Leveling new characters is unbearable aids - rant

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Legatus1982 wrote:

You people aren't getting it.

First of all, nobody cares how great you or anyone else is or is not at poe.

The point is these bosses are unfun garbage that I don't want to do. And from the comments alone I'm not the only one who doesn't want to deal with the act bosses.

In maps if you don't want to do a boss you do the map and skip the boss. In the story you can't do that, and the story bosses are worse than any map boss up to like tier 10 maps

I think that bosses are meant to push out of your comfort zone, at least to some extent.
And as much as I agree that certain boss designs where the visibility is pretty bad and there is a clusterfuck of effects ( which is .... not really enjoyable ) kinda bad, I bet that if you were breezing through those encounters quickly without any troubles, you would not have come here and made this thread.

So I'm pretty sure that difficulty is part of the issue here.

Like ... I think that people don't usually throw such complain here ( even in the form of constructiv criticism, but I would use other words than what there is in the OP for that honestly ) about game design/balance issues if they can easily and quickly go through that part of the game in the first place.

It's like the stupid anti-lab threads couple of years back ( did it stop btw ? ) where people tell you that they have no difficulty issue, that they are super good at it, but always spend more than 30~40 mins going through that part of the game that they hate lol ( or need to resort to specialized build to do it when really any correctly built char can ).

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enjoythejourney wrote:

There's a fair number of annoying boss fights, but they get less annoying as the time the boss is alive goes down. At least, that's been my experience.

Pretty much my thoughts.

The OP is not entirely wrong. I blame 2 things - invulnerability phases on bosses and how hilariously different the uber lab experience is between certain builds.

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Fruz wrote:

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Legatus1982 wrote:

You people aren't getting it.

First of all, nobody cares how great you or anyone else is or is not at poe.

The point is these bosses are unfun garbage that I don't want to do. And from the comments alone I'm not the only one who doesn't want to deal with the act bosses.

In maps if you don't want to do a boss you do the map and skip the boss. In the story you can't do that, and the story bosses are worse than any map boss up to like tier 10 maps

I think that bosses are meant to push out of your comfort zone, at least to some extent.
And as much as I agree that certain boss designs where the visibility is pretty bad and there is a clusterfuck of effects ( which is .... not really enjoyable ) kinda bad, I bet that if you were breezing through those encounters quickly without any troubles, you would not have come here and made this thread.

So I'm pretty sure that difficulty is part of the issue here.

Like ... I think that people don't usually throw such complain here ( even in the form of constructiv criticism, but I would use other words than what there is in the OP for that honestly ) about game design/balance issues if they can easily and quickly go through that part of the game in the first place.

It's like the stupid anti-lab threads couple of years back ( did it stop btw ? ) where people tell you that they have no difficulty issue, that they are super good at it, but always spend more than 30~40 mins going through that part of the game that they hate lol ( or need to resort to specialized build to do it when really any correctly built char can ).

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enjoythejourney wrote:

There's a fair number of annoying boss fights, but they get less annoying as the time the boss is alive goes down. At least, that's been my experience.

Pretty much my thoughts.

I'll say it again, it's not that these bosses are TOO difficult. It's the level of annoyingness attached to them.

And what you are saying about alive time is correct. When I played my first character (arc miner) I basically instakilled every boss the instant they came out of invulnerability. I don't even NOTICE the boss mechanics on those characters who are using twinked OP shit.

But the problem is every character after my first is an experiment where I am using hilariously underpowered gems to see what I can do with them. I made a viper striker - act bosses were unbearable shit because once you can't oneshot the boss you have to actually avoid their mechanics, and EVERY act boss from 5 to 10 has "mechanics" that are basically just screen-covering cancer. I spend about 90% dodging shit, 5% moving into or out of position, and 5% of the time actually dpsing the boss. Try it man, level a viper strike shadow. You can use sunder or double strike, but unless you're using megatwinked gear that costed 100 exalts you're going to have ZERO FUN doing these act bosses. And that's the problem.

So I leveled a viper striker, a flicker striker, an autobomber, and a wander after my first character. LOL, yeah I'm sorry but when you aren't using OP builds to level these bosses are fucking trash to deal with. It's not that you can't do it, it's that when you aren't using arc or some other obscenely broken shit these bosses are trash to deal with and I don't want to level any more characters because I cannot bear to deal with them any more after doing it 5 times.

What would make these bosses better is if they just tripled the HP and removed some of the invulnerability phases and removed enough of the damaging crap that you could attack twice or triple as often, so you actually feel like you're doing anything when fighting these fuckers.

I can empathize with how different non-meta builds feel because I play mostly non-meta builds. For example, I like physical-plus-bleed-based earthquake, cleave, or cyclone when melee (jugg, ascendant, or slayer, depending on whim when making character) and spark / storm call when playing a caster (ascendant for spark, elementalist for storm call). I also play necro summoners and occultists using blight with ED support.

Arc takes very little skill to play because you just press a key and the spell does all the work for you. Playing an arc character very quickly and literally puts me to sleep. Most other meta builds have a similar effect on me.

I've been interested in trying out a viper strike based trickster for a while now. But, I think I'd rather pair viper strike with another chaos / poison attack to make bosses less annoying. This is what I do with blight; I can't stand either blight or ED on their own because I find boss fights annoyingly slow without having both ED and blight together (at least, that's been my experience).

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Legatus1982 wrote:

But the problem is every character after my first is an experiment where I am using hilariously underpowered gems to see what I can do with them. I made a viper striker - act bosses were unbearable shit because once you can't oneshot the boss you have to actually avoid their mechanics, and EVERY act boss from 5 to 10 has "mechanics" that are basically just screen-covering cancer. I spend about 90% dodging shit, 5% moving into or out of position, and 5% of the time actually dpsing the boss. Try it man, level a viper strike shadow. You can use sunder or double strike, but unless you're using megatwinked gear that costed 100 exalts you're going to have ZERO FUN doing these act bosses. And that's the problem.

I've been through the game with all kind of builds, including melee ones.
Some bosses are pretty awful for melee ( really close combat ones ) and you have to spend part of your time running and dodging, I know.
You picked a somewhat extreme example, pretty much all new/reworked skills have at least a bit of range/coverage now making positioning way easier.

last year I went through the game SSF HC with earthquale and fire trap to complement it ( avatar of fire EQ, no AW ), and I honestly didn't have troubles through the game, but fire trap was helping quite a bit, I had 2 sources of damage.
This league it's been SSF HC spectral shield throw and I was surprised by the dps that I had and most bosses felt really quick. And the base damage came from items, not the gem. That one is a ranged skill though, much easier for those encounters, but the point is : the dps was there.


And no, not every act boss from 5 to 10.
- a6 = this one I agree, the boss as some point covers what ... 70%+ of the walk-able terrain and some additional lightning thing pop a bit everywhere, sometimes under part of the boss and are pretty hard to see, I really dislike that part.
- a7 it's all dodgeable, I wasn't actually sure how to deal with the whole grid going crazy but if you run in the direction of the corner that is still free, you can find some space.
- a8 there is enough space to move, you can pretty much dodge everything but some attacks kind of hurt ( there too, close combat skills ... more difficult to find good dps window when you need to hug your target )
- a9 it's all dodgeable too, it's never completely covered, and not too many effects compared to some other arenas
- a10 too many effects I agree, the burning ground can cover just too much, if you run on the wrong side you're kinda fucked.

I don't think that GGG is designing the game considering real close combat skills such as viper strike anymore honestly. that's not the direction that the game is taking.


PS : Please don't tell me that you were using multistrike with viper strike during all those encounters, because then yeah, I understand why you had an awful time, in addition to what I just said there.

PPS : why did you build a viper strike trickster .... without taking patient reaper and prolonged pain as ascendancies ? That's one of the big thing that trickster gives for dot build, the survivability and dps boost from there is just amazing honestly.

Heh, playing PoE "hard mode ON" and then complaining that the enemies are actually difficult. Who would have thought about such a possibility... /s

On a more serious note, all bosses should be "zerg-ed" at your leisure. Not kidding even a tiny bit. That's what TencentGGG entices for Softcore. And it's also important for the builds that use "subpar" non-meta skills, items, mechanics or interactions, and unfortunately, this will ALWAYS be the case, as long as TencentGGG are adamant to keep Mariana trenches regarding various balance aspects and manually "shift" metas - you're a regular, you should have caught these tiny aspects a long time ago...

Fun fact, if you know what to do, and the skillplay is "up to snuff", you could manage the entire storyline playthrough underleveled, underequiped and almost unprepared. Especially if you actually played old school classics that render the current PoE difficulty NULL.

"Labyrinth", even in it's Uber variation is ANNOYING AT MOST, as long as your character manages one of the 3 certainties - "moar" than "enuf" DAMAGE, "moar" than "enuf" MITIGATION and/or SUSTAIN or any satisfying amount of the previous 2 combined for the third option.

So do tone down your expectations - I know I did - as these "difficulty spikes" are here to stay, because the other viable option would require BALANCE, and a cap to the maximum damage a character could dish out, resulting in a game that isn't a "pew pew" shooter and also one where difficulty would be a "thing", meanwhile we do know we're talking about PoE, so those aspects are not even remotely possible...

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Heh, playing PoE "hard mode ON" and then complaining that the enemies are actually difficult. Who would have thought about such a possibility... /s

On a more serious note, all bosses should be "zerg-ed" at your leisure. Not kidding even a tiny bit. That's what TencentGGG entices for Softcore. And it's also important for the builds that use "subpar" non-meta skills, items, mechanics or interactions, and unfortunately, this will ALWAYS be the case, as long as TencentGGG are adamant to keep Mariana trenches regarding various balance aspects and manually "shift" metas - you're a regular, you should have caught these tiny aspects a long time ago...

Fun fact, if you know what to do, and the skillplay is "up to snuff", you could manage the entire storyline playthrough underleveled, underequiped and almost unprepared. Especially if you actually played old school classics that render the current PoE difficulty NULL.

"Labyrinth", even in it's Uber variation is ANNOYING AT MOST, as long as your character manages one of the 3 certainties - "moar" than "enuf" DAMAGE, "moar" than "enuf" MITIGATION and/or SUSTAIN or any satisfying amount of the previous 2 combined for the third option.

So do tone down your expectations - I know I did - as these "difficulty spikes" are here to stay, because the other viable option would require BALANCE, and a cap to the maximum damage a character could dish out, resulting in a game that isn't a "pew pew" shooter and also one where difficulty would be a "thing", meanwhile we do know we're talking about PoE, so those aspects are not even remotely possible...

Why should I "tone down my expectations"? Balance is too much to ask in a feedback thread on POE forums? Everyone should have content shoved down their throats? Many people specifically make builds that clear well but aren't great for bosses, such as KB wanders. These people typically skip most map bosses (unless theyre on a wall), but are still forced to do the act bosses. IDK man. If the abilities were balanced better I'd be ok with it but they aren't and I'm not.

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Fruz wrote:

PS : Please don't tell me that you were using multistrike with viper strike during all those encounters, because then yeah, I understand why you had an awful time, in addition to what I just said there.

PPS : why did you build a viper strike trickster .... without taking patient reaper and prolonged pain as ascendancies ? That's one of the big thing that trickster gives for dot build, the survivability and dps boost from there is just amazing honestly.

I do not agree with your assessment of viper strike building. Have you ever actually played a viper strike trickster through high maps? I cannot guess from this comment that you have because your comment shows lack of experience playing VS tricksters imo, no offense. The build desperately needs survivability against enemies that aren't dying yet because the DOTs take time to materialize. Escape artist and weave the arcane, when built correctly, provide that survivability. It's not worth trading for the damage.

Dying every couple maps or rerolling every damage mod is not acceptable, even in SC leagues, IMO.

I do think prolonged pain is amazing for VS and would maybe be willing to trade weave the arcane for it if it was not behind another set of bad nodes for VS.

Overall though it doesn't even matter because VS is just trash right now. The old double dipping VS was serviceable because the damage was overwhelming (when you exploited double dipping), like the new double strike, but without double dipping VS lacks the damage to make up for all the faults of a melee DOT build and just ends up being trash. It's truly a dumpster build right now no matter what you do with it.

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Legatus1982 wrote:

Spoiler

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sofocle10000 wrote:

Heh, playing PoE "hard mode ON" and then complaining that the enemies are actually difficult. Who would have thought about such a possibility... /s

On a more serious note, all bosses should be "zerg-ed" at your leisure. Not kidding even a tiny bit. That's what TencentGGG entices for Softcore. And it's also important for the builds that use "subpar" non-meta skills, items, mechanics or interactions, and unfortunately, this will ALWAYS be the case, as long as TencentGGG are adamant to keep Mariana trenches regarding various balance aspects and manually "shift" metas - you're a regular, you should have caught these tiny aspects a long time ago...

Fun fact, if you know what to do, and the skillplay is "up to snuff", you could manage the entire storyline playthrough underleveled, underequiped and almost unprepared. Especially if you actually played old school classics that render the current PoE difficulty NULL.

"Labyrinth", even in it's Uber variation is ANNOYING AT MOST, as long as your character manages one of the 3 certainties - "moar" than "enuf" DAMAGE, "moar" than "enuf" MITIGATION and/or SUSTAIN or any satisfying amount of the previous 2 combined for the third option.

So do tone down your expectations - I know I did - as these "difficulty spikes" are here to stay, because the other viable option would require BALANCE, and a cap to the maximum damage a character could dish out, resulting in a game that isn't a "pew pew" shooter and also one where difficulty would be a "thing", meanwhile we do know we're talking about PoE, so those aspects are not even remotely possible...

Why should I "tone down my expectations"? Balance is too much to ask in a feedback thread on POE forums? Everyone should have content shoved down their throats? Many people specifically make builds that clear well but aren't great for bosses, such as KB wanders. These people typically skip most map bosses (unless theyre on a wall), but are still forced to do the act bosses. IDK man. If the abilities were balanced better I'd be ok with it but they aren't and I'm not.

Oh, you should tone them down as nothing seems to improve regarding these "common sense" aspects - still waiting for TencentGGG to grant single target namelocking melee skills a PURPOSE, and I only started playing a bit earlier than 1.3.0.

They keep ignoring REAL problems and the goddamn danger vs reward ratio, so I don't know why are you surprised at content being "shoved down" our throats. "Common sense things" like rare and rewarding divination cards that SHOULD drop ONLY from DIFFICULT FIGHTS, or cramming some multi possessed corrupted essence monsters into Diviner's Boxes if the divination cards WARRANT THAT are impossible, right? /s

And let's not talk about making those difficult encounters rewarding via EXP gain so you're actually enticed to run it to LEVEL your character...

Regardless, I've been asking for "balance" in feedback threads on PoE forums since 1.3.0, guess how many improvements we're made during this time - if you guessed 0%, you're entirely right - so us "keeping up the crusade" is nice, but not helpful for anyone.

And bosses are DESIGNED to be skipped for most of those builds that fail to reach those 3 thresholds that I illustrated regarding "Labyrinth". No one sane and not a glutton for punishment - yours friendly neighborhood casual n00b hoarder ALWAYS kills the bosses with his single target namelocking REAL dual wielding RT Jugg, and reached 99 in >3K hours played so I can attest to the situation of "Hard Mode" ON or OFF - should attempt anything different than the "path of least resistance", as TencentGGG are unable to BALANCE due to the extremes provided by broken damage versus the regular output - not having a damage hard cap that is NEVER REACHED and a soft cap that would instantly warrant investigation and various adjustments WAS, IS and WILL BE ASININE.

Regardless, PoE is not difficult if you're "up to snuff" on at least one of those 3 "obligatory guidelines" - so have bonkers damage, bonkers mitigation and/or sustain or any variation of those 2 combined if you expect an "adequate" experience. Anything else simply makes the game "difficult", and it's a shame that TencentGGG stoop so low, as they should have had a real difficulty curve, not dependent on players nerfing themselves to grant content a "fighting chance"...

PS: My signature perfectly describes the situation, and it will remain as it is until things change, which seems close to never, if TencentGGG don't want to address it...

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Legatus1982 wrote:

I do not agree with your assessment of viper strike building. Have you ever actually played a viper strike trickster through high maps? I cannot guess from this comment that you have because your comment shows lack of experience playing VS tricksters imo, no offense. The build desperately needs survivability against enemies that aren't dying yet because the DOTs take time to materialize. Escape artist and weave the arcane, when built correctly, provide that survivability. It's not worth trading for the damage.

Dying every couple maps or rerolling every damage mod is not acceptable, even in SC leagues, IMO.

I do think prolonged pain is amazing for VS and would maybe be willing to trade weave the arcane for it if it was not behind another set of bad nodes for VS.

Overall though it doesn't even matter because VS is just trash right now. The old double dipping VS was serviceable because the damage was overwhelming (when you exploited double dipping), like the new double strike, but without double dipping VS lacks the damage to make up for all the faults of a melee DOT build and just ends up being trash. It's truly a dumpster build right now no matter what you do with it.

I have played a dot based trickster and hit red map SSF HC, at lvl 90, relatively recently.
Which likely gives me a lot more experience playing dot trickster than you have, judging by your character being lvl 81 and your gems being lvl 18 (including viper strike ), seriously.
And I have also toyed with viper strike a long time ago, I think that it was before ascendancies though, it has changed but the skill use remains pretty much the same.


You are playing an Acro melee (and a real close combat one) character without Coil, without ToH, without even a basalt flask, without any block nodes, without stuff like Atziri's steps, or even endurance charges .... yeah, no kidding you have survivability problems.

Many ( if not most ) bosses have adds at some point which will trigger the increase recovery, which is one of the biggest boost you could have to your leech from your flat chaos dmg, by the way, that + the increase damage to your dots.
( Killing a boss 20%+ faster also means that you will be endangered for a shorter amount of time.
There is also the notable "fatal toxin" that you should definitely take imo, it's only 3 point and of coures way better than those 12% inc dot dmg.

Why don't you put viper strike in your gloves for single target and use another skill for pack clearing ? You could go high AS reave and I bet you'd have much high clearspeed, and that pseudo 5L viper strike without melee splash would likely just be better for single target.


Anyway, I think that you just made bad choices on your char, that ghost dance ascendancy is pretty much waster on your char since you have nothing to make ES recharge start quickly, and you don't even have a jewel or something that gives you ES on hit ( which you give you an extra 10% dodge against big single targets on most hits ... ).


Patient reaper as a first ascendancy would have made the whole progression smoother imho, really.
And as sofocle is pointing out, there is obviously something about single target namelocking skill such as viper strike : They don't fit the game anymore, as sad as that might sound.
At least definitely not as a main skill.
If you can get bonkers of dmg with that skill then you can use a single target setup and use it for big single targets, and at least it would have an okay purpose ... but clearing packs with viper strike ?
... no, not in the current version of the game, that's definitely not the direction it's going.