Supposing you could completely ignore the issue of min/maxing

Fortunately, PoE's skill tree does reward weapons specialization, with weapon-related nodes. That way, if you go sword, you dun have to feel quite so guilty for passing up on that killer mace in Greust's shop. On the other hand, you can play a DW 1H or 1H-and-board whore, and choose whatever ups your DPS.

Flexibility has its advantages, too. =^[.]^=

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Drizz't build? Shtick. That's shtick, pure and simple. LOL.

__

And that's the thing with PoE. With the right gear and mtxes, you really can indulge these inclinations provided you don't feel the need to do high-end content with them. If you're that worried about min/maxing, style shouldn't even be a consideration.

That's why I don't say 'could', I say 'do'.

You can have your cake and eat it too. Have min/max chars farming high end content to kit out your dream fantasy chars. Easy, really.

I don't know...

I want my dream characters to be able to do high level content. I would not mind building them for lower levels and play them up to normal/cruel, but the skill tree is huge and desgined for higher level play and there is only so much you can do outside of maps(there is only so much you can do in maps i guess, but since you will have trouble at high level maps, they give a reason to keep min-maxing and feeding your addiction). Also alot of interesting items have higher level requirments. Plus i always hated the design of dual weild in this game. I thought it was lazy. There is no reason to dual weild if you cannot hit with both weapons or combo in some way. But that would of course require much more work to balance it propably, since each skill would require attention seperately.

When i started playing PoE, and conceived the idea of my glass cannon(back then), risk/reward flicker striker, he was dual weilding for a while. I did not mind the constant dying and was determined to make him work, only to find out after awhile(did not browse the wiki or the forums at the time) that i was not loosing ANY damage by dropping one weapon. Was like WTF? And naturally, without realising, the min maxing proscess then begins without even realising it.

Also the game being isometric Diablo style, your defenses are bound to be RPG style and not action style, since it is next to imposible to rely on manual action based skill to survive. That's not a bad thing. It's what it is, but i never enjoyed it. You could never feel the blast of a combat rogue with an inner "30% chance to dodge". The thing that i always love on Dark Souls(which was even improved in DS2), was that the game allowed you to beat it(even on NG+7) with whatever weapons, armours and playstyles you prefered, given you played enough to develop the required skill.

TLDR, I always felt that PoE forced me into compromising my build creation in order to survive and to ultimately take full advantage of what this beautiful and huge skill tree has to offer, putting me in a min-maxing mind frame that i originally did not want to be in.

Edit: I might have quit for over a year now, but what i always enjoyed more than playing the actual game, and what i still do(even though very rarely), is to just open the skill tree and start designing builds and thinking about the items that could be used. I always loved that. If reaching fairly high levels and gearing sufficiently was easier(quite abit easier), i think i would actually be playing PoE for years. But as it is, it's just too much of a hustle, especially since most times your character will be a failure.

Ignoring min/maxing I'd be Yamcha and "wolf fang fist" everything from PoE to real women(if they want it tho).

Sadly Yamcha sux so I netpick my builds +- in PoE and live by the rules.

(sad story of my life)

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

...Oddly I call this Dark Souls...

Heresy!

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Ever since Lockstep went in, Poutsos, it's been more than possible than survive with manual action. I use WB as a manual dodge very happily. Oddly I call this Dark Souls' style, since a few hits will kill me, but I typically land enough viper strikes and chip damage with WB+Culling to clear packs before they can touch me more than once.

In fact, my great nemesis is The Tiny Bit Of Ground Debris Getting In My Way. It's the only thing that truly kills me pretty much every time I run into it.

You're right that the Skilldrasil's perceived generosity is hampered by the hoops the game makes you jump through to get those last 20 or so skill points. This is why, for better or worse, I build for 70-80 points. I strongly believe there aren't many builds out there that *should* need more than that to get up and running. After that threshold, it should be just about more of what you've already got, rather than game-changers. Of course, someone building to 90+ can think differently, but in my experience, MOST builds are doing their things by 40 or 50. Exceptions such as level-locked builds by way of certain uniques need not be considered there. There's no getting around that.

Well i do not really know about the lockstep since i have not tried it, but i can't help myself taking this solution with a grain of salt. Why? Because Chriss for years has claimed that this method(that is adopted by MOBAs) is not a good option, and the deterministic model works better for PoE. Was there a reason to wait 4 years of full desync rage from users to even try this method? And surpirse, judging by the feedback it works better.

I agree that 80 points should be enough for the core build, and the remaining points should work towards optimisation. However the "optimisation" seems to be needed in order to "win" the game. And even a character with a 80 points spent, and decently geared does take a significant time to build, so it's kinda tedius to even play the reroll game up to that point(especially if your chances of building a "failure" are pretty high). After all it is an ARPG of a fantasy setting. You have your hero, and the hero needs to come out victorious of an epic battle, or become a martyr of some sort. I remember watching my cousin with his lv93 marauder, full of legacy crap getting owned by merciless malachai. *By win i do not mean clearing lv80 maps in 2 mins, but to be able to fairly stand your ground and level up every now and then.

Your playstyle sounds interesting. I had tried to do something similar like 2 years ago, but using puncture instead, moving with flickerstrike around enemies to "assasinate" them, and using whirling blades to survive. I failed miserably, partly due to desync, partly due to me sucking, partly due to not being geared properly(despite having played for hundreds of hours already). This is part of the proscess that "forced" me into min-maxing. And yeah, after having mmirrored dagger, 6L op rares, legacy uniques and all that jazz, on around my 200th(random number) of farming atziri, i asked myself, what the fuck am i doing here? :P Quiting was easy after that.

As i said before, if the game allowed me to build a fuctioning, decently geared, level~80 character each month, by playing~5-10 hours a week without or minimal trading(and balance decisions made abit more sense-to me at least), i would be playing PoE for years, no doubt. But this is not MY game, it's GGGs game, and i have absolutely no right to demand what i want out GGG, neither means that what i prefer will make the game "better". Just better to me.

That's why i always drooled at the idea of GGG releasing a buyable standalone offline/lan client. This way through modding support you could customise the game to your liking(that was the main selling of Skyrim on PCs, which is arguably the most successful RPG on the platform), both in terms of drop rates, speed of build creation/experimentation and balance. And you could play through lan totally lag free with the people you choose.