Absolutely disapointed -- This game is hard, and not in a fun way.

The biggest issue as I see it is that PoE2 has added Dark Souls-esque elements to the ARPG roots of PoE1 in the form of giving players a dodge button and making enemies have realatively high health and telegraphed attacks that hit for a ton of damage, but hasn't meshed those elements with the rest of the design.

If you're supposed to play the game in a highly mobile fashion (in which case it's not for me, but I'll leave that aside), then the fact that most skills temporarily rob you of being able to directly control your character is pretty bad.

And then there's the fact that you can build for Armour, Evasion and/or Shield through your nodes and equipment which misleads players into thinking those matter and that building those stats gives you more survivability. Which they currently don't because the game is balanced for using dodging to not take damage in the first place. At least when you face anything more special than regular monsters.

You can build for lifesteal, but that's currently also pointless, because the only time you won't be at max health is when you've just been hit and immediately popping a flask is a much safer response to that than trying to claw back your health by hitting enemies with attacks that, because you can't move during the animation, increase the chances of you getting hit again unless you time them just right.

Unlike in (the good) Dark Souls games, using a shield and blocking isn't viable a viable alternative to dodging, because bosses and elites will mostly stagger you in one hit and regular monsters are too numerous to ever make trying to block their attacks a more viable solution than just dodging away from them.

Basically what it amounts to right now is that the way monsters are balanced requires you to play PoE2 like a (bad) Souls-like, while all other elements of the game from the stats on items to gem skills to the nodes on the web are designed for a regular ARPG style of play.

If PoE2 wants to be a Souls-like, it should at least commit to playing like a Souls-like and strip out all the ARPG elements that do nothing but hinder it playing like a Souls-like.

OR, and this would be my preference, it could just not try to be a Souls-like and be a good ARPG instead.

"

RobrechtvE#3064 wrote:

The biggest issue as I see it is that PoE2 has added Dark Souls-esque elements to the ARPG roots of PoE1 in the form of giving players a dodge button and making enemies have realatively high health and telegraphed attacks that hit for a ton of damage, but hasn't meshed those elements with the rest of the design.

If you're supposed to play the game in a highly mobile fashion (in which case it's not for me, but I'll leave that aside), then the fact that most skills temporarily rob you of being able to directly control your character is pretty bad.

You can interrupt all your skills...

It feels like im on the beach the entire time. No flow in game at all.
Drops is for all other classes, reroll and same shit.
My poe 2 bills goes to the fun endgame of poe1!

First impressions - too hard! There is no option for a 'easier' playthrough at the moment.

I don't like being killed a load of times with a relatively 'easy' boss such as the Devourer.

I am glad I only paid $30. I have enjoyed most of it, but I have not enjoyed getting extremely unlucky with the gear, which basically blocked my progress.

I don't mind hard if you give me the tools to make it easier. The tools being the gear or skills. But it feels like I have exhausted all the options, tried different passive tree combinations, different skill combinations, and I just can't deal with the mob ambush in act2.

I presume I could re-roll the character just to attempt to collect better gear. But guess what, I started it, and then realized that I don't want to go through that slog again, I better go play chess. No quicksilver flask, no fast boots, no blink skill, I am out.

To the people saying "get good", let me remind you that the game is chance-based and being "good" is simply sinking more time into it - getting XP to overlevel, collecting gear, or memorizing boss patterns.

Summoner witch, the Count feels impossibly hard for an ARPG.

Your minions are constantly dead, and even throwing all dots at it does 2% of it's life. The fog phase for me it's a constant death roll - it's just "spam flasks and hope to be able to add something in the middle".

Probably with a different build it's a different experience, maybe I'm too early there? Is lvl 17 too low for the first boss? I imagine I could have leveled to 5 my main skills, but I wanted to try a bit of everything - does that make it impossible?

I do agree that the whole experience is rolling around and escaping btw - which is ok I mean, it feels like you need to have some skill and the capacity to time what you are doing. Still, it's quite unrewarding even when you kill gold bosses. Even larger enemies rarely drop anything worth looking at - and there are so many that I already encountered for an early game that I feel like I should at least be full gold - and that is not the case.

Also, gold boxes drop nothing, is that supposed to be like that? Shouldn't they drop at least 1 gold item?

So yes, after the stability thing has been fixed, maybe it's a good idea to look into a little balancing :)

I might to go back to Satisfactory, I'll wait a couple of weeks to see if there are some qol patches being released.

"

Seqea#4393 wrote:

To the people saying "get good", let me remind you that the game is chance-based and being "good" is simply sinking more time into it - getting XP to overlevel, collecting gear, or memorizing boss patterns.

Well...yeah.

It's not POE1. It plays different.

Besides, and so many seem to be forgetting, it's an EA - the final release, which is at least 6 mos away, will likely be quite a bit different.

When has this studio not released anything new that isn't overtuned as hell in the first week. Don't expect this to be any different

I just want to give feedback here. It shouldn't be whining or a demand to change the game.

At first glance the game turned out really great. The graphics are beautiful, discovering and trying out the skills is exciting. Discovering the campaign is (would be) interesting.

Fighting against rare enemies is really fun because they have some cool skills that noticeably affect you or cause damage. However, the fight remains fair. There are no attacks that come out of nowhere unexpectedly and give you a one-shoot. It's a shame there aren't more rare enemies.

The boss fights, on the other hand, are far too difficult. The first boss is absolutely fine as there is a small tutorial during the fight and his attacks are not one-shoots. However, if you come to The King in the Mists, for example, then you have to know certain things that I couldn't understand anywhere. E.g. When the red skill for your cage works on you, you have to stay standing to avoid being caught. Furthermore, the boss, like other bosses, has one-shoot mechanics that seem unfair. We're currently in Act 1 of the campaign here and it feels like the late endgame of POE 1.

Some players think this is cool. To each his own. I wanted to explore a new world, find new items and make an initially weak character grow stronger. If my character's strongest point is rolling, then unfortunately it feels weak and tactically primitive in my eyes.

My POE 1 buddy and I put the game aside for the time being last night. Unfortunately, we didn't even get into Act 2 with the skills we wanted.

Everyone else have fun!

Having rerolled from a minion Witch to a more caster build, I managed to completely stomp all over Act1 boss who I just couldn't do with the previous build since there were no corpses for minions. While it sucks I had to start over in order to do it, it was infinitely easier - and I did it at a lower level than the minion build.

This is telling me honestly, that certain builds are in a TERRIBLE spot. And that makes it artificially difficult. I haven't tried a melee yet, but I'm going to at some point, but everybody has said that it's terrible for the first several levels and will likely be something too difficult to do for me with restrictions.

So far, I think the difficulty I'm finding, is that some builds just don't work right now, and you can't reset that with skill gems and a respec. You might be able to afford the respec but you sure can't get the gems to go with it unless you plan on making another character just to be a burner for skill gems.

There's things I'm hoping get improved, particularly minion builds, because the difficulty for some builds and classes is incredibly stupid compared to others.

"

a_lexandros#0827 wrote:

Summoner witch, the Count feels impossibly hard for an ARPG.

Your minions are constantly dead, and even throwing all dots at it does 2% of it's life. The fog phase for me it's a constant death roll - it's just "spam flasks and hope to be able to add something in the middle".

Probably with a different build it's a different experience, maybe I'm too early there? Is lvl 17 too low for the first boss? I imagine I could have leveled to 5 my main skills, but I wanted to try a bit of everything - does that make it impossible?

I was completely unable to do him as a minion witch, absolutely completely not possible for me. I had to start over, picked up frost orb, flame wall, ed, contagion, bone cage, skeleton sniper and bonestorm. Using a chaos wand and lv 5 skeleton warrior mace for extra minions to have basically as passive damage. Also used ... I think it was the grim feast aura so each time a minion died I was able to refresh my energy shield. I did him ridiculously easily as a caster witch. It feels like some builds aren't in a good spot and I think if they get fixed it'll be so much better