different spells for the same purpose? Again, a lack of specifics on your end, while just trying to whine about the game feeling shit. And plenty of builds are running enduring manaflasks exactly because mana is an issue. That one mana-flask prefix made a bunch of builds more viable and playable.
One of the biggest limitations on being able to use multiple skills is the fact that most builds can only use 1 6L. Something they explicitly stated they want to change going forward with PoE2 and the new skill system. So clearly they are aware of this particular issue and are going to change it.

Another - Monsters don't mean anything, you either die or live and anything in between doesn't matter.

That's kinda how these games go, yeah. You either die or you don't. Is there some weird game out there where theres a third option, and you get teleported into a spiritrealm where you're in limbo between life and death? Like, what are you even trying to say here?

All special abilities, monster types and their skill don't matter beacause they kill you and they die in split seconds.

That's not true either. Knowing which mobs use which skills matters greatly in order for you to survive. Maybe don't run over the plague zombies you just killed if you're at -40 chaosres. Maybe sidestep the literal barrage of tittybitch projectiles since they cannot change once they started firing. That racecourse boss is starting to cast his reflect aura? I'll stop attacking it. A delve-doggo in your way? Drop a flare because he will EMP your cart. Bunch of magic mobs with Legacy of Vigour or Zeal? That last survivor might one-shot you so better be careful. Bameth beyond demons? Stay away from corpses.

If you actually believe the stuff you write, it's no surprise that you seem to struggle with not dying all the time. Lack of understanding of defensive layers, thinking all mobs are the same. The reality is quite different.

 

[Perkel]

Oh yes tell me about your build that is not totally contagion/bane combo and how it is playing "multiple skills".

You know what for me means playing multiple skills ? Throwing fireball at someone as standard attack and then casting big mana eating spell i can't cast willy nilly on group to slow them down then maybe put firewall between me and them to separate me from them while dealing some damage to slowed down stragglers. Some monsters will try to avoid that some will try to get through.

That is the quintessence of good ARPG. It is the thinking part when you actually play.

In theory POE has all above but in reality it doesn't fucking matter because:
- curses to be effective need to be specialized in
- specialization in POE forces you to only care about one thing
- there are way to much monsters so even if you can pull this off eitherway 70% of other monsters will attack you from othersides.
- monsters are way too fast so your slowdown doesn't even matter outside of few monster types

That strategical level simply doesn't exist anymore in POE. It did in BETA and gradually as game speed up and they doubled trippled amount of monsters per map it slowly removed bit by bit that layer.

In the end today POE is just effectively Serious Sam. You fight horde of monsters and strategy other than going in circles around target doesn't matter.

The most funny thing skill they recenly added was chain hook skill. IF POE would be actually like i said then chain hook skill would make sense. Thanks to it you could fish out some necromancer from pack for melee character but in POE you just leap slam with 0 mana issues all day so that was never the problem. So in the end it is useless skill because it doesn't have any purpose in this game.

 

[Saark]

Oh yes tell me about your build that is not totally contagion/bane combo and how it is playing "multiple skills".

-Selfcast Frostbolt+Icenova
-ED/Contagion/Blight/Soulrend
-Desecrate+Cremation/Detonate Dead
-Vortex/Coldsnap builds
-Ignite Fireball/Firetrap/Flamewall builds that apply both an ignite and a burn for more DPS
-Any build that uses an EE or CoH ability like Orb of storms or brands
-Any build using Wave of Conviction to apply Exposure
-Any build using any of the new self-buff skills like Frostshield
-Any build that carries Frostbomb to counter-act life-regen i.e. against metamorphs
-Any build selfcasting EC, RC, Withering step on demand
-Any poison build using Plaguebearer
-Trap-builds generally use multiple types of traps when theres a cooldown involved
-Slams+Warcries to benefit from Exertion
-Archmage builds that self-buff Arcane Cloak
-Indigon builds that active/deactivate auras or totems to quickly gain max efficiency
-Heist spellbuilds that self-buff Anomalous Berserk
-Darkpact builds that arent using your own lifepool
-any of the new steel builds
-any of the new blade builds
-necro builds that apply EE, offerings and a variety of other thigns like deathmark to enemies

This is what I came up with in 5minutes. Need more? The gameplay has become quite a bit more involved and requires people to use multiple skills for full efficiency, and that's certainly a step in the right direction, away from the one-button-one-screen we had ~2-3 years ago. The new gem-system allowing for multiple 6Ls will certainly add more variety to this as well.

You know what for me means playing multiple skills ? Throwing fireball at someone as standard attack and then casting big mana eating spell i can't cast willy nilly on group to slow them down then maybe put firewall between me and them to separate me from them while dealing some damage to slowed down stragglers. Some monsters will try to avoid that some will try to get through.

Which aRPG or Hack'n'slash has been like that? Cause I don't remember one. What you're talking about sounds fun for sure, and I personally enjoy games like these. But they're much more tactical in nature, and there's plenty of games that not only give you the opportunity to do all of this, which PoE also does, but they require you to set up your spells and abilities in this much more strategic fashion to succeed. PoE is in the wrong genre of games if you're looking for that.

I think ultimately you're just playing the wrong game for what you want. There is a lot of games out there that require this much more tactical approach that you seem to enjoy more, but PoE has never had the desire to be like this. You misremember beta PoE if you think the game played like this. It certainly required less button clicks than current PoE does. There was no movement skills besides Leap Slam, which was only usable with specific builds due to its horrendous cast-speed, no applying of debuffs besides self-casting curses, no auras, no multiple-spell-interactions. If you consider this PoE at its best, then you're one of very few people left who think like that. The only good thing about PoE back then was the fact that monsters didn't die as fast, and that can easily be achieved within the current PoE framework without going back to 3-5mobs per pack and rares that took a minute to kill even with the best of single-target builds. Casting Freezing Pulse on a rare for 30second until it finally keeled over wasn't fun.

Maybe PoE just isn't for you, and you're better off playing tactical RPGs instead of action RPGs.

 

[Gerrard]

Every build looks for ways to automate casting anything that isn't the main skill exactly because the game is not made for that kind of play.
Adding three fucking buttons you have to press every 3 seconds on top of the 4 flasks feels absolute shit.
Just a reminder that the Chinese client has a built in flask macro.
GGG is delusional.

 

[Tacgnol]

Just a reminder that the Chinese client has a built in flask macro.

Auto currency pick up, planning features in the passive tree, in game trade search without having to visit hideouts, intro/explanation videos for all the ascendancies and probably a whole bunch of stuff I've forgot to mention.

 

[Saark]

Every build looks for ways to automate casting anything that isn't the main skill exactly because the game is not made for that kind of play.
Adding three fucking buttons you have to press every 3 seconds on top of the 4 flasks feels absolute shit.

Just because you don't like pressing more than 1 button, doesn't mean that there hasn't been a push recently that introduced a lot of extra temporary buffs and debuffs that can significantly improve defenses or offenses. You don't have to press these buttons all the time, but when the situation asks for them, you have more tools at your disposal to deal with enemies in a more efficient manner. That's kinda how the game is supposed to be, which is why we've seen massive increases to rare and unique boss health, to widen the gap between clearing skills and single-target skills, and pushing the game back towards using more than just 1 button.

You can argue that you don't like it, or that maybe it feels bad because you're so used to zoom-zoom meta that you don't enjoy, while having to use multiple abilities again. But you cannot argue that the recent leagues haven't introduced many new abilities that act as supplementary support skills for yourself or your party, that the game isn't "made for that kind of play". Either you don't need these abilities cause you're breezing through the game already and then the zoom-zoom meta annoys you with all these abilities just being wasteful and not time efficient. Or you actually cast them occasionally, at which point you actually need them, and that means the zoom-zoom meta that people complain about has been reigned in at least partially. You can't complain about both, because they're mutually exclusive.

Personally I like being able to clear maps largely by just using my main-ability, and then setting up my boss-dps by using a few supplementary skills to double or triple my boss DPS to kill it faster. Using a clearing 4L or 6L setup to deal with the first 3-5 tiers of a delirious map, and switching to a slower but higher DPS one once you get to the end of the map and things become much harder to kill. Feels much more engaging than one-button-one-screen Legion or Breach gameplay.

Auto currency pick up, planning features in the passive tree, in game trade search without having to visit hideouts, intro/explanation videos for all the ascendancies and probably a whole bunch of stuff I've forgot to mention.

Some of these are nice QoL changes that save you from tabbing out of the game as much, and I think those should definitely make it into the main-client. A lot of the features however are bad for the economy, auto-pickup in particular hurts more casual players since it essentially made chromatics and alterations worthless. Casual players oftentimes rely on these lower-value currencies to trade to wealthy players who no longer pick up these currencies.
"Needing" Flask Macros is awful and while I personally don't really mind having to press 5 flasks every 5.4 seconds, I'd like flasks to be more situational and not something you maintain permanently. I think they talked about this a few times as a design goal for PoE2.

A lot of the changes to the game in china widen the gap between top-end players and casuals, something that casuals are already complaining about a lot while also asking for these "QoL" changes. Not everything that makes your life or the game easier is Quality of life, oftentimes it's just dumbing down the game. Something people on the codex seemed to heavily dislike at some point. In-game PoB, ascendancy tutorials and build-guide functions would be something that makes the game more accessible to newer players, without actually impacting the way the game is being played. Flask macros, auto-pickup of loot, being able to resurrect from death etc. are things that can go fuck itself, and are just bandaid fixes to bigger underlying problems that I would like to see addressed properly instead.

 

[Tacgnol]

Looks like next league might get delayed cos of the Cyberpunk delay.

Apparently GGG don't want to release any new league around the release date. Just a "news on this soon" right now.

Chris took it well:

 

[Saark]

I'd be less afraid of Vaporwarepunk than a potential early to mid-december Shadowlands release. There's a massive overlap there in terms of what players play both kind of games, and WoW generally takes priority especially at the beginning of a new raid-tier or new expansion. Cyberpunk is a single-player game that you can put off playing for a while when a new league comes without actually missing anything, and I also believe there to be less overlap in terms of potential player-base. Maybe he's just upset cause it means he cannot play it on release since he is busy heading up the release of the new league.

 

[Tacgnol]

I'd be less afraid of Vaporwarepunk than a potential early to mid-december Shadowlands release. There's a massive overlap there in terms of what players play both kind of games, and WoW generally takes priority especially at the beginning of a new raid-tier or new expansion. Cyberpunk is a single-player game that you can put off playing for a while when a new league comes without actually missing anything, and I also believe there to be less overlap in terms of potential player-base. Maybe he's just upset cause it means he cannot play it on release since he is busy heading up the release of the new league.

Apparently they'd given a pledge not to overlap release dates with 2077. Whether they stick to that (and how serious the pledge was), I've no idea.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Lone Wolf]

I got into this pretty hard between June-September, but, wow, when the boredom hit, it hit like a truck. I've got a lawnmower build that can deal with anything in the game - why play anything else, ever? There's no item hunt, there's just currency stacking (and then starting again with some league-specific gimmick every three months, if you can be fucked). Almost every build devolves to running around and - every once in a while - right clicking.

In Grim Dawn, there's at least a 'win' condition, where you pretty much have accomplished everything and gotten every meaningful item. The game doesn't pretend it's meant to be 'played forever'. And the itemization is at least interesting.

PoE uniques are either build-enabling, or utter shit, and there doesn't seem to be anything in between, by design. The correct answer is always rares. Stack res, stack life. If in doubt, stack some more. There are tons of builds where it's res + life in every gear slot except the build-defining unique. GD forces you to juggle a large number of resistances, so maxing them all out is doable, but only with lots of layered itemization. Meaning, you've got the base items, then the components, the augments and the skill actives/passives/on-hit effects/constellations to fill the gaps. You can also situationally use potions that are a finite resource (not refilled, but used up) to raise resistance for a time. Usually, you achieve max resists on Ultimate by end-game, if you're lucky.

In PoE, maxing res is something good players do by the end of Act 2, and it stays maxed for the rest of their time with the character. Your character is either virtually invulnerable, or one-shot, and it's usually the latter without max res. In GD, you do get one-shot at times, but normally what happens is that you have a few moments to react before fail-state, which makes it feel less inherently unfair.

I do like PoE a lot. It's slick, there's a feeling of progression, you get to chat shit while you're playing and the biggest obstacles are quite satisfying to overcome. However, GD is definitely my game of choice in ARPGs, still.

 

[Jaedar]

I'd be less afraid of Vaporwarepunk than a potential early to mid-december Shadowlands release. There's a massive overlap there in terms of what players play both kind of games, and WoW generally takes priority especially at the beginning of a new raid-tier or new expansion. Cyberpunk is a single-player game that you can put off playing for a while when a new league comes without actually missing anything, and I also believe there to be less overlap in terms of potential player-base. Maybe he's just upset cause it means he cannot play it on release since he is busy heading up the release of the new league.

Just because you can doesn't mean you will. A lot of players will likely be more hyped for cyberpunk than winter poe league and play it instead. Meanwhile I didn't even know shadowlands was a thing. Cyberpunk is going to be YUGE and any game that releases in close proximity will have a bad time.

 

[Tacgnol]

I'd be less afraid of Vaporwarepunk than a potential early to mid-december Shadowlands release. There's a massive overlap there in terms of what players play both kind of games, and WoW generally takes priority especially at the beginning of a new raid-tier or new expansion. Cyberpunk is a single-player game that you can put off playing for a while when a new league comes without actually missing anything, and I also believe there to be less overlap in terms of potential player-base. Maybe he's just upset cause it means he cannot play it on release since he is busy heading up the release of the new league.

Just because you can doesn't mean you will. A lot of players will likely be more hyped for cyberpunk than winter poe league and play it instead. Meanwhile I didn't even know shadowlands was a thing. Cyberpunk is going to be YUGE and any game that releases in close proximity will have a bad time.

Yep. I doubt Blizz are going to be happy about a near release either.

 

[Gerrard]

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/jjwgjr/313_launch_delayed_until_january/

 

[tritosine2k]

Every build looks for ways to automate casting anything that isn't the main skill exactly because the game is not made for that kind of play.
Adding three fucking buttons you have to press every 3 seconds on top of the 4 flasks feels absolute shit.
Just a reminder that the Chinese client has a built in flask macro.
GGG is delusional.

WOW.

They lost me at the 5 layer of defenses required for a non-minion build, when you spend more time googling and trading then theres zero backtracking from uninformed decisions, that's just ,

proves they overarched years ago and went ahead anyway ? Not that the endgame worths any of that extra time , seemingly.

 

[Gerrard]

 

[tritosine2k]

I actually enjoy the Sirus fight, but only after having done it a lot and more or less memorized the whole thing

Path of Souls-tard?

(from reddit)

I think their tile based maps and prefabs are obsolete and the Heist affair highlights how Labyrinth stuff is unimproved, should be most worthwhile content however. Now there's such a dire need to revamp and PoE2 won't even touch endgame afaik?

 

[Saark]

Every december league touches endgame.

 

[Baron Dupek]

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2986656

The Stash Tab Affinity system allows you to designate a stash tab to store selected specialised item types in. Ctrl+clicking an applicable item from your inventory into your stash will always send it directly to the stash tab with an affinity set for that item, regardless of which stash tab you currently have open.

About time I guess?

 

[Tacgnol]

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2986656

The Stash Tab Affinity system allows you to designate a stash tab to store selected specialised item types in. Ctrl+clicking an applicable item from your inventory into your stash will always send it directly to the stash tab with an affinity set for that item, regardless of which stash tab you currently have open.

About time I guess?

Better late than never I guess. Pretty major QOL feature.

 

[Jaedar]

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2986656

The Stash Tab Affinity system allows you to designate a stash tab to store selected specialised item types in. Ctrl+clicking an applicable item from your inventory into your stash will always send it directly to the stash tab with an affinity set for that item, regardless of which stash tab you currently have open.

About time I guess?

Better late than never I guess. Pretty major QOL feature.

It is a pretty huge QoL, even if it is still lacking some usability. The fact that it uses up a lot of tab space is quite annoying.

I also found a mirror (obligatory lottery screenshot)

Kind of a useless item in SSF though. I guess if I ever decide to play standard I'll be able to make whatever builds I want for a while.

 

[Tacgnol]

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2986656

The Stash Tab Affinity system allows you to designate a stash tab to store selected specialised item types in. Ctrl+clicking an applicable item from your inventory into your stash will always send it directly to the stash tab with an affinity set for that item, regardless of which stash tab you currently have open.

About time I guess?

Better late than never I guess. Pretty major QOL feature.

It is a pretty huge QoL, even if it is still lacking some usability. The fact that it uses up a lot of tab space is quite annoying.

I also found a mirror (obligatory lottery screenshot)

Kind of a useless item in SSF though. I guess if I ever decide to play standard I'll be able to make whatever builds I want for a while.

Never had a mirror. Most singularly valuable item I've ever had drop was a 1 point voices cluster jewel in Harvest.

Funnily enough that was right towards the end of the league when I'd already finished everything.

I always seem to get the most valuable drops right when I'm finishing up a league.