PoE 2 Early Access Notes. Played as Minion Witch

PoE2 early access notes.

My experience playing as a witch minion build, plus general feedback. Mostly bugs or balance. Some of these points might have been addressed since I started writing.


My build: Witch minion build. I invested points ca 50/50 into life and damage.
- Minions are underpowered. They are too weak, frail, and too Spirit intensive.
- They die to most magic or rare packs I meet, and on bosses they melt almost instantly. Gets worse the further into the game I got.
- From level 1 to act 3 I out-DPSd my minions using skills myself. Bonestorm especially was alone far more powerful than my minions.
- Highest minion damage I can possibly do is to have the Skeletal Snipers fire their poison into fire, exploding for a burst of damage. Unreliable since the skill does not always trigger for some reason.
- Summons unsummon/die when barely off-screen. They should not die at all merely from distance. Teleport them to you instead without triggering the revive cooldown.

Character
- My character is too frail. Multi-projectile skills shotgun and almost always instantly kills me. Bosses 2-3 shot me while stun-locking me, while some non-"red" attacks are 1 shot attacks.
- I often die without understanding what killed me, and since every mob is reset and randomized I cannot go back to the same mob to try to understand.
- I took the node that makes damage drain Mana before Life, and without it I would have died so many times over from 1-shots. After taking it it almost felt mandatory to take due to the lack of survivability without it.

Skills
- Bonestorm. It's hits hard, but sometimes it seems like it doesn't hit at all. Funky hitbox or trajectory.
- All minion skills with a Manual skill seem to sometimes just not happen. Doesn't seem like neither I nor my minions are stunned, or dead when this happens.

Bosses
- Act 1 final boss is very overtuned for an Act 1 boss: He's cool as hell, but I felt most of my time was spent dodging and avoiding attacks instead of actually fighting.
- Hyena raid leader boss at the start of act 2 was incredibly frustrating because of the arena, and adds did not give flask charges.
- Bosses feel like their adds either do not give flask charges, or less than 1 charge per mob killed.
- Boss adds may not leave a corpse for minion-build purposes. Act 1 final boss is extra hard because of this.
- Boss arenas often feel slightly too small.
- Act 2 boss was mechanically easier than Act 1 boss.
- Unique monkeyboss in start of act 3 one-shots you despite not being an unblockable move. Has near perfect tracking as well.
- For reference, I had around 600-ish hp + 250 energy shield, plus the node that takes mana before life when you're hit, so 400+ more effective life. Still one-shot by the monkey.
- Overall the boss mechanics and overall fights are great, but their damage is just insane, and slightly too fast with certain attacks.

Wording/skill description
- "Increased area of effect" is still unclear. +40% should mean a radius of 1 becomes 1.4. But it only increases to 1.1. I have no idea what kind of math is done behind the scenes, but it's not intuitive to understand.

UI
- Some checkboxes and functions are not intuitive. Most noticeable: Right-clicking a skill in the skill menu to activate, and in gemcutting to show all applicable gems instead of just the recommended ones.
- Minion stats are unreliable. Their stat-sheet states they deal just a few points of damage, like 1-5. Clearly incorrect. Don't know what else might be wrong.
- Boss HP bar obscures far too much of the top screen, often leading to being hit by easily avoidable attacks if you're below the boss.
- Enable opening the gemcutting menu without using an uncut gem. Could not find the entry in options.
- Map needs a better icon for the player position. Looks a bit too similar to the objective markers.
- Secondary/bonus objective icons on the map are not too clear on whether they are completed or not.
- Secondary/bonus objective icons on the map are not "logically" placed in terms of the actual location in the area they're in. If the icon is on the left of the area on the map, you'd expect it to be to the west when you explore.

Loot
- Crafting currency drop rate is very low. When I stopped playing I only had 2 Alchemy, 4 Regal, 5 Exalted, and 1 Chaos orb.
- Useful gear in general extremely rarely drops. For instance, I have found just a few rings by act 3. Perhaps like 6 in total?
- The first half of act 2 hardly had gems drop. Might just be my luck, but it felt bad.
- Loot drops seems unbalanced. I have found a LOT of chest armor, 2-handed maces, bows, and crossbows. Everything else is noticeable rarer.

Movement
- The dodge-roll feels "sticky", as you slow down by the end of the roll. Feels really bad.
- Enemies can push your character and minions around at will. It's like mobs have infinite mass and you are made of scrap paper. Same applies during dodge-roll. Enemies that roll or keep moving as part of their attack become very annoying.
- Minions rarely crossed smaller passages or doors. In the Dreadnought map in Act 2 they almost never wanted to cross the small bridges.

Graphics and performance.
- I have a 2080. Used default settings. In hubs it dropped dramatically to 30-40 fps. Some areas had smaller hickups. However, FPS was mostly fine throughout all areas I visited with smaller drops to 50-ish fps.

Other comments
The skill-gem system in PoE 1 is fantastic. I really don't see how this new one is supposed to be an improvement. This might be some "immersion" issue on my part, but it made sense in PoE 1. You slotted gems into gear, that then lent their power to the player. In PoE 2, the gems are just slotted into a menu, completely "disconnected" from the character. I feel they could still have the system where you slotted them into gear, while leveling them up with uncut gems as in the new system. It would have been fine, and still kept the direct connection to the character. Now, this disconnect between the character and skill-gems just feels bad when we had such a great system before.
I might be wrong, but weren't there lore-reason for skill gems working that way as well?
I suppose this is a minor point, but it just irks me the wrong way.

In act 3 and level 35 I decided I was done with PoE 2 for the time being. Will stop playing until big a big balance patch is out, and enemies have their damage and speed nerfed. But especially their damage.

"Dodge or die" mechanics suck. 1-shot mechanics suck. Already with the Act 2 boss it had a few moves that somehow felt like an MMO boss to me, and that is not a compliment. Please for the love of god I hope that end-game superbosses are not some dumb dance that you gotta nail or you are just dead.
Overall it feels very difficult compared to PoE 1. If this difficulty is intended I can't see how this will bring in more players, and most importantly, KEEP players playing the game.

Essentially just negative things in here! The game has a fantastic design over the board, but is overly difficult. I'd say I am a somewhat better played than most, but only in the top 25% or so, and it's too much of a struggle to be enjoyable in its current state.

I am also playing as summoner witch and all your points are valid. I stopped playing mid act II, I waited too long for it to get better. apparently it never becomes better, just more slog. idk GGG is high or something

"

Kormakr#2070 wrote:

PoE2 early access notes.


Wording/skill description
- "Increased area of effect" is still unclear. +40% should mean a radius of 1 becomes 1.4. But it only increases to 1.1. I have no idea what kind of math is done behind the scenes, but it's not intuitive to understand.

To clear up confusion about how area relates to the radius of a circle. The area scales exponentially with increases to radius, meaning that your new 1.1 meter radius actually will become a circle with 40% increased area.

Area of circle = πr2 = (3.14) x (radius)squared so

Original Area = (3.14) x 1 x 1 = 3.14 square meters

Increased area = (3.14) x 1.1 x 1.1 = 3.8 square meters

that's a 21% increase but I suspect that they are rounding down the decimal to 1.1 when it could be anywhere between 1.10 and 1.19 or something, which could get you to the 40% when nearer to 1.2.

TLDR: It might seem like they did the math wrong, but they most likely didn't. :D

I don't mean to distract away from your feedback, it's just that other readers might have similar suspicions about how the area seems incorrect.

I agree with OP, currently L29 and the fun factor is not there to play.

"

Remcycle#3184 wrote:

"

Kormakr#2070 wrote:

PoE2 early access notes.


Wording/skill description
- "Increased area of effect" is still unclear. +40% should mean a radius of 1 becomes 1.4. But it only increases to 1.1. I have no idea what kind of math is done behind the scenes, but it's not intuitive to understand.

To clear up confusion about how area relates to the radius of a circle. The area scales exponentially with increases to radius, meaning that your new 1.1 meter radius actually will become a circle with 40% increased area.

Area of circle = πr2 = (3.14) x (radius)squared so

Original Area = (3.14) x 1 x 1 = 3.14 square meters

Increased area = (3.14) x 1.1 x 1.1 = 3.8 square meters

that's a 21% increase but I suspect that they are rounding down the decimal to 1.1 when it could be anywhere between 1.10 and 1.19 or something, which could get you to the 40% when nearer to 1.2.

TLDR: It might seem like they did the math wrong, but they most likely didn't. :D

I don't mean to distract away from your feedback, it's just that other readers might be confused about that particular thing in the game.

I see. I wish they just did radius instead, really. Much easier to understand at a glance!

Ya, that could be a simple solution.
I hope your feedback contributes to get minion skills in a better spot!

played as minion witch with a friend. we hit brickwall @wolfboss with lvl 18.
invested every skillpoint in minionlife and they are dying like its nothing.
Its just boring not feeling the strengh of items and the skilltree.
maybe thats it for us for now. its just not fun to play.

Witch Summoner here too and I agree with OP's feedback, except about skill gems. The Ultimatum you have to do at the end of the campaign in Act 3 is just cruel. I think 10 rounds of that is waaaay too much and its heavily overturned like it was in poe1 when Ultimatum came out.

I'm loving the game so far but when I came to the Ultimatum thing in act 3 it really did ruin my experience. I really cannot stand Ultimatum and if you want to remove it from the game GGG you will get no argument from me lol.

Maybe 3 or 4 rounds of it would be okay but 10! No way. I cannot seem to get past doing 3 rounds before they completely overwhelm me and destroy me. The minions just melt like butter on a hot knife to the Ultimatum mechanics and I'm left walking backwards trying to kite them till my minions rez again. Not fun imo.

Fully agree with this Post from Op.
Hope GGG make´s some changes and give Minions a little Boost the Balancing has to come. I don´t want to slice trough to everything and have to be OP, but Minions and some Skills do not enough Damage it takes the Fun to play this Build in the Long Term.

Minions are straight up incapable of surviving right now, with as much life as a reasonable person can give them, they die instantly and do no damage with every damage boost possible.

Something is wildly out of balance

BUT I have other classes I can try out for now while they fix it