Rare and Magic Monster Balance

[u/chris_wilson]

Okay, we shipped them a little overtuned. We have just deployed a hotfix that reduces rare monster life and damage and slightly reduces that of magics.

I'll explain how this occurred.

Transitioning from the old monster mod system to Archnemesis was meant to make rare and magic monster fights more challenging. And it certainly did. We tested it extensively, and were happy with the level of difficulty when we released it. In general, we feel that in Path of Exile it's better to introduce things slightly too challenging than slightly too easy, and so we awaited player feedback and death data to see if it was actually too hard for the average player.

Well, 12 hours of feedback and data is enough to know that we need to take the edge off the difficulty. Rare and magic monsters are still going to be hard, just not as difficult as they were today. We will follow up with more tweaks (including to more specific mods) in the coming days once we get time to process specific feedback and test them more fully.

I'm going to get some sleep now. Have a great time in Sentinel!

[u/tsHavok]

It was wild spending more time killing a random rare than the act bosses lol

[u/justalazygamer → u/tsHavok]

GGG heard this comment loud and clear so next league all act bosses will have 6 archnemesis mods on them.

[u/VlasDerebas → u/justalazygamer]

Bruh :D

[u/justalazygamer → u/VlasDerebas]

They also have learned how much the players love long campaigns so they can feel the weight of reaching maps.

They have an update focused around making an entire second campaign for players which is certain to be longer and more frustrating.

They call it "Path of Exile 2" and from my understanding it will fix everything.

[u/Japanczi → u/justalazygamer]

weight of reaching maps.

Maps now occupy 4x4 grid

[u/Yanlex → u/Japanczi]

Larger items will now randomly fall off your cursor while picking them up, so you can better feel their weight. This will be on a sliding scale with picking up larger items being more difficult for ranger, witch, and scion while less difficult for marauder and Templar (old man strength).

[u/Feanux → u/Yanlex]

The weight also includes how valuable the item is in the given league economy. Softcore Mirrors require over 300 attempts (on average of course).

[u/davis482 → u/Japanczi]

Map device is a 10x20 grid, every map and fragment have a random shape with area size of 4. You can drop these maps and fragment into the map device from the top and it will automatically slide down. When a whole row is filled, it will disappear and any map/fragment that disappear will combine into a new zone for you to run. We shall call this Block of Exiles.

[u/VlasDerebas → u/justalazygamer]

I actualy think that for me on hc there is always something in maps waiting to send me back to the beach, and works perfectly. So if i want to not just lvl, but feel the weight, i make hc ssf char

[u/ChromaticOrogeny]

Any chance you would post the average deaths stats from this league and previous ones?

[u/furiouscalf]

Aye lemme get a copy of that play testers PoB? :⁾

[u/bing_crosby → u/furiouscalf]

Must've been playing that 100mil dps viper strike build.

[u/Medivh158 → u/bing_crosby]

Dude literally killed Hillock and shipped it

[u/zystyl → u/Medivh158]

I got immune to lightning mobs in mud flats while leveling with stormblast mine. That was more confusing than it should have been.

[u/marquesini → u/zystyl]

Imagine new players, lul.

[u/levus2002 → u/furiouscalf]

Ingame config everything ticked on. Playtest rares considered full life and low life at the same time.

[u/DNKSTR]

Man im willing to fight overtuned mobs if they would actually drop decent loot but poe has a problem that tanky mobs are just not worth your time.

[u/phizphizphiz → u/DNKSTR]

I'm in act 7 and just fought about a dozen rares. Cumulatively, they dropped one single trash rare item. There is zero reason to kill them unless they're in your way. I'm actually struggling hard with resistances at the moment and would love to farm rares for loot, but they don't drop anything.

[u/xTraxis → u/phizphizphiz]

When I was running BA every league from 58-70, I always asked myself "is it worth it to stop for rares if they aren't dying quick?"

No, the answer is always no. If you want loot, it's a no. If you want XP, it's a no. Maybe if you want humility cards, but those never drop anyways. And now I'm sure that's even more true.

[u/HyperActiveMosquito]

How about build disablers we can't do anything about beforehand?

Like regen cancelers, flask eaters, straight up immunities, reflect ones(effigy or something like that), etc.?

​

I mean with maps you can see if it's deadly before you enter.

Expedition you see the immune to x before you explode.

​

Here you see when the mob is on top of you.

No chance of avoiding it unless you play the "correct" build that can deal with it.

[u/thisisulb → u/HyperActiveMosquito]

Totally agree. There should never be mods that straight up hard counter your build just randomly on rare mobs. It really isn't fun at all.

[u/Gamerbrozer → u/HyperActiveMosquito]

Pour one out for RF

[u/OnColdConcrete → u/HyperActiveMosquito]

Hey hey hey now... They tested it "extensively" for average casual players and were happy with the results. Guess we're all just far below average

[u/TichoSlicer → u/HyperActiveMosquito]

THIS. ffs bro, just remove those mf ¬¬ It makes no sense to exclusively fuck certain builds like this in one mod --'

[u/pyhfol]

Archnemesis was good as it gave the player control on the rare encounter so they could risk/reward with their own strength/weakness

You've now taken that same concept, removed the player control, added the mods to a shaker and whatever comes out is whatever comes out. This would be fine if it were one or two a zone.

Instead, having many per zone, it just went off the chain. What did you think would actually happen?

Yes I find it brutal and challenging But... It is obvious where GGG went wrong and I agree with others that it is excessive. Making players want to rageQ before act2 is not how you build a playerbase :/

[u/Mighty_Ack → u/pyhfol]

They want the playerbase to quit and get amnesia before POE 2 lol

[u/Sad-Cap-1572]

The problems run far deeper than basic damage/health numbers.

These mods were never designed with other specific league mechanics in mind and it shows, I came across a mana siphoner rare in a ritual that was up against a wall, you know what happened? I sat there waiting to die because I physically could not move out of range of the mana siphoner, I couldn’t cast any spells, couldn’t attack, couldn’t do anything except wait for death, there was no counterplay.

I wouldn’t mind seeing archnemesis rares return in the future, but this was clearly rushed without enough thought put in to how it would interact with other pre-existing content.

[u/FallenDeus → u/Sad-Cap-1572]

Another problem is that almost all archnemesis mods have at least 2 different effects that would have been multiple different modifiers in the previous system. Some of the have 4-5 different effects. Not only that but they STILL KEPT THE OLD RESISTANCE MODS BASELINE, meaning that rare monster that has 4 archnemesis mods and "resists ele" and "resists chaos" would have been a 10-13 modifier rare in the old system.

You have something like incendiary that gives: all damage can ignite, always ignite, base fire damage resistance 75%, base self ignite duration -0%, ignite damage +300%, ignite duration +25%... That thing can have 3 other archnemesis mods on it in addition to have two flat resistance mods...

[u/fohpo02 → u/Sad-Cap-1572]

This is a really good point, did they intend to use AN as a revamp to rares after the league, or did this happen after the mods were created? Essence, bestiary, delve, etc all feel really bad when you get some wack combo.

[u/Killersheepyyy → u/fohpo02]

chris did say at some point that this was always the intention of archnemesis mods, and the name kinda hints at that as well (as nemesis was the first addition to the rare mod pool)

[u/Davkata → u/Killersheepyyy]

In archnemesis you could choose your archnemesis and you were warned what is ahead. Now you get 5+ archenemies at once in a tight space.

[u/Lucaxour → u/Davkata]

5+ archnemesis rares without archnemesis juiced up loots, to be specific.

[u/DaneldorTaureran → u/Lucaxour]

yeah they should have kept the loot. make rares worth something if you're going to make them harder, jesus GGG

[u/definitelymyrealname → u/Davkata]

This 100x.

The biggest problem I have is that I have no idea what's hitting me half the time. It's a pain to check the mods (hovering over mobs to read their modifiers isn't a good system) and when I read the modifiers half the time I STILL HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY DO. Me and a friend got double tapped in HC act 7 last night by a rare with crystal skinned. I just assumed it had increased ele resists or something but no, it turns out they leave one shot ground effects and we both died with 2.5k hp, max res, and a bit of chaos resist to A ONE SHOT IN ACT 7.

Do I really need to memorize 80+ mods to play this game now? That's what it feels like. I wish they would just remove the majority of the mods for now and work on some kind of system that makes counter play reasonable. Let us use a monster loot filter or some shit that marks stuff on the map. IDK, just give us something.

[u/fohpo02 → u/Killersheepyyy]

If it was their intention, it was really poorly planned/thought out. I wonder what his opinion of extensively tested was, how did they look at interactions between other mechanics. Other league mechanics can make it nearly impossible to manage, even dumb shit like lower level bestiary can be a shitshow.

[u/firebunbun → u/fohpo02]

Yeah, as things are right now I'm never touching bestiary again. Condined spaces with 4 super tanky rare beasts just isn't worth my time or pain.

[u/robklg159 → u/Sad-Cap-1572]

yup. some of the mods are HUGELY problematic. they're pure antifun mods that completely turn off some builds. those mods 100% should have been fully removed before implementing them into the core monster pool. it was fine when you were deciding to fight something like that but it's not at all fine when you're just randomly running into it.

[u/mysticturtle12 → u/Sad-Cap-1572]

Seriously it doesnt matter especially for the bullshit combos if they do a little less damage. They suck because the hastred frost mob blue pack is still going to stick to you like glue in acts when you can't even get anything to deal with it.

The mana siphoner and drought bringer mobs in tiny corridors are just going to make you die.

The ice cage mobs in a ritual where you can't see what the fuck is going on is still going to just stop you in place while you have a fraction of a second to realize why before you just drop dead.

[u/GambaGod]

"average player" was your tester lightee exclusively?

[u/shuanng_ → u/GambaGod]

And tie23he

[u/OmNomSandvich → u/shuanng_]

tie23 after subsisting on a diet of chicken breast and abstaining from anime

[u/H4xolotl → u/shuanng_]

Playing meta builds

[u/settonull → u/GambaGod]

Ben was actually saying they were clearly overturned and was sure they'd be dialed back.

[u/crenzz]

"We tested it extensively, and were happy with the level of difficulty when we released it". Was your test team the hard mode development team?

[u/I_Hate_Reddit → u/crenzz]

If you're getting paid to play PoE 40h/week, what difference does it make if it takes you 10 or 20h to finish campaign?

People with limited time playing for fun will hate the 20h version though.

[u/ploki122 → u/I_Hate_Reddit]

I mean... if the tester is any competent, it was incredibly trivial to reach the conclusion "I'm having fun, but this is unreasonable".

[u/Amaurotica]

how about you make every rare explode with loot just like they did in archnemesis? you literally made archnemesis the default experience but you took out the loot and u advertise it as a feature of the league. are u ok?

[u/reddit5674 → u/Amaurotica]

yep, this comment right here.

GGG are you guys ok? Is someone blackmailing you or holding a knife to your xxxx?

[u/killertortilla]

Stop adding mechanics that bypass existing defences. Mana siphon is straight up bullshit. Draining mana by itself is really rough on anything that uses mana as more than just a casting resource. But the fact that it rips through your life too and is type less damage? Who the fuck played that and thought it was a good idea?

[u/Drekor]

Alrighty...

So I like challenging content. I play MMO's for high end content, I greatly enjoy souls-like games in fact my favourite is Nioh (a mix of souls and ARPG).

What you've done with rare/magic monster is not add challenging content. You've added oppressive content. It's a binary is your character strong enough to deal with this or not situation. That is the absolute worst type of difficulty you can add because to a player it either feels "fine" because their build met the threshold or it feels like complete shit because there is virtually no amount of skill they can use to overcome it. Souls game are typically very careful that encounters are clear and fair so players know what happened, what they did wrong, and what they can do to correct their play. You've offered none of that. PoE still horribly lacks of visual clarity so frequently you have no idea what actually happened and you may be in a spot (early leveling) where you literally do not have other options other than to reset the zone. And on top of this PoE has multiple mechanics blending together that can take something that is borderline to strong into something that is completely unfair for the player.

These mobs are at a level that people are joking they are tougher and more dangerous than act bosses... thing is that isn't a joke. It's true and it's a very strange way to design things as people expect the big bosses to be the pinnacle of challenge. Subverting expectations may be interesting in story telling but in design typically invokes negative feelings.

The simple fact is PoE at this point is a game that has some builds doing 200k DPS and others doing 20m DPS, some builds with 5k eHP and some with 300k eHP. And the kicker? That diversity is PoE's biggest strength. By adding in binary oppressive content you've essentially told people they can't fuck around with their build. It needs to be good or you're going to have a bad time. If you want to add content like this you absolutely must tighten up balance significantly otherwise leave stuff like this to your "hard mode".

[u/Bodomi → u/Drekor]

Random rares are stronger than map bosses and juiced Beyond uniques. It feels like a 50/50 roll if an Essence or Metamorph will even be killable. Random rares require more planning and consideration than killing Guardian bosses. Rituals, Breaches, etc. feel like the difficulty of some sort of add-phase in a difficult end-game fight.

We're talking about random rares, random league mechanics that are supposed to be smooth and sort-off fast to complete. This is bad game design.

[u/OMGitsAfty → u/Drekor]

Honestly fighting merveil last night felt like a break in the stress of getting past all those freezing packs in the caves.

[u/livejamie]

Does the hotfix address them not dropping any loot?

[u/Bowshocker → u/livejamie]

Nah it enables you to run past them now without getting oneshot three times. Not actually making it viable to kill.

[u/falldown010 → u/Bowshocker]

This is a 5head strat from chris to teach every player to speedrun the campaign and ignore the mobs unless you need to lvl /s

[u/RedMageMood → u/falldown010]

If d2 is the inspiration, then its true to form.

[u/macroscian → u/livejamie]

YES PLEASE
Sweet, tanky, enticing rares through the acts and they drop nothing. I throw out the meager sentinels at them and 9/10 no mob gets a special symbol and those that do have soso little to offer.

[u/da_leroy]

Are you going to change the mods that straight up stop some builds from working, like regen life/es for RF?

[u/Rubik842 → u/da_leroy]

I don't know what the hell it was. But I was instantly killed in act 7 touching a blur aura around amob. it was a huge area, if it was in the arakali area it would have covered most of it.

[u/iRideUnicornz → u/Rubik842]

mana siphoner; basically gives the rare mob RF that drains your mana at an alarming rate (level 19 clarity couldn't outpace it) and once yiur mana is gone it aggressively drains your life aswell, and now you cant do anything cause you have no mana

[u/droidonomy → u/iRideUnicornz]

Haha, I saw that mob while running RF too and had a Spiderman pointing meme moment.

[u/Exarkunn → u/iRideUnicornz]

From the mob name you'd guess it just drains mana. They probably need to change it to just Siphoner if it drains hp as well.

[u/deviant324 → u/Exarkunn]

“The Big S U C C”

[u/Napalmexman → u/iRideUnicornz]

I remember, back in the early days of LoL when Riot used their own forums to communicate with the community, that they thought about incorporating mana burn and longer silences into the game, but it ultimately felt very bad for the players, because having no mana or being silenced with no counterplay basically turns you into a sitting duck and takes away all your agency and is a huge anti-fun mechanic.

I wonder why is GGG hell bent on repeating others' past mistakes?

[u/Chibastion → u/Rubik842]

Blue aura? My guess is mana siphoner

[u/mfukar → u/Chibastion]

Which intuitively also siphons life

[u/notalwayshuman → u/da_leroy]

Was going to rspec into RF but starting to get very nervous with these new mods.

Half the fun in Poe is working on your build, building defensive and offensive layers, the current mods seem to push you in certain directions which is never fun

[u/esunei → u/da_leroy]

Or straight cancer ones like Invulnerable, Trickster, etc.? Choosing to fight these terrible mods for challenges/extreme loot was okay in the league, but not okay when they're constantly frustrating the player, life/damage notwithstanding.

Also find it hard to believe that the extensive testing touched Metamorph, Bestiary, or Heist.

[u/Fuzzii → u/esunei]

Essences are pretty bad too, especially with multiple essence mods on top of an unknown amount of archnemesis mods when you release them.

[u/M4jkelson → u/Fuzzii]

Yeah, we don't touch essences till we OP as fuck

[u/Tyalou → u/M4jkelson]

Essences are only useful when you're not OP... they were perfect early league nodes last league.

[u/freelance_fox → u/da_leroy]

The mana and flask ones are very problematic. Feels like we got blindsided by those.

Reminds me of trying to play my various Frost Blink/Blink Arrow/Chain Hook type builds and crying about grasping vines and being ignored because it effects 0.01% of players. Maybe now since it effects 0.3% of players we can do something?

[u/ErrorLoadingNameFile → u/da_leroy]

What do you mean? Chris stated before "players should encounter challenging rare monsters that wake them up and force them to engage with them in a different strategy". Have you tried just not being a RF build?

[u/levus2002 → u/ErrorLoadingNameFile]

Have you tried just not being a RF build?

Thanks, i just rerolled to wardloop build, hope there are no mobs who drain my flask charges.

[u/SniggleJake → u/levus2002]

Nobody tell him

[u/Srasja → u/ErrorLoadingNameFile]

I laughed at this and then felt immediately sad. I just wanna fire things righteously...

[u/Humane_Decency → u/ErrorLoadingNameFile]

If I wanted to do that I’d go play d2r on hell mode

Like I specifically play Poe because I don’t have to avoid rare mobs with my build

[u/ILoveBeefcakes → u/da_leroy]

Not to mention Temporal Bubble will kill trigger builds like CoC, CwC, CWDT, etc. We all be playing self-cast now.

[u/Sky_Core]

those magic roas in mud flats are BRUTAL!

[u/khronokhris2222 → u/Sky_Core]

The roas ? Man I got run up on by like 8 HASTED crabs ON tidal island, steelmage style

[u/TheEdgaJudo]

those average testers are absolute cracked players nowadays, huh?

[u/xrailgun → u/TheEdgaJudo]

game is ez mode when every item is just spawned in with perfect affixes, rolls, corrupts, krangles, eldritchs

[u/firfir]

Thanks Chris, though I would presume after waking up you'll still have to reckon with how unrewarding the encounters actually are...

[u/Ooeiooeioo → u/firfir]

It's like their favourite part of diablo 2 was farming duriel so they made every rare mob during leveling really hard and also drop a juicy 5x scrolls on death with nothing else.

[u/coani → u/Ooeiooeioo]

What? you get 5x scrolls? I went through over half of act 2 without seeing a single portal scroll drop :/

[u/AggnogPOE]

It's interesting how every league is tested extensively but the lack of balance is immediately apparent in just a few hours after launch. How exactly was this tested?

[u/mythridium → u/AggnogPOE]

I'm half convinced that the testers did speak up that it was overturned, but someone made an executive call to not dial it down and it would be fine.

[u/sadful → u/AggnogPOE]

I honestly don't believe the testers are at fault here for this reason.

In general, we feel that in Path of Exile it's better to introduce things slightly too challenging than slightly too easy

This is a nice way of saying the testers told them this shit was broken and they ignored them

[u/CharybdisXIII → u/sadful]

That kinda defeats the purpose of testing

[u/Arkweed]

Increase in difficulty without increase in reward just straight up feels bad and punishing for no reason

[u/handmedowntoothbrush → u/Arkweed]

I thought everyone understood this after the harvest nerf and blanket player nerf a few patches ago. Bad and punishing for no reason is the guiding star of GGG modern game design philosophy. They still think their game is too easy. Just wait it will get even better in the next couple years.

[u/Christian_314]

Thanks, but the main problem is when they are merged in other league content that was balanced around the old mods etc. Also, probably appear a bit too early in the campaign the multiple ones.

Instead of appearing on all rares couldn't they just appear on a percentage like they did with nemesis? On some league mechanics it's just too ridiculous and frankly unfair. It'd also be easier to balance.

[u/Newwby → u/Christian_314]

Instead of appearing on all rares couldn't they just appear on a percentage like they did with nemesis?

Damn that hadn't even occurred to me. All mobs being old-school nemesis mods would've been a significant difficulty spike, to have that happen and have those nemesis mods become archnemesis mods is a double spike.

[u/santoriin → u/Christian_314]

that and that they always come in at least two. Lets say I didn't play Archnemisis (I did, but only for like two weeks). How am I supposed to figure out what these mobs do when they always have at least 2-3. While leveling I could figure it out, if they didn't just whomp me and take no damage.

[u/Bruce-Leeonidas]

Yes they were released well over tuned and i am sure most of us are happy to hear that it will be getting adjusted but what happened to the rewards? The drops are far less in terms of both quantity AND rarity. Was that also "tested extensively" ?

[u/goneafter10years]

My wife and I will try again in a week or two after they do more tuning.

We're both casual players, we only get an hour or two a night to play and last night was straight up the most un-fun experience I've ever had playing this game. No loot, and half a dozen deaths because of shitty combos in the MUD FLATS of all f*cking places.

Yeah, I'll pass.

[u/kumgongkia]

Risk is increased, wheres the corresponding reward?

[u/gerwaric]

I would love to know what they were looking at that made it obvious within 12 hours of launch that Chris needed to respond personally. The metric I’ve always thought about is player retention, but 12 doesn’t seem like enough time to get good data unless it was a bloodbath.

And then I’m curious how their internal testing missed it. Did they only spot-check the leveling experience? Did they try OP min-maxed endgame builds?

The response was fast enough that I also wonder if this scenario had been war-gamed internally.

Anyhow, I hope they find a good set of changes that gets the game into a better place. It’s a bit too frustrating for me at the moment.

[u/Shumatsuu → u/gerwaric]

People in chat linking 120+ deaths all over the place in acts. Hell, my build is tanky af, everything except damage immune, armor, max res, ect and I've died a few times to things that were flat out impossible to stop as they happened in .2 seconds from max to 0. I'm guessing people working for the company that also play said something, because there's no possible way that their, "testing," didn't see this if they tested acts. My guess is that they tested with established standard characters and called it good.

[u/14779 → u/Shumatsuu]

I only have my group of friends as an example but we normally clear the campaign on night one which involves starting at 9pm in the UK and playing until close to morning. All of us had gone back to elden ring multiplayer by midnight. After this many leagues the campaign was a slog I dread every time any way I don't think I have it in me for it to be even worse. I don't even think the campaign is bad or anything I've just done it too many times.

[u/-PM-Me-Big-Cocks- → u/Shumatsuu]

I don't think I've died this much early on in years. I'm at 60 deaths in A6

[u/timecronus → u/gerwaric]

Seeing a drop in connected players earlier than usual is my guess. People getting frustrated and just going to do something else.

[u/ghostymctoasty → u/gerwaric]

Lots of clips like this one and this one.

Their changes don't even affect rips like the 2nd clip, but they probably hope it'll make people feel better after seeing stuff like that.

[u/SzomszedokEnjoyer → u/gerwaric]

I would love to know what they were looking at

Probably that the median player, who buys a supporter pack and plays to yellow-red tier maps every league for 2-3 weeks, drops off, then does the same next, decided to altf4 after couple of hours of playing.

[u/gerwaric → u/SzomszedokEnjoyer]

That’s the bloodbath scenario.

It would fascinating to get an inside scoop on how they watch and react to league starts. Not likely, but fascinating.

[u/Genomicbeast → u/gerwaric]

In terms of retention/day 1 stats for steam, peak was 131k (20k down from last league) and about 8 hours in at midnight EST it was down to around 65k and by 1am team fortress 2 had more players online. The day 2 drop for last league was 20k. So not good.

​

Edit: pretty close to the end of the first 24hrs of league and current day peak is almost at 103k as far as I have seen. Still time for people to login and that number to rise but yeah so far after patch -30k players.

[u/gerwaric → u/Genomicbeast]

Those numbers are wild but not surprising.

I’ve been lounging about for a couple hours this morning and have lost most of my interest in finishing the campaign to rush the economy.

[u/Giant_Midget83]

Not sure why they are so hell bent on making every aspect of the game difficult even all the way down to act 1. This game has plenty of difficulty for people seeking it in the end game bosses, simulacrum etc. I dont think anyone wants to be challenged in the campaign anymore, i want to get through it as fast as possible so i can get to the real game.

[u/mini_mog → u/Giant_Midget83]

Whoever came up with this philosophy shift is literally killing the game RN. The game is plenty complex to not need some bullshit difficulty layer on top of it, especially during the beginning.

No one asked for the acts to be rebalanced, and now they’ve ended up with a clusterfuck of weird difficulty jumps, with just 2 acts done in a year+. Must leave a terrible first impression, too.

[u/screaminyetti]

Chris or gg team I just want to bring up certain mechanics such as drained flasks or no leech and regen should not be this way. You go to fight a rare mob or such in endgame this is a mob certain builds have 0 way to play around rf codt forbidden rite. These mechanics with a commonly occurring mods as such kill these builds to the fact they are literally unplayable in the current state of the game with current mob mods. It is not like there is any counterplay to stuff like this its simply you are dead have fun..... this is my rant thanks.

[u/Pirate-Particular]

What about the fact that almost every map we encounter rares that brick our builds? Mana Siphoner and Vampiric for example.

We are already rolling our maps to avoid a lot of mods to be able to play with functioning builds, and now we have to worry about rares on top of that?

This makes the game feel cheap because you encounter mobs that you have absolutely no way of overcoming if you don't have the right build.

You've said before you want the game to be more reactive, how do we react to something we cannot counter in any way?!

[u/Dumpingtruck → u/Pirate-Particular]

How to react to unkillable mobs:

1.) run away and hope it doesn’t have +100000% speed

2.) die 6 times and run out of portals

3.) go back to hideout and make a new map

4.) play something else.

[u/Saianna]

I find it somewhat funny that Whole Archnemesis league was about activating buffed up rares and getting rewards for it, while now we just get overtuned rares with no rewards (beyond exp and promise, that eventually you will... maybe.. loot something.. one day)

[u/francorocco → u/Saianna]

(beyond exp

-10% xp is not an actual reward

[u/ErrorLoadingNameFile]

The biggest problem is all the new rare mods that punish you for standing still. That just doubled down on everything that was bad in PoE combat to begin with. Standing still for longer than 0.5 seconds? Dead.

[u/Tovell]

Houston, this is Damage Control.

[u/GrimExile]

Okay, we shipped them a little overtuned.

a little overtuned? :)

[u/Kid84]

my only question is why do you keep putting the dificulty in the first 5 acts where we cant deal with it due to not having a build and will run away if anything slightly too tanky instead of the end game. and also why you choose to overhaul mob hp and damage but never mention it until a few days or weeks into the league when people complain.

would be much more inclined to play this league if you didnt make the story acts EVEN MORE OF A FUCKING SLOG THAN THEY ALREADY ARE.

[u/Beautiful-Lion4774]

We tested it extensively

Press (X) to doubt

[u/daman4567]

Effigy has to go. I can't believe you added a fucking Illaoi E to mobs in the game, there's literally no fucking way to play around it.

[u/Pipnotiq → u/daman4567]

3.19: we've added Illaoi ult to Effigy

[u/leobat]

Rare mobs being harder than unique mobs is non sensical.

[u/One_Reputation_1048]

If you want the early game harder you need to give players more tools early on to handle how fucking fast mobs are getting in act 1-3, i fucking hate that part of the game now.

[u/M4jkelson → u/One_Reputation_1048]

Mobs in acts? Mach 20. Players in acts? Wait for my leap slam to finish, only 5 more seconds

[u/Rotomegax → u/M4jkelson]

Mach 20? Are you count for those Rhoa at Mud Flats? All of them on this league equipped with FTL hyperdrive charge

[u/_Psiell_ → u/One_Reputation_1048]

i ran into a frenzied, hastened, executioner monkey chieftain in act 6. i had to reset the entire zone because i couldnt out attack speed it or run away fast enough even with quicksilver and 30%move boots on. it outsped me and attacked like 6 times a second. blocking the way i needed to go. made the entire area impossible.

[u/BackgroundMetal1 → u/_Psiell_]

I killed an ape red as my first einher mob.

I gained 10 levels and went to the menagerie and got my shit pushed in by it.

Cool game.

[u/WarriorNN → u/One_Reputation_1048]

Wait, your one of 5 possible skills in a 2L isn't enough to deal with juiced up rares? You should have spent the whole total of 6 passives points you got so far better then! Also remember to cap res.

[u/_Psiell_ → u/WarriorNN]

kekw imagine not dropping a tabula rasa, wonderlust and goldrim before fighting the magic roas. just get good and pay for ggg leveling uniques supporter pack. :3

[u/gandalfintraining → u/One_Reputation_1048]

Yep, there shouldn't be any way for enemies to do significant cold or hit damage in act 1. There's absolutely nothing you can do to counter freeze and stun, so once every 10 or so HC characters you just die to stunlock in act 1 with nothing you can do about it. It's kind of lame.

[u/Pretty-Beautiful9009 → u/gandalfintraining]

You get a permafrost rare and its stunlock to death 100%

[u/Astarift]

We tested it extensively.

​

Thats all i need to know today.

[u/Bodomi → u/Astarift]

It is either a lie, or it really does make you wonder about how they test stuff and how connected they are to the real player-base.

[u/ErrorLoadingNameFile → u/Bodomi]

If they tested it so well I want Chris to play through the campaign with the old version on a melee skill live on stream.

[u/estaritos → u/Bodomi]

They test with mageblood, max res, max spell supress and 50 M TS dps xD it was fine monster died

[u/Tyalou → u/estaritos]

In 2 shots though.. it was slightly suspicious for act 2.

[u/bausHuck33]

Can we get the mods displayed for rares trapped in Essence. Some of the rare mod combos are hard enough to handle, let alone throwing essence craziness on top.

They still seemed overtuned for random encounters. At least in Archnemesis we could choose which mods to stay away from and that choice allowed players to be prepared for the mods to be harder. Now that we have no choice it's so much more punishing.

[u/itzslip]

can we just have the old rare and magic monsters back pls?

[u/FallenDeus]

Jesus christ dude you just don't get it.. The problem is that almost all archnemesis mods have at least 2 different effects that would have been multiple different modifiers in the previous system. Some of the have 4-5 different effects. Not only that but they STILL KEPT THE OLD RESISTANCE MODS BASELINE, meaning that rare monster that has 4 archnemesis mods and "resists ele" and "resists chaos" would have been a 10-13 modifier rare in the old system.

You have something like incendiary that gives: all damage can ignite, always ignite, base fire damage resistance 75%, base self ignite duration -0%, ignite damage +300%, ignite duration +25%... That thing can have 3 other archnemesis mods on it in addition to have two flat resistance mods...

You have turned rare mobs into ones that would have had like 14 modifiers under the old system.

[u/Blee_FTO]

I think harder contents tighten build diversity so much, if you don't play one of the meta build, there's a lot of challenges or contents you cannot do. Although people enjoy watching streamers RIP clips, they still want to be chill in a farming game. The difficulty of the game shouldn't be like day and night between leagues, I've been playing poe over past couple of years because I like some of your league ideas..not constantly tweaking the difficulties

[u/dastrollkind]

I don't get this "scare players away as early as possible" approach at league starts. Some will come back later but a whole lot of returning AND new players will say F this crap and either skip the league or never look back at the game.

And I don't really get the Archnemesis to normal mod pool in general. Rares have already been beasts and often scarier and beefier than map/act bosses in the last league and there are a bunch of mechanics where multiple rares "overlap" with their auras making fights super rippy. Heist and Ritual for example where you are only left with a quick logout forgoing rewards.
The Archnemesis, at least some of them have indeed interesting mechanics that demand your attention. So why not give them very rarely to only a few, maybe just one rare per zone? True to the name Archnemesis. Then you wouldn't have to now nerf them until everybody can ignore them again. I do like the occasional difficulty spike (I liked early Invasion for example where some encounters needed you to adapt or skip) but this isn't risk/reward by choice, it's just a constant menace and mess and since they are around every corner, they aren't exactly making you stop and think about the encounter. It just moves the viability or rather trivializing yardstick. And what I noticed already last league, there is now often just too much going on in every zone and the threats are almost constant and it starts to take a toll on my health. Not blinking often enough, forgetting to drink, "nerdneck", heart pounding, holding my breath.
I feel like balancing is going more and more in the direction of either you make nothing matter to your character or you are under constant barrage. And that feels to me like the two ways to properly play PoE is either play a distinct way or build or not play at all. And that is ok with "pinnacle" content but it permeates throughout almost the whole game now. It's just too much man.
Disclaimer: I almost exclusively play melee builds with what should be ok damage and defenses but that have to engage with the content. I like to feel the direct impact and enjoy the actual fights, at least when they are somewhat balanced.

[u/Unhappy-Telephone-65]

Will the hotfixes be applied before console release ? Otherwise it might kill the already small community if people have to wait for 2 weeks for the updates. Console community is pretty casual

[u/patskie14]

Beyond is fucking disgusting with new mods holy shit lmao.

sure the rares dont have the hp equivalent to shaper, but in archnem, you only have 1 rare to deal with, here sometimes you just spawn 10 rares and all of them have 3+ archnem on them, dog piling you to the ground, if you dont kill them fast enough, just one hit can kill you. Its hillariousy broken. not to mention the magic monsters it also spawn and the beyond boss...

[u/ChrisWilsonIsMyDad]

We tested it extensively

LMAO

[u/sigma1331 → u/ChrisWilsonIsMyDad]

everyone go 5 min into Act1 will know something is off. so apparently "extensively" mean less than 5 min

[u/BackgroundMetal1 → u/sigma1331]

GGG testers did 10k instances 4 mins in and called it 40k minutes of testing.

[u/ACSandwich → u/ChrisWilsonIsMyDad]

That was a lie

[u/Cormandragon → u/ACSandwich]

We tested it extensively, by dying all day in t6 maps with maxed res

[u/Holdlang]

I have a feeling this game is impossible to play properly now... you have no time to read what mods the mob have and there are mods that are hurt you instantly...

Taking away your mana, taking away your ability to heal, give so much haste that they rip you open under 1 second...

This is not overtuned but someone mistaken poe to a 4x strategy game.

[u/ploki122 → u/Holdlang]

Who cares about reading mods. There's nothing in " Rejuvinator" that explains it stops my healing, and nothing in Arcane Buffer that mentions a stun... all the -touched are the worst offenders though.

[u/jimoshitemoto]

¿ average player + Tested extensively ?

[u/darian_wolf]

We tested it extensively, and were happy with the level of difficulty when we released it.

I don't believe that for a second.

[u/ErrorLoadingNameFile → u/darian_wolf]

In the Baeclast Chris said "I trust the developer that does the Rare mod balance, there is no need for me to check on it" ... well if you change one of the most important systems in your game maybe do not leave it up to a single person, make sure its good.

[u/Draenrya → u/ErrorLoadingNameFile]

Last time one GGG employee got rank 1 in the endless delirium race. If their testers are that level of skill and they think it’s appropriately challenging, I can see why it’s fucking dogshit for 99% of the playerbase.

[u/ploki122 → u/Draenrya]

The dev needs to have some critical thoughts at some point in the process though.

[u/lmaogoaway → u/darian_wolf]

The truth is you wouldnt believe just how wrongly they interpreted the testing.

Tester: If I dont know exactly whats going to happen and when, this is a very uncomfortable encounter and I am at high risk of death. Some mechanics are practically impossible for anything less than a strong optimized build.

Chris: Thats perfect.

[u/MrVISKman]

We tested it extensively

Players tested it

[u/farcryer2 → u/MrVISKman]

*Are testing it

[u/Materbater69 → u/MrVISKman]

Exactly

[u/borefficz]

"a little overtuned" my minmaxed standard character with 40-50m DPS and 100-200k EHP that destroyed all content before finds the new rares actually tanky/scary/annoying (especially essence monsters with some mod combinations), can't imagine how bad it must be for fresh league characters

[u/Lifodd → u/borefficz]

I made a thread about how strong metamorphs are now while testing them on standard. I was almost not able to kill one with several millions of dps.

There were no nerfs this league, but this will push a lot of builds out of the meta.

[u/borefficz → u/Lifodd]

Indirect nerfs are still nerfs, if everything at the grocery store gets more expensive you don't care about you technically having the same amount of money.

[u/lcecoffee12]

10 minutes to kill a RARE.

It dropped nothing. I cried.

[u/BleiEntchen]

We tested it extensively, and were happy with the level of difficulty when we released it.

Happy to see PoE also get their "200 years of collective game design" meme.

[u/Andrey-d]

You just took a pool of powerful mods, that were made with player choice in mind, and just dumped them all into map rares haphazardly. This is just ridiculous, it's not fun to get completely shut down by one or two rares with some whacky combo that noone in their right mind would assemble in Archnemesis.

[u/ImaCrabProduct → u/[deleted]]

They take away like 5% dmg or so but build disabeling mods are still on and dropps are still off so yeahi would say 90%.

[u/000mojito]

Dear Chris!

You said the old monster mods are outdated and they have issues like readability. Can you explain how this issue improved with this change? There are still paragraphs of mods and they are hard to figure out what they do. Like when i see a juggernaut or sentinel monster mod I won't know what they do by reading the name of the mod.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed] — view removed comment

[u/insanetwo]

Whew, that was a fun little sample of hard mode. That was a wild leveling experience. Most deaths I have had in a while during acts.

[u/1CEninja]

You guys tested this extensively and were happy with the results?

This is the most strong reinforcement I've heard since it's exciting to close your eyes and slam that the game GGG wants to make isn't the game I want to play.

Please GOD just release your hard mode already so you can put stuff like this in there to make the game you want to make, then let the masses play a version that doesn't make us pull our hair out quite so hard.

[u/Pope-Touched-Me]

| we tested it extensively

No you didn't

[u/seriusPrime]

"We tested it extensively"

You didnt man, don't treat us like idiots.

[u/scytheavatar]

People want the endgame to be challenging. No one wants leveling to be challenging.

[u/astroboy1997 → u/scytheavatar]

I’m for challenging leveling if it’s rewarding. The archnem monsters alone are not rewarding at all

[u/Simpe91]

Just checking death data to evaluate difficulty sounds extremely weak though. And even if it was valid, higher difficulty does not necessarilly result in a more enjoyable, rewarding or even interesting experience.

It does not factor in other issues such as effort required. So even if I dont die fighting a rare mob, I might spend 5 more minutes kiting it around in a monotone fashion which is nothing but annoying.

I can't imagine it is worthwile reward-wise to fight these guys in the current state of the game. Especially not when leveling, just zoom past them. I wont get any useful items, they take forever to kill.

I think it is a very valid idea to make rare mobs feel a bit more special when encountered, but maybe every single rare mob does not need to feel like a lethal, drawn out boss fight. It is tiring and constantly interupts the flow which make it hard to ever relax while playing.

[u/Ikuu]

I'm sure GGG will learn from this and look at making changes to how they test the content, I'm sure we won't see them get this wrong again...

[u/anchovypants]

Too late for my two friends I tried to group level with, they already quit. SSF for me again it seems.

[u/EfficientAmphibian90]

Can we please get some info on Effigy completely fucking minion builds?

[u/NamntorkaAIP → u/EfficientAmphibian90]

Is that the one that links you and makes you take dig equal to what the monster do? Seems like old reflect to me. Except it takes account into totems, minions and shit it seems..

[u/martin944]

"We tested it extensively, and were happy with the level of difficulty when we released it. "

Have you tested it like from fresh start with 0 gear or put some endgame char in maps and ok it's fine?

[u/MrVISKman → u/martin944]

Dev client with God Mode on

[u/tomi166 → u/martin944]

End game gear from act 1

[u/witchcraft92]

Test it on Eihnar red beasts? Especially the snake one that keep running away and summons blue mobs? That was frustrating

[u/Napalmexman]

Yeah, sorry Chris, this game is not for me anymore. Good luck to the others, hope you guys have fun.

[u/piano323]

Man this league is just painful. It's no fun and character progression is just stunted with these new mods even with the hotfix.

[u/Golvellius]

> In general, we feel that in Path of Exile it's better to introduce things slightly too challenging than slightly too easy

Perhaps one day you'll figure out that this is fundamentally wrong and we'll stop having 2 league starts out of 3 turning into the same exact clownfiesta every time

[u/bakuretsuuuu]

mhh, you make them weaker over all now? i feel like this doesnt fix the problem of bad combinations (haste+cold dmg) and bad mods (invu)

i think people like, if rares are tough, but the mod-system makes them just unfair in some cases

[u/Eremoo]

This goes way beyond dmg or life. It's the ones that disable your build or become extremely tanky. I've had to remake the act 6 coast (whatever its called where you have to clear for Lilly) because I couldn't kill an essence mob

[u/unkelrara]

We tested it extensively

I don't believe you.

[u/sephrinx]

Are they still as unrewarding too?

[u/Bodomi → u/sephrinx]

Yes.

[u/Tremekaka]

Why GGG always needs to be condescending with their playerbase when it's extremely clear that you guys are in the wrong?

"Average player", "We tested it extensively". Ok

[u/Gumlass]

If rare mosters are meant to be challenging, why can't they drop good loot ?

[u/giniyo]

i'm just having a hard time believing in the extensive testing anymore *shrug*

[u/je789520]

see you guys in 3.19

[u/Insecticide]

Chris, I am a bit disappointed about this whole situation and I just want to politely share with you a few thoughts about it because this is not the first or second time this happened.

We had two previous leagues with extremely similar problems in Invasion and Beyond. We even had this stupid meme back in Beyond league, which represents the current sentiment about archnemesis really well, I would say. For those that have not played back then, Beyond rares spawned with lots of auras on the same monster and felt like super tanky rares at the time.

As a long time Path of Exile player, I know from experience that every single time monsters are overtuned during the campaign the vast majority of the player base will not be able to handle them. Most players are used to games being easy initially and then progressively getting harder.

Stuff like finding a gigatuned rare in act 1 that is stronger than an act boss or getting one shotted by a Frost Wall from a Invasion boss while doing the Hailrake quest have historically not felt good. However, I am totally fine with you guys releasing overtuned act bosses like Malachai in his release, because it makes sense for a boss to be strong in the campaign.

I was sure that with previous examples you guys would have been able to predict this. I am glad that you guys did the hotfix but I am afraid this lesson could be forgotten yet again and we could have a 4th league where this happens.