Is versatility dead as a concept?

There are some ways and means of hybridizing reasonably effectively - the aforementioned Blade Flurry > Bladefall builds, for example, mix a physical attack and a physical spell with a pretty high degree of effectiveness - but the issue is that you only have so many gem slots, and only so many links.

Despite the 'one-button wonder' nature of a lot of builds, most characters are hard-pressed for slots. You deal damage with one skill, you move around and traverse the map with another, you have automated trigger skills for defense or utility. Auras, golems, the occasional utility secondary attack skill.

Trying to do the sort of thing I believe you're describing - switching from a physical sword attack build to an elemental spell build to a chaos build to a bow build to whatever-else - is going to be massively inefficient because you'd need to carry tons of extra gear with the skills for all those alternate sub-builds. You can't possibly fit them all on one character's worth of gear, and having to switch between alternate gear sets all the time will massively slow you down and seriously choke off your inventory space.

PoE isn't so much designed to reward overspecialization as it's designed to reward focus. Picking one thing to be really damn good at and finding ways to make that thing deal with all the things that might otherwise fox the thing is a stronger path than trying to be every kind of character in PoE all at once. A good example is, for sake of discussion, a Fire Sword build.

You can try and also include Cold Spells and Physical Bows in your Fire Sword build, but then you can't take sword nodes. Or spell nodes or bow nodes. Or fire or cold or physical nodes. You have to try and build a tree, and use support gems/utility skills, that cover all of those, and the broader something's effect in PoE is, the less powerful that effect is allowed to be.

Whereas if you decide from the start that you want a build that uses a fire sword, you actually have a much wider array of overall options available to you. Fire nodes, sword nodes, generic attack nodes, generic elemental nodes, crit nodes if you go crit. As well, because you're dealing only a single source of damage, you can utilize Penetration gems to allow that damage source to slice through its primary deterrent much more effectively, as well as the corresponding "Weaker-Against" curse (a'la Flammability, in this case). You can use flasks to mitigate elemental reflect to some extent, and because you're not using spells or spell nodes, you can ignore map modifiers and the like that bother spell builds. Whatever those may be.

There are combination builds out there, but they tend to be specific funky things that happen to synergize particularly well rather than a typical playstyle. One of my favorite theoretical examples (have never tried it, but always wanted to) was Earthquake > CoMK > Storm Call. Both benefit from similar support gems (Less Duration, Conc. Effect), and both have somewhat similar characteristics, so despite one being a physical attack and the other being an elemental spell, they actually mix reasonably well. Building the tree would suck, though, and the usual thing to reduce the suckage is to - and you're going to hate this - convert Earthquake to dealing Lightning damage via Brain Rattler and Physical to Lightning supports. Don't get me wrong, that sounds awesome to me (THOR BUILD HO, F*** MJOLNIR), but it's not really what you're looking for.

Commonality and synergy between Things is key to building a strong build in Path. You only have so many passive nodes to spend, so many gem slots, so many places to hang a piece of magic swag on your body. Devoting all of those things to reinforcing your chosen plan, rather than trying to spend each piece on a different one of All The Plans, makes for much greater power.

Not really any way around it. Unfortunately.

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Reianor wrote:

Where's the drawback of specialisation for crying out loud?

well, the entire reason you stated you wanted to go hybrid was to get around immunities. Those dont rly exist in this game in that sense but monsters can be heavily resistant to a given type of damage. Different mods in the map system that apply to whole zones punish specific forms of damage, specific forms of defense. If you are an evasion build who deals pure fire damage then you could roll a map that completely fucks you over by punishing both those things where an armour + evasion hybrid character who deals a split of physical and fire damage only has half their defense and offense effected.

The more you specialise the harder it is to find gear, you might find 100 rare 1h weapons but only 10 of them are daggers and only 3 of those rolled physical damage and only 1 of those rolled crit. The more you specialise the less skills you have to choose from.

Theres enough drawbacks to specialisation that if it wasnt as rewarding as it is no one would ever do it.

1 button game? Yeah, to some extent. Ultimately it is what you make of it and people given the choice more often than not go that route. I usually like 2 offensive skills, single target and aoe, then my other buttons are warcries, movement skills, curses, totems etc. Most people prefer 1 offensive skill so thats how they always build.

If ggg let's you get away with making builds that alternate between a bow and a sword and still be able to do end game stuff, then somebody else that actually specializes in bow would be able to make something too overpowered for all content. It's a balance nightmare so it's not gonna happen.

The closest possibility I could think of is to base around the Crown of Eyes unique.

For skills there are Spectral Throw, Lightning Strike and Frost Blades which converts your melee weapon into projectiles. Sunder, Ground Slam and Lacerate are semi ranged and scales damage based on your melee weapon.

Could something like this work?

109 points Inquisitor
bunch of jewels: Life, generic or lightning skill crit/multi, generic lightning damage, attack and cast speed hybrid affix

Wear 2x
Melee: 6L static strike with inc crit, crit multi, WED, Melee phys, physical to lightning




In Gloves: Arc, crit, crit multi, spell echo (+added lightning)
Auras: Wrath, Herald of Thunder with COH Assassin's mark
Rest: Rares with life/resist (ton of lightning resist).

(But then again, I could use Lightning Strike instead of Static Strike and also have my AoE skill)

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

Theres enough drawbacks to specialisation that if it wasnt as rewarding as it is no one would ever do it.

While IMHO there should be enough for people to get away without doing it at all.
The way I see it it's currently so rewarding that everyone does it. And that's just the opposite side of the same wrong.

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jeerinho wrote:

If ggg let's you get away with making builds that alternate between a bow and a sword and still be able to do end game stuff, then somebody else that actually specializes in bow would be able to make something too overpowered for all content. It's a balance nightmare so it's not gonna happen.

It's NOT a balance nightmare. It'd be a REbalance nightmare though if they were to try and change the game now.

But as a standalone concept the one and only way to balance specialised and non-specialised builds is by balancing enemy weakness.

Within your example that'd mean making a relevant part of the enemies so "resistant" to bows (that's a general concept, I'd don't mean a literal resistance, just some abstract mechanic that makes bows ineffective against them) that a build that has nothing in his arsenal other than a bow would actually find himself at too much of a disadvantage.

Also big part of the reason PoE builds are so specialised is because specialisation is all over the place. It's harder to find a general bonus than a specialised one.

You're just taking your first step away from your starting position and you're already focusing yourself.

But even in that kind of environment it's not the means that define specialisation it's the goals.

Anyone in this thread familiar with the first witcher game? It was full of specialised passives to take, but you took a wide range of those passives because you needed a wide arsenal to deal with various threats.

Goals define means and, from what I've read so far, the reason versatility has little place in PoE is is primarily the fact that it has little application in PoE.

But all of that is beside the point. We aren't making new games here, we're playing the ones we got.

P.S. Thanks again to various people who took the time to answer. I've decided to stick to something more focused for now to get more experience with the game before I try building something so unconventional.

One thing to potentially keep in mind is that you don't necessarily need to stick with the whole swapping-EVERYTHING bit to get the versatility you're looking for.

You could try running a 2H Melee character with a single-target melee attack and Spectral Throw configured for GMP AoE clear. If a zone doesn't like ranged (tight, choke-y corridor design a'la Cells and stuff), switch a Melee Splash onto your melee attack. If a boss makes melee a bad idea, switch GMP for Slower Projectiles or the like on Spectral Throw. Keep some spare auras in an off slot and you can switch between offensive boosts (Hatred and the like) to defensive ones (Arctic Armor, Grace, Determination, whatevs). You can also reconfigure flasks and keep a Physical to Lightning gem handy to split your damage types against reflect maps or such.

You have up to six 'spare' gem slots in an offhand swap, if you're not using your swap to fight. Use those. Keep some change-ups relevant to your build handy. Or if you're rich beyond your wildest dreams, get two good 6L weapons and a 6L chest and make use of your offhand swap to switch to an entirely reconfigured version of your skill. Some folks do that, though obtaining three high-quality 6Ls for one build is a bit...yeah.

You can't make one character with ALL the builds. But you can certainly tool up a character with one build to have some flex in that build. Once you get a better sense of how Path of Exile works, that'll become easier to see.

http://plays.tv/video/58b21fd095c6ef12d0/stuffs


thats a vid of a build using projectile spells, projectile attacks and melee attacks dealing physical, bleed, cold, fire and chaos damage.