Balance - Difficulty, Cheapness/Fairness, Toxicity, Accessibility.

Path of Exile 2 has huge potential as a framework for providing challenging and fun experiences, but I feel like a number of the currently designed encounters aren't fun or accessible. It's also clear that due to the souls-like nature of the game, there's a lot of elitism, gate-keeping & "Git gud or leave" sort of mindset, which might not even be reasonable when you're experiencing a more difficult fight due to various factors (class, build, loot, etc - everything will vary between players)

Because I don't feel like the systems are well balanced currently, especially in the first 3 acts, I'll try to bring up a number of details that I find need an adjustment.

- 1-shot mechanics. Bosses in the earlier Acts should not be able to 1 shot you, unless it's an attack that has a big wind-up & clear AOE. Those attacks shouldn't be spammed and might only be used like once or twice per the fight (change of phase maybe, etc). If it's a big attack, then it would be good to limit the damage of that attack to 90% of the player's health (non-mitigatible) if you wish to give a sense of urgency to that attack, without making it a "1-shot attack". 1-shots aren't fun, they're cheap especially if the boss might spam them (Bird fight in Trial of Chaos, Rakjaw with the fire flurry attack followed with 3 earthquake slams when you're outside of melee, slam from Silverfist, etc). This point also includes the fact that currently the vision is limited and the big 1 shot attack might not even be visible for you when it happens. You don't learn with 1 shots anyway if bosses spam them, you already know that you will die if you get hit (Sure you can learn the timing, but you can also learn timings by taking big attacks that take 90% of your HP as well), the fact is that a lot of 1 shots have homing elements to them, don't have a clear wind-up from the boss (Trials's bird boss can shoot a nova of feathers with close to a 0.5 second wind-up & that's a boss you haven't faced in Act 3)

-Trials of Chaos is not balanced & is unreasonable with its modifiers. This game-mode should either be removed until it is better balanced, or get a fix asap. The AOEs of some modifiers is crazy (the growing AOE is literally a screensized AOE that deals 90% of your HP dmg, or might even 1 shot you, AT LEVEL 1). I'm sorry, but what's the point of leveling up modifiers when their initial state even at level 1 is completely messed up (enrage boss which will make an already difficult boss who can 1 shot you even worse, Screenwide AOE that you have to run out of while escorting the statue, Corrupting lasers or lightning arcs that ruin your boss fight, because you have to time your dodges for the lasers and what happens when the boss attacks u with a 1 shot while you're rolling - death, and not a fair one..). Reduce the AOE of level 1 modifiers, they should be far smaller (especially the growing one or the ones with significant effects with large AOEs. Some of them could be made to be 30-50% of their current size and it'd still be annoying to deal with, but not as bad, same with lasers and lightning towers that literally also do attacks in a screen-wide AOE, AT LEVEL 1). Remove the 1 shots from the bosses in trials, or use a %hp modifier for those bigger attacks. Remove bosses that the player has yet to fight in the Acts (you literally have checkpoints when facing those bosses normally, but who thought it would be fun to put that boss with a number of 1 shot mechanics behind a 20 minute trial?)

- The initial 1-3 Acts should NOT pay for re-specs, especially when they're still getting used to the spells, skills etc. Ascendancy should also be able to be adjusted during the first stage of ascendancy. The 2nd ascendancy could be a "WARNING: Are you sure you will lock in this build?". The first acts SHOULD be a "getting used to the game and its mechanics" section. If you're making the game this difficult, at least allow the players to not lock in a bad build in a way that they might need to re-roll their characters (which is again, not fun).

- Create a section for "Most popular builds" on the skill tree screen and show like the top 3 of the most popular ones. Same with spells. Everyone who wants can have their own builds, but as POE1 had a majority of players follow optimized builds, then with the difficulty increase in POE 2 it only makes sense for new players to have an easier access to currently viable popular builds. We already have support gem recommendations, this would pretty much just be an improvement on that system by accumulating details across all characters. This could be as simple as "Look at what skills are the most used on your character" ("x% of players use this skill") or "look at what spells are most used on your class". This way there will be less separation between players and the skill trees can be more accessible.

- The bosses that have the most people die to them, especially in the early 1-3 Acts should get looked at, and the reasons why people die to them. It's unreasonable to hope new players to do perfectly timed dodges 10 times in a row for a boss while keeping up optimal DPS. Big attacks should have cooldowns to them, the speed of some movements may need to be slightly reduced initially (There's always a chance to raise the difficulty in later Acts). For example the 2nd Act boss can start the 2nd phase at 60% hp, and you will not be able to recharge your potions during the 2nd phase at all, which can cause huge problems for casters or classes that rely on mana for damage. By the end of the 2nd act boss I was literally out of mana and HP pots completely, and dodged while auto attacking the boss for like 2 minutes straight - not fun.

- Some bosses need a bit more clear tooltips. Such as the Chimera boss should have the tower HP visible (it's not clear that you can attack Towers while the Chimera is on them), or for example the djinn boss who you have to "find" to stop him from killing you with poison. I don't like the way how you pretty much have to die because of lack of information from the games side. You can add in more voice lines to indicate attacks "I will smash you" (which indicates a slam attack) or "You'll die without being able to touch me" something akin to that (you can ofc do far better than these lines). I also saw some Ash boss where the mechanic is that you have to go inside a fire wall area to not get insta-deleted (which also needs to be clear to players. Saw a guy with a Hardcore character die to it, which is something that shouldn't really happen)


I will add more points to this thread later, but quite honestly it's really sad seeing how much toxicity is rampant with players screaming for help with bosses, while others go "git good" for reasonable complaints about poor design decisions. It's honestly a huge problem for the future of this game imho, especially this early into the release where things should be looked through the lens of "what's reasonable" and what should be changed. In this game the first 3 Acts have bosses that are close to the difficulty of POE 1's endgame as simple bosses. There can be skillchecks, but those should be made in a way that's educational (where a person will get better with certain mechanics) not be a matter of luck where if a boss attacks with a certain 1 shot attack at a bad moment (outside of screen, no wind-up, etc).

POE2 is really great with its gameplay and the gameplay is what I enjoy, but the bad balance and unfair game systems has just made it frustrating. I can get through those bottlenecks, because I'm more on the hardcore side, but I know a lot of people cannot & the current systems in this game aren't set up in a way to help guide them onto the "right path".

Edit: Wished to note that Trial of Chaos seems to have gotten some nerfs to its modifiers (which is great), haven't had a chance to try it out, but it at least seems like a step in the right direction (the last few quick patches seem to be all going towards a good direction - really great job!). I still got a boss I hadn't fought previously which isn't ideal, but hopefully the trial will keep moving in a good direction for the general playerbase.

Edit 2:
I will just add that while I haven't reached the mapping area (currently going through Cruel), I saw Kripparians video on it, and based on him, it also seems like the endgame is far more toxic/cheap in terms of the balance then I thought. No matter how much HP/ES you have, you will still get 1 shot if you miss a dodge against a certain bosses/casters, there's no point of relaxation (aka it's a high stress game) and it's only worse for melee characters (Saw a guy jump at a drowned hag, dude got 1 shot the moment he landed cuz of the water orb). Then it seems like you lose your map + 15% xp while constantly dancing with death? I honestly think that it won't make for a long term game. People will just play through the campaign and leave afterwards - which isn't what GGG as a company should want. The endgame should be rewarding and one where you can progress step-by-step (and buy stash tabs/cosmetics in the meantime), but it seems like there's a point where you might stop your progress due to the map difficulty, or just bad luck.
There should be content for both the casual and also the hardcore - currently it seems like casuals can get some enjoyment out of the campaign (similar to an Elden Ring sort of experience), but due to the difficulty it might be that they also might quit playing due to the difficulty (& won't be back for the new season due to the difficulty of the campaign).

Very good analysis - bump