River hags should have a consistent spawn location for it's drowning orb

It's extremely dangerous to fight the river hag as a close range build, as they often spawn the drowning orb in unpredictable locations. And sometimes even right ontop of the player.

Sometimes they do the animation to spawn the orb but it somehow fails and no orb is spawned.

As the main way to fight the enemy is to wait for the orb to spawn this makes the fight highly unpredictable. It's almost never worth trying to engage with them.

I'm fully for removing one shots such as the drowning orb. I think the mechanic is stupid. But second best is to make it predictable so you can consistently fight a enemy that can one shot any build.

That mob is simply the worst thing that can happen in PoE2 as a game. If you are playing HC + close range character, having 1-shot mechanics (which disregard any of your defenses) is insane. I invested tens of hours in the char, made it to be fully geared and than came to area where several Hags spawned. Dodge-roll from 1 orb into another spawning just on me... instagib. Redit is screaming about this, hoping that this forum will as well so that someone reacts.

That got me in my first hc playthrough.. i knew drowning orbs from pinnacle boss/eater in poe1 and t17 maps.. but didnt expect it being spammed and in tight floors.. and looking so subtile.. in poe1 it is dramatic.. screen gets black. i tried to roll intuitively out but got caught in the tight floor and several of those.. didnt expect this in campaign. Its a true 1 shot or ?
I can live with it but im not sure if this should be more a t17 thing if its 1 shot.. next playthrough i had was fine.. i understood more subtile animation.. yet there can be alot random spawns on screen. Bit divided here

its good. You just have to pay attention.

Sometimes the ground is hidden.. maybe a (missing? Or wrongly configured) opacity setting - obstacles on pathways exist where you cant see through. As usual in poe there can be alot effects on screen. it can be hard to spot it.. in a poe1 environment corpse explosion and drowning orbs were screen wise very dramatic / strongly visible effects.. wild blinking or darkening slowly full screen.
I understand the thrill for 1 shots.

Watch out, I posted a silimar thing yesterday and got accused of noobness.
The mechanic is just too punishing to melees while being irrelevant for ranged.

Also the issue I found is not when you have 1-2 orbs but when you have so many hags that an orb spawns on top of you every second.

Maybe the orb should not also slow you to a standstill or melee actions should be able to resist being slowed somehow. They already slow with the whirlpool maybe that could slow more and the orb less.

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Wilmots#7633 wrote:

its good. You just have to pay attention.

It's okay and you can play around it when there's one or two of them around.

But there usually isn't. It's at least four or five of them around.
Ranged characters can play around that, to the point of actually not being inhibited at all, for melee characters it just becomes incredible tedious to even kill one of them.

Honestly speaking, GGG should take a look at any ranged mob which is not using a pure physical attacks and playtest it ranged vs. melee (actually even projectiles are significantly less dangerous for ranged characters). Dirtiest fix would be a shared cooldown for all special attacks among each mob type.


What would help would be, if any developer actually gametested the game on both a melee and a ranged characters, because right now it seems as if they never did just that.

I want to add that my experience with river hags has turned even worse while playing a magma barrier build. I have even started to tally up which maps can spawn and cannot spawn river hags to avoid them even before entering a map. But as it's impossible to avoid certain maps without taking huge detours, it's impossible to avoid them fully with the current mapping system. It's also not possible to not fight them in a map, as they can spawn as rares and you have to kill the rares.

My build cannot at all safely fight river hags. They have no blockable attacks and having to juggle a donor monster to block and the infinite damage ball at the same time. Is not fun.

I have started to sandbag maps until river hags do not spawn. I am in favor of having them removed at this point.

Another suggestion would be: Bubble can spawn on you, but is immobile.