Who is even supposed to play this game

Difficulty needs to be hard nerfed during the campaign.

I attempted a Witch infernalist and pushed my way through to Act 5 before getting way too frustrated at survivability and minion jank during boss fights. Rolled a Mercenary and then got hard stuck at the cemetery bosses in A1. Even used leftover Lvl2 support gems from the witch playthrough to juice him up and still just unable to do _anything_.

Did yall want endgame feedback? Because people arent going to be able to even get to endgame, I'm done till full launch.

Cemetery boss in A1 on Merc?

Well the issue is you are missing 2 things that makes him infinitely easier. Go to your active skills and look for "git" and "gud."

Once you get those, you will have no problem with the Cemetary boss.

Merc getting hardstuck at the cemetery bosses in A1? That's a really good example of git gud wtf.

If it makes you feel better act 1 is by far the hardest part of the game not counting endgame stuff, but it seems like you already had a witch a5 so I really have no idea what the issue is.

The early game difficulty is mostly due to not having a proper build online yet or getting unlucky with drops and being woefully undergeared. Once you get into late A2 and beyond (especially cruel) the difficulty falls off quite a bit.

You may die to the odd boss fight but typically that's your own fault, where as early game you just aren't put together properly enough to deal with bosses that have multiple phases.

players used to POE likely found this less a problem (they understand how to build a character better) whereas the new players are getting demolished at lv 17 with a few support gems and still in blues against bosses that have multiple phases and take forever to whittle down.

Beyond that, the game is far more punishing than it is challenging. Dying honestly sucks. I miss the days of just taking a durability hit and maybe losing some gold/exp... But dying removing all activities from a map and deleting any loot hurts and removes a lot of fun from end game, while having whole maps reset monsters hurt and slow down campaign.

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redrowen#7388 wrote:

The early game difficulty is mostly due to not having a proper build online yet or getting unlucky with drops and being woefully undergeared. Once you get into late A2 and beyond (especially cruel) the difficulty falls off quite a bit.

You may die to the odd boss fight but typically that's your own fault, where as early game you just aren't put together properly enough to deal with bosses that have multiple phases.

players used to POE likely found this less a problem (they understand how to build a character better) whereas the new players are getting demolished at lv 17 with a few support gems and still in blues against bosses that have multiple phases and take forever to whittle down.

Beyond that, the game is far more punishing than it is challenging. Dying honestly sucks. I miss the days of just taking a durability hit and maybe losing some gold/exp... But dying removing all activities from a map and deleting any loot hurts and removes a lot of fun from the end game, while having whole maps reset monsters hurt and slow down the campaign.

This is exactly what's wrong though. I am a new player but being hung up on the act 1 boss is making me want to quit this game, The game itself is bad ass i love the difficulty. but early game should not be a migraine, I made it 2 Act 2 on Sorc very easy. minus a couple of boss help along the way one of them being Grelnor.My hype is completely squashed at hour 3 of trying to kill Grelnor with a warrior.I like the game but it's just a poor game design decision to punish you early then throw immense power and the game becomes face roll. I truly enjoy the challenge but not having the gear or tools is likely the issue. the mechanics are easy enough to get down but being starved of potions and resistances at last 10 % of boss is very disheartening. 3 hours on first boss and dying last phase like groundhog day. no potions no movement speed to avoid beams or the slam.

game expects you to at least understand you need resists what not. like if you think youre gonna just stroll through you might not understand..

like its def a challenge. ive played these alot. but its basically the same as usual.. get some res. tank some shots dodge the others.

Dodge in this game is crap compared to most of the others I have played. Mobs moving 3-10x faster than you is not added difficulty it is just bad game design. Would like to try controller but slogging through assigning skills the way they currently have it set up is almost as painful as having to play at melee range with a ranged character on the very first boss to even get into the first town. The design decisions and the overall flow and engagement in the game are just stupid. Unintersting campaign areas and from what I have seen on twitch maps are garbage too.

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DiezillaTor#5852 wrote:

Difficulty needs to be hard nerfed during the campaign.

I attempted a Witch infernalist and pushed my way through to Act 5 before getting way too frustrated at survivability and minion jank during boss fights. Rolled a Mercenary and then got hard stuck at the cemetery bosses in A1. Even used leftover Lvl2 support gems from the witch playthrough to juice him up and still just unable to do _anything_.

Did yall want endgame feedback? Because people arent going to be able to even get to endgame, I'm done till full launch.

Go to poe market and buy gear, how do you have all these supp packs and dont know how to do that???

I started a new char. Spent 5ex and i have a +3 staff wih 120% combined light damage and 30%+ to all rea and like 1.5k es at lvl 30. Game is an absolute fucking faceroll. All with 20 minutes on poe trade and 5ex.

I do not want to sound condescending or harsh but even for melee you can easily set up a character to kill the first act boss and even the first trial boss.

Yes it helps to know general mechanics from poe, but I mean, how hard is it to realize you need cold resist if you are fighting a boss that throws cold attacks around like crazy? That alone makes it pretty easy for anyone.

Next you have people saying they spend hours fighting bosses, why not just you know, fight other stuff, get better eq and level up some and try the boss again?

The hardest characters to fight the act 1 boss with (Which are not that hard mind you) are warrior and monk. Both get A TON easier ifyou level up a bit first, and make a nice weapon, add 2 slots to it, and add elemental damage runes in those slots (or maybe if it's high enough physical base 20% phsycial damage on a 2 handed mace).

Defenses are hard to understand for new players and many may not realize you can take other classes spirit auras etc. The wind aura adds 45% more evasion, so even just a halfway decent amount of evasion will make you get hit 50% of the time or less.

Another thing new players don't know about is poe 2 trade, where you can trade augmentation orbs for good equipment.

Spend time shopping as well, so you can buy lots of weapons with slots on them (breaking them down and you can put slots on anything, even uniques), and you can even do the same for armor, putting resist runes in your armor (along with a nice resist ring) and you will max out resists easily.

People say git good and all that, which actually WAS true in poe (the original). In this game so far, skill level isn't as important as you can for the most part overpower the bosses. Monks, Warriors, definately rangers, mercs to a lesser extent can all kill most bosses before they even get to attack (not right away usually (although snipe gets pretty close), but not that far into the game.

Spells can't "quite" ramp up as much, but you can still handle the bosses fairly easily with them. Sorcs having the hardest time there due to witches getting almost everything a sorc gets, but much better summons (even Raging Spirits alone is a significant damage increase and you only need 30 spirit total (which you get in act 1) to run with them.

If you are having a problem with a boss or a trial, just ask for some advice on how to fight it or build your character, there are tons of people happy to help, myself included. The game needs challenge in order to give motivation to make strong characters, get better equipment and level up in the passive tree etc. It's...honestly, the primary motivator for both this game and it's predecessor. If you take the challenge away, NEW players will be able to run through it easily, sure, but nobody will ever have any reason to keep playing it and it'll die fast (like D4 did for me).

I STILL enjoyed playing PoE 1, right up till the release of this game (not sure if i'll ever go back now), and I was in the initial beta even before early acces like 12+ years ago. There was enough challenge to make me enjoy trying new builds even after all these years, especially with the leagues adding new stuff.

As this game currently stands, I feel like the difficulty is a bit less than PoE, even the trials. The first trial often just requires you to find an exit or survive x amount of time, or run to a buncha crystals, while you only get attacked by a few monsters at a time. Any ranged char (bow/xbow/spells) can destroy them without ever getting hit. Meanwhile the "traps" are WAY easier than the ones in PoE 1 (thank god for no more lava floors). Fire spins are easy to avoid even with normal movement speed (who has normal movement speed?). The spike stalagmite traps can be a bit tricky sometimes but often you can mostly avoid them as well. Without the traps you literally have no challenge in the first trial until the boss, who....lets be honest, is generally easier than any first Lab boss was in the original game (maybe not for melee focused, but certainly for ranged/spell focused). Max fire resist and you have no real danger/chance of loosing on the last boss fight of the first trial, even if you barely have any honor left by that point.

So yeah, I would bet that a large % of the long term PoE players are playing PoE 2 and will be for quite awhile. We already know that starting off any league is the hardest time you will have, cause you need to build up equipment and currency. That is why builds are called league starter builds etc. We know that over time you will get stronger not only with your current character but future characters and most of us actually LIKE a boss (especially a new one!!) that poses a challenge. It's refreshing compared to just running through maps destroying everything you see.

IF you are struggling, reach out to older players, we will help, or don't and just wait awhile. This game is JUST out in EA, and many ofyou have no clue what that even means. It's not a complete game, it's currently going through constant changes, there is a ton not added yet, and the devs are going to watch the player base and tweak things to make it as fun as possible, often many times, before the final launch.

So if you don't like the current experience, put it on a back burner for a bit and revisit after the next big patch. I'm guessing there will be some before final release that adds more weapons/spells/skills maybe classes etc. By then there will be more info on the game, more stuff for sale on poe 2 trade and bugs or weaknesses will be ironed out to make it less challenging for many (as quite often the challenges are due to things that need to be addresssed in the future).

Anyway, everyone I know who has played PoE for more than a few years loves PoE 2 so far and has played it waaaay too much in the last week. I have not played ANY game this much in over a decade. I thought I was just burnt out on games, but nope, I just needed the right game to draw me back in. PoE 2 is that game.