Oceanic players are at a disadvantage so great it's pointless to PvP.

Does GGG even have any plans to integrate anyone else other than US and EU only for PvP?

How are you going to expand PvP through exclusion?

I'm referring predominantly towards Ping, and this absolutely insane disadvantage it leads to. This is not something that can be balance because while people can (Pay 2 win) for the gear, you can't actually increase the speed of light.

So, this leads to a severely incapacitated experience for non US and EU.

Here are a few of the issues that have been around since day 1 of PvP existance. Infact, I was hoping that you'd actually take some initiative to fix it in Season 1 but you decided AGAINST an Oceanic Server. I tried it out anyway and found it extremely hard to PvP in many cases. After Season 1 I was hoping for some kind of improvement for Season 2, but now that it's arrived it's the same crap as before.

1. Attacks/spells/whatever will not actually land on players when they are moving. You can use a variety of gap closers but when you reach next to them, you have a 250ms or 400ms ping to essentially delay your attack and thus giving the opponent time to move away from you and causing the attack/spell to miss entirely. This, in comparison to Local players, results in a 30ms response to move away vs 250 ms to command the attack. Guess which one goes through?

You have your typical trappers who lay traps and just keep fucking running. More importantly, Puncture trappers. Now in Season 1, I had a very very similar build to Killtacular. Now Lapiz, who is a renowned melee user, has stated that melee (sword+shield) is a direct counter to bowers and trappers. Killtacular proved this by beating the trappers in the invitational. I however find it pretty much IMPOSSIBLE to beat these players. Same setup, same skill usage and similar tactics. The difference? I can only avoid damage from external sources such as traps/bleed for so long but I will never kill them. Someone with local ping will be able to hit them while i can not. Fair game GGG.

2. Potions are probably 50% of PvP. What happens when you have 250ms or 400ms delay on Pots? The answer is you don't pot. Everyone uses Panicked Flasks because they are the best instant heals (though i did not say they were the only flask you used). This is when lowlife (<35% hp) it's instantaneous. But what's the problem? Are your reactions too slow? Get good at the game!

Unfortunately, the state of PvP atm is pretty much burst damage and burst damage only. Having a 0.25 or 0.4 second delay on your pots is absolutely rediculous. Note, in this scenario this excludes any human reaction times and that must be added on top. If i'm getting bursted and i see my HP fall below 35%, often I will just die even if i press my Panicked Flask. The only way for me to counter this issue is to preemptively flask, which often leads to the panicked not working at all.

What else about Flasks is impacted by severe latency? Anti Bleed. Lets say i step on a puncture trap (fuck those are OP). On the server, I'm registered as bleeding but it takes another 0.125 or 0.2 second delay for it to reach me. I must then use my human reaction times to stop moving and counter pot, taking another 0.125 and 0.2 seconds to send it back to the server. This basically results in me taking 0.25 seconds or 0.4 seconds of bleed WHILE MOVING ONLY BECAUSE OF LATENCY. With the rediculous trap multiplier, point blank multiplier and crit scaling It takes less than a second to instantly die.

Solutions? Use immune to bleed flasks prior to battle. But but but, any skilled player will know that their puncture no longer works for the duration and thus will run. This is my time to strike! No, refer to point 1. On top of that, i don't have enough anti bleed flasks to continuously be immune because for 1) Not enough Flasks and 2) I need different Immune flasks too.

What a Conundrum.

3. Desync is a massive Pain in the Ass and the Achilles Heel of PoE. It's also a double Achilles Heel for high latency players in PvP (and quite literally at that too).

I don't know how the system works, and I don't understand why it works. However, I get noticeably less Desync when playing on US compared to EU. That's 400 ping to 250 ping. Sometimes, I lose because i know it's Ping related and challenge them on an AU server. With 15 ping and them on 250/400 It's the opposite and I have a significantly better time.

Even though I don't know how it works, I can provide an example of it taking place.

Bear traps - Getting delayed on client side of being trapped often results in not being trapped while being trapped. You have already moved PAST the bear trap on client side but on Server side you're stuck. This results in 99% of bear traps for high latency players to simply NOT go off on client side. On your screen, you're walking around trying maneuver yourself. However you see your HP rapidly dropping despite seeing no attacks and no one around you. Okay! Lets use /oos! Nope, it's disabled. Lets attack them back when you are taking damage from an invisible player! How do i target them? 10/10 fix for Season 2 GGG.

Stun - You might stun an enemy player for them to simply disappear. You might get stunned (when i tried no stun immune) to just teleport around the map. Man this is fucking annoying for everyone, but with high latency it's delayed for so long it's abosolutely rediculous.

Getting out of desync is for some reason near impossible for me at 250 ping. I can see that I'm taking invisible damage, but there is no way for me to stop it. Often i have to walk back to the enemy player on my client side to start targetting them again. On server I was just standing next to him the whole time.

4. Gear swaps and gem swap. If you want to experience what it's like, PM me on any league and any character to experience what i experience. Impossible to do gem swaps on EU server, extremely slow on US. Gear swaps are near impossible because of gem reallocation i could do in less than second on 30 ping but too long on US/EU. Weapon swap is too slow and pretty much is 100% negligible because of the pointlessness of waiting so long to switch to and back.


@GGG You've been promoting PvP and attempting to expand it. So far you've pretty much put off the entire Path of Exile Population through a rediculous PvP system that the majority (including me disagree on).

I've sat through season 1, hoping for anything for Oceanic players (which ironically includes New Zealand.... where the game is created and based upon). Instead nothing has changed and you continue to push away potential players.

You don't acknowledge our feedback (vocally) and it's quite apparent that you don't act upon it either (1.3.1 patch). You have the PvP Discussion/Feedback will with some very biased opinions often resulting in unnecessary changes. Doesn't help that GGG Moderators are against Discussion and fair arguments (GGG_Kieran vs Midwest) and the community isn't very accepting towards opinions other than their own (See Alea vs PvPer as an example).

You have limited any real PvP to the wealthy, yet in 1.3 you balanced with regards to mid level PvP (which pretty much doesn't exist because wealthy makes it 100% obsolete). Infact, you can put me against a mid level puncture trapper and with my Ping disadvantage I would probably win. You have not incorporated nor impressed the large majority of the PoE population. Infact it's safe to say GGG's actions with regards to availability have alienated everyone.

I'm posting this here, because the Ratings threads have the highest response rating from GGG (a few compared to pretty much none) and because the PvP forums are pretty sad.

I could rant another essay like http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1150151, but I've pretty much lost hope in GGG for any real PvP.