Anyone else agree that Merciless Malachai sucks?

Hi

No point in act 4M, get the skill point quest and fuck off to maps or dry lake. Act 4 looks great but feels like I bought a Twinkie WITHOUT THE CREAM FILLING, wheres the content?, the filler?, such a long act without much to do and when I did it I didn't even know it was a quest.

My main beef with act4M though is the lack of urgency or fear or surprise from the townsfolk: Aren't they under attack? Do exiles show up all the time? The townsfolk in act 4 seem like they have no cares in the world!

Chris can you tell your fellow GGG workers to re-add a new maelstrum of chaos/ endless descent-like dungeon as a viable choice besides maps for end game characters lvl 90+? No body does act4M belly of the beast areas as an ''alternative'' to maps, lol.

cheers

"

adzang wrote:

Yup thats the main problem with Act4 for me too besides the fact its pointless killing Mal you don't get anything worth killing him.

 I only persevered and killed Malachai just to say that I had done that once. Since there is no value doing it again with any other build I'll be skipping most of act 4 from now on.

 I'm also surprised that I didn't get even 1 passive point from defeating him, WTF is that? With original PoE GGG had the final Merc Piety battle give us 2 passive points. Now we get none for a much harder Merc Malachai! GGG's risk/rewards in Act 4 needs a major rethink and overhaul. Just ramping up the difficulty without better rewards for the harder content is pointless and a major failure. No wonder we skip it.

"

Finkenstein wrote:

Hi

No point in act 4M, get the skill point quest and fuck off to maps or dry lake. Act 4 looks great but feels like I bought a Twinkie WITHOUT THE CREAM FILLING, wheres the content?, the filler?, such a long act without much to do and when I did it I didn't even know it was a quest.

My main beef with act4M though is the lack of urgency or fear or surprise from the townsfolk: Aren't they under attack? Do exiles show up all the time? The townsfolk in act 4 seem like they have no cares in the world!

Chris can you tell your fellow GGG workers to re-add a new maelstrum of chaos/ endless descent-like dungeon as a viable choice besides maps for end game characters lvl 90+? No body does act4M belly of the beast areas as an ''alternative'' to maps, lol.

cheers

 100% agree. If GGG needs to feed the elites and masochists that suck all content from PoE and want more than some kind of endless dungeons like TorchLight has with a ladder for dungeon level (depth) completed. Also, as a way to prevent racers from skipping dungeon content to just race down to extreme depths fast make it so the next level down is not open until the current level is full cleared. You can do the same as the Necromancer side quest off the Mud Flats so near the end of clearing we get a countdown on creatures left.

"

Arrowneous wrote:

 I'm also surprised that I didn't get even 1 passive point from defeating him, WTF is that? With original PoE GGG had the final Merc Piety battle give us 2 passive points. Now we get none for a much harder Merc Malachai! GGG's risk/rewards in Act 4 needs a major rethink and overhaul. Just ramping up the difficulty without better rewards for the harder content is pointless and a major failure. No wonder we skip it.

Merciless Piety was never intended as the end of the game. She doesn't have the same design than Dominus (pre 2.0), Malachai and others. They are thought as something that should challenge people that play high level maps. They have bonifications to IIR and IIQ, so if you can farm them you can get wealthy relatively quickly (as Dominus before 2.0, but then again, Malachai probably is too hard for the rewards).

"

NeroNoah wrote:

Merciless Piety was never intended as the end of the game. She doesn't have the same design than Dominus (pre 2.0), Malachai and others. They are thought as something that should challenge people that play high level maps. They have bonifications to IIR and IIQ, so if you can farm them you can get wealthy relatively quickly (as Dominus before 2.0, but then again, Malachai probably is too hard for the rewards).

 What Merc Malachai rewards? I've read that Merc Malachai offers no better drops than any other tough map boss and as such it is pointless to even try after you have done it once. This is even worse incentive to take him on than full clearing of zones. At least we are credited for a full clear. The Merc Malachai battle is without any value and now that I have accomplished that once I'll never do it again. Similar to kill Kole once to get a full clear of that zone and then always skip past him unless testing a new skill combo.

 Ok, so Merc Malachai is not the end of the game either as GGG is working on Act 5 so that means nothing. If an extremely tough boss battle has no reward value then it is just skipped over and for GGG it becomes a totally wasted programming effort. At least Piety gives us 2 passives for each difficulty level. If I was a game designer I'd have to seriously question any game element, be it Kole, Malachai, end of map one-shot death damage spike boss compared to the rest of the maps difficulty level (ie. Jungle Valley map), etc. that the majority of players skipped over. GGG just doesn't seem to know, or more likely just doesn't care that there are some major play flaws that need to be addressed and fixed. Merc Malachai is certainly one of them. Kole is another "WTF is he here for" imbalance as his drops are the same as any other easy to kill rare and thus completely lost and a waste of programming resources.

Can you imagine the tears if we moved one passive point from Piety to Malachi?

"

Barivius wrote:

Can you imagine the tears if we moved one passive point from Piety to Malachi?

i can. everytime i play through the game the one thing i look forward to the most is the 2points given from killing piety, its the most rewarding and heart warming part in the game, i love getting passive points but if they decided to move one point from piety to act 4 it would ruin the game for me, a better idea would be to add 2points as a reward for killing malachai which is given to you when you summon the power in town from same npc, would also love to see some kind of reward for killing vaal oversoul and see the 2 points from killing piety moved to dominus with piety granting something else as a reward

Act 4 merciless is supposed to be hard and it's not nessecairy to finish it in any way to get the "full" experience. After the mines there is nothing more you need and all good non-map farming areas are unlocked. Just get the last passive point and enjoy maps!

Take this from someone who complains mid/up - level maps have "rediculous" damage spikes (so definitely not a top player):
1. Act 4 Merc is where it should be, your builds are not.
2. Act 4 Merc is also doable with sub par builds, you just need to be sharp. I just did merc Dominus with a 3k spectral throw scion at lv63, and spectral throw is nerfed into oblivion and borderline worthless in 2.0. In complexity and span solo-Dominus beats Act4 in some ways; so yes, very doable.
3. 3000hp is NOT enough for endgame, on any build. My build from point 2 just sucks. That being said my 3k flame totem MF does very well into mid tier maps and finished Act4 completely, you just have to know the game, this goes for all end-game games, not just poe.
4. All the bosses after piety (all bosses in general) are well designed and damage spikes are telegraphed. I actually found Malachai phase 2 easier than some other bosses, more than enough adds to leach from and Malachai himself is boringly predictable.

I know just saying get good is lame, but it is true. You don't see me complaining I never won Roland Garros while I suck at tennis either.

You can't blame end-game for being hard, especially when it actually isn't. You can blame yourself for not taking it, and your build, seriously. And nobody forces you, just do maps then, they're more varied and fun anyways and net you more currency.

I do however strongly agree there should be a proper reward for finishing Act4. Finishing the last super-boss and not even getting an attaboy is just weird by any standard.

Many people say that Act 4/Malachai is designed to be very difficult and I agree, both for leveling and end-game. But what I don't understand is why did they make that boss a complete waste of time. No end-game grind option for specific items like Atziri/Uber considering how hard the fight is, extremely inefficient to farm and even Core map is pointless to run. Theres literally nothing to get there that's worth anyone's effort and time.

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Kasparov13 wrote:

1. Act 4 Merc is where it should be, your builds are not.

This is simply just not true. There is a difference between hard and bat-shit stupid over the top gfx that lag you to the point where it doesn't matter what build you have you're going to rip over and over and over again. I've got a char with a solid tree and 80+ex worth of gear and I fully understand the mechanics yet I have to fire the corpse cannon up to 40 times. This is where a4 should be?

And before you go talking about my potato, I can play the rest of the game just fine even with laggy skills like discharge. :)