Circles Are Bad, Actually

Or How I Learned To Love The Cone

This is the first real piece of feedback I'm writing during EA. I want to preface this feedback by saying I think PoE2 is generally an amazing product and I will not stop playing it for the time being. The league is the best state of the game to date, including the Abyss mechanic. However, there are two general traps in the design where I think GGG seems to continually stumble, and it's in ways that have been consistent since PoE1.

Another preface is that I'm probably around an average PoE player. I'm enfranchised enough to have thousands of hours in it, but I'm not enfranchised enough to say I'm actually good at the game. Some of these issues may be avoided if I just got gud.

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First, a quick aside. The reason Archnemesis failed in PoE1 wasn't because the modifiers were intrinsically bad. A big sucky (as in awfully bad) part of early PoE was that physical/elemental reflect was part of the normal rare modifier move pool. While hypothetically it forced you to play carefully, nothing in the rest of the game pushed a careful play pattern. As such, the result of the mechanic was that you were idly mapping until you accidentally oneshot yourself.

The eventual solution was to make it a map modifier. I guess if you want it in your game, it being a map modifier wasn't too awful a solution. You could *opt into* that mechanic, and had some degree of control over it. It allowed content (eg through map trading) for some builds that could handle those maps when you couldn't, such as a physical attacker vs elemental reflect, or by using minions. Eventually, a softer version with Elemental Thorns returned, although even as an elemental attacker, I bluntly didn't much ever find it affected me at all. (And if it's not even thorns, that's even funnier. I to this day have no idea what that mod does.)

Archnemesis as a league system was functional, because you built your own rares and chose what to opt into or not. That the modifiers weren't clear was fine because opting into them meant you found out how they worked or not. It only really went to hell when archnemesis mods replaced regular rare modifiers. Suddenly, the insane, inscrutable modifiers were unavoidable, often made certain builds have a pool of stuff they just couldn't deal with, and it was part of the regular map pool. Nevermind even understanding what the modifiers did. Independently of the sheer stat boosts, individual reflect returned to map, but much, much worse. GGG eventually gave up on Archnemesis, softened the modifiers, renamed them to something that made sense, and PoE1 was all the better for it. The new mods are evocative and usually interesting.

Point is, it's fine if you make something truly build-invalidating, even for a lot of builds. It's also fine if you make something inscrutable, if you have an entry point to figure out what's going on. For a lot of PoE2 bosses and content, it's actually fine if you can opt out of doing them. My 0.1 character was awful vs. Breach and good vs. all other content, so I chose the other content. Breach just swarmed me, so I didn't do it. *This is fine*. It's the Atziri logic; in PoE1, I play Trinity builds most of the time, so I could never really fight her. But that's fine, I'll do other stuff, then.

It's good that mechanics exist that absolutely wreck your build. Sometimes you can even just nope TP out. The problem is that there's a very fine line as to how much of that stuff should be allowed in the *core pool* of content when the game is so high octane. You're not gonna notice or read a text line at the top of the screen; you're gonna *try* and read it when it flashes on and off, as you try to mouse over the monster as it machine guns you with a mechanic you don't have time to dodge. You're not even going to understand it if you manage to read it, because the modifier is called Sonling of Kyzymagl, and it's above a modifier called Baneful Hatepooler, and the two smudges of black on top of the rare can be either-or, and both ground effects have a number of different effects, so which of the four things happen to you belong to which modifier? Is the green skeleton firing at me part of it? Oh, I killed the rare. I guess I'll try and figure it out next map.

So, uh, yea. A bunch of the Abyssal modifiers are basically Archnemesis modifiers, in that they're esoteric, have numerous functions, are hard to visually parse, kill you quickly, and are in every map. I get that they're often cute in that the designers have made a small skillset solidified in a number of modifiers, but cute gets old real fast. And, well, I started writing this post as soon as I finally figured out what one of those modifiers were called, at T14.

So. Let's talk about melee.

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As a core problem of designing melee vs ranged in games is that ranged is just better in a vacuum. Even if fighting was on one straight line, *everything else being equal,* ranged would win every time because it fires first. Range simply always has the advantage of more uptime (striking even once before you strike each other = more uptime), and you have to compensate for that in your game mechanics somehow. GGG is very aware of this of course. It's a basic principle in these things, people don't even have to tell them. In PoE this discrepancy is a huge problem because the game is so modular; all classes use the same gear, skills, and weapons, meaning that you can't really solve it with the classical solution, where you make melee more tanky. So the solutions have to be found elsewhere.

There is, of course, a built-in solution in PoE's system that I happen to agree with. This part is important: during some interview earlier in EA (I don't remember whether it was during 0.1 or 0.2) GGG brought up a good point about melee. Basically because a number of the enemies use cone attacks, fire directionally, or use their slams ahead of themselves, melee literally has a specific mobility advantage to ranged: rotating *around* the monster to avoid an attack takes less movement. It means less dodging, which means more uptime. This is good, and I agree with the principle. But ignoring the problem of swarming (where that benefit bluntly gets nullified), it requires that specific situation to show up. Which means that the core pool of monster designs and modifiers need to facilitate that this benefit shows up.

Which brings me back to the Archnemesis/Abyssal mod I finally learned the name of. Shade Walker.

So, Shade Walker is one of those things that I feel are designed to be cute. The enemy teleports up to you every once in a while; it also has a small aura of degen around it; and you can't use flasks. It's build to be kind of a punishing assassin with a twist in that sense; it's a small precise toolkit that a rare mob is given to make it feel a certain way where it has built-in solutions to its potential drawbacks (you get damaged, you can't run away from it, and you can't heal out of it). There's some interplay in there because you can juke in and out of the degen to heal with flasks (although Utility Belt is necessary there). There's timing windows where you can strike. Technically, it's pretty much a brutal gear check, but let's take the interaction windows at face value and presume they exist.

For melee, you need to enter the aura to attack. It's circular, so all of the benefits of being melee are back to square one. There's no directional attack, no cone, nothing to dodge. You have to juke in and out of it to heal sometimes, hope it doesn't have any other modifiers that make this difficult, and then get back in and do the gear check.

Sidenote: Because it teleports, it hypothetically also punishes ranged. I understand ranged builds also have issues. But it punishes ranged not by punishing range; it punishes ranged by letting ranged shoot at it first, and then it forces them into melee, which is the bad position to be in. For the above reasons. Where ranged comes out on top because ranged already fired at it.

Anyways. So, for the first issue with this: It has the issue of effectively being an Archnemesis modifier. It is a whole toolkit of interlocking axises of mechanics, the name is inscrutable, and it's too punishing to too many builds while being part of the core mechanics pool. Often you can get screwed by a rare getting a number of interlocking modifiers (eg temporal bubble and trail of ice can be tough for me), but this is different from a single modifier. As I noted above, *frequency* of these things have a lot to do as to whether they're acceptable. Rare monsters with interlocking modifier combos is kind of fine.

Here's the thing. Path of Exile 2 has the best movement system I've ever used in an RPG. It far outshines PoE1's one button screen clears, it's not even close. And melee is actually amazing because of it, as it makes the most use out of it. The degree of minute positioning, dodge rolling around mobs and finding an opening for your skills, is difficult to pull off and really satisfying. But Shade Walker wholly nullifies any point of the intricate movement system, or, rather, it takes the part of the game where the movement system shines the most (melee) and makes it an issue of distance to the mob (where ranged really just wants to stay and shoot).

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Even if this modifier was removed from the mod pool, I want to talk about something in general. The problem really comes down to circles, which has been a tendency since PoE1.

Whenever a new modifier is added, there is a tendency to make it an aura or an affected area, or something similar. And it so often is just an aura or affected area around the mob as a point of origin. This *wholly negates* the real and compelling benefit of melee being able to dodge around mobs and slam them. There are *so* many modifiers originating from mobs in areas - trails, temporal bubble, molten shell. These wholly take away from PoE's movement system, as circling the monster barely matters, but gaining distance does, and the ranged class just hangs out half a screen away and blasts away at the thing.

I think it's important to take this into consideration for making future mechanics. Because I know that circles are elegant, reasonably easy to visually parse (like... visibility aside), auras kind of make sense to the mind, and it's just hard to make mechanics that punish distance. But circles are bad, actually. At least, too many of them are. I know every mechanic is added with a lot of caution and care, but there should be more attention making mechanics that force the player *around* the mob, not *away* from it.

Off the top of my head, Proximal Tangibility is the only regular mod that punishes ranged characters... By forcing them into melee. Please have a think on that. And no, Donut doesn't count, because its affected area is medium range. My 0.2 character was a whirling slash/twister huntress, and the only mod I cared about was Proximal Tangibility.

There's potential options to use in PoE2's established mechanics. Ice walls, longer cones, grenade projectiles that fire far, but not near the mob. I do not understand why there are so many circles.

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Shade walker and similar effects are so egregious that I've defaulted to just spin-to-winning using molten blast with nova support. So I'm using my carefully crafted mace skillset of a number of useful skills, ready to play the game with the best movement system out there - and I'm basically playing CwC Cyclone again. My build works quite well, but I don't think it builds on the strengths of the game. It's only against bosses that I can safely expect to land strikes. I could do slams, but spoiler alert, they're kinda just ranged with extra steps; having the melee hit cover half the screen doesn't make use of the game's movement and positioning. There's so much obvious love spent in the movement system and I barely get to use it outside bossing.

To sum up:
- I would take a look at shade walker.
- I would make sure that area-affecting modifiers aren't just circular auras. Make use of melee's positional benefits so it gets to juke.
- I wouldn't bundle numerous modifiers into singular ones. It's cute, but it's more exciting when death rares are so because of interlocking modifiers, not because of singular ones you can't deal with. Archnemesis failed as a system because of this. Break apart the modifiers and have the death show up less often and more organically.

Bonus feedback, partly because it's kind of funny:
There's an Abyss mod that makes the enemy undamagable, I believe, for a *very* long time. It's technically fine in itself, but because I'm using temporal chains, I think the undamagable state got absurdly extended. I spent most of the fight just staring at the boss, dodging attacks. Temporal chains in this case (which is permanent because i'm playing lich) incidentally backfires the monster into being a super boss, since none of the ground effects are slowed, neither are the constant beams from that apparition skeleton thing, while I can neither touch or damage it. I might be misunderstanding what the mod even is, but then we get back to the problem of esoteric Abyssal mods.

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Bonus feedback, partly because it's kind of funny:
There's an Abyss mod that makes the enemy undamagable, I believe. It's technically fine in itself, but because I'm using temporal chains, I think the undamagable state got absurdly extended. I spent most of the fight just staring at the boss, dodging attacks. Temporal chains in this case (which is permanent because i'm playing lich) incidentally backfires the monster into being a super boss, since none of the ground effects are slowed, neither are the constant beams from that apparition skeleton thing, while I can neither touch or damage it. I might be misunderstanding what the mod even is, but then we get back to the problem of esoteric Abyssal mods.

pretty sure this is the undying will modifier as I encountered the same thing, from my understanding it's a damage reduction aura that stacks so if you have 2 rare monster with the mod near each other they literally take 0 damage.

funny they would make the same mistake as the allies cannot die aura in poe 1 where you could have 2 of them and they would make each other invincible.

Good feedback, I agree some mods are very unclear as to what they do and some are insanely punishing for no reason, like why is a physical degen pool (hard to mitigate against) also disabling your life recovery ?.

my warbringer this league was insanely strong damage wise and felt near invincible in most mapping scenarios but some abyss modifiers would near kill me in half a second after teleporting directly on top of me.

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Esmat#7982 wrote:

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Bonus feedback, partly because it's kind of funny:
There's an Abyss mod that makes the enemy undamagable, I believe. It's technically fine in itself, but because I'm using temporal chains, I think the undamagable state got absurdly extended. I spent most of the fight just staring at the boss, dodging attacks. Temporal chains in this case (which is permanent because i'm playing lich) incidentally backfires the monster into being a super boss, since none of the ground effects are slowed, neither are the constant beams from that apparition skeleton thing, while I can neither touch or damage it. I might be misunderstanding what the mod even is, but then we get back to the problem of esoteric Abyssal mods.

pretty sure this is the undying will modifier as I encountered the same thing, from my understanding it's a damage reduction aura that stacks so if you have 2 rare monster with the mod near each other they literally take 0 damage.

funny they would make the same mistake as the allies cannot die aura in poe 1 where you could have 2 of them and they would make each other invincible.

Good feedback, I agree some mods are very unclear as to what they do and some are insanely punishing for no reason, like why is a physical degen pool (hard to mitigate against) also disabling your life recovery ?.

my warbringer this league was insanely strong damage wise and felt near invincible in most mapping scenarios but some abyss modifiers would near kill me in half a second after teleporting directly on top of me.

I only saw one, so this might have been the case; I might have killed the other offscreen then lmao.

Thanks for the kind words!

OP makes sense, but GGG was never playing fair. They want players to fail miserably, lose progress, waste time, as it apparently "generates friction" and "adds to retention". Otherwise "nothing left to do in game".

Build-bricking enemy mods or combination of mods are part of this strategy, and they are never going away. I was shocked they removed reflect damage from poe2, but maybe just because chaos orbs are now not for map spamming.

Such a rare unicorn to spotted in the wild. A well reasoned, well written, and well appointed post in the PoE forums. Full agree, and a round of applaud.