I really hate lab

"

Doomstryver wrote:

Because I'm playing SpecialSnowFlake league.

And TBH the warcry benefit and 40% damage is more than anything chieftain gives me.

The fact is that there is a part of the game that I do not want to run. I get bored of chaining maps nonstop so I enjoy the other endgame activities like prophecy farming or atziri. Its a shame that one of the other big alt endgame options (lab) is so damn bad that I would never do it unless I had to.

Just tried your character in path of building with the current gear and no other changes you lose ~20k dps by not being beserker, but gain a lot of other benefits.


Like enemies doing less damage to you, not only from not having the 10% more damage taken from the beserker, but from the Moon's Presence node. You also gain the ability to potentially not use minion and elemental res and use something like conc effect, because ur totems will no longer degen. Plus the reflects totem life might be nice, assuming your building around totem life.

You also get more regen from that AC class as well.

I think with the uber lab you also gain the ability to automatically get the endurance charge and you could instead use rallying cry or abyssal cry to help with the clearspeed, would no longer need to use enduring cry.



That isn't to say its 100% better, but there are obviously factors to be considered.

"

goetzjam wrote:

"

Doomstryver wrote:

Because I'm playing SpecialSnowFlake league.

And TBH the warcry benefit and 40% damage is more than anything chieftain gives me.

The fact is that there is a part of the game that I do not want to run. I get bored of chaining maps nonstop so I enjoy the other endgame activities like prophecy farming or atziri. Its a shame that one of the other big alt endgame options (lab) is so damn bad that I would never do it unless I had to.

Just tried your character in path of building with the current gear and no other changes you lose ~20k dps by not being beserker, but gain a lot of other benefits.


Like enemies doing less damage to you, not only from not having the 10% more damage taken from the beserker, but from the Moon's Presence node. You also gain the ability to potentially not use minion and elemental res and use something like conc effect, because ur totems will no longer degen. Plus the reflects totem life might be nice, assuming your building around totem life.

You also get more regen from that AC class as well.

I think with the uber lab you also gain the ability to automatically get the endurance charge and you could instead use rallying cry or abyssal cry to help with the clearspeed, would no longer need to use enduring cry.



That isn't to say its 100% better, but there are obviously factors to be considered.

Thank you for the tips. I think berserker is more fun anyways, as it has better clearspeed and is generally more dangerous to play.

I would consider respeccing into chieftain if I were to find a Tukohama's Fortress, since I wouldn't be able to go MoM and abuse the 25% mana warcry benefit from berserker. But that's not likely to happen.

This is a slight derailment from the original topic though, which is that lab sucks. The fact that I feel I have no motivation to do lab aside from getting ascendancy points really nails home how bad it is. I understand how good the rewards are, and the Izaro fight is good fun (minus fucking charge disruptors) but the fact that I have to deal with traps and the lab itself means I have no motivation to do it at all.

I actually posted a thread yesterday:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1868646
with what I thought were some constructive ideas to change the lab to make it more interesting and appealing to a larger majority of the playerbase. I don't think the lab itself is a bad idea, but its execution was far from good.

I have zero problems beating uber lab on bascially any char I play. Dodging traps is easy.
However, I hate lab and wish it would burn in hell. It's stupid as fuck, especially to standard league players who are choosing to play standard because they don't want to deal with hardcore mechanics.

The fanboi flowers who always crop up to insult people who don't like lab tend to always sound the same. They tell you that you don't know how to do it, basically LEARN TO PLAY.

Fuck you. I know how to play and uber lab is easy as fuck and I hate playing it.
So go measure your penis elsewhere.

The truth is the majority of POE players hate lab. end of story. GGG should figure out some simple fixes.... actually it's all been suggested to them. Just implement some of the community ideas.

"

CaliforniaPyro wrote:

I have zero problems beating uber lab on bascially any char I play. Dodging traps is easy.
However, I hate lab and wish it would burn in hell. It's stupid as fuck, especially to standard league players who are choosing to play standard because they don't want to deal with hardcore mechanics.

The fanboi flowers who always crop up to insult people who don't like lab tend to always sound the same. They tell you that you don't know how to do it, basically LEARN TO PLAY.

Fuck you. I know how to play and uber lab is easy as fuck and I hate playing it.
So go measure your penis elsewhere.

The truth is the majority of POE players hate lab. end of story. GGG should figure out some simple fixes.... actually it's all been suggested to them. Just implement some of the community ideas.

Ok what do you hate about the lab that is actually different than the rest of the game? Traps? A checkpoint a little further back? I know you like to think the majority of people think like you, but seriously do you honestly believe that the majority of people give two shits either way? It's just an angry fad that most people wouldn't have given a second thought to normally. The lab is hardly different enough content to warrant anything remotely similar to the response it's getting, and the constant cropping up hate threads got people to push back from the vitriol against it, because frankly there was a new thread saying nothing of substance cropping up every hour for a long time.

That said GGG has actual data and seem to think people mostly like the lab or are at least neutral about it. So ask yourself, how is the lab that different from the rest of the game, or at least the pre mapping leveling process?

"

j33bus wrote:

That said GGG has actual data and seem to think people mostly like the lab or are at least neutral about it. So ask yourself, how is the lab that different from the rest of the game, or at least the pre mapping leveling process?

Can you provide a link to this data you are talking about?

Playing WOW is about "leveling process". Playing Diablo 2 was about grinding for drops to do better grinding for drops. Leveling was incidental and a secondary objective. Hell, they even had to nerf the shit out of Ancients because people were getting carries there for 20 levels.

Lab breaks that idea somewhat in that silver chests and such are not even close to worth the time investment and that getting to ascension is really the primary goal of doing lab.

I think there are a lot of concise posts on why people dislike lab. It's an artificial timesink that requires a front to back time commitment to complete with a mechanic that isn't conducive to ARPGs or the idea that time=currency.

So I believe if they had a poll and asked: Do you think the lab is a chore? The overwhelming response would most likely be yes.

"

ewolow wrote:

"

j33bus wrote:

That said GGG has actual data and seem to think people mostly like the lab or are at least neutral about it. So ask yourself, how is the lab that different from the rest of the game, or at least the pre mapping leveling process?

Can you provide a link to this data you are talking about?

Playing WOW is about "leveling process". Playing Diablo 2 was about grinding for drops to do better grinding for drops. Leveling was incidental and a secondary objective. Hell, they even had to nerf the shit out of Ancients because people were getting carries there for 20 levels.

Lab breaks that idea somewhat in that silver chests and such are not even close to worth the time investment and that getting to ascension is really the primary goal of doing lab.

I think there are a lot of concise posts on why people dislike lab. It's an artificial timesink that requires a front to back time commitment to complete with a mechanic that isn't conducive to ARPGs or the idea that time=currency.

So I believe if they had a poll and asked: Do you think the lab is a chore? The overwhelming response would most likely be yes.

Yea but you're not grinding for drop for 70 levels anyway, and about the silver chests in the uber lab are totally worth the time, and don't forget, the lab has a much higher than average mob density so you can still grind for currency and drops in it.

The complaint about consecutive time sink is almost reasonable, except that you totally have at least 3 spots in the lab where you could just walk away, and come back later, they're closer to each other than some waypoint placement, and at a plodding pace going through the lab takes about 30 minutes. If you can't find 10 minutes to play, you can't really run a map either or progress through the story.

Even if it was just for ascendency points so what? The actual content of the lab is so close to the rest of the game, the hate for it is comedic.

"

Can you provide a link to this data you are talking about?

Just check the patch nodes. People complain in this forum essentially since the release of the lab. And they changed nothing. So ask yourself would they do this if they feel that players seriously hate it?

Thing is they reacted to the player base before on a few occasions, which was likely because they figured out that it wasn't just a few people complaining in the forum. For the lab though they seem to not see a reason to act, which might be because they did do research on how players see the lab.

"

So I believe if they had a poll and asked: Do you think the lab is a chore? The overwhelming response would most likely be yes.

Thing is... you could get that yes on many things. If you look how players enjoy games it is mostly by being a tiny bit too powerful for whatever they are facing however if you give that to players directly they get bored and feel the game is too easy.


And there are some things I would change on the lab (although not the Uberlab that one is fine). I don't think that 3.0 needs 4 labs still, I think visiting it twice before Uberlab would be better, exspecially considering that you could actually develop the story of the lab potentially and make the A3 and A8 versions different.

I also feel that instead of using trials to teach players the first lab could be used. I know they want to preserve their speedrun thing and the ladders for it, but I doubt it is worth it. Making the normal lab for learning (iE the A3 lab) and the A8 version like the merc lab now and removing the non-map trials would go a long way. I would add every single mechanic and waypoints into the normal lab, which makes it maybe a bit odd for players but right now there isn't really any teaching going on and I assume many players still do not know how each gargoyle buffs izaro or how the idols work etc.

"

Ok what do you hate about the lab that is actually different than the rest of the game? Traps? A checkpoint a little further back? I know you like to think the majority of people think like you, but seriously do you honestly believe that the majority of people give two shits either way? It's just an angry fad that most people wouldn't have given a second thought to normally. The lab is hardly different enough content to warrant anything remotely similar to the response it's getting, and the constant cropping up hate threads got people to push back from the vitriol against it, because frankly there was a new thread saying nothing of substance cropping up every hour for a long time.

That said GGG has actual data and seem to think people mostly like the lab or are at least neutral about it. So ask yourself, how is the lab that different from the rest of the game, or at least the pre mapping leveling process?

Trials are the only place that have traps, traps are one of the only sources of damage to the player that are not mitigated by character growth, only from very binary buffs that provide % physical damage reduction, and traps are not like monsters at all where even if you fill rooms and rooms of them with no thought to their composition that you could potentially survive- traps depend on level design placement that is universally not done well at all in the Lab and oversized hitboxes on the traps and the controls not being suited to tight movement compound that.

I'm not one of those people that think that you should be allowed to skip lab and get free Ascendancy points, but even just small tweaks and some more thought to the level design would go so far.

"

I also feel that instead of using trials to teach players the first lab could be used. I know they want to preserve their speedrun thing and the ladders for it, but I doubt it is worth it. Making the normal lab for learning (iE the A3 lab) and the A8 version like the merc lab now and removing the non-map trials would go a long way. I would add every single mechanic and waypoints into the normal lab, which makes it maybe a bit odd for players but right now there isn't really any teaching going on and I assume many players still do not know how each gargoyle buffs izaro or how the idols work etc.

Making the first lab the "tutorial" would make the first lab easier, but it wouldn't really fix a bigger problem where the labyrinth traps don't take advantage of the knowledge you learn from the trials. The trials are designed with the assumption that you can be patient and take advantage of openings but the Labyrinth trials are designed under the assumption that you always have some kind of warp or fast movement ability to bypass the damage sources.

"

Making the first lab the "tutorial" would make the first lab easier, but it wouldn't really fix a bigger problem where the labyrinth traps don't take advantage of the knowledge you learn from the trials. The trials are designed with the assumption that you can be patient and take advantage of openings but the Labyrinth trials are designed under the assumption that you always have some kind of warp or fast movement ability to bypass the damage sources.

Well the game is designed with you having a movement skill. I use Shieldcharge right now which doesn't even move you over terrain. But I need that charge not only in the lab, but also in other situations. And considering that the trials are dealing percentage based damage they likely deal less damage than any high level map boss, which usually oneshots players, while being more random.

People always complain about missing ability to build against traps, I would even go that far as giving them fixed damage. Because that is actually an advantage of them, because you do know how much damage they deal. And even with the current design you can do them easily with abyssus. One thing traps do punish is running blindly into them, which is something the rest of the game doesn't punish enough. Until reaching incredible high maps you hardly need any awareness, if there is a volatile he might take you down a bit, but in lower maps he won't kill you. There is not much damage and players kill fast enough that they avoid most mechanics anyway.

Also in general the trial traps are a lot harder. The lab traps are not designed to be passed with movement skills, they just allow it, while the trials don't. But you don't need it. In most cases if the traps are not hindering your movement or blocking it you can just run through them and you might have 90% chance to survive by really just running through, and those chances go up massively if you charge through with a Quicksilver and a Basalt Flask. So the best strategy for most people might be pretending the traps are not there, hit Quicksilver and Basalt and run.

That wasn't my point. My point was that the trials you find in the acts teach you how to bypass traps, but for the Labyrinth the traps are designed to almost require things that the act trials don't teach as being necessary. It makes turning the first Labyrinth into the tutorial kind of pointless for that reason.