Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 84 85 [86] 87 88 ... 100

Author Topic: Path of Exile - Betrayal  (Read 248258 times)

frostshotgg

  • Bay Watcher
  • It was a ruse
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1275 on: February 16, 2017, 07:51:40 pm »

Atziri is nowhere near as bullshit of a fight as Malachai. She has a large barrier of knowledge before you can run her (Mirrors and immunities in split phase say hi), but once you can she's pretty damn fair.

Malachai is the worst boss in the game design wise, by a very, very large margin. He suffers from the usual "Absurd anti-melee mechanics in a cramped arena to force you into melee" that many of the bad bosses do, but turned up to 15 on a 10 point scale, then has a lot of other issues on top of that. Let's go down the list.
  • Horribly, horribly cramped arena
  • One shot slam
  • Degen ground that covers the arena
  • More floaty degen things that stack with the other degen
  • No downtime to recover
  • Horrible hitboxes on everything
  • Unavoidable damage
And the biggest offender of all, the fucking color palette. My god the color palette is pretty much Stalin. I have no idea who greenlit a fight that's entirely red and brown on red and brown background, with some more red all over the place, but my god is it impossible to see.
Logged

nenjin

  • Bay Watcher
  • Inscrubtable Exhortations of the Soul
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1276 on: February 16, 2017, 08:22:05 pm »

I know how to do the Malachai fight "right" but as a melee without broken damage it takes. For. Fucking. Ever. Extended periods of just running around waiting for shit to disappear. The hearts are the worst because it takes everything about the fight and goes "Now stand in one place for a really long time. Go on, do it fucker." The hearts probably have a million HP between all of them and just...ugh. I can stand the fight up until that point. It's horseshit but my build could make due. But then the hearts show up and it's just mindnumbing repetition of "Charge --> Attack a few times --> Charge out --> Throw some swords --> Evade --> Charge..." where your first bad judgment call may well be your last.

Still, I think the Piety fight preceding that in some ways is a worse fight. I hate the mandatory "and now you must run X fast in Y pattern or die instantly" mechanics. You can flask through a couple of those but that's it, and you're fighting in a damn closet by comparison to pretty much all boss fights, where spawns at the start actively get in your way.

Which is why I'm not thrilled to see that attack make a return at all. That attack might actually be worse in a larger room than a smaller one.
« Last Edit: February 16, 2017, 08:36:42 pm by nenjin »
Logged
Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

aristabulus

  • Bay Watcher
  • Fnordius Maximus
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1277 on: February 16, 2017, 08:33:34 pm »

Atziri is nowhere near as bullshit of a fight as Malachai. She has a large barrier of knowledge before you can run her (Mirrors and immunities in split phase say hi), but once you can she's pretty damn fair.
...

I dunno, having to look up detailed spoilers (or wasting rare tokens repeatedly on observation/lemming runs) so you can know what tells to look for is still bad.  Different flavour, same orifice.

re: Malachai details, yeah, that all sums up what I hate about it.... can't see what the hell is going on half the time, and even if you can, good luck having somewhere to run to.  :/

I know how to the Malachai fight "right" but as a melee without broken damage it takes. For. Fucking. Ever. Extended periods of just running around waiting for shit to disappear. ...

My recollection of my 2H Melee duelist basically mirrors that.  Didn't die quite as much because he was very passively tanky, but it took a long time to get good damage windows.
Logged
If iron is to become steel, it must feel fire! --ancient Dwarven proverb

What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?  --Thulsa Doom

nenjin

  • Bay Watcher
  • Inscrubtable Exhortations of the Soul
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1278 on: February 16, 2017, 08:40:13 pm »

Once I started hitting mapping I gave up wanting to discover stuff in PoE organically. At least boss fights. Maps are too finite and precious to waste them trying to learn a fight. Better to read about it then actually learn versus dying a half dozen times in frustration before you figure out what's going. I'm sitting on 4 Atziri fights right now but am still trying to over level as much as possible so the fight sucks a little less. To be honest I think I'm just afraid of going in and finding out my build doesn't cut the mustard for that fight. Mostly I get by with a ton of defensive stacking and life leech and fights take as long as they take. But whenever there's a DPS threshold to meet, I usually fall well under it. You generally know you have a real dps problem when all it takes is a shit rare combo with life regen and/or Soul Eater to ruin your day.
Logged
Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

frostshotgg

  • Bay Watcher
  • It was a ruse
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1279 on: February 16, 2017, 08:49:06 pm »

I mean at some point there's going to have to be stuff that isn't quite kosher from an immediate visibility perspective, or at least without having a paragraph explanation. I wouldn't object to a bestiary of sorts, that would honestly be super neat, but that's not happening any time soon.

As it is, Atziri is fairly benign. The Vaals are entirely fair game, they're a boss you've fought before with maybe one new attack that's a skill the player has access to. The Trio is pretty visually obvious what each of them does. Atziri herself has a lot of really well telegraphed stuff that gives you plenty of time to react like flameblasts and stormcalls. The one part that's not great is the split phase but at some point you're going to learn by trial-and-error what each of them do, and as long as you don't immediately go full ham and try to kill them, you get a chance to read the mods on each of them that tell you immunities and that the mirror one reflects.
Logged

Kanil

  • Bay Watcher
  • [T_WORD:PILLAR:kanil]
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1280 on: February 17, 2017, 03:52:50 am »

Still, I think the Piety fight preceding that in some ways is a worse fight. I hate the mandatory "and now you must run X fast in Y pattern or die instantly" mechanics. You can flask through a couple of those but that's it, and you're fighting in a damn closet by comparison to pretty much all boss fights, where spawns at the start actively get in your way.

I personally don't mind Piety's whirling death beam. I just hate that she has so much HP that you end up seeing it a dozen times.

I suppose that's typical for PoE, the bosses go on way too damn long. Actually, the more I think about it, for a game where big numbers=difficulty, I kinda like Piety's whirling death beam, because it's different. Not quite Vaal Oversoul actually enjoyable boss fight different, but it's something.
Logged
Yah, it sounds like minecraft with content, you have obviously missed the point, people dont like content, they like different coloured blocks.
Seems to work fine with my copy. As soon as I loaded the human caravan came by and the world burst into fire.

Aklyon

  • Bay Watcher
  • Fate~
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1281 on: February 28, 2017, 11:17:58 pm »

No legacy drillnecks is a bit mean I suppose, but its been Superior Quiver for ages now, it was gonna happen eventually.

Also, they may or maynot have finally fixed the perandus mobs of laggy doom.
Logged
Crystalline (SG)
Sigtext
Quote from: RedKing
It's known as the Oppai-Kaiju effect. The islands of Japan generate a sort anti-gravity field, which allows breasts to behave as if in microgravity. It's also what allows Godzilla and friends to become 50 stories tall, and lets ninjas run up the side of a skyscraper.

nenjin

  • Bay Watcher
  • Inscrubtable Exhortations of the Soul
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1282 on: March 08, 2017, 08:07:16 pm »

Got through Merciless Lab last night with my 73 Blade Flurry DoT Assassin. That's the lowest level I've yet beaten the lab with. I sort of broke down and compromised and made a character around BF rather than just adopt it on my Scion tank.

And it's pretty damn good, even after all the nerfs. Superior to most melee skills on its face, anyways. It'd actually compliment my Scion's build, it just I dunno...feels cheap as hell after I got that far with just the classic melee skills.

Anyways, my Shadow is Energy Shield/EVA. I know, I know. The meta says I'm a fool and I'll get wrekt'd scrub. So far though, sub Level 80 it's been totally doable. Yeah, there are some nasty one shots out there, and for all the trash people talk about Armor, when you have none and take a hit on your health it's fuckin scary. But in general good reactions and judgment can make it work. I was dreading Izaro Merciless and it's true, his mortar blasts will pretty much kill you (I'm 2.8k Life/1.3k ES something right now) in one barrage with any amount of damage missing or curse debuffs on you or whatever. But supplement with a little fortify, enduring cry....and you make up the difference pretty well. I more or less had Izaro beat the first time I fought him. Then I proceeded to get disconnected about 4 times, 20 minutes apart, from the Lab despite having rock solid latency. Then GGG brought the realm down to replace a database and tanked another run. Then I DC'd again. >< After like 3 goddamn hours of trying to beat Izaro Merciless, mostly through no fault of my own, I finally beat it. Guess he must have rolled the "Shit Servers" mod that day.

Really enjoying my Shadow more than I expected. It's the first character I made in PoE back in Open Beta and I haven't been back to him in years. But after playing a heavy shield tank for long, it's kind of liberating to not only do a shit load of damage but also not have to stand and deliver for it to happen.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2017, 08:14:03 pm by nenjin »
Logged
Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

nenjin

  • Bay Watcher
  • Inscrubtable Exhortations of the Soul
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1283 on: May 24, 2017, 05:42:39 pm »

Checked up on my PoE patch notes since they're releasing a lot of manifestos right now in the lead up to FoO.

Spoiler: Witness the nerf! (click to show/hide)

You can spot the ES/CI build players right now in the manfiesto thread by how hard they're freaking out. Personally, having never played ES/CI (just a poor man's ES build for my Witch), I'm looking forward to someone else feeling the pain of life builds like I do right now. I still predict it will outperform life builds, but now at least I don't have to hear about people face rolling content that face rolls me, like I'm the asshole for not playing ES/CI.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2017, 09:01:50 pm by nenjin »
Logged
Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

frostshotgg

  • Bay Watcher
  • It was a ruse
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1284 on: May 24, 2017, 07:14:33 pm »

large ES values were a bit ridiculous, but I think they hit CI too hard. ES does have its downsides, and the "Life is technically better than ES" comment a dev got lambasted for still holds true. Point for point, Life is more valuable. The break even point has been, in my experience, around 1.5 times before ES starts to feel better. If entry level CI gear only leaves me at 6k and it's exalts plural to get above 9k, that just seems like too much pain and absolutely not worth it. Characters who had 25k ES before had dumped unreasonable amounts of currency into their builds, and scaling that down so much seems likely that CI without a moderate fortune to spend will just be miserable.
Logged

Aklyon

  • Bay Watcher
  • Fate~
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1285 on: May 24, 2017, 08:47:54 pm »

CI will sort itself back out eventually, what I'm interested in is where will all the people who relied on VP for their ES combat regen go. Since it seemed like half the time leech was holding some aggressive builds together.
Logged
Crystalline (SG)
Sigtext
Quote from: RedKing
It's known as the Oppai-Kaiju effect. The islands of Japan generate a sort anti-gravity field, which allows breasts to behave as if in microgravity. It's also what allows Godzilla and friends to become 50 stories tall, and lets ninjas run up the side of a skyscraper.

nenjin

  • Bay Watcher
  • Inscrubtable Exhortations of the Soul
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1286 on: August 04, 2017, 01:35:08 pm »

Heh, think I'll wait a day for the shit storm to settle and some mandatory bug fixes to happen. Prime Time in PoE can be a bit of a shit show, so prime time on the biggest content update they've ever done is probably going to be a nightmare.
Logged
Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

RoguelikeRazuka

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1287 on: August 07, 2017, 07:36:00 am »

After a years-long break I've recently started playing PoE again, and now I want to take a slightly different approach to get good at it rather than I used in my first attempts -- do you think it's worthwhile or viable trying to figure everything out purely on your own through trial and error, that is not playing or even looking up (maybe rarely) other people's builds, not consulting anyone or anything other than general tips and guides and the wiki for reference? Just picking a character and play style that I like and trying to forge a build from scratch? I mean, when PoE was first launching, everyone played it just like that (I guess), so why can't I do the same now that the new league has started?

I used to play PoE on a regular basis in 2013-2014, when I tried to learn things via following various builds made by other people for various characters and play styles, and trying to gather valuable or useful information from reading their guides and playing their builds, but that failed.

« Last Edit: August 07, 2017, 08:00:06 am by RoguelikeRazuka »
Logged

nenjin

  • Bay Watcher
  • Inscrubtable Exhortations of the Soul
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1288 on: August 07, 2017, 10:41:25 am »

I'm a Solo Self Found player. I've made it up through T9 maps in the end game strictly under my own steam, and the wiki, at Level 88. I'd occasionally read someone's build and cherry pick a couple cute gem combinations (like Tempest Shield + Blind), but other than that I've never tried to replicate someone else's build, nor do I think that sounds remotely fun in a game as expansive as PoE. All my character builds are made by me, with some informed reading on some threads on the PoE forums but no point for point copying of gear or skill tree choices. A lot of my builds work because I've found decent enough uniques and Lvl 70+ yellow gear to support them, but that's pretty much every build in PoE. The only thing I've ever traded to get in PoE was a Shield Charge gem back before you could just buy gems from quest NPCs. I sell the occasional duplicate unique for a couple of Chaos now and then, otherwise I do no trading.

So yeah, I'd say it's totally viable if you have the time to put in to it, and are willing to table or shelve a character until the right gear is available to them.

RE: Fall of Oriath. What a mess for standard players. The entire expansion was already beaten when I logged in. They took away a large chunk of my skill points and locked them behind dumb side quests. So upon logging in and spending 30 mins remapping skill points, I just had to go each one of the acts, collect my rewards for the main quests and run some low level crap to get my missing points back, so I could end the expansion exactly where I started. What fun, what thrills.

So I have no idea what happened in the story. I ran down a couple of the story bosses just to see them, smooshed them and kinda went "meh." Talked to some of the story characters before I found myself scrolling through their dialog without paying any real attention. Mostly I was just jumping from act to act with no real sense of why, and little ability to care.

So thanks GGG. Always appreciate the standard love. I know their attitude is "Just make a league character bruh and replay the game for the 40th time!" but I can't be fucking assed. Also, the entire story seems pretentious as fuck. Even more so than the rest of PoE. I get who Sin and Innocence are, I just don't get why they take up so much of the story and their dialog with each other is particularly abominable. At least with the other characters in the story there was a direct connection between why they're opening their mouths and the game you're playing. Sin is literally just there to be a writer's mouthpiece (because of course "you can't harvest the power of the gods yourself so let me create a NPC tag along who does it for you") and it's not even a particularly good one.  Also, why does it feel like every other normal human NPC in PoE is a sailor, a ship's captain or a smuggler? We got those two new smuggler characters that show up in all acts with, I swear, some of the cringiest voice acting PoE has ever offered. The chick in particular makes me feel like I need to take a bath after listening to her talk.

The gods too, who are supposed to be ya know, bad ass gods? Barely get any treatment other than "Hey go kill this guy." One of them doesn't even have a quest per se that I could find. I noticed there was a zone I hadn't explored after clearing the FoO and found the boss there, that I retroactively got a reward for after defeating. Their models aren't that amazing and some are even recycled assets, nor are their fights that cool. The areas don't feel like they're under their sway at all, they're gods in name only. Oh and one of the new Pantheon bosses straight up DCs you from the server at the same point in his fight, every time.

I've tolerated PoE's writing and story up until now but even I don't have the patience for FoO's self-indulgent tripe. The whole thing has MAGNUM OPUS stamped across it in 40 foot high letters, only it isn't that good.

All in all, I'm underwhelmed by FoO. Other than the new tilesets and a couple of new enemies, it mostly feels like recycled trash regurgitated into another 5 acts. I wasn't expecting the moon, but about the freshest thing in the expansion to me is the enemies who now launch an attack when they die by default, or the changes to Volatile Blooded enemies. The Pantheon System seems like a joke, yet another extension to the mapping system with a non-scaling pay off that most end game players will have wrapped up in a month.

I like the continuity now of kill Malachai --> watch Oriath Burn --> kill the gods --> become the Ascendant Emperor. That's a nice personal story arc for your character. But that's about the only fluff I find interesting in the whole mess.

Also this league seems like one of the laziest. An entire league to farm for shards of existing currency, or shards for new some currency that, other than the Mirror of Kalandara or w/e, seems mostly like junk.

If there is one silver lining to me in FoO, it's that the difficulty curve in PoE is now finally feels reasonable. I had exactly zero troubles with any of the major fights (I didn't fight Kitava so, maybe she's as ridiculous as pre-FoO Malachi was.) Granted my main is pretty OP for story content but still. I was expecting some GGG style difficulty spikes and didn't find them. Which I'm happy about. I feel like the real ball breaking content should be in the end game anyways, not in the lead up to the end game.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2017, 12:00:54 pm by nenjin »
Logged
Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

Kanil

  • Bay Watcher
  • [T_WORD:PILLAR:kanil]
    • View Profile
Re: Path of Exile - Fall of Oriath
« Reply #1289 on: August 07, 2017, 03:52:51 pm »

If there is one silver lining to me in FoO, it's that the difficulty curve in PoE is now finally feels reasonable. I had exactly zero troubles with any of the major fights (I didn't fight Kitava so, maybe she's as ridiculous as pre-FoO Malachi was.) Granted my main is pretty OP for story content but still. I was expecting some GGG style difficulty spikes and didn't find them. Which I'm happy about. I feel like the real ball breaking content should be in the end game anyways, not in the lead up to the end game.

The amount of times I got instagibbed by the bosses playing through acts 7-10 is really the opposite of this experience, and is easily my least favorite part of the expansion.

That the game drops maps, gives me a map device, and then tells me "go bury Kitava in your corpses first" adds to my frustration. To think Merciless Act 4 was an upgrade, if for no other reason than that you didn't have to actually bother with it.

At least I don't have to do it again any time soon.



Also, considering how much I dislike act 4, act 9 is actually reasonably enjoyable. This surprised me.
Logged
Yah, it sounds like minecraft with content, you have obviously missed the point, people dont like content, they like different coloured blocks.
Seems to work fine with my copy. As soon as I loaded the human caravan came by and the world burst into fire.
Pages: 1 ... 84 85 [86] 87 88 ... 100