Got my first ever Shaper kill. I'm celebrating with a long-ass post about endgame difficulty.

(Not crying about Shaper being too difficult btw.)

I'm one of those idiots who prefers to learn the game for himself instead of copying OP builds from streamers. I go to the internet to look up how individual mechanics work, but I prefer to come up with my own way for putting them together into interesting builds.

Oh yeah, I'm also a fan of hipster building and will genuinely get turned off a build idea if I see someone else using it. To top it all off, I don't even use PoB, I just eyeball a passive tree, then spend half an hour at level ~40 trying to figure out what my gem links are actually gonna be.

Long story short, I have no idea if my builds will work until I try them out. And that's where PoE's endgame is massively disappointing.

Here's how things usually play out:
- I bumrush through the campaign 4 levels under zone level
- I get to level 80/T10 maps faster than I can use up my map pool
- I grind T11-15 maps until I hit 90, dying a couple times along the way (always killing all map bosses)
- I do guardians, and they each kick my ass a few times
- I try Shaper and realise I don't have the DPS to get through phase 2

Now, given that I do so little to optimize my builds, I'm fine with them not being up to scratch against the very endgame. What's less fine is that those same unoptimized builds run into virtually zero resistance before then. The challenge curve has a very distinct hockey stick shape, and it's really not fun to suddenly hit a wall after so much time investment with no indication that it was going to happen.

What's especially tragic is that the map system has this excellent way of allowing players to customize the difficulty of their content via map mods. But in true PoE fashion, the implementation details undermine the system. Running rare maps gives so much more loot that it becomes the de facto standard, and most map mods don't actually add all that much to the difficulty. Map mods should primarily affect difficulty (for realsies) and XP gained, not the amount of currency you get.

And for some reason, the entire concept goes out the window when we reach endgame. Shaper, Uber Atziri, Elder etc have exactly one difficulty setting. Why not allow players to customize the difficulty of these encounters as well, and match the drop rate of exclusive uniques to the difficulty? I'd be fine with forfeiting the cool uniques from Shaper if it meant I can at least play the bloody thing and not have to roll up a new char. It would feel like the game actually wants me to play it.



tl;dr because I know most of you dr

- Raise the difficulty curve of maps, close the gap between high tier maps and Shaper/guardians
- Give map mods/rarity a bigger impact on difficulty, smaller impact on loot quantity
- Introduce difficulty customization to endgame bosses, matching drop rates of exclusive uniques

I like the idea of being able to add mods to fragment encounters somehow for increased difficulty and reward, and then reducing the base difficulty for vanilla runs. That addresses a lot of issues with the endgame, for players of all sorts of different levels of skill.
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As for the majority of your post, it sounds like you can cruise through the rest of the game because you've got a lot of practice at doing those bits well. For example, you don't try running act VI, die to Tukohama and only then realise you need more resists, since you already know you need more resists straight away after killing Kitava and are probably already overcapped.

Guardians are the next thing you're not super good at yet, but with practice I imagine you'll be able to steamroll those too with your 'eyeballed' builds. Then, once you learn to predict what it takes for a build to be able to beat the shaper, you'll probably be fine for that fight too - without needing to get any better at the earlier parts of the game.

Game, and especially end game content starting with maps, with exception of few bosses, is far far too easy. And i agree completely with the post.

I am actually surprised people keep playing the same maps offering zero resistance over and over again.

Something will have to be done in that aspect. It also makes no sense having white maps when difficulty of finishing maps stay almost the same being a white, or a corrupted one.

I have made a similar, yet quite longer post here

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2138760

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dudiobugtron a écrit :

As for the majority of your post, it sounds like you can cruise through the rest of the game because you've got a lot of practice at doing those bits well. For example, you don't try running act VI, die to Tukohama and only then realise you need more resists, since you already know you need more resists straight away after killing Kitava and are probably already overcapped.

Guardians are the next thing you're not super good at yet, but with practice I imagine you'll be able to steamroll those too with your 'eyeballed' builds. Then, once you learn to predict what it takes for a build to be able to beat the shaper, you'll probably be fine for that fight too - without needing to get any better at the earlier parts of the game.

Sure, there's an element of that, and I can see myself getting better at the mechanical bits already, even after just a couple tries. But you can't deny that there is also a massive numerical difference between T15 bosses and guardians/Shaper/etc. The Chimera adds hit harder than most T15 rares. I can chew through Lava Lake Kitava's phases in a couple seconds, but guardians take several minutes with the same build. Being able to easily level through mid-high tier maps gives you absolutely zero information as to whether you'll be able to do endgame content. And that only encourages people to play it safe by just copy-pasting some tried and tested build instead of coming up with their own ideas.

From yesterday's Baeclast with Chris:

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Chris a écrit :

One could argue that the game may need to be harder, or potentially having harder content which in turn has better item drops possible.

You already have this. Chiseling a map and making it rare does exactly what you describe. But everyone considers +20% rare maps to be the standard, instead of 0% white ones.

Either raise the baseline difficulty of maps, or if you're worried that that will scare off new players, make map mods more impactful so that the difficulty difference between normal and rare maps is bigger.

Who said that top-endgame is somehow related with maps difficulty? We have Shaper, UberAtziri and UberElder now. But that's not enough! Each new expansion should add some sort of REAL end-game boss. But it's not happening, many expansion bosses is not even comparable to named encounters, Rigwald was a joke, Chayula too, this expansion's Farrul is boring and simple as well. Only good expansions were AoW because it introduced Shaper and guardians and WftA later with Elder's stuff. We definitely need more end-bosses!

we do not need more end-game bosses

we need LESS cookie-cutter build that are more cheating than playing the game - these peaks of power among build spectrum trivialize ANY end-game. there is no point in making more of boss fights people will 'global' and not even notice that it has phases..

shorching ray, shaped stat sticks, various idiocies with barrage, ignite (in 3.3 - im sure it will be the GO-TO mechanic of choice). builds that require very little investment like various totem-spells that in general can go with garbage gear or skills that are just simply better than other similar choices. twice as good, not by 5%


creating this void between 'classic builds' and few - arbitrarily selected - cookie cutter choices is the problem this game has

you can run full MF idiocy setup because it is Windripper Tornado Shot - bow + crit + tornado shot. you can do a fairly endgame powerful build with several pieces without life nor damage. just because bs multiplication carries you

try the same playing static strike. no way.


for builds like crit bow ele full pen or glacial mines (soon to be explosive traps because GGG seem incapable of understanding why phys->ele conversion skills DESTROY balance) everything is easy

for static strike or other garbage choices - current endgame is difficult enough already

here is the problem, not with the lack of further endgame choices. pick a non-cookie-cutter build and try again. im sure youll be surprised just HOW IMMENSE the difference in power is and how different the game

OP: Not crying about shaper being difficult

*Proceeds to cry about shaper being difficult*

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ironstove a écrit :

OP: Not crying about shaper being difficult

*Proceeds to cry about shaper being difficult*

Not really, no. Shaper's difficulty is fine for its rewards. The main problem is with the difficulty, or lack thereof, in the content leading up to it.

Then there's a separate argument to be made that you might want to allow people the option to drop both the difficulty and the rewards of endgame encounters.

Ok, serious post though,

Fact of the matter is that making encounters that are both challenging BUT can also be done by many different builds is HARD, whereas designing encounters which are challenging and can only be completed by very few builds is EASY (look at uber elder and how the majority of people playing are using RF).

Having an encounter that can be dealt with by many different types of builds by default makes it a very easy encounter because there are so many different mechanics in the game that some builds will find a way to cheese and then people will start copying and crying about how it's OP.

The same with hall of grandmasters, and how scorching ray/EA are two of the only builds able to deal with that map, and EA only because of the detonation exploit using the walls.

At the end of the day, you can make many different builds but you will not be able to do all encounters with most of them simply because some of the tough encounters have mechanics which heavily exploit the weaknesses of certain builds. There are very few builds which are so well-rounded that they can handle almost every encounter in the game with enough gear investment, and most players want to play all of the content in the game, so it's a natural consequence that we're seeing most people playing the same builds throughout the league.

I've always thought that fights such as shaper/uber elder were bad design (Filling the arena with permanent DOTs) because they're speed/DPS tests on builds and not really mechanically challenging, but some might argue that if you want a mechanically challenging fight, you should head over to uber atziri instead. Ok great, so I did that fight, now I want to do other content as well, but back to the first issue, my build is neither fast nor high DPS (Say I'm using something like resolute technique + bleed), now I'm just dying because my build is not as fast as other meta builds so I have way more difficulty in terms of these permanent dots that keep filling the screen that other builds don't have to deal with.

Long story short, this game is really dull and boring if you want to play many different builds because you'll end up playing only maps and never trying to encounter harder bosses knowing they'll steamroll you, OR this game is really dull and boring because you can only play 4 different builds if you want to try to play everything in the game.