ARPG Souls gameplay feedback - issues with speed and visibility

Ill try to be brief.

I like the attempt to make combat more deliberate and consequential but there are some glaring issues (possible PoE1 design leftovers) that are heavily at odds with the new direction.

One of the biggest issue is visibility, player effects overlapping enemy effects/abilites (gas clouds and firewall especially) and making them invisible leading to instant deaths that you can do nothing about because you literally couldnt see whats happening, this wouldnt matter in a game like PoE1 where stats/resistances make it so youre basically invulnerable to all common threats.

Terrain/Scenery covering the playable ground is also a problem. Especially the Feythorne biome and some of the walls/indoor areas in act 2 where you can again die very easily simply because you werent able to see anything for just a brief moment and the penalty in this game for not having all important information is very high.



The other big issue is speed specifically with regular mobs/rares. Bosses tend to not have this issue. There are significant discrepancies between classes here.

A lot of skills want to commit you significant animation time, even some skills that SHOULD get you away from danger like monks tier 1 "ice block retreat". This particular skill is so slow that ive commonly been stunned during the animation (the airflip) which canceled the animation early. I am well aware there are supports that stop this from happening but that is NOT the point.
The point is that this skill is a retreating aoe chill and even act 1 enemies are so fast at rushing you down that the skill cant actually fulfill its primary function which is to create space and or avoid attacks.

I want you to imagine this for a moment:
You play dark souls and every pack of mobs can close the gap between aggroing and melee range in under 1 second but you yourself have regular dark souls animation speed. Thats what it feels like using some of these abilities in act3 especially with all the hasted utzal mobs.

On the other hand ranger has to commit very little animation time for massive payoffs making lategame ranger poison cloud - explosion loadouts. This particular loadout plays like a PoE1 character in PoE2 and its quite jarring.

This is a common theme where the most functional classes right now are the ones that need to commit the least animation time.

Ironically the bossfights are designed with this in mind so you usually have enough time to get your swings in but the mobbing/rares/uniques in particular are extremely unforgiving in how fast they can rush you down compared to some of the tools the game wants you to use.

I think its fine if some skills are slower but the ones that seem specifically designed to create space or fling you through the air with long airtime either need to be invulnerable during the air or have massively sped up animations. I think certain mobs in general could do with a movement speed slow and playerspeed should be fairly unified to not create massive discrepancies in viability. Anything faster than the wolves in act 1 is probably too fast if you want to keep this level of incoming damage but players shouldnt be able to outrun them.

Again if you want combat to be deliberate you need to allow players to actually have tools and time to make decisions.

site went down after posting >_>