River Hag in Drowned city insta kill

It seems to me like a bug, she casts two spells, one slows you down and other drains very slowly hp, but when you are caught in both of them at the same time for 3 seconds (especially when there are 3 of them), HP goes from full to zero instantly.

That's not a bug. One of the River Hag's spells are the drowning orbs that first appeared in the Eater of Worlds boss from PoE1.

Your character gets a drowning debuff with a timer whilst inside one of the orbs. If the debuff timer hits zero (about 3 seconds), it's an instant kill.

Damn man i'm so sad I just got to where they appear at 41 in HC SSF and figured I had enough ES none of the bosses were even removing more than half of my 2.3k ES. Honestly haven't seen any instant death effects up to this point I just stood in it thinking a white mob isn't going to do any damage lol
oh well now I know. Thanks

Agreed. It's a gotcha mechanic, and a lot of POE players have pride and ego they flaunt when they see people getting unfairly "knowledge checked" by it. I wouldn't be surprised if you see people come in hot like an ego warrior about it if you try to convey your point. There is unfortunately little compassion at times.

I could understand if this was all due to a reasonable damage calculation or some communicated mechanic, but this instant-kill mechanic with no tutorial or explanation like a sadistic trap for adventurers who don’t have prior knowledge. It is designed in a way that solely ruins the gameplay experience.

It’s entirely unnecessary. You have people that rationalize it by saying it was part of some epic "boss" mechanic in another version of the game. Yet it's a small water bubble from a normal monster, which seems like it's no threat and to just slow you down, that will instantly kill you out of no where. From what? Drowning in a few seconds? The character doesn't even have to be inside the bubble of water. The tip of the character's arm can barely touch it and that somehow equates to drowning? Even older games from tens of years ago were more evolved than this.

GGG, what were you thinking? Or is your team unaware how long it takes for a human to remotely drown? In what world does this make sense? Are our characters not human? I’m certain we created a human character during character creation. Humans do not drown in 2–3 seconds. This mechanic lacks integrity, not only in its design but also in the lack of response to reported issues, which have been raised repeatedly for over a month.

This level of neglect is incredibly disappointing. I would rather take my Hardcore gameplay to another game entirely because I can no longer trust a system with such arbitrary, predatory mechanics. It’s already enough to deal with the unnecessary “after-death” explosion mechanics, where a significant number of monsters are somehow more dangerous after they’re dead than when they’re alive. To then add mechanics like this, which are utterly unfair and poorly designed, is entirely unreasonable.

It's sad to see this happened to you. I'm sorry to hear and see the hours wasted that you and others put into your characters. It's rather cruel and unusual treatment for a game company to not care about hundreds and hundreds of people investing tens of hours in their characters just to lose them without fair notice or indication. At the very least they could just change it to start doing some damage over time (like most games do) after you start drowning. Being a "gotcha mechanic", the only way to really know is to unfairly die to it randomly and find out yourself. In order for it to be generally fair (especially for hardcore players), there needs to be a clear disclaimer in the game saying "we have and will put random stuff in the game that kills instantly if you haven't first figured it out yourself."

The River Hags can be quite dangerous. They can cast the drowning orbs right on top of you and you can have more than one of them cast on you at once. You can also have multiple hags in one spot, including rares. Even the white mobs are fairly spammy.

A couple of times I was trapped on the (seemingly flat) edge of the Drowned City map by this and could not move or roll to get away. I had several seconds and a slow charm, but couldn't get unstuck.

Having the orbs cast UPON you may be a little unfair, especially in a hardcore context.

It's incredible how they nerf the giant skeletons falling on you and 1 shotting you after a 2-3 second animation, and they nerf a bunch of after-death explosions, BUT they DON'T NERF THE RIVER HAG 100% INSTANT KILL. Terrible integrity; just because some developer of theirs or something is obsessed with the River Hag and feels empowered deleting people's characters.

I haven't played poe1 and wasn't familiar with this mechanic. Playing exclusively on hardcore because I don't get any fun otherwise. I lost two witches, the last one at level 76 and decided that I would create a warrior with a lot of health, energy shield, defense and health regeneration. Imagine my surprise when after defeating the final boss of act 3, where I didn't lose even 10% of my health, I experienced instant death in the first cruel act.

I understand that it is against their policy to return the character back to the hardcore league, but otherwise I personally am not going to return to the game and I think I'm not the only one. It simply takes too long to get back to the endgame and there is no guarantee that another bug or absolutely crazy mechanic will not take away your character.

Thanks poe2, it was a wonderful 140 hours :)

Message to the developers: Please consider removing this instant kill "mechanic" from river hags. The game deserves better. Thanks.