Good Morning Folks. I have to admit I have been largely radio silent on social media about Path of Exile II, because as you might be able to tell from yesterday’s post… I am not exactly certain what to think about it. I had hyped myself up quite a bit going into the release of Early Access, hoping that my love of Path of Exile would translate into a great time playing the sequel. I think ultimately what I was expecting was a much higher fidelity version of Path of Exile, not necessarily a retread of the Ruthless mode as we got. I’ve asked myself a few times… “Are You Having Fun?” and honestly I am not sure what the answer to that question is yet. I am stubborn as hell and I keep progressing with the same build because in theory, it is starting to work.
Up until this point, all we had seen from GGG was some nerfs of specific over performing skills, but nothing to really address the core of my complaints with the game. This morning we saw the first movement, but I am not really certain it is enough. Essentially instead of adding phasing to dodge roll like the players have been asking… they are doing some fiddly nonsense of lowering the player size to 0 for the sake of collision, meaning if there is a gap at all no matter how big, you should be able to roll out of it. Similarly instead of stopping the nonsense of maps respawning when you die in them… they are making it so we can teleport between checkpoints and adding new checkpoints at the boundaries of various zones within the map. They are making improvements, but not necessarily the improvements I would have made. Time will tell what we might see as a result of this. You can check out the broader statement about planned updates, as well as the pieces that they rolled in over night that did not require a restart.
I hit a hard wall yesterday, and it is the same wall that I watched Jorgen battling on his stream over the weekend. Essentially the Boss at the end of Act 2 is a massive step up in difficulty, especially for melee players… though based on the experience of my friend Ace it might not be a cakewalk on other play styles either. Essentially I was running out of resources and while I could get to the final phase of the fight, it felt like I had to perform perfectly and was just not dealing much damage to the end boss. It seems like this is intended, and that they expect fights to drag on forever as you slowly whittle down a giant bag of hitpoints. I got so frustrated that I had to walk away for awhile.
Instead of walking away entirely, I spent some time playing a Ranger. I’ve played a few alts so far for various reasons, but sometimes going back and playing the extremely well-designed first act helps to clear my mind. I am getting MUCH better at making my way through that content and I find that I am starting to focus on efficiency as I clear my way through the objectives much like I do in POE1. I think it was Ash who made the comment that we felt the same way about the first game until we got better at it, and maybe he has a point because subsequent alts are going so much more smoothly than my first outing. The end of the act boss is still a massive pain in the ass no matter what character I am on. I still do not love their boss design this time around but I am adjusting.
For years now I have been a member of the Cult of Mouse Steering since my friend Ace tipped me off to the idea. I wrote a post about it awhile back, but essentially the idea is that you bind force move to W and then steer your character with your mouse cursor, similar to how you might control a third/first-person game. In Path of Exile, this meant that I had to give up a keybind, but I gladly did it just to play a more comfortable control scheme that did not trigger RSI quite so badly. With the Ranger in Path of Exile II however, it made a lot of sense to try out WASD because it allowed me to easily backpedal while firing off attacks and strafing to the side to keep from getting surrounded. The thing is… it felt pretty great and even when I swapped back to playing my Warrior later that evening, I decided to keep rolling with that control scheme. It turns out a lot of the weird targeting I was experiencing was a side effect of the forced move scenario locking in a target direction, and while it is getting addressed with an upcoming patch it does mean that WASD became a bit more predictable for firing off abilities.
Another thing that happened yesterday is that I decided to engage in the Trade Economy. Much like every player… I have been struggling to find upgrades and it had been quite a long while since I updated my weapon. I did not want to give up the +2 Level of Melee Skills, but I did want to find something that was capable of dishing out a bit more damage. I had come into a few Exalts recently so I spent one buying a new mace and spent a second one picking up a shield with quite a bit of armor and life on it. Lastly, I happened into a Plate Belt with a high armor roll and managed to actually craft that into a decent item using one of the few Regals that I had managed to get. These three items were a significant upgrade to my stats.
I also spent a bit of time last night grinding out some more levels and also speccing and respeccing points until I landed on what I feel like is a good combo of abilities. Resolute Technique I think is critical to my build at this point, because I am not really doing anything to try and gain accuracy and at least that guarantees that I am always going to hit my target. Additionally, I have armor break on heavy stun, and some points into aftershocks and damage recoup of physical damage prevented. You can check out the current state of my tree here, but for the moment I plan on building into the rest of the mace node and maybe going up into the ignite node above it on the tree. I am also contemplating going and getting the Heavy Stunned Culling Strike node. For the moment clearing trash feels pretty great because Herald of Ash combined with aftershocks means I am exploding things quite effectively.
Eventually, I returned to making attempts on the boss and it was completely wrecking me still. I was running out of resources, so I decided to stop trying to do as many big attacks as possible. While it might seem counter-intuitive, I knew I did not have the DPS to rush this boss down quickly and would have to batten down the hatches for a long fight. What I started doing was using a lot more basic attacks to jab at the boss here and there and then setting up a big combo every six seconds, when fist of war support was up so that I would pour all of my efforts into a really big attack and then just spend the rest of the time dodging and poking at the boss. The thing is… this actually worked and I managed to down the boss with almost a full mana flask and about half of my life flask still available. Maybe this is the intended play style for this game… just accept that the encounter is going to take forever and try and reserve your resources as much as possible.
So now I have made my way to Act III, and the final new act in this Early Access client. I will start working my way through that tonight, but I managed to clear to the first town at least last night and take out all of the bosses in the first area. So far it felt fine, and while I was having to deal with a lot of poison mechanics I managed to make it across the zone without taking any deaths. I did get a third unique drop, which is I believe still three more than Ace has seen. I thought while I was having show and tell this morning I would show off the uniques that I managed to pick up. By the time I got Hoghunt it was pretty much useless for my warrior but when I rolled my “BigBonk” alt I used it for quite a well to great effect. Blackgleam Quiver is something that I am using on my Ranger and I am not entirely certain if it is good… or if I am just using it for the sake of using a unique. Last night I picked up Igniferis off the beach of Act III, and it is a weird item. Essentially it takes your Regen and multiplies its effect… but makes it so you only get healed every 4 seconds. I could legitimately see this being an interesting item if you have heavy defensive layers otherwise.
So at this point… I have not given up on the game, but I do feel like it has a long way to go in improving before it is a truly great game. I am coming to accept that I am not going to be in maps anytime soon, and hopefully, by the time I get there, we have a few more patches that tweak the difficulty curve of content. I am somewhat proud that I am sticking with my yolo character design, and that it is weirdly working. I probably need to go more into Ignite since I am never going to crit, but for now moment to moment gameplay feels significant smoother than it did. Bossing is still going to be a bit of a pain in the ass for a long while, but so long as I can keep slowly chipping things down I think I might be able to make it through the remaining acts. I am hoping the improved currency drops really do make a difference and give me more access to better gear as I go up in difficulty.
