Act 4 Normal Sucks and Is Way Too Hard

There is even more difficulty to Malachai there are random crashes and fps drops that I mentioned in another topic of myself. This can just kill you instantly making hardcore even more of a put off.

The second part of A4 is somewhat balanced, Kaom and Daresso are hectic but you can just get 75% fire resistance for Kaom and 75% cold for Daresso and they both are very manageable, only difficulty might be the 50-60 or so skulls Kaom summons when he gets to 1/3 health. I thought Kaom was a very good fight and rewarding. Daresso was very unpredictable but had a pattern to it as well. Both are polished and good. I haven't done them as ranged though. Daresso might be very difficult for ranged builds as well as Kaom his skulls (as melee you could ice crash them and it was manageable).

The trio of Maligaro, Doedre and Shavronne was fairly balanced. Though I´m not sure how people would kill Shavronne without using cyclone or flame totem (I used cyclone). I do have a slight complaint about Doedre though that her balls are very random and if you're unlucky as melee you can just get randomly killed by that if you're not cycloning around her.

The real unbalance is Piety of Act 4 and Malachai both his phases, I believe phase 1 Malachai is balanced well though if you take away the sudden crashes and frame rate drops that kills your pc and causes your screen to go into saving mode. Piety act 4 doesn't need that energy shield she has or she has to beam much less frequently. The beam itself is very unforgiving dealing large amounts of damage and you can easily get trapped and killed. There are also quite a lot of adds coming up that you need to kill before they overwhelm you. It is a very hectic fight and without quicksilver a very hard one. I think her auto attack and beam damage combination is a bit much.

Malachai his fps drops and screen filled with stuff makes some deaths almost unavoidable. I hope this fight gets reworked because this is more off putting than the sudden difficulty peak that Dominus had to newer players.

I'm not saying that normal mode should be super easy, it always had sticky situation to newer players (even those who are used to ARPGs) but it shouldn't be this difficult either. The issue also doesn't get better that you absolutely have to do Malachai to progress to cruel. It is quite strange that if you were to take a level 40 character into act 2 cruel it would be easier to do than the second part of Act 4 on normal difficulty. The difficulty fall between A4 normal and A1 cruel is enormous.

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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, 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.

Tempest is just whack. If you get that regenerative stuff on a boss in act 4 you can't kill them. Also some uniques are very hard to kill if they suddenly regen back from 20% to 100%. And then you have some impossible tempests that greatly increase damage randomly of mobs like Enlarge. That is definitely not something you want when you're doing a boss because their regular attacks become suddenly one shots.

It is quite a shame though that the balancing team did such a horrible job, since the content itself is amazing. The arenas you go into in Daresso's dream are the peak of this expansion imo very well done and very beautiful. Daresso's story felt great and gritty. It still doesn't answer why they were even there in the first place, what where they doing in those 2 areas and why are they still alive after 300 years or so?

Anyhow the overall design, look and feel was great of this expansion. Mines stood out to me as well with the sound effects they added along with the overall cramped feel of it felt very good.

This is my first time going through act 4. It is a bit short but I really like the lore and theme that is going on in the new areas.

Everything was going fine until I hit the 'Belly of the Beast' area. A few bosses feel way overtuned (especially Piety and Malachai). Keep in mind that you enter the area with an unfinished low-speed build wearing shitty gear. It is normal after all and you are in a new league. So the difficulty has to be balanced around these parameters. It just felt frustratingly difficult. I love myself a good fight but getting one-hitted all the time, isn't much fun.

You don't do enough damage, the bosses have tons of hp and there is so much going on the screen, I feel a bit clueless how a first time player can get through that.

Act 3 Dominus felt hard the first time as well but no where did I experience the same frustration as with these mutated act 4 bosses. Not even the corrupted area bosses and the last crazy hc month league were that hard.

It also totally breaks the smooth progression curve going from normal to cruel.

I'm sure GGG will nerf the ACT 4 damage and final boss, especially if they notice they are losing lots of players because of it.....i'm not up to act 4 yet, but I've already hear many of them commenting in chat that they are moving on to another game because of the imbalance. Challenging can be fun, but if it gets ridiculously challenging, the fun part goes away and people move on to another game...

I think GGG nerfing the Final Boss fight and some of the damage has to happen, if they want to save their game......This has the ability to chase people away very very quickly.

died 2 time on marachai and act4 piety.
this time made lvl 41 character as melee + fortyfy, 1,4k life, 1k armour 1,5k eva. then died witihin 2 seconds on piety. please let me say "who the hell are balancing on this?"
i like HC challenge league. there also was broken balances. invasion, beyond, flozen of sky... but this time completely different for me. because you did closed beta even selling the beta key.
i met a few new poe player in 2 days. hope they still having fun on it.

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Mentoya wrote:

I'm sure GGG will nerf the ACT 4 damage and final boss, especially if they notice they are losing lots of players because of it.....i'm not up to act 4 yet, but I've already hear many of them commenting in chat that they are moving on to another game because of the imbalance. Challenging can be fun, but if it gets ridiculously challenging, the fun part goes away and people move on to another game...

I think GGG nerfing the Final Boss fight and some of the damage has to happen, if they want to save their game......This has the ability to chase people away very very quickly.

There's a number of issues with Act 4 and its difficulty:

- Kaom hits hard, but his attacks are timely telegraphed, so even if you're melee you can dodge most on incoming damage. I'd rebalance the SRS damage tho, to me it felt like SRS did more damage than actual hits I'd get from the boss.

- Daresso's trio is really, really fun. But unless you run a skill that can damage the bosses past the waves of trash the fight definitely takes too long. I'd therefore limit the number of monsters that spawn.

- Daresso itself is probably the most interesting fight in Act 4. It's the only fight where GGG introduced new mechanics instead of revaming the already exisiting ones. Daresso hits hard and fast, but it's a really fun fight.

NOTE: I'd probably build some more storytelling around Kaom and Daresso and add some side quests. There's a lot of potential in these two encounters.

- Piety spawns out of nowhere. You're breezing thru Belly and then you join the next location and get to fight a crazy battle. There's very little room to dodge the beam and if you're playing evasion and don't have any source of physical mitigation, you're screwed. It's totally counter productive to expect new players to roll staunching flasks.

- I can't really say much about the other bosses, Deodre is definitely intresting, Shavronne's way is somehow easy if you manage to dodge her spells. Maligaro's doable if you use a golem as a decoy. But agin those fights get way too hard if you're melee.

NOTE: all those fights get very easy if you play totems or taps. Dunno if it's intended, but so far PoE looks like Path of Flame Totems.

- Malachai, can't see shit, room is tight, can't espace anywhere, skills look similar.

CONCLUSION: I wouldn't nerf the bosses too hard. I would definitely cut down the rare/unique mobs hp in Normal, because it takes way too long to take them down. I'd put Piety in a bigger area and make her less of a surprise. Malachai's room needs to be bigger and the number of skills need to limited. I'd put emphasis on Kaom's/Daresso's quest and make Belly a traditional dungeon instead of a never ending streams of penises with snake heads. I'd make the three mini bosses past Piety a side quest where each boss would get enough attention.

Im stuck on normal lvl 42. Second stage of the malachia fight. Cannot even make his health bar move lol. So am I supposed to come back with 5 more folks that can also not damage him so I have company when we all die?

Way over the top here GGG... Im out till some sanity kicks in.

NS

It is good that the game is hard.

I remember a feedback of a guy about 1 year ago who played through standard with his wife and complained about zero challenges of the game in this standard difficulty.

Act 4 normal difficulty is not too early to make ppl think and plan better - at least in the standard leagues. Maybe HC should be toned down a bit in order to not punish first timers?



Of course there will be some things that need rebalance but the general direction is right. Haven't got the chance to see everything yet.



Am curious about high lvl maps. Hope glasscannoning up to lvl 100 within 2 weeks is not possible anymore. Therefore it doesn't tell much if a lvl 95 guy dies on a lvl 70 map (as stated here in this thread). Ppl probably got used to blue packsize + domination 78 map chaining with a glasscannon charackter too much. It was a ridiculous state of the game. Hope its gone.

I thought it was awesome. I finally had to think for a second on normal. I haven't had to do that in forever. You want to go back to brainless play?

I just ripped my level 41 witch on the last boss act 4 i had full gear realy good gear to ress capped and even 1200 hp and 1k flame totem damage but i got bitch slapped on phase two last boss in act 4 even the other bosses where realy insane hard with ressist cap.
Cruel act 1 2 3 is a joke compared to normal act 4 this is realy messed up.
Act 4 realy needs a nerf this is to insane.