Headhunter Belt - This is a joke right?

Hi GGG newish player here, started at the beginning of the season, no prior POE1 experience. Avoided the HH belt early on because it was pricey at first and I have a thing for doing off-meta to the point of trying to avoid meta and popular items. Made a home brew character that's pretty fun and when well geared now easily handles everything in the game. The only slight point of difficulty was when I finally got to 70 rooms in my temple, I was occasionally dying when getting caught in the pile up at doors, and clearing got slower.

Tried HH for the first time a few days ago, and my fully built temple clear time was cut 80%. From this one item I'm gaining a pretty consistent 400%-500% dps, and my dps already felt stupid good.

As if that isn't an insane enough boost, despite doing a glass cannon Eldritch Batter Mind Over Matter build (no not blood mage or CoC, or Cast on anything) that has 0 armor and 0 evasion, I am now completely indestructible in temple runs, and on maps after popping maybe 2 or 3 rares. Doesn't matter if the shroud walker effect throws me into a pile of AoE ground effects, there's barely any dip in my health at all (1700 Life + 5200 mana).

This has reduced the difficulty and feel of the game to something similar to mobile games, or click and wait games like Farmville or Jumbo airport story. If this item stays in game in its current form I can't see myself coming back for much more.

It's hard to fathom that the devs can't see how damaging to the soul of a game an item like this is, if it is actually intended to be a good game. Can only guess this was put in to make it easy mode so everyone can just win. But this makes putting any thought, effort, or time into your build or playstyle 100% meaningless.

And please spare me the 'you can just play the game without using HH if you don't like it' comments. If I do that I'm putting myself at a complete disadvantage to everyone else using HH and this is a resource collecting and trade based game. Not using HH means your time is worth about 5% what anyone else's is.

For the good of the game please remove this item entirely.

+1
Is it really that busted?

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TwitchGLHFsport#2155 wrote:

+1
Is it really that busted?

86% of lvl 100 characters use HH this league. It's almost the same as rare amulet, and there's barely any unique amulet worth using. The next most used belt is 6% used and it's ingenuity which is a very strong belt (if you don't compare it to HH)

To put into perspective, Nascent Hope which is an almost must have charm only has 69% use

It's obviously brokenly op and everyone uses it unless they're trolling

If you want to take a look: https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaal?min-level=100

Granted not every single lvl 100 character is there, even mine isn't since I didn't bother linking, but it gives a good idea

did you see that there is a Mirror of Kalandra item ?)))

but yes, poe2 is a similar to mobile 1click/casino shitty games. easy dopamine is what most of people need to be happy. that's why gambling is a common thing in games now and that's why there is HH and MoK in poe- first they make things hard, but then you get superpower. isnt it a "dream come true" feel? in game ofc, but for people it is enough.

not sure when avoiding difficulty became mandatory for humans

"

TwitchGLHFsport#2155 wrote:

+1
Is it really that busted?

'+1' and you don't even know if it's good?!?

LOL WHAT?!

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iHiems#0168 wrote:

86% of lvl 100 characters use HH this league. It's almost the same as rare amulet, and there's barely any unique amulet worth using. The next most used belt is 6% used and it's ingenuity which is a very strong belt (if you don't compare it to HH)

To put into perspective, Nascent Hope which is an almost must have charm only has 69% use

It's obviously brokenly op and everyone uses it unless they're trolling

If you want to take a look: https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaal?min-level=100

Granted not every single lvl 100 character is there, even mine isn't since I didn't bother linking, but it gives a good idea

DING DING DING DING
ninja requires people to link it which is obviously going to result in data that has a MASSIVE bias towards more serious players who are more likely to be min/maxing.
Metas will always exist regardless of how you feel about them. If it's not headhunter it'll be "OmG evErY sOrC iZ uSinG tHesE SkIlL GeMS DELETE THEM"

What really sucks is once you equip it, you can’t unequip it and use something else if you feel like it trivializes the game. Oh wait….

"

ungamer321#7175 wrote:

did you see that there is a Mirror of Kalandra item ?)))

but yes, poe2 is a similar to mobile 1click/casino shitty games. easy dopamine is what most of people need to be happy. that's why gambling is a common thing in games now and that's why there is HH and MoK in poe- first they make things hard, but then you get superpower. isnt it a "dream come true" feel? in game ofc, but for people it is enough.

not sure when avoiding difficulty became mandatory for humans

Guess I got fooled by what I read about the game, and my first playthrough where I used a bleed build (big mistake there) and the campaign, then third and 4th sekhemas trials felt moderately challenging and gave me a bit of a thrill to overcome. I was like damn this is better than d4 for sure...skill, forethought, and effort actually matter....

Sadly the longer I've been in it the more the way you describe it feels like where it's going or where it already is. Must be boring to be a content creator for games like that, trying to pretend that your new build variant actually matters and then just doing "whatever + HH build" watch me blow stuff up.

Ah well, there's a lot I like in this POE2 and I am willing to forgive for an early access game for many things, so I'll give them a chance and look for patch notes on removal of or changes to HH for 0.5, among other changes I'd like to see. Probably not happening, as I said they had to know how bad HH is, so it's hard to think it wasn't intentional. All good, so many other games out there.

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SRS BIZNESS BRO#9609 wrote:

What really sucks is once you equip it, you can’t unequip it and use something else if you feel like it trivializes the game. Oh wait….

What really sucks is when people don't read an entire post but comment anyway.

Oh I read it. I rarely use the item outside of T4 sim. The fact so many people get worked up over balance and a super rare item doing what it does is silly.

I assume you think that ARPGs require skill also?