Reduce the radius of aura effects surrounding mobs.

The mana drain rate from auras given through affix is over the top. It makes zero sense. In the time it takes a melee character with 35% extra speed on the boots to get to the mob, the player's mana is already gone. Two seconds. Only way around it is mana leech but you have to be able to get to the mob first. Then you have the stupidity to put it on mobs that move faster than us even with 35% extra speed. Making it impossible to dodge, recover or do anything. If they run you cant catch them and if they chase you then there is no recovery. Flasks don't even keep up with the rate of mana drain while doing mana leech sometimes. How does a melee character get close. Why would you put mobs that out pace us and then drain all of our mana in two seconds. Not even bosses do that. We can't do that to them. We can't drain their mana where they can no longer function or attack but a rare mob with a small pack all have mana drain auras while moving faster than a boosted player. Were you not saying this was meant to be slow meaningful combat? At least limit which mobs can have that affix so they don't outpace you. Absolutely absurd to have left this for so long. How about reducing the size of the aura so it does not cover half the screen. Give us an ability to reduce the size of mob auras. Make it a passive or a support if you want. 4 second reduction in aura projection.

Mix in the fact you LOVE putting curses on us and slowing movement debuffs all over the ground CONSTANTLY. You are not adding difficulty, it is just stupid. It is not fun and nobody feels challenged by it.

Many players wonder why you would code something so absurd in the first place. The mana drain seems obvious when all of our attacks require mana. Every single one. You are taking our attacks, our defense, our ability to dodge it and our ability to out run it while normal flasks do nothing. Leaving what exactly? I swear you test this with a much bigger view than we get to play on because you constantly add stuff that blocks our view or covers half the screen with no thought of the absurd mechanics you are applying. All it takes is one stutter from your servers that constantly lag. Then you erase hours of progress from us every death.

I get having challenges and I encourage them to be brutal but NOT DURING EARLY ACCESS! The game is buggy, stuttering, has missing classes, missing weapon types, missing passives, missing balance structure, missing end game design. You have added so many things that have no proper counter balance. It would be equal to playing zelda but instead of going through a dungeon shooting bows and finding keys you are dodging massive hordes of mobs that respawn, glitch, warp forwards due to lag, surround you excessively, debuff your char and the entire dungeon is covered in ice and fire with lasers hitting the only open spots. Most people would ask what the hell is going on. Are we here for meaningful combat or a dungeon puzzle run. It is like you want us to fight at high levels and skill ranges while also playing with constant debuffs and disabling our ability to fight and run a maze at the same time. If you die there is often no sign of what caused it since it can come from off screen or be some garbage under your feet with boss attacks that cover or can cross half the screen instantly. You often have half second to one second telegraph time spans while surrounding these things with painful auras.

Back to the point though, maybe the mana drain should come from the enemy hitting you the same way leech works on a player. The current mana burn at 400 per tick per second by simply smelling them is crazy. A lot of the affixes would be fun if they only applied when hit, not all the time. Giving a purpose to dodge and evade. You could make something like parry reflect the skill used on the player when timed perfectly.

Lots of ways to approach this but right now the mana drain aura at this rate and size of the aura while putting it on the fastest moving mobs in the game is a combination a dumb meets dumber. It adds some challenge but it becomes rapidly broken when you enfeeble us, freeze, slow, debuff, poison, bleed, stun and burn us constantly. The end game rare mobs already have stacked affixes to melt us in seconds. They don't need mana burn at this pace unless you want to give us the ability to lock all of their skills with mana burn too.

A more reflective calculation of the mana burn rate based on the total the player has rather than the tier he is running or make the mob have to hit you. Give players a chance. Every single ability uses mana so burning it in seconds on a tough rare mob is the same as having it on a boss which you never do since it is too powerful. Yet you put it on rare and unique mobs that are reduced versions of the big boss fights...

I agree with you and that’s exactly why, compared to Path of Exile 1, I only ever play ranged in PoE 2.

Why? Because the first time I tried playing melee I was like: “Hmmm no, thanks. I'll pass.”

Playing melee is worse in every way in this game. Its like doing things 10 times harder. Going to stick to range unless GGG buffs.

I tried a warrior, thought it would be tanky but it was weaker than any of my spellcasters. This game is very strange.