Check: is the campaign too gear dependent?

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TheBalrogslayer#7574 wrote:

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Hyperspacing#5593 wrote:

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Jobama#9902 wrote:

Yes, its all rng based, all gear based, not fun

Welcome to ARPGs where its all a gamble broski

Then why can every class in D2 clear normal without any gear? Because that game has RNG + skill, not only a need for high numbers.

To be fair D2 normal/nightmare/hell is extremely easy even without the top OP builds and without being an expert player. I certainly prefer PoE being harder than D2.

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TheBalrogslayer#7574 wrote:

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gr0o0ve#1473 wrote:

I viper is the wall though, she is the gear check for the rest of the campaign

I’d like to see someone beat the Act2 boss with starting gear. I don’t think it’s possible.

Well expert players can learn to do most bosses with zero hits taken from the boss attacks (except the ones that force you into some sort of AoE damage) even when their gear isn't up to date. So for those bosses, it's mostly a matter of having the patience to repeat it until you don't die while you chip at the boss with your minimal damage.

There are however a couple of points in A2 boss fights where if you don't have high-enough damage yourself, you might not be able to avoid damage. The flying constructs of Zalmarath explode on you if you don't kill them first. Rathbreaker and Jamanra I/II have minions and Jamanra's minions might not be possible to dodge all the time. If you were about as overleveled as you feasibly can, and were level 25 for Rathbreaker, you could have 479 life and 64 ES. That's probably more than the majority of SC players finish Act 1 with. If you were in bear form, you might also have 375 armour which would be significant at that level against white mobs. But you might not want to be a bear since attacks scale so much from your weapon and gear, so you might want to prefer spells.

On a quick check, the above setup that has 479 life, would have the intelligence for level 7 spark. Combine with Orb of Storms and in the best case your DPS is around 81/s. Seeing that ES is anyway so low, if we do away with ES, we could have theoretically have around 100 dps vs Rathbreaker though only theoretically, in practice it's gonna be like one fourth of that with Spark and Orb of Storms at best. Even then, Rathbreaker is actually going to go down fairly easily.

If we aren't allowed to use support gems or to level skill gems, then it's more like 20 theoretical max dps. Even then, I'd say Rathbreaker is doable.

After doing those calculations, I changed my opinion. With right builds, you absolutely should be able to do at least Act 1 and 2 without even being a top tier player, wearing no gear except the first white weapon you found for your chosen skills.

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AlexiaRP#4088 wrote:

I also really just wish there were way better options for defenses early on. It's really easy to scale damage, but you're almost forced into semi-glass cannons for a long time.

I usually finish Act 2 with something like 800 to 1.4k in life+ES, depending on build and gear luck, and some positive resistances.

Rarely do I have so little EHP that I could die to two attacks. There's a couple of exceptions. In the first half of Act 1 some bosses could do that, unless gear has been particularly good. Rudja's self-explosion can also often take more than half of the EHP.

Often even if I am going life, I still end up wearing ES stuff in Act 1 and Act 2. Tho depends again on gear luck; if a lot of gear has come with +str or +max life, then that might not be needed.

There's RNG and you could get completely screwed RNG-wise, but in my experience, enough magic and rare gear and enough currencies drop that the chance to be fully screwed is not high for a single run through the campaign. Since I play HC, what has happened now and then is indeed that the gear I've found has been so lackluster that I've started a 2nd character and played them to the same point in the 1st Act. Usually that gives some gear.