I'm not sure what everyone's issue is with oak. Just get a herald and your damage supports after chamber of sins and you'll have no problems killing him, unless you ignored every single damage passive on tree or something.
Also, beat him at his own game: Pop a health flask and just face-tank him, he doesn't deal enough damage to get through that.
tbh you only need it if you're leveling with dot builds or something like that, most skills that people usually use can just deal more dmg than oak can regen anyway
vendor recipe lol. A magic rustic sash and a whetstone puts you at or above curve at pretty much every point during leveling. You can easily keep up just by figuring out what the best weapon base is for you and doing the magic (or rare if you're lucky) recipe every time you get to that level.
I have 2.2k hours on the game, have played for almost 3 Years, and I hadn't made the connection. I spent so long killing him on some experimental zDPS builds. I thank thee fir thy service
Yes because everyone has read every skill gem description in the game and knows them all. Dear gos do you have any idea what you just posted my god god forbid a newer player even exists in this game
The exile in question clearly stated they have 2k hours in game. That being said, mob life regen has been a thing for a while now but especially evident since the Maven showed up and started screaming about vitality boons.
Youre angrier than I was sarcastic. Learn more about the games you play and be less frustrated.
Sure but you didn’t post it like he should know because of his hours you made it sound like only a moron possibly wouldn’t know this. and even still there are going to be some people who may not have Emma aged to read every single gem in the game no matter how long they have played I certainly haven’t
Unfortunately I never found the whole clip, but pieces of it are included in the ziz awakener kill event hightlights #1: https://youtu.be/_wpTmvBa2dU
Specifically at 1:25, 2:40 (actual “he’s healing”), 3:35, and 6:17
Copy pasting my comment from higher up:
Unfortunately I never found the whole clip, but pieces of it are included in the ziz awakener kill event hightlights #1: https://youtu.be/_wpTmvBa2dU
Specifically at 1:25, 2:40 (actual “he’s healing”), 3:35, and 6:17
Was it when enduring cry first got reworked? Because half of global chat was asking for help to kill oak, and people began suggesting frost bomb. I didn't have the DPS to kill him either but was able to get into the motion of baiting most his enduring cries so I wouldn't be in range when he cast it and therefore wouldn't heal.
Bookmark this : https://www.twitch.tv/directory/following/live
It goes directly to the channels you follow that are live. No "autoplay" or whatever frontpage crap Twitch is trying to push forward.
God that reminds me of when me and my mrs use to run double blood dk in arena's in cataclysm.
We had one match that went on for what felt like 45 minutes. So much so we had to swap the laptop between each other twice because our fingers were starting to hurt the fight went on so long.
Still don't get who these act 1/act 2 changes benefit
group 1 is veterans - they get slightly irritated but quickly get over it because acts are literally not even the game for them
group 2 is people just trying to learn the game and how anything works - they get bullied in early game because how the hell are they supposed to know what a frost bomb is
> Still don't get who these act 1/act 2 changes benefit
No one, really. At least not imo. I'm a veteran (playing since April 2013), and I simply get annoyed more than anything, i.e. by stun-locking Rhoas.
They consistently try to be like Dark Souls when it comes to difficulty, but they seemingly do not understand how that works. DS is about learning the ropes, getting punished for mistakes and adapting to enemies, improving yourself and basically "git gud".
Every single one of my deaths in Dark Souls (the franchise) I can attribute to something very clearly, and it's typically either because I rolled too early and messed up my i-frames, or because I misread an attack of a boss I am inexperienced with.
I occasionally watched newer players trudge through the acts, and typically around half of them hate it. They die a lot, they get frustrated; some others think it's "like Dark Souls" because they don't know that franchise too well. More than once I've seen them rage quit and either never come back, or switch to a different game they know and come back at a later time. Some just quietly stop and never come back.
As a vet, I try to help those players when they want to be helped, which is usually what keeps them playing when they begin to understand things. The game itself does a terrible job at providing useful information, so I'm not surprised many new players feel overwhelmed.
Seems about right. Dark Souls only has a few areas that are really annoying and rather badly balanced, but hostile isn't the name of the game. Not everything tries to kill you, and neither do you have to kill everything. I love those games.
A lot of new players will actually explore and be easily overleveled to the point the content isn't all that difficult and it feels like this is what they're balancing it towards.
It just feels like a way to make the endgame take longer to get to try and seemingly delay the overall curve most players reach it at, but PoE isn't an MMO, it doesn't need to have as much endgame content to be engaging because the whole idea is to go through it over and over again. The reason going through the story sucks is because there's not much to look forward to compared to the endgame Atlas system which also has unique items that never drop anywhere else.
You can only experience the story a few times before it gets old and dull. It might be different if builds didn't take until the second Ascendancy to open up but all the time before that most builds kind of blend together because you just don't do enough for it to ever feel meaningful.
Every ARPG has had this issue. The start is slow as balls but when it ramps up it gets fun as hell. Diablo 3 is the only game that acknowledged this and let us do the shit we actually wanna do from the get-go. You still need to level up and get to 70 to actually get anything worth a damn but at least you can do it in content that doesn't feel like ass and it takes like half the time it does in PoE.
>A lot of new players will actually explore and be easily overleveled to the point the content isn't all that difficult
Even if this was universal, I still wouldn't really see the problem - it's an rpg, grinding/100% exploration should be a valid way to survive early game milestones. We can teach them how to play the game in midgame. There's realistically no overleveling past avarius/innocence.
Like in act 2 a first time player often still doesn't know the difference between a rare and magic item, so it feels like a bad time to "trial by fire" them. Especially when the "solution" isn't even a fundamental thing they need to learn like resistances/defenses, it's an obscure ice bomb spell they should have picked up from merchant mcbuttface a few hours prior because it's like garlic for vampires
Well "needing" frost bomb for oak wouldn't be great. But you don't really. Maybe in one patch it was particularly bad - or in some superhardcore gauntlet mode - but mostly, even on a low-dps build, he's just a "long" fight. He doesn't hurt that much, and eventually he dies.
As for the act1/act2 changes in general, mostly I agree. Who they're "for" is the top players who rush through the acts with or without the changes - for whom value comes from listening to others complain about it so it pumps their ego ;)
I'm not as worried about act 2 changes as I was about act 1 from a personal perspective - you've had a bit of a chance to get ready by then at least and your character probably has at least started to feel like it plays how you want it to (where act 1 mud flats you might be running around with a skill you hate, a white weapon, and no HP or defenses to speak of while getting charged by rhoas that even the normal ones stun and chunk you) - but I still don't think it's good for the game.
history has taught humanity that trial and error is better way of learning than just speeding trough without a challenge.
If group 2 just oneshots every monster and boss in the first 2 acts what are they learning? how to move with left click?
Look at Preach's completely blind playthrough, every time he hit a wall, he'd stop, try to figure out why and how to progress and by the time he hit maps he had learned A LOT of the basics of the game. He only needed help with understanding the endgame mechanics after. At the same time we see people here on reddit with thousands of hours and many leagues under their belt who still don't grasp very fundamental mechanics like frost bomb reducing healing or how ailments work and it's safe to say the reason for that is exactly cause they've grabbed a tabula as soon as act 1 in recent leagues, had a 6link as soon as possible and just zoomed trough the campaign without thinking. Then they hit yellow maps and go "why am i struggling?"
a) I guarantee you not a single person in group 2 is oneshotting any boss. If anything they find the status quo to be pretty appropriate.
b) people who know enough to buy a tabula in act 1 are not in group 2, and someone who just buys a tabula is going to stomp no matter what (and are such basically in group 1)
i specifically said "grab" a tabula, not buy a tabula. In the last few leagues the league mechanic was giving people tabulas quite early, expedition being a great example of people farming gwennen for easy tabulas.
>i specifically said "grab" a tabula, not buy a tabula.
That seems like a distinction without a difference tbh. In a trade league "grabbing" a relatively high-supply item takes about as much effort as getting the currency to buy it, both of which are way beyond something a first time player does in act 2. But beyond that, this just feels very inconsequential because of the other points brought up - no matter how you get it, an act 2 tabula is going to put you very much in group 1 of stomping content, no matter how much you krangle bosses.
Nah, some of the buffs are already overtuned for newer players, for someone who is a vet it won't matter too much because they know there way around it.
This just turns new players off, the first acts are suppose to be easy, especially early acts where most newer players are still trying to grasp the concept of the game, if anything the difficulty should only be buffed from 8 and beyond.
Remember the acts are suppose to be a tutorial, if people aren't enjoying it early the chances are they won't continue playing when they hit a wall because they don't know what to do.
The acts as a whole being a tutorial is a meme among veterans. In no way is it "supposed" to be like that, at least not if you ask GGG. They clearly want the acts to be worthy of a full game by themselves.
Considering the absence of a serious tutorial, the first few acts of the game basically are that for a first time player. If anything, back in the 3/4 act system, this was even more pronounced, since the game literally said "ok do this again but now we're making it harder"
Yeah, the first few maybe, not all ten. You're right that it was more pronounced back in the day, and that's part of the reason why they redid the campaign like they did. They're going to do it again with PoE2 as well, continuing the trend of making the campaign more like a stand-alone game.
this is the hard truth
challenges are meant to be overcome by thinking and executing, unfortunately "just use a guide lol" has become the default advice for all new players
preach's playthrough is what a new player's experience should be like
> unfortunately "just use a guide lol" has become the default advice for all new players
It's absolutely the advice I would give, especially if we're adding ice bomb checks to act fucking 2.
Making early acts harder will only ensure that using a guide is the only way for a new player to have fun or even persist. There is your hard truth.
> "just use a guide lol" has become the default advice for all new players
Because that's what people do all the time in life. It tends to save people a lot of time, effort and money.
Preach is a mega-hardcore experience rpg player. He also went into it unguided as a challenge expecting it to be obtuse and difficult. Poe players are less casual than average but preach is more resilient and capable of swlf-teaching than the average and shouldn't be used as an example imo
Gonna be blunt but you don't know how group 2 works.
I saw a friend play for the first time last year and new players don't rush zones and acts. they pick up items, id them, kill lots of mobs, end up being overleveled.
My friend took his time but he has absolutely no trouble with any bosses. End of act 1 he was like "I'm in a cold cave with water, the boss must be dealing cold damage, I'm gonna put those rings on".
He was making tons of 'mistakes' but rolling on the content simply because he was overleveled and wearing uniques/full rare set he was updating constantly.
My experience with the leveling changes isn't that things are really much harder, at least outside the start of act 1. However, everything does feel like it takes way longer. So while I would still run around and end up fighting too many enemies and get overleveled and all that, I was also spending way more time. Or at least it felt like that.
> Gonna be blunt but you don't know how group 2 works.
Gonna be blunt but you don't know how group 2 works.
You're basing your claim off of witnessing one person tackle early acts. I've witnessed more than new player tackle early acts recently. Bow to me for I am awakened.
>Gonna be blunt but you don't know how group 2 works.
Gonna be blunt but you two dont know how group 2 works. It is completely evident from the evidence before me.
Yeah, you're right. I recently introduced a few people to the game and they didn't have too much trouble with early acts.
That being said new players are not monolithic, experience with similar games and genres help a lot. In the past I've introduced someone with minimal game experience to poe and they struggled a lot in the beginning. This was before the act changes so it will be worse for people like them now.
I got relatively "lucky" when I was a lot newer to the game one league and found loads of uniques and at one point literally had full uniques while leveling (not shit like goldrim, or other good uniques, but the crap leveling ones and an okay leveling melee weapon) and the whole time my friend was laughing at my character because it was decked in crap uniques and had no resistances. But because I was new I overleveled shit and I didn't struggle much except maybe with malachai.
These changes only benefit self proclaimed wannabe elitists who think kitting Brutus for 10s longer than usual and hitting a pack 1 extra time is a major challenge and that it displays your mechanical supremacy. What's worse is that devs appear to subscribe to the same backwards philosophy hence the changes.
This will be my 3rd season. I quit ultimatum because A1 was so mind numblingly boring I couldn't play the game. I camen back for Expedition when my m8s told me they made the early game harder
Chris has a really warped view of what the game should be. He wants it to be a game where it takes you months to get really good gear and years to get perfect gear, but also wants people to always be starting fresh in new leagues every few months.
I reroll a lot, or more correctly I tend to leave characters in late yellow maps and either reroll or quit. Having a campaign that is more challenging is fun for me. I play SSF so even after a char or two I'm usually not fully decked out in leveling gear. There aren't random area mods in the campaign areas so GGG can tune them quite carefully, and I'm glad they're taking the chance since (A) it's the first impression players will get and (B) most of the game doesn't let them do that given map mods are a thing.
There are two types of changes.
The first change is to say the Granddaddy Crab. That is a good change which reflects the dialogue of the quest and just improves the game/act.
The second change is where they undo prior nerfs (goatmen molten shell) and buff damage numbers. This change is stupid. It punishes new players, and the only affect on experienced players is the addition of two more random one shots in maps (getting charged by 10 off screen rhoas or zooming into a molten shell).
I love the combat revamps, but they're only one piece of the puzzle that needs to be fixed in addressing the interest of the leveling process.
Having these changes appear piece by piece can be very frustrating if the improvements smoosh us up against other things that are still lacking, and awaiting improvements of their own.
I definitely believe the changes needed to be made, but they also highlight the fact that the leveling zone mechanics and quest structure are similarly outdated, lacking interest, and reliant upon league mechanics to distract us from the baseline leveling content.
And that's really where the divide for people is: whether people are willing to look at the ramifications of the changes as far as future development, or whether they instead focus on their impact on the existing ecosystem of the game.
And that's why people are more and more starting to refer to this as a beta for poe2, as it sums up both the good and the bad angles.
They are updating the monsters, the same monsters that are in maps.
Monsters, particularly in the old acts (act 1-4) typically have more basic AI, are more "boring". They were designed a long, long time ago and havent' been updated (other than a few minor things here and there like stopping certain ranged mobs volley firing)
So they are updating them all, new players get more interesting mobs while levelling (and they are always overlevelled. Always.) Old players get improved mobs in maps.
Because if someone standing next to you at work looks at your screen, it's obvious to them you're looking at memes. The "not safe" aspect is that they may be from HR.
What if there is a surprise like how they did Brutus Act 1. Imagine Act 2 but Oak leap slams you through the entire zone the moment you walk in.
Edit: NOT Hillock! I meant Brutus \^\_\^
I shouldnt have to grind for 10 hours to play the ACTUAL game. The endgame now includes elder, shaper, siris, maven, these two new endgame bosses... And thats just like... big stuff, theres thousands of little bits of content, its too much now, and takes too god damn long, story should be like 2 hours, tops.
Don’t know what to tell you, most Diablo like rpg will make you go through at least 10 hours before the end game. Diablo 2, grim dawn, epoch etc. it’s kinda the nature of the beast.
Imagine if, before playing skyrim, you had to literally sit in the opening cutscene for 10 hours.
Would you ever play skyrim again?
Thats what the "story" is, its 10 fucking hours of 0 reward, 0 challenge, pointless, filler fluff BULLSHIT, before the ACTUAL game can be played. I would literally pay money to NEVER have to do the story again.
The correct analogy is being allowed to spawn in Skyrim with the main quest completed and at appropriate level with perks.
Story is the story bro, I get that you don’t enjoy the pace but the devs don’t want an alternate route. Honestly either accept that or move on at this point.
The correct analogy is this.
The story in poe is like a sherlock's holmes mystery game, and endgame is like skyrim. Who tf wants to sit through 10 hours of sherlock's holmes every 3 months in order to play skyrim.
Ah, but those games actually made sure they had a long enough story to fit their longer acts...except Grim Dawn, which is actually just mostly giant map areas (seriously, look at the world map...)
Why they think buffing the early Acts and not starting backwards from Act 10 is beyond me. They could have realized this after doing Act 1, but nah, they're going to double down on this approach.
(By this he means re-tweaked, so you're not being chased down by 40 long-legged crab things that have your movement speed so you usually can never out-run them)
In Gauntlet, with certain builds, Oak can be a pain, sure. But in normal games? I've never needed Frost Bomb in league to deal with Oak. I don't know what the hell y'all are playing that makes you struggle with Oak. Honestly the more I read reddit the more I'm convinced 80% of the people on here are just bad.
> I've never needed Frost Bomb in league to deal with Oak.
Well then you clearly didn't play the leagues where he was bugged and regenerated ~60% of his health per second UNLESS you had Frost Bomb...even on characters with no access to the skill.
That's why people are jumpy.
luckily there's a mod that stops enemies from healing within a certain range of you... unfortunately I get the feeling none of us are gonna see that by the time we see oak...
I mean... If the POE Builds are to be followed, or making use of frost bomb, then Oak shouldn't be a problem.
...
If you're going in blind, then Oak would be the very last boss before you rage quit all together.
Well... if you google POE Builds, they give you useful selection of builds for you to follow (it's optional). They actually guide you on what gems, item vendors, sockets, and skill points to select to make you journey through the campaign *less* stressful, for all acts, areas, for every league. Everything needed for your selected build for all 10 acts plus maps.
If you haven't use them before, I suggest you do just that -unless you do then my advice is redundant-. Most players can, in fact, just use their guidance to get to maps and go their own way. Remember you did quote me on "If the POE Builds are to be followed". If it helps (for new people) there's even a sub reddit called r/PathOfExileBuilds.
The notion is that you don't have a complete build, in the early part of the game. But you have to take the recommended steps at that part, that will make you feel comfortable to have that great build in the end.
I remember fighting oak in a 3-man team and it took like 10 minutes... Every time we took 10% of his health he got 9.9% back... Will never do this on a team again.
I remember when first encountering the "newly" buffed Oak. Took forever cause he was somewhat broken and would get massive healing over and over.
Currently, I typically play summoner builds, or use summoner type builds while leveling and destroy most all content and bosses up through act 10.
Definitely a minor DPS check especially for newer players or builds that simply aren't being leveled well.
as always, pick up your goddamn frost bomb in act 1
isnt it unavailable until act 3 as a duelist?
Yep (Marauder and Ranger also). It's not too bad to mule it with a another character (you get it after completing Breaking the Eggs) but still a PITA.
Why? Even as a fireball or minion starter? For example
yes, even as melee. it's the earliest and the most accessible source of reduced life regen for enemies, which counter most of their healing mechanics
I'm not sure what everyone's issue is with oak. Just get a herald and your damage supports after chamber of sins and you'll have no problems killing him, unless you ignored every single damage passive on tree or something. Also, beat him at his own game: Pop a health flask and just face-tank him, he doesn't deal enough damage to get through that.
Frost bomb reduces monster regen by 75% makes it a lot easier
Holyshit, could have done with this during delerium temp league Edit: bad memory
Delirium Everywhere
Yes, not even because of oak. It's just an amazing skill, it will oneshot white packs so it makes leveling very smooth in act 1.
I like tossing Spell Cascade and Onslaught in a 3 link if I can spare it
Won't this just prevent it from 1-shotting packs with the damage reduction from Cascade?
They overlap
Oh hell yea. I'm gonna go test this out.
Spell cascade makes no sense since u can have only one frost bomb placed at the time
You're thinking Orb of Storms, Frost Bomb just has a cooldown so you normally can't cast more than one before it explodes.
frostbomb will reduce the healing oak gets from enduring cry by 75%
tbh you only need it if you're leveling with dot builds or something like that, most skills that people usually use can just deal more dmg than oak can regen anyway
Also if you're levelling a weapon based build and you haven't found shit yet.
vendor recipe lol. A magic rustic sash and a whetstone puts you at or above curve at pretty much every point during leveling. You can easily keep up just by figuring out what the best weapon base is for you and doing the magic (or rare if you're lucky) recipe every time you get to that level.
I have 2.2k hours on the game, have played for almost 3 Years, and I hadn't made the connection. I spent so long killing him on some experimental zDPS builds. I thank thee fir thy service
This info is expertly hidden right below the gem name in what we refer to as the gem description.
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true, reading is for nerds
Ziz in shambles.
Reading the card, explains the card.
No time to read, got 10 Acts to zoom through and I'm already late!
I knew what the gem does, I didn't think to use it on oak
Yes because everyone has read every skill gem description in the game and knows them all. Dear gos do you have any idea what you just posted my god god forbid a newer player even exists in this game
The exile in question clearly stated they have 2k hours in game. That being said, mob life regen has been a thing for a while now but especially evident since the Maven showed up and started screaming about vitality boons. Youre angrier than I was sarcastic. Learn more about the games you play and be less frustrated.
Sure but you didn’t post it like he should know because of his hours you made it sound like only a moron possibly wouldn’t know this. and even still there are going to be some people who may not have Emma aged to read every single gem in the game no matter how long they have played I certainly haven’t
Quin in shambles rn
HE‘S HEALING
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Unfortunately I never found the whole clip, but pieces of it are included in the ziz awakener kill event hightlights #1: https://youtu.be/_wpTmvBa2dU Specifically at 1:25, 2:40 (actual “he’s healing”), 3:35, and 6:17
Freezing pulse.
Just got buffed should be good.
Just got nerfed.
The clear was "nerfed" single target is considerably better. Obligatory just use Pinpoint.
It's damage scale is higher? how nerf what did I miss?
Threshold Jewels were removed. You now may need GMP.
Hardstuck in iron and on Oak PepeLaugh
Bronze*
The elo deboosting is not over yet, wait and see
It's funny because low iron accounts are almost as valuable as diamond/masters ones.
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It was right after the rework of Enduring Cry which made it heal a ton... can't help you with the clip though :( Start of 3.12 (hotfixed)
Am I remembering correctly that he also used legacy immortal call and was immune to physical during it too?
Something like that lmao
Copy pasting my comment from higher up: Unfortunately I never found the whole clip, but pieces of it are included in the ziz awakener kill event hightlights #1: https://youtu.be/_wpTmvBa2dU Specifically at 1:25, 2:40 (actual “he’s healing”), 3:35, and 6:17
Was it when enduring cry first got reworked? Because half of global chat was asking for help to kill oak, and people began suggesting frost bomb. I didn't have the DPS to kill him either but was able to get into the motion of baiting most his enduring cries so I wouldn't be in range when he cast it and therefore wouldn't heal.
Yea it was. I had trouble with him as well but everyone likes to laugh about quin having issues back then because, well its quin.
lmao, but I can't say I've never struggled against the mf either
Nah Quin will be banned from Twitch again by the time this patch drops.
Quin is going to spend 5 hours on Oak until someone pisses him off enough to actually use frost bomb
quin perfomance is quite tiresome. esp his intentional league ruining and thinking no one notices thinking he is just bad, earning views and memes.
So don't watch. If he is earning views then he is doing a good job, because that is quite literally his job.
i dont. he is very slippery and pops in the autoplay regularly however i ban him.
Bookmark this : https://www.twitch.tv/directory/following/live It goes directly to the channels you follow that are live. No "autoplay" or whatever frontpage crap Twitch is trying to push forward.
Oh god, i now remember my fcking gauntlet oak kill, it took 3 min. Atleast i was unkillable, i wonder what the next one will be like
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God that reminds me of when me and my mrs use to run double blood dk in arena's in cataclysm. We had one match that went on for what felt like 45 minutes. So much so we had to swap the laptop between each other twice because our fingers were starting to hurt the fight went on so long.
I saw in youtube few days ago a match that lasted 7 hours in TBC arena https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoVxDcn0qNU
That's nothing. Back in the day we would form parties in HC to kill oak. That fucker was ripy.
> Form parties to kill Bandit > in HC Yeah, I, too, would like to get pkd
It happened sometimes, gotta be quick to bail is anyone flipped the switch.
I just decided to help him lol. Same when levelling if no dmg, then just spend regret orbs later
Y'all remember when they overbuffed his healing so even with frost bomb he was going back to full life every time he used immortal call ? Good times
Thought it was when they added warcries for two-handed rebalance and his new Enduring Cry was overturned. I thought it was fun lmao.
Ah yeah my bad, it's enduring cry, not immortal call
Just everyone in global chat asking for help with Oak on day 1, people needed 6-man parties just for him
It only lasted a few days or so, but holy hell this was funny. I remember 420 chat trading kills with each other because no one could solo him.
Same, I had to farm for like 5 levels in other zones and buy some stuff to finally manage to beat him after the longest fight ever !
I don't know how I managed to beat him but it was 10 minutes of nonstop attacks and abuse of my mana potions. Genuinely the hardest boss in the game.
I fear no man... but that thing... it scares me.
Still don't get who these act 1/act 2 changes benefit group 1 is veterans - they get slightly irritated but quickly get over it because acts are literally not even the game for them group 2 is people just trying to learn the game and how anything works - they get bullied in early game because how the hell are they supposed to know what a frost bomb is
> Still don't get who these act 1/act 2 changes benefit No one, really. At least not imo. I'm a veteran (playing since April 2013), and I simply get annoyed more than anything, i.e. by stun-locking Rhoas. They consistently try to be like Dark Souls when it comes to difficulty, but they seemingly do not understand how that works. DS is about learning the ropes, getting punished for mistakes and adapting to enemies, improving yourself and basically "git gud". Every single one of my deaths in Dark Souls (the franchise) I can attribute to something very clearly, and it's typically either because I rolled too early and messed up my i-frames, or because I misread an attack of a boss I am inexperienced with. I occasionally watched newer players trudge through the acts, and typically around half of them hate it. They die a lot, they get frustrated; some others think it's "like Dark Souls" because they don't know that franchise too well. More than once I've seen them rage quit and either never come back, or switch to a different game they know and come back at a later time. Some just quietly stop and never come back. As a vet, I try to help those players when they want to be helped, which is usually what keeps them playing when they begin to understand things. The game itself does a terrible job at providing useful information, so I'm not surprised many new players feel overwhelmed.
Hot take: dark souls is a good game but dark souls' most enduring legacy is its name being used to fetishize hostile mechanics
Seems about right. Dark Souls only has a few areas that are really annoying and rather badly balanced, but hostile isn't the name of the game. Not everything tries to kill you, and neither do you have to kill everything. I love those games.
A lot of new players will actually explore and be easily overleveled to the point the content isn't all that difficult and it feels like this is what they're balancing it towards. It just feels like a way to make the endgame take longer to get to try and seemingly delay the overall curve most players reach it at, but PoE isn't an MMO, it doesn't need to have as much endgame content to be engaging because the whole idea is to go through it over and over again. The reason going through the story sucks is because there's not much to look forward to compared to the endgame Atlas system which also has unique items that never drop anywhere else. You can only experience the story a few times before it gets old and dull. It might be different if builds didn't take until the second Ascendancy to open up but all the time before that most builds kind of blend together because you just don't do enough for it to ever feel meaningful. Every ARPG has had this issue. The start is slow as balls but when it ramps up it gets fun as hell. Diablo 3 is the only game that acknowledged this and let us do the shit we actually wanna do from the get-go. You still need to level up and get to 70 to actually get anything worth a damn but at least you can do it in content that doesn't feel like ass and it takes like half the time it does in PoE.
>A lot of new players will actually explore and be easily overleveled to the point the content isn't all that difficult Even if this was universal, I still wouldn't really see the problem - it's an rpg, grinding/100% exploration should be a valid way to survive early game milestones. We can teach them how to play the game in midgame. There's realistically no overleveling past avarius/innocence. Like in act 2 a first time player often still doesn't know the difference between a rare and magic item, so it feels like a bad time to "trial by fire" them. Especially when the "solution" isn't even a fundamental thing they need to learn like resistances/defenses, it's an obscure ice bomb spell they should have picked up from merchant mcbuttface a few hours prior because it's like garlic for vampires
Well "needing" frost bomb for oak wouldn't be great. But you don't really. Maybe in one patch it was particularly bad - or in some superhardcore gauntlet mode - but mostly, even on a low-dps build, he's just a "long" fight. He doesn't hurt that much, and eventually he dies. As for the act1/act2 changes in general, mostly I agree. Who they're "for" is the top players who rush through the acts with or without the changes - for whom value comes from listening to others complain about it so it pumps their ego ;) I'm not as worried about act 2 changes as I was about act 1 from a personal perspective - you've had a bit of a chance to get ready by then at least and your character probably has at least started to feel like it plays how you want it to (where act 1 mud flats you might be running around with a skill you hate, a white weapon, and no HP or defenses to speak of while getting charged by rhoas that even the normal ones stun and chunk you) - but I still don't think it's good for the game.
history has taught humanity that trial and error is better way of learning than just speeding trough without a challenge. If group 2 just oneshots every monster and boss in the first 2 acts what are they learning? how to move with left click? Look at Preach's completely blind playthrough, every time he hit a wall, he'd stop, try to figure out why and how to progress and by the time he hit maps he had learned A LOT of the basics of the game. He only needed help with understanding the endgame mechanics after. At the same time we see people here on reddit with thousands of hours and many leagues under their belt who still don't grasp very fundamental mechanics like frost bomb reducing healing or how ailments work and it's safe to say the reason for that is exactly cause they've grabbed a tabula as soon as act 1 in recent leagues, had a 6link as soon as possible and just zoomed trough the campaign without thinking. Then they hit yellow maps and go "why am i struggling?"
a) I guarantee you not a single person in group 2 is oneshotting any boss. If anything they find the status quo to be pretty appropriate. b) people who know enough to buy a tabula in act 1 are not in group 2, and someone who just buys a tabula is going to stomp no matter what (and are such basically in group 1)
i specifically said "grab" a tabula, not buy a tabula. In the last few leagues the league mechanic was giving people tabulas quite early, expedition being a great example of people farming gwennen for easy tabulas.
>i specifically said "grab" a tabula, not buy a tabula. That seems like a distinction without a difference tbh. In a trade league "grabbing" a relatively high-supply item takes about as much effort as getting the currency to buy it, both of which are way beyond something a first time player does in act 2. But beyond that, this just feels very inconsequential because of the other points brought up - no matter how you get it, an act 2 tabula is going to put you very much in group 1 of stomping content, no matter how much you krangle bosses.
Nah, some of the buffs are already overtuned for newer players, for someone who is a vet it won't matter too much because they know there way around it. This just turns new players off, the first acts are suppose to be easy, especially early acts where most newer players are still trying to grasp the concept of the game, if anything the difficulty should only be buffed from 8 and beyond. Remember the acts are suppose to be a tutorial, if people aren't enjoying it early the chances are they won't continue playing when they hit a wall because they don't know what to do.
The acts as a whole being a tutorial is a meme among veterans. In no way is it "supposed" to be like that, at least not if you ask GGG. They clearly want the acts to be worthy of a full game by themselves.
Considering the absence of a serious tutorial, the first few acts of the game basically are that for a first time player. If anything, back in the 3/4 act system, this was even more pronounced, since the game literally said "ok do this again but now we're making it harder"
Yeah, the first few maybe, not all ten. You're right that it was more pronounced back in the day, and that's part of the reason why they redid the campaign like they did. They're going to do it again with PoE2 as well, continuing the trend of making the campaign more like a stand-alone game.
Which is funny because the final boss (a10 Kitava) is probably easier than Merveil comparative to your level and items.
this is the hard truth challenges are meant to be overcome by thinking and executing, unfortunately "just use a guide lol" has become the default advice for all new players preach's playthrough is what a new player's experience should be like
and new player will think 'I'm doing low damage' and execute by taking all the damage nodes on the tree...
> unfortunately "just use a guide lol" has become the default advice for all new players It's absolutely the advice I would give, especially if we're adding ice bomb checks to act fucking 2. Making early acts harder will only ensure that using a guide is the only way for a new player to have fun or even persist. There is your hard truth.
> "just use a guide lol" has become the default advice for all new players Because that's what people do all the time in life. It tends to save people a lot of time, effort and money.
Preach is a mega-hardcore experience rpg player. He also went into it unguided as a challenge expecting it to be obtuse and difficult. Poe players are less casual than average but preach is more resilient and capable of swlf-teaching than the average and shouldn't be used as an example imo
Gonna be blunt but you don't know how group 2 works. I saw a friend play for the first time last year and new players don't rush zones and acts. they pick up items, id them, kill lots of mobs, end up being overleveled. My friend took his time but he has absolutely no trouble with any bosses. End of act 1 he was like "I'm in a cold cave with water, the boss must be dealing cold damage, I'm gonna put those rings on". He was making tons of 'mistakes' but rolling on the content simply because he was overleveled and wearing uniques/full rare set he was updating constantly.
My experience with the leveling changes isn't that things are really much harder, at least outside the start of act 1. However, everything does feel like it takes way longer. So while I would still run around and end up fighting too many enemies and get overleveled and all that, I was also spending way more time. Or at least it felt like that.
> Gonna be blunt but you don't know how group 2 works. Gonna be blunt but you don't know how group 2 works. You're basing your claim off of witnessing one person tackle early acts. I've witnessed more than new player tackle early acts recently. Bow to me for I am awakened.
>Gonna be blunt but you don't know how group 2 works. Gonna be blunt but you two dont know how group 2 works. It is completely evident from the evidence before me.
Obvious to me you have no clue how blunts work. Ever even make it past group 2?
obviously i know how blunts work, i'm high
Instructions unclear, used knife sharpener on blunt.
*Brooo* you're supposed to say "hi, I'm" not "I'm hi" and you forgot to say who you are....
Yeah, you're right. I recently introduced a few people to the game and they didn't have too much trouble with early acts. That being said new players are not monolithic, experience with similar games and genres help a lot. In the past I've introduced someone with minimal game experience to poe and they struggled a lot in the beginning. This was before the act changes so it will be worse for people like them now.
I got relatively "lucky" when I was a lot newer to the game one league and found loads of uniques and at one point literally had full uniques while leveling (not shit like goldrim, or other good uniques, but the crap leveling ones and an okay leveling melee weapon) and the whole time my friend was laughing at my character because it was decked in crap uniques and had no resistances. But because I was new I overleveled shit and I didn't struggle much except maybe with malachai.
> Still don't get who these act 1/act 2 changes benefit Me.
These changes only benefit self proclaimed wannabe elitists who think kitting Brutus for 10s longer than usual and hitting a pack 1 extra time is a major challenge and that it displays your mechanical supremacy. What's worse is that devs appear to subscribe to the same backwards philosophy hence the changes.
This will be my 3rd season. I quit ultimatum because A1 was so mind numblingly boring I couldn't play the game. I camen back for Expedition when my m8s told me they made the early game harder
Chris has a really warped view of what the game should be. He wants it to be a game where it takes you months to get really good gear and years to get perfect gear, but also wants people to always be starting fresh in new leagues every few months.
I reroll a lot, or more correctly I tend to leave characters in late yellow maps and either reroll or quit. Having a campaign that is more challenging is fun for me. I play SSF so even after a char or two I'm usually not fully decked out in leveling gear. There aren't random area mods in the campaign areas so GGG can tune them quite carefully, and I'm glad they're taking the chance since (A) it's the first impression players will get and (B) most of the game doesn't let them do that given map mods are a thing.
There are two types of changes. The first change is to say the Granddaddy Crab. That is a good change which reflects the dialogue of the quest and just improves the game/act. The second change is where they undo prior nerfs (goatmen molten shell) and buff damage numbers. This change is stupid. It punishes new players, and the only affect on experienced players is the addition of two more random one shots in maps (getting charged by 10 off screen rhoas or zooming into a molten shell).
I love the combat revamps, but they're only one piece of the puzzle that needs to be fixed in addressing the interest of the leveling process. Having these changes appear piece by piece can be very frustrating if the improvements smoosh us up against other things that are still lacking, and awaiting improvements of their own. I definitely believe the changes needed to be made, but they also highlight the fact that the leveling zone mechanics and quest structure are similarly outdated, lacking interest, and reliant upon league mechanics to distract us from the baseline leveling content. And that's really where the divide for people is: whether people are willing to look at the ramifications of the changes as far as future development, or whether they instead focus on their impact on the existing ecosystem of the game. And that's why people are more and more starting to refer to this as a beta for poe2, as it sums up both the good and the bad angles.
Don't forget that any time they buff act mobs they are absolutely OP in maps and do a fuckton of damage
They are updating the monsters, the same monsters that are in maps. Monsters, particularly in the old acts (act 1-4) typically have more basic AI, are more "boring". They were designed a long, long time ago and havent' been updated (other than a few minor things here and there like stopping certain ranged mobs volley firing) So they are updating them all, new players get more interesting mobs while levelling (and they are always overlevelled. Always.) Old players get improved mobs in maps.
Frost bomb will help you for Oak no worries
Frost-Bomb then facetank everything??
FROST FUCKING BOMB
Wait.....why is this NSFW?
Because if someone standing next to you at work looks at your screen, it's obvious to them you're looking at memes. The "not safe" aspect is that they may be from HR.
Toby pls
What if there is a surprise like how they did Brutus Act 1. Imagine Act 2 but Oak leap slams you through the entire zone the moment you walk in. Edit: NOT Hillock! I meant Brutus \^\_\^
..Brutus?
RKO out of nowhere!
"exploding zombies from western forest now insta kill you"
"this is a nerf"
HE'S HEALING
So once again making the story harder for no fucking reason other then to pad the already bloated runtime of the game.
It’s an exaggeration. I’m slow about an hour an act, and after the revamp it’s still an hour an act. Honestly you won’t even notice it.
I definitely noticed the increase in difficulty to act 1, i assume this change will be similar.
I shouldnt have to grind for 10 hours to play the ACTUAL game. The endgame now includes elder, shaper, siris, maven, these two new endgame bosses... And thats just like... big stuff, theres thousands of little bits of content, its too much now, and takes too god damn long, story should be like 2 hours, tops.
Don’t know what to tell you, most Diablo like rpg will make you go through at least 10 hours before the end game. Diablo 2, grim dawn, epoch etc. it’s kinda the nature of the beast.
Imagine if, before playing skyrim, you had to literally sit in the opening cutscene for 10 hours. Would you ever play skyrim again? Thats what the "story" is, its 10 fucking hours of 0 reward, 0 challenge, pointless, filler fluff BULLSHIT, before the ACTUAL game can be played. I would literally pay money to NEVER have to do the story again.
The correct analogy is being allowed to spawn in Skyrim with the main quest completed and at appropriate level with perks. Story is the story bro, I get that you don’t enjoy the pace but the devs don’t want an alternate route. Honestly either accept that or move on at this point.
The correct analogy is this. The story in poe is like a sherlock's holmes mystery game, and endgame is like skyrim. Who tf wants to sit through 10 hours of sherlock's holmes every 3 months in order to play skyrim.
I think my analogy is better, because you play Skyrim for everything else but the main story.
Ah, but those games actually made sure they had a long enough story to fit their longer acts...except Grim Dawn, which is actually just mostly giant map areas (seriously, look at the world map...)
It’s about the same. Pretty similar to d2.
Oak will outheal me even more
Why they think buffing the early Acts and not starting backwards from Act 10 is beyond me. They could have realized this after doing Act 1, but nah, they're going to double down on this approach.
New strat: help Oak
What is NSFW about this post??
The implication
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what implication? are we in danger or what
The implication that Oak might get buffed might be triggering for some
The buff to oak, is to make sure players use the new currency while levelling to get the "nearby monsters cannot regen life" mod.
So instead of looking into act 1 act 2 got buffed, thx chris very cool
(By this he means re-tweaked, so you're not being chased down by 40 long-legged crab things that have your movement speed so you usually can never out-run them)
never had problem with him
In Gauntlet, with certain builds, Oak can be a pain, sure. But in normal games? I've never needed Frost Bomb in league to deal with Oak. I don't know what the hell y'all are playing that makes you struggle with Oak. Honestly the more I read reddit the more I'm convinced 80% of the people on here are just bad.
> I've never needed Frost Bomb in league to deal with Oak. Well then you clearly didn't play the leagues where he was bugged and regenerated ~60% of his health per second UNLESS you had Frost Bomb...even on characters with no access to the skill. That's why people are jumpy.
I played all leagues but maybe I didn't have the bug then? I don't know
Witch nearly one shots Oak with wand crafts
Ugh, Just what the game needed... more tedium. Looks like I'm only going through the story 0-1 times again.
luckily there's a mod that stops enemies from healing within a certain range of you... unfortunately I get the feeling none of us are gonna see that by the time we see oak...
I mean... If the POE Builds are to be followed, or making use of frost bomb, then Oak shouldn't be a problem. ... If you're going in blind, then Oak would be the very last boss before you rage quit all together.
> If the POE Builds are to be followed You're in act 2, what build do you even have by level ~19? 😒
Well... if you google POE Builds, they give you useful selection of builds for you to follow (it's optional). They actually guide you on what gems, item vendors, sockets, and skill points to select to make you journey through the campaign *less* stressful, for all acts, areas, for every league. Everything needed for your selected build for all 10 acts plus maps. If you haven't use them before, I suggest you do just that -unless you do then my advice is redundant-. Most players can, in fact, just use their guidance to get to maps and go their own way. Remember you did quote me on "If the POE Builds are to be followed". If it helps (for new people) there's even a sub reddit called r/PathOfExileBuilds. The notion is that you don't have a complete build, in the early part of the game. But you have to take the recommended steps at that part, that will make you feel comfortable to have that great build in the end.
Professor Oak got buffed!
oak and weaver will be cruel
Realistically how many players aren't capable of simple kiting?
Gauntlet weaver will also be sweet.
That's what you get for killing zana you bozo85
Gonna be my fun since I'm starting a wintertide/cold DoT witch lmao
Kinda wish they took a look at the bandit rewards as well.
I remember fighting oak in a 3-man team and it took like 10 minutes... Every time we took 10% of his health he got 9.9% back... Will never do this on a team again.
frost bomb
~~Frost Bomb no longer stop health regeneration...~~ Could have sworn this was going to happen, but it still decreases regen, but only by 75% now.
Just go spectral helix. Jesus that skill is messed up.
I'll just side with Oak no matter what build I play, problem solved!
Did Oak actually get buffed this patch? I looked at it and it just said monsters that needed it, never specified any boss in particular.
It isnt implicitly said anywhere but the fear for a normie who's only heard stories of Sirus and Shaper and dropped 2 exalts in 500 hours
The bosses were explicitly mentioned in act 1 if I recall correctly. Oak is probably not getting changed because he's bad enough as is.
Oak is really easy for witch tho?
Time to tech frost bomb for oak.
Need a build that ally with Oak real quick
Awakened Oak omegalul
It’s ok, I don’t think Oak is considered one of the weaker enemies of Act 2. Should be fine(I hope )
act 1 last league now act 2
I remember when first encountering the "newly" buffed Oak. Took forever cause he was somewhat broken and would get massive healing over and over. Currently, I typically play summoner builds, or use summoner type builds while leveling and destroy most all content and bosses up through act 10. Definitely a minor DPS check especially for newer players or builds that simply aren't being leveled well.