We're 64 hours into Path of Exile 2 already. Must be getting near to the end of Act 3. Unless Act 3 is a lot longer than the other acts.

Yesterday the game got very laggy At some point input lag was several seconds... I guess it runs over the server even when playing local co-op? I haven't seen this kind of input lag since playing Everquest 20 years ago! Obviously unplayable in a modern arpg.

Act 3 has many glitches and bugs. The map doesn't work right after draining the water (have to travel through chaos temple to be able to use the waypoint map again) and we had several hard crashes, submit error report. And after trying to reboot the game we were stuck on a splash-screen of Ziggurat landing not able to see our characters running around. Had to reboot into single player to move us back to Act 2 town to get co-op working again.

A lot of things don't work right in co-op. Switches and quest item use seems to alternate between who can perform the action. Player 2 can activate the waypoint map and salvage table but only player 1 can operate them. Online doesn't work in co-op, no other people in town ever. Online co-op doesn't work either in couch co-op, disconnects instantly when you try to add another player. And last night tiles started to go missing again, holes in the floor. That next to bad screen-tearing and uneven pacing from server lag, slow down then speed up.

It's definitely still a beta with weird difficulty spikes and unbalanced abilities. But obviously a ton of fun just to be able to play together. It does seem the best strategy is simply to do as much damage as fast as possible, not allowing bosses time for their special attacks. Freeze build monk plus high dps warrior is working well together.

The gear system is both cool and a problem. You can customize and upgrade your gear a lot, but with all that investment, when/how do you upgrade when lvl 8 upgraded items still outperform lvl 42 base items... If upgrade materials were a lot more common you could build up other pieces of gear to get better, yet they're so scarce we can't even keep one of us fully 'socketed' with max quality items. Artificer's Orbs, Blacksmith shards and whatever adds modifiers to rare items are very rare to come by.

Also the higher level skills confuse the hell out of use with power charges?? combo counters and conditions upon conditional other conditions. So we're mostly upgrading lower level skills and sticking to that. Same with the skill modifiers. We have tons of support gems, just don't know what to do with them. Most of the support gems don't seem to do much or have negatives.

If this game was going for a more casual approach, hard fail. The accounting part of the game is too complex and confusing. My wife just puts the controller down when we have to go back to town and lets me try to sort it all out for both of us. She isn't interested in builds at all. So we're just picking up less and less loot, hardly every finding anything worth keeping, let alone using, and have half a million gold in the bank lol.

Simple fix, make upgrade materials purchasable in shops.


Btw we haven't tried ascension stuff yet. It bugged out when we first tried it, went online and only saw people with more problems with it. So ignored that for now.

I have two characters in the level 70s now, and I'm doing maps with them both. At this point, I'm hitting walls here and there, which require significant boost to knock down. Defense is the hardest part. My Witch minion build works really poorly in certain maps, namely ones with tight corners or narrow sections; most of my minions get stuck and I'm left with only half my army. My Monk is very squishy but does decent damage with the Frost Strike, crazy damage with the Bell in place (using Power Charges alone gets me somewhere around 30-40k dps right now).

I started a Sorceress with Spark focus, but it's slow and kind of boring, the damage isn't all that either in the early game. I also rolled a Ranger, only level 22 or 23 so far, and this one is also a slow start (I didn't pick only damage nodes at the beginning). I switched to WASD controls today; it's really something else, especially on ranged characters and builds. I don't think I can go back now.

As for Act 3, it's pretty long, I'd say about 50% more so than Act 2. I've done them a few times now, so it's mostly smooth sailing, but parts of Act 3 are kind of a slog, the maps are huge.

All in all, I'm still having lots of fun, I'll be farming gear and waystones for now, and trying to get my Ranger going and get some more dps soon. Keep on going!

What happens when you defeat the ACT 3 boss? To be continued screen? Or is there new game+ for the first 3 acts?

We're lvl 50 now, no clue what power charges are or do. We're in the torture zone now, disgusting, but seems we have to level up / farm more there. The boss kills us very easily. It was already late though, not enough mind power left to make sense of all that's happening on screen. Plus I broke my wife's warrior by 'upgrading' her belt. Didn't notice half of here skills didn't work anymore due to lost str. Redemption tomorrow!

How do you see how much damage the bell does? It seems to be a lot when we both hammer on it. I also like that it keeps my monk in place instead of jumping around attracting more trouble!

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.

"Attack damage" bonuses/buffs are all forms of attacks except spells, it includes elemental attacks, AoE, Impact, Projectile, Physical etc. Ice Strike is AoE, Melee, Strike, and Cold. Boosting the various attacks that are listed below a skill boosts the total damage output. Elemental skills like the ones you and I use on our monks convert your weapon's physical damage to the corresponding elemental damage - usually a percentage. So a "Strike" might consist of different forms of damage types. Other bonuses are stacked on top of that base, meaning that your damage grows exponentially as you add bonuses and synergies to them (via support crystals, for instance). Like in my previous examples, where 20k becomes well over 30k from one boost (Charged Staff). Also, don't forget about Critical Hits, many powerful builds center around Crit Chance and Crit Damage. My Monk has around 28% Chance and 300% Damage, this is even more DPS that doesn't get tallied in the skill menus or descriptions the same way.

I generate Frenzy charges with the use of Combat Frenzy (a skill gem), every time I freeze or shock an enemy. This allows me to activate Charged Staff and use said charges to add lightning damage to my Ice Strike. On top of that, there's Unbound Avatar from the Invoker ascension, yielding even more elemental damage based on charges (and activated the same way). All that jazz, and the bell on top, is what gives me the insane damage output, even with a pretty poor weapon. My main weapon isn't even mainly cold-based, it has mostly lightning damage besides physical, this is why my Charged Staff gives such a big boost since it scales lightning damage. If I got a weapon with 400-500 physical damage, and as much cold damage as I have lightning now, my DPS would be hilarious, even at level 71. Even as is, the Act 3 final boss on Cruel was melted with three Bell cycles. The wait for the phase transition was nearly longer than the entire fight around it.

If you want to have more of a good time, I would recommend one Ranger or Mercenary paired with a Witch using minions. Safe distance, lots of distracting tanks that can also deal insane damage, and an overall fun play-style!

Thanks for the tips! I should look into charged staff and combat frenzy and figure out where all the stats are. (No clue what my crit chance is although I did put points toward it). I feel like this game would be a lot easier on PC!

Ranger Witch combo sounds fun. We've been finding lots of cross bows with much better stats than our weapons doh.

So far we've mainly been trying to stun or freeze the boss. When it works we can get through the fights yet this last one doesn't want to stay still lol. And maybe do the ascension stuff solo, not having to worry about dragging the other over the screen into traps while having a shared honor bar. (And unbind the X button, that's why the death crystal stuff doesn't work :/)

I kinda wish developers would realize there's a blue ocean out there of matured gamers that want to play couch co-op! It always feels like a box ticking addition when it's even added, doing it in such a way that makes it much harder than playing solo.

Couch coop is amazing, all forms of local multiplayer are leagues ahead of online play, in my opinion. I think the full release of PoE2 will set things right, or at least make them considerably better. Maybe they'll throw in crossplay as well, we'll see!