The experience at 400hr.

[Red_Mag1]

I want to start by saying this game is far from complete I know its called 'early access' but playing for a decent amount of time now.... this feels more like an Alpha. i would say the game is only 10% done at least in the current state patch 0.1.1 or whatever we are at. i don't see in any world this game actually launching for 2 years or at least close to this., There is way to much missing and untested, and we are the guinea pigs testing it now for the populace. Alot of what I'm going to cover is mostly a bunch of whining and crying, now maybe others feel similar, but hopefully GGG hears these and potentially implements some of my suggestions in the event others in the sommunity resonate with the following. That is if GGG even reads this... XD So lets get into the ramblings of this individual child eh!

Balancing:
Patches: just rip off the bandaid. In the event things are game breaking don't wait on league reset the consumers need it now, not later. Let the infants cry and throw their tantrums if their builds are bricked it's just too damn bad.
With this in the event of bricked builds offer a free respec scroll/item that resets the passive tree EZPZ solve to get new builds up and running, keeping people engaged and playing.


Fire spells: I've said it before but fire spells are just dog****!!! This is coming from someone that slogged a full playthru as a demonform fire mage. The adjustments to ignite definitely help the 'cast on ignite' triggers in gameplay, but the spells themself are primarily bad and need to hit the drawing board.
Solar orb/Fireblast, this interaction feels horrible not to mention you can be stunned midcast wasting the entire combo. fire fullisade while powerful is awkward and clunky to interact with. Fireball the ONLY useable fire spell. Incinerate this does negative damage i swear..... even at 200 demonform stacks.... Firestorm only redeeming quality is "it looks cool on the screen." these spells NEED serious reworks in my opinion.


Warrior/Maces: GZ..... just bad. This class/Skillset is HEAVILY reliant on the gear, i.e. crap gear = crap build no matter your skill level. Making a horrifying slog in gameplay during the campaign and early stages of endgame. Late endgame LOOKS AMAZING, but there is so many pain points to get there.
Warrior passive tree needs a rework in the early leveling stages. Taking the attribute highway over to the mercenary side of the tree is in my opinion the only viable option for early game warrior. Specifically the skill/attack speed nodes. even then these are not achieved until lvl 10+. The early stun build, life regen and stun threshold nodes are all useless in the early and mid game. and furthermore are reliant on gear drops. Warriors better pray for even one decent drop..... Even the early melee damage nodes are useless in the event a mediocre mace refuses to drop. This entire section of the tree NEEDS a rework to help the early game warrior out. Specifically the nodes early nodes should be melee and skill speed up one side, with + armour and + Life on the other. and maybe not 100 life but something around 25-50 would help the early stages of warrior have a fighting chance due to its natural archetype.
Maces.... I love the basic attack being my big/main damage skill, this makes sense. Furthermore skills like 'perfect timing' being high risk high reward i.e. big channel time. Also makes sense. What doesn't make sense and worse FEELS HORRIFIC are the goofy ass animation skills. Molten ball lob, Leap slam, stampede, totems.... Its the animations and stun thresholds, for me, that cause a TON of clunkyness in gameplay.

Leap slam: should be more instantaneous.

Stampede: Why am i running in place.... WTF! why does it take so long too run in place WTF! Give this a knockback, + damage against full hp targets, or overkill effect.

shield charge: same issues as stampede!

Molten skills: no/ minimal damge, and have awkward animations. Maybe give these faster animations with 1H maces, and slower animations but double damage with 2H weapons.

These above skills feel incomplete and awkward in moment to moment gameplay, causing many deaths or terrible interactions. The other mace skills currently in the EA game actually feel complete and well thought out and more over FUNCTIONAL in comparison. HOTGs is amazing, shatter and sunder great! war cry's and shield resonance perfect!

Ascendencies:

INFERNALIST...... 90% of this acendency is unuseable. I have easily 100+ hrs. on mine. In my opinion their are two possible routes to take and both only require first and second ascendency clears the other points just sit there and do nothing, When not running a minion build. To elaborate, you have Altered Flesh and the nodes that follow, amazing nodes! also Loyal hellhound great for damage mitigation.
Outside of those two nodes the rest of the tree is mostly crap. Demonform while a cool design feature requires a ton of hoops to be jumped thru in order for any viablility. Looking at you barrier invocation flask spammers... like really?!?
Grinning Immolation this doesn't offer enough maybe bump it to 80-100. I know its multiplicative but 30% doesn't offer much.
Pyromantic pact and its following nodes. Now here i see some amazing potential but a ridiculous amount of risk/more hoops to jump thru. Again I look at these absurd barrier invocation flask spammers. Setting this sort of build up, is actual insanity and I HAVE DONE IT!.... the flask farming alone was silly... I think the thresholds on the following points seething body and bringer of flame should be adjusted and this would open up more build viability. i actually re-speced to a melee mace set up with these nodes and could feel something possible brewing but the incoming damage from the pyro pact points and enemies changed my mine. I also think having MAGIC FLASKS DILUTE the mechanic would also add to build viability instead of being dead weight on the character when taking these nodes.



ACOLYTE OF CHIPOTLE: This just flops compared to the invoker ascendancy. Invoker just has it all damage mitigation and bid D damage. I think to make these ascendencies fall more inline one of three things should be added.
1) Damage mitigation thru the darkness mechanic. currently this mechanic isn't effective at doing the job its supposed.
2) more upfront damage from the chaos nodes making the character an absurd glass canon spec.
3) recieving more from the 'into the breach' wisps either more global defences, more life regen, or more value from leeching.
I think before pursuing any of these changes we have to look at the LEECH interaction first. this may be the culprit causing, me, issue with this ascendencies survivability. As it is a complex path, maybe not enough players have delved into its potential builds.

The above are just classes i have played to this point and the problems that i found while playing them. I'm sure there will be more in a later post once i try out other builds and classes.


Crafting:
I see all over online a major point of contention in the current game is crafting. I'm not really sure where or what the consumers really want here as most builds I have seen online run 4-6 unique items. Leaving no room for any actual crafted gear. I don't really get it.....
Now if we are talking the early endgame content. I think I get it, where the vendors no longer provide the absurd godly gear drops, and both essences and greater essences have low/no drop rate at all. I do think the drop rate of essences should be increased. a youtuber Snoobae85 actually did a large target farm session of essences, I don't believe this is peak gameplay at all, and the value of doing a farm like this didn't look convincing. Not to mention the actual TIME required to set these maps up and running maps for essence specific drops just wow....
In my mind essence drop rates (when encountering an essence event) should be increased both in terms of number of essences dropped, and chance of greater essences dropped. I have not found a single greater in my time playing but I have found hundreds of regular, that sounds silly to me.

Crafting options:

I think more should be explored with the reforge bench. for as much as it already does it really doesn't do much and just sits there, staring at me while i'm in the hideout. Whispering: "come here use me in anyway you see fit" like the dirty little shower hand rag it is. Gents you know what I'm talking about.

I hear a lot of content creators talk about the crafting bench from POE1, now maybe not a 1:1 port of this is needed but an idirration of this mechanic is necessary for smoothing out the crafting frustration.

In all I do think there needs to be more here. to smoothen out that early endgame set up builds require for maps process. I do agree with the devs that some level of slot machine is required to keep players engaged and searching for the 6/6 rare piece of gear, but having only 2/6 guaranteed hits and just being lucky on the other 4 modifiers isn't the path to pursue either. Somewhere in the 4-5 guaranteed modifiers is where we need to sit when crafting gear. AND I am a firm believer that in a LOOTING game the merchants are not the play..... at least at an endgame level.


Towers:
In the most recent patch we received new layouts while this helped for a second, it really does not take away the monotony of running towers in the first place. Personally, I believe towers should be our big bad boss fights, where concurring the higher tiered bosses drops the overseer tablets, allowing us to put map bosses out in the world.
In there current form maps still feel dry and boring where I slap a white map of low tier in and speed run it, to get onto better activities. I really think the what i said above will breath life and a desire to farm towers into the game.


Deliurium:
More bosses and delirium rares and bosses when running these maps is needed currently I don't see much value when running these events.

Expedition:
have better/ more targeted loot drop from this event either currency or tiered gear. Currently this event also feels lackluster to run.

Ritual:
larger and larger waves of monsters and maybe even more ritual sites would really help juice this event out.


Campaign:
By the third or fourth time thru it just feels like wading thru a muddied paddock where you jkust want to be in endgame running maps. I'm not to sure how i would fix this missing the other acts makes it tough to talk about to....


Thats all I can think of with the current state of EA. Maybe some of you feel similar or think i'm way off here. Game still feels good but it's become more noticeable that so much is missing. More and more this EA, feels more like an alpha and I think the community needs better clarification and more consistent small patches to help address issues. But anyways, let me know what you guys think. And always stay safe out there EXILES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Grubbs008]

Might be time to play something else.

[Vin]

fire is bad? no. a fire witch is dollar store fire sorc. witch is very strong at chaos and minions. leave elemental damage to the class they gave her elemental ascendancy to.

[Branded Lost]

ok.

[Hatsune Miku]

Its obvious they released it into EA way too early, I've personally leveled almost every class to 80+ and its blatantly obvious that some classes are leagues better than others, warrior obviously needing a massive upgrade which doesn't bode well for other melee classes on future updates.

[Random009]

he spend half of his 400h writting this bore manifesto

[bibudis]

Originally posted by ♥BlackSun♥:

he spend half of his 400h writting this bore manifesto

Its true bro... Game needs a lot of changes otherwise is just copying POE1. Why not continue playing poe1 then??? Only the graphics changed. We need innovated ideas to bring in table and make it happen. If Devs not listen the Voice of steam community sooner or later this game will be dead.

[Lord Dralisz]

I didn't read it

[TonnieKrain]

You are suppose to make a review, not a thread in discussion. Nobody is reading that massive wall of text from a random on the internet with a random generated name and no Avatar

[taxi83]

i aint reading all that. i'm happy for u tho. or sorry that happened