Changes to the Labyrinth

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Last week someone asked me to help them with lab, he was herald summoner with about a dozen assorted minions and decent move speed.

As we approached the first Izaro room, he stood outside and said "I don't usually go in, so I don't die". I figured somehow the instance would not let him progress unless he at least went inside, so I went in, and waited. And waited. And dodged, and ducked, and zigged and zagged, but he still didn't come in. "You coming?" I asked. "No need, will meet you in basilica, hurry pls I have hw to do"

Lather rinse repeat at the second Izaro room. Okay, so there's an exploit where you don't even have to go in and wave hello, you just proceed to the next checkpoint as if you had gone in and done your duty.

Third Izaro room, last chance. I thought surely, out of basic balance, the game engine would not let him bypass the final boss fight. I went in, and he... stood outside again and said "hrry plz sorry I need to be done with this"

Izaro went down. Keys sprayed all over the room. I began picking up some stuff and he barged in and swooped up the keys before I could even turn around.

I believe this is one of the few games I've played where a fundamental character upgrade is not gated by a basic test of viability.

In other games, even if you don't deal any damage, you are expected to at least be in the room with the boss present, and by extension, be able to survive if the boss randomly directs an attack your way.

Some of the problems we're seeing with minmax and clearspeed might be better addressed by fixing gatekeepers such as lab and Innocence, rather than nerfing good spells and skills into the marianas trench.

I'm not saying we should punish minmax speed racer builds for not being able to solo Izaro. But those builds should be strongly encouraged to minmax a little less, by challenging them with content that forces them to diversify their stats a little.

And lab carry should not mean "you magically bypass all the trials and skip ahead to the ascendancy and all the keys". It should at least entail all party members in the room with the boss each time; whether you facetank or whether you go hide in a corner is up to you but at least it requires thought.

It's funny though this guy had decent minion damage and all he would have needed to do was point the zombies/Harold/specs in the right direction, and snipe from various vantage points around the room, staying out of smackdown range.

Make lab shorter, delete some rooms and make all rooms shorter + add options to sell/save enchantment mods into crafting bench!

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crunkatog wrote:

In other games, even if you don't deal any damage, you are expected to at least be in the room with the boss present, and by extension, be able to survive if the boss randomly directs an attack your way.

generally, you just need to be in the instance of a boss. same with shaper and uber elder and everything else like regular map bosses or liches. sometimes the instance is just a room like regular elder, but in most cases you can wait outside the arena.

Make Lab Shorter.
Get rid of Golden Doors
Make Trials shorter
Do something with enchants so that it doesn't feel like such a terrible slog to actually try and get your own enchantments


ANYTHING. I don't even want to bother with leveling another character, EVER, simply because I'm so burnt out on Lab.

Still as of today the labyrinth is my least favourite part in character development.
- it is undoable on experimental builds.
- in particular merciless and endgame I have learned to overrank by 10 to 15 levels before I even try.
- I completed endgame ever only once, as I consider it worse than work.
- For my favourite class Scion the endgame lab offers little reward.

I have collected a few characters throughout the leagues. Occasionaly I spec one into "merciless lab" after a skills reset, to assume something more fun with the next skills reset.
I hesitate to roll new characters, as at some point merciless lab shows up.

Lab is fine.
Sounds logic and legit to have some build who can do it pretty easily, while they can't do UElder/fast mapping...
You can't get everything, stop whinning.

The only tunning imo, should be to reduce the "escort" puzzle thing, running labs (or walking lab...) and having thoses escort thing is really really annoying, to have to wait for minutes already when you spend a lot already inside the lab (if you're going for a "full run", not a speedy one)

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Blooglet wrote:

Still as of today the labyrinth is my least favourite part in character development.
- it is undoable on experimental builds.
- in particular merciless and endgame I have learned to overrank by 10 to 15 levels before I even try.
- I completed endgame ever only once, as I consider it worse than work.
- For my favourite class Scion the endgame lab offers little reward.

I have collected a few characters throughout the leagues. Occasionaly I spec one into "merciless lab" after a skills reset, to assume something more fun with the next skills reset.
I hesitate to roll new characters, as at some point merciless lab shows up.

all this everybody should win a trophy u come straight form balance manifesto ? lab content is very easy and short.
justice has been served...

I lab and do lab every single league. My youtube channel is full of result from 100XLAB, 200etc. I do this a lot and I gave my thoughts on the enchant system here.

https://youtu.be/2LtycR2yDo4


Let me know what you think, thanks

Lab continues to suck.

You fight Izaro up to 12 times per character, which is waaaaayyyyyyy out of line compared to every other boss in the game. Also, the lore is nonsensical (we run lab 4 times because ... why?, why does merc lab exist when merc difficulty no longer does?, among other problems). Plus, gating character progression behind a mini-game instead of the main game is an odd design decision that makes the experience feel alien and non-immersive.

When a merc or (especially) eternal lab run fails because of a disconnect -- and that's the only reason I fail at getting ascendancy points these days because Izaro is very predictable -- then it's a borderline rage-inducing event that means POE doesn't get touched for a while.

On that note, I've had a big uptick in sudden disconnects kicking me out to the login menu in the past month or thereabouts. That uptick plus lab killed my interest in leveling up some higher level characters in the last league; re-running merc / eternal lab is irritating enough that I find other things to do instead.

Izaro the Boring can get the fuck out of this game anytime, from my perspective. Make the process of earning prestige classes suck less and make it make more sense.