What's coming in 0.9.5?

People didn't pay attention to the part where "flasks now heal slower" it seems.

P.S.

Have you guys considered boosting enemy average movement speed a bit as part of the difficulty ramp up? Just to test it out.

Anyone can slap on damage/health multipliers on every enemy to make it "challenging," but as always, I would prefer difficulty increases that don't equate to "need moar farm because skill = running Felshrine Ruins twenty times more than everyone else."

P.P.S.

Any idea when monster A.I. will begin getting general improvements?

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konfeta wrote:

P.S.

Have you guys considered boosting enemy average movement speed a bit as part of the difficulty ramp up? Just to test it out.

If there is anything to be changed by its speed, it 'should' be us, not mobs. After the added base speed of characters, evasion users got the most benefit while meleers suffered at most unfortunately. The challenge comes where there left non to be seen difference from our run speed compared to mobs'.

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konfeta wrote:

P.P.S.

Any idea when monster A.I. will begin getting general improvements?

Another good point,if and only ai of mobs would get tweak, then we shall meet with what 'real' challenge was, as greatly done in Diablo I. I hope devs will care about this stuation and will change most of the things about it in the long run.

Adjusting that difference by slowing down characters isn't as big (or as interesting IMO) of a challenge increase as adjusting it by speeding up enemies.

Advantages of speeding up enemies:
1. Less time for ranged characters to shoot upon initial encounter of enemies.
2. More difficult to aim things like projectiles/Frost Walls.
3. Speeds up pace of the game.
4. Makes the 'enemies derp-scatter and run around like headless chickens' situations less annoying for melee.

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Chris wrote:

This isn't a buff to flasks at all! It will make the game harder rather than easier.

I am surprised there's so much concern in this thread about the game becoming too easy. It's very easy for us to ramp the difficulty at will, which we can do once this patch is deployed and we have a wide spread of feedback about how hard it is.

You know. Its like in diablo 2 , when you had all the items you need for all alts (not even speaking about main character) the game became just easy as pie.
I bet those people who speak as the game became easy are probably all the 60+ lvls who can equip all alts with best items. Probably once you can do the chaos and get best drops and you start equiping characters with maxed items the game becoming a joke ? I dunno. My highest character is 52 now. I started exactly the same day we got 0.9.4 and i have to say lvling was quite hard. Getting items was quite hard.
Again as we can speak of diablo 2 - how hard do you think the game is when you have best items you can get with 75% or higher resistances ? Its again a joke, you just farm to get more stuff. Actually what PoE can be missing is the lack of any "endgame thingies" - like runes in diablo 2. But if you remember diablo 2 was great at beginning without runes - when rares were the best items. Runes simply destroyed diablo 2 but yeah - they were rare enough so people just keep playing. Maybe it was necessary to bring them to the game.
Now you can ask yourself why there was so much questions about how the game will be in endgame in diablo 3. You can ask why the blizz team added the inferno difficulty.

Now you can see where PoE is heading. Since i didnt reach the "chaos runs" yet i cannot tell much about replayability/end game drops/something special at end game. I think we are here more to test the parts and mechanics THEY GIVE TO US. Like Chris said they can ramp the difficulty so killing one pack of blue mobs will be possible only in party or even the first mob at normal can be unkillable. But since the difficulty can be scaled i would rather ask PoE dev team what they plan for endgame. I think also that first they should balance characters and then scale lvl to those balanced characters. Will be the easier. And i think its gonna happen since we will have a full wipe before OBT.
again comparing to diablo 3 - we can have gems collecting/items which can only drops in inferno. So far i dunno what PoE has to offer. So basically stop asking about how easy the game is. It can be done in 1hour to make the game really like hell. But making the endgame fun, balanced and REWARDING is what i am waiting for.

Awesome currency! sounds great Chris and gang looking forward to this one :D like to see your getting some balances down as far as Life and what not for when pvp roles around!! i konw thats not gonna be for a bit but you seem to be working on the balancing of classes and skills/gems wich all needs to be done before any pvp is released.. awesome work as usual!

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Chris wrote:

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Darkfyre wrote:

ya, me as well. but they don't say whether they've reduced the speeds or increased the speeds. could get even worse than it is now lol

We've reduced them (while increasing the amount they heal in total). Is that the direction you wanted?

Not at all :(

currently having issues with keeping my mana up in extended fights. No matter how much I spam my flasks currently the mana cannot keep up with the casts because of how slow you regain mana from drinking them. And now I guess it will be even worse.. oh man

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Chris wrote:

I am surprised there's so much concern in this thread about the game becoming too easy. It's very easy for us to ramp the difficulty at will, which we can do once this patch is deployed and we have a wide spread of feedback about how hard it is.

i can only speak for myself (and a few of my guildies who are antisocial and dont really post :p)

we already have a very big issue with the game being too easy (on HC as you know). so when we see vague references to "more hp to help survivability" and any sort of "better drops or better mods on items at higher lvls" or anything of that sort we kind of get concerned.

we very much appreciate the opportunity to test and voice our opinions in such an early beta build. since sotw has been around the block we have resisted raising this "difficulty" concern of ours as we wait for the natural balance process to continue.

should we get closer to open beta and still see the same easy romp though the game we see now...you will hear us loud and clear :)

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Darkfyre wrote:

currently having issues with keeping my mana up in extended fights. No matter how much I spam my flasks currently the mana cannot keep up with the casts because of how slow you regain mana from drinking them. And now I guess it will be even worse.. oh man

Have you considered removing a support gem or two? It makes a huge difference.

you're having mana issues? I only use 1 flask on most of my characters..