Act 4 Normal Sucks and Is Way Too Hard

I had a long post in a separate thread, but to reiterate...

Post-nerfs, first character, solo, self-found, SC, split arrow ranger...

1. In general, Act 4 requires a bit more grinding/leveling than before, but that's OK.
2. Daresso's Dream mini-pit cages are bullshit because not having room to move is no fun at all. And dying on Barkhul's cage forces you to respawn IN THE MIDDLE of the mob. LOLWTF, spawn me in front of the door, please.
3. Triskeriaki is so ridiculously fast and overwhelming that if your method of damage requires you to stand still, the bastard's not worth fighting. Melts me in seconds. However, he's entirely skippable and optional, so it might actually be nice to have him as an extra challenge... though I still haven't figured out a good way to approach him.
4. If you're having shitty lagspikes like I do, entering the final part of the Grand Arena might immediately kill you because the cycloner immediately attacks you upon entry. Moving him out of the way would be nice.
5. I liked pretty much everything else. There are some extra things I could praise/criticize, but they're small and the overall reaction is "I like it".
6. The Grand Arena, due to a huge amount of monsters in a small place, is the best leveling area in the whole damn act.

Is it a difficulty spike? Yes. Did I die more than usual? Yes. Did I like it? Yes.

I think, however, that a first-time HC player would have to be insanely cautious on act 4 in any difficulty and play very, very carefully.

Also, I'd like more optional quests. Having only one feels... strange.

From act 3 to act 4 is a lot larger of a spike in difficulty than act 1-2/2-3 .... almost enough to be like going from act 3 to an act 5.

Just went through normal act 4 again this morning... this time as a melee character.... Barkhul is the second hardest thing in the act for me with Malachai's room of endless lag is the hardest.... but i feel Malachai is only harder because of the lag. If you die once to Barkhul you are almost guaranteed to die 3-5 more times with what seems like 30+ mobs all hitting you as soon as you enter, if it wasn't for the mob's he would be cakewalk though. Anywho, this melee character had over 100 life regen with around 2k life so I was able to facetank piety and Daresso without dieing... Kaom killed me once Barkhul and his many mobs 3-4 times and Malachai 2-3 times. Think dps was around 240 ish using lighting strike (had not picked up many melee nodes... invested mostly into life/life regen by that point)

When I went through with my summoner I had to have help with half of act 4... minions would just instant die to things like Piety's death ray.

Duel flame totem build made it through all but Barkhul (died until totems thinned the mobs out enough) and Malachai (1-3 fps is almost a guaranteed death) with ease.

CoC bow character needed help but that was my gears fault and think it would have been only a little harder than Duel flame totems if I had spent more time gearing up and using something other than quill rain lol.... worked great in a group though.

Hopefully beyond mobs are only going to be for this league.... every time they appear I have to either run or die with my melee build while everything else cant touch him (besides act 4).

"

RutRoh wrote:

And it doesn't get any better in Merciless. I find myself just running past some of the ridiculously overpowered monsters on a map. I just encountered this one monster, and every time I get it down by even 1/4 of it's life bar (ie; it still had 3/4 of its life) I goes underground and heals back to 100%. That was a freaking rare monster!! I'm hitting it with a 3797DPS Fireball and 706DPS Firestorm, I finally had to just run past the SOB!!!

There are lvl90+ characters getting butt-raped by lvl 70's maps. That's not challenging!! It's punishing!!!

Here's a video of the difference between challenging and punishing. Maybe if it gets posted enough GGG will have an epiphany!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs

"As a designer, you are NOT trying to defeat your player, you want them to OVERCOME the challenges you are setting before them"

What ggg does instead?

ONE SHOTS

ONE SHOTS FROM OFFSCREEN

CRAPPY LOOT

UNDERPOWERED DEFENSES

"

Mystereye wrote:

When I went through with my summoner I had to have help with half of act 4... minions would just instant die to things like Piety's death ray.

Interesting.

I have still known act 4 when it was a little overtuned. Now with the flashback leagues it was the ideal opportunity to experience act 4 again. It is much, much easier now. I have been using zombies as well. None of them died in the fight against normal act 4 piety. But then again I was using this:



And the +2 minion mod is not to be taken lightly.

The fights are in a good position now. At least for normal difficulty.

"

sidtherat wrote:

wait till you get to merciless

it is ofc doable as most of the BS moments are scripted and with lockstep stuff is WAY easier than with desync (however.. i wonder how guys with 100+ ping can manage stuff like Maligaro fight.. or transformed Piety)

but i just wonder.. how are non-SRS summoners going to kill lazor-Piety? Evangelists are mandatory again or what? VS Maligaro degen even Evangelists cant help.

I just wonder what was the goal of overtuning the damage so much?

Given that the rewards for killing Malachai are nill (the only important act4merc rewards are rare jewel and 1 passive) we are back to 1.3 when people did not bother with Domino after killing Piety for points and just ignored non-map content

new map bosses are crazy as they are but.. not as crazy as Malachai and co.

and they do drop stuff

The goal was very probably to please the cry baby masochistic supporters with 500 stash tabs of mirrored gear and thousand dollars spent in supporter packs. In one word... to please the 2% of the playerbase (the only player base ggg cares of)

"

kolyaboo wrote:

I can see that some of you that found it hard have never played Titan Quest. That end boss, now THAT was hard!

Some of the stuff I have read in this thread, is frankly, unbelievable. Someone took a high level character to normal and died to Malachai? NO WAY

Typhon or Hades? In both cases, chance to avoid projectiles helped a lot

"

melodia1 wrote:

The game, with all its technical flaws, is designed so you'll eventually die somewhere. I don't get what's the purpose of playing in a HC league at all in this game. In Diablo you play HC because at least it's dependent on your skill/luck, you die because you did something wrong. In this game? Lol good luck surviving with all the stupid ping spikes, freezing and absence of any balance whatsoever. Summon a minion? Freeze for 1 sec. Open a strongbox? Freeze for 3 sec. Fighting a boss? FPS cut in half. Earlier my character just died in merciless arena because one of the bosses summoned about 20 skeletons right on top of my character, and my game froze for 4 seconds straight. If this was HC, then I have to start over because of the incompetency of programmers to optimize loading? Lol yeah right. I have a high-range spec laptop and can play Skyrim on max settings, yet a 2.5D game like PoE lags me to no end. My friend has a top-tier desktop computer with first tier GPU and CPU, and she suffers random freezes too.

Same here, buddy!!!! Is that mini boss in that arena FIXED (=he is ALWAYS there)? YES

So why the fu.k ggg doesn't load him BEFORE the fight? PURE INCOMPETENCE!!!!!

My pc can SMOOTHLY run MONSTERS of heaviness like Metro 2033, but has problems with poe!!!!

dont worry, act 4 will be nerfed to shit when act 5 is released

"

Wispo wrote:

The goal was very probably to please the cry baby masochistic supporters with 500 stash tabs of mirrored gear and thousand dollars spent in supporter packs. In one word... to please the 2% of the playerbase (the only player base ggg cares of)

The ladder elites do get the lions share of the special treatment by Chris. He was probably instrumental in getting the map and xp changes recently that made the grind to a level 100 build even more exponentially harder than before, all on account of a handful of elite players that can play fanatically non-stop from the start of a league all the way to 100 in a month or two. Chris and company is dead set against level 100 builds as they have the perverted and wrong assumption that if we get a build to level 100 that we will say "game over" and quit.

I fail to see why GGG thinks that a level 100 build equals quitting PoE. I see it completely the other way. If I could get to level 100 in a reasonable amount of time and that is 3 (hrs/day) x 7 x 26 (6 months) = 546 hours. So in about 546 hours we should be able to get a build to level 100, retire it, and move on to another class and work it to level 100 and not quit. Oh right, the no-lifers time-unlimited elite players (aka top of the ladder) will play 18 hours a day to get 546 hours in 30.33 days. This is a totally reasonable expectation of the time grind to reach level 100. Anyone saying that 1000 or 2000 hours is necessary is either time unlimited and/or a masochist player. The rest of us should not be punished and pushed out by their extreme time grind desires. Nor should GGG push PoE to that extreme time grind requirements to reach level 100 just to satisfy a few.

"

Arrowneous wrote:

So in about 546 hours we should be able to get a build to level 100, retire it, and move on to another class and work it to level 100 and not quit.

I don't get why you would assume that at all. Why is leveling to 100 supposed to be an attainable goal for most players, anyway??

My other biggest ARPG time sink has been Diablo 2, where it was functionally impossible to get to 100.

The devs logic is that making 100 should be exceptionally hard, so that it's still impressive when someone makes it there. This is not being met currently because of the super-serious players out there, but the solution isn't to make 100 more accessible... It's to make it less accessible!

(Particularly I'd like to see a bigger, indirect nerf to party play, as sharing maps seems to be a big part of how players get high leveled so quickly, but thats another thread entirely)

I usually count my builds "done" about 85 because that's where I typically stop playing them.