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SvennoJ on 03 January 2025
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Mummelmann said:

End of Act 3 on Cruel transitions into Endgame, you're given a new base with a regular waypoint and can still visit all previous Acts. From my understanding, the Cruel act repeat was implemented to cover for the full game's 6 main acts, and the level scaling is supposedly the same. After Cruel, your characters are likely around level 66-67. When you finish the first "batch" of Act I, II and III, you're tossed into the beginning area of Act I via a portal, no real fanfare to it.

What boss are you fighting? Some of them are a real pain. For me, the first playthrough was tough, but subsequent ones have been much easier. Not just because of choosing different classes and paths (although that certainly helps), but because I learned boss moves and setup along the way. At this point, all three act bosses are quite easy for me, depending on build and gear. I'll be trying a new Warrior run some time this month, just to see what's up. It's still among the slower starts right now, but can be built into stupidly powerful juggernauts (some totem builds are ridiculous). There is one boss, with a present "cheer-leading squad", that can be a real pain, and it's actually tougher on multiplayer by most accounts.

The Bell amplifies damage via Shockwave and Impact, based on which elemental types/damage are striking it. I think it's 30% per damage type, in my case that's 60% (Ice and Lightning). In addition, it does Impact damage giving almost 150% damage on the strikes themselves, as long as you're within melee range (you'll note that large bosses standing on top of the bell take a lot more damage than mobs a few feet away from it, it's essentially a double-smack). I've stacked Cold and Lightning damage on nodes and gear, but my gear isn't very good at the moment (I don't trade at all).

My three-strike Ice Strike combos are something like this (bear with me, I'm not entirely sure of the math here):

Two first strikes - 4900 damage at 4.13 strikes per second (20300 DPS total)

Third strike (the jumping one) - 10950 at 2.06 strikes per second (22550 DPS total)

Add on Charged Staff, which gives me an additional 80% Lightning damage - the math here is difficult as it doesn't say on the skill description. But my DPS goes into the 35-37k range with Charged Staff activated alone.

With the Bell modifiers, and Charged Staff activated, my damage output (more or less) is something like 56-59k DPS with the Shockwave and 52-55k on Impact. But it doesn't pop on the skill windows in the same way. In theory, I should be smacking out around 108-114k DPS on enemies that get the full brunt of both Shockwave and Impact from the Bell. Even the Shockwave hitting enemies several meters away does crazy damage on its own.

My Quarterstaff has terrible base damage, I've seen weapons at my level with literally 3-4 times the Physical damage as base, which would likely send my DPS into 110-155k territory without issue. And that's without the Bell. With more Spirit, I could also use Herald of Lightning, meaning double Herald bonuses (Frost and Lightning), that would be another large boost. PoE is all about synergies in skills, items, and additions. In many ways, it's a continuation of what Diablo II did with patches/updates years ago; where skills started affecting one another through direct synergies, where they merely acted like flat output before.

We're on Doryani, Act 3 boss it looks like. I just looked at a video of someone defeating the boss and it looks simple? Nothing like what we get in couch co-op. So much chaos on screen and hardly and space to dodge to when he blows up the whole arena.

We're level 50 now, my monk is using the ice attack modified to do more cold damage and has double third strike. According to the skill page just over 1000 dps now. My wife's warrior does just under 3000 dps. We both die quickly at the boss, nowhere near to reaching stage 2. Once he loads up the arena with purple and yellow circles with hardly a spot to stand on while the red beams and other crap keeps going we're toast.

It's already much harder in co-op since your always looking where you character is on screen. So much easier playing alone and always being in the center. When one of us dies the other can usually finish the fight because you don't have to track where you are on screen :/ So loading up the arena in co-op makes it very hard. (And reviving at a boss is nearly impossible)

Thus we're currently repeating black chambers and agalotl to out level the boss again I guess.

We didn't do the ascension trials as that went horrible wrong in co-op. The black crystals got us since the X button doesn't work when enemies are near, then it bugged out. Also no online players to be seen in co-op, it's like a single player game with online lag lol. Once I log in on my own to get co-op going again (keeps bugging out after draining the lake, just a splash screen of Ziggurat landing, can't see us walking underneath) I suddenly see tons of people around. So the idea of trading never came up...

My gear needs a lot of work. I've been upgrading my wife's gear mostly hoping she could last longer. (She's not one for tactics, 2 hand mace, infernal cry and totems is enough for her. And one ranged fireball throwing attack) I don't understand how her fire resistance can be negative, it's still at -2% after a lot of boosts. I did give here a one hand mace and shield as well hoping the stats still count although she never uses them. My gear is waiting for artificer's orbs, they almost never drop :/ Artificer's shards take forever as well. Meanwhile new gear to be upgraded sits in the stash waiting. The shop doesn't seem to restock much at all and hardly ever has anything with quality on it to salvage.
 
The passives skill tree is hard to make out on PS5, especially in co-op, so we're just stumbling along the paths it feels like. Also the comparisons only work for my character even when browsing her passive skill tree. It never shows what anything does for her. She did find extra damage against enemies on fire since I have a fire hat that sets all enemies on fire when they get close. (Pretty funny going back to Act 1 and everyone falls down as I walk around lol) And I got a attack/damage boost with an ally close which should help I guess.

I don't really understand the difference between attack damage, physical damage, spell damage boosts. Nor charges. Is there a counter somewhere? We also only have 60 spirit so limited in what we can do with that.

The game is fun but all this 'accounting' stuff is dragging it down, as well as the boss difficulty spikes. Co-op needs a lot of work, you can't sell/browse at the same time. Salvage bench only works for the main character and you can only pass stuff along in town via the stash.

Anyway we'll keep plodding along, really don't want to dive into guides and builds and all that shit. Not quite the BG Dark Alliance experience we were looking for.