Scaling is an interesting thing, I’ve written a lot about the concepts in gaming. Most ARPGs tend to have a weird mix of them, where monsters appear linear but are actually exponential, and players appear linear but are actually logarithmic bumps. The math behind it generally results in you either feeling good or bad about your power level. You feel strong being a level 50 taking on level 1 mice, but feel week taking on a level 60 boss, right?

Ok, real hard tangent for a minute. Taxes are math. When you’re young, taxes are pretty simple. When you get older, taxes can get hard, man. There’s an actual profession for it! The goal of taxes remains simple enough, people pay their fair share for common services. Now, everyone has their own definition of fair, and that’s why the complex math exists. Your emotional reaction to fair has a major impact.

ARPGs use this model, where some content feels fair and others do not. Some encounters feel good, and others on the exact same map, feel punishing. Why? There are a couple reasons here, and they boil down to mechanics and math.

Mechanics

Enemies have their own methods of attacking you. Some burrow, some fly, some are melee, some are ranged. PoE has some rather insane enemy variety to parse, and they are generally visually distinct which helps. Mods though, mods will do you in. A monster with a hp/mana drain effect and can only be hit while being next to them is, for most players, an immortal enemy. Again, all the deadly ones have a very obvious visual clue.

Some events are more fun than others, mostly due to their mechanics. Having a ton of spawning enemies is generally manageable. Having multiple rares spawn at the same time – that is extra spicy. Breach, Expedition, and Rune events can cause this, with minimal warning. The net effect is that while you’re pushing maps there are certain events you will absolutely want to avoid, simply because the mechanics themselves are too volatile. Delirium certainly feels like hard mode if you get all the way to the boss and get a double spawn, as the difficulty in the map actually gets harder as you go!

Map bosses have their own amount of fun with generally a fair share of AE mechanic to avoid. With only a couple exceptions, there are few 1-hit-kill attacks so you are generally provided ample time to avoid a big hit. The effects of a given map will impact a battle, but this isn’t specific to the boss but all content in a map. Arguably, the harder a map, the easier the boss as you will have memorized the mechanics by that point. Except maybe the psycho gorilla. Screw that guy.

Major bosses are a different matter – these are either end-of-act repeats of bosses or new pinnacle bosses with absolutely punishing mechanics that will kill you. And then kill you again. But then you’ll get it! And then die again. (Noting that every death has you lose 10% xp, but not a level. Ideally only try these bosses when you just leveled up.)

Math

This is where PoE2 frankly does most people in. Your damage output and taken is under a complicated formula. Conceptually it is simple, but the practicality is much, much different. A minor thing, like +5 damage on a glove could have a few hundred damage impact in the end game. Uncapped resists are just, well, wild when you look at the actual impacts on numbers. And there are so many intertwining systems, it honestly feels like a math degree to work it all out.

In this space, hats off to frankly every other ARPG out there for having generally solved this issue. You can get to max difficulty in pretty much all of them without any help. PoE has a Solo-Self-Found (SSF) mode where you can’t trade. That should give you an idea of how much trading is core to the process of gearing. PoE2 has this mode as well, but has some controls to try and help here… back to a prior post on item drops.

The net effect is that by changing 1 piece of gear you will immediately feel the in-game effects. Making the correct choice as to which piece of gear to prioritize (99% of the time it’s your weapon) and what stats you want on it, well, that’s the true battle.

Finally a bit on the actual Waystone tiers. Maps start at 65 for tier 1 and go to 80 for tier 16. One level may not seem like much, but enemy stats scale with levels. There’s no damage penalty for a level difference, but the game expects you to be at a certain threshold – and item / mod drops are level based – so you will for sure feel a difference between tiers.

The net result is that difficulty in PoE2 is a combination of the Waystone tier, the mods on that Waystone/Tablet, the actual event within that map, and finally the RNG of enemy mods on any given enemy. That means the concept of fair at any given time fluctuates wildly. What an interesting model.