Consolidated feedback after time in T15 maps - general, controller, mapping

I did my first post just after finishing the campaign playing fsf* (friend self found, no trade or currency exchange throughout the campaign with one/two friends along the way in coop now and then)

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3754104

This is all feedback following the last week in maps, currently running around in T15s, still hunting corrupted Nexus. Found 2/3 citadels. 2 points in breach tree, 2 points in expedition tree, 22/40 base atlas points, currently on T8 nexus. Earning boss points was totally unclear to me, had to go look up an article after I realized I wasn't getting more for some reason - should probably be quests.

For reference, accidentally wound up playing the meta build of the season, LS Amazon, wasn't intentional I swear :V

Playing on steam, controller, top end pc, big tv, UI set to side of screen if any of that matters.

Once I hit maps I started using the currex, still not doing base item trades (not really an intentional challenge to pseudo ssf or anything, I just don't want to interact with the incredible jank that is poe trade on a controller, let me know when you can seamlessly switch between mkb and controller :D)

Anyway, feedback and notes, this will be really scattershot, as these are just little notes I took along the way while playing, stuff that stood out as irritating, or controller specific issues.

General Balance

Echoing what I said in my campaign notes, please do not give up on difficulty and challenging content. D4 (and now LE, after playing the latest season) are just zero friction experiences. Plenty of people enjoy that, I do not. We don't need another clone where loot rains from the sky, bosses die in one hit, and normal mobs can never kill you.

With that in mind, a specific mapping complaint: Infusing delirium is one of the best ways to scale endgame difficulty right now - please consider moving this functionality to the atlas tree. Playing endless delirium infested maps gets really depressing, even moreso given how many beautiful maps there are, covering them with a fog and constant annoying whispers just makes for a really unpleasant mapping experience.

Speaking of mapping, I don't think locking a bunch of maps to the citadel 'biomes' is a great idea right now. Maybe in a year when you have another 50 maps in the atlas, but right now, I'm really tired of running Hidden Grotto and Decay over and over, when there are a bunch of other maps I'm only going to see a few times in a week next to a citadel.

Random notes

Biggest annoyance of the patch: Checkpoints. This carries over from 'getting around is too slow' in the campaign and wanting an out of combat sprint. Checkpoints are straight up not doing their job. See:

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/577638605502021710/1361476213029343532/image.png?ex=6806ce08&is=68057c88&hm=02ffa29c7363976db2fa07c268b671061ae88cda60b824546114a7395e8b588b&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=2994&height=1685

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/577638605502021710/1361487695724937517/image.png?ex=68062ff9&is=6804de79&hm=1b1720bb7ac90144dd767bce5d02eb66d0f426e70791b355a69d0fc96b1650af&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=2994&height=1685

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/577638605502021710/1361496086279098398/image.png?ex=680637ca&is=6804e64a&hm=457f46fcc48badef62ca20e9f9b4a9ac227a2937ce97c454d2d4710d3594377e&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=2994&height=1685

etcetc, you get the idea. This stuff happens all the time. Checkpoints need a much larger activation range and to be shared with coop party members.

The activation range in particular needs to be like, more than the entire screen, so you ALWAYS activate nearby checkpoints. This still won't fully alleviate situations where there's no checkpoint nearby and you have to schlep your way over to one, but it would at least avoid the absurdity above where you clear a map, there's one rare/boss left, and you have no viable checkpoints to speed up the process.

Larger feature ask: Please implement a better method of interacting with waystones directly at the map device. Shuffling between stash and map device was horrible UX in poe1, it's even worse here in poe2 on controller. A means of storing a battery of maps in a map stash directly on the device would make mapping so much smoother. Telling a friend they need to regex their stash for quality/rarity maps and set them aside for later is madness.

Please add some place that shows all current and required stat levels - ideally on both the main inventory screen and the passive tree. It's really annoying cycling between inventory item by item, and the skill screen and the character screen to figure out what stats I need.

Weapon set points remain unused, two patches/leagues in a row. Neither me nor my friends. I get the idea of them, but outside either a) having an offhand curse stick or b) an offhand parry stick (which would be super dangerous due to swap delay), I just can't be assed to deal with the amount of UX fiddling this requires. It probably will enable interesting builds down the line, but again, actually interacting with this system is unpleasant as it is currently implemented.

Visibility on some maps is really bad, the clutter makes it hard to spot viable movement paths, and hard to spot dangerous enemy effects. Worst of all, some enemy effects seem to actually be concealed by foliage or other clutter on maps - e.g. the Decay map or Blooming Fields, places where chaos orbs can chase you under plants etc.

Slams need better telegraphing. Some are slams. Some are aoe slams. Some are very, very long linear slams. All of these cannot be parried, all are deadly to evasion builds, and none clearly indicate what type they are. Some type of area indicator as the slam is charging would help, some indicator if it's a long linear slam. Or straight up remove long linear slams from trash mobs and leave them for magic/rare mobs or something. Whatever the case, these were, by far, the number one source of death for our cadre of Huntresses - until you go acrobatics or ES, they're just absurdly lethal. They also make parrying feel incredibly bad.

I can't tell if there's no grace period on portalling? I've died at least once returning through a portal due to mobs that moved during the transition between hideout and map, and I was dead before I could react. Might be a quirk of 'always moving' on controller?

Rhoa mount heavy stun handling is annoying, it never depletes. I don't know if this is a bug or not, but it requires getting off and back on to reset it - if you forget, it may be a lethal mistake.

Shroud Walker needs sfx/visuals. Right now it feels like the mob is just desynced.

For clearing Corrupted Nexus maps, unless I missed it, there is 0 indication you need to run a minimum 4 mod map to do so. I thought it was bugged until asking in chat. Needs a clear tooltip/quest note.

Related, there's no quick indication on a waystone of how many affixes it has, and since nexus and towers both care about this, it should be clearly labelled.

More waystone affixes adding waystone drop chance instead of suffixes adding quantity/rarity feels absolutely crazy to me. You can get a map that has 50-75% more monster health and your reward for tackling that is a few % more waystone drop chance, totally divorced from quantity/rarity/xp/gold/other rewards.

The +1 level to map mod from cleansed/corrupted maps is important, and annoying to look up, please add it as a visible indicator on maps.

Unique maps could use better visibility from fully zoomed out map view in general, a glowing highlight etc.


Controller specific issues

General top to bottom controller complaints

Please allow full arbitrary rebinding of functions to whatever buttons I want. Without a multi-paddle controller or out of game software, it is impossible to set up physically comfortable setups for higher button builds.

I've completely given up on double-binding the use button to a skill. Please go look at how D4 handles picking up items/interacting with objects with a double bound use button, it's way, way, way more comfortable there, bad enough here that I've sacrificed a limited skill bind button to ensure I can actually pick up loot comfortably (it's infuriating trying to play coop with timed loot on controller with an mkb friend in combat).

Speaking of double binding, with no way to automate mana potion usage, I have L1 and R1 bound to health/mana potions. Left/right dpad is madness, you have to take your thumb off the movement stick to use those, that's death in any challenging content. L2 is swap panels. O is dodge. X is unbound from any skill. This means the sum total of available skill buttons I have without holding L2 is 3, Square, Triangle, R2 (and that's not considering using parry or block!). Holding L2 adds X to that list, so on a controller with 4 face buttons and 4 bumpers/triggers, I have 7 comfortably usable skill buttons, 4 of them requiring an L2 chord.

A means of automating potion usage on controller would free up R1/L2+R1 - you can theoretically get away with dpad directionals for mana since it won't outright get you killed like a delayed potion usage, but it's not great.

Having L3 and R3 hardbound to show items and... show xp? I guess? Feels like a real waste, I'd rather have those bound to health/mana by default if anything (I'd still use l1/r1 purely for comfort reasons, but at least it wouldn't require moving hands off sticks to heal/mana pot).

General control rant over, other stuff below:

Adding an optional 'skill ready' popup and/or glow to the skill tray would be really nice to avoid constant 'skill not yet ready' voiceovers and button mashing (especially annoying if said skill happens to be on your L2 chord bar). Add an option to have the icon pop over your head onscreen, and/or have the skill on the tray flare and glow when ready would help a lot with skills that have short cooldowns but can/should be used constantly.

Instilling maps from the Delirium tab is impossible - if you use a distilled emotion, it brings up the instill menu with no way to add emotions. Frankly the entire process is just annoying on controller, you have to open the menu (which does *not* add a the emotion you just used), add the map, add the emotions, instill, then manually extract the map. Just way too many steps for something that should be quick.

Scrolling the info pane on the advanced skill info goes by a full page, instead of smoothly scrolling. Consequently I couldn't read certain info that always scrolled out of sight on certain skills without resorting to a mouse (non option for console players I'd assume)

Using currency on other currency should activate the other currency type instead - currently transmute/aug/regal is a fiddling and annoying process, please at least let us press use on an aug while a transmute is on the 'cursor' to activate the aug.

Holding L3 to view ground items does not allow you to use R3 to scroll which item you want to pick up

Constant annoyance - while viewing a skill gem, pressing R3 to view details, please default the position to the skill gem tabs, not the most topleft skillgem tag

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/577638605502021710/1363668681342586950/image.png?ex=6806deed&is=68058d6d&hm=a1d005176d9f65bba24584ea157500c7033ee6f1d37556a3e3372cb2a2966526&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=1118&height=945

In basically every case where I'm looking at a gem, I want to see what the different tabs are doing, I don't want it to default to the 'AoE' tag in the top left

Similar annoyance while moving between inventory and Currency stash tab, moving left from inventory will move into the first open slot on the bottom 'slop/stash' space on the currency tab - don't want this! 99% of the time I want the top currency area selected for crafting currency.

Pressing Start then R3 to view debuffs, it would be nice if it auto highlighted a buff/debuff by default, right now you have scroll past every skill to reach them. Sometimes it *does* default to highlighting the buff bar, but not every time, I can't figure out when/why. edit: Think I figured it out, inside maps, it defaults to highlighting the 'content' on the right side of the screen (ritual, breach, etc), instead of the buff/debuff bar, which is not what I want as the default!)

Adding some means of marking a set of 'I'm gonna keep/use this currency in my inventory' and a button to move all other currency to stash would save a ton of time and be a big qol improvement for mapping. I carry around a small set of currency to quickly interact with map items (strongboxes/essences) and quickly craft and test good crafting bases, everything else goes in the stash when I get back, and this is a slow and manual process on controller.

Minor bugs/quirks

If you use the instilling menu for delirium, you cannot view nested tooltips, which means you can't see what 'Toughness' does

Salvage bench does not respect the 'right stick goes to appropriate item' as currency usage does. ie with an Exalt on the cursor, right stick will bounce between items in your inventory you can Exalt, but with the salvage bench open, it does not do so for quality items in your inventory.

most of your controller issues are you just being impatient...just cancel a currency to use the next one, the cursor doesn't move so it would cost you less than half a second.

also instead of mapping potions to L1/R1, how about improving your build so you need flasks less?

you should have L1, R1, R2, Square, Triangle and a dpad or two open for skills, then L2 for some extras (if needed)