Do you like Diablo 3?

[Pepisolo]

I played necromancer or whatever I thought would lead to it ;p Didn't feel very visceral or satisfying, the sounds aren't delivering oohmph, the visuals don't feed back into my brain properly, and tada, I think "what the hell am I doing with my life playing this?" that's the moment I uninstall games ;P Maybe it was just the lag... POE never ran very smooth for me for some reason.

POE is definitely not the most well optimized game. I don't have any problems with general lag, but occasional desync can pop up from time to time (pretty dangerous on hardcore). Sounds like it just didn't float your boat for whatever reason. Combat early in the game can feel a bit sluggish until you boost your attack and movement speeds and start getting your character in order, so it might be worth you playing on for a bit... although it seems like this game is just not your cup of tea.

[Hearteater]

The biggest downside to me in POE is a lot of character builds just don't work until you get much higher level (with the talent points to hit everything you need). As a result, leveling as your "final" build is often very difficult, if not impossible. It is often at least extremely slow. I find that cheating really, to throw on a Bow and shotgun my way through content for 60 levels before switching to my Trap-based Dominater or whatever. But they've been doing a lot to increase build diversity and that appears to be more important to them than how "broken" a build can be which allows for some crazy builds (like abusing Dominate to take control of 90%+ of the mobs you encounter).

[keith.lamothe]

I'm in Act 2 on Cruel and it's been a lot of fun in general.  Just had the game d/c in the middle of a boss fight after about 2 minutes of most everyone standing still (I kept running around in hopes that it might somehow reduce the chance of my dying when it "caught up"), though, leading to yet another "singleplayer!!!" moment

I certainly won't play Hardcore with that kind of possibility on the table.  "Oh, by the way, for the last 20 seconds you weren't actually dodging monsters and stuff, you were instead just standing there like a moron because of a hiccup in the internet connection.  You'd probably be surprised how much damage that boss can crank out in 20 seconds.  I hope you didn't like that character!"  Though I guess in PoE you don't lose the character, it just gets "demoted" to a non-hardcore league?

Other than that my only notable concern is that the game doesn't seem very challenging.  The Act 1 boss on normal difficulty pushed me pretty hard, and there were a few random-rare monsters with nasty spells that almost got me, but other than that everything (including the Act 1 boss on cruel) has been pretty easy.  My only death was to some non-boss monsters in an Act 3 sewer because I got sloppy while running through monsters to get to the next map.  Possibly the witch+minion+fire approach is a bit OP?  Or is it not supposed to actually get hard until merciless?  Or the "maps" you can pick up?

Not that I mind a relatively-easy game, just wondering if I'm missing something.

[Hearteater]

The game does get harder. Cruel Act 3, especially the end can be rough. But Merciless is when it starts to get real. And once you've got that covered, you'll hit Maps. Those are when the crazy starts. See, they are dungeons that you access via Maps that drop. Each dungeon type is a different map. And they have levels, which indicates the level of monsters in the map, but also the level of items. Now you can enchant these maps just like items, but instead of getting normal properties, they get properties that make the map harder. For example, a Map with "of Suffering" has all players taking constant Chaos damage while in the map. Further, you only get 6 tries at clearing the map (there are 6 portals into the map when you activate it, they disappear when entered so you can only enter a map once/portal).

So combine crazy map mods with crazy monster mods, and it can get very interesting.

[Aklyon]

The game does get harder. Cruel Act 3, especially the end can be rough. But Merciless is when it starts to get real. And once you've got that covered, you'll hit Maps. Those are when the crazy starts. See, they are dungeons that you access via Maps that drop. Each dungeon type is a different map. And they have levels, which indicates the level of monsters in the map, but also the level of items. Now you can enchant these maps just like items, but instead of getting normal properties, they get properties that make the map harder. For example, a Map with "of Suffering" has all players taking constant Chaos damage while in the map. Further, you only get 6 tries at clearing the map (there are 6 portals into the map when you activate it, they disappear when entered so you can only enter a map once/portal).

So combine crazy map mods with crazy monster mods, and it can get very interesting.

Also, theres Master Cartographer Zana now. So you can get maps, inside maps. That can drop maps, which may or may not have her and her map-in-a-map as well.

[keith.lamothe]

And then when you've beat the very last recursive monstrosity, while you're picking up the infinite number of drops, some dude rolls up the map

[Pepisolo]

Though I guess in PoE you don't lose the character, it just gets "demoted" to a non-hardcore league?

Yeah, you just get demoted to standard.

Regarding the difficulty, things are supposed to get harder near Act 3 Cruel (as Hearteater says), which is around about where my hardcore char is now. Generally things don't seem too difficult... but then you enter a corrupted zone with insane mods and come up against something you weren't expecting, and things start getting real scary. It's hard for me to gauge the level of challenge in standard as I only play hardcore which changes how the game plays a lot, but I think there will come a point where you may potentially hit a wall in terms of how well your char can handle the content, which is where you might need to focus and concentrate on your build and playstyle a lot more in order to progress.

My only death was to some non-boss monsters in an Act 3 sewer because I got sloppy while running through monsters to get to the next map.

You took out Dominus first try!? Props!

[keith.lamothe]

Dominus's normal-diff encounter doesn't seem built to challenge a minion build.  Was a bit hairy with the various uniques running around during the beginning, but after that, well, evidently my 7 Insurance Executives (Zombies) and 10 Philosophers (Skeletons) had a lot to discuss with the boss.  I'm really only there to replenish the army and firestorm anything whose death is behind schedule.

Merveil was much harder, the first time around.  Though knowing to stack cold resist by the time I faced her on Cruel helped a lot.

[Pepisolo]

Dominus's normal-diff encounter doesn't seem built to challenge a minion build.  Was a bit hairy with the various uniques running around during the beginning, but after that, well, evidently my 7 Insurance Executives (Zombies) and 10 Philosophers (Skeletons) had a lot to discuss with the boss.  I'm really only there to replenish the army and firestorm anything whose death is behind schedule.

Merveil was much harder, the first time around.  Though knowing to stack cold resist by the time I faced her on Cruel helped a lot.

Nice. I've actually got a level 30 summoner on the go which it sounds like I should really get back to. I'm presuming your coterie simply tore apart the second form of Dominus in double quick time?

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, the second form was something of a non-event.

[Pepisolo]

Yea, the second form was something of a non-event.

And my first hardcore char ripped to the guy... minions OP! 

[Aklyon]

Ah, firestorm. Thats probably my favorite skill in general, followed by arc (more directed than firestorm but otherwise about as good a support with minions), glacial cascade (not good with minions since its an ice spell, but pretty fun with cold snap and/or herald of ice), and reduced duration lightning warp.