By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Mummelmann on 28 January 2025
Edit Thread
SvennoJ said:

I'm starting to get fed up with POE2's death penalty. It makes no sense. I'm trying to catch up with my wife with the chaos trials, but there you lose xp as well on death and all the bullshit modifiers that accumulate got me on the end boss.

Btw the Chaos trials also don't work in co-op, the game doesn't let you start it as it claims for both of us that only the map owner can choose the parameters.

Maybe I can use the shittema trials to catch up as the game freezes when you run out of honor and thus don't die... My wife leveled, so she is 'safe' for now (can't go below 0 in the next level), but I'm falling further behind with every death.

Terrible game design, every seems stacked against couch co-op. Why do developers hate couch co-op so much. They'll include it to get more sales as it's rare to have nowadays, but then they make such a shitty job of it. Tons of things don't work for my wife, the game crashes or locks up shortly after I die in a map, only one person can use the shop at the time (which is the only thing that works for my wife as p2, she can't use waypoints, the tool benches, can't pick up waystones in maps)

I don't know about this game anymore, it keeps getting worse in the end game. Sure there are still fun experiences, but then you suddenly get one shot again and the game crashes shortly after as it can't handle P2 walking away from P1's corpse. It's a roller coaster that's starting to fall apart.

I hear that the console versions are much worse in this regard. Then again, I imagine very few on PC sit in the same room over LAN when they play.

XP penalties are a hassle for sure, my Titan is level 79 now, I've reached Tier 10 and 11 maps as the highest. As long as there aren't too many modifiers, I good decent tankiness. There are some balancing issues with my build (note, for instance, the hilarious overshoot on Cold Resistance), but it generally works. Best of all is that it's not a meta-build made from guides - I simply combined some aspects of what I've learned so far and made a hybrid. I have a feeling that I'll have to go all in on Ancestral Totem later on though, and become passive with the Titan himself while they clean house. My current strategy when leveling is pumping points into Block Chance, I'll pump into Armor nodes after that. The reason is that Block completely negates damage, while Armor simply mitigates - it makes a huge difference!

I have very little Life and Mana, the latter became an issue with my Ancestral Totems, so I switched to "Life Cost" on a gem with them. Along with decent Life Leech, it works well, especially since my build is largely focused on Physical damage (Leech always scales off of physical damage). I place my Ancestral Totems (3 of them), lose about 400 life doing so, and then Leap Slam into the crowd they're chewing up, leeching life from what remains. It's effective, for now. But I know that higher tier maps will be hard. I haven't had a proper power boost for a long time now, and my DPS is falling off some. Hammer of the Gods does great damage, but it often misses on groups or bosses on the map, it's better suited for large main bosses all in all. One issue for me has been maps with tight corridors, combined with on-ground effects. The combination of "Burning Ground" and any sort of acid of smoke eats me up in seconds, if I happen to leap into it. My Totems use "Sunder", which makes it hard to see the ground, so sometimes I have to sit back and wait to know whether it's safe or not.

My Monk is kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum; his DPS is great but he's squishy like a raspberry. He frequently turns into jam.

For comparison: Titan has about 14.5k DPS on his main attack (Leap Slam), with another 25% when the totems are out, so around 18k DPS or so. Hammer of the Gods is in the region of 37-40k when buffed by Totems, much, much more if it triggers the aftershock (30% chance). But the cooldown is immense (about 25 seconds or so).
Monk (Invoker) has 50k base DPS on Ice-Strike, with Charged Staff this climbs to about 75-78k. With another boost from Unbound Avatar, it's easily in the 110-130k region, and this is without the bell. I can imagine the Bell bringing the max boosted total up to 180-200k all in all. It absolutely rips through packs of enemies, and destroys most specials and bosses before the ever unfreeze, but one boss with one pain-in-the ass ability pops me in one hit. And this is all with a pretty piss-poor weapon in hand. As mentioned; my defenses are woeful, save for capped Lightning resist (the others are in the 60-ish area), and I only have Evasion to properly rely on (you need two defensive layers, at least).

I also have the Witch with Minions, but haven't played it for a while, as well as a Deadeye. The Witch is the safest playstyle in general, but she was worthless defenses and poor resistances, meaning that bosses in smaller arenas shred her in seconds, usually while waiting for the minions to respawn. Deadeye needs better gear, I haven't leveled it beyond 71 for now. Early 70s is the pain threshold where gear becomes much more important, and deaths start happening more often.

So, of all my characters in the high 70s now, only the Titan is viable, but it's slow and methodical. Still running the same weapon, I have a much better one (as in at least a 50-60% hike in DPS), but lack the strength to wield it (Giant's Blood). Losing the shield will break the build entirely and I'll just keep dying.