Are the game producers making fools of us, or maybe they want to discourage us from playing POE?

Due to the constant being killed by enemies and because of this - the lack of progress in the game, I decided to check the game logic, its legitimacy and how realistically the player can influence the progress of the game or the control of its progress.

I decided to play as many games as possible, adjusting my gameplay to the map conditions. Since then, I have played over 200 games. All the time I was playing Hierophant at level 92.
Equipement with all games 21lvl and quality +23:
Martyr of inocence + Holy Flame Totem + Faster Projectiles + Elemental Focus + Fire Penetration Support + Controlled Destruction + Energy Leach.
Memory vault + Purity of elements + Discipline + Flame Dash + Flame Golem.
Shavronne's Vrappings + Steelskin + Second Wind + Efficacy + Increased Duration + Holy relic + flammability.
Empire's Grasp + Holy Flame Totem + Greater Multiple Projectiles + Multiple Totems + Knockback.
Torchoak step + Cast when damage taken + Phase run + Shock nova + Summon skeleton.
Doryani's invitation, Karui charge, Mings Heart, Death loop.

All of that gave me ~40.000.000 experience points on single hour with (when activated) about 65k dps, all resistances ~80%, 1500 HP, 2500 shield, 2500 mana, 1800 def (with 23% dmg reduction), every aligment avoidance = 100% and it blocks from chaos baypassing energy shield

To establish some regularity and reduce the number of variables as much as possible:
To increase my chances of survival, I decided to completely stop fighting those bosses who are unpredictable (very fast, long-range, etc.) and therefore able to deliver a single, sudden blow that could be fatal. I fought only those who were easy to control from a distance (Boss from the maps: Peninsula, Arana, Sulfur Vents, Ashen Wood, Cursed Crypt, Pen, Promenade, Cemetery, Arid Lake; on the other maps I avoided fighting the bosses completely). All this was done on rare maps with a quality of about 50% with parameters increasing the parameters of the bosses (which I did not fight against), but not affecting the other enemies or negative player parameters such as lower performance from the flasks increasing the parameters.
To increase my chances, I usually played on maps with a lot of open spaces, so that when enemies appeared, I would place 2 or 4 totems (which would draw attention to myself), and be able to escape to a safe distance into free space. In case of greater danger, I invoked the group of Vaal Sceletons. As my character is not a tank, but is a ranged mage with high damage, but a low defense parameter - I was avoiding Abyss, I did not activate negative totems increasing the probability of finding loot (but lowering stats, and I immediately left the maps on which it appeared Syndicat.

After spending a long time with the game, it was possible to conclude that the game is designed only to bring its creators profit at the expense of convincing players that the player has total control over the progress of the game. However, no rules can be considered verifiable and binding, and they can be changed without the knowledge of the players and often act to their detriment. The game lacks basic information that would seem necessary at the stage of the game, and due to their lack, the gameplay can be considered illogical.

I noticed a certain negative regularity. The only time I got more than 6 parts (out of 20) of the experience bar (usualy I'm not even able achieve more than 4-5 parts of experience bar). That one time I scored 14/20. The next day I lost all parts of my experience playing on maps with identical parameters (remember that death means losing 2 parts). First, Syndicate Exile appeared on the map, and it attacked me immediately, dealing fatal damage. I left the map. On another map, I was attacked by a normal-looking group of ordinary mobs that appeared out of nowhere and prevented me from moving thanks to the group stun, which resulted in me dying. And so until it has cleared the experience bar completely. At this stage, for some reason, the number of random hindering factors became so large that it was impossible to progress, because it is not known for what reason - very strong enemies appeared on the maps (which was not due to the parameters of the map) or there were unexplained situations from which my character for unknown reasons she died ... which had not happened the day before, when I gained 14 slices of experience bar without suffering a single death.
This may suggest the existence of a mechanism (algorithm) in the game that is responsible for allowing the player to progress (or blocking this progress) in the game. It looked as if some kind of counter was used to count the number of enemies killed or the amount of experience gained in order to stop the player from his progress in the game. The use of such an algorithm by developers, however, deprives players of the sense of further gameplay, because it makes the game completely independent of the player, and the entire development system is irrelevant because as a result - it has no real impact on the game.

This game is a fake

"

neosphoros wrote:

about 65k dps, all resistances ~80%, 1500 HP, 2500 shield, 2500 mana, 1800 def (with 23% dmg reduction), every aligment avoidance = 100% and it blocks from chaos baypassing energy shield

Your character is paper and your dmg is not enough (by far) to nuke everything before it has a chance to to hit you. Maybe a few years ago you could have fun with those stats. In 3.19 though, definitely not.

Stack HP or energy shield and go determination+molten shell. Essentially like what every build is doing. And you really need way more dmg (look for 500k+ dps for mapping).

You need at least 5500 life with layered defenses, or a ton of ES with some life.

You can't expect to survive without that in the current state of the game. Something WILL show up to murder you. If you're fragile, you will die. If you play carefully, you will die as a fragile character. This is pretty well known, as the mechanics of the game are designed to actually hit you, so pure avoidance is impossible in some instances. I've played a ranger and am aware of this because of that.

Your best bet is to get as tanky as possible, while still allowing yourself the needed damage to clear areas. If you're playing full glass cannon, you're going to die a lot. Especially on bosses. The bosses do a lot of errant "low" damage filler, which means you'll get clipped by a fireball, smacked by a hit, or simply burst from something that seems fairly weak.

This is why being fragile is bad. You'll simply get clipped or smacked by something you don't expect, and boom dead. Even with 5500 hp, layered defenses including high chance to block, fortify, and a great deal of other minor effects, as well as determination aura or purity of elements; you'll still end up getting hit ONE TIME and dying to situations in maps tier 11+ if the mods are bad enough.

The logic is, the game kills you.

This is why SC is bad. If he played HC and rip, he will think twice before making another one 4k hp build, learn some game mechanics and try something new, but on SC he can endlesly feed and blame GGG, as many people do.

"

Alendert wrote:

This is why SC is bad. If he played HC and rip, he will think twice before making another one 4k hp build, learn some game mechanics and try something new, but on SC he can endlesly feed and blame GGG, as many people do.

Even with high HP builds (7k+) you still see HC players getting oneshot by random stuff. There's a practical level of HP that can be attained without bricking your damage, and then there's the hardcore level of hp.

You have no damage AND you are paper thin. What the heck did you expect? Not only is your gear bad for that level and build, Holy Flame Totem is a super low damage skill (due to its utility) AND you are using terrible supports. Faster Proj sucks for this. Energy Leech does nothing because it's leeching for the totem, not you.

Before you blame the game, you may want to actually learn how to build a character properly.

"

funplayer wrote:

Even with high HP builds (7k+) you still see HC players getting oneshot by random stuff. There's a practical level of HP that can be attained without bricking your damage, and then there's the hardcore level of hp.

Pure HP doesn't make you tanky. And oneshots are not random. Where one character will die another will facetank with less hp.

I still remember video when one guy got one shot with over 200000 energy shield (yes 200 thousands). It was headhunter build and it got ripped by dd. couldnt find video thou.

improvise - adapt to a changing game and overcome. Maybe OP should get more EHP

i dont know how much damage a full unique reverse knockback holy flametotem ming's heart build does, but maybe also a Lack of CC / fast clear leads to getting hit more often.

BTW how do you leech life/ES with totems? Does Chieftain enable all forms of leech with totems? (Atziri belt and energy leech support)

also check the posthistory / charakters of posters :^)

Hey the build might not get you where you want to be, but I gotta say good effort.

At the build level you are at, I can only suggest checking guides and browsing around in other builds to compare. It's like you say, the game itself does not offer build hints or such and to go and try every option is too much (unless that's what you enjoy - some players do).


So builds now are made a bit different than one might expect. I think the default case is to check skill gems and chose options that go well with it. You chose holy flame totem and supported it with stuff and with that reached a certain point (or hit a wall).

The most successful builds now are more based on scaleable patterns and next supplemented with the optimal skill gems. Dot scaling, attribute/armour/accuracy stacking, warcry scaling, etc. These are not the type of builds you'll just easily run into when playing the game. They're far from obvious.

Some skills gems can carry, like Seismic Trap. So a new player can get lucky a bit with that choice and it will do fine and they are probably wondering why people are complaining :-). Holy Flame totem - well, here you are. Glad you didn't start with animate guardian.

Anyway, as you are playing totems - perhaps have a look at Mathil's Shockwave Totem guide.