Seriously, fuck this game

Seriously, fuck this game.
I just cleared cruel with my archer.
He's level 57 with 1.6k hp, acrobatics, and full evasion.
Every attack from every single boss / midboss in act 3 and act 4 is an instagib. I must have died some 40+ times against cruel malachai before killing him. I haven't even attempted cruel lab yet.

I'm not going to bother to try merciless. What's the point? This isn't gameplay, this is just sadism. At least there's no way to respec without sinking my entire bank account into orbs of regret.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=-5BtuKGYU_g
pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1041989
youtube.com/watch?v=nTbZWrtOkks
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>1.6k life
WEW LAD

The game's item and XP grind heavily favors glass cannon builds, which of course means they're underpowered for bosses. Using a more balanced build increases the amount of time it takes to clear everything else which is frustrating to players.

Either way people end up frustrated.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Of course I know that NOW, that I should've been ignoring everything on the tree that looks slightly interesting and just spending everything on +2% life nodes so I could crawl through the early game dealing 1dps.

But the difficulty progression is balanced as to make it completely non-obvious that you will suddenly start instantly dying to everything, evasion and ele resists be damned.

Then by all means explain why. You can't just say "you're wrong" without proving it, otherwise you are wrong.

No. There are plenty of guides and a comprehensive wiki that explains everything already.

Then by all means link them or quote them. How are you not getting this? You need to back up your statements if you want to be believed. Until then you're wrong and full of shit. The things I said are not only logical, they're self explanatory. You're insisting that the item and XP grind do not favor glass cannon builds (when that's the fastest way to gain both), that focusing on glass cannon builds does not leave you underpowered for bosses (which is obviously not the case), or that choosing a build that increases your defenses somehow does not decrease your damage dealing abilities (which is mathematically impossible).

Prove I'm fucking wrong. I'd love to see how you can argue the points I've made because from where I'm sitting NOTHING can be disputed.

Not him, but goddamn, are you autistic or something? Not every internet discussion has to be a debate. He said you're wrong, just take it or leave it.

A lot of people die multiple times to Malachai. If you're having that much trouble you should either get good or regear/respec/reroll.

My problem is not that "grinding builds suck at bosses" -
I didn't intend to make a glass cannon build.
I was making my levelling decisions in the context of the content that I was currently playing, where there was no reason for me to buy health and it made much more sense for me to buy damage.
My problem with the game is that there is no way besides blindly following a guide to know that the difficulty is suddenly going to take a u-turn and invert the significance of your build choices, while also not providing any meaningful respec options. If you want a character that can tackle the content I'm facing in a reasonable manner, your build has to be ridiculously and stupidly lopsided for previous content. The progression is balanced like shit.

>Not him, but goddamn, are you autistic or something?
Not everyone who takes a little time to make a point is autistic. The fact that you think this probably means you're stupid and don't like being reminded of that.

>Not every internet discussion has to be a debate.
It's not a discussion. It's a debate. Very literally.

>He said you're wrong, just take it or leave it.
Without backing it up.

>A lot of people die multiple times to Malachai
I'm not the person having trouble with the game.

No, you're just the one shitting up my thread
I'm sure there are more fedoras for you to tip over in /lit/ or something

As you play in the end game, you'll encounter a lot of situation where mobs and bosses have insane burst damage (especially with how the armor mechanic works) and can easily chew through all of your hp before you can react, not to mention all the reflect auras and crap.

...

>can't argue a single thing
>get mad that someone embarrassed you

Go back to wherever the fuck you came from.

>my
I'm OP, you mongoloid. Nobody is even trying to argue with you, you completely misinterpreted the point of the thread and started having a fit by yourself.

>tfw 5k hp marauder
>my gear is garbage and I really want more HP
>I run into all of my maps and shoot fire everywhere while everything tries to bash my face in
>Vaal pact restores my hp to max after everything bursts into flames
Bulk up, you tiny fuck.

Last time I checked
>don't go full evasion unless you want to suffer
>put some points into life nodes, just look up a build for that or go to /vg/ for advice
there now you know

>he just found out that any hack&slay arpg is all about having defenses out of the ass until you can survive facetanking the hardest hitting enemy and dps literally doesn't mean shit

babbies first diablo

but that's exactly why I don't play them anymore, there are no builds, there is only the binary issue of enough defenses or not, everything is pointless

I don't think you've played much of PoE.

WOLOLO

>but muh point&click max defense simulator is different from diablo, I swear!1

I feel sorry for people who still play this kind of game when there's a ton of skill based rpgs out there.

youtube.com/watch?v=-5BtuKGYU_g
Not an argument

>skill based RPGs
>a genre rooted in RNG at it's core
>skill based

hearty kek

I think my biggest point of pain is how non-obvious it is what I should be doing to survive.
Shit's flying all over the place and it's rarely clear what sort of damage it is. I was fucking furious at Daresso before realizing that he has resolute technique, so he never misses, which renders my evasion worthless. Evasion doesn't do shit to "spells", which presumably includes the giant deathbeams all the bosses are constantly shitting out. The only counter there is presumably resists, except they come in all sorts of stupid colours and the only way to actually figure out which resist to itemize for is to look it up on the wiki.

>except they come in all sorts of stupid colours and the only way to actually figure out which resist to itemize for is to look it up on the wiki
You itemize for all of them.
HIt the cap on the elemental resistance, carry flasks that remove status effects, and hop out of the way of big damage dealers with a movement skill

nigger you're struggling in fucking act 4 cruel. you haven't even reached maps, yet you think you are some kind of hyper professional powergamer who worries about MUH CLEARSPEED and shit? you're a pathetic scrub, nothing more.

protip: buy (or craft) cheap gear that has an evasion base (assuming your char is built around evasion), has life on it, and gives some resistances. that's literally all you need to reach endgame. you can worry about optimizing your builds damage when you start pushing into high red maps.

>dude you have to try PoE
>omfg it's D2 but 10000x better
>bro bro bro it has all the builds
>not even kidding it has ALL the builds bro you can do anything
>fucking anything bro any build it has so many bro
>all the builds bro seriously not even exaggerating
>oh btw just make sure you follow a guide to the absolute letter or else you'll have to abandon your character and restart
>seriously though bro the builds

You're right, I haven't been actively looking for resists on my gear except for rings. Reaching the elemental cap (effectively 95% in cruel, right?) sounds pretty impossible.

Look at it mathematically. The game has an incredible amount of variation. Obviously 99.99999999999999% of all possible builds are garbage, but the remaining ones are in hundreds.

Well you can.
Nobody said your shitty CI glacial hammer summoner shadow would progress past merc, but you can go ahead and give it a shot.

>oh btw just make sure you follow a guide to the absolute letter or else you'll have to abandon your character and restart
Just like D2.

>Reaching the elemental cap (effectively 95% in cruel, right?) sounds pretty impossible.
nah
make a habit of picking up two-stone rings of all kinds, roll alts on them until you get something decent (life + resist, or two resists) and stash them.
regarding the rest of your gear, dont make the mistake of thinking magic (blue) items are beneath you - they are very useful for leveling, and super cheap to craft. roll alts and augs to get useful stats (life, resist) on ALL your equipped items.

rare items look shiny and impressive at first, but when you actually think about it, your evasion based bow ranger really doesnt get any benefit from a rare with
>+24 strength
>21% reduced stun recovery
>+8% increased light radius
>+35 to maximum energy shield
>45% increased armor and energy shield

and you are way better off with using a crafted magic item that has
>+26% to frost resistance
>+41 to maximum life
or some shit like that


keep in mind that all this information assumes that you are playing a good build.
if you are playing a shit build that cant kill anything, better optimised armor wont get you very far either.

That's an understatement though.
I have an absolutely vanilla archer build, not something pants-on-head retarded, and the game became unplayable at cruel. I don't expect to be doing endgame maps with my first character, but I at least aspired to get to a point where I could reasonably fund future builds. It doesn't look like that will happen, because there's really no way for me to progress with that character because I can't magically fix my health without 20 level's worth of progress.

>he thinks rpg needs rng
you are literally the cancer that is killing video games

>hundreds

More like dozens. Or a dozen. If even that.

>GIT GUD
Also, I stopped playing this trash game. Nowadays it's just too easy. Literally it's just currency farming slot machine.
>also Xbone annoucement
It's going Diablo route and fast.

>I have an absolutely vanilla archer build, not something pants-on-head retarded, and the game became unplayable at cruel.

what kind of archer build?
go 4link your bow and use
>tornado shot
>greater multiple projectiles
>faster attacks
>physical projectile attack damage

if your skilltree isn't completely busted and your bow base is at least somewhat close to your character level (if it's not, just buy a base off a vendor and alt spam it until you get an increased physical damage stat to pop up) then you should be doing just fine damage wise.

if you want a good guide for this kind of build, check this out:
pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1041989

i played it during perandus league last year, it was a blast. the guide is somewhat out of date, but none of the relevant things really changed since then. you can follow the guide and get into maps without any problems.

I'm using barrage for single target and multishot for crowd. I didn't really enjoy tornado shot. I realize that barrage isn't amazing, but with deadeye's bleed chance/on-bleeding bonuses it's pretty good and I enjoy how it feels.

Any advice on which curses I should use? I've been using frenzy with curse on hit: poacher's mark or projectile weakness mostly, but I can't really tell what's best.

Pretty much this, I stopped playing a few years ago and now when I come back the game combat feels identical to D3.

the return per point for passive life bonus are way too shit to be worth it especially in the archer area where there's maybe 10% extra life to grab in total, and the bow sucks so many dicks that you will sink everything in damage boost just to kill rare packs at all.

>bulletproof glass cannons are the way forwards

how much future would the game have if having super tanky, high clear speed characters were easy to get?

Now do a rare red map.

I'm working on it.
I'm only at tier 6.
youtube.com/watch?v=nTbZWrtOkks
I'm using this guy's build and he can manage

i havent played a ranger since last year (most recent char that i played was flameblast ele in breach league) but you dont really need any curses at all. you can run the usual temp chains or enfeeble shit for survivability if you want, but if you want damage then you're usually better off spending your time shooting things with damage skills rather than cursing them with some sub par coh setup.

regarding skills, i dont really see why you would use split arrow over GMP tornado shot. in general, i heavily recommend using tornado shot as your main damage skill 99% of the time, and throwing an occasional frenzy in to keep max frenzy charges up.
the beautiful thing about GMP TS is that it works really well against both multiple enemies and single target fights because multiple secondary arrows can all damage the same target.

considering the limited slot space, and the lack of cool downs, I usually end up with builds that are 2 main attacks(one for solo monster, one for packs), an utility, a golem, and 2 auras/enchants/curses. With middle mouse being the "wild card". And it works for all classes. I think the game's problem isn't really skill diversity, but the enemies you face that will drive everybody toward the same strategies. Some bosses are totally meant to be done in one way, so if you can't do it, fuck you.
It works well enough in group play, but for solo players it's just frustrating.
(and yeah dodge builds are pure shit, too hard to go above 51% dodging. it's bullshit considering how many hits per second you can take)

The fuck are you even talking about.

the fact you got your vanilla archer to cruel is merit in itself. everyone will be hard as fuck about it but really im happy you made it thus far before giving up because a lot og people press 'P' for passive skill tree and soon after quit when they don't one shot anymore.

>he fell for the deadeye noobtrap

no wonder your build sucks so much

I still do oneshot
That's probably half the problem

have you considered getting some gear that actually has max life and resists on it?

it isn't hard to get capped resists and 2.2k+ life by cruel dried lake with pretty much any build that picks up a few life nodes on the tree.

also pretty much every one shot is easily avoidable, try actually moving out of the way when a slam is being telegraphed. getting 20%+ move speed boots helps.

You get like 16 respec points from doing side quests by act 4 cruel. You could respec out of some damage and pick up some life nodes. Post a link to your skill tree if you need help.

you did pick the short straw, from all the defenses i'd say evasion is the very worst. UNLESS you use blind in some form, then its average. still a block chance + blind is better :(

Game is shit and your build sucks. Power creep destroyed the little fun you could still get out of the game even with how broken it was. I recommend getting into some other ARPG like Torchlight 2 or whatever instead of wasting time on this trash.

PoE is probably the easiest ARPG I've played in years even on its "hardest" difficulty.

you are so cool

you need life leech or regen and use utility gems like taunt or slow totem or some shit