Crucible Difficulty Scaling is unhinged

Wicked Feedback
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1

Right now, the scaling of difficulty on Crucible is simply impossible to play.

At level 18 I was going into the Crucible to try to beat the boss, my build was OK, not super great, and I was still managing to hit the last boss every fifth to seventh run. Which is great, difficult, but most of the time I died because it was my fault, not even RNG. So I was compelled to try again and again to do better.

Now, at level 24/26 every little mob takes A LOT to kill, I have over 500 armor, over 50% resist on everything (using mesh armor and gloves), all items level 11 or more with sinergies. And still get stomped. Less than 5 hits from a common mob and I am dead. And the crucible is notorious for having swarms of enemies so its really easy to get hit constantly, also enemies that bodyblock, grab, push, etc.

I played at least 20 or more runs, and couldnt get past the 3rd map, my food stock is over and I already had to repair my armor 3 times because of that much dying. So back to grinding for food.

So now I dont feel really compelled to try the crucible because it feels like its not my fault, but its an artifical difficulty that is simply impossible to beat, or it will take so much time and luck that it doesnt feel like I did it myself, and got better, just got lucky with the echoes, for example the one that can kill enemies with a 10% chance per hit. When i get that i gets a little easier, but it just takes a single big mob to stagger me and I am 100% dead.

So is this a wanted feature? A simple stagger will kill you, in a 10 map, single life content? I belive that it shouldnt be at least.

2 Likes
2

totally agree i just get destroyed with a max build level 30 and super optimized maxed out gear

1 Like
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Interesting, I’m level 30 and I got to the last boss only healing from food three times. EK stomped me because it was the first time i’ve ever fought it, but can’t say the mobs were a big deal

4

what is your build?
i play dex str with a sword a spear and a scythe all maxed out but i cant get past the first 2 rooms at level 30

5

Get the 10% chance to intsakill mobs echo power and use some multihit skill. It’s a total game changer.

In terms of the crucible, at lv30 running a cloth mage the main threats are the knight mobs, the gloam goliaths, and the large abomination hulks. The nith pickaxe enemies also do a ton of damage.

If I get a room with lots of knights early without any echo powers available, it’s gonna be painful.

It feels very RNG. Some runs I get a ton of echo traces to buy a ton of echo powers and one shot the Echo Knight.

Other runs I get pain and suffering with hordes of knight mobs in narrow abyss platform fall to your death if you dodge roll maps.

6

The first few levels can be rough and very dependent on the map and mobs. But Echoes can absolutely trivialize the Crucible. You can get some extremely nasty builds going.

7

Faith, scythe, heal 10% hp on stagger, 25% extra damage on charged attack

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To prove i’m not just BS’ing, went in and recorded this straight after seeing this thread. Pretty happy as well, 2nd attempted, managed to get him off the lil horsey!

(don’t mind the odd colouration, just a byproduct of recording in HDR)

9

Meanwhile monk melee builds 3 shotting echo night in max level pestilence with max offering debuffs and ZERO echo powers from crucible.

Builds make and break the experience for people. If you get lucky with some rings and weapons, it completely changes your experience.

It certainly changed mine when I got band of calmness exalted+ 20% rune damage ring on top. If I felt like playing even more risky I got a snake ring for 20% extra damage if I’m willing to take 20% more damage. That’d be a 40% damage boost from just 2 items and excluding the 20% rune damage enchant on my weapon.

I bet a lot of people that are still having a bad time post-hotfix 3 just haven’t gotten lucky with gear drops.

10

I think the most important things to check before embarking on a challenge like the crucible are:

Gear

  • Are all my items fully upgraded/can only be upgraded with items I don’t have access too? (e.g. winged brood claw only drops after the last boss. ) If there are any items that have possible upgrades that you can farm for right now, go out and farm those mats!
  • Do I have three combat rings?
  • Do I have 4 positive affixes on full purple gear? are the cursed affixes extremely detrimental to my build?
  • If I can, are my items exalted or are at least very important stats exalted?

Attributes

  • Are my stats optimized around my current weight class? (your weight should be like 1 or 2 points under the threshold for the next weight class to maximize your stats in offense) In my experience, you can get away with investing much lighter than you expect into health and stamina as well as this game really seems to favor heavy investment in damage.

Runes

  • Do I have actually useful runes? I’ve swapped out tons of runes that feel like they do nothing and wound up with some pretty solid ones that help me clear A TON.

Synergy

  • If I’m melee, do I have lifesteal? (IMPORTANT)
    • Do I have some kind of AOE capacity through rune choice, infusion (lightning infusion feels amazing for my gauntlets ) or weapon choice?
  • If I’m ranged, do I have some bonus to focus generation/ max focus/ reduced focus consumption?

Food

  • Is my food relevant to my build and does it give the maximum HP possible? Unfortunately mushroom stew (while sounding very tasty) will not cut it for the rest of the game : (

Once all of these focal points have been resolved for your build, you should have a significantly easier time clearing the game, save for some of the harder enemies like Echo Knight and high pestilence lvl bosses. (and if you’re like me, bears. I suck at dealing with bears man.)

11

I understand the topic of improving gear in order of being able to tackle difficult areas, but the idea here is the scaling of the crucible, I am level 24/25, and the crucible is asking me to be a level 30, with a mega stacked build with multiple sinergies and everything minmaxed, the scaling feels wrong for me.

I loved the balance of the crucible at level 18, it was hard and it felt like when I failed it was my fault, or I had a bad RNG on the echoes, now its just impossible to even get a good echo build, because I am dead by map 1 to 3.

It feels right now that the crucible is doable at a lower level, but at a high level its impossible unless you have farmed for a hundred hours and min maxed everything.

IF that is what the crucible is about, then my complaint is wrong, but if its not, the balance is wrong.

12

Why you dont check what echoes you gain at the end?
And can you show your skill points build?

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I’m at level 30 and every other boss I play I can beat with light challenge on my tank shield build but the Echo Knight has far too much poise damage compared to everything else. Seriously, it’s too much for what the rest of the game does. It gives the false impression that my build is alright and that is the only one it can’t beat.

14

It shouldn’t take hundreds of hours of farming to flesh out a build. I have 80 hours total logged on Steam, and that is including the times I have played earlier patches of the game and I have two level 30 characters that have cleared all content in the game. I’d say it takes maybe 5 hours of real grinding to make substantial upgrades to your character.

As for getting better equipment as opposed to just upgrading it, you just need to farm for any 4-5 affix purple to drop, or 3 affix blue to drop. If you have been opening enough chests throughout your run I assume you have around 100 + fallen embers. You can use those to reroll every stat on your items to something that is useful.

I took the route of just finding a white weapon and slotting in 4 gems to make sure I didn’t miss lightning infusion, but as for defensive stats, a lot of them are useful so just roll the ones that are not. . If you weren’t aware already, all item stats come in groups, and you can’t have two stats from the same group on any item. This doc is massively helpful for knowing what you can and can’t roll for.

Also you probably know this, but your player level has no bearing on how strong you will be in the crucible as enemies are matched to your level. the only thing that matters is your overall build strength. If you are having trouble as a level 24/25, then in theory you should be having trouble in the overworld map if you find groups of enemies that are level 24/25. The only difference should be the type of enemies you encounter.

15

Because it was my 3-4th time doing crucible, went once around 15/20 to get the home teleporter, then recently got the challenge to beat the crucible 5 times so decided to give it another try. Basically I had no clue you even could check the echos. I forgot to even buy them until after the Senechal which I think says enough :smiley: Build is 42 faith, rest in stamina, hp and equipload

16

Can confirm! Just defeated the caretaker (took me 4 attempts) and was already on Max Level. Haven’t tried the crucible since the Breach update, but before the breach update I usually had a >75% chance to at least reach the Echo Knight on each run with a Level 24 character. But now, if I am lucky I make it to chamber nr. 2 and even the first chamber enemies are much harder than anything I can find in the outside world.

17

I’m just reading about the “difficulty” of the crucible and I’m amazed.
Farm up for an upgrade for leg nodes - it won’t take long.
That’s all - certain combinations make you unkillable and raise your damage to the skies.

One-shot the boss, with increased concentration and spending all concentration per hit.
You can collect 10%, 20% and 40% damage reduction - even in the cloth the boss will not do anything.
2% damage for every 15 kills. 1% for 100. Increases crit chance, crit damage.
Seriously, choose your nodes wisely

18

Neat monk build..
*Tho, seeing you burn all those items hurt my soul. Granted I didn’t see any Fallen Embers in your inventory, it only takes 3x of them to push an outbreak to T4.

19

Not my build, just a youtube video.

And you don’t want to burn more than 2 fallen embers.

Fallen Embers still got a ton of crappy pestilence debuffs.

If you burn only 1-2 embers and for the rest use sinews and marrows, you get a lot less Pestilence debuffs.

20

ah, that would be a good use for all the sinew’s I’ve collected (over 300 atm).

Still, the hoarder in me questions if that’s a good idea to use them.
*what if the devs put in something that uses the sinews as a currency!?

lol, it’s the brooms from Skyrim all over again. XD

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