We welcome First Impression posts! Please be nice to those posts.

I pretty much stopped playing after new update seriously.
My 71 summoner can no longer contest in Act 4 or the majority of cruel

I'm sorry but it's just not fun, just irritating. Bad loot doesn't help at all.
I'm a casual player but I think Diablo caters to players like myself better.

Idk what happened, I loved POE back when it was balanced, but it seems those days are long over I guess.

Was a good ride though

First impression..
Its junk.. What game does not give you the ability to change your skill tree. Oh wait..you do..barely. I have to acquire these things..and if I am not at a high level..fucking forget about it. Its the dumbest idea ever..essentially I have to sit back..wait to; some trees have been tried and tested and proven true and then copy them. Because lets face it..with so much bullshit you have in here..leaves a lot of holes...Game is unbalanced, and shitty. Sorry, but true. Same thing with everything about this game..I have to dump massive amounts of time..just to be told go fuck off. Good idea..bad delivery. You bowing to the masses..and you will lose it all.

There are too much boss fights especially on The Harvest and they are incredibly hard, and i thought there would be more areas like on other acts, basically there is only The Aqueducs, The Dried Lake, The Mine, Kaom, Daresso and The Belly of The Beast, even if there are 3 maps in each it's still the same, it really feels like it has been too much condensed. Also it's only confined maps, i would have appreciated some more open maps like the Dried Lake which make it the only good map to farm/exp with Kaom's Stronghold.

Hi, first of all sorry bad badd englandow. Who i am ? Im neither a beginner nor an expert, im kind of an advanced player. I started back in beta but never played that much, mostly due dsync problems, i think i quitted the game like 10 times in total. I never got to the endgame of poe due to my death's in hardcore, i never bothered with standard because that not the way i like these games, i allways enjoyed the fact that i could allways die if i made a mistake. Unfortunetly 3/4 of my deaths back then were caused thx to dsync. Thats why i never got into this game until:

Bloodlines, i decided to play a caster for the first time, it was an arc witch with eldritch battery, mom due cloak of defiance, endurance/immortal call cwdt setup, a budget version of arc with spellecho in geofris crest, later 5L chest. It was cheap, it was effective, it was no highend uberatziri viable build nor a build someone would rush to 100, at least not with that version. But i managed to experience the endgame mapping and played to about 90 before i lost interest for the game. I had a lot of currency, gear, rare uniques, but sadly im not the guy who plays 5-10 different build per league. But overall i made a huge step in my poe experience.

Thats my grade of experience i have with this game. Its not great but i can play in hardcore and allways know what to do if im stuck and i allways know whats infront of me during the progress.


So... awakening.... 2.0.... act4

Thx to lockstep and my awesome ping (frankfurt) i decided to play a melee again. Marauder, simple, nothing great, armor, life, liferegen, 2hand, endurancecharges ( total of 7), leapslam for mobility and coh warlordsmark, started with groundslam > turned out it sucks, switched to icecrash > better in everything, heavystrike for gg singletarget dmg. All in all, a budget, simple build, that shall carry me to endgame maps, i thought so.

The build itself is not bad, very versatile, i can use every 2h, i can easily respec to different stuff and so on. I just wanted to grind maps for currency and then decide for something, because suddenly poe feels kind of complete thx to act4 and i want to try a lot of stuff this time. I even compared my build to etups marauder, and it turned out it is mostly the same, that told me that it should be at least solid for my purpose.

I like the new act in general, maybe a bit too straight forward, maybe a bit too much bosses. But overall its quite decent and something new.

I died 3 times in a row, played 2 days, died, played 2 days died. First death was to malachai on cruel ( i play tempest ) because i was stuck in my hit animation right at the beginning. The fight started, he made his tentacles, i hit 3 times with heavy strike, he raised his fist, i was still in the animation and couldnt get aways early enough. dead, but ok .. my fault. The second time i died on merciless in the gardens before dominus, stormbearers... nothing difficult, sadly the screen was so filled with animation from icecrash, mobs, tempests, a had a small lagspike... and a brainlag i confess and i was dead with full resists. Third time was in cruel kaom.. i underestimated the abyssal tempest, onehit > dead. All in all, mostly my faults, i was a bit rusty, and i got punished for it.

Right now im mappíng the 68s and honestly, heres my major complain.

The physical dmg i take is totally out of controll, it just makes no sense. I have about 50%~~ mitigaten from armor, a total of 7 endurance charges, i have capped resits and fortify linked to my icecrash, i have 400 lifergen ( 8%) which means i have about 5000 life, my gear is still shit, but for early mapping it should be moooore than enough. Im lv 71 right now. And the only... really THE ONLY FKN WAY im able to progress is to hide behind Immortal Call. Its like my other mitigation does nothing, i cast endurance cry, take a step forward >>>> Instant BLING, then i spam icecrash and hope that everything dies before immortal call runs off.

It simply feels terrible, there are so much attacks that take away half of my life in one hit, i cant even stand ( i tested it multiple times ) between 4 or 5 mobs without being hit for 20% from each of them, its just scarry for me to just take one step outside of town without immortal call, that makes no sense ??? Granite flask >>> 90% mitigation, mobs dont care, i would die to 5 hits even with my 400 liferegen. This simply makes no sense. If i have to rely on immortal in every single situation why even bother with armor ?

Even my witch on bloodlines was more tanky than this marauder and it just makes no fun at all to even map. Dont get me wrong, im still able to play, its not impossible, but its only possible to certain immungmechanics from immortal call. That makes no sense, and its not fun at all. For the first time poe feels complete and totally broken the same time for me.

I dont know how long im able to motivate myself doing this league, the tempests are doing their best to kill all the fun and challenge. How good is challenge if it totally sucks the fun out of your game ?

Well sorry for this wall of text, but here it is, my first impression since release.

I really hope to see some balancechanges in the next days or weeks, but right now, something is terribly wrong.

Good day y'all :)

Few words from me as well. Im normal player, I dont play Hardcore cuz its not fun for me. I like to play this game for sheer fun, its different then other H&S games, but lately something donent feel right.

Armor and Evasion

Mobs hit u how hard they want, how often they want !

EVASION:
Second char I made was Archer (Ice Arrow) I managed to get lvl 81. Evasion Rating almost 25.000+ with Grace aura (around 66% Evasion Chance), Hyrri's Ire (10% Dodge attacks and spells), Atziri Boots (16% spell dodge) + passives from a tree, overall:

66% evasion ( 90% on potion)
50% dodge attack chance
56% spell dodge.
75% All Res (not chaos)
2600 hp

And I was like, IM UNTOUCHABLE. Bull**** I got hit more often then my current 30% evasion and dodge only tree passive Kinetic Blast. Those mobs dont care if u have fudgeload of evasion they will hit u anyway, bosses ? You thing u can dodge my MEGA spam magic skills with ur 56% please... 2 hits in a row, DEAD. with all that dodge and evasion I felt like I was walking naked IT was all utterly useless. I gave up on this char cuz I coudnt have fun from fighting bosses on maps (I love fighting them) but they are not WORTH IT. Hoping u wont get hit from a boss that is 10 lvls lower then you with max evasion and dodge is NOT FUN, I died a LOT on bosses cuz I got hit a LOT, and drop from them ? Is a joke (on that later).
Overall, dont take evasion from passive tree, take ALL life nodes u can find, and by all I mean ALL, cuz its only resistance u have in this game.

Oh and remade passive "Arrow Dancing" is crap... try to make close range dagger/claw is impossible. Get hit in melee or die trying to get to ranged monsters ur choice.

ARMOR:

Almost same as Evasion. Isn't there, or is but is just a little fraction of all hits u get. My Cyclone + 2h sword crit duelist 72lvl.

55% Dmg reduction from armor (85% with potion)
25% Fortify with passive tree
75% all res
3500 life
200 life/s

If u dont have a LOT of Life on Hit/Leech and attack speed ur dead anyway. Later on maps there are to many monsters with Elemental dmg that u cant block, so ur armor is just there for show. Increase Max res... but how ? I only have 5 potion slots and there are 4 elements, armor, life and mana.
Again same as in Evasion, u get 80% reduced dmg and fortify, boss (ur 5 lvl higher then him) on map hits with only phys dmg, ur dead anyway, even rare mobs can kill u 1 hit, like yellow devourer.

Overall:

Only thing that matters in this game is LIFE. Get it as much as u can, dont take only armor/evasion nodes on passive tree cuz they are useless. Dmg nodes and life is all u need in all builds, without exception. Same goes for Items, armor/evasion not important.

Loads of life, Life leech, high DPS is only defence in this game right now. If u dont have build like this https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/822139 (first best found build on google) you simply wont have fun clearing/farming WHOLE maps/locations without dying. PoE rule is simple "Kill it before it Kills u... In fraction of a second"


On last Season I played over a month. Right now after 2 weeks Im tired and bored. Everywhere I look, cyclones, totems and summoners mostly (As I know spectre ones are dead so should be less of them), other skills dont have built in AoE, to slow or simply not effective in anyway.

AWAKENING patch 2.0 problem:

I have a feeling that with desynces ppl had to find builds that where effective and safe on equel level. You had to kill everything around u but u also had to survive moments of peril, but without desyces and with Act 4 and those nighmarish mob/boss settings and weird new affixes (some are rly stupid, like totems that spam skills untill u wont kill all monsters) all u need is dmg spam to get rid of imminent death that is coming with next hit u simply cant survive. So all fun looking build are no longer valid, cuz they are useless all is left is few that u can count on fingers of one hand:

Kinetic Blast
Cyclone
Totems
Summoner (who knows if there are still valid after nerf)

4 top builds I red on forum that guarantee fast clear and less dying.

SINGLE PLAYER:

I mostly play alone or with friend duo. But I hate big parties in this game cuz mostly one or 2 people carry rest or there is so much skill spam that lag and make latency spikes that its unbearable what is NOT FUN. New skill "Ice Crush" with increased AoE is just joy kill to play with other players, animation is to big it should be a bit flattened out cuz ice spikes are size of a player or even big monster what makes u see nothing, a specialy monsters effects on ground that killu, thay are covered by it.

Playing solo is not rewarding at all:

I know, I know go with parties u will get better drop bla bla bla, read above. But right now drop rewards are broken to me. In last season you could farm docks solo for a week and unique item of high value would drop randomly. But right now you can farm any location that is not a map solo and your chances to get something worth more then 2 chaos is close to zero, if its not zero.

You can wish for Maligaros Virtuosity, Rat's nets or other higher shelf item but it simply wont drop. Best drop so far after 2 weeks of playing I had was Devoto's Devotion on labyrith map with my firend and Empire's Grasp on other 72+ map also with my friend.

In last season orbs droped less, but uniques had chance to drop more... Random ?. Right now all u get are some low level uniques when u go with story line. I alone had 2 - 3 times same item drop for me like: Death Bow (Harp), Woolshoes, Sadima's Touch or Deerstalker. An all I get are those items, when i see unique drop, I know it will be garbage. I prefered previous settings where Uniques dropped less, but your solo grinding gameplay of 1 location was rewarding with sweet drop not only with orbs, even if they are Exalted... (4 in 2weeks, last season 3 in month)
Prices of high grade uniques are also twice or trice higher then last season, what is for my case not cool at all and shows only high lvl maps and good 5, 6 ppl high life/dps partys can farm them.



SUMMING UP:

I dont like Awakening.

It flattened gameplay, you are forced to stay in party for better drop, you lvl up to fast and all other things lvl up to slow (gems, masters).

Solo game is not fun nor rewarding, its based on grinding maps and collecting orbs, no suprise super uniques.

There are more low level uniques then high level ones: 1. U level to fast to use em 2. They clog better unique drop.

Plus is UI, new features and color drop modification.

Divination Cards are cool thing, but pitty they are Bound to a place not total random drop, kills joy of droping, they should be like uniques, just parts of them, drop everywhere, piece by piece everyone can get it from lvl 1, get lucky, Or Unique full Item Divination cards can drop everywhere but rest can be alocated to places, fair as it sounds.

(Personal, I love claws) No new Unique high lvl Claws.

Life Leech is based on Max Life and Regen (Evasion char has to get half of passive tree to get it more or compensate with Life giving items)

Survival is based on ur max Life not evasion or armor.

You can not make risky character with evasion and low life cuz there are more new effects in monsters that bypass it, and less effects that counter them (ex: nerfed Arrow Dancing)

Act 4 Is simply a death row. When u think about making new test character with untested build and just thinking about those no brain spam skills of all bosses with narrow spaces... I dont want to play this game anymore, few of my friend quit already cuz of that.

Its less fun playing this game. Yes we got new Act but its not what I was hoping for, I wanted cool story new grinding places and boss to be in awe with and Shatload of new maps from low level to high that are challange. What I got was pure death and frustration that covered whole experiance, and old maps to grind cuz in solo or duo its very hard to get to top ones. (And Tempests,Warbands. They are just sidekick, nothing special in eyes of normal player)



Im 24 year old, I have lot of free time on my hands right now. I play a lot each day and this is my opinion of this game after Awakening 2.0. Remember this is view of normal (Very Honest) player that wants to have fun in this game not struggle with it, previous season was more balanced, but I give GGG benefit of a doubt that they will streighten things out, cuz theres a lot of new stuff going on in Awakening that they could not get from selected players in Beta tests. Keep it up guys and give us a game that we want to play for months not days.




Clarification of my current situation IG for those who like detales:

Mostly solo, duo.
8h+ a day.
2 Week Period

4 Chars:
1st: Shadow Dual Strike,evasion 49 lvl (Dropped, Arrow dancing nerfed, cyclone ultimate phys skill... Boring)
2nd: Ranger Ice Shot,evasion 81 lvl (Dropped, Not enough money to make high dps to fast clear without dying)
3rd: Duelist Cyclone,armor 72 lvl (Dropped, Test char, Cyclone ultimate skill... Boring)
4th: Shadow Kinetic Blast 81 lvl (Currently playing, fast clear speed, bombarding monsters with high dps)

Items:
Rat's Nest (Bought)
Rest Rare

Around 6 Exalts in orbs in stash (Current)
Farmed around 8 exalts in orbs and 2ex in items, its like 2 good unique items. (Whole 2 weeks)

(All values are rounded)

Sorry in advance for my written English. And Sorry for not being nice in this post, wanted to give honest feedback.

+999

Wall of text incoming. Apologies in advance.

I'm a SC league casual player. I come for the new leagues and then take a break until the next. It works great for me and it's one of the things I like most about the design of this game. Overall, I probably have about 600 or so hours of playtime. So, that's where I'm coming from.

My impressions of 2.0 are mixed. I was firstly pleased with the streamlining of acts 1-3 to accommodate the addition of act 4. I think GGG did a great job with this. Most of the unnecessary content that didn't add to the game and was essentially just busy work intended to make the game feel longer than it actually was got shortened or removed. Thumbs up.

Act 4 was hit and miss. Overall, great core concept. It feels unique and adds something new to the game that makes it feel a bit more complete. The artwork and new monsters are mostly pretty cool. Thumbs up.

The level designs however leave something to be desired. After the dried lake, it feels like one big, long corridor the entire way through. It was really frustrating trying to use movement skills and made me feel claustrophobic. I was more than bored of it before I got anywhere near the end. The arena theme was a great idea but the execution needs some tweaking, especially on maps like the Pit. The areas are simply way too small for how many mobs there are. I enter the last area, the gate closes, and within 5 seconds the screen is literally completely full of red health bars to the point where I can't even see my character. Then, if you die, (which, thanks to lag, I always do) when you come back you get teleported directly into the center..? Then the game freezes, you die, rinse and repeat. Completely broken design. Either the amount of mobs needs to be mitigated or the area needs to be redesigned to allow for some movement. 3 Thumbs way down (yes, 3).

I also agree with the majority of posters that the bosses are way overtuned. The Malachi fight especially is just...whatever the extreme polar opposite of satisfying is. I understand the desire to make it a challenge but, in my opinion, GGG tunnel-visioned on this intention and failed in the overall execution. Running around in circles for 20 minutes isn't really difficult...just tedious. Extremely tedious. I say this knowing it won't happen but in my opinion this fight needs a complete rework; trying to tweak some numbers won't suffice. Thumbs down.

In parallel with that, the transitions between difficulties (Norm, Cruel, Merc) make the game progression feel very inconsistent. For me, act 3 merc was significantly easier than act 4 normal; which flat out just doesn't make sense. After playing through normal, the game has a feel of driving an indie car full speed into a brick wall. After normal, I tore through Act 1-3 cruel and then all of a sudden the difficulty ramps up 10,000% when you get to the end. Then the same thing again for merc. Just doesn't provide a feel of consistent progression and makes it feel like the majority of the game is pointless and act 4 is merely the head of an empty body. Trying to look at it from a new player's perspective, this would be a huge deterrent for me because it makes me feel like my time is being intentionally wasted rather than rewarded. Thumbs down.

That being said, I know how it goes immediately after the addition of new content and I am willing to give GGG the benefit of the doubt that they will get things polished up. Hopefully, in a timely manner. In that regard, to any new player, I would say if you aren't enjoying the game at this moment, check back in a month or two and give it another go. It has worked well for me in the past.

The new balancing issues are nothing we haven't seen before and I won't go into the specifics as I have seen them covered extensively in other posts; but I will say I think it was a bit too much all at once. Hopefully, GGG is working to sort it out.

The changes to item/map drops, however, are of great concern to me. I am only just getting to end game in Warbands but I'm starting to see what everyone has been complaining about. It's, again, the same experience as the inconsistent progression between difficulties: full-speed into a brick wall. As GGG has stated, their intention was to make end-game less accessible in the hopes of keeping the "no-lifers" entertained for longer periods of time between leagues. However, I think they grossly overshot it. Rather than a blanket nerf to drop percentages on items that are literally the path to progression, they would be better off just making a separate league for the select group of people who enjoy grinding 100 maps a day only to end up where they started. I don't mean to sound condescending but for the average player, there is really no incentive to continue playing if time and effort aren't being consistently rewarded with a sense of progression.

Unfortunately, it does seem to me like GGG is beginning to specifically cater to a very small group of elitist players and, in turn, making it more and more difficult for new players to get into the game and stick with it. It also feels more and more like they are contradicting the core design of the game by focusing on trying to make the game last longer for people who choose to play it 18 hours a day. As the game has been developed so far, it feels like the potential creativity is being smothered by the lack of clear vision. So many of the recent changes feel reactive rather than creative. Essentially, it's negating the intended creative versatility of the original design and pigeonholing players into having to choose between a very small pool of viable build choices and endlessly grind the same 20 minutes for hundreds of hours just to be able to see all of the available content; kind of like having to watch the first half of a movie 300 times before you see the end. The balance of investment vs. reward just isn't there. I can no longer get any new people to play because when they inevitably get frustrated, all I can really say is, "...yeah, it didn't used to be like this." In my opinion, if this isn't addressed, it will eventually be the death of the game as loyal casual players become resigned and new players are deterred from joining because they no longer feel rewarded for their time past a certain point, making their initial investment feel like a waste.

Regardless, I think the devs have a great core game and some great ideas to keep it going. I am optimistic they will have the foresight to recognize the eventual consequences of their choices and get things headed back in the right direction. At least, that's what I'm hoping for. :)

Until then, back to other hobbies.

GLHF

you guys can create another farm side in the city of sarn, in the right, just after killing the vall, and not warn the players about it

Well I don't know what to add here but to say wow I have never seen such a bad screw up in my life from people who make games. I dont get it let me ask just a few ?s.

1.Why make a helm called necro if it never adds to your mininos I have wasted countless orbs trying to get mine to give me a +2 but no and we are talking Item lvl 65 nope .I can however find one for a warrior?

2.I kill the last boss in act 3 merciless he is lvl 66 I am only lvl 65? I come to act 4 and everything is lvl 66 I kill all of them go to lake bed kill all of them full clear do I lvl NO WTH ?

3.I am in on of the dreams no it is lvl 68 I am lvl 67 where is my exp why is it so hard to lvl?

4. When something does drop as in loot why oh why is it always for some other type of toon not the one I am playing?

5. Did you hire someone from warcraft or Diablo because you really seem to want to hurt this game I lvl slow I am behind in lvls so when I get to bosses I WILL die taking all my efforts to lvl away ETC.

I mostly agree with ownjizu

Came back to the game a few weeks ago right after 2.0 release (didn't come back specifically for 2.0 but just felt like trying POE again).. Only played a few days back in alpha/early beta days.. The game was just horrible back then.

Few additional comments:

This game is not for casual players or players that want to enjoy a bit of fun finding gear and getting nice gameplay but is more and more tuned for that 1% of nolife 24/7 players.

Unfortunately for GGG, the majority of the money they can collect does not come from that 1%... Shame their financial guy doesn't bring them in on this little secret.

This game has always and still is, incredibly steep and hard to get into.. this game is not for casual players (3, 4 hrs a day) who want to have fun.

The fact that the only way to progress in the game is to trade (anyone remember the lovely D3 AH?) is just mindblowing.

Playing this game should be fun and you should be able to find decent items every now and then that you can actually use on that char.. Not so... The occasional worthy drop goes into the stash and is put on poe.trade for people to buy.. This is how to progress and have fun in the game... Trade..

Might as well call it trading tycoon 2.0.. Not for me... I never traded in D3 nor will I do it in POE as I don't care about playing trading tycoon 2.0.

Oh and the deathpenalty on cruel/merciless added together with the brick wall this game is: MINDBLOWINGLY stupid... Farm 5 hours only to see all of that evaporate in 3 deaths. This will most likely be the main reason I will drop POE forever.

Overall up to a point the game is enjoyable until you hit the brick walls ownjizu menntioned.

My final verdict isn't out yet.. I'll keep at it for a while to come and hopefully GGG will undo the harm they have done with the 2.0 balance/Phys/Eva changes.