Stupid and unfun enemy attribute combinations and other game mechanics that are just bad UX (WIP)

As the subject states, I'll be listing here combinations that are just a slog to get through as well as in-game experiences that are just plain bad.

- Aura that siphons flasks and deals lightning damage, Volatile plants, periodically unleashes elemental attacks, regeneration, on a caster that summons Hammer of the Gods and similar skills.

Like WTHF GGG. There is no real "challenge" in this. It's just a slog to take down this combination if a character doesn't do the highest level of single-attack DPS

- Haste, Temporal Chain Aura, Trail of Fire and/or Unleashes Elemental Fire attacks.

- Xenomorph-like e.g., "Ravenous" enemies that burst out of fresh corpses that have the "Palpatine zap". It is ridiculous they come out firing Chaos and/or Lightning.

Spearfield with Bludgeon and Arms length has become my best friend but with you all ramping up leaps, proximal tangibility and making sure that Elites always have an attack attribute against the character's weakest res makes this particular "challenge" an absolute insult to players.

I can handle hordes that circumvent my tactics and skill but these should be balanced for more fairness. I can handle leapers, intangibles, and Hammer / Anchor from the Gods inokvers just fine but these cheapshots don't allow for any chance for the player to deal with them if they spawn in close proximity other than spam healing potions (if the player has the twitch reflexes for it or get lucky that one of the misses).

They should not fire immediately right after bursting out, especially with all the things players have to deal with at every given moment. You usually put these things in monsters that rush the character making it obvious that how much thought you all put in in counteracting the defenses YOU gave to players.

You already have attacks that force players to evade and it is in these evasion animations that immediate insta-kill attacks are stupid design. It's stupid because these Xenomorphs don't burst out alone. There are usually 2-3 of them per spawn and the chances for survival are less than slim.

Why not just make all monsters, even whites, one-shot? If your goal is to put characters in constant danger, it's practically the same thing. Forget about being a Soulslike, embrace becoming the bullet hell you want PoE2 to be.

I'd be all for that if you all perfected defense so that everything feels fair to players, but defense remains an abstract only a few players can put together without resorting to the Economy.

Armor + ES, only certain Warrior specs can pull this off
Evasion + ES - spotty
Pure Evasion - spotty
Armor + Evasion - Having both means neither are effective at the highest tiers.
Pure Armor - a joke
Pure ES - only a select few class have access to this while naturally progressing. The rest have to convolute and/or sacrifice their class themes in order to avail the best defensive type you all made for PoE2.

I want to end this rant by asking the burning question many have asked already: Do you actually play your games, GGG? If you do, are you actually playing what you are having your customers play? Or do you do your testing in a dev sandbox that can tweak parameters in realtime? Because there seems to be a disconnect somewhere between the 2.

Edit:
Lastly, these negative player experiences would have been okay, at least for me, if the whole UX was not underpinned by the wannabe XP loss mechanic. To have both feel fair, you have to ensure the challenges presented to players don't leave them feeling robbed. You also have to make sure your cues and telegraphs can actually be SEEN. For attackers that are offscreen, you have to put some indicator, a big one, for impending attacks that will annihilate characters.

So much character deaths are from cheapshots from monsters that are winding up offscreen while you throw hordes at players that cover up the already weak indicators that exist in-game. If that is impossible to dev, then make sure these offscreen crap are not lethal. The Skeleton trebuchet in D4 was so reviled for this very reason, and I'm sure you all know that. So why didn't you take care to prevent giving your loyal players bad UX?

[WIP]


Not everything is bad. I give credit when it's due:

- Kudos for tweaking those porcupine crabs from hell to not always create burning ground and to actually factor in evasion and armor when 10 of them fire at the same time.

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Elitista#7887 wrote:

- Aura that siphons flasks and deals lightning damage, Volatile plants, periodically unleashes elemental attacks, regeneration, on a caster that summons Hammer of the Gods and similar skills.

Like WTHF GGG. There is no real "challenge" in this. It's just a slog to take down this combination if a character doesn't do the highest level of single-attack DPS

I guess one man's misery is another's fun. I love the crazy combo of mods that can happen, and one of my favourite things I encountered was the


I also liked archnemesis and metamorph. I don't play meta builds.