Monster Slam Attacks Incentivize Glass Cannons

*Monster Slam Attacks*

I like 0.2 and how it’s developing. I'm playing a (improvised and suboptimal) bleed ritualist and having a lot of fun. I’m up to t10 maps, SSF except for a 1 div spear that’s helping a lot. I enjoy the fast, pyrotechnic nature of PoE1, and I also love PoE2’s slower tactical vision, and I really hope the two games remain distinct in this way.

That said, in PoE2 I think monster slam attacks as they’re currently designed are getting in the way of that tactical vision.

By monster slams, I’m talking about hard-hitting attacks that cannot be blocked, cannot be evaded, and can hit you through a dodge roll. These attacks have issues with clarity and mitigation that leave them feeling mostly tolerable during the campaign but awful at mapping density.


*The Red glow*

Boss monsters glow red before an unblockable attack, a clear cue that it’s time to change your positioning. Normal mobs do not. This wouldn’t be so bad if slams had consistent vertical windups. Many of them do, but many do not.

The Vaal behemoth guy has a blockable hit where he lifts his leg and kicks. The Mawdun wheel-carrying dude has an unblockable slam where he lifts his leg and stomps.
Vaal forgemasters have a very telegraphed fire slam, but Vaal undead guards slam all the time with little windup.
Some monsters have blockable hits where they punch you, but unblockable slams where they punch the ground under you.

The game teaches us in the first area to watch for the red glow, but then breaks that rule when we’re fighting minions. Some slams feel clear and some feel arbitrary. I don’t mind dying to a windup slam, but dying to a slam that looks like a hit feels bad. And I’d like to be more frightened of a big boss’ red glow than white mob slam spam.




*Shockwaves*

Some monster slams send out shockwaves in a forward line or cone. Vaal undead guards and Azak stalkers are the big ones here. If you dodge backward the cone catches you for huge damage. Combine this with the fact that you’re often fighting in cramped maps where you can only dodge backwards, and it feels pretty bad.

On dark maps it’s also very difficult to see the shockwaves. On a tileset like Sump, it’s extremely easy to die to what looks like nothing, realize there’s a stalker in the corner of the screen, and deduce through clever sleuthing that it was probably a shockwave.

These monsters can close distance pretty quickly - do they need the cone? Does the cone need to do as much damage as the close range hit itself?





*Mitigation*

So if we can’t dodge or block slams and sometimes don’t have room to maneuver, how do we defend against them? As a new player four months ago, I thought I could ameliorate this by getting more armor. Sweet, my character sheet says 90% expected physical mitigation, how great is that. Wait why am I dead again.

When I found out about the armor formula I felt downright betrayed.

Armor already slows us down, making us more likely to get hit by slams. Please at least make it more effective against them. I’d love to have a stat I could focus on to help with slams. In lieu of that, we’re left with…




*Just offscreen them*

Or at least kill them before they can do anything.

The combination of endgame monster density + map clutter is brutal. When you can see the slams coming, you often can’t dodge to the side because there’s a tree, or an urn, or a patch of something that looks like ground but is actually impassable.
Sometimes you don’t see the slams coming, because the monster did it offscreen and the shockwave hit you.
Sometimes you see the slam coming and dodge it, right into another slam.

When I try to engage with a monster’s moveset I usually regret it. In the endgame there are so many slams, if you’ve been standing still for more than 1 second and there are monsters still alive, you have made a huge mistake.

So the good builds are the ones that kill monsters before they can do anything at all. Players definitely do love building glass cannons and that will never change, but right now our defenses don’t work very well against so many monster types that glass cannon is by far the most effective way to play in almost all circumstances. Most of us are made of glass already, best embrace it.




*Conclusion*

In the current state of the game, most of the builds which feel good are the ones that don’t interact with monsters at all, and I think monster slams play a significant role in this. If they were used by white mobs less frequently, and/or could be more effectively mitigated with armor, engaging with monsters would feel a less punishing, and the game could push its tactical vision without it feeling so rough on the player.

Great post. As someone who's been trying many melee oriented combinations I totally agree with you that killing everything from afar is just what people will tend to do as that's the best way to deal with slams.

All of these issues could've been avoided if devs actually played maps with huntress, but they did not, they did campaign on normal, thought it was ok and released it.

Also you forgot to mention, these slams cannot be evaded, blocked but they can't be parried either :D Azak Stalker is the worst offender because his normal attack is a vertical attack and his slam attack is also a vertical with pretty much the same animation, you gotta guess which to parry and which will one shot you.

Lastly, no, you are incorrect, these slams don't do the same as their normal damage numbers, i've checked database and they increase their damage by 100 to 200% depending on the mob.

So not only are they AOE, and physical (which means your resistances don't mean crap and chances are you are not building armor which won't make a big difference either way) they can't be blocked dodged or parried and deal double to triple damage, in a one shot fest of a game where you already have a huge struggle building defense if it's not energy shield. Smart devs.

From the last paragraph you can deduce that devs genuinely never even touched late game with this class, and sometimes i wonder if they play the game at all?

PPl don't seem to realize how bad physical slams are in this game, all big mobs have it, more than half of medium mobs have it (including the medium electric scarab, he shoves his horn into the ground then does w ground shockwave slam attack)

Lastly, i forgot to mention, Quadrilla and those quick lightning infused bugs that have blades on their arms and all mobs that have a jump attack including those small spiders that jump to you, including the worm douchebags dune lurkers that deal Physical slam attack when they jump into the ground near you, and also deal physical slam once they exit the ground, the jump attack can't be evaded, blocked or parried.

Sorry for the rant but i'm tired of this one shot fest.

+1 this is a big issue. I think the solution is making player defenses actually function against slams and general AoE damage innately.

Armour for one should just scale on an enemies base attack damage instead of their hit damage. Big damage multipliers wouldn't make it useless then.

I have a post recommending block work on all hits innately, but doesn't mitigate a full 100% damage:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3743266

Evasion could honestly be changed to be an in-between of what it is now and what Acrobatics turns it into as well:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3694268

Honestly,

I’ve a level 89 merc, bis for all my gear and 91% evasion. I won’t even attempt maps with end game bosses or fun content because I’ll just die - 100% of the time. You’ll say skill issue, but what percentile of the games users are going to be “good enough” the games in a horrible state.

Here is my simple equation;

End game content = extremely hard and punishing x punished for death via xp loss = playing only white maps.

Playing only white maps = short enjoyment time = changing game.

Then to announce a holiday when the games been in free fall for weeks…
Honestly, management need to take a look at themselves.

Oh and the quantity, design, size and time duration of on death effects.. they are on the screen all the time, the little purple flowers that come out of the dead things you kill - I’ll just sit and wait 10 seconds while the screen removes the insta death poison that’s blocking the way.

It’s lazy game design - how can we make it harder? Well players loot bodies when they die, it’s one of the dopamine releases, so what if we make the bodies explode when the players go near them, cut that dopamine right off.

Devs have lost the way. They also have no respect for peoples time.

"

Sirbeaverous#2893 wrote:

I'm playing a (improvised and suboptimal) bleed ritualist and having a lot of fun. I’m up to t10 maps, SSF except for a 1 div spear that’s helping a lot.

There, that is the problem. You playing a suboptimal, not META and not trading. That is something that the game tells you not to do. The game still designed just like PoE 1, still balanced around itemization and trading, and yet trying to be focused on action and combat.

I completely agree with this post. I played bow in 0.1 and had few of these issues, now in the 0.2, playing huntress melee I sometimes die without knowing what killed me.

I would add that the items popping on top of on death effects do not help at all, and it's not the items culprit but on death effects which are BS and should they disappear the game would probably be better, picture this:

The blood carriers drop a blood area that hurts you if you stand/walk over there, sometimes overlapping various of these auras dropping the HP of the player rather quickly. What can I do as a player to avoid this damage? back up and wait for these blood ponds to disappear. Where's the fun on that?
Besides a couple of these mobs in T15 map density can quickly turn the mess of not knowing what's happening (which is bad on its own) into not knowing what's happening but ending up dead.

On death explosions are another beast on their own, kill a mob, have some drops and behind the items BOOM you're dead now. Why? no but really, why?
There should be a simple rule, if you kill something it can't harm you, even if it makes things easier for the top 1% players, at least it would make things more bearable for the rest of us IMHO