0.3 is the worst patch we've had thus far.

I have consistently been one of the biggest defenders of PoE2 on forums against criticism. I have called criticism overblown, and decided to trust GGG.
It has gotten very difficult for me to do so with this new patch.


PROS:

- I love Act 4
- I love the new voicelines
- the new Essences are very nice

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CONS:

1) SPRINT

Sprint was supposed to be a QoL change.
However, as GGG is, everything, even a QoL feature, needs friction.

While every normal game developer out there makes it so you hold Space, you start sprinting, you stop holding, you stop sprinting, GGG decided to be quirky with it.

We now sprint out of rolling, then end the sprint with a 2 second slide (animation lock). Because people love nothing more than to get animation locked for 2 seconds after using a mechanic. That's why Mace Warrior is so popular.

A hit from a monster lays us napping for 10 years.
Hitting a pebble while sprinting has us stunned for 5 business days.

They did the same thing with the Rhoa: What was supposed to be a QoL addition is so trash to use that barely anyone bothers.

As a cherry on top, they gave Khari Crossing in the Interlude, a map that was most definitely designed with "You have sprint, you can get bigger map sizes" in mind, completely ignoring the fact that the reason people asked for sprint in the first place was because maps are big and MS is slow.

And they looked so proud when presenting it during the announcement stream too.

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2) WAYSTONE MODIFIERS


In 0.2 I could run safe blue waystones, with prefix = good.

In 0.3 all modifiers are downsides.

Every waystone I drop (which is only the guaranteed one from the last rare) is a rare one with 4+ modifiers along the lines of monsters have increased crit chance, monsters fire additional projectiles, monsters have increased attack speed.

Why can I not drop white waystones with no modifiers?

Many of the modifiers are straight up cruel and/or unrunnable for many builds, particularly in HC, so many waystone drops (and you will generally drop 1 per map) are completely unusable at all.
This means that waystones are impossible for me to sustain.

The waystone quantity modifiers in the Atlas tree are straight up placebo.
In 0.1, you could path into waystone quantity and farm multiple per map.
I have all of them in my atlas tree and still consistently only drop the guaranteed one from the last rare.

The balancing of the game is all over the place.
On one hand, campaign bosses get nerfed into oblivion, on the other, all waystone modifiers are now deadly downsides *and* atlas boss points require 6 modifier waystones.

Problem 1:
Many modifiers are straight up unrunnable, particularly for HC.

Problem 2:
Why can I not drop white waystones with no modifiers?
I only drop rare waystones with multiple unrunnable modifiers, despite only running white and blue waystones.

Problem 3:
Waystone quantity does nothing. There are 8 waystone quantity nodes in the tree, and I have all of them. I alternate between blue and whhite waystones. I still only get the guaranteed one from the last rare.

Problem 4:
Balancing in this game is all over the place. Trivial campaign, overtuned Abyss rares, unrunnable waystones.

From Doryani you can buy up to 10 waystones of 1 tier below yours per level.
So my gameplay loop so far has been:
- run a low tier waystone and farm gold
- buy 3 white tier 14 waystones, reforge them into tier 15.
- run the tier 15 white (blue if I feel spicy) waystone
- drop ONE unrunnable rare with 4+, often 6, lethal modifiers
- repeat
- do this 3 times until Doryani runs out of white waystones

As mentioned above, the 3 issues with this are:
- all my waystone drops are exclusively rare with 4~6 modifiers, even with no waystone rarity node in the tree, even when I run white waystones
- many modifiers are straight up unrunnable
- I only drop the guaranteed waystone from the last rare, despite having every single waystone quantity node

Not only is this incredibly unfun, it is also unsustainable.
If even one of these issues got addressed (e. g. the guraanteed waystone dropping always white) it would be better.

Mapping was genuinely the best it was in 0.1 and kept going downhill from there.

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3) CURSES

Cursed Grounds trade-off was that the delayed activation is gone, but enemies are only cursed while within it and the curse expires if they leave the AoE.
They changed Cursed Ground so that the activation delay is still there, but the downside of them not being cursed anymore if they leave the AoE also still is, meaning it is now actively a downgrade to your Curse without any upside.

Blasphemy is bugged and often doesn't work at all.

While trying to apply
Curse skills and skills that apply Elemental Exposure now can't apply those debuffs to enemies that are significantly higher level than the skill's own level requirement. This requirement is fairly lenient and disappears completely by high gem levels.

Curses now need to be severely overleveled in order to function.


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4) ABYSS RARES

Abyss rares, especially that horse with the lance that spams AoE cones, are severely overtuned.

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5) LACK OF BLUE ORBS

I have full cleared every single map during campaign for 67 levels, looted every single blue and yellow item to disenchant, and finished campaign with a full stash tab of white chestpieces I couldn't transmute due to lack of blue orbs.

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6) BALANCING

One second you casually beat an act boss, next second you get hammered by a random abyss rare, then you stomp campaign again, breeze through a couple maps and then drop your +enfeeble +burning ground +monsters have high crit chance

On one hand they buff every class and nerf the campaign into oblivion, making it more trivial than ever, on the other hand it's "all waystone mods are downsides now, all waystone drops will have 3+ modifiers (downsides), and basically all your waystones will have +30% extra damage +30% attack speed +temporal chains +burning ground, and also boss atlas points require 6 mods"

I'm getting whiplash from this game.

Turns out, letting a random Reddit moderator handle the balancing of your game isn't the best idea.

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7) INTERLUDE

I wish you hadn't wasted god knows how many weeks of development time for this.
Time that could have been used to make Druid.

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8) BODYBLOCK / COLLISSION

When monsters revive or new monsters spawn (corruption, abyss), you immediately have collission on you and get bodyblocked.
This is extremely frustrating to deal with, because you can't roll out and get swarmed.

Getting swarmed was an issue in 0.1.
You addressed it. We commended you.
Now you bring the same issue back to the game.

How resistant to learning is this company?

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9) ATLAS POINTS ON UNIQUE MAPS


Both in 0.2 and now in 0.3 I have been in my mid level 90s while still missing 6 atlas points because I can't find the supposed unique nodes that are supposed to give me the atlas points.

What a stupid system.

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10) OMEN DROPRATES

I've been spamming rituals for 12+ hours for several days now.
Why do I only get Omens of Gambling and Bartering at the Ritual Altar?
Where are the Omens of Homogenising, or Omens of Sinistral / Dextral Crystallisation?
Why even have them in the game at this point?

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CONCLUSION

I hate the direction 0.3 has taken and I have a nagging feeling it's only going to go downhill from here.

"

Fae_Lyth#6750 wrote:

One second you casually beat an act boss, next second you get hammered by a random abyss rare, then you stomp campaign again, breeze through a couple maps and then drop your +enfeeble +burning ground +monsters have high crit chance



I hate the direction 0.3 has taken and I have a nagging feeling it's only going to go downhill from here.

yeah i 100% agree with this, the bosses that have well designed mechanics should be the difficult part not some random rare that is 10 times tankier and kills you with default attack.
Meanwhile most bosses die before they can even do anything and/or are perma cc'd

The only things i agree is the waystones not dropping in normal quality. I have a lot of alch that i can't slam >< . And the waystone mods most of the time horrible, 6 mods bricked 90% of the time and 4mods bricked 40% of the time (monster damage mod + extra damage mod + less health recovery + multiproj etc)

And ye the abyss rare overtune.

I agree with almost all the feedback OP has provided. Unfortunately for GGG, I feel like I am done for the league and will not be buying supporter pack. This was the shortest league I ever played.

I dunno, to me 0.3 is the best patch so far.

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

I dunno, to me 0.3 is the best patch so far.

That's because you are playing a fun build, molten lava warrior. And RNG has been in your favor fro drops. When you get bad drops, it will lower your enthusiasm.

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2836742981#3689 wrote:

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

I dunno, to me 0.3 is the best patch so far.

That's because you are playing a fun build, molten lava warrior. And RNG has been in your favor fro drops. When you get bad drops, it will lower your enthusiasm.

Actually no, I played that build in 0.1 as I told you in another post. You just proved my point that many people here can't even read and then complain about difficulty :) and about drops - these are much improved in 0.3 so you can buy very decent gear as soon as you reach act 4.

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

"

2836742981#3689 wrote:

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

I dunno, to me 0.3 is the best patch so far.

That's because you are playing a fun build, molten lava warrior. And RNG has been in your favor fro drops. When you get bad drops, it will lower your enthusiasm.

Actually no, I played that build in 0.1 as I told you in another post. You just proved my point that many people here can't even read and then complain about difficulty :) and about drops - these are much improved in 0.3 so you can buy very decent gear as soon as you reach act 4.

What do you want me to say, that I am reading at a 5th grade level and in danger of failing out? That I Use POE2 as a way to escape. Problem is that my drops have been bad, real bad so I'm not getting my dopamine hit which is making me really cranky these days. They need to make the game rewarding for everyone, not only for rich people like you who buy mtx and are swimming in divines. End of story period.

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2836742981#3689 wrote:

What do you want me to say, that I am reading at a 5th grade level and in danger of failing out? That I Use POE2 as a way to escape. Problem is that my drops have been bad, real bad so I'm not getting my dopamine hit which is making me really cranky these days. They need to make the game rewarding for everyone, not only for rich people like you who buy mtx and are swimming in divines. End of story period.

You have zero idea what you are talking about. Swimming in divines? I dropped one - just one so far. I work 200 hours a month, how much time do you think I have for gaming? The problem here is that you use PoE as a way to escape and feel cranky when you are not getting your dopamine hit. I mean games should be fun, not addiction.

And by the way - my current gear costed me about 40 ex (all dropped in campaign).

I stopped reading after waystones... remove the nodes that increase waystone rarity and you won't be dropping that many rare waystones. Hell, I doubt you are really dropping them as you describe right now.