Act 4 Normal Sucks and Is Way Too Hard

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SometimesBoobsAreGay wrote:

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I have played for a couple thousand hours, and I can't even get through Piety in a4 let alone the rest of the bosses.

Wow ... really? Slow learner. Or stubborn, perhaps?

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I have almost 2k in normal freaking difficulty got through dominus and a3 easily and now I am completely stuck. If the a4 trio was overtuned how is this not? And if I can't get through any of this with all my experience, how on earth is a new player going to pick it up and say "whoa act 4 is so much fun i want to get to cruel difficulty now"? I can't even buy a carry through the rest of it, because everyone else in my guild thinks that it wouldn't be possible, even though they are level 55+. Please at least lower the bosses hp or something, I can't even get rid of Piety's ES before she does her beam again, and I was completely fine damagewise until this point. Again I have 2000 hp, which is more that 1 of my endgame map characters has, and I can't get through normal.

New players get passed normal. They either leech in parties (which is an OK thing to do, people's been doing so 4ever) or they play cheesier builds.

That's my first replay ever about difficulty.. could not hold this..
i thought that dominus was hard, i died just a few times in all normal difficulty but over 100 times in malachi battle and more 200 times before i reached him..

and it's just damn normal, i was geared well (to lvl 40), had 1490 hp and been 1 shotted almost from every act 4 boss..

what gonna be on cruel or merc? i will die just from seeing them or what?

pretty much the post title. act 4 is too linear and unrewarding (2 quest rewards, NOTHING for the last 2 quest - not acceptable compared to how stupidly hard they are!). the story is basically a huge plothole, I have no clue why all those people that should be long dead are alive again, AND why I have to fight them. there's not even a message after defeating the end boss, you just go straight to twilight strand WTF!? gg

in my opinion act 4 should have at LEAST 2 more side areas and quests related to them

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Kreaper_669 wrote:

people qq'ed about dominus when he was released.

dominus is the act 4 prototype. way too many hp and too long, feels completely unrewarding. hate his guts

This boss fight is courtesy from the same guy that turned reduced mana into level 4 enhance.

A4 Malachai and Piety are too tough, at least on Normal and Cruel.

The main problem is that being as hard as they are, they're basically a hard stop for a lot of new players.

I think the difficulties in the game should be as this:
Normal: A difficulty where a new player will die plenty, but where he'll have no big difficulty in progressing to Cruel once he's done a few characters.
Cruel: A new player should still die quite often, but if he follows a guide for character development, or has learned to skill his characters well himself, he should be able to go through to Merciless.
Merciless: Let 'er rip! Current difficulty is fine, also for A4.

It follows from this that Normal and Cruel should be quite easy for experienced players who have a stash of good equipment.

I feel that GGG has not really thought of new player retention with A4N and A4C, but based their balancing on the very experienced players participating in the Beta. This is not very forward-looking.

The main purpose of the first two difficulties should be to guide new players to end-game... Not prevent them from getting there...

I ripped from Tempest league to A1N Piety. got caught between the three giant orbs and the laser. fine. no big deal I will position better next time.

Got to malachai 1st phase: the fight was fine, a little bit laggy and hectic, but doable.

malachai 2nd phase. At this point I can only laugh. Actually I did laugh while playing because I didn't know what else I could do. The arena is tiny, the game became super laggy and framerate greatly suffers. I died a couple times to desync as well when the server rubberbanded me right back to the center of Malachai's slam and we all know how that goes. After I downed the 3rd heart, I actually felt very trapped. There were s*** everywhere, I couldn't tell which is which because they were all slightly different shades of blood/red. At one point half of the stage was covered in Malachai's blood pool from the projectiles and the other half was occupied by Malachai, the big red circle of flame, and his red orb things that explode into 3 projectiles. I felt completely hopeless and useless because everywhere I go I take damage, moving or standing still. I thought Kaom was chaotic, but this was on some other level of s***.

Sure, Dominus was hard when I fought him for the first time. But after I died I always learned about something I can do better next time. Don't try to tank the spiders, don't stand on shock ground, run away from touch of god, don't let minions explode on you, take cover,...etc. Every time I die I learned a bit more about the mechanics of the fight, which eventually made the fight manageable. But Malachai on the other hand was just a complete clusterfuck. After I died, I just thought "welp there was little I could've done differently, there was literally no where for me to go." After playing through act3 and most of act4 it is obviously that "not standing still" and "don't stand on shit that's not just the ground" are vital to not dying. you learn nothing new from Malachai, only that perhaps you should spend the next 5 hrs overleveling just to be able to progress to the next difficulty, and then be very bored because, well, you overlevelled.

Well sadly as a summoner Malachai got barely playable... I didn't die that often personally... but my zombies did and after about 5 to 10 minutes the lag from all the dead zombies was basically unbearable.

All the stuff that was already going on + all the dead zombies (literally there was not a single location were you could see the actual floor-texture) made the fight incredible laggy.

I'm done with HC until second part of act 4 have some more balance into it, am very disapointed (not to mention temepest itself is nothing amazing ) just gonna play warband, maybe just need to get some skills or whatever.. though as of now am not sure If I wanna play at all, I don't remember being this much frustrated with PoE for so long... Oh well.

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Olej wrote:

I'm done with HC until second part of act 4 have some more balance into it, am very disapointed (not to mention temepest itself is nothing amazing ) just gonna play warband

Couldn't have said it better myself.