My feedback after a year of playing PoE

Well when i joined, the endgame was MoC, mindless grinding ledge and rocky climb which i have to say i did enjoy quite a lot, i wouldn't say bring back Maelstrom of Chaos as it was back then because of course after a while it will get boring and since it is not a currency sink everyone will be swimming in orbs and that way players will lose interest in the game quite quickly.

What i and others on the forums, like Xendran, suggested is to keep maps but make it so everyone can play any map, dont make maps drop in random places and dont make people quit the game because they run out of maps and higher level maps dont drop, make them a free to have any time you want in the laboratory, choose which level map you want to do and do it, BUT also make them a currency sink: you can not do a map unless it is altered or alched,you can then proceed to chaos/regal etc it, that way people will still waste their currency trying to get the most desirable and maybe easy mods they can so they get more experience and loot. This is a change that everyone will enjoy and it would make leveling and playing the game MUCH more fun and anger free.

It would also make testing the game much more easier, maybe i want to test lets say ice nova on a level 77 mob, i alch a 77 map in the lab i go test it, ill probably die if im underleveled but i can do it freely as i please, i am sure there are still people over level 80 who have not been in a 77 map, so why not let us do it?

This a an issue that has only came since Open Beta, now i have posted why melee is weaker than ranged a few times but i guess i will include it here too.

The factor that makes melee seem under powered compared to casters and archers is monster damage and the low damage reduction that melee builds have, A melee character has to attack mobs from a short distance, at a short distance monsters can hit you easily and when monsters hit they do too much damage that can not be mitigated effectively by resistances or by armor/endurance charges.

This is a problem that is very hard to solve, you could add a keystone that says: "Global damage reduction X%, cannot do damage with spells or ranged attacks" but this would then be a mandatory node then and we dont want that, because every melee build will revolve around getting this keystone.

So how about making small damage reduction nodes all over the tree that ONLY apply to melee, that way people can choose how much damage reduction they want and they dont have to go a route they dont want too take just so they can survive, they just take them as they please, if they dont take enough they die, if they take too many they wont have enough nodes for damage or life.

For example, for armor nodes melee characters get x% DR, for evasion x% chance to dodge or evade, if dodge turns out to be OP, for ES flat ES maybe, and all of these can only apply to melee, you cant benefit from the bonus the nodes offer (DR/Dodge/ES) if you cast spells or use ranged attacks.

Another way to solve this problem would be to add nodes like: "Increased damage with maces, small amount of DR" that way elemental builds profit from this too, and with daggers as we know they are used by spellcasters too but make them offer a small bonus to damage reduction or ES that will deter casters to get them because they would not be optimal for their build, and they would favor the bigger ES nodes, and of course the same"increased damage" so it applies to both elemental and physical melee attacks.

This way you can keep the monster damage as it is and melee will have the same or even better survivability than ranged and casters

These are skills that i have tested, leveled and used and i didnt not find them very good, this is my opinion on them and my suggestions on how to make them better and more fun:

Shock nova is first, this skill is a very good damage dealer, you can reach over 5k lightning damage on it with not much effort, but the problem with it as everyone knows is the dead zone, even with concentrated effect there is still a dead zone, aiming with it is basically RNG you have to somehow assume at what speed the mobs are moving and cast it right on time as they pass through the small area in which it does damage.Currently its only use is to apply shock stacks to enemies if the gem has quality, surely this should just be a bonus to the skill not the main use of it.

A way to buff shock nova would be to make the skill come out of the character like a blast of lightning, increased area of effect nodes will increase the range it travels outwards from the caster, you will also have to add a damage effectiveness to it because it would be overpowered with the damage it deals, so lower damage by a bit, like 70-80% damage effectiveness but in turn make it act like a proper AoE spell.




Arc is another spell that is just too weak, mostly because it cannot be supported by LMP,GMP or fork the skill does good damage by itself but it just can not be used to clear areas at a decent speed, it chains by itself so it can be assumed that it was intended for it to be used as a area spell to clear packs of mobs, unfortunately it is just too slow to do this without being supported by LMP,GMP or fork.

If you enable the LMP/GMP/FORK supports to affect this skill it will become a good spell and it will be fun to use.. without it, its just too hard to be used for clearing mobs, its only usefulness now is to shock mobs for you on a spell totem.. which isnt much.


As you can see, these lightning spells can be very good if they get these buffs and then people wont use just spark as a lightning spell, it will enable a lot of builds and bring diversity to the game.



Another skill i would like to see made more interesting is shield charge, currently its just used for running away from mobs, hitting single mobs to stun them and PvP, but it would be much more fun and interesting if you would allow it to be supported by Melee Splash, that way some interesting builds around it are bound to surface.




Mines, small buff here, remote mine and freeze mine in pvp should be indestructible, they take a long time to lay and they can just be destroyed with groundlsam or other skills thus making them pretty redundant in this regard, in PvE on the other hand they can be pretty fun to use and you can make some nice combos so no problems there at all.





Chance to flee Support gem, because unqiues and rares are imune to it and magic mobs are 50% resistant to it.. it basically makes it a completely uselss support gem, if you just remove this penalty people can make a build around it, puncture of course.

Some of the bandit rewards are bit off, i dont think anyone has chosen the flat mana from Alira in normal difficulty, i would suggest to make this reward a increased X% mana reward, then more people will opt for it, same with Kraytin 8% all resistances seems too low, very few people take this reward as well i think me and many others would like to see it buffed a bit so its more attractive.

Now onto the re-choosing of rewards, i strongly feel that this needs to be implemented, many new people choose their rewards by accident or without being sure about it, the other problem is that we can respec our full tree with regret orbs and change our characters from ranged to melee or melee to caster whenever we like, but then if we chose the life from oak for a melee build, we get bored of it and lets say we respec into a CI build, then we need to be able to spec out of our earlier reward choice.

In my opinion if we are given the liberty to change our build whenever we want we should also be able to remake the bandit reward choice, i think the majority of the community agrees with me on this and we would all be very grateful if we had this option, like Moosifer suggested you can add a ingame currency for it, that is a bit more rare but still obtainable by the normal player.

I know this topic has been addressed in a lot of threads but i might as well post about it too, i really feel like this should not have been implemented, this change is very punishing to most builds, everyone needs to look for chaos resistance mods on gear, it is now mandatory for any life build and i dont think this is the intention you had, it makes bloodrage as a skill very underused because most people will not get so much chaos resistance to be able to use it, and most of all it pushes everyone into getting it, which is not an easy task for most people and people who cant afford to at least get more than 0% chaos resistance will be punished basically by any chaos damage dealing mob.

It also makes going CI less attractive which i think is the opposite of what should have happened, i assume you introduced this resistance so people will still find CI usable as a keystone after the nerf, but now people would much rather use life and try to maximize their chaos resistance thus being able to withstand any amount of chaos damage with no big problems.

My suggestion would be to just remove it altogether, chaos resistance set at 0% for everyone and make chaos resistance on gear have no effect on it, make the mods inactive somehow so they dont become legacy items.This way people wont need to be pushed to get this type of resistance and they have a good reason to spec to CI since it will be the only way of avoiding this damage.

This has been a big issue for low life builds for a long time, we can barely see mobs off screen especially in dungeon maps it is quite dangerous since ranged mobs and leap slammers can sneak up on you.

You added the light radius % mod.. but that mod is only useful for people who already have a good light radius.. low life builds have a very low amount of light radius so increasing it by a % amount doesnt do anything! I really think you should make the mod give us a flat value of light radius, that way low life builds can actually benefit from it, please help the lowlifes!

The thing i would really prefer though is to just add this to the Pain Attunment keystone, i dont see why people that want to go low life have to to search for a mod to be viable, i mean we already need to search for certain types of gear anyway..

Going to point out the things i think should be looked at, minor things mostly :
-Shadow area badly needs some mana nodes early, the progression is quite hard because of this, especially for a caster shadow that also requires mana regeneration, a deep thoughts node would help a lot here.

-Ranger and Witch core area is very lacking in resists, the ranger is designed to be more squishy since it is a ranged char but midgame when you need to start getting resists is very hard, because there are few and not very substantial, the closest nodes are a diamond skin and some of the 6% all res nodes which go to some 15% ones, it would be very nice to have some early resists here like the other classes have, maybe a hybrid node for ranger 10%evasion+10% all res and another one for the witch that gives some es and resistance as well.

-The 3 8% mana recovery from flasks node need to be buffed in my opinion to add a more useful amount of mana, currently i dont know anyone who took those nodes, they seem very weak and not very useful at all.

-Purity of Essence node at the Marauder start, is a very good node in PvP but it is rarely taken because of the nodes that precede it, the only useful node from there is the 1% life leech, it would be very nice if this node was more accessible.