Nerfing: You've GOT to be kidding me - get real Devs

[Bollockoff]

Forge Knights stacking three Noxious Bursts on top of my party made me laugh. That's the level of bull**** I'd expect myself to pull off, so I'm cool with being given just as good on occasion.

[Brimsurfer]

 

I am not saying that I agree with OP and I am not a casual gamer, but combat and the difficulty does seem out of sorts in this game. 

 

I have played all the IE games and I have been playing RPGs for over 2 decades and in my experience difficulty of BG or IWD games or even PS:T was much more balanced than what I have seen in this game.

 

I disagree, as I could faceroll solo BG/IWD.  I can't do that with PoE.  

 

And it wasn't just becaue of Multi-Class and Rest spam, but some base classes got pretty nuts later on (Monk).

 

 

 

I don't think you read my post carefully.

[Luj1]

 

 

Successor to the IE games?  Not by a long shot

 

 

 

While I agree PoE carries with it the nostalgia and charm of IE games, the old IE games never had an over-engineered combat system like this.

 

Combat is more similar to Temple of Elemental Evil (unforgiving, hard-core) than Baldurs Gate or Icewind Dale

[Jasta11]

Loads of spells are poorly balanced. For druids, Firebug does only slightly less damage than Sun Lance, but can rebound 7 times (making it a veritable room clearer by itself) while the latter is single target. They are in the same tier, for some reason. The Priest's 6th level spells are very situational at best, compared to their level 3-5 spells which are mostly good. The Wizard has several borderline OP spells (Slicken, Fan of Flames, Gaze of the Adragan for example) and a lot of junk ones (Necrotic Lance is downright useless).

[Luj1]

It's more important to remove Firedorn Memorial than balance spells, classes and fix game-breaking bugs. Terrible message you're sending to your backers Obsidian.

[revjwh]

Claims like "the game is easy on hard" are really, really unhelpful.  To start with, there are a lot of factors that play into difficulty.  Let's say that you throw every spell into every encounter and run back to the inn over and over.  This will make the game "easy", because it's not designed around having player throw dozens of spells into each battle.  Another example: let's say that you clear everything the first time that you see it.  There are many places in the game where this results in genuinely tough encounters - several of which you run into at the very start of the game.  However, if you wait on them a few levels, they become "easy".  Because they're not level scaled. 

 

Another example: if you accidentally trigger encounters out of position they're tough.  If you always line up terrain, scout, and open up with high damage ranged attacks and spells: a lot easier.  Mix/max your party and use a handful of strong combinations: easier.  Roleplay: harder.

 

Just claiming that the game is trivial on hard is therefore really unhelpful; it's a lot better to ask what particular problems that others are having, or to specify what you mean. 

 

 

First, I meant with a full party - so if you are playing with less than 6 the difficulty will go up some.

 

Here is how I always play overall (average style):

 

My rogue sneaks and scouts out the opposition.  Returns to party.  I look for a place to funnel the opponents and position my party (when I played party and found it too easy) accordingly:  2 fighter-types ready to block chokehold, mage to the side ready to slam a quick area of effect damage spell and then retreat, priest in back ready to buff/heal, druid ready to either go offensive/debuff or opposite as needed.  The rogue then places a trap if a tough opponent.... I go to the room and fire off a crossbow as a sneak attack and then run to the party.  My mage fires off AoE spell of some sort and retreats behind fighters.  Fighters block gap.  Rogue stays behind them and deals with any teleporters to keep them off squishies.  The rest debuff/heal/attack as needed.

 

Using this basic combo I didn't really have any problems ..... esp. once I could summon - then I would drop a summon or two out in front of the fighters and the monsters would usually stop to deal with them allowing even more time to attack them.  I replaced the druid or rogue with a cipher sometimes and that also upped damage output.

 

I rested about every 3-4 battles?  I remember being level 5 party of 6 and I took out the Ogre level of Cuad Nua (always forget name??) without resting until clearing the level (by then some characters were in the 'yellow' health range but overall ok).

 

Don't know if that helps??

 

For some situations I set up tactically in creative ways.  For example in Raedric's Hold I had a fighter stand to the south and my cipher cast Antipathetic Field (the ray that corrodes if I have name wrong) and I then used my other fighter and a summons to make them clump and then my cipher ran back and forth and mowed down about 50% of them.  My one fighter went down but at the expense of about 1/2 Raedric's men...... Soul Shock (again, the wizard spell that jumps and is 1 or 2 level) was often enough to kill quite a few foes in one hit..... I pay attention to vulnerabilities/bestiary as well......

Edited April 5, 2015 by revjwh

[Skor]

Mage spells are a complete mess. Ironskin lv 4 is a complete joke. Not even worth a 1st level slot.

[Katarack21]

If you pay attention to the bestiary and exploit the damage types properly, exploit choke points, use the right weapons, use traps and scrolls, and make creative use of various connecting-ray spells you can go quite long and far without ever having to rest. Especially since I'm a cipher and I use grieving mother--ciphers never worry about resting. It's never really been an issue for me.

[Luj1]

That's exactly it Katarack. When one plays Ranger, Barbarian, Monk, Rogue then the game is too hard. And when you play Fighter, Cipher, Chanter, Druid the game's easy. There is really a big efficiency gap between classes. And races too.

[Katarack21]

I have a custom barbarian with might/con/resolve (low intelligence, imagine that) that I use for my main off tank. I imagine it would be more difficult if I was using her as my main--honestly she doesn't get to do much in most fights. She rages and she hits things and she takes hits, that's about it.

[Gulch]

Do you realize how many average gamers/casual gamers are rage quitting and reloading over and over and over.

 

No, please tell us how many...

[Delicieuxz]

I've learned some things from this thread: I never though of reading the bestiary to learn opponent weaknesses (kinda just assumed that bestiaries in games are creative relish and didn't check them), and the power of debuffing to set up further casts (normally I wouldn't want to miss a chance to score damage for a potential to score future damage).

 

Thus far, I've been able to go several or many good battles between rests in PoE on Hard, but I have mostly found the game to be true to the designation of Hard. Only for rare and brief areas have I encountered battles that haven't required intense setup, management, and relflex.