Too much AOE in POE?!

Does anyone else feel this?

Disclaimer - I love POE. It's one of my all time favourites and there are so many nuanced, strategic, fun, and difficult aspects to this game. And the loot system/actual loot is epically good.

I've been looking for a new build to try recently, but most of them just feel a bit samey because it all comes down to 'click over here and this half of the screen in a cone/circle shape dies'. When I watch youtube streamers it all just feels like different flavours of the same cone shape or other giant splash radius.

I get that setting up a character to become that all powerful screen clearer is kind of the point of POE, and half the fun (and it is fun figuring all that out) - but when you reach those later stages the skills all feel a bit the same to use. Why? In my opinion there are too many ways to scale AOE - LMP, GMP, Fork, Chain, CoC, IncAOE, faster proj to name a few.

Sure I could play a melee build for that 'old school style' but it just feels weird when the meta is screen clearing without having to get close, and there are so many options to do so.

To compare to say the venerable Diablo 2 (rose tinted glasses on now pls everyone)...it had a couple of screen clearing skills. Lightning javazons could clear a screen too easily (and are the only comparable one I can think of to POE), but even a blessed hammer paladin would have to lock in place to create a decent size AOE. A wind druid would have a completely different playstyle and positioning to a lightning trapper ,or a bone necro, or a poison necro. Each skill would require a recalibration of playstyle and quite a few had a bit of skill involved in aiming. POE it seems like its either put it on a totem and stay right back, self cast and everything this side of me for a screen dies, or gimp myself with melee (with some crossover of categories for things like reave/ice crash).

D2 by todays standards is definitely a little clunky in the combat skill/action department, but I feel like the range of skills were different enough to be excited about playing a new skill because they didn't clear a large amount of the screen with one click. I think D3 actually improved quite a lot on all of this - a range of skills that mostly feel different to use. Its a pity it completely failed at well..almost everything else.

There's probably little point to this post as the game is quite fully formed - I guess I just wanted to see what peoples opinions are on the matter. I'm going to play D2 for a bit and undoubtedly come back to POE in a week or 2 :p

No.

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I_NO wrote:

No.

I'm guessing from your name you're a no kinda girl/guy!

*awaits obligatory reply*

Are you saying melee skills lack AoE potential or are you saying AoE skills in general make for a dull gaming experience?

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Nephalim wrote:

Are you saying melee skills lack AoE potential or are you saying AoE skills in general make for a dull gaming experience?

I'm saying that the ability to scale AoE to screen clearing potential on quite a lot of skills in this game makes those skills feel too samey. 1 or 2 clicks = everything to one side of you dead. So instead of different skill based aiming for each skill (some skills do have minor differences here or there), the main difference is in how to scale the damage.

For me personally this means less replayability.

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dommomo wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

Are you saying melee skills lack AoE potential or are you saying AoE skills in general make for a dull gaming experience?

I'm saying that the ability to scale AoE to screen clearing potential on quite a lot of skills in this game makes those skills feel too samey. 1 or 2 clicks = everything to one side of you dead. So instead of different skill based aiming for each skill (some skills do have minor differences here or there), the main difference is in how to scale the damage.

For me personally this means less replayability.

Would you prefer to whittle away 1 mob at a time with your thresholded heavy strike build? I can't understand why you would want a true single target skill.

If your going to compare it to D2 it's kinda the same thing.

I mean even the examples you used.

Lightning javazons = One build with the same amount of attacks like PoE
Hammerdin = One build with the same amounts of attacks like PoE

You literally just held right click and spammed shit to death exactly like in PoE if you good enough gear.

Also if you were going to talk about build diversity in terms of power, the only 2 choices you had to play in D2 was a paladin + MF sorc. It was literally just teleporting past everything to instant kill the boss or pack you where aiming for and remaking the game.

Even the examples you used

Wind Druid = Cyclone or Blade vortex
Lighting trapper = We have 4-5 different types of trap abilities in the game AND you can make any attack into a trap
Poison Necro = This patch is all about poison/chaos, you can also summon if you want.
Bone Necro = Large variety of physical damage skills now + you can summon if you want too.

The reason why it can feel "samey" because your not forced to make a brand new character for any variant you want. Since you can swap out skill gems anytime, your fire spellcaster in PoE can cast any type of other fire spell in the game or swap out supports to edit it.

Also the game would do you more justice if you actually tried to level to 85 with a character.

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RagnarokChu wrote:

If your going to compare it to D2 it's kinda the same thing.
Lightning javazons = One build with the same amount of attacks like PoE
Hammerdin = One build with the same amounts of attacks like PoE

You literally just held right click and spammed shit to death exactly like in PoE if you good enough gear.

No I used those as the most similar to POE. At that time most players felt like lightning fury at its most OP screen clearing stage ruined D2, and quite a lot chose not to use it.

The point I'm trying to make is that through GMP, CoC and other such things now, the vast majority of skills can be made similar to lightning fury by mid to late game. So if you're not doing that then you're not really playing the game properly.

I guess players preferences have changed since those times which is fine. Its just less replayable for myself because of this.

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Nephalim wrote:

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dommomo wrote:

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Nephalim wrote:

Would you prefer to whittle away 1 mob at a time with your thresholded heavy strike build? I can't understand why you would want a true single target skill.

No I mean...thats what the start of D2 and POE are like and not many people want it to stay that way forever. D2 sees a power increase but for the majority of skills it didnt reach a 'deleting entire screens' stage.

I guess I just liked the medium between the 2 extremes that D2 was minus lightning fury. The skills felt more different.

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RagnarokChu wrote:

Bone Necro = Large variety of physical damage skills now + you can summon if you want too.

iirc bone necro was magic damage, not physical.