Why does the game force you to make a build that 1 shots the screen?

The entire game needs to be slowed down.

• Attack and Cast Speed increases need to be reduced across the board (passive tree, abilities, & item modifiers) by at least half
• Reduce monster movement speed drastically
• Increase monster health drastically
• Add life nodes to the passive tree (or have armor increase life in some way)
• Increase base damage of spells drastically
• Rework "cast on" meta gems to not be spam-able
• Add interactions for maiming, slowing, cursing, pinning, etc. so there's actually incentives to use multiple abilities and mechanics together

I would even argue that you should be able to hurt yourself with your own AoE, so you can't just make mindless clear the entire screen builds without killing yourself. Not full self damage, but even if you take 10% damage from your own AoE, it would promote better gameplay.

The campaign is actually good because the pacing is good. Things don't kill you instantly and you don't die instantly, but you don't kill everything instantly either. There are benefits to using multiple abilities, tactics and strategy, etc.

The original vision is actually good. Attempting to appease zoom players when there's an entire game for them (POE1) results in PoE2 having no identity.

Easiest way to tell if the game is still bad: herald skills have a place in it.

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SplashKing#6352 wrote:

The entire game needs to be slowed down.
The campaign is actually good because the pacing is good. Things don't kill you instantly and you don't die instantly, but you don't kill everything instantly either. There are benefits to using multiple abilities, tactics and strategy, etc.

I disagree. The campaign is not "good", but it's better than the rest of the game. Act 1 is no doubt the best act by far (best boss included). Still, you're flooded with massive packs of enemies as soon as Clearfell, and you face stupid ground degen as soon as Grellwood, never mind the Ogham Manor. Well, when it comes to Clearfell I understand that the white wolves are meant as a mob that is only dangerous in large packs, good. But then that continues to be the case for every mob type that comes after, the werewolves in Grelwood are no different to white wolves, they just run faster.

Mobs (white mobs included) should have some individual characteristics that make them tough to deal with in one way and easier in another. I really like the witches in Clearfell with their massive damage + small AOE + channeled spell and ability to ressurect the little ones -- easy to counter yet punishing if not done right.

But then, take for example the shoot-projectile-on-block fat shield guys from the tombs -- absolutely terrible design and unfun to deal with. If you're playing a squishy projectile build then you have to wait for them to move their slow asses out of a monster pack before you can even engage. Now, that wouldn't be a problem if monster encouters were rare are far between, but at the current pace of the game you have to kill who knows how many thousands of mobs every act. You just can't expect players to employ patience at any point, feels like a total waste of time to spend even two extra seconds on a monster pack when you'll have to fight two hundred more before your next progression milestone.

I would argue that monsters being able to mitigate all damage is just stupid to begin with. Even the giant lizards with shields feel terrible. Just give them a very large health pool and partial damage mitigation when the shield is raised, not complete.

I could go on an on but then what's the point if quite clearly GGG's game designers don't read the forum.

My conclusion: game peaks HARD in Clearfell (Mud Burrow a close second), and boss-wise it peaks with act 1's act boss.