Detailed Review of 0.2, with (good?) suggestions – from a HCSSF perspective

I tried to be concise, but utterly failed as I like to explain my reasoning, so good luck, here we go :)

My profile as a gamer:

I love a challenge, I always play games at the hardest difficulties because it forces me to get good to progress, I enjoy learning games and needing to optimize my gameplay/gear/talents/gems. I also enjoy trying to rank up in the leaderboard, usually just for a week or so, as I don’t have the endurance to keep it up. I quickly get bored when it’s too easy or once I run out of objectives or if they are too unattainable.

Accordingly, HCSSF is my preferred league, by far, as it forces me to play well, consider defenses/offenses balance at all time and gives me a good feeling of progression, without being too fast through trade (I’m not a big fan of trading in ARPGs in general, and have absolutely zero interest without an in-game auction house).
In 0.2, my best leaderboard placement was in the top 30, twice (outdated now).

My journey this season:
I played my favorite class, infernalist, which I also consider to be a very strong league starter in HCSSF.
I had trained the campaign leveling in 0.1 and it felt strong and fast. I knew the dangerous bosses, knew what skills were strong and at which stage of the game, talent tree route etc..

- 1st Char: Like everyone, I felt the nerfs, progression was slow-ish but fine. It forced me to adapt my plan, where instead of steamrolling the campaign with SRS (Raging Spirits), my main DPS skill for clearing was the arsonists command skill by detonating the Raging Spirits (which I had never used in 0.1). It found this great, refreshing and very fun to play (the gameplay would be Ember Fusillade (with Unleash) + firewall to create the Spirits as fast as possible (only 2 by 2 now), then detonate them for big AOE clear. For bossing I was switching support gems and was relying on Minion attack damage mostly, and damage was okay. When I was mid Act3, GGG buffed minions, and it felt much stronger! Then I got to Viper, barely had any chaos resist or good gear, was spec’d full dps (first mistake), and totally messed up my dodge roll (2nd mistake) with the boss at 5% hp and ended up getting double tapped by the guard spikes. DEAD at level 42 (9h playtime). Skill issue though, we go again.

- 2nd Char: With gold, some gear, level 2 support gems, 4-Link gems, the minion buffs + knowledge, I went a bit faster. Spec’d into more defenses before Viper, didn’t fail my dodge rolls, all good. Got to endgame in ~17h of playtime. I then focused on getting my atlas points, doing mostly non-juiced maps, but boss maps to increase the monster level to keep getting some XP. I was again struggling with capping my chaos res (was a ~30%). And in a T13, I absolutely didn’t see them coming with all the mess with firewalls & minions everywhere. But I believe I got double tapped (again), this time by these Volatile purple plants while looting, 3s after killing a rare (honestly, the damage of these orbs is over-tuned and they should disappear once the rare is killed). DEAD again, level 83, 32h playtime. While recovering from the shock, I saw all the “f” in the chat, and got whispered by several people, that’s when I realized I was in the top 30, and some people’s messages were really nice. So that was a nice touch J. Anyway, skill issue(I guess?), back to the beach.

- 3rd Char: Much faster, got to endgame in 10h, and continued where I left off with the atlas tree, on the way, I collected all the map/nexus atlas points (except one unique map), bosses points (level 82 map), Xesht 0, king of the mist 0, Orloth 0 & 1. Didn’t touch simulacrum or Arbiter. But along the way, I got heavily frustrated by the gear progression, and sort of got bored a week ago at level 93, after 68h on the character.
And now I would like to explain all the things that frustrated me along the way, in the hope that the devs will see it and make adjustments (One can hope). I also suggest some ideas, even though the devs say players are usually bad at suggesting improvements :)

But before that I need to say that the game is amazing in many ways, and a 100h+ of fun, gaming like a degenerate, is a great deal, and not many games can achieve that, so thank you GGG :)

Issues & suggestions (some/most have probably been said before)

There is no particular order, and I will only focus on what I personally experienced and only with HCSSF in mind. There are many aspects of the game I know nothing about (trade, the economy, group play, bots etc…) and I’m not really interested. I numbered them if anyone has comments :)

1. The loot:

I didn’t have any particular issues during the campaign (likely due to training it). It bothered me more at endgame.

1.1 Orbs to slam:

I was often starved for Exalts & Regals because I used them on all 78+ scepter to try to get a +4 minion, or amulets for +3. I never got any of these though after lots of gambling & rerolling 3-to-1. I guess just buff the drop rate? I think I should be able to consistently slam the few bases I focus on.

1.2 Jellewer Orbs:

Over the 100h+, I got 4x Greater & 1x Perfect (at level 91.5 I think), and I’m likely on the “lucky” side of the population. By the time I got any Greater, I had 70+ Lesser, so I already had all the 5L I needed through corruption (but this is silly).

Suggestion: I would heavily buff Greater drop rate (otherwise by the time a Greater drops, it’s almost useless). And probably double or triple the Perfect drop rate. Additionally, I would add a guaranteed one-time Greater and Perfect at some milestone. (e.g. maybe Greater at the first endgame nexus clear, and 1x Perfect at the first any pinnacle boss kill).
The perfects should remain rare, but the greaters should be much more common to promote experimenting.

1.3 Rare items:

The tier system is good but I barely ever saw tier items drop. Also, having a tier 5 rare with 4x modifiers, that you then EX slam for 2x T1 is very frustrating. Tier items should always roll 6 affixes and be more common or maybe be linked to the atlas progression?
Suggestion: How about once you complete all pinnacle boss T1, all your rare drops in maps are at minimum of Tier 2 (with maybe a slight reduced drop chance). Incremental up to all T4 pinnacle bosses where you get only Tier 5 rares (most of them would still be fairly bad), and killing all bosses up to T4 in HCSSF would likely take 300h of playtime, farming all the breach/simulacrum fragments, invitations etc... . But it would be a real goal with a real reward that all your characters can then enjoy.
I understand this could mess with trading leagues with speed farmers selling great items for cheap. Or maybe then make Tier 2 to Tier 5 rare items to require level 75, 80, 85, 90 to equip or something.

2. The “crafting”
2.1 The RNG:

There are layers on layers of RNG, in my opinion, too much, and I would suggest to tone it down by adding a few deterministic outcomes on top of all this RNG.
Take the example of fracturing orbs. I dropped a single one. It’s a shame that my extremely rare drop has a 75% chance to brick and be absolutely useless. It’s disheartening.

I tried to hit a +2 minion on amulet (which isn’t great, but it’s the best I found, and I was then hoping to spam chaos orbs to get spirit). I fractured a +60 accuracy and it was one of the moment that killed my enjoyment the most. I would love if I could just select 100% the affix I want to fracture. The fracturing orb drop is already very rare, and there is still a lot of RNG to have after the fracturing with the Chaos Orb spam or other.

Suggestions: Make fracturing orbs (and maybe other systems) so that you can have a determined outcome. This would make the drop exciting, instead of thinking “well, this is most likely going to miss”. The overall suggestion is, if a drop is already very rare, avoid making it work only 20% of the time, please J

2.2 The recombinator:

I actually love the idea, but I dislike the implementation (again, it’s way too random). I first need to find two good items, e.g. scepters with +4 minion and +50% spirit (which I didn’t find any +4 in 100h even though I 3-to-1 and slammed all 78+ scepters). And then I have a 5% chance to recombine because these are rare affixes. It’s just too unlikely to work to be exciting, or an objective worth pursuing.

Suggestion: What if we could buff the success chance by paying more tokens, then I’d definitely farm the hell out of expeditions to get a 100% outcome. It would give me an objective that I know for sure I get a “decent to great” reward once I’m done (I still need to 3-4x EX slams and get lucky after).
Example: I have a 5% chance, for the price of 20 tokens. How about if I pay 400 tokens (20 times more), I get 100% change. Or for two low affixes, instead of 20 token for 50% chance, I get the option to pay 40 tokens for 100% chance, etc..
This would also incentive to farm the expedition mechanics (but kind of kill the vendors, but they aren’t great anyway).

2.3 The essences & omens:

I think I got 4 greaters and 1 rare omen. And the use cases are so limited, I never really used them. I tried 4 times to get chaos resistance on a good armor base but got reduced poison duration each time.
Suggestion: Make Greaters more common. Make Lesser essences usable on white & magic (1 affix), and Greaters on magic (2 affix) or rare.
Maybe it would be too strong for making phys weapons? Even though, at least we’d be crafting :)

2.4 New orbs?

How about orbs that could improve an affix to a higher tier. Could be limited to T5 max for example (would need some rework of the affix tier system probably). This way if you get a good item that rolls all the right affixes but they are all T1-T2, you could boost this trash item into a good idea, but never a great item.

3. The Mapping:
3.1 Juicing maps:

I dislike the fact that most map mods prefixes are way less useful in comparison to “quality & quantity of items”, or “increase rare monsters”. This leads to too much time setting up, filtering prefixes on maps and not enough time spent in maps killing monsters.

Suggestion: Attach the “best mods” like rarity, quantity, increased density to a formula that takes into account the MAP tier & the number of prefix/suffix on the waystone (suffix having more weight) & if the map is instilled. This way, any 6 mods map would have good density and loot. And a full suffix vaal’d map would be very hard to survive but would have very good loot. This would be rewarding.
Currently I feel like adding suffixes is always bad unless it’s for getting fragments in citadels (as the waystone sustain isn’t much of an issue).

Side note: I also don’t really like having rarity as a modifier on gear, but that’s personal. I’m sure some people like this, but when playing hardcore, it’s not an enjoyable/fun trade off. I prefer to be stronger and clear stronger content than run lower maps with more rarity gear. It’s kind of counter intuitive to the “challenging gameplay”.

3.2 Corrupted maps & setting up map farming:

I don’t understand the decision to remove the +1 monster level from corrupted maps.
I also don’t like to have to overthink the maps & waystone affixes. Some thinking is good, but I think currently there is too much micro-management. I dislike spending 15min reading everything to see what’s good and what’s bad. If I could just focus on filtering out the suffixes that are deadly to my build, that would be great.

Suggestion: Please add the +1 monster level again to all corrupted & cleared maps. Early in maps, you would still probably rush the nexus quickly to unlock your atlas and then keep exploring.
But once you’ve unlocked your atlas and are doing T15+, this would incentivize a more “natural” gameplay/strategy of finding a corrupted biome, and clearing all the corrupted maps, then doing the nexus, and then going another round on the cleared maps. This way, all those maps would be Monster level 81 (T15 [79] +1 corrupted +1 irradiated), from which rare monster can drop level 20 gems (ilvl 82). This would also help the XP grind a bit which has felt slower in 0.2.
Currently it’s almost impossible to drop level 20 gems, unless it’s from the unique strongbox (which is the best thing from 0.2, as it rarely disappoints [I got 3x level 20 spirit gems though, no skill gems])

Extra painful: Also, in 0.2 trying to find a corrupted/cleared +1 monster level to get the last boss atlas point (monster level 82 with T16 waystone) took me 15min of reading every map affixes to find one.

4. The Atlas tree:

I did like the chase of getting the points with the nexus & unique maps, even if long, I enjoyed it.
However, once I had all the points, and thought about optimizing, I was disappointment as you barely "feel" any node. The only one I remember for being fun is the “one rare gets duplicated”. Because everytime you meet the two twins in a map, you remember why. And it’s fun.
I tried a few things, strongboxes at first, but wasn't amazed, so I ended up just stacking all the small %x or y to density & tablets & whatnot. So 39 atlas points of 2/3% this and that and 1 point of fun twin rares :).
I would also like clearer info (because adding 40%, then 100%, then 20%, if we have no idea what the original chance is, it’s kind of obscure).
I suppose GGG just needs to get creative and find some fun nodes to add.
Here are some ideas I came up with in 15min:
How about adding nodes that cost 2-5 points to unlock (to balance them), but then for example 5 points would guarantee you one exile per map. Then another 3 points to guarantee he/she wears a mimimum of 1 unique and 2 rares. Or 5 points to get a super wisp that goes to touch every rares, but doesn’t stop “running” until it’s the last rare which it then possesses (with like 800%+ rarity if you managed the whole map). It would be tough and require very good clear speed, you could lose it (with maybe a penalty, as GGG loves that :D), but when you get it right it would likely be super fun and engaging. Also very risky in HC. Or 5 points in shrines that would do "taking a shrine refreshes the timer of previously taken shrines", so that if you take 1 shrine every 30s, you can stack them and become an absolute machine. Then another 3 points that gives you 30% MF per active shrine. Just some random ideas of stuff that could be fun imo.

5. The Arbiter one-shot mechanics

This arbiter fight is great, but the combination of one-shots with short reaction windows is really tough in HC. To the point that the risk/reward balance is way off, and I haven’t even considered trying it. (I tried in 0.1, managed arbiter 0 [bomb phase], and failed a tunnel on arbiter 1)
The bomb phase: It’s usually fine, but sometimes the bombs are very far, almost off screen, and then you’re dead.
The corridor phase: It’s a bit too fast, and even with good reaction time, some appear further than others, and dead.
Suggestion: Tune the damage such that 1 bomb or 1 tunnel fail is survivable if well spec’d into defenses, but apply a debuff with 50% increased damage taken for example. This way, the 2nd fail would be almost impossible to tank unless extremely tanky, and 3rd one is a guaranteed death even to the tanky-est builds. Or give slightly more time to players to react to tunnels/bombs?
In comparison, the one shot mechanic in Sekhema's Trial (last boss) doesn't bother me, because there is enough time such that a trained player can consistently make it.

6. The Uniques

Except for some leveling uniques, and Tangletongue, I haven't found any use to any of the ones I found. It would be nice to have more decent uniques in the level 60-80 range that can compete with average rares.

7. Lightning Spear vs. anything else

I noticed I had looted a 24.89% Tangletongue, probably Day 1 but didn't know it was good until a few days ago. Aaand it's just ridiculously strong, even when you miss the monster, the spear bounces back on the wall and clears the whole screen anyway :D
So I got a level 82 unoptimized amazon in 13h and it's clearing better than my infernalist I spent hours trying to optimize. It feels... unfair :)

Conclusion

These were my main “bad experiences” in an overall amazing time, I love the game, I fully support "the vision" and I’m looking forward to next patches.

Hopefully this still fits in a forum post.

I'm 1000% with you on all the topics you shared. It's refreshing reading such useful and objective feedback.

I'm a bit sceptical about the drop/craft topic because some of the mods feel odd, also i reviewed the problem with the tiers.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3770583

Also, i feel the same way about having a good item just to add t1/2 mods and willing to throw my computer out the window. Maybe a true "augmentation" orb which augments the tier mods to a limited tier would be amazing for crafting/upgrading a good concept item without going into a crazy good one.

Thanks! :)

I checked your post and I fully agree with the points you raise as well, there are too many bad mods and the weighing probably needs to be reworked so that high ilvl items have increased chance for good mods.

It's quite a complicated topic, let's hope GGG gets it right soon :)

Bumping this jewel of a post.

"

Sulik7#2502 เขียน:

Bumping this jewel of a post.

thx for that , and thank u Trias for your feedback .

I agree with all the points raised; even the improvement suggestions are good and reasonable."

Maybe i was lucky, but the fury guy once you cleared the corruption has 100% drop rate of fracturing orbs for me. It tells you on the map when hes there.

"

Trias67#2266 เขียน:

Suggestion: I would heavily buff Greater drop rate (otherwise by the time a Greater drops, it’s almost useless). And probably double or triple the Perfect drop rate. Additionally, I would add a guaranteed one-time Greater and Perfect at some milestone. (e.g. maybe Greater at the first endgame nexus clear, and 1x Perfect at the first any pinnacle boss kill).

I disagree with the buff of drop rate. I think right now, its in a good situation. I personnaly got as you did : 4 greaters and 1 prefect after 40h playing SSF end game.
But I totally agree to add a milestone that guarantees 1 greater and later 1 perfect specially for players who are not lucky enough and to "smooth out" difficulty.

"

Trias67#2266 เขียน:

1.3 Rare items:
...

I agree about having higher tier items looted. And maybe another milestone to be sure drops are significantly better after that.

"

Trias67#2266 เขียน:

2.2 The recombinator:

Suggestion: What if we could buff the success chance by paying more tokens, then I’d definitely farm the hell out of expeditions to get a 100% outcome.

I agree with the idea to be able to spend more artifacts to have better chance to recombine item. But not for a 100% chance. It would totally break the trading system with some perfect items crafted by players who just played 20h/day and then, be rich by just farming artifacts...
For me, have the possibility to double chance, to reach 50% max chance to recombine with 2 affixes and like 10-15% max for 4-6 affixes to recombine, by spending dozens of artifacts.

"

Trias67#2266 เขียน:

2.3 The essences & omens:

Suggestion: Make Greaters more common. Make Lesser essences usable on white & magic (1 affix), and Greaters on magic (2 affix) or rare.

I find essences pretty useless and greater not good enough. Maybe greater need to stay as very rare loot, but when using it you are sure to have a high tier of affix...

"

Trias67#2266 เขียน:

2.4 New orbs?

How about orbs that could improve an affix to a higher tier. Could be limited to T5 max for example (would need some rework of the affix tier system probably). This way if you get a good item that rolls all the right affixes but they are all T1-T2, you could boost this trash item into a good idea, but never a great item.

I think its a very good idea, but just for 1 affix on the item. But you can choose the affix you want to improve.

Very nice post, +1 on that. As a side note, I found Omens to be most useful for crafting desired maps (to guarantee prefix only first and only if you get the rarity+quantity double mod I go further delirium and corrupt them). But yeah they are very limited in their use because they are rare compared to the demand you would need to craft gear.

Good post! One thing I may add. Corruption *can* still add +1 to monster level, but it's now a random modifier. Some corruption adds this, some add that. But one of them is +1 to monster level.

When you clear the nexus, the "Cleansed" modifiers acts like a new corruption, and it also has a chance to provide a +1 to monster level. So you can get 2 chances to get a +1 to monster level on a map. If the original corruption doesn't have +1, then clear the nexus and maybe the "cleansed" will.

Hope this helps!

good idea for recombinator and atIas tree.

i don't know if i agree on fractured orb tho but i'II not be disapointed if they Iowered the affix needed to sIam, maybe 2-3 max. basicaIIy on a magic or rare with 3 modifier. or maybe, Iike recombinator, you can choose between somes and have a % chance idk