Utility Skills

For a long time I have been wanting more utility skills in PoE. Things to use in between attacks that help you survive, are also attacks/spells themselves, but not main spells. A big issue with this is how the game requires focus on a build for current skills to be effective. Warcries can be awkward to use, totems aren't strong without investment, movement skills are "gimmickey". So for a long time I have been trying to think of ways to add skills that a lot of people could use, doesn't require massive investment, cannot be used as a main skill but provides useful utility, that players will want to use.

Finally got some ideas on how a few skill ideas could be inplemented. Firstly some restrictions- these skills have to be fast to use, so they can be used quickly when they are needed. Second is they need to be fairly strong without strong investment, so they can actually be used by many players. Third is they need cooldowns, to enforce they are utility and not main skill, as well as mean when to use them is part of the strategy of playing with them.

So here they are:

Warp Strike
Attack, Melee
Strike at your target with any melee weapon, doing weapon damage. If the attack hits, immediately teleport behind the target.

Skill to avoid an attack or get behind enemies. A great example of when to use is the Vaal Oversoul smash, time this right and you warp behind to dodge it. Cooldown would ideally be around 15-20 seconds or so.


Reflective Shell
Duration
Create a barrier of energy that shields you for a short duration. The next attack that would deal ~10% or more of your total [health + ES] gets reduced by [x + y] damage.

Intended as an "oh shit" button skill. x is a value that increases with gem level and pretty much nothing else. y is a value that is equal to your highest stat. Needs to be instant or there is no point, but the cooldown would be around 40 seconds. The "short duration" perhaps around 5 seconds.


Volatile Shot
Attack, Ranged
Target the ground and fire a shot that explodes at that location or if it hits an enemy. It then explodes in a small radius doing weapon damage and stuns all enemies for x seconds.

Made for bow/wand users that want to kite. x should be really low, 0.5 seconds or so. Only the radius increases (slightly) as the gem levels. Also it cannot pierce, otherwise targeting is the same as caustic arrow. Cooldown of around 25 seconds seems fair.


Maybe they could have a "Utility" tag as well, creating a new type of skill. Just I hope there is never many, if any, passives that boost them. The point is for them to be useful without investment and every passive that boosts them directly is some power you have to take away from their base value.

Anyway I hope these ideas can be used eventually! Game is great, but a couple more open options in combat would make this game so much better for me.

I like those ideas, but it will not be like anything that we can expect unless we get out of the "instantly kill everything on the screen" meta I'm afraid.
Because why would you use an utility skill, if you could have reduced all threat on the screen to ashes in a split second ?

Maybe for some boss fights ....
But yea, I don't see this happening in the current meta.

I wish the game would be less binary than what it has become recently though, really.

I agree. But part of that is because there was no utility skills, so you have to make a high leech, high damage, high AoE build. GGG have also already said they don't want to "arbitrarily" increase HP to make up for the increased damage players have gained.

Without adding tools first to make survivability more than just leech+kill, the only thing survivabiliy can be is leech+kill.

Good point.

But I find it still hqrd to implement given how much power / dps we can have at the moment.