Melee issues: River Hags and more
" Sorry, just no. There is a night and day difference between the hags and the actual broken things that can one shot you in this game without warning or broken combination of monsters that can spawn. Water hags are like scared little kittens compared to the truly dangerous stuff this game throws at you. And I'm not even a great PoE player, I'm just average. Last edited by Gordyne#2944 on Jan 2, 2025, 12:42:50 AM
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" Hey, there very well might be harder and tougher things to deal with. That doesn't mean that River Hags aren't annoying/frustrating for players though. What makes you think that River Hags aren't worth worrying about? |
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" The only case they might be frustrating is if there are several other monsters chilling/freezing/slowing you. But then again it would be the case of broken combination of monsters. The hags themselves are harmless if you have a bit of patience. They will only frustrate players that want to stand still for 10 seconds dpsing something or players that don't focus them before killing the other mobs. You have 3 whole seconds to dodge away and find an opening to kill one of them. Then repeat and kill the next... etc. etc. They have a lot of counterplay A corpse explosion that you can't see that instakills you has almost 0 counterplay. That's something to worry about as melee. When I hear complaints about something that can be countered by just being a little active and moving aroung makes me think a good portion of the playerbase just wants the: "Stand still and hold click to mow down mobs" gameplay with little to zero actual "fight the enemies!" involved. Last edited by Gordyne#2944 on Jan 2, 2025, 1:17:11 AM
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Personally, I wish there were more white mobs with meaningful abilities that you have to look out for. Mapping becomes really boring after a while and every enemy feels the same. Dodging the orbs when several hags are around almost turns the battlefield into a mini-game and I like how it mixes things up.
Warrior PoV btw. I died to hags maybe once or twice during my first playthrough. Last edited by Prügelprinz#9311 on Jan 2, 2025, 1:22:28 AM
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In a vacuum, river hag mechanics is constructed fine, with supposed delays and telegraph. Problems begin when it starts randomly stacking with other mechanics.
First, due to lazy shader compilation, initial orb spawn on top of you results in drown overlay being fully rendered at least halfway through the duration, so 3 sec becomes 1 sec, and 1 death is now enough to eat everything you "deserve" Second, drowning orbs are not seen through walls and some other landscape. Third, you may get hindered in countless other ways by nearby mobs and fail to act on the drowning orb. Forth, if hags spawn in group, all intended choreography is broken and you are better to just run past hags and not waste time killing them. This situation is an example of global problem present in poe1 and now in poe2: GGG doesn't bother with any kind of limitations on their random layers, which turn normally designed mechanics into rippy mess. Group of hags in poe2 is like group of basilisks in poe1 T17. Except now you cannot passively defend against drowning like against petrification |
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" Ah, So this is how you view River Hags? That they're managable, so long as there's not a bunch of other effects. I agree. They're pretty manageable most of the time. " Well, In my experience, If there's a bunch of River Hags, they can be annoying too, especially as a Melee. I could not kill them when I tried, simply because I constantly had bubbles spawning on top of me every 2 seconds. Not giving me a chance to attack. It was very frustrating for me, so much so that I skipped the entire zone. " You do indeed have 3 seconds to dodge away. But unfortunately, we're playing PoE, and it's usually a bit more involved than just having a few River Hags attacking you. There tends to be a large group of other monsters trying to maul you to death too. And they tend to be very fast. I bet you've experienced this too. Being swarmed with enemies, constantly dodging to try to get into a favorable position to fight back. Wouldn't you agree? " Yes, you're right. This game has a lot of things that can insta-kill you. Especially if you have a lot of stuff happening on screen and you can't see. There's lots of things to worry about as a Melee in this game. It feels very unfair sometimes. Frustrating, no? " Well. In your viewpoint. These enemies are easily dealt with. And I can see why. You're very attentive to the game when you play. You take extra care to watch, and pay attention to things, dodge attacks, and hit the right target it sounds like. Why do you think other players want to just stand still though? If I might share my perspective. I'm a veteran gamer, and when I encountered the River Hags. There simply wasn't a solution for them given my character at the time, and how fast I could kill stuff. My gear wasn't the best, and usually there was 4-5 River Hags spawned in the same area, all spamming bubbles on me. It did not give me a chance to counter-attack, I was just dodging. The bubbles they spawn underneath you every 2 seconds, drastically slowed my Melee attackspeed and my movement speed on my Monk and made it impossible to kill anything. It was a frustrating experience because of this. It wasn't a skill issue, just a timing issue. The game simply would not give me an opening to attack them, and every time I tried, I had a bubble spawn under me, and nearly kill me. I ended up skipping the whole zone because of it. Maybe you had stronger gear, or a better build that let you kill them easier. Do you realize, that not everyone has the same experience as you did, with them? |
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there's a lot of melee-unfriendly mechnics in poe2 now, most of them are not allowwing slow pacement.
sunder, supercharge, perfect strike, rolling slam... a lot of slow skills can't even hit once infront of these mechanics. If you dare to use them your map and exp are gone. The best way to avoid the melee-punishing monsters is use defaut attack. sometimes hammer of the gods. passives spent on those bad skills? respect them. currency spent on min-max those bad skill? haha! The effort and money that GGG put into the animation and motion design of these skills are all wasted by the stupid total attack time. People ends up using defaut attack. Any designer with any sense of shame should be ashamed of this situation. |
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Remove on-death effects. They don't belong in fun. They don't belong in a game with melee while casters get to ignore on-death effects.
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Not joking: "reduced Slowing Potency of Debuffs on You" is a good stat. It especially helps melee toons avoid stuff like this! I laugh whenever I see maps give "Players are Cursed with Temporal Chains" because its a whopping 2% 'slow' for my monk.
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The drowning orbs add no fun to the game. I never died to them but the mechanic is just not fun at all. I do enjoy them in PoE1 since they are tied to a pinnacle boss fight and the behaviour of the orbs is better and the visual clarity is better.
For PoE2 I don´t think it is just the orbs being in the game, it is in combination with melee movement skills being very buggy and clunky where you get stuck on random loose pebbles, a small spider, terrain or just having your mouse cursor 1 pixel off from target. If you get real lucky you get rare hags in duos with invulnerability aura, temp bubble and slowing minions in small rooms or narrow passageways where you can get stuck even more. Oh and as nice as the graphics are in this game they really should make dangerous stuff somewhat visible through trees, walls and whatnot if you are on the same side as the dangerous effect. |
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