Quitting for now, here's why + some suggestions

Been having fun playing an Ice Shot Deadeye for a few weeks now, and I played a ED/Contagion Lich before that (both to the low/mid 80s) but as of hitting the endgame, I keep logging on excited to play and then logging off irritated about my experience. The other day I had a super annoying death in a higher tier map that I prepped for hours to do and I just kinda lost interest after that.

HOWEVER I do like this game and I respect the devs and want it to succeed SO I am putting out a good-faith post outlining the most irritating and off-putting aspects of my experience in this league on the off-chance that the devs read these forums.

1. Delirium mobs do not explode from Herald of Ice!?

As an ice shot deadeye I rely on Herald of Ice to clear packs of small mobs and not get surrounded too easily. Delirium packs spawn right on top of you so it's extra important to be able to use this utility to freeze them and shatter the pack, but due to some sort of death animation seemingly, they don't explode on death when you kill them with Herald of Ice up, making packs that are not meant to be particularly challenging pretty rippy for me. Delirium is a super common mod in the endgame obviously, so this goes from a nuisance to a serious safety concern pretty quickly and caused a handful of very stupid deaths. Not fun, can't play around it, needs to be fixed.

2. Inconsistency of damage effects lingering after a mob has died.

In a lot of cases GGG has actually done a good job making sure mob effects and mods disappear after the mob has died, but for certain affixes they simply didn't code that in. The toxic plants one where chaos bubbles follow you around and then explode on you with a .5sec delay or something are the most egregious offender of this. There is nothing more frustrating in the game right now than being killed by mods from an enemy that is already dead. I know this isn't just me either, friends who play this game are annoyed by this as well and I see content creators mentioning it too. At best this slows down the game and is annoying for looting and at worst this kills people and wastes their time for a reason NOT related to "meaningful combat".

3. Proximal Tangibility and Temporal Bubble

These mods are VERY common (once counted 12 Proximal Tangibility packs in a single map) and they largely counter certain build types. Any time you have a situation where mobs are straight up invulnerable in a game like this it's a poor design choice IMO. Ranged builds like my deadeye or my lich rely on NOT being up close for a lot of their safety. Being up on top of the mobs is often a death sentence in PoE2's endgame if you aren't built to take a lot of hits, and these packs force you to do that, and they show up all the time. In addition, my build has invested in more damage the further away the mobs are, and PT packs nullify all of that investment as well.

I haven't played melee yet but I see Temporal Bubble as a very similar idea but in reverse, punishing you heavily for being up close and I assume it must be similarly frustrating. The game is already more difficult for melee classes in a handful of ways, this mod is just adding insult to injury, and it must be a huge pain in the ass for melee builds as there is no way for them to escape being slowed WAY down while they try to kill a rare mob. Add Shroud Walker to that rare mob and you have suddenly created an enemy more difficult than the majority of endgame map bosses.

These two mods deny the player their ability to play around things, which should be a core aspect of "meaningful combat" in my opinion. If I'm forced to play a certain way that's inherently less meaningful than being able to choose my playstyle to match the content or the build. My suggestion is to at the very least make it so that PT is just less dmg taken, not full invulnerability for the mobs. I think TB should just be removed from the game.

4. Not knowing what killed me

In a game that punishes you fairly severely for dying, you should always know why you died. It's unacceptable to be set back an hour or two of game time from a single death and not even know why or what you did wrong. It's gotten better since the launch, but I'm still finding that every 3rd or 4th death, I just don't have a clue what killed me. There's so much random shit flying around the screen at any given moment, it becomes impossible to identify and/or avoid things because the human brain just can't process it all fast enough. Not sure what the solution is for this, as ARPGs tend to just get a bit cluttered later in the endgame in general, but better telegraphing for certain things and more obvious outlining of effects would go a long way towards alleviating this frustration.

Sorry for the massive wall of text, hopefully GGG gets some insight from this post idk, #1 is a total non-negotiable for me, until they fix that I don't have an interest in playing, but hopefully that is an easy fix and maybe they look into improving #2-4 as well who knows.

For 4 we need a combat log, that straight up fixes it. For me the biggest one is 3. I played both melee and ranged and you've hit the nail in the head. But believe it or not I'd rather as a melee ice strike monk face a FULL PACK OF TEMPORAL BUBBLES than volatile plants. I hate this way more when i play melee. All these homing AoEs for melee are just straight up so bad i slammed my desk multiple times. Because i have to roll roll roll, throw a hit , roll roll roll throw a hit, roll roll roll throw a SHIT. Especially on Ritual when you get the volatile plant ritual as a melee OR THE TORNADO ON P2 of T5 KING. It's depressing, i can pull it off but again this tediousness kills me. I KEEP SPAMMING MY ROLL BUTTON. I THINK MY SPACE BAR HAS A CRATER AT THIS POINT.

I play Lightning Arrow and I don't experience your problem. Riding Roah and I shoot so fast that enemies cannot even react. It's crazier with shrines :).

Proximal? Run up close and shotgun.
Bubble? Drop the rods -> 1 shot.

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Brisket5450#4084 wrote:

I play Lightning Arrow and I don't experience your problem. Riding Roah and I shoot so fast that enemies cannot even react. It's crazier with shrines :).

Proximal? Run up close and shotgun.
Bubble? Drop the rods -> 1 shot.

Which problem? The delirium issue? Cause yea if you're not using HoI you wouldn't have that issue.

I mean it's not that I can't figure out how to beat Proximal packs hahahaha (picturing me scratching my head at my keyboard, dumbfounded) it's that I think it's a poor design choice.

And yea...I, too, annihilate Bubble mobs, you and I are playing ranged characters that is my whole point on that mod my dude.

Remsleep mentioned a combat log that's a great idea, that would help immensely to learn the game and figure out things you can't see or process in real time when things go awry.