Ridiculous looking endgame gameplay

I was looking forward to the Fall of Oriath Update for PoE and I'm definitely having fun with the game so far. While watching several Youtube vids though, I noticed a few things that bothered me.

It's first and foremost how dumb and ridiculous the character gameplay seems to be getting in the endgame.
In the vids I was watching, the char teleported/blinked/Whatever through the map with ridiculous speed, had an attackspeed of like 15 attack/s and was all the while spamming a single skill. It was seriously hard to watch and looked downright stupid. Just completely over the top.

Another thing I noticed was that in many vids the characters were built around a single attack, which was just spammed to oblivion. Skill cooldowns don't seem to be a thing in this game. I think I'm just missing some sort of skill rotation which you have to figure out in order to play your character efficiently.

I couldnt't tell how well equipped the char was etc. but please tell me this is not how gameplay will look in endgame...

So maybe don´t watch too many YT and play your own way:)

Btw wrong section .. it belongs to feedback/general discussion

most of those ridiculous builds have been significantly nerfed. Theres stuff stuff like flicker that moves you in outrageous ways and is very fun, but its not vaal fireball which I presume is what you were seeing. Ultimately very few of us play those sort of builds, you have to ask yourself what do u want from endgame? Are you a top 0.001% player who is only focused on leveling to 100 as fast as possible to win the ladder push in a new league?

Cause the rest of us do stuff like pick up items, craft, trade, play a variety of builds, farm hard bosses, enjoy ourselves... all these other things that someone just charging down a straight line map doing vaal fireball for 12 hours a day to level rly fast is not doing.

Ultimately while its possible to play the game like that for a very small minority of people, most of those who can dont. To the question, for 999 out of 1000 endgame players no, endgame looks absolutely nothing like those videos.

Also, you can play more complicated builds if you want to. It isn't optimal in regards to xp and loot per hour, sure, but it doesn't really have to be, there's no hurry.

POE is generally considered one skill game because in most builds you have just one slot for 5-6 link a skill which is the end goal. And in the builds that allow for dual 5-6 slot it gets expensive as fuck to gear 2x 6links.
With that said, in general you still use more skills, golems, auras, movement skills, curses, other procs, but yeah high end play usually involves maximum automation to provide the best clear speed and progression.

I'm bumping this thread, because I couldn't agree more with the OP! Most builds end up as a one trick pony with ridiculous attack speeds, which I find utterly boring to watch or play. Of course you can go for a (usually) less optimal play style and ignore everyone else, but it just not cool that these simplistic spammer builds out perform you in every way.. I also think GGG should dub-down on the skill effects a little bit. You can hardly see whats going in on in Team games with everyone bursting out 5 skills per second :(

At least there are the SSF leagues now, where you can do things at your own pace. And as a bonus you don't have to spend half the time trading and its easier to stop eyeballing that insane legendary gear that you will never be able get.

Most chars use 1 attack skill, 1 movement skill, 1 skill very rarely to bridge gaps and a few buffs that either have to be activated once at the start, or periodically from time to time.

So yeah, the game does mostly consist of a) press button to move, b) press button to kill, repeat. Then at bosses you also have to manage your flasks, which often means you just slide your finger over the keys 2-5 every 4 seconds or so.

There are even builds that have a permanently active attack skill or use triggered skills to kill monsters, those don't even have to do b).

Skill rotations are absolute poison and bad design. When you just have 4 skills you alternate through that is utter trash, just takes more keys on a keyboard and requires zero skill. Way more interesting utilizing flasks and timing skill when they are useful and not when they become "available" after cool down.

That is one reason why Diablo 3 was trash compared to d2.

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trav_dawg wrote:

Skill rotations are absolute poison and bad design. When you just have 4 skills you alternate through that is utter trash, just takes more keys on a keyboard and requires zero skill. Way more interesting utilizing flasks and timing skill when they are useful and not when they become "available" after cool down.

Disagree with principle on your first part - skill-rotation play vs. single-button play to me is the difference between

Baby, baby, baby oh,
Baby, baby, baby, oh!

and

You are my only friend,
Where is my loved one?
... Know you where she is?
My friend, ever faithful, answered
My friend, ever sincere, answered
She was your loved one,
She was your loved one,
She was your loved one,
But now she is my wife.

That's why I have so many frickin' synergistic skills on my SSF melee witch (WitchesGoneWild) that I actually have to click on my skill bar regularly to swap out two of my skills:

LMB - Frenzy - Faster Attacks - Fortify; for more damage and more defence
RMB - Wild Strike plus a buncha damage links - main damage skill
MMB - Golem summoning - must resummon Ice/Flame as needed, and on Insulated maps, need to swap to Fire Trap to have Burning to use Immolate on
Q - Orb of Storms - PCoC - for additional damage (Wild Strike is a "Lightning Skill") and greater procs of Elemental Overload
W - Elemental Weakness - indispensable on most of my builds, to have a curse for offence/defence
E - Ancestral Warchief - for moar damage and again Burning for Immolate
R - Enduring Cry - +16% PDR is amazing; at a minimum (0.97)/(0.97 - 0.16) = 19.75% more EHP vs physical here, that's equivalent to +1000 net Life
T - Leap Slam - standard movement skill to bypass monster blocking, cross gaps, and bypass Tar/lab traps

and she's level 89 (44% to 90) after 3 days 11 hrs /played.

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But I agree with you that cooldown-based forced rotations are a little, well, forced. Kinda awkward.