Labyrinth test - one year later

- Level 91 slayer with cleave attack
- Complete satisfying T15 maps (higher not tested yet)
- DPS (town):______________68 k (tool-tip does not take into account bleeding, poison etc.)
- DPS (path of building):__~ 3 mio. (effectiv DPS: takes everything into account)
- 7.9k HP
- Solo play
- Movement: Brightbeak + Prismatic Eclipse(3G), gem: Leap slam (0,37 s attack time)
- Playtime: more than 10 h

- I used my roughtly 20 "Offering to the Goddess" for uber-lab. I succeeded 5 times.

- Currently "Offering to the Goddess" is 5c - 7c worth in standard league. In average my loot does not had this value.

- On merc lab I was lucky to get a run-through-friendly layout one day. On this day I did most of my item enchantments. The fastest run was about 6 min. and the longest run about 10 min.

- Enchantments are not very promising at all. There are 388 possible enchantments for the helmet. So the chance to get the enchantment I am looking for is 0.3 % and this calculation does not take into account that the same enchantmens can appear multiple times which happens as well. From my opinion the boots have the best balance in term of getting something which nocticeably support your build.

- Most of the time I died due to the 'deathzones' or due to Izaro's one or two shots.

- Overall it is better to pay for the carry on mercyless and espacially on uber lab rather than to do it by your own. Instead of doing lab runs farm your currency and experience on the atlas. This makes much more sense.

In the following figure


http://imgur.com/OrbeRGJ.jpg

we see what I call the 'deathzone'. Since the rooms are very dark and you are not able to zoom out, you do not know, what is expecting you in the next corner. Once you overcome half of the path you do not want to turn around.

You have to pass this long way, filled with a deadly combination of trials like trials of crippling grief, of piercing truth and uber trials, to enter the next room. There is no other way. Until you reach the pedestral, you loose life within the green cycles whenever you use a movement skill, which most of the time you do in the lab. A hugh downside for close combat characters. If you are unlucky, which tend to happen on such a long path, filled nonstoply with these dangereous trials, the spikes hits you right in the position, so the wheels hits you as well. While you are stucked you can not escape and you get a lot of trap damage.

I got 2 flasks which can replenish my life by 1.4k instantly. Since i got almost 8k HP this is not much but best i can get, since % instant life regeneration flasks are undesirable in the game.

These deathzones are ment to see you death and most likely in the second or third last room, probably to awake the full frustration potential - who knows.

Please do not understand the critism as I am not appreciating all your work. Seriously you do a good job. However there is still space for improvements:


- I loose an insanly amount of experience in uber-lab (T8), since I am level 91 and die so often even with my high end equipment
If I do manage to open the chests in uber-lab, I do not get a similar loot value compared to "Offering to the godesss" value in standard league. Since my stash is very limited it is not worth to keep these very low level items hoping to trade them.

- I am able to do deathless T15 content but I die almost everytime, even with 7.9k life, in T8 uber-lab maps. How does this fit together?

- you can not expect the players to know all Izaro phases and their fight consequences (CHARGE DISRUPTORS, FONTS etc.).

- In high-end gameplay everything goes really fast and then you have to watch how slowly Izaro is always arising. It feels like you are waiting for ages for him. This happens three times. Why do I have to wait this long? The same when I want to leave the room.

- Once Izaro arives, he smashes me with his first attack and I am instantly dead. 7.9k life, fortify, armor based character, basalt flask and I am still instantly dead on a level 75 map. How does this fit together? There are not many other options to get more life. Seriously I do not care which phase mechanic causes this but it does not feel balanced to me.

- As soon Izaro looses 1/3 of his life in the first stage he is still attacking me? Why? I can not make him loose life but he can kill me? The same happens on the second stage. What is the intention behind it? Imagine shaper could do this?

- Camera rotation issue: There are corners where i can not see the trap because of the wall and the static camera angle. Why not creating larger rooms so this does not happen?

- Experienced a bug where I got damaged on fully stoned stairs.

- The lab currently favors whirling blades and leap slam and probably blink arrow as movement skills. Lightning warp is because of its delay not an option. Since the movement skill is a crucial part for lab the movement quality should be on an equal level unindepent of the main hand weapon.

- Why does the labyrinth has its labyrinth name? I never have the feeling to be in a labyrinth. One day I entered a hideout which was designed as a labyrinth. I almost feeled lost until someone guided me through it to the map device. This was funny.

- I am not satisfied with the current leech state. My 43 % maximum life leech rate, which is max., can not compete with vaal pact. If the intention is to have every character vaal pact you could put all classes starting over there?

- Lab favoures non-close-combat builds

- most difficult and dangereous rooms are in the last section rather than in the first section

- before I did the test I got the ascendency points on merciless and uber-lab by paying someone to carry me through. And after my test I will handle it the same. I am not sure if GGG indended to do so, since the game gets a pay-to-win character, but I do not see any other option.

- I guess there is no other part of the game which is so highly discussed like the lab issue in POE. I think, that the community deserves to know how the average opinion is. Share some statistic data about the lab. How often does people do lab runs on which difficulty. How often do they die in average there? Make a survey, how people like the labyrinth, e.g. when they log in or on any other internet page. Is most of the feedback to the lab from individual persons or does this represent most of the user's opinion?

- I do not want to read i got the wrong character or wrong skill gem. Because that is the way I want to play the character. However the truth is, there are lab-friendly builds. But seriously this is not my fault.

- I highly disklike the idea of dealy events. There are layout where you do lab runs and there are days where you do not do the lab runs otherwise you most likely will die or it takes too much time to get the 3 keys. You are looking for comments like:

"The day i waited for. Almost zero traps, locker and argus main path. Only golden door sucks."

- I dislike the idea to click on switches to open / close multiple doors. There is no other place in POE where you have to do this.

- for all mantioned reasons the frustration potentinal is so high in the lab. I prefer to die in a rare T15 dark forest map by boss rather than to be killed by traps in the last room of the lab. And I still will get there more XP and more valuable loot compared to the lab.

- Give the player more options. I highly like the idea of this layout.



Either the payer takes the golden door part or the other two rooms. Why not expanding the idea and offering the player three different boss fights in the final stage. I want more of this.

- focus more on one point:
If you want to make my decisionmaking in boss fights affecting the next boss fights do this.
If you want to have more daily events, do this.
If you want to test the movement skills and flask management of characters by traps focus on this.
But do not mix everything up. First each part for itself has to work. As soon as this is successful you can try to combine it again, presuming most community member will enjoy it.

- to reduce the waiting time in Izaro fights, start the fight as soon the player hits Izaro for the first time.

- Introduce flasks which replenish 50 % of hp instantly. For my char it would be about 4000 hp.

- reduce the number of possible enchantments on the helmet by half

- reduce the number of rooms by 1 or 2

- instead of items I prefer more currency loot from the chests.