Remove Devouring Orb Mechanic

Why does the Eater of Worlds have an insta-kill mechanic that can't be countered with spells? I'm playing a melee spell build and I can tank absolutely all of his hits. I have 30m DPS and I can't kill him because he literally has 5-6 Devouring Orbs on top of him, making it impossible to hit him. Those fucking orbs always end up killing me because spells don't push them away. It’s absolutely unfair that an attack can do it, making the boss trivial, while a spellcaster just has to run away from the fucking orb the whole time.

"The moving Drowning Orbs in the arena inflict a debuff called "Drowning" on contact, which causes an action speed slow and automatically kills the player after 3 seconds if they do not move away in time. While facing away from Drowning Orbs, they will slowly float towards the character; when facing towards them, they will back up a fixed distance away."

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Eater_of_Worlds

Not a huge fan of the mechanic in general. In POE2, they have them in just regular campaign zones. They have to find ways to mods that will be challenging I guess. Not the best way to do it in my opinion.

I know what the debuff does. The problem is that if you touch it, you can't even walk out or use a dash because of the stupid amount of Action Speed reduction. The issue is that a melee character attacking from a standstill gets pushed away just for existing, and spells don't hit him.

Honestly, it’s one of the mechanics I hate most in the game, and I’ve been playing since 2017. The game was fine during that league when it was new, but it’s been what... 4 years? If you don't one-shot the boss with a spell or kite him from range, it’s insufferable. I can literally do all the Uber Bosses practically AFK with my build, so this is just a general complaint. That mechanic needs an urgent rework.

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V4LK1#5841 wrote:

I know what the debuff does. The problem is that if you touch it, you can't even walk out or use a dash because of the stupid amount of Action Speed reduction. The issue is that a melee character attacking from a standstill gets pushed away just for existing, and spells don't hit him.

Drowning Orbs are one of the slowest and most obvious "traps" the game throws at you....perhaps don't be greedy as a melee character and stand in one place? The fight may take an extra 30 seconds if you move around, but you won't die.

And you can absolutely blink to safety before you die. You just have to be quicker and more aware of the visual cues. Pre-nerf drowning orbs in t17s were far more frequent and even those were entirely dodg-able in juiced content as a melee character.


There's no rule that states you should be allowed 100% dps uptime on all bosses standing in a single place. Some bosses are more friendly to melee than others, but that doesn't immediately make non-melee friendly mechanics BAD mechanics.