Is PoE 2 supposed to be this hard? I figured there would be a leveling curve but didn't figure I would die to the first boss twice before I even got any decent gear.
Is PoE 2 supposed to be this hard? I figured there would be a leveling curve but didn't figure I would die to the first boss twice before I even got any decent gear.
From what I recall, the bosses are all supposed to be like that (and not total pushovers). I am playing a witch minion build. Started out quite slow and the minions were garbage, but it's starting to ramp up. I picked up a summon raging spirits gem but in PoE2 you don't cast it, it goes off when you cast fire spells of which I have none.
I'm appreciating the difficulty, the not knowing what to do, and the exploration. So far it's been a blast.
Hey, just dipping a toe in here - I always wanted to love PoE but was turned off by how respecs are expensive so you need to keep rerolling to experiment with builds. Has that changed in recent years?
Hey, just dipping a toe in here - I always wanted to love PoE but was turned off by how respecs are expensive so you need to keep rerolling to experiment with builds. Has that changed in recent years?
No, not much. The most recent league added some mechanics that make it easier to buy the currency that lets you refund passive points, and I hope they keep them. I think most people with jobs and kids stick to build guides they like and maybe tweak them a little.
It's revamped in PoE2, Respec is just some gold now
Oh awesome! Like fully? The last time I played they'd recently added those base thingies, where you find craftsmen and hire then to hang out in your base etc, and I felt like there was enough gameplay in leveling a character that it no longer made sense to restrict respecs. Not like D2 or something where you get powerleveled and you're good to go.
Is there a built in auction house or something? That was the other issue I had.
There’s a lot of stuff I like, and some stuff I expect I’ll get used to, but separating the skills into a discrete window while also tying some skills to weapons just seems like a counterproductive design decision. I accidentally lost an important support gem because I forgot the skill it was slotted into was from an equipped item, and when I sold the item to upgrade to one with a higher level version of the skill, the gem appears to have been sold with it rather than transferring with the skill or at the very least unequipping. I played the original game for almost a decade and never accidentally lost a gem that way.
Struggled quite a bit with this. I'd say play around with a few of the classes unless the first one your try floats your boat.
I started with the witch and felt lackluster. Then I went with ranger since it seems everyone was streaming sorceress and it felt much better.
I tried monk and the quarterstaff felt impactful but I struggled with the first boss. Plus the first skill gem you get is lethargic.
The warrior felt good but I had to step out before I even made it to the first boss.
I may go back to but did not like the core ammunition swapping mechanic of the mercenary. I might use the ranger's lightning arrow with that class.
I liked the sorcerer's spark skill but it is very easy to get overwhelmed. The skill spread seems designed to get into a pack and blast for maximum effect. That is a quick way to die though.
But after groking with the ranger to level 5 with a handful of unique gear finds, I revisited my witch. She is a total 180 now with the arsonist and leveled up unearth. (really fun skill once I read the text and understood how it worked)
Do we have a Guild yet?
Do we have a Guild yet?
Yeah ping Athros on discord or in game. I'll be out for a few days before i can jump back on
Impressions after 4-ish hours:
I've mentioned on the discord but it seems to be a common impression with people: most every class is going to feel kind of weak at the start. And it's not the typical weak where you know you just need to pick up a bigger club at level 2 to swing away more heartily at that elite enemy or mini-boss. This is the kind of difficulty that comes with being more intentional with how you crowd control, how you time your dodges and your skills target selection. Love it or hate it, that naughty Fextralife early review was pretty spot on when they described POE2 as "the Dark Souls of ARPGs" or something to that effect.
Sorry, I've only been playing the Mercenary so far but that's 100% been my experience. I was at Level 4 and still thinking to myself: "It's not too late to try out my second choice, the Monk...". My basic attack was anemic, the shotgun-like blast was wasn't one-shotting crowds like I expected and the frost attack was absolute a$$. Even the grenades were finnicky, since they didn't explode on contact and their fuse felt interminably long.
Then came my first support gem, which I decided to make a poisoning effect on my basic bolt. Then I used my next skill unlock to try out the last of the level 1 skills - armor piercing rapid fire - which has turned out to be my favourite so far. Swapped the poison support over to the rapid fire skill...okay, now we're getting somewhere. Another skill gem unlocked me a penetrating sniper-like bolt that does greater damage on armor-broken enemies. Even better!
My final "ah-ha" moment for the night was grabbing yet another support gem and choosing "Chain". Suddenly my poisoning, armour-piercing rapid fire bolts were proccing additional bolts that would fly out to track enemies not directly in my line of fire. I kinda stopped worrying about using my grenades at that point. The cooking has begun!!
I have died a number of times already. The Rust King took me 3 tries and a few of the minor bosses made me respawn once or twice. By the end of the night though I ran into the Devourer and blasted through that thing without dying. Overall it felt like a good balance of making rational upgrade & skill decisions while also being very tactical & aware on the gameplay side of things. I can see the vibe they're going for here. They don't want us to walk into a room and only have to hold down a button or execute a rote rotation of skills. I mean... I'm sure there's going to be a degree of that eventually but for right now the gameplay is more "action-y" and I do appreciate it for that.
Oh, wanted to add for anyone who's curious about playing Mercenary:
He's VERY "APM" heavy. You can auto-reload or reload manually by tapping the key for your currently equipped ammo skill. There are combo effects in play, so you may want to equip the frost bolts to freeze your target, then switch over to the "shotgun" bolts to shatter them. After which there may be ranged enemies far off which will make you switch over to your basic attack so you can quickly plink them down. I'm playing on controller and my thumb is constantly dancing across the face buttons while also driving the right thumbstick to aim.
Started over as a Ranger and am just rolling over bosses that the Witch struggled with. Seems to be a good starting class if anyone’s having issues with the difficulty.
Started over as a Ranger and am just rolling over bosses that the Witch struggled with. Seems to be a good starting class if anyone’s having issues with the difficulty.
Agreed.
I think its just getting a little bit of knowledge on how your class works. And some classes get a much better starting skill.
Case in point:
I fumbled with the witch out of the gate and the minions seemed underwhelming. Yet, on my warrior, I equipped the witch's unearth skill that makes a nice pair with my hammer whacking things. And on my sorceress, I have an off hand scepter with level 2 skeletons built in which makes for a nice distraction while spark whittles things down. Oh and that witch has now leveled up skeleton warriors, unearth and now plows through things with the arsonist in tow.
So its not one or the other. Its both and its different combinations of that depending on the class.
I'm also wondering if you can get past equipment requirements with sockets in them? I have like 2 pieces that have sockets (gloves and helm) and I wonder if that is what they are for?
Another easy win class is warrior that you can apply bleeding to you blunt attack with a support gem.
Working my way through the opening acts as the warrior. Working pretty good so far. Lots more movement and dodging than I remember from PoE, but that may just be my poor memory.
Not used to the M&K playstyle though, developing hand cramps from the mouse.
I’ve been playing mostly with controller and it works well, the setup is almost identical to the Diablo 4 controls.
Do we have a Guild yet?
If you want an invite to the guild, your character name is needed. You can add athros_war_one as a friend. That should link to my account name Athros#7309
Loving it so far, it’s got me much more so than PoE ever did. The elemental sorceress is a blast.
I’ve been playing mostly with controller and it works well, the setup is almost identical to the Diablo 4 controls.
It works with a controller on PC??
I like this idea.
ruhk wrote:I’ve been playing mostly with controller and it works well, the setup is almost identical to the Diablo 4 controls.
It works with a controller on PC??
I like this idea.
Yeppers. Only been using controller. GGG has learned a lot from implementing controller support for POE1 after-the-fact. I feel the streamlining of the skill gem system in POE2 has also helped a lot for making the navigation feel so much better.
Its 6 of one, half dozen of the other for me with the skill system.
Pros
PoE2 - finding a gem can be used for any skill, support gem drops can turn into any support
PoE1 - any support can work with any skill (or at least its no where near as locked down as PoE2)
PoE1 - skills level up through usage
PoE2 - not relying on equipment slot numbers and types really streamlined the skill system
PoE1 - if GGG hadn't gone over board with up to 6 slots AND linking AND types, that system did offer more flexibility
Cons
PoE2 - the tiered support gems are good in theory and for streamlining, but in practice it seems limiting
PoE2 - relying on RNG drops to level up skills
Honestly, as good as the game is, I predict it won't do more than moderately better than PoE2. Yes they had a lot of early access sales, but eventually, the people that played PoE1 will be the ones that play PoE2 long term. The difficulty is the reason. Not that it is bad, but that it wears the players down. Diablo 4 hit the same wall with the post level 50 paragon grind at launch and it cost them significant numbers until they repeatedly dialed it back. The difficulty AND grind are built in to PoE2 from the start so the only thing available to them is empowering early quest rewards.
Just my 2 cents.
WRT Support gems - it's cut off to recommended gems only at the outset. You can turn that off permanently in Options or you can turn it off every time with a little check box in the bottom left.
I followed it for a bit until I was comfortable, then turned it off.
If every story boss is going to be multi-phase I wish they would just factor that into their health bar rather than having them completely heal after each phase. It’s demoralizing getting a boss down to like 20% and then suddenly they’re at full health again.
Changing to controller made it so much smoother for me.
Thanks!
Thinking I might step away and let this bake for awhile longer- I’m stuck on a boss that has a bunch of highly telegraphed attacks that encourage you to stay within melee range to avoid them, and one attack that can one-shot me at full health and isn’t telegraphed at all unless I’m well outside melee range when it triggers. It wouldn’t be so bad if boss fights only took 10-20 seconds like in the first game, but the drawn out fights here offer too many opportunities to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and just makes some fights feel cheap rather than challenging.
The early game is definitely way too punishing currently.
I think the main issues are:
- The cost of respecs making it difficult to adjust if you hit a wall
- The lack of appropriate gear/crafting drops
It seems like later in the game both of those issues are mitigated a bit, and certainly leveling alts will be much easier with the resources from your main available to them. I can totally understand people getting frustrated and dropping it though since your first character is going to be the worst experience.
Also, I've been experiencing a hard lock crash on loading screens which requires a hard reset of my PC. The devs have acknowledged this as a high priority issue. It causes all my CPUs to max out and Windows can't respond. Pretty frustrating.
They have started increasing drop frequencies in the latest patch and will continue with various classes of items in the next few patches (according to statements).
To me, this is not a respec game. It's a "strip everything off the char, buy stuff with the money, then delete and start a new char" game. There's accommodation for a bit of redoing in PoE1, but it's not Diablo IV by any means.
The early game is definitely way too punishing currently.
Also, I've been experiencing a hard lock crash on loading screens which requires a hard reset of my PC. The devs have acknowledged this as a high priority issue. It causes all my CPUs to max out and Windows can't respond. Pretty frustrating.
I've experienced this same thing. Changing to the Vulkan renderer seems to have helped, as I've not had a similar crash in a couple of days. It's definitely not a guaranteed fix though. Several folks have reported back that things are still presenting with that option set.
Thinking I might step away and let this bake for awhile longer- I’m stuck on a boss that has a bunch of highly telegraphed attacks that encourage you to stay within melee range to avoid them, and one attack that can one-shot me at full health and isn’t telegraphed at all unless I’m well outside melee range when it triggers. It wouldn’t be so bad if boss fights only took 10-20 seconds like in the first game, but the drawn out fights here offer too many opportunities to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and just makes some fights feel cheap rather than challenging.
Which boss was this? Curious if it's one I has the same issue with.
Was not enjoying my monk character much, so decided to try switching from M&K to controller and wow did it make a difference. So, so much more fun to play my monk on the controller - it just feels way more natural, and targeting the bell seems much easier.
Gonna have to give it a try on my sorc too, see what that's like.
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