Path of Exile 2

[YellowKing]

I'm really having a blast (quite literally) with it now that I'm nearing the end of Act 2. I was not using any build guides, and had created a minion-based Witch that was working out really well. However, when I hit my ascendancy and went Infernalist, I decided to check out some builds and stumbled across one that was *really* close to what I had created. I made a few tweaks and now she is just ridiculous.

It's a fire-based minion build, so you throw down a couple of Firewalls which generates 10 flame spirit minions that attack. Those are backed up by my permanent cadre of Skeleton Arsonist minions lobbing grenades. I also have a Flammability debuff that reduces fire resistance along with the pain totem that ups minion damage. The result is you just melt crowds of mobs - in that respect it's also a quick leveling build. The only downside is that she can be a bit squishy like any caster, but it's fairly easy to stay at range and let the minions do the heavy lifting.

Bosses in this game are super fun, much more so than D4. Most of them require at least some level of strategy. This build works pretty well with bosses (and a stat bonus on one of my gear pieces that reduces minion respawn time by half (!!!)), but I also use Bonestorm to do high single target attack when my minions go down.

I watched a couple of "helpful tip" videos on YouTube that were indeed VERY helpful. Though it's not as complex as PoE1, there are still a lot of things that aren't taught and aren't intuitive. From little things like turning on the option for enemy health bars, to really important things like realizing that when inscribing skill gems you aren't shown the full list of available skills, just the suggested ones.

[YellowKing]

I'm now near the end of Act 3, and I confess a bit of the grind is starting to set in.

One thing that is very different in PoE2 compared to D4 is that you typically can't rely on loot drops to upgrade your gear. Instead, the game heavily leans on crafting your gear. Crafting gear requires orbs, which do various things like turning a normal or magic item into a rare item, adding affixes, changing affixes, etc.

Getting orbs requires a mix of salvaging and drops, so to really "get gud" you need to spend a good deal of time farming, something which I haven't had the desire to get into yet.

I hit a point with my Witch where I can't beat the boss I'm stuck on, so my only real option at this point is to grind levels, gear, or both. So I'm actually debating whether I want to do that, or start over from scratch and level up a different class. The journey being much more fun than the destination, and my lessons learned would probably put me in a much better position with the new character.

[YellowKing]

Got my Witch into Cruelty mode and she's wreaking havoc, but I ran into a game-stopping bug today. Basically click to move no longer works on her for most maps. I know it's not a keyboard or interface issue because if I port to town I can move, but porting to certain maps she's stuck in place. I tried a couple of solutions for this bug including entering a new instance of the map, logging out of the game for 20 minutes, etc. but nothing works.

If I log in as a different character I can move fine, so again I know it's not a hardware issue on my end. Pretty frustrating since she's essentially unplayable at this point (swapping to WASD works to move her, but then she can't click to loot).

I rolled up a new Ranger in the meantime to mess around with, but I'm hoping this is fixed soon.

[Edit] Disregard - found out the hard way that certain skills can't be mapped to left-click or it will cause issue above. When I switched back to my Chaos Bolt wand, the problem was resolved. Lesson learned.

[Butterknife]

I know I said I wasn't going to buy in to the early access on this one, but I was weak and did it anyway. Steam has me clocked at 44 hours and I tried out 3 different characters and got my longest played one almost to the end of Act 3.

I could type up a laundry list of things I don't like about the game, but I think it can all be summed up like this: The game is too hard, and playing it feels like a chore instead of being rewarding. Usually in games of this type you get to a point where you feel powerful, which is the reward (along with the loot). I doubt that will ever happen here. I think I'll be shelving it for now, maybe try again when it comes out of early access in a year or perhaps 6 months from now. But I'm severely disappointed with it (I put something like 4,000 hours into POE 1) and I regret paying for the early access, not because of the money -- but because one of my favorite games just isn't fun any more.

[Cylus Maxii]

Agreed - it does seem like work. They have definite issues with armor being basically useless the way damage scales.

They claim to have fixed a lot of the more punishing issues, but it is still brutal. They cut crit damage from mobs by 40% and they still one-shot because of the way they scale damage reduction. They also reduced the flask charges drain on the mobs that were doing that - since they were doing it at 10x the intended rates. They are WAY out of whack with balance right now. I think that ranged casters and those with pets are OK. But any sort of melee is still a mess. Veteran PoE players seem to be fine since they are just that much better at juggling everything than I.

Anyway, I'm gonna shelve it until I read patch notes that sound like its worth peeking in.

[YellowKing]

Yeah it's definitely a ranged class game right now. My witch is pretty much coasting through Cruelty mode. I'm going to continue on with her until I finish Cruelty, then will probably give it a break until release or they add new content/classes. I got my money's worth.