You don't understand, the game HAS TO one-shot you. And white mobs HAVE TO hit that hard.

Dear players,

I have a hard to swallow pill for you: GGG has no other choice other than design the game to one-shot you.

If you think about it from a game design perspective, you want more life nodes, you want to nerf mob damage so you die less often? But have you ever thought about "HOW THE GAME SHOULD KILL YOU?", or you just want the game to give you -godmode so your characters would be immortal?

Supposed your IQ is above room temperture, then unkillable players would be obviously NOT the scenario you pick because that's how you develop a lullaby to induce sleep, not a game with a morsel of challenge.

So what is the right way to kill the players in a map then? Is this gonna be:

A. Each encounter removes a bit of your resources, but never threatens to take all your life bar in a single blow. You spend some mana, lose some HP, you flask drains. In boss encounters, getting hit of a slam might take out 70% of your life, but you survive and have to consume charges. Eventually, if your gears and skills prove inadequate, you'd run dry before dying and must decide whether to risk it and press forward or give up, turn back and save yourself the trouble of exp loss.

However, with the current landscape of the game, this approach is impossible, since recovery sources like flasks and regen nodes are so ample that, if the game wanted to kill you this way, as long as you can survive one encounter, you'd survive them all. Small loss in life wound't matter since you'd heal up in a split second. This would run into the same trouble as immortal characters running around.

B. Some/all encounters threaten do delete your HP bar in a single strike, one-shot you if you don't pass the gear check, or fail to dodge one explosion. If this is what you choose, then PoE1 and also the current state of PoE2 end-game are what offering you. Once you get to maps, there shouldn't be any complaint anymore. Pure evasion chars get obliterate by a single slam from blue mobs, a few white crossbow zombies take out three-quarters of a 55% armour Smith in one volley and no more, volatile plants spit out purple bombs so deadly that you keep running to dodge them more than hitting the rare that grows them. This should be exactly what you want, and you should have nothing against the game for trying to one-shot you around every corner.

And stop asking GGG to add more life nodes thinking it would solve the one-shot dilema, because when your life pool reaches a critical mass, in combination with regen you'd become unkillable again. That would just force GGG to buff monster damage while you still have to spend points on obligatory life nodes instead of investing in something more interesting.

Yet, I've seen all of these scenarios (the death plants, the giga slam, the death volley... ) mentioned in feed-back threads here and there. Many, players of this game seem not to know what they want, and never give a second thought about the consequences that what they want would lead to if GGG decided to give them just that.

With approach A obviously out of the question, we are left with the only option left, which is B: in conclusion, the game HAS TO TRY to one-shot you as many times as possible.

Now, if you've had enough with the sarcasm, and interested in a civilzed discussion on game design, please check out my other thread right here. https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3769992/page/1

Also, I don't suppose that A and B are the only approaches to the kill-the-player problem. If you can come up with other ways to die, please leave a comment down below.

Please note that, I really don't want this thread to turn into "buff-us" cries since we've obviously got enough of that on this forum already.

Tell me, how should the game kill you?

White mobs are harder than bosses. I play hardcore and when I get to a boss i feel relieved and safe. The game is weird lol

useless take, u get oneshoted anyways.

"

outlander19900#0213 wrote:

White mobs are harder than bosses. I play hardcore and when I get to a boss i feel relieved and safe. The game is weird lol

You practically summed it up. Back at PoE1 we ran T17 maps, took almost a minute to hit and run a difficult tanky rare. When we got to the boss, it died in less than 10 seconds. It's a contradictory mess.

"

Shurne#0114 wrote:

useless take, u get oneshoted anyways.

You think there's anything useful on this forum, other than useless squabbling? GGG listens to the streamers, not you. Get real, boy.

Or, just play efficient / META build and obliterate everything before enemies have any chance to hit you.

And if you refuse to play it, well then have fun in not getting any progress. The game dictated by resources acquisition efficiency with a competitive economic environment. When the game punish players in every single corner of the game, players will gravitate toward something that will punish them less to maximize efficiency and ensure smooth progress.

Spears can be nerfed in next league, Deadeye can be nerfed next league, but players will always find something to ensure maximum efficiency in playing the game. And if the cycle keep nerfing something that is popular and META, well then the game will be dead because why play PoE 2 with all this systems and the vision of focus on "tactical and meaningful" action / combat , when there are other games that actually focus and designed around "tactical and meaningful" action / combat without all the friction that PoE have ?

Making a game that tailored and designed around friction, competitive economic environment, trading, itemization, and randomization, has to come with stale and braindead combat of speedy and zooming through general content after players meet a certain power-level threshold. If even a generic content that players do daily require maximum effort and attention after they do the work of gearing properly, with all the current itemization, randomization, and friction, the game won't be able to break the shell of PoE 1. It will just still be a niche and small game like PoE 1, but slower and could be worse. And that is bad news for stockholder / investor.

For sure that 1 million+ keys are sold for 0.1 EA, but will 0.3 , 0.4 , 1.0 and future patches will have similar or even more profits when game is still a niche game ? It could be with different monetization model like making the game buy to play. But that would be a gamble that the company needs to take but the only frame of reference they have is PoE 1 with free to play model with MTX.

In short, trying to mix a meaningful and tactical combat with PoE 1 itemization / randomization / trading / friction / competitive economic model will not work. Pinnacle boss fight is exception but for daily gaming session content, but PoE 2 has to choose which one it wants to be.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3769197

The game doesnt have defensive skills.
The one you think they are just illusions.

Currently the game feels good end cruel campaign and early maps. Thats where we have class identity.
But around T10 you supposed to have all res capped and your defensive ability capped.
once you have all those what other stat is left? Hitpoint and DPS.

The "meaningful" endgame is a statcheck. Your map is decided before you enter.

I admit, its hard to create a challenge when every player indgame have a "I am immune to damage and whatever I get hit with I will recover in a second"
Then yeah... the only option is to oneshot every player with any skill... But if I wanted that I would just Play Binding of Isaac with The Lost...

Evasion is a horrible mechanic, because eventually it outscales any issues.
Block is the same, but it triggers thorn.
I guess block could be balanced that it reduces incoming damage, and the game has Guard mechanic. Block should be 75% chance to reduce incoming damage by an amount that can be scaled with critical block chance for example.
And whatever you get hit with further reduced by armor.

But when it comes to evasion I admit I lack creativity. We need to consider that we can reach endgame stats to a level that brakes the game.
Generally in RPG games there is a hard cap. We can say here its 75% but that's obtainable around map tiers.

The thing I can imagine if evasion would be more interconnected and lets say semi exclusive with recoup.
Dont know... like recoup heal scales with evasion
or the bloodborne and hollow knight made the fight mechanic in a way that when you get damage first you get "ghost damage" that you can get back by fighting. But not sure if that could be straight translated to PoE...

Do we want tanks that can just afk the game due to tankyness?
I would say... perhaps. This is an arpg. Builds are measured in "how many divines per hour" it can farm. And typically defensive playstyle comes with reduced dmg output. And clearly glasscannons will be better at that.

And I/we don't want an idle game / autobattler either.

Currently a defensive playstyle only means you use shield charge as autoattack, but you pop out the same way as anyone else endgame.


But evasion... How can you balance against a player who has 90% chance to just nullify damage?

Here is my 2 cents:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3769197

Create defensive skill that has a risk-reward mechanic.
Currently defense is "granted" and its passive. Am I a "skilled" player because I managed to get 75% block chance and 85% resistances so I can now just walk through the map?

We need interesting defensive skills and Crowd control abilities that goes well in a swarm based ARPG.
Give me skills that can handle situations, let me shape the combat field!
Meaningful decision can be how I... well... control the crowd.

Theres everyone favorite: the river Hag. As soon you hear her moaning, you all go to bloodlust predators.
Its should be the same.
Let me cast a shield wall that brakes Line of Sight, so ranged enemies need to find an angle to shoot at me, while I deal with the creep.

Smokescreen granade should again block vision of ranged enemies.

A slow tarpit that is more effective against slow and/or fast enemies.

Knockback that shoot the enemies longer distance the heavier they are.
Imagine if there would be a collision system, where if a knocked back enemy hits the wall they get stunned or gets extra damage?
Suddenly your position instantly matters.

And get rid of so many regeneration!
I try to build a tank and I don't even have mitigations.
I am a warbringer with thorn focus. The further I go to endgame I cant even use thorn, because damage outscales all my defenses resulting that I have to do a no-hit run. Its a paradox, because in this case I MUST need that block = nullifies damage (turtle charm)

We have Jade Heritage, that I think is a bad option. Why would I go for 10% physical damage reduction when TC block anything that isn't a dot?
Or if you're a totem warrior you have 20% any hit transferred to your totems...
The skill investment value is just garbage.

Or another huge disappointment was [Vengeful Fury] (rage also gives 1% extra armor per stack). Buffed even further with Berzerker Spirit Gem (45% extra effect on rage) and in full battle mode my armour got stacked from 6.5k to 6.85k... an extra 350 armor?! According the stat screen that's a single +1% of physical dmg reduction. XD

Then we have support gems that...
Holy Descend - 5% heal/second
Font of Blood - 2% heal/s
Vitality - 1% heal/s


Cannibalism - 2% per kill
Recoup - Heals back life after damage
Leech - straightforward life leech...

How can I reduce damage?!
I wish we would have a mod that would show how much overheal I actually have.
And healing is pointless anyway, because if you're dead by a single hit, there's not much to heal.
I barely see my hp between 0 and 100.

And I am wondering how many players actually dare to use the Low Life type of skills.
Because I wouldn't even dare to go that direction unless I have the Unique item.

"

bewilder2#0356 wrote:

Or, just play efficient / META build and obliterate everything before enemies have any chance to hit you.

And if you refuse to play it, well then have fun in not getting any progress. The game dictated by resources acquisition efficiency with a competitive economic environment. When the game punish players in every single corner of the game, players will gravitate toward something that will punish them less to maximize efficiency and ensure smooth progress.

Spears can be nerfed in next league, Deadeye can be nerfed next league, but players will always find something to ensure maximum efficiency in playing the game. And if the cycle keep nerfing something that is popular and META, well then the game will be dead because why play PoE 2 with all this systems and the vision of focus on "tactical and meaningful" action / combat , when there are other games that actually focus and designed around "tactical and meaningful" action / combat without all the friction that PoE have ?

Making a game that tailored and designed around friction, competitive economic environment, trading, itemization, and randomization, has to come with stale and braindead combat of speedy and zooming through general content after players meet a certain power-level threshold. If even a generic content that players do daily require maximum effort and attention after they do the work of gearing properly, with all the current itemization, randomization, and friction, the game won't be able to break the shell of PoE 1. It will just still be a niche and small game like PoE 1, but slower and could be worse. And that is bad news for stockholder / investor.

For sure that 1 million+ keys are sold for 0.1 EA, but will 0.3 , 0.4 , 1.0 and future patches will have similar or even more profits when game is still a niche game ? It could be with different monetization model like making the game buy to play. But that would be a gamble that the company needs to take but the only frame of reference they have is PoE 1 with free to play model with MTX.

In short, trying to mix a meaningful and tactical combat with PoE 1 itemization / randomization / trading / friction / competitive economic model will not work. Pinnacle boss fight is exception but for daily gaming session content, but PoE 2 has to choose which one it wants to be.

All solid points, it's so rare to find a player with an actual flow of thoughts on this website. If GGG want to work toward "meaningful combat" with this current game design they are heading to a dead-end.

One glaring problem is it offers no benefit to playing tactically, all you get is a slower progression.

Accepting to be the more-visually-pleasing-PoE1 is not a bad deal tho. I really had a blast with Dual strike of Ambidexterity Antiquarian. The zoom was insane. Hope it makes a comeback.

It sounds a lot like the meta build is super squishy because I don't ever see a one-shot even with stacked negative mods on waystones

I always pick an ascendancy with a hefty defensive passive (lich eternal life this time round, the monk evasion = armour one last)

Not sure how amazon or deadeye stack up defensively but I would assume people are choosing 4 offensive nodes

Players will never accept ignoring defense is a trade-off, and that without death penalty the offensive meta would be even more mandatory

"

Strangehill#1736 wrote:

Not sure how amazon or deadeye stack up defensively but I would assume people are choosing 4 offensive nodes

Speed. The faster you move, the faster you attack, the faster you kill enemies, the less chance you'll die.

Also evasion and Tailwind. Amazon is amazing early since all you need to do is having a decent rare spear with high accuracy and EDWA, slap Lycosidae and Azis, spec to full evasion or hybrid evasion + ES , and you'll breeze through everything.

Deadeye is the same but on higher level, because Tailwind is really really strong and overpowered. Not only Tailwind on 10 stacks gives 150% Increased evasion, it also gives 10% Action Speed and Movement speed. With Deadeye, you also have Windward in which gives 3% damage reduction per Tailwind Stack, means it is 30% damage reduction for single hit. While you still need to keep Tailwind stack at max, there is no thinking needed to maintain it, because all you have to do is press a skill. So not only Deadeye is fast, she also have insane damage reduction if the evasion fail, with buff maintenance that requires no strategy at all.

I don't understand on why not only GGG didn't nerf Deadeye, she even buffed this league. She is the Golden Child of PoE.