Content Update 0.2.0 -- Path of Exile 2: Dawn of the Hunt

Everyone ranting in this thread seems po'd that they'll have to actually learn to play the game and the mechanics of the game...lol

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Aulyx#1181 wrote:

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AlekzZz84#2947 wrote:

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Oinkaments#6390 wrote:

You are asking me If I play the game and telling me that the minion are fine? I have around 1100 hours in the game and it's all on minion. And no the minion build is not fine after this patch, it got nerfed through the ground. Did you even read the patch notes on minions?

the minions are fine dude, i went through patch notes 3 times, you are gonna be fine, i will be playing minions on lich, it's gonna be fine, I project from lvl1 to t15 in about 20hs instead of 15, but thats it, it will be a bit more annoying in the beginning with fewer srs, but it is not apocaliptic by any means, chill and relax, it's gonna be ok

HOLY, the cope is REALLY strong with this one! lmao

xD what can I say, seems alright to me, the only time I knew things are gonna be bad, was after patch notes of 3.15, and yeah, the only league i had to skip due to how unplayable the game was

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Azimuthus#1135 wrote:

I'm actually pleased with patch notes. Would like to see even more nerfed tbh.

Same! I would like for every skill in the game to take 1% of every monster's HP every 10 seconds! Such is The Vision™!

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pruszykrul#6010 wrote:

GOOD CHANGES

CASUAL GTFO

Sure, we'll move on. Good luck with your 0.01% superheroes.

People crying in Early Access about changes like its already finished game, what's the point. The point of EA is to test everything so it will build up to be great in full game eventually. Just don't take everything so seriously, you can take different approach in the game. What is the big deal here jesus
You want to spend the whole EA ingame time by playing the same thing over and over again? I don't get this

I love how everyone is freaking out about changes to builds that exist

"Many Skills have had their base damage and/or damage growth per level rebalanced. Most of these changes are not specifically mentioned below as the changes are too widespread."

This is the most important line in the patch notes.

I was looking forward to trying something different in this patch. Now in this patch I am looking forward to finding a different game to play.

The more I read and research, the more disappointed I am.

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eriksson#8145 wrote:

Yes they made a lot of nerfs to the player, but also to the bosses, literally halved the bosses hp by 50% to make it more accessible

Just to make it clear they only lowered HP on difficulty 0, while difficulty 4 is unchanged. So we're still looking at ~35M HP bosses that one shot you with most attacks.

Good luck doing Arbiter 4 with 500k DPS which is apparently the intended value, you'll have to do the exploding donuts and hallways like 10 times each.

Somebody should be fired. Like, there are only 2 options:
1) Someone made EVERY skill really bad and unbalanced from the beginning, and the team had to nerf literally everything. - In this case you have to fire the ones who balanced stuff in the first place.
2) Someone nerfed EVERY skill that worked, and now the game sucks (if everything was OK before), so you gotta fire the ones who did the nerfing.

This number of nerfs can only be indicative of somebody making catastrophic mistakes during development, whatever the reason and outcome. Please, let the next dev post be "also the people responsible for bad balance in the first place have been fired"

Also, still no "take all" button in trading = bad design IMO

My only concern is that there seems to be a duality in the game that seems to be exacerbated by this patch.

During the campaign, we get slow methodical gameplay, for the most part. This is good for those who want that style of gameplay, which was advertised as such by GGG. All well and good.

During the endgame, in 1.1, we get very fast rocket-tag like gameplay. This can pull in people wanting faster gameplay who are willing to suck up the campaign's slower gameplay, but causes issues with the people who like the campaign gameplay.

This issue, in 0.1.0, is pretty well known. So my question is: How does 0.2.0 change this?

The key point here is that if GGG wants a slower, more methodical gameplay at all points, they need to slow the endgame down. To do this, both the player and the monsters need to slow down for this to happen. Let's tackle each of these in order.

Well, first, player power seems to be overall lower, going by the patch notes. Of course, we have the huge caveat that we don't have the gem info, which we are told have changed but no details. So... the immediate impression of player power is that it's unclear how it's changing, but it's likely not increasing. This is good from the slower gameplay perspective. Having said that, it seems clear that player defenses are getting weaker, and it's unlikely that skill gems are going to improve this. So possibly stronger offense, and likely weaker defense.

What about the monsters? Well, in this case, the patch notes should be complete, as there is very little in the gem information that could impact the play styles of monsters. What's in the patch notes, unfortunately, is that the monsters will, overall, be stronger. Most importantly, it will be harder to CC them, and there has been no change to the speed of monsters. Yes, a few defenses have been weakened, but this is not a change in the right direction.

So. Unless there are undocumented changes to monster power in the patch notes, it looks like monsters are getting stronger, or at least not getting weaker, while the player's change is undefined (could be stronger or weaker). Let's work through the possibilities.

If players, indeed, increase in power, and have weaker defenses (relative to 0.1.0), and monsters are holding steady or stronger, this intensifies the rocket tag one-shot-or-be-one-shotted gameplay of 0.1.0, which the players advocating for slower gameplay explicitly do not want.

If player power decreases while monster power increases, the game doesn't really slow down, as monsters already in 0.1 have the ability to overwhelm players who can't kill them fast enough. It just takes longer to kill the monsters.

So... how is this good from the standpoint of slowing down gameplay?