That’s my overall take as well, PoE2 lost the feeling of limitless toolbox that PoE 1 had where you could be running a Berserker Blood Magic Physic Spell master with poison spec (random stuff on top of my head) crossing the full tree to get a specific keystone for an obscure synergy with an ascendancy nod.

Still a great game but I feel like the theory crafting part of it has been greatly limited. 

Completely agree.

“Slightly expanding treadmill” is perfectly apt.

But it’s kind of the worst of both worlds? There are so many skills, tons of support gems, mountains of passive nodes, but you can boil it down to only a handful of relevant synergies.

It’s simultaneously complex and constrained.

Yeah I was playing with merc perma-frost bolts, then picked up snap but don’t seem to have a use for infusions. Then picked up that bow cold barrage spell but can’t generate fragments… Feels a bit boring early on trying to find non-standard ways to play

Bone constructs from Unearther are another example of this.

They do a super cool thing where they absorb contagion if the enemy died with contagion. But that’s it, it’s be super cooler if you could have them carry ignite, shock or other ailments from the corpses that are used to create them.

They have really leaned in to the class based design. It’s evident just based on how they talk about the game themselves in press releases etc. It’s not crossbow skills, it’s “mercenary” skills. It’s not spear skills, it’s “huntress” skills etc. That skills are locked to weapons and then weapons are designed for certain classes really cements it.

Also the discourse around the game is very class based. I remember when someone said they were playing gemling mercenary and looking for tips and I asked them what weapons they were using and they just said “crossbows obviously” like that’s the only thing a mercenary could ever use. It was in 0.1 and quarterstaff attribute stack gemling was one of the strongest builds in the game(besides any es build obviously) but we are allegedly playing d4 and mercs can only use crossbows.

Yup I would say thats a weak spot of poe2. In poe1 you have so much agency on build making, can mix any skills to any class with varying level of success of course but the possibilities seem much greater

Everything feels like Diablo 3 generators+spenders

I think in a year or two this will be greatly improved.

I think there is definitely room to improve here, especially in the support gem realm.

Yeah it definitely has that feeling.

Granted, theyve done some great changes this patch, so im confident they’ll get to a good end result before release, but one issue at a time i suppose.

It looks like it’s going to get worse too. Ancestral totem now require 3 endurance charges to cast, eye of winter got a 15 second cooldown, cast on X skills got gutted early on, snap got a 4 second cooldown and that’s a payoff skill it requires set up to use.

At this point may aswell take away the second weapon set. Anything that might be considered spamable and OP is going to get conditions added to it. The pursuit of balanced combo based gameplay will eventually turn it into the most shallow game in the genre.

Yep. Since 0.1.0.

The first time I saw hollow palm I was siked to play pathfinder with concoctions and quarterstaff skills. But only unarmed AND quarterstaff attacks get bonuses. There is no way to combine skills from classes. Only passives and those….not so much

Agreed. I love playing hybrid classes. And I can barely hybridize anything in this game. It’s very very sad.

This is the one thing that will always make me consider PoE2 inferior to PoE1, I love everything else but man… just thinking about PoE2 builds make me fall asleep.

“Inter-class” means between different classes (equivalent to “Cross-class”). You mean “Intra-class”.

Infusions actually feel awful, I am playing spark and arc, I am pressing like 6 different buttons on single target running around all over the place picking them up only to end up doing less damage than I would just holding mace strike.

Fully agree. I was excited for the blackflame keysyone, fire to chaos. But it’s only for spells. So no more idea of crossbow or hammer-throwing witch

There’s practically no synergies between individual Skill trees in PoE2 due to the needlessly restrictive Weapon Type requirements on Skills.

The game would’ve been objectively and substantially better if each Skill supported multiple Weapon Types, of course with some common sense restrictions like a Ranged, Weapon Skill requiring a Ranged Weapon etc.

yeah. I mean EVERYTHING in poe2 is like this. all builds are predesigned.

weapon swap = apply big shock or curse, thats all it does
the tradeoff is that we are shoehorned into using only a handful of sklls with each weapon

the other funny thing is that poe2 already almost has as many skill gems as poe1 but it feels like a fraction because of how the game is designed,whatever weapon you pick you are gonna play half the skills of that weapon. Only solution here would be to add like 3 or 4 times the skills we already have to each weapon but theres no way this is ever going to happen.

I think limitations for skills tied to weapons is one of the biggest issues in the game atm, classes having a specific flavor tied to their tree isn’t an issue for me personally.. but if I wanna rolling slam with my wand and scepter just let me.

I do think it’s important though to look at what this patch’s goal is. They want to fix a lot of the class stuff at a base level. Mark himself said they wanted to dial in the archetype support better. So for them to get a solid base to then potentially build and expand complexity I think it’s kinda fine. Like for me there’s plenty of skills that are still either outright bad or don’t really do anything (im looking at you crossbow) and I’d personally want them to focus on making all skills good or have a function rather than making sure someone can make an esoteric build at this stage.

Yeah they tryna encourage weapon swaps hard.

But not much actually synergizes that makes sense.

I tried bow +spear both dex weapons. The spear basically combos all within itself and not much on bow that made sense to run with it. Aside from a few skills.

My takes too and I’m a bit sad about it.

I really want to love POE2 as much as the first but some design choices make it difficult.

I still enjoy the game but I dont know if in the long run I will play it over the first.

Generally I do think people get too nitpicky with some of this stuff but this one is spot-on, I agree completely, if I have one single major gameplay complaint it’s this. I DO feel like things are getting a little better as time goes on, but it has a long way to go. I will say this is one of those things i DO think it’s fair to call an early access issue potentially though; I want to believe they know but are working on designing classes to work well in and of themselves as intended and feel fun and powerful before they start opening the floodgates.

And as it is, stuff from this very update like Witch Hunter’s 100 weapon swap points + insta weaponswap feels like it could be its own dam-bursting for potential insane builds with ANY possible weapon combo.

Check back in a month when everyone figures out the best way to proc Lightning Rod using Weapon swap Galvanic Shards at level 24 to one shot the Act 2 boss 

Cause I’m sure people will find some nonsense way to take advantage of instant weapon swapping. We just got it 12 hours ago. 

Clearly a design choice. They want to streamline some parts to expand their target audience. Clearer ”classes” or rather ”power-pathways” for your character is easier to get into for newbies. 

PoE 2 is not meant to be ”another PoE1”, that’s why both games exist concurrently. 

Skills are indeed too specialized, contrary to what they’ve presented on earlier cons. They should abstract all these specialized interactions into support gems and let us decide how we want that skill to function.

Good example: Eye of Winter
It gets damage from ground effects, also, it applies critical weakness, completly specializing the skill in builds that uses ground effects and critical, and no, the skill won’t be good if you don’t follow this path.
Solution:
Abstract the Critical Weakness and + Projectile Damage on Passing Over Ground Effect into support gems and let us decide which skill we want to behave like that.

Another example: Snap
Why does it have to consume the ailment? What if i didn’t want it to do so? Like many consuming ailment skills? Let the skill trigger explosions on the enemy based on the ailment, and then let us decide thru supports if we want it to consume those ailments in exchange of damage or aoe or anything else. Sometimes (anytime) my 60% more damage shock would be better if it wasn’t consumed.

Minor gripe in comparison but also about unnecessary class limits I hope they change this as well, does Witch starting nodes really have to be tagged spell? I’m often rolling Sorc and Witch with bows, xbows, (and yes i was even testing molten blast on them at once point. I never got as far as testing blood mage melee though lol). I think the old starting sorc nodes (they got changed now) were straight up just pick your elemental damage sans spell, so it actually worked for bow starter. Stormcaller and gas arrow sorc were some of my favorites and they shredded for leveling. But Witch? I can’t even synergize poison bow with her chaos nodes bc spell tag and I would LOVE to do that. Shes stuck for a long time traveling to any non spell damage.

I know this doesn’t matter later once you get going, but for starting out, and just in general, it just sucks being told “you picked the X class, you cant just take generic damage at the start to do what you want, you HAVE to pick spell damage or minions only!”. Furthermore it’s just not very fair or mirrored with the other classes zones, like Ranger is just FILLED with Projectile nodes for days that apply to anything, even projectile spells, and that class surely isn’t magic caster themed, but you can level proj spell ranger fine, they aren’t held back. And that’s fine. But that’s why I’m arguing spell classes shouldn’t be so closed in with all their passives in their starting zones only reading “you can do x, y, and z… as long as its a spell.” It feels so dull taking nodes for nothing till you finally get somewhere else. Is that really how cross class creativity should feel on the tree?

It really goes to show how too good right side is and how the “proj” tag doesn’t hurt creativity as badly as the other classes tags because it applies to so many more cross class skills than “spell” and “melee” does. I feel like I can level so many more quirky builds on the right side than anywhere else.

Its because they are over-frightened at the thought of letting people have a good time

I hit level 20 and said I cant do this anymore and shut it off. Feels bad man

the whole push towards combos was a huge mistake.

its so forced, in poe1 everything came together naturally through creating your own build - now you really are on a set path and at the complete mercy of designers

(designers who dont seem to play the game in the first place, looking at further warrior attack speed nerfs)

Fully agree

Honestly with their goal of a more casual friendly game it kinda is a necessary. I think this is absolutely intentional with the goal of keeping power levels and power creep in a much more controlled state than it is in Poe 1.

You can’t have the freedom in build creation of PoE 1 while also being friendly to new players and allowing them to homegrow a build which can take on maps. This only gets possible when you restrict build creation. Let’s take last epoch as an example. You can totally come up with a build and tackle endgame with it. Sure you are weaker than optimized builds but because the potential for optimization is smaller thanks to less options the gap between a homegrown build and a optimized build isn’t day and night. Poe 1 in comparison is the total opposite. A homegrown build is miles worse than the optimized builds the community came up with over the years. You simply can’t balance this in a way where a beginner can make a build and take it to endgame while also not completely trivializing the game for people who play optimized builds. Restricting the freedom in build creation allows GGG to narrow that gap down.

I’m also much more a fan of the freedom of PoE 1 but this simply isn’t possible with their goal of being newcomer friendly.

This will age badly when people start actually theory crafting potential combos with instant weapon swap and trees. Give it a few weeks

I agree with the perspective.

Honestly agree. I didn’t do any crossover on my first characters and I was kinda excited to look into it on 0.2… very disappointed to find that most class skills are gated behind those specific weapons and didn’t do much with it aside from grabbing the shock Mark from ranger for my Merc and one or two Witch skills for my Sorc. This patch I’ve been considering using the extra bazillion swap passives on witchhunter to run some staff skills like possibly flame wall for the extra projectile damage but I honestly don’t think the juice will be particularly worth the squeeze.

To be fair. It’s only 0.3. a lot of stuff is still missing and we still don’t have a solid idea will eventually look like when the majority of content will finally hit the game. Maybe it’s my heavy copium cape, but I do think (or hope) that everything will make more sense in the long run and problems will be solved.

In the end we are all just beta testing stuff that’s already there. Complaining is fine, but some treat this game as a finished product.

Its like a more complex D4. Same issue just rather than 1 set of skills along a defined path, you have to plot your own path with the same defined skills.

End result is the same or worse due to not properly optimizing your skills.

You aren’t wrong but I also think this problem will be solved when we get the rest of the classes, spells, skills, and ascendencies. GGG has a very solid track record of constantly expanding on gems and gem interactions.

im wondering if the rigid class structure is to ensure that the classes feel stable until theyre all released. after that, its a skill free for all (hopefully pls GG)

I hope we get a Scion class like PoE1. It might not be the most efficient way to min/max a build/char but I always felt it allowed the most freedom.

Which part of the monk class uses power charges? Which ascendancy?

While it is limited, it’s still early. I’m.sure as time goes on things will diversify more

Currently I’m chopping this up to still being early. In the beta. 0.3 our of 1.0

A common practice in betas is to get the wackier our of line stuff tested first and peel back to something more normalized. Between the rough patches if trying our proper combo skills and not having every class and weapon type in the game yet, I think a good deal of this will be smoothed our once every weapon and class is out there and even note of it will be fixed after the full rsotwr has had some time to be explored.

Knowing GGG they may even have a bearing solution in mind for it that they’re cooking up. Maybe they’re making jewels that can allow you to start at different starting points, or jewel nodes. Maybe they have beyywr pathinf in mind.

It still very much feels lime a wait and see moment. That said, it is something that does need to be adjusted

This is exactly my thought as well. Tried to forcefully use different weapon classes (because it’s simply cool) just to find out that single weapon combos are better and more streamlined.

Coming from LE, PoE2s classes feel… uninspiringly same-y. LE classes feel like they should, and I’m just not getting that in PoE2.

I am fine with things being a bit more limited. That’s what poe2 is going for.

But it’s a bit too restricted. What they need to do is open up skills to be usable on one or two more weapon sets (kind of like how hollow palm works now).

So let each skill work with 2-3 other weapons.

They have went the path of more traditional Diablo-esque classes.
Classes and skills definitely feel more locked and rigid compared to PoE 1.

Heavy focus on combo gameplay and prerequisites for skill to feel fine to press and all the synergy is within the same weapon skills. It does really feel like playing a WoW class sometimes.

I prefer PoE 1 heavily to PoE 2 when it comes do the more open ended skill system.

There is some cross weapon potential but you have to look for it.

The biggest problem to me is how high level you have to be to unlock skills.

Level 50 something for the highest skills?  Unlocked ~after you beat campaign?  That is absurd.

So the leveling experience is linear, just due to lack of choice.

I think they still need to strike the balance between making casuals like myself able to homebrew and succeed (somewhat), and let players like you and most of the PoE 1 veterans able to create something more complex/interesting. Seems like they are trying to diversify things, and in interviews they say skill diversity is important. I guess it remains to be seen how they want to implement more “unorthodox” builds, since the strongest ones atm seem to be the ones that they essentially force you into.

I feel the same. However with this latest patch I’m growing increasingly confident that they are working towards making it what they want it to be.

We’re already seeing major overhauls to systems this early on. And they are listening to player feedback.

However I feel the same. If I want to go a specific playstyle I feel like mixing across different class abilities isn’t as viable as it would be expected to be.

Obviously there are afew exceptions. I’m currently playing infernal witch using chaos and the 100% fire to chaos damage perk now has me using more elemental skills than my occult skills. Outside of those two trees though, there’s nothing really I can take due to weapon limitations etc.

I mostly agree with your point, I always get excited at the idea of mixing up builds but it ends up so much easier to just go along the defined class pathway.

But I think that’s what they’re going for and part of the balancing,,,game is accessible for people to follow the predetermined path of their character but mixing builds starts to require a lot of investment.

I think as others have said they are working towards balancing the base game at 1.0 then will likely start to break the rules more.

im really hoping that their plan here is to make a rock solid set of base mechanics for each class and then allow for a huge amount of mixing stuff up later, but as it stands i completely agree with this sentiment and it needs to be voiced extremely loudly to make sure GGG doesnt forget or get to carried away with classes being hard defined.

Daggers will probably use powers as bows use frenzy and so does spear

Also supports enable you to use any charge

As for power charges - any elemental build can utilize them with https://poe2db.tw/us/Adonias_Ego in 2nd weapon set now, especially with instant weapon swapping.

We start in the middle, we should be allowed to path anywhere we like on the tree. Don’t force me to go around an outside circle to get to minion nodes from a warrior or ranger!

im ngl everything im trying to play its always raildroaded into like 2-3 different setups that are possible for each class, which eventually makes everyones build almost look exactly the same with a slight fariance

Agreed. I guess it makes sense, since their goal is to bring in new players and new players need guidance and guardrails, but it feels very constricting coming from PoE1.

This is pure speculation, but maybe their priority right now is getting the core gameplay stuff right, and getting the rest of the content into the game? They might shift to cross-class interactions once they’ve got the bulk of the skills into the game.

That feels logical to me, at least. The game has the fewest moving parts right now, which means this is the best time to do whatever sweeping reworks and experimentation they need to do to get the foundation right. Then they can build on top of that, then they can link everything together.

Yup, it’s by design. New PoE2 players talk about “I’m playing amazon” to say what they are doing (they mean spears). In Path of Exile saying your ascendancy doesn’t really tell what you’re actually playing.

Choosing my weapon and then choosing from a large selection of skills that worked with it was a huge part of my fantasy fulfillment when making builds in poe1. That is definitely lost in this game. Stuff like using a staff to cause an earthquake is one of the reasons this game stood out from other arpgs.

Personally i like that skills have effects that work with other skills

but i feel like it should be a bit “Broader” in scope. so let enemies cast wall of fire, so my whirlwinds can utilize that to deal more damage, etc.

That may already be the case but please more of it.

This is my number 1 complaint about Poe 2. In Poe 1 new skills and patches created interesting combinations that made the game exciting. This is impossible with the current restrictions on skills being linked to weapons.

That was my problem in PoE1 class having no identity, that’s why i prefer it like this in PoE 2.

the problem i think is skills branding from only 1 type of weapons and cannot usa with other. so it limited skill interaction with that weapon alone while in POE1 every skill can use with several type of weapon, even spell(bow spell). combining with ascendancy make it cocktails event better. Maybe in future when it out of EA and with all the classes and weapons then they carefully decide which skill is useable with how many weapon then it will be great again.

This reminds me of a time in school where we were tasked with designing a repeating pattern of shapes. One kid took a ruler and made four one inch lines that each connected, forming four 90 degree angles. They did this for an entire page, which took them ages. They were proud of it, until someone said it looks like they just made a checkerboard pattern (which they had), in a super time consuming way.

I feel like this is GGG with poe2. We’ve made things really complicated just to end up at “builds are simple, skill mechanics feel forced/shoehorned, and this is just builder/spender systems hiding under 9 different tooltips”.

I think it has it’s benefits, it makes the early game combat a lot less dull.

But for the most part I agree, I don’t think they should completely remove it, but just increase the amount of cross weapon synergies.

They could also add a pool of “wildcard” gems that are effectively skills requiring no particular weapon, kind of like the elemental spells are now but more broad.

Or perhaps some cross weapon skills that can use multiple weapons.

This has been my biggest issue with the game since day 1. It’s a design decision that is a fundamental step away from what is arguably PoE1’s most definable trait - its build diversity from skill agnosticism.

You have a very different opinion of that of PoE1 than I do, because I always thought that mix and matching skills between classes were just something that is possible on paper but ultimately superficial because the different classes cannot use certain skills as well as the other, e.g. a witch can use quill rain with toxic rain, but she will not be as good as the ranger classes because of the nodes in her proximity (I am just using this as a possible example, not an absolute one), and that pretty much just means that witch is better off doing something else and not try to force using that type of game play, even though it is possible.

Funnily enough, Blood Mage lightning spear bleed is my most played character build in 0.2, and LS is decidedly a Ranger or Huntress skill, not a witch skill.

I was excited for the sorc remnant thing. But the remnants themselves are tied to skills that have a long duration before they appear and like you said, very limited use cases.

Aside from firestorm using all of them, they’re all specific.

This is a single player game people play online.

they’re afraid of the players getting creative which was the main draw of poe1 for many

I feel this, especially with the update has actively gutted my build so I’m struggling on the Dreadnought WAY more than I already was. It’s like the devs are going OUT OF THEIR WAY to kill anything that can remotely seem strong, like EVERYTHING I had suddenly is so defunct that I’m getting soft locked in areas I actually was able to contend in.

I got the Blink gem to try and alleviate the issue, felt my maneuvering might be lacking, an the thing won’t even work!!! I’ve restarted the game, left and returned to the map, nothing. It took a WHILE for me to get that drop for the Gem, and it’s so damn frustrating that it’s literally a dud.

And I prefer the current system of PoE 2 way more. Also, it can be balanced better.They will probably make such builds viable in the future, but let’s give the power creep some time. That more concentrated skills for specific classes is something the PoE 1 hardcore community doesn’t like but is something the majority of casuals like, prefer, and enjoy more.

I kinda agree

Idk, between weapon swapping and weapon swap points, and support gems that can at least let skills consume power charges (idk about remnants I only play monk) you have the options but these are not early game options. POE wants every step of the journey to matter.

I do agree that the game is a very very slow burn though. From what I remember in 0.1 I didn’t even unlock some of the final skills before my first playthrough.

God, I thought I was the only onde struggling to make a multiclass build from the beggining of 0.1.

Good to know that are other people trying tk make this setup too.

All correct. I would add that often there’s such an excess of within-class synergy that when you’re doing the paint-by-numbers thing the game wants you to do, you give yourself carpal tunnel.
I’m playing Sorceress, in act 4 currently, and my only incentive not to use 5 (literally 5) synergistic skills to buff my main skill against bosses and tanky rares is that it isn’t fun and takes up all my skill slots. Then when I don’t, and try to be creative or have fun, the rares and bosses become a slog.

I don’t entirely agree that it’s as bad as you’re suggesting right now, but I also don’t disagree with your overall concern.

But. I think this is something where the game is still very young, and that’s part of it.

It’s worth noting that PoE1 has had years to implement overly strict mechanics here and there and then expand it out to be more flexible later.

Consider boneshatter in PoE1. It was released in 3.15 and for a long time it was just “ok I guess this ONE build gets to have this self damage scaling concept…”. 3.22 Trauma Support was finally released, and suddenly a bunch of other builds could try to do something like that. You could add damage to bleed or poison using self damage. Glacial Hammer (a nearly dead skill for YEARS) suddenly could kill Ubers with a 1-hander.

I think of what GGG is doing now in PoE2 is laying down foundations and ironing out mechanics. They are finding rules and balance for concepts in a slightly more controlled environment. And then when we have more things, they can start adding more exception cases or expanding the mechanics that work well.

Like the whole elemental infusion is a brand new idea they just slapped in. Do I wish it worked on the many ele skills elsewhere besides spells? Sure. But that can always be added later if they are super fun. But for now, people are already complaining about how annoying it is to pick them up. So why would they have added them to every class off the bat. That’s so much balance that has to be done without even knowing if the concept is going to test well.

They are still building the base framework of the game while trying to also make sure it stays fun and engaging despite like half the classes, skills, weapons, and ascendancies missing. I think a lot of the flexibility is being sacrificed for that at the moment. But I really think it’s going to get a lot more complex over time.

That’s what kills my will to play PoE2 actually. Since the beginning they have been taking player agency/ability of choices from the players.

Not only in what OP said but also other things like:

• inability to level skills with xp. We can level up skills in pre-determined areas in which the gem’s drop
• Cant choose which endgame maps to farm.
• In endgame you don’t work towards a objectives, while doing another. You need to choose what u want and u will get points for that and only that. Want to change strat? Do it again.

In PoE1 the thing that i loved the most was he choices…i could do what i want, when i want, if i want. But now from beginning to end it feels like “i get what they want, when they want, in the order they predetermined is the best so I don’t break game play.”

There are few stuff the could do to improve the usability of multiclasse.

One example: making grenade skills also Slam skills, that would open a whole branch of hybrid warriors/mercenaries.

I really hope they do something to improve the gameplay on this side, that would open a lot of doors.

I mean, I’m playing a blood mage right now and pathed over to Monk start for skill speed (and crit) and over to Templar/Druid start for life regen (and crit). I could, if I wanted to, start leaning more heavily into ice damage quarter staff skills to protect myself when I eventually get rushed by a mob of enemies.

You’re only limited by your own perception of the passive tree and the archetypes immediately presented to you. The only thing stopping warriors from playing a Mister Fister build with hollow palm is the number of travel nodes they need to take to get over to Monk. At the end of the day,

imo, we just haven’t had enough time with the passive tree to fully digest it, and make whacky builds that are still somewhat viable.

Very fair criticism. I think they are trying to find a balance between the free for all that is poe1 and the typical categorical structure of most arpgs. Hopefully they are able to cook up a nice inbetween.

Personally I don’t feel like it has to become as open ended as poe1 necessarily. That shit is amazing and would be super cool, don’t get me wrong, but Poe2 is a diff game and if they can’t fit that into their vision I can understand that. Tho like you said the slider needs to go more towards open ended rn

lightning rod change was a complete eye-roller for me. changes like that need to apply to all skills

I said this last league and people bit my fucking head off. I said skills were too class limited.

People responded “pOe WaS tHe SaMe! It also had skills limited to weapons”

Yeah… it did. But most of those limited skills were usable by 2-4 weapon types and not tied to class at all.

I mean, nearly half the classes aren’t available and more than half the weapon skill sets are also not available. It’s too soon to come to that conclusion.

Tbh, you can already play Monk with other weapons, which are the same like what you could in PoE1, PoE doesn’t really have skill combo or weapon synergy either, it’s just that you can use 1 skill with different weapons.

We are still missing more than half of the total skills, I’m not saying that it’s good, a lot of things feel like they are pushing me into a specific type of build with not too much variety but I have faith that with more things added they will fix that issue

Very fair criticism. You expect to find synergies when the league/patch is not even 24 hours old? Maybe things will open up more when you create another alt with the currency and items on your next run? That’s what I’m doing.

I mostly agree with you. I don’t understand why cold infusion doesn’t boost my ice monk skills. It’s super easy to get before like level 5. That being said it’s early access and I think a lot of it will be fixed with more skills

I’ve been dying this exact thing from launch. Since they have locked pretty much all skills to weapons, you can’t mix and match class skills. (Except for sorceress and witch). For a while I think skills like shockwave totem were weapons agnostic. But looks like they made that skill mace only, which doesn’t even make sense.

At this point why not just make separate isolated classes with their own skill trees? It is so painful to traverse to other class areas anyway.

To me, the core issue is really that abilities in PoE2 are designed to COMPLEMENT other abilities, rather than just standing on their own. That inherently also contributes to the lowered build diversity, because some abilities will simply complement other better - so why play anything else?

That then loops into what we’ve seen so far:

Players overwhelmingly play what complements each other the best -> it gets extremely nerfed and something else gets buffed and now that is played instead and we repeat.

blah blah blah yap yap ya

ehhh, poe1 has many of the same problems. it just happens to have more stuff so it’s harder to notice. i remember playing poe1 from the beginning, it spent a LONG time feeling about the same. it didn’t have as much class identity, sure, but you were still hard locked out of certain builds depending on where in the tree you were.

we would spend entire months or years in poe1 where all bow skills sucked, or all attack builds had to build tri-ele, or all attack builds had to build phys as ele, or all attack builds had to go 1h + offhand, or 2h just sucked, or 2h is too overpowered. even now, if you pick a skill to play, there’s a 99% chance you’re going to be using the same 5 supports that everyone else is using with it.

build diversity is an illusion, exile.

Don’t look at path of exile one on release bro there was like 2 builds that used power charges it’s going to take time

my monk skills synergize with my spear skills very well, but i know what you mean.

Though PoE is a pretty deep game and its very hard to say something is 100% certain, things just arent found out most of the time.

Yah I ran into this yesterday and was immediately reminded how limiting the skill system is.. I’m not playing a bow user, but I wanted to use the mark skill that makes shocks better. Even though the skill doesn’t shoot with a bow, I have to have a bow equipped to cast it?

There should be at least some skills that are not dependent on the weapon.

It’s early access, I think it’s great. How many builds in Poe 1 are unlocked by uniques items? A shit load. Let em cook.

This is what caused the massive downturn in world of warcraft. When they stopped making cool stuff you could use how you wanted and started building streamline ways of playing where your massively gimped if you don’t follow their path the game went downhill. From what I understand it’s rebounded a bit since then but it’s probably not going to get back it’s giant playerbase.

I said this on release for 2 and I got death threats for it on the poe2 fourms lmao

I wanted to try Trinity with the Elemental Infusions and got to level 22 today. It is an absolute pain to play for me. I have to mash 6 different skills to create and make use of these infusions. It is not fun. Way too many buttons for an enjoyable PoE experience, especially with cast times that interrupt each other if you queue a new spell before the others finished casting.

I really love the combat system from PoE2

yeah no

“but you can use the power charge support” no you cant. that shit is like 50% more damage but so much set up. that needs to be 250% and then its useful.

In order for poe1 to have more flexibility in skills, they have to deliberately add every ‘flexible’ interaction whenever they add a new skill gem, support or item. And the more skills/supports and items they add, the more it becomes bloated.

Its fun to theorize but its also a lot of dev effort behind the scenes to add all these interactions that may or may not actually end up being used.

So thats my theory why they’re moving away from ‘anything goes’ idea of poe1.

I quit early in 0.2 because of this problem, and won’t last long in 0.3. The forced combos, and forced use of multiple skills, etc., is just not fun. I would mix things up in PoE and found things that worked. Ya, maybe I wouldn’t get past level 90, but I didn’t care, I enjoyed it. There is no joy in the current skill system.

My feeling exactly too. I would rather remnants were instead just the 3 charges and we add a whole bunch of ways to generate/spend them with elemental skills. That would give it potential to have meaningful combo with other skills in other trees.

This feels like a function of them trying to create the depth of PoE 1 from the start rather than having it emerge more gradually from the development of broad systems.

That said, this may be either a design goal, or the result of the tradeoff of a design goal. They want PoE 2 to be more accessible. They want it to be a bit more straightforward in terms of making intuitive choices and having things work.

I think they can eventually get to a point where the core is robust enough with a broad enough player base that they can break down those stricter barriers a bit, especially toward end game. But I think, for now, it’s not an accident that the classes and skills are more siloed than in PoE 1.

And then you play Last Epoch. Is it easier? Yes. Does PoE 2 do some things better? Certainly. But in Last Epoch can you go outside of the combos and have fun building characters? 1000%. Combos exist, but you don’t have to follow them.

Last Epoch gives you alot of freedom. I currently have a Blade Dancer in LE with NET from the Falconer line as my primary attack, supported by Decoy, Shift, Smoke Bomb, and syncrhonized strike. Now is this optimized? No. But its working and fun.