Path of ExileFollow

Its one that I cycle to. Very good game, lots and lots of variation. I had a lot of fun the last time I played it. (made a trapper was awesome). FTP is pretty nice too. I recommend it to my friends who like the ARPG stuff. Also way better than Diablo 3, it is much more in the same vein as D2 and if D2 wasn't such a cult classic id say could give it a run for the money as well.

Decided to check this out this weekend. So far I am impressed. It's very polished and quite entertaining. Nice level of challenge, got my but handed to me a bit before I got the swing of things but mashing along now.

Playing a shadow atm.

D3 is like a whole new game now imo, and I was probably one of the most vocal about its flaws. Maybe not. But I didn't like it. I still have yet to get the expansion because frankly after an unimpressive Cataclysm expansion in WoW, an unimpressive Expansion in Starcraft, and the unimpressive launch of D3 I just don't think I can realistically give Blizzard anymore dollars until they show me that they can create something that is actually "good".

I still like PoE, I haven't played it in a while, but thats how ive been with all games lately.

A lot of my original complaints about D3 have been resolved, a lot haven't. It's undeniably a much better game.

Things that are much better: No AH, better gear drops.

Things that need improvement: The PS3 desperately needs to get Loot 2.0.

Things I'm still unhappy about: Story, their approach to stats and skills*.

*This was my single biggest complaint until it became clear how central the AH was, so it's actually still a big complaint. I'm more resigned to the change now, though. I really miss the feeling of actually building and developing a character. Your gear options are so limited compared to early games, and then you have access to every skill. It's so much less fun to me.

The story wasn't a con for me before playing (because I obviously didn't know), but I'm confused by the writing. I just don't get why you'd spend so much time on Leah to then... have that not matter at all to anyone, anywhere, ever.

Playing D3 was an almost surreal experience.

Well, crap like that is pretty much why the game is BoA now. It was simply far more effective to game the AH than to actually play the game.

Of current itemization, there are basically 2 glaring issues that jump out at me:
1) Mobs dropping anything feels way too rare.

Now, one of the promises of Loot 2.0 was that mobs wouldn't drop as much junk, but in turn, we'd get higher quality items. What we got was perhaps Blizz cranking drops back too far, while not making the loot itself good enough. Indeed, you are likely to find things while leveling a character to use as upgrades, but the problems arise at max level where more precise gear requirements directly affect what difficulty you can play in. And since some stuff now only drops in Torment difficulties, well, cross your fingers. It's pretty much so bad you see people instead resorting to running areas with high treasure chest populations, ignoring any and all monsters just to pop them and hope for the best. This resulted from a kneejerk reaction from Blizz to thin out chest spawns. Still doesn't change the fact that chests and select breakables seem a more likely source for loot than your average white monster.

2) Forgotten Souls are way too scarce.

This is perhaps an extension of #1, but it applies more so directly to legendary and set drops. 2 FS are needed for every legendary/set crafting attempt as well as 1 being needed for the rerolls of legendary/set equipment. Blizz implemented a "fail safe" where a player should be finding one legendary every 2 hours or so if they're actually killing things, but the problem is, a lot of legendaries you do find are going to be garbage. This puts pressure on crafting and rerolling to help players target gear they need if they also have the corresponding recipe to attempt it. However, just like finding a drop, most crafts will also be garbage.

Now, the trollish sorts will claim legendary drop rates are already too high and people shouldn't complain. Diablo is supposed be a grind, yada yada. FS, however, are not actual combat tools. Having 100 in your inventory will not let you clear T6. All they will allow is more endgame crafting attempts, which may or may not go in your favor. There are still dropped legendaries with superior and desirable bonuses, but I feel making the crafting process more casual friendly will up the game's longevity by virtue of allowing people to experiment with more builds and classes instead of sticking to one because that's all their time can manage to build.



If Blizz can tackle those, all the ******** about BoA won't hold much weight as it shifts progress from luck and more to honest effort. Allowing trade, with or without the AH, just risks inviting all the cancerous activities back that outright led to people who rarely played the game itself influencing those who do. People love to bring up the D2 economy and how it made the game better, but when I look back, I just recall dupes ruling the scene and items most legit players would never find being the only things people actually wanted to trade for. When it came to things like Perfect Gems, the only time that flew was if you seriously had an account stocked with them like some kind of chinese gold farmer. No thanks.

Class balance, of course, is another story. Demon Hunters are my bag and I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, how Cluster Arrow is pretty much the only reliable way to tackle later torments with any respect for time efficiency. When you have a skill that hits nearly 2x harder than anything else, that's just bound to happen. Some are okay with this just because they can still play the class. Some are okay with it because they like being an underdog and deliberately using other ****** skills. Meanwhile, nobody really wants to invite a DH to anything because they either die in a hit with CA build or don't do enough damage with everything else. Alas.

Well, console version is different than PC. Maybe not by much, but comparing them fairly can be rough to do.

RF is perhaps a good example of a skill diminishing in worth as the difficulties climb, however, as mob HP scales much more sharply than our damage potential. Same goes with mob damage relative to the DH's defenses and Dex's failings as a primary stat (loldodge to STR's Armor or INT's All Resist passively). When you're forced to stand still, you make yourself vulnerable to the approach of mobs, and some can just leap/charge/teleport to you anyway. Once they are in range, you lose the benefits of things like Steady Aim, but must also take up a skill like Brooding if you do indeed want to hunker down and just keep firing away. Further investing in Armor, All Resist, Vitality/Life% also comes at the expense of offense under their new 4/2 system, which I guess is something else I'd also criticize since I believe sockets should roll independently of the 4/2 on all possible items while boots always have movement speed, as another example.

Anyway, DH's defensive failings inherently translate to other skills suffering at higher difficulties. Shuriken Cloud on the Chakram skill is literally a blade shield that floats around you. Fan of Knives is a skill that deploys a small AoE centered on yourself. The poison rune of multishot also does similar. More stationary attacks like Sentries and Spike Trap also demand a slower pace, nevermind my utter disdain for Sentry having both a Hatred cost and cooldown timer. The class simply carries an identity crisis amongst its skills that have led many to simply disregard being more well-rounded or even on the tanky/melee side because efficacy simply drops off like a rock. Of course, you'll get the tryhards claiming that's how things are supposed to be, that archers are squishy, and all that sort of RP-type justification that only matters when its convenient for an argument. Meanwhile, other classes are simply easier to gear and roll mobs more effectively at later difficulties.


Anyway, incentives for later difficulties isn't something I'm against. I'm not sure where I really gave that impression. Right now, rolling a difficulty where you can 1-2 shot mobs is generally more rewarding on the loot end due to the absurd rarity of the Torment-specific sets and legendaries. I'll certainly have a personality clash with people who want to treat the game like an MMO and demand that completing a character's build should take years. Wanting stuff handed to me is also not something I'm asking for despite that being employed as a common strawman against people who feel similarly. If it took me something like 3-5 days of gratuitous play get a good item for a slot, not exactly top rolls, I'd be okay with that. A class still has a number of equipment slots before even factoring in doing that for all the classes. Right now, though, reward is too much on the side of RNG. Like 1% 24hr NM FFXI-style RNG.

But yeah, Blizz can say things like there's an increased legendary drop% chance in Torment difficulties and inside Rifts, but a percent of a significantly tiny percent isn't really something your average player is going to notice. "RNG is RNG" might be the common mantra, but my ultimate argument was that mid-game feels more like a late-game here. Again, an MMO this is not.

Monks are in a bad spot because of the false Toughness value thanks to dodge not actually being very useful for half the stuff in the game. Same with DH. (Funny, those are my 2 main classes...).



I've found this chart useful for drop chance.

Note that the values for Rifts are incorrect with the recent changes, but everything else is pretty close. I play on T1 because I can kill things relatively quickly and I also want Torment specific legendaries .

Closer to "completely impossible to do."

Digg on console doesn't get loot 2.0, doesn't get the updated paragon and difficulty systems, doesn't get the large balancing patch that came with RoS. Console users are, for all intents and purposes, playing a different game than PC users.

And on Monks, defensively they would be just fine if Blizzard would just make Dodge work on ground effects and scale similarly to Armor/All resist. It's scaling is really off, and it doesn't scale nearly as well point for point.

If I understand it right, it wouldn't though. It's a chance to either take full damage or no damage at all, and over a significant period of time, it ends up being x% damage reduction, where x is your dodge chance.

Though I guess that's not taking into consideration that you can stack armor and allres on top of dodge as a monk or DH, but you can't stack dodge as any of the other classes. Possible new stat affix idea? I wouldn't mind playing a dodge melee wizard.

Oh no, you're right. Monks certainly aren't in a bad place. There's just a few things here or there that could really use some attention, like build diversity. The monk suffers from this pretty badly, but so do other classes, maybe more so.

Blizzard was probably right in not changing the monk in the most recent patch.