River hag and death by drowning

Dear Devs,

I want to speak about the water hags that swarm the Utzaal in Normal Act 3 and Cruel Act 1. More specifically, about their water orb spell.
This spell was actually a specific boss spell from POE1. Considering the fact that water hags spawn multiple times and can be as rares, it is absolutely unbalanced for the game (more so for HC), especially if you are melee. It is horrendously punishing for a white mob and not on par with the rest of mobs or bosses from location.

I kid not, I died like 3-5 times on HC as a melee (both cruel act 1 and normal act3). This is not a skill issue and this should be tuned. Nothing in your toolkit can prepare you for 3-4 normal hags or 2 rare hags at the same time. You can't counter it. You simply die if you are unlucky.

Here are the key points why I think this is absolutely unbalanced:

1) Little to no counter play if you have multiple hags in reach;
2) As a melee, orbs can spawn very close to your location;
3) Orbs sometimes go through skill-created walls like warrior stone wall;
4) Orbs will drown you even if you are on the other side of skill-created wall, because the orb hitbox is larger than any skill-created wall;
5) If you charge through the orb with a skill (e.g. shield charge), it will slow you and if you bashed into an enemy, it is a certain death, because of the stagger mechanic + slow. Absolutely brutal for any movement abilities.
6) The hag appears to be a normal white mob, but have an instant death mechanic that is not present throughout any single boss in any act or map. This is not consistent with the mobs/bosses balance across the game.
7) In POE1 you had a pretty solid indicator that you are about to DIE by drowning in a second or so. In POE2 however, your screen turns slightly blue and nothing allows you to understand that you are in GRAVE danger.
8) 3 seconds on drowning is very low reaction window for a near death mechanic.
Especially if it slows you down. You not only need to react accordingly, but also make sure that slow effect will not prevent you from getting out.
9) Bodyblocking game mechanic from mobs in this game makes orbs an absolute threat that makes you evade every single mob completely before hag is eliminated. That slows the location progression by a largest margin of any location in the game;
10) Instant kill spells overall is a very strange design that takes out any preparation or skill from the game encounter and introduces a lot of luck to the game, the game which has planning as it's core features.
11) And yep, it currently ignores any slow-immune mechanics and bypasses them.


Dear developers, please, take a look into that mechanic. So far, this is the biggest balance offense I've seen.

I died the first time to this right now and i was like wth? Was it a bug or was i unlucky? That's why im searching for infos right now to understand what happened.

When this blob is affecting you there is a waving around the screen and a hissing sound to warn you but i dodge rolled backwards and just died instantly with 1.4k hp because i assume the animation of the dodge roll was too slow?

This is imo definitely something that needs a bit of a balancing.

I had one mishap of dying to this as well (playing caster though) and the visual effect is not very clear given how dangerous the effect is. It was previously only present on the Eater of Worlds encounter, which I remember the entire screen becoming "tentacli-fied" once you started to get drowned.

In here, it's far more subtle which I think should be a little more clear given that the monster type is far more common here in POE2, as it's worrysome that a seasoned player like myself also struggles to note the effect & by the time you realise you are in fact drowning, there's not much room or time to try and get out before it's too late.

Agree, they have to rework this feature complete

Died here today as a level 65 hardcore SSF Infernal Summoner.

I can delete bosses in under 20 seconds on average and have nearly capped resistances. Very strong build, worked REALLY hard crafting nearly everything I used. Went from 1.6k HP + 6K ES to zero in two seconds from this BS bubble effect.
Incredible.

There is no information that you will instantly die although I did roll out of it as soon as I could but apparently this wasnt quick enough still (have 25% ms boots).

Uninstalled until this game gets more work (and they probably nerfing my build soon anyway) I dont really care to keep going at the present meta and putting in this time to just die like this in two seconds with no real way to counter it.

Been playing POE since closed beta POE1 and find this type of mechanic quite incredible.

Goodluck out there boyos.

"

Izerion#7574 wrote:

This is not a skill issue and this should be tuned.

I mean.. It is a skill issue.. Quite literally.
That's the logical way of looking at it since it's def doable to go up against even several rares.

Now is it prob overtuned? Ye, prob. But using what is essential a hyperbole statement doesn't rly help anyone that is supposed to take in the feedback you are trying to provide lol.

I don't know how many times i died to this and lost maps out of it.

For me it is just not visible until i am dead on the ground, i used the steam replay each time to check wth was going on.

This need attention asap...

Lost a character in HC due to the Hags, which propted me to check on this.

Seems all of the things that prevent slow are broken.

Unique boots, Charms, Ascendencies.

Seems like a core mechanic issue given how it appears universal.

"

Pandaabear#6797 wrote:

I mean... It is a skill issue... Quite literally.

And here we go again—another dismissive and judgmental comment, lacking consideration or compassion. Acting as though an unfair "gotcha" mechanic is some kind of necessary skill check for fighting obscure normal monsters is unproductive and misses the point entirely. There’s almost always someone—usually a former PoE 1 player—who shows up to flaunt their ego and derail discussions that advocate for proper changes.

It’s neither skillful nor healthy to constantly be on edge while playing hardcore because of a clearly broken mechanic. Hardcore mode already has plenty of challenging, skill-based mechanics to deal with—there’s no need to prove “skill” over something this poorly designed.

What’s next? Like others trolling this issue, are you going to say the insta-kill mechanic is justified because it exists in some PoE 1 boss mechanic (or the Trial end-boss) and then leap to the conclusion that it should also casually apply to normal monsters like River Hags? That kind of reasoning is just unreal and a clear mental fallacy.

"

Frice#6584 wrote:

Died here today as a level 65 hardcore SSF Infernal Summoner.

I can delete bosses in under 20 seconds on average and have nearly capped resistances. Very strong build, worked REALLY hard crafting nearly everything I used. Went from 1.6k HP + 6K ES to zero in two seconds from this BS bubble effect.
Incredible.

There is no information that you will instantly die although I did roll out of it as soon as I could but apparently this wasnt quick enough still (have 25% ms boots).

Uninstalled until this game gets more work (and they probably nerfing my build soon anyway) I dont really care to keep going at the present meta and putting in this time to just die like this in two seconds with no real way to counter it.

Been playing POE since closed beta POE1 and find this type of mechanic quite incredible.

Goodluck out there boyos.

Smart choice—no need to invest your time and energy into a game managed by a company (or perhaps one stubborn developer obsessed with River Hags) that refuses to address insidious, overly predatory, and poorly designed mechanics like this. Instead, they seem content to watch players suffer and quit while attempting to enjoy their game—if because they believe having "enough" players means it may not matter to them.

Since the first week, there have been hundreds of bug reports and feedback threads raising concerns about the River Hag Drowning issue, yet nothing has been done. Many players are still even frustrated with the completely unnecessary volume of after-death explosions and the egregious River Hag insta-kill mechanic. These problems are actively driving players away from the game, whether the developers care to notice or not.

I also had made a bug report regarding this, along with many others on this forum:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3703993/page/1#p25889594

People on steam are also lighting up about this issue:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2694490/discussions/0/598513524566678003/?ctp=3

It takes literally one line of code to disable this nonsense and save thousands of hours of players' time unfairly wasted—especially in hardcore mode. The issue isn’t getting the fair attention it deserves because the majority of players are on softcore, or perhaps because there’s one developer somewhere who thinks it’s “cool” to have a random normal monster with an insta-kill mechanic. What’s the logic here? Was it a contractual obligation with Tencent to include insta-kill River Hags?

Meanwhile, constructive feedback is being derailed by trolls who would rather play devil’s advocate than admit this mechanic is poorly designed. Rationalizing it with pseudo-positive arguments doesn’t change the fact that it’s a bad feature. There’s no reason to try and polish a turd; something so fundamentally flawed—it was a bad idea to add it, and it’s a bad idea to keep it.