Descent Champions - Some comments, complaints and praises

What a wonderful event! It was very fun, difficult and surprising. It was pretty much as I expected for the most part, although I only got to about 14.

First off, I wanted to play Witch. I like them and they are fun. Unfortunately this race is not fun for witches. We don't really get anything special. The wand is great, sure, but nothing really unique to it. I ran the first time until I RIP'd and didn't even really notice the proc. The secondary chest is even worse. The helm is okay, but you are never really at either of those options. If you are at low life you're (at least I am) generally half kiting while you're flasks tick and not really casting. You're never really at full life either as you're always in the middle of mobs.

I tried out the shield the second time and combined it with the fire mace. I didn't think it would do very well but it was worth a shot. I tried Firestorm to go with it but it was absolutely horrible- basically unuseable. Fireball was okay, but both Nova and Freeze Pulse were better even with a fire mace. The shield was even worse. I'd be surrounded by 20 monsters getting hit and never get any charges whatsoever. I think I got them a couple times in the entire run. Losing out on the potential of a +1 Cold/Fire Wand in the offhand is also not worth it. I even picked up Lightning Shield and it wasn't proccing my charges.

The only Unique I really see worthwhile for casters is the Sash, which is somewhat suicidal with no Leather / Chain belt. The only spell I really see worthwhile as a Witch was Ice Nova. The summons don't do anything and the fire/lightning spells are just horrible.

The other thing that really bothered me about this race was the inclusion of Brutus. He is one of the most infuriating mobs to play against as it never really feels like there's skill involve. Stuff hits you that doesn't hit you, you desync everywhere and it's just overall a good example of how bad desync is. I am not trying to complain about desync as I know it's a somewhat unfixable problem, but why use a boss that could basically be renamed Desync-For-Five-Minutes-While-You-Try-To-Dodge instead of something else? He is still not very difficult but just frustrating.

Aside from all of this, I had an absolute blast. I'm just wondering about some of GGG's reasoning behind these. It's only the first race and these are just my opinions, so maybe I am wrong about the items and such!

I've been racing for a while now, and this was easily the most enjoyable race I've ever played.

I personally loved the wand/shield combo, and the wand is amazing if you're playing a templar/witch ice nova build. I died after 20 minutes and still made it back to 15,4 fairly easy.

Brutus is troublesome because of the desyncs of course, but just attack - move - attack - move when you play a ranged character and you'll be alight. I mean the small skeletons recharge flasks so it's a relatively safe fight that just soaks up time.

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Mulm wrote:

I've been racing for a while now, and this was easily the most enjoyable race I've ever played.

I personally loved the wand/shield combo, and the wand is amazing if you're playing a templar/witch ice nova build. I died after 20 minutes and still made it back to 15,4 fairly easy.

Brutus is troublesome because of the desyncs of course, but just attack - move - attack - move when you play a ranged character and you'll be alight. I mean the small skeletons recharge flasks so it's a relatively safe fight that just soaks up time.

Yeah, that setup I used too. Brutus is not really difficult as I said, it's just a frustrating fight that highlights the biggest problem with the game. It seems really odd to use him.

I love the uniques - most of them are powerful enough that end-game builds would be built around them in normal PoE. Sadly they aren't actually that great for early game characters, but still lots of fun.

@OP: one potential caster unique you didn't try was the Bow. ;)

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Valentia wrote:

I'm just wondering about some of GGG's reasoning behind these.

I'm reasonably confident GGG will never balance around desync; they'll just keep pretending it doesn't exist when designing content. They want their game to have the potential to be awesome, and not constantly be forced to make design compromises for the sake of making it more playable.

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dudiobugtron wrote:

I love the uniques - most of them are powerful enough that end-game builds would be built around them in normal PoE. Sadly they aren't actually that great for early game characters, but still lots of fun.

@OP: one potential caster unique you didn't try was the Bow. ;)

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Valentia wrote:

I'm just wondering about some of GGG's reasoning behind these.

I'm reasonably confident GGG will never balance around desync; they'll just keep pretending it doesn't exist when designing content. They want their game to have the potential to be awesome, and not constantly be forced to make design compromises for the sake of making it more playable.

Has anyone tried this with various spells? Shock? Freeze Pulse? Etc?

The Obelisk of Faith area is obviously aimed at melee characters.

I got there with my Witch and while they gave me the tools I needed to Slam, it wouldn've done NO damage cause I had no strength, not a single melee node, the given weapon is well, crap. Not sure I want to cross a whole zone without getting xp when staying in XP range is so crucial, especially when the zone is packed full for blue monsters that give tons of it.

Other witch/caster related issues :

1. Lots and I mean LOTS of Elemental resistant monsters, Undying, the totem boss.. If you focus on a single element you're boned too, especially if it's cold (which would be expected, cause Ice Nova and all). The 2 races I ended up using only Ethereal Knife, because that was really the only viable spell I found.

2. The Brute, Soul Eater makes him stronger whenever you kill his skellies, but as a witch is REALLY hard not to. Fireball has splash, Freeze Pulse is a line AoE, Ice Spear Pierce, etc. Spark is somewhat single target if you shotgun, but it's kinda risky, especially since the Witch doesn't have the stats to equip anything but ES gear past the first tier unless you get lucky with the RNG and drop stat boosting gear. ES gear is cool and all but it doesn't mitigate damage nor allow you to avoid it.


I mean, it's TOTALLY possible to get far as a Witch, but you can't expect to win the whole thing, at least the most points come from the class ladder. Descent : Champions as a witch is kinda like Ranger in really short solo races like Burst. Worst choice by far.

Very fun race though!

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Vyniea wrote:

I mean, it's TOTALLY possible to get far as a Witch, but you can't expect to win the whole thing, at least the most points come from the class ladder. Descent : Champions as a witch is kinda like Ranger in really short solo races like Burst. Worst choice by far.

The second Descent Champions race was won by a witch...
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/639680

Well then pictured me surprised.

I must be the worst witch ever.