River hags - Someone actually thought this was a good idea?

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schalander#6765 wrote:

This is the kind of design that just leaves me baffled—because someone at GGG, at some point, actually thought this was a good idea.

Riverhags appear in Act 3, in the Drowned City. They’re spellcasters that use an ability called Drowning Orb—a large blue orb that spawns directly on top of you, tracks your movement, and drastically slows you if you’re inside it. If you don’t escape within three seconds, you die. Instantly. It doesn’t matter how tanky you are—it’s a guaranteed death.

Worse yet, they can spawn in packs. That means you might have four or five orbs chasing you at once, cluttering half the screen. Trying to dodge one often just puts you right into another. Its not a huge problem if you are ranged, but if you are a melee with a slow attack animation, its hell.

Is it really good design to have a white mob that can one-shot you, regardless of your build? Apparently, someone at GGG thinks so.

This is exactly the kind of design that makes people rage quit and find another game to play.

I mean....WHY?

Yep, this is one of those design choices that makes the game worse.

No one actually feels like dying to this is fair. It's just a cheap gotcha mechanic that traumatizes the player into learning to avoid it. It's akin to the devs slapping the player for daring to play the game.

It's like "rocks fall, everyone dies" in ARPG form.

The biggest problem is there is literally no indication that it is going to kill you until you suddenly die no matter what.

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Velexia#1591 wrote:

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schalander#6765 wrote:

This is the kind of design that just leaves me baffled—because someone at GGG, at some point, actually thought this was a good idea.

Riverhags appear in Act 3, in the Drowned City. They’re spellcasters that use an ability called Drowning Orb—a large blue orb that spawns directly on top of you, tracks your movement, and drastically slows you if you’re inside it. If you don’t escape within three seconds, you die. Instantly. It doesn’t matter how tanky you are—it’s a guaranteed death.

Worse yet, they can spawn in packs. That means you might have four or five orbs chasing you at once, cluttering half the screen. Trying to dodge one often just puts you right into another. Its not a huge problem if you are ranged, but if you are a melee with a slow attack animation, its hell.

Is it really good design to have a white mob that can one-shot you, regardless of your build? Apparently, someone at GGG thinks so.

This is exactly the kind of design that makes people rage quit and find another game to play.

I mean....WHY?

Yep, this is one of those design choices that makes the game worse.

No one actually feels like dying to this is fair. It's just a cheap gotcha mechanic that traumatizes the player into learning to avoid it. It's akin to the devs slapping the player for daring to play the game.

It's like "rocks fall, everyone dies" in ARPG form.

The biggest problem is there is literally no indication that it is going to kill you until you suddenly die no matter what.

When you are in the blue orb there is a blue circle that starts to form on your screen slowly growing. This is letting you know you are about to die and you need to hit space bar.

How can you say there is no indicator that you are about to die? lol

Hags are why i started putting molten blast on my melee builds. (the projectile scooping attack)

another option is to have a weapon swap just to shoot them, even the basic arrow from a bow or crossbow does decent damage and you could put pierce or something to try guarantee landing the shot.

I don't hate the river hags, but I do find them baffling. The drowning spheres were a mechanic from the Eater of Worlds in POE1, a pinnacle boss, yet a white mob gets them here? I just don't get it.

I think it's still is one of the more interesting mobs, it simply stops people from the usual "I will just stop here and press Q till X monsters dies."


You see them spew blue glowing bubbles, you run.
But, I generally agree that it is really a PITA if you run a melee build that doesn't have at least 2.X APS because you would just fail to even land a hit and just get gibbed.

That alone is a tad OP for a white trash mob but you can't just say it's bad and shouldn't be in the game at all.

Since if all white mobs are just zombies then where's the fun at all? and then if all the rares are balanced in a way that is near godlike: ES, self regen and minion revival, I simply won't try fighting them at all either, I play ssfhc and that is the sh#t that I don't even want to attempt at all for the high risk low reward yield.

I see that I immediately just run back reset the area. that was it.
If it sucked, i just won't even deal with it altogether.

Right now, the problem is this: base attack speed be it melee or range is just too low and then to invest on passive to raise your aps is actually a huge sacrifice as well when gearing alone is not enough to raise your dps to acceptable levels.

the TL;DR: GGG still needs to go back and retune the base speed for everything, they stated slowing down mobs in areas case by case but the issue is mobs everywhere are still faster imo in every way than initial characters have. That's like a rigged game of wack a mole, where you are actually the mole instead.

I like the impact they have on how you approach a fight. Tbh, I wish there were more mobs like the hags who make fights more interesting.