Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,886
D2 you could finish without farming, PoE you cannot (unless you don't count mapping and Shaper as part of the main game).
In D2 farming came as an additional activity you could do after you killed Bhaal on Hell. For me it marked a moment to restart with another characters.

In PoE getting to mapping feels like the game just started and it consists of too much grinding. Then you got a choice to grind 10x more (for SSF) or just grind enough to buy items you need. This is why trading is often singled out as a problem.
 

Saark

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Messages
2,205
A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
I finished D2:LoD on Hell Act 5

D2 you could finish without farming

What the fuck are you talking about? You don't need a 6l to kill shaper. You don't even need that great gear, as long as you know how to exploit the current double-dipping mechanics and know the fight.

Whats even more retarded is the fact that you think you finished D2 by killing Baal on hell. Theres this little thing called Uber-Tristram, which not only required quite a lot of farming for just the keys (whereas PoE at least has a decent progression tied to shaper), but it was also pretty much impossible to do Uber-Tristram solo unless you were playing a specific class, with rather specific gear. Getting a 6l on any class in PoE is quicker than trying to solo-selffarm a smiter and hoping to get draculs and either kiras or ravenfrost for CBF.

Of course you can solo Uber-Tristram on pretty much any class as long as you have draculs, some sort of crushing blow and close to perfect gear on all the other slots, but please tell me how that is any different from "having" to own a 6l like you described and abusing double-dipping? Its quite literally the exact same thing, only that thanks to div-cards PoE has plenty of options for progressing towards the final goal, D2 did not. You can also kill Shaper on a multitude of builds, whereas unless you were a paladin you could not solo Uber-Tristram unless you were playing a very specific build on each of the other classes. And except for the necro, they all had to be melee too. If you think what you have to do to get a 6l in PoE is bad, try farming the gear required for a Melee-Sorc, Kicksin or a Fury-Druid. Then you will know what pain is.
 
Last edited:

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,886
I guess this Uber Tristram was implemented after I played D2 or maybe it was for online version only.
But all you wrote still does not change the facts that socket system implemented another layer or RNG in loot hunting that only trading balances out.
 

Saark

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Messages
2,205
A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Yes, Uber-Tristram was an MP only thing.

You do realize that the current implementation of the socket-system that is present in PoE is actually an advanced version from the socket-system that was already in place in D2, right? Right down to the ilvl requirement for being able to roll certain amounts of sockets. While you socket skills in PoE in D2 you socketed passive-stats (gems/runes) or combined runes to make rune-words to create powerful items, some of them being literally the best you could get. For example White was great for boners/skelemancers, Spirit was used in a monarch for pretty much any caster build that stacked FCR, and if you actually managed to get an Enigma, well you were one lucky bastard. While you might argue that it makes a huge difference whether you socket skills or stats, I personally prefer the PoE system in practice.

It doesn't matter much to me whether I have a 5l or 6l, and getting a 5l is really not a big deal anymore. I lose out on about 20-30% damage not having the 6th link. In D2 getting a +3BS/White wand on a boner would increase your DPS by about 50% compared to some shitty random-ass weapon. And if you managed to get your hands on a HotO, oh boy. We're talking double/triple the DPS if you got to another FCR threshold, so I really can't get behind your reasoning from a "finishing the game" standpoint since D2 actually is way more demanding than PoE in that regard. Of course you already explained that in D2 you were basically "finishing" the game by just killing baal, not exactly a crowning achievement considering freaking bots did that all day long. Comparing Hell-Baal to Shaper is really like comparing apples to the third law of thermodynamics. You haven't experienced what was considered endgame in D2, which is why the only option for you to not look silly in this discussion is to not compare your experience you had with Diablo 2 to anything even remotely endgame related in PoE.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,886
I cannot but compare because hell act 4 and 5 was far more difficult than anything before yellow or red maps in PoE.
Standard content in PoE is laughable, I remember the time just getting to end game on HC was an achievement.

And yes socket system determining active skills is way more impactful than some passive bonuses.
I never liked it. When blizzard makes a remastered D2 I am not coming back to PoE.
 

Saark

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Messages
2,205
A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
I cannot but compare because hell act 4 and 5 was far more difficult than anything before yellow or red maps in PoE.
Standard content in PoE is laughable, I remember the time just getting to end game on HC was an achievement.

And yes socket system determining active skills is way more impactful than some passive bonuses.
I never liked it. When blizzard makes a remastered D2 I am not coming back to PoE.
Which is all fine and dandy, to each his own. But please don't try to convince anybody that you prefer D2 because it's more difficult. Did you actually play HC in PoE? You have a point in that PoE is somewhat easier during the leveling process, at least until you hit merciless. The only tough zones were maybe sanctuary, flayer jungle and depending on the spawn some of the ws keep areas. Hell was hard for one reason only, which is immunities. Good luck playing a necro and suddenly a bunch of PI mobs appear.

Also, you don't really make much sense. You're arguing that D2 is much harder than any non-endgame content in PoE, yet here we are with snippets like these:
When I didn't do that, the game became significantly harder with many builds. (in reference to PoE)
D2 you could finish without farming
Then explain to me how I finished D2:LoD on Hell Act 5 with multiple characters solo or just with one friend with almost no farming?

So you didn't need to farm for D2, but PoE basically required it or it became much harder, but D2 is harder than PoE? Doesn't make sense, sorry. You're basically saying yourself that D2 wasn't that hard of a game.

And you know what, I agree. Having lived and breathed D2 for a couple of weeks every ladder reset for more years that I care to admit, I can tell you that the content you describe in D2 was nowhere near close to being hard, not even on hc. It was very much enjoyable, still. It had the same amount of bullshit deaths as PoE of course, getting bumrushed by a bunch of stygian dolls, tormented/black souls or getting offscreened by Nihlataks CE was not fun, but it was easily manageable. Bosses were laughable thanks to static field/smite.

So far you have failed to provide any arguable metric as to why you consider D2 harder/better than PoE. At least you said it yourself in your last reply to me.
I never liked it.

Which is fine by me, PoE isn't for everyone, but please either come up with a reasonable point where D2 is better than PoE or just leave now, because having to endure this kind of bullshit until "Blizzard remasters D2" will mean you're gonna be here a while. Out of all the things that worked better in D2 than PoE, choosing the difficulty of content or the socket-thing as a means to argue about loot-RNG is one of the stupider things to choose. PoE has become too easy, yes, but it's endgame is still quite a lot harder than anything I've ever done in D2 - and I did pretty much every content in D2. Maybe your mistake is confusing T14+ maps with the actual endgame PoE has, because everything that is not the pale council, rigwald, uber atziri, guardians or shaper doesn't count as endgame. Ever came close to doing those on hc? Because maybe then we can talk about difficulty in both games, well that is once you did Uber Tristram in D2 to have something to compare to.
 
Last edited:
Self-Ejected

Barnabas

Self-Ejected
Patron
Shitposter
Joined
Dec 12, 2016
Messages
718
Location
USA
Well I downloaded PoE yesterday started in the beach but quickly got bored. Does it get better or do you just click things until they die the entire game?
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,886
I cannot but compare because hell act 4 and 5 was far more difficult than anything before yellow or red maps in PoE.
Standard content in PoE is laughable, I remember the time just getting to end game on HC was an achievement.

And yes socket system determining active skills is way more impactful than some passive bonuses.
I never liked it. When blizzard makes a remastered D2 I am not coming back to PoE.
Which is all fine and dandy, to each his own. But please don't try to convince anybody that you prefer D2 because it's more difficult. Did you actually play HC in PoE? You have a point in that PoE is somewhat easier during the leveling process, at least until you hit merciless. The only tough zones were maybe sanctuary, flayer jungle and depending on the spawn some of the ws keep areas. Hell was hard for one reason only, which is immunities. Good luck playing a necro and suddenly a bunch of PI mobs appear.
I don't play HC in aRPGs, it is a waste of time for 99% of the players. I do play HC in Xcom and Civ type games where it is not a waste of time.
And immunities was a better design than spike damage that PoE has. It also had many better things like charging enemies (these were once dangerous in PoE as well), high damage but slow projectile enemies, teleporting enemies, raise dead enemies surrounded by swarming minions and the rest.
Also, you don't really make much sense. You're arguing that D2 is much harder than any non-endgame content in PoE, yet here we are with snippets like these:

When I didn't do that, the game became significantly harder with many builds. (in reference to PoE)
D2 you could finish without farming
Then explain to me how I finished D2:LoD on Hell Act 5 with multiple characters solo or just with one friend with almost no farming?

So you didn't need to farm for D2, but PoE basically required it or it became much harder, but D2 is harder than PoE? Doesn't make sense, sorry. You're basically saying yourself that D2 wasn't that hard of a game.
I am arguing that PoE is more dependant on trading because of it's more layers of item modifiers that makes just looting items 99.9% useless (or you turn it into currency you use to buy stuff). I got few hundred hours of experience doing just that, no mere words can persuade me otherwise. It is like you are trying to tell me water is actually wine IRL, good luck with that.
D2 was just an example of a previous aRPG I loved to play that I never ever did any trading and didn't ever never feel like I needed to. Yes you could finish Hell Act 5 without farming but that is due to character builds, slower playing and smart playing. Anyone that did spike damage you could beat with smart playing or run away from (those minotaur like creatures in ice caves in Act 5 when backed by a Hasted hero where not something you fought against directly)
And you know what, I agree. Having lived and breathed D2 for a couple of weeks every ladder reset for more years that I care to admit, I can tell you that the content you describe in D2 was nowhere near close to being hard, not even on hc. It was very much enjoyable, still. It had the same amount of bullshit deaths as PoE of course, getting bumrushed by a bunch of stygian dolls, tormented/black souls or getting offscreened by Nihlataks CE was not fun, but it was easily manageable. Bosses were laughable thanks to static field/smite.

So far you have failed to provide any arguable metric as to why you consider D2 harder/better than PoE. At least you said it yourself in your last reply to me.
I never liked it.

Which is fine by me, PoE isn't for everyone, but please either come up with a reasonable point where D2 is better than PoE or just leave now, because having to endure this kind of bullshit until "Blizzard remasters D2" will mean you're gonna be here a while. Out of all the things that worked better in D2 than PoE, choosing the difficulty of content or the socket-thing as a means to argue about loot-RNG is one of the stupider things to choose. PoE has become too easy, yes, but it's endgame is still quite a lot harder than anything I've ever done in D2 - and I did pretty much every content in D2. Maybe your mistake is confusing T14+ maps with the actual endgame PoE has, because everything that is not the pale council, rigwald, uber atziri, guardians or shaper doesn't count as endgame. Ever came close to doing those on hc? Because maybe then we can talk about difficulty in both games, well that is once you did Uber Tristram in D2 to have something to compare to.
I never liked the extra layer of item mods introduced by socket system I consider it the main cause why trading is so much better then just looting. Also the game difficulty is around spike damage which is bad. 99% of the time you are murdering everything and suddenly you die, often with barely any warning.

D2 for now is still the best aRPG I played.
 

Saark

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Messages
2,205
A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
immunities was a better design than spike damage that PoE has
Both are shit mechanics. Only that you cannot avoid PI mobs in D2, whereas you can avoid getting oneshot in PoE, largely because there is no one-shot ability in the game that you cannot avoid.
It also had many better things like charging enemies (these were once dangerous in PoE as well), high damage but slow projectile enemies, teleporting enemies, raise dead enemies surrounded by swarming minions and the rest.
PoE has all of that. Rhoas/Vultures have a charge-attack, Necromancers and Devourers exist, and most of what you described exist as nemesis mods on every monster available. You may not notice them as much since PoE has a larger focus on bosses, and not trash-mobs, which is something I am personally hoping they will fix with 3.0. That doesn't mean all these different types of challenges on monsters don't exist.

I am arguing that PoE is more dependant on trading because of it's more layers of item modifiers that makes just looting items 99.9% useless (or you turn it into currency you use to buy stuff). I got few hundred hours of experience doing just that, no mere words can persuade me otherwise. It is like you are trying to tell me water is actually wine IRL, good luck with that.
How would you even know how much trading was required in D2 when you only played singleplayer and never tackled the actual endgame of either game? What are you comparing your PoE experience to? I'm not trying to sell you wine that is water, I'm trying to tell you that just because you were building sandcastles at the beach you are in fact not an expert architect. Of course you never needed to trade in D2. That's because clearing Hell Act5 was piss-easy and done in the first 24hours after a ladder reset. You didn't need to trade up until then, unless you wanted to PvP or do Uber-Tristram once Patch 1.11 got released. D2 is a game that struck an almost perfect balance between challenge and reward from start to finish, which is something no aRPG was able to duplicate. PoE is the closest we got, and it has 3 things that it massively improved upon compared to D2. Character customization, having an actual endgame and crafting. You don't seem to care or enjoy either of them.

Obviously a game that enables and encourages the player to experiment and enjoy the complexity and depth of its core-systems requires loot that doesn't limit this experience, but instead enhances it. Combined with the crafting-system the need for large amounts of loot to drop increases, which is why lootfilters are now a thing. If less loot dropped, people would complain all day about being unable to build their character the way they wanted, being forced to trade. It's more fun having a rather high chance to get the base-item I want to craft actually drop, compared to shopping Drognan/Larzuk for 6+hours just to get a decent base. Luckily this complaint is seen rather rarely, which directly contradicts your statement of trading being mandatory. So does the public outcry for SSF-mode that was just recently added. Now if we talk to people who actually engage with the end-game, then we have a different type of discussion and for those you generally do need to trade or grind, but this is absolutely no different to what happened in D2. And even then there are people out there killing shaper in SSF.

Also the game difficulty is around spike damage which is bad. 99% of the time you are murdering everything and suddenly you die, often with barely any warning.
Yes and no. D2 had more emphasis on white mobs, bosses were just loot-pinatas. PoE focuses on bosses the most. You are right in that PoE is balanced around the fact that instantly logging out is a possiblity, and therefore needs to have spikey damage so people can actually die in HC. However almost all of the deaths you see are absolutely 100% avoidable (disconnects excluded) by just playing differently, wihout logging out. The game lulls you in a sense of security, and when you do not pay attention something that is either extremely well telegraphed or is an affix on a mob/map that you can read kills you. Volatiles, Bearers, Slam-Attacks, Detonate Dead and other things are all very much avoidable, but since people are so set on trying to clear as quickly and as much as possible, they risk dying to these things. Sometimes the amount of stuff that can happen makes people forget about certain mechanics, and then they die to them. But in all the years I've been playing, I never felt like I died to something that was unfair, and I died plenty of stupid deaths. But in the end I as a player could've avoided it with either forethought, preparation or just not risking as much as I did. It's almost always on the player (unless your ISP/the servers fuck up). You dislike it, to me it's one of the things I like the most about PoE.

D2 is still one of the best aRPGs out there, especially when you play with some of the mods. I suggest taking a look at Path of Diablo or MedianXL, those might be the best mix of PoE/D2 and most to your liking. But please for the love of god stop talking about PoE as if you know what you're talking about, it is triggering me to hell and back, and back to hell again.
 
Last edited:

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,886
immunities was a better design than spike damage that PoE has
Both are shit mechanics. Only that you cannot avoid PI mobs in D2, whereas you can avoid getting oneshot in PoE, largely because there is no one-shot ability in the game that you cannot avoid.
It also had many better things like charging enemies (these were once dangerous in PoE as well), high damage but slow projectile enemies, teleporting enemies, raise dead enemies surrounded by swarming minions and the rest.
PoE has all of that. Rhoas/Vultures have a charge-attack, Necromancers and Devourers exist, and most of what you described exist as nemesis mods on every monster available. You may not notice them as much since PoE has a larger focus on bosses, and not trash-mobs, which is something I am personally hoping they will fix with 3.0. That doesn't mean all these different types of challenges on monsters don't exist.
Yes it has but they are shitty implementations. At the moment none of them even slow you down and provide zero danger or challenge. As you mention multiple times in your post, white enemies were done better in D2. I guess I prefered that better and it is why I enjoyed playing D2 more.
I am arguing that PoE is more dependant on trading because of it's more layers of item modifiers that makes just looting items 99.9% useless (or you turn it into currency you use to buy stuff). I got few hundred hours of experience doing just that, no mere words can persuade me otherwise. It is like you are trying to tell me water is actually wine IRL, good luck with that.
How would you even know how much trading was required in D2 when you only played singleplayer and never tackled the actual endgame of either game? What are you comparing your PoE experience to? I'm not trying to sell you wine that is water, I'm trying to tell you that just because you were building sandcastles at the beach you are in fact not an expert architect. Of course you never needed to trade in D2. That's because clearing Hell Act5 was piss-easy and done in the first 24hours after a ladder reset. You didn't need to trade up until then, unless you wanted to PvP or do Uber-Tristram once Patch 1.11 got released. D2 is a game that struck an almost perfect balance between challenge and reward from start to finish, which is something no aRPG was able to duplicate. PoE is the closest we got, and it has 3 things that it massively improved upon compared to D2. Character customization, having an actual endgame and crafting. You don't seem to care or enjoy either of them.
I did try endgame of POE, but without trading getting to 4 guardians is too much of a chore. So best I got was farming red maps up to lvl 15. For D2, as you guessed I didn't even know there was more. I played the pirated version of D2:LoD at the time and didn't even have access to online services. Still last acts of Hell on D2 were comparable in difficulty to PoE red maps except I did those in D2 with 0 trading and for PoE I do a lot of trading.
And I do agree that D2 has best balance of challenge and reward, that is what I am saying all the time. I don't even know why are we arguing then :D
Best part of PoE for me is trying out new builds, and every time I need to trade for everything which is irritating and something I didn't need to do in D2 where I also had many characters.
Obviously a game that enables and encourages the player to experiment and enjoy the complexity and depth of its core-systems requires loot that doesn't limit this experience, but instead enhances it. Combined with the crafting-system the need for large amounts of loot to drop increases, which is why lootfilters are now a thing. If less loot dropped, people would complain all day about being unable to build their character the way they wanted, being forced to trade. It's more fun having a rather high chance to get the base-item I want to craft actually drop, compared to shopping Drognan/Larzuk for 6+hours just to get a decent base. Luckily this complaint is seen rather rarely, which directly contradicts your statement of trading being mandatory. So does the public outcry for SSF-mode that was just recently added. Now if we talk to people who actually engage with the end-game, then we have a different type of discussion and for those you generally do need to trade or grind, but this is absolutely no different to what happened in D2. And even then there are people out there killing shaper in SSF.
Public outcry for SSF was made because people consider the tradePoE too easy and wanted a way to make it harder that had its own ladder (since those people have been doing self enforced SSF for long time).
And I never said we should get less loot from drops, I don't know why you bring that up. Yes give us more loot but more useful loot so I never need to trade again. Also remove socket system from loot and implement it in another way.
Also the game difficulty is around spike damage which is bad. 99% of the time you are murdering everything and suddenly you die, often with barely any warning.
Yes and no. D2 had more emphasis on white mobs, bosses were just loot-pinatas. PoE focuses on bosses the most. You are right in that PoE is balanced around the fact that instantly logging out is a possiblity, and therefore needs to have spikey damage so people can actually die in HC. However almost all of the deaths you see are absolutely 100% avoidable (disconnects excluded) by just playing differently, wihout logging out. The game lulls you in a sense of security, and when you do not pay attention something that is either extremely well telegraphed or is an affix on a mob/map that you can read kills you. Volatiles, Bearers, Slam-Attacks, Detonate Dead and other things are all very much avoidable, but since people are so set on trying to clear as quickly and as much as possible, they risk dying to these things. Sometimes the amount of stuff that can happen makes people forget about certain mechanics, and then they die to them. But in all the years I've been playing, I never felt like I died to something that was unfair, and I died plenty of stupid deaths. But in the end I as a player could've avoided it with either forethought, preparation or just not risking as much as I did. It's almost always on the player (unless your ISP/the servers fuck up). You dislike it, to me it's one of the things I like the most about PoE.
You also forgot Shock. Also not everyone played 13k ES CI or Shavrone characters so way more things than those were actually killing people in damage spikes. I didn't say one shots, I said damage spikes. I watched a fair bit of those HC death videos that one streamer did often, people died to many things in those videos, not only one shots.
D2 is still one of the best aRPGs out there, especially when you play with some of the mods. I suggest taking a look at Path of Diablo or MedianXL, those might be the best mix of PoE/D2 and most to your liking. But please for the love of god stop talking about PoE as if you know what you're talking about, it is triggering me to hell and back, and back to hell again.
I am waiting for D2 Remastered. I played enough of D2 that I don't need to go back to it as it is and play more. I want a more refined and enhanced experience and UI when I go back. Until then PoE I hope will suffice.
 

Saark

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Messages
2,205
A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
I did try endgame of POE, but without trading getting to 4 guardians is too much of a chore. So best I got was farming red maps up to lvl 15.
So you did not experience the PoE endgame, thanks for clarifying that. Getting to the guardians without trading is not a chore, it's something you can easily achieve in less than 72hours of playtime. Whether you can actually kill them at that point is another matter entirely, but why not try it when you're just playing softcore anyway?
Best part of PoE for me is trying out new builds, and every time I need to trade for everything
There is only very few builds that actually require build enabling uniques. You can do LL-builds without shavs, you can do any pathfinder build without vinktars, almost all builds work on a budget. Their survivability/dps obviously isn't going to be where you eventually want it to be. But growing your build over the last 20 levels, consistently improving gear and thus improving your build is what makes aRPGs fun in the first place. Farming maps for a couple of hours, selling items and then being able to finally get that one big piece that enables you to increase your survivability or dps by 20-30% is what makes this game so much better than D2. Back then it used to be +100% or more. It appears to me that this may have been lost to you.
Public outcry for SSF was made because people consider the tradePoE too easy and wanted a way to make it harder that had its own ladder (since those people have been doing self enforced SSF for long time).
None of this is true. Having a specific SSF-League was spearheaded by a bunch of individuals who had no business complaining about difficulty in the first place (like ProjectPT). It wasn't that PoE was too easy when you traded, it was the fact that the way trading currently works is just not the way it should be, something GGG agrees on, which is why a lot of people are actively avoiding any trading. But because their egos were somehow tied to being seen by other people they were whining about it for such a long time that GGG eventually caved and created another set of sub-ladders.
You also forgot Shock
I did not forget shock. Shock, and bleed/curses by extension, were once something to be feared. You used to actively remove these effects, instead of having nigh-permanent immunity thanks to the flask-affix changes, pathfinder and items like brinerot whalers/red trail.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,886
I did try endgame of POE, but without trading getting to 4 guardians is too much of a chore. So best I got was farming red maps up to lvl 15.
So you did not experience the PoE endgame, thanks for clarifying that. Getting to the guardians without trading is not a chore, it's something you can easily achieve in less than 72hours of playtime. Whether you can actually kill them at that point is another matter entirely, but why not try it when you're just playing softcore anyway?
Best part of PoE for me is trying out new builds, and every time I need to trade for everything
There is only very few builds that actually require build enabling uniques. You can do LL-builds without shavs, you can do any pathfinder build without vinktars, almost all builds work on a budget. Their survivability/dps obviously isn't going to be where you eventually want it to be. But growing your build over the last 20 levels, consistently improving gear and thus improving your build is what makes aRPGs fun in the first place. Farming maps for a couple of hours, selling items and then being able to finally get that one big piece that enables you to increase your survivability or dps by 20-30% is what makes this game so much better than D2. Back then it used to be +100% or more. It appears to me that this may have been lost to you.
Public outcry for SSF was made because people consider the tradePoE too easy and wanted a way to make it harder that had its own ladder (since those people have been doing self enforced SSF for long time).
None of this is true. Having a specific SSF-League was spearheaded by a bunch of individuals who had no business complaining about difficulty in the first place (like ProjectPT). It wasn't that PoE was too easy when you traded, it was the fact that the way trading currently works is just not the way it should be, something GGG agrees on, which is why a lot of people are actively avoiding any trading. But because their egos were somehow tied to being seen by other people they were whining about it for such a long time that GGG eventually caved and created another set of sub-ladders.
You also forgot Shock
I did not forget shock. Shock, and bleed/curses by extension, were once something to be feared. You used to actively remove these effects, instead of having nigh-permanent immunity thanks to the flask-affix changes, pathfinder and items like brinerot whalers/red trail.
I see now I am talking to one of the PoE elitists that only considers guardians and shaper end game LOL. Ok I am done here. We can agree to disagree. We all know what the other feels is true and we have no way to change that for the other.
If you are offended by my saying bad things about POE you can:
1. Ignore me
2. Don't read or reply to my posts.
 

Jason Liang

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2014
Messages
8,337
Location
Crait
Nerfing my beloved frozen burrito killed D2 for me.

Gameplay-wise and presentation-wise there are a lot of things D2 still does better than PoE. D2 AI, at least in acts I-IV, is better than PoE AI. D2 has a simpler and more intuitive gearing system. D2 has way less one shot kill situations than PoE (the exception being those fucking Act 3 Fetishes and that corpse explosion boss).

PoE's merits are crafting and trading (and therefore scavenging). PoE also has entertaining innovative minigames like Vaal corruption, chancing, etc... If you don't enjoy those gameplay elements, you are better off playing D2.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
Joined
Feb 24, 2007
Messages
14,982
Their survivability/dps obviously isn't going to be where you eventually want it to be.
Then they don't fucking work do they? If your definition of 'work' is 'makes teh pretty lights in yellow maps' then yeah, all builds work all the time. If you want to fight a guardian without getting popped like a zit before you even see all of it's attacks, you need a build that actually works.
 

Saark

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 16, 2010
Messages
2,205
A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Their survivability/dps obviously isn't going to be where you eventually want it to be.
Then they don't fucking work do they? If your definition of 'work' is 'makes teh pretty lights in yellow maps' then yeah, all builds work all the time. If you want to fight a guardian without getting popped like a zit before you even see all of it's attacks, you need a build that actually works.
You didn't get what I was saying. What you said doesn't mean the build doesn't work. It means you either need more gear or skill to be able to tackle whatever content you set out to do. Doesn't mean the build is shit.

Going by your logic Pathfinder BV during Perandus "didnt work" because unless you had vinktars leech and a 600 ES Regalia so you would sit at atleast 9k ES you couldn't kill Shaper yet. That was an extremely low entry-point, wouldn't you agree? Some builds have extremely low entry-levels, some have extremely high ones, doesn't mean you cannot start out mapping with either of them and work your way up - meaning farming better and better gear until you can eventually tackle whatever content you want. Which is PoE in a nutshell, which was my point.

Also, holy shit uber beyond starting at act1 was way more fun than starting in act2.
 

T. Reich

Arcane
Joined
Apr 15, 2013
Messages
2,714
Location
not even close
Considering the Guardian/Shaper HP+power disparity compared to any T15 boss (including post-nerf Core Malachai), Guardians/Shaper can only be compared to Ubers in D2.
Regular mobs in t16 maps and t15 (or lower) bosses are actually very "competitively" balanced, meaning that they can be beaten with the natural progression (by "natural progression" I mean the effort required to naturally progress through the atlas to get to them).
Will they be actually hard to beat with purely self-found gear? Well, yes! Considering that they represent the top end of leveling, that is to be expected.

Guardians/Shaper are in no way mandatory to be beatable for a build to be considered "endgame-viable". This is because they (and Uber Atziri) force a particular gameplay choice ("boss-killer" builds).
Will those "boss-killers" be able to do the rest of what PoE has to offer? Sure. Will they be as good as dedicated builds? Hell, no.
Vaal skill vomit speed clear builds will still (as of current meta) be the best at doing retardedly fast shaped Strands, but will fail at said T16+ bosses or even U-lab.
U-lab speedrunners are only good at that (and shit at everything else), but hell they're good.
U-lab "endurance" builds can both clear U-lab with 100% success rate and also plow through non-Guardian content, and probably even Guardians. But will they ever measure up to specialised builds? No.
Finally, one could also forgo this specialisation bullshit and just play a "good" build - the one that can do U-lab, and clear maps, and go fast if you want to, and even do Guardians from time to time with decent investment. Will it be amazing? Likely not. Will it have the "comfy" feeling of being able to do whatever you want to do? Yes, it will.

You pick your own endgame in PoE, and they is no "the absolutely best" thing. This is actually what a lot of PoE players fail to realise.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom