Completely broken mechanics/design

[Anaztazioch]

Well, ive spent 140h on this game to care enough to point out things i believe arent just "balance issue of EA", but actual design that will carry into release with nothing but minor alteration.

Initially - Sorceress:
1) You have no weapons !!!
I have not noticed any "quality" of a staff to providing a thing.
You cant insert runes into staff/wand
Higher level of a staff only provides free mana ability that underperforms other spells
Modifiers are out of whack, you can get + levels to spells, which is +12% dps per level, or get +100% spell damage. If you roll a weapon that has both +lvl and +100% spell damage, than getting another staff with those two modifiers will happen maybe once in next 60 hours. When i was lvl 42 i got a staff, that until entering endgame content by evel 67 i didnt get a staff that was even close to what i have.

2) Bad spell mechanics/damage
First is firewall - sounds good, doesnt work. It is there to buff projectiles, not deal fire damage. while the dps values are good, its completely unreliable, even when placed under frozen/nonmoving enemies. It just... doesnt work.
Spark - this thing is designed to work with firewall and with firewall its good even in endgame. But solo it becomes useless around level 25.
Orb of Storms - nice idea but lacks damage, has a big gap between min and max damage, so by default it does unsatisfactory damage and eventualy becomes a waste of casttime.
Ice Nova - this... is weak. Does hardly any damage, chill and knockback is decent, gets a nice gem to boost it but... due to low damage becomes near obsolate.
Ember Fusillade - this is something i dont get... Basicly you dont shoot, you accumulate "embers", which are fired after not casting/channeling the spell for 1sec. End result, each ember deals damage comparable to... firebolt which you get for no mana from a staff. Seems the idea is to gather embers, drop a firewall to buff your projectiles, but the casttimes makes it that you fire embers before firewall is up... and its dps is slightly better than firebolt... and which channeling you move are 50% speed making you easy target... and you cant chose your targets as embers fire at nearest... and they can miss...
Solar Orb - fun idea, an orb that deals dps burning when enemies are near it and releases fire novas every second. Bad is, both dps and nova damage is weak and most enemies need to stand in its full 10 second duration to recieve damage every other spell can deal in 4 seconds... and its area is small even with many upgrades.
Incinirate - same as in D4. Deals DOT and sets enemies ablaze, but DOT is WEAK and requires you to channel, which "self-roots". Many enemies in the game can almost instantly jump from edge screen in your face and interrupt your channel, many ranged enemies can just hit and kill/interrupt your channel. Many enemy casters will force you to dodge, abandoning your channel. And you have to channel the spell for like 4 seconds for it to start dealing damage... From level 30+ the channel requirement makes it obsolate, from 50+ its damage and self-root makes it suicidal.
Fireball - ehhh... Its weak. Just weak, underballanced. Hard to kill anything with it. And just like in D4 - even tough it explodes on contact, it is still bad at dealing with multiple monsters... Currently its useful in breaking frostwall...
Firestorm - basciluy a screenwide rain of fire that.... does no admage... chances for its bolts to hit enemy are low and the damage is even lower. Literally lowest dps spell of all.
Flameblast - another channeled spell as it deals damage depending on how much its charged. Low charge = no damage, Max charge = barely noticable damage. And its needs to be charged... its targeted on caster or solar orb. So to have any efficiency with it you need to use underperforming spell with another underperforming spell, while the latter also self-roots you. This should be a nuke usable on damage windows when bosses cant attack to buff your dps, or be a cool wave clear. Currently it cant even drain your mana.
Curse debuffs - there is a debuff for fire/ice/lightning damage, which lasts only 6 seconds and reduces reistance by -30%. Its good on bosses, but... it cost like half your mana.
Mana Tempest - Good buff, but mana eater. Starting level 50+ you are getting mana problems, so basicly its balance issue, as there are abilties that cost less mana and are more effective.
Lightning Warp - This is... both great spell, but its mechanic is broken. It requires enemy to be low on health, other wise, casting this spell will cost mana and have NO effect. Alternatively you can wait about 9 levels until you unlock the next tier of spells that has Ball Lightning. You can use Lightning Warp on Ball Lightning, thus finaly letting it deal damage... Problem is it can expose you to melee damage and is useless in boss fights without ball lighting. With proper use it can out dps Arc even on single target, but it literally throws your mana out of the window.
Ball Lightning - deals no damage. Useful only as target fort Lightning Warp. ITs meant to shock enemies, but shock value is tied to damage which is non-existant. End result it shocks comparable to arc.
Cold Snap - this is the strongest damage spell in the game. Problem is it can only be used on "frozen" enemies - including bosses. Without freeze effect, this spell only costs mana. Other spells may not deal as much raw damage, with can be used with gems that totally outclass Cold Snap. For instance Comet with +50% damage when removing frozen and echo gem that makes 2 extra comets to fall.
Lightning Conduit - This spell... deals slightly more damage than Arc, but requires a extra 1 sec cast time, which self-roots you. During Endgame you get interrupted by almost any damage, which means window to cast this is small, its damage is subpar and thus the spell has no place in the game. Without the "cast time animation" it could be useful, but that mechanic is what trashes it.
Other spells, Arc, Frostwall, Icebomb, Comet are in a good place and currently dont need any tending. Its not that they are "meta", its mostly the others are falling behind on being useful.

3) Locked out of STR and DEX - you need INT for spell level and mana/mana regen so you cant focus on other stats, resulting in being locked to a very narrow equipment options. 90% of items you find will be unequippable due to lacking STR/DEX. With the way Staffs work, Sorc has almost no equipment action, only inventory tetris.

4) Stunlocks - this is the worst of all... In late game every attack stuns you. When stunned you cant cast, cant dodge, so even with high life/ES you cant do anything than be zeroed.

5) Frostwall leaks - Its mostly bugged, as sometimes the wall is stuck in reforming, recreating ice crystals over its duration. Also it makes maps and enemies can easly sneap through it. It also has ridiculous high amount of HP. I often see enemies mass aggro on it and are unable to break it...



Warrior:
Where is my tankiness ? All dmage goes to health, no ES due to no INT, armor loses its efficiency with level progression too fast to be a viable choice, DPS is so weak you are basicly locked into a single build.
Its a terrible shape Warrior is in, when his abilities appear to be nice and interesting and gameplay fun. But no damage and no survivability...


Witch
Here my problem is only with curses... Witch deals DOTs... dots are damage over time... but...
I cast, Despair
I cast, Drain Essense
I cast, Contagion
I cast, Archer to shoot poison cloud arrow
I cast, Enfible with gem that gives it a DOT
My despair duration ended, so i recast Depair
My Drain Essense duration ended, so i recast Drain Essense....
...
Dots and curses have 6 second duration by default, which eventually means you have to recast them. The long run is that you are forced into 5 different sources of DOT to be cast over and over and in the end give the same DPS as other class with just 1 or 2 spells the cast over and over.
Dots should have a long duration and should provide DPS while you do other actions, eventualy applying multiple DOTS and than using "filler" attacks are meant to give edge over just DPS classes.


Closing remarks:
Trials... after quest related 2 ascendancies you can repeat until completed, you are given an item that can be used only once. If you die its lost.
One trial, forces you to undergo 7 small maps and a boss, than another 7 small maps and a boss, than another 7 small maps and a boss. Eventualy the trial lasts half an hour or more, where you basicly just run... and if you make a mistake its all over and you need to grind for hours to get a new item to start another trial attempt.
The other trial is RNG debuff. You get 7 debuffs where some are game over or ignored. Like a debuyf that places a rune on ground which deals lightning damage if you stand on it for 2 seconds... The rune has small radius and i have never been hit by it. You can "upgrade" this debuff 2 times... Or give enemies 30% movement speed and buff it to make them immune to stun. Sorceres has no ability that stuns so this debuff doesnt affect her. So yeah, 5 debuffs that dont affect you. Than you have one that reduces your resistances which is nothing as during trials its Physical damage thats the problem and resistances dont affect that... Or a debuff that reduces your armor and sorceress has no armor... So 7 debufs that dont affect you.
Or you can get a spell to be cast on you, which deals massive physical damage on almost screen wide radius after 3 seconds. While this is not a biggie, it restricts your movement, allows enemies to surround you, or make avoiding boss mechanics impossible... Or get statues that can petrify you if you stand close, which are basicly game over during boss encounters as once again, you cant dodge his abilities. And those are just 2 FU debuffs.

Completing trials is mandatory to progress ascensions - one of strongest passives for the class and major DPS/survival buffs, locked behind a cancer mechanic.

[Just Wyvern]

Publicado originalmente por Medicles:

Well, i dont know your overall build, but i am pretty sure that if you are going for crit then you cant really go for ailments as well. If you wanna go crit then you have to focus on crit, if you want to go ailments then focus on ailments.

I also dont know what skills you are using, i hope the curse for lightning pen. is one of those and i dont know your gear. Do you have a staff with at least 60% spell/lightning damage and +1-2 Lightning Skills?

The only thing i can really suggest is that you should focus on dodging when Viper does her aoe attack and when the spears come out. No need for attacks. In my experience, Viper does the aoe event once and the spears maybe two times.

I'm not sure if I want to go spell crit or ailment more, but I'll look into soloing out one.
The curse is for lightning pen, my staff + my boots give +5 for lightning spell levels and +44% spell damage.
For some reason the viper for me spams the heck out of the wall-invulnerability phase and maybe goes 10 seconds outside of that before transitioning to spamming-the-aoe-spells phase. It does this pattern seemingly endlessly, the longest I survived was 11 rotations of these two abilities in a row (about 7 of them when the arena shrank)

As far as resists for an earlier comment, I think the last time I saw a ring/armor with a decent resist (10% or more) was uh... somewhere around level 7. Seriously the drops have been nothing but bootycheeks. My only really good gear has come from gambling.

As an introduction into the PoE games, it has been very rough.

[Chris]

vendors sell better gear then you will probably find at that level
even if it is white, with better base values.. cause you should have currency items to add stats to the white item.

this is critical for classes that rely on attacks, as a higher level base white or blue item could be double the damage as a lower level rare you might be keeping just cause its yellow..

every time you level up they refresh their inventory for sale.

check vendors every level for belts rings weapons, and general rares that are worth buying to use.

[Just Wyvern]

Publicado originalmente por Chris:

vendors sell better gear then you will probably find at that level

every time you level up they refresh their inventory for sale.

check vendors every level for belts rings weapons, and general rares that are worth buying to use.

I do, for some reason they keep dropping with entirely useless stats for me like charm charges, on-hit damage, stats other than int, or reduced flask usage.

[Younguns 375]

Totally agree with the DOTs the time on them is way too low

[Medicles]

Publicado originalmente por Just Wyvern:

For some reason the viper for me spams the heck out of the wall-invulnerability phase and maybe goes 10 seconds outside of that before transitioning to spamming-the-aoe-spells phase. It does this pattern seemingly endlessly, the longest I survived was 11 rotations of these two abilities in a row (about 7 of them when the arena shrank)

As far as resists for an earlier comment, I think the last time I saw a ring/armor with a decent resist (10% or more) was uh... somewhere around level 7. Seriously the drops have been nothing but bootycheeks. My only really good gear has come from gambling.

Yeah, you can forget about drops, its a rarity to find something useful there. Ironically its a nice feeling when you do get something useful. But my gear comes primarily from vendors and from gambling as well. Vendors are especially good though, i too can only suggest to look at the vendors every time you level up. Luckily each zone fully cleared is worth around a level and a full inventory during campaign, so it fits together.

I dont know what to tell you in regard to Viper though but i absolutely understand your situation. I have played several different builds and thus i know that not everything is useful and a lot of stuff seem to lose power the higher you go for some reason. But its EA and a lot will change in the future. Like being able to comfortably upgrade gems with more slots, which starts now in endgame but should actually start around act 3.

[Just Wyvern]

Publicado originalmente por Medicles:

Yeah, you can forget about drops, its a rarity to find something useful there. Ironically its a nice feeling when you do get something useful. But my gear comes primarily from vendors and from gambling as well. Vendors are especially good though, i too can only suggest to look at the vendors every time you level up. Luckily each zone fully cleared is worth around a level and a full inventory during campaign, so it fits together.

I dont know what to tell you in regard to Viper though but i absolutely understand your situation. I have played several different builds and thus i know that not everything is useful and a lot of stuff seem to lose power the higher you go for some reason. But its EA and a lot will change in the future. Like being able to comfortably upgrade gems with more slots, which starts now in endgame but should actually start around act 3.

Yeah, I think for now though it is best I take a break. Trying to troubleshoot this problem seems to have yielded no results (tried changing passives between ailment and crit build - both seem to still be useless against the viper (and crit turned out to be even worse against ads) and it has drained a fair bit of my sanity. Maybe I'll try again next major update or try a different class at some point.

As stated, as a first experience with PoE this has been very rough.

[Chelios]

Dodge through the spearmen attacks with incredibly generous windows of timing, then go back to attacking.

[Medicles]

Publicado originalmente por Just Wyvern:

Yeah, I think for now though it is best I take a break. Trying to troubleshoot this problem seems to have yielded no results (tried changing passives between ailment and crit build - both seem to still be useless against the viper (and crit turned out to be even worse against ads) and it has drained a fair bit of my sanity. Maybe I'll try again next major update or try a different class at some point.

As stated, as a first experience with PoE this has been very rough.

Oh yes, this is rough as a first experience, especially because its just half a game and many systems have been changed to work for this. For example, they planned for another trial, which means that at least the means to get the current 5 - 6 ascendency points will not be used in the release version.

See this game more as a playground to figure out what works, not as a game where you stay with one character and reach lvl 100, which you can obviously do, but it seems obvious through the amount of exp you have to farm to even just get one level in the high 90s that it is currently only meant for the dedicated with a lot of time to spare.

I suggest you try out a new character and use everything you have learned from your previous on it. You can even use the resources from your current character to give you good headstart and believe me, you will notice the difference, even if its the same class you are playing now with the same build in mind.

[Empukris]

As sorc main that already try all element I dont agree with most of what you said OP. Seems like there is something terribly wrong with either your support gem or your build. I dont even have to prove it to you simple google will give you many of those video proof.

Most of the spells you put there are viable. It is way above the average in term of dps compared to other class. But sorc are squishy in melee range early. Until you can stack ES and mana for MoM which is the Meta.

[donut32]

the entire game just needs a total redesign. if it doesnt, players will just go back to poe1 or D4 (the better game)

[donut32]

Publicado originalmente por Empukris:

As sorc main that already try all element I dont agree with most of what you said OP. Seems like there is something terribly wrong with either your support gem or your build. I dont even have to prove it to you simple google will give you many of those video proof.

Most of the spells you put there are viable. It is way above the average in term of dps compared to other class. But sorc are squishy in melee range early. Until you can stack ES and mana for MoM which is the Meta.

the only viable spell for sorc is spark right now. let us know when you are out of act 1 cruel...

[Empukris]

Publicado originalmente por donut32:

Publicado originalmente por Empukris:

As sorc main that already try all element I dont agree with most of what you said OP. Seems like there is something terribly wrong with either your support gem or your build. I dont even have to prove it to you simple google will give you many of those video proof.

Most of the spells you put there are viable. It is way above the average in term of dps compared to other class. But sorc are squishy in melee range early. Until you can stack ES and mana for MoM which is the Meta.

the only viable spell for sorc is spark right now. let us know when you are out of act 1 cruel...

LOL

[Anaztazioch]

Publicado originalmente por them4pples:

i just skimmed through your post, so not gonna go too deep, but a lot of your points are literally game knowledge issue:

1. spark is probably the best skill sorceress has. you don't need to combo it with flamewall to do good damage. my spark rn has over 30k dps in the tooltip. that's not counting the extra damage i so with double shock and lightning exposure. look up any sorc vid on youtube and you'll see even crazier dps from this skill.

5. just skimming through the part where you said sorc has no ability that stuns. why does she need to stun when she can freeze? freeze is OP af compared to stun. also, electrocute stuns. there are unique gloves you can get on trade site for cheap if you really wanna stun with lightning damage. they're called kitokos

You said you didint read everything, but the part about no stun is the broken mechanic of Trials of Chaos. There are dubuffs that dont affect your char and stun immunity debuff is no debuff at all for sorc, but for warrior thats 90% of his kit.

As spark, yes - with firewall its OP, im using Arc for fun, but its either crit or no damage. Frost spells are boss nukes, currently the die either on 1st or second time they freeze.

[Anaztazioch]

Publicado originalmente por Empukris:

As sorc main that already try all element I dont agree with most of what you said OP. Seems like there is something terribly wrong with either your support gem or your build. I dont even have to prove it to you simple google will give you many of those video proof.

Most of the spells you put there are viable. It is way above the average in term of dps compared to other class. But sorc are squishy in melee range early. Until you can stack ES and mana for MoM which is the Meta.

You are talking about experience up until endgame or experience when youve reached endgame of the endgame ?
As for min-maxing i never liked the idea. Its often feels like some spells/nodes are there simply as a trap to mess with player.
Going to sites and reading about builds takes away the fun of building you char, the fun of progressing a char, and the whole idea of "role-playing", leaving you with only action-arcade-gacha

[ministrog]

Publicado originalmente por Anaztazioch:

Publicado originalmente por Empukris:

As sorc main that already try all element I dont agree with most of what you said OP. Seems like there is something terribly wrong with either your support gem or your build. I dont even have to prove it to you simple google will give you many of those video proof.

Most of the spells you put there are viable. It is way above the average in term of dps compared to other class. But sorc are squishy in melee range early. Until you can stack ES and mana for MoM which is the Meta.

You are talking about experience up until endgame or experience when youve reached endgame of the endgame ?
As for min-maxing i never liked the idea. Its often feels like some spells/nodes are there simply as a trap to mess with player.
Going to sites and reading about builds takes away the fun of building you char, the fun of progressing a char, and the whole idea of "role-playing", leaving you with only action-arcade-gacha

coming back to this thread means you're open to feedback. open for getting inspiration. same can be said about going to build guide sites. or YT guides.

the game isn't simple, leave the ego at the door.