Bosses difficulty vs average exploration difficulty balance

First of all I moved to POE from Diablo III. Almost everything here is better. Diablo III seems to me like a retarded game now. On Breach league finish after having my lvl 80 Trickster, which I built totally by myself with no supporting myself with documented builds, I have a remark about one thing I really don't like now in POE.

That thing is balancing between almost all bosses difficulty vs. all other creatures difficulty. Bosses difficulty is way too high, while typical exploration is way too easy. E.g. I can clear a magic t2 map almost without looking at the monitor and random clicking except the map boss, which sometimes even kills me with one spell discharge. This is retarded. The game is supposed to be relaxing, not frustrating. On the other hand exploration difficulty could be a bit higher, so something more than random clicking is required.

In particular elemental damage dealing bosses are pain in the ass, because they can kill with 1-2 hits. Despite the fact that with flasks I reach 75% resistance on Merciless. I have also spend vast amount of currency buing way better gear that I got dropped on average through the game. This is nonsense. With such approach there is no real skill with bosses fights, only luck. Either you get killed in one hit or luckily avoid it.

Another thing in particular which anoyed my especially were act IV merciless bosses - same story, 1 hit kill despite countless hours put into character development and equipment buying.

And the last is the difficulty of the ascendancy labirynth. I actually beat Cruel difficulty lab after finishing the act IV on merciless difficulty. What a gap! But in this case I can understand that the extremely high difficulty is at least partially justified by great skills and other prices of ascendancy classes indeed.

So, dear Grinding Gear, please fix it. Probably the shortest suggestion:
- bosses: -25% dmg, -25% hp
- others: +20% dmg, +20% hp

probably easy patching. Apply changes in code, test, release. Thx. Just kidding :D. I'm a software dev in real life. But, please fix this problem, so I can spend more money on this game :).

I agree that bosses are way out of proportion to rest of the enemies.
The imbalance encourages building glass cannons, as most of the time you don't need defences.
And then when you do, you are better off not taking a single hit.

Hey,
agree with Fnts7, bosses are way hard on merciless, however it encourage to play in team.
Also bosses/normal imba causes that you won't know that your build is weak till ~60-70 lev. Before that (normal/cruel diff) everything is quite easy.

Many of the bosses have specific mechanics that you need to learn. You can't just rush and facetank everything.

Agree on the imbalance between bosses and mobs. Its one of the things which I dont like in PoE.

Indeed, bosses are often overtuned, or look overtuned, because you cant oneshot bosses with most builds (like you do with trash and even rares).
And that main problem is that rewards for killing badass boss isnt appropriate.
Ok, let's call it game desighn so trash mobs are just cannon fodder, and bosses are real challenge (many games, namely MMORPGs, follow this rule).
But why bosses provide negligible experience when killed? Why their orb and map drop sucks? In map, you can just skip a boss, and dont lose much anyway...

agreed with somehow... but that's obviously not how GGG thinks it's better.

"We'd rather have it so you can kinda have the TV on while you are playing"
"I'd like it that people can relatively mindlessly grind regular content of path of exile where there are spikes of difficulty when things converge together"
-Chris Wilson 2016, interview with ziggy pre atlas of worlds I think

It makes some sense when you think about it though. They don't wan't fatigue to kick in when you're playing. You probably don't know, but personally I can tell you - I remember clearly a few years back when piety was final boss I had to take breaks between maps in hc because it was really intense all the time. It seems funny now, but difficulty balance was very much different back then.

Oh and yeah, just play HC leagues. The mindset that GGG holds makes way more sense for HC, or rather - makes absolutely none for SC.

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MortalKombat3 a écrit :

But why bosses provide negligible experience when killed? Why their orb and map drop sucks? In map, you can just skip a boss, and dont lose much anyway...

That's true. With current balance, bosses should give much more experience. Actually main map boss should probably give more experience than the rest of the map altogether. It is often the case that e.g. I have 50% experience then I get killed by a boss, I get high penalty, experience goes down to like 35% if I remeber correctly. Then I have a streak of winning over bosses, but the experience gain is too low, so even to reclaim the lost experience from that one time death takes a long time.

Indeed with current way it is not profitable to risk. It is better to play on "clean the area easily up" difficulty then to risk higher prices. Or probably it is profitable to risk only after you reached the maximum level.

Someone from GGG hear that? Seeing all the replies here it is quite obvious that is a real problem, which may discourage players from POE. Please fix it as I said. Either by lowering bosses power or greatly increasing the experience got by killing them.

Note that many people, like me, just want to play for fun. I simply don't have time to be a hardcore gamer. I often just turn on the game e.g. for like 30min-2h that go back to real life. And that is the case for most people on this earth. So only during weekends and vacations from my real life job, I have time to actually play the game for like 4 hours + and not being tired after job. Since the topic start I actually gained maybe 4 levels with my Trickster in std (I'm playing also Legacy with other character, but still very low tempo).

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Docbp87 a écrit :

Many of the bosses have specific mechanics that you need to learn. You can't just rush and facetank everything.

THIS!!!

In fact i feel exactly the opposite in mapping anyway. In maps once you get to a certain point most boss's can be killed before you even notice them if they are not in their own room. All the boss's throughout the content only get easier the more characters you lvl. If you struggle on any of the story line boss's its simply because you are not used to their mechanics not because they are too powerful.

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Demonoz a écrit :

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Docbp87 a écrit :

Many of the bosses have specific mechanics that you need to learn. You can't just rush and facetank everything.

THIS!!!

In fact i feel exactly the opposite in mapping anyway. In maps once you get to a certain point most boss's can be killed before you even notice them if they are not in their own room. All the boss's throughout the content only get easier the more characters you lvl. If you struggle on any of the story line boss's its simply because you are not used to their mechanics not because they are too powerful.

The point is about the balance, not only about the absolute difficulty level of bosses. It is true that the fights get easier and easier, but you must learn the mechanics and also improve your build. E.g. since starting the topic, I actually made a lot of improvements to the build that really made my build stronger. But still the often cases is.

I play on easier maps, gain up to e.g. 80% exp to next level. Then I decide to risk go to higher diff. Get killed by a boss. Then e.g. get killed in final labyrinth trial. 2 deaths drop exp. to ~50%. That is really, really annoying. The game is to get relaxed. The real life is about having to controll stress, suffer frustrations etc.