That Skill requires [WEAPON TYPE]

There is way too much of this. You should be able to use man different weapons with different skills. I feel shoe horned and forced to use Quarterstaff as a Monk. Maybe I want to dual wield 1h maces instead. Why not?

The build diversity is massively butchered because of this, and it makes me feel like a "pick your character" style game rather than a "build your character" Path of Exile style game. It's like Diablo 4.

I'm sorry, wall of text. It's hard to lookup at other topics on the forum, so I'll post here instead of creating a new one.


I agree with you. We either need more skills/element types per weapon type, and more support gems, or, the easier solution is that we need to be able to use skills with more weapon types than it's currently the case.

I know there's a lot of work involved with creating new skills, but I feel like devs mostly tied Weapon types to an element or two only, and it really limit the overall builds you can make through "non spells" skills. Instead of creating new skills, GGG need to make it possible to use weapon skills with more than one weapon type. It's extremely limitative right now. I understand the "Two-handed weapon" limitations on some skills, or why some skills require a shield, but every attacking skill is tied to a specific weapon. Weapon, singular.

For example, I wanted to make a ranger (bow) shooting fire arrows, and exploding arrows. There is no burning arrow, but you could manage to squeeze something through the normal "Shoot bow" slot with some infusion + ignite support gems, but you won't get the flavour of seeing flamming arrows... and through my testing, it didn't ignite often enough for it to matter. Had to use the crossbow, or spells, to ignite.

Anyway, if devs are to keep skills gems "stuck" to a particular weapon, they really need to create more skills per weapon (very tedious)... or they could ditch the specific weapons requirements for each skill. Make a variant for the crossbow/bow skills so that they can work with either: That would require a lot more work balancing everything, I get it, but we need more choice, not less. Also, make it so that any two-handed weapon and maces can slam, etc.

That will require more work from the animation department, but I think it's essential for that "build your character the way you want it" fantasy. The only odd skills left would probably be javelins (Huntress) as it's weirdly specific and probably couldn't fit with any other weapon type except maybe daggers (as throwing daggers for some skills?).

I like the game, and I know people will find some odd combos that are completely out of nowhere, but I think people want to be able to build their own character through gem use and not feel like they're being funneled to a specific weapon/gameplay. Unless I'm mistaken, in the original PoE, most skills weren't tied tied to a particular weapon type. Sure, some skills were limited to bow only, or to dual-wield, or to blades only (for example), but most skills weren't limited and those that were, you could use it with more weapon types than it currently is in PoE2.

Maybe this is due to the other classes not being released yet, but I really feel like we should be able to use Mace skills with staves or two-handed swords or polearms or whatever.

Being funneled to using a single weapon type per class was kind of my main fear when it comes to build diversity, or lack thereof. I really thought you could use a lot more skills without being tied to use that specific class' weapon.

Yeah it feels like they built the classes/skills from the bottom up, rather than creating the skills and items and letting the classes build themselves, if that makes sense.

It feels like everything is shoehorned into archetypes, rather than them being created naturally.

The animations are great, but I'd rather have fewer animations and more widely available items/gems/abilities to use. Let me use Icy Strike with a Sword or Mace instead of a Quarterstaff... it's so odd.

Does not feel like Path of Exile.

Yeah. Loot scarcity aside (which can be corrected easily), the overall build diversity, or lack thereof, probably is my main issue with the game.

Skills being tied to a singlar weapon only makes things easier to balance. That's the only benefit that comes down from this, but it really go against the core concept that made PoE great : Being able to build your character "almost" the way you wanted. Spells and some buffs/warcry are mostly useable by everyone given you meet the requirements. It's the only part that's okay about the way skills gems are done though.

With 12 classes and more weapon/spells types with the upcoming classes, there will be plenty of different archetypes mix and match, but you'll still mostly be limited to said archetypes. It feels like multiclassing, if need be.

We saw the Druid use staves, so my guess is being primal spells, it's probably not tied to a particular weapon. At least we'll kind of get new spellcasting opportunities there.

Now, will the Templar, if it comes back, be the only one to yield flails or whatever weapon they come up with?

If that's the case, the Shadow (if it comes back) could be the only one to use traps (or daggers, dagger traps combo?).

The Marauder, if it comes back, will be the only one to use Axes.

The Duelist, if it comes back, will probably be the only one to use Swords.

Then the Huntress will be the only one to use Spears/Javelins.

If that's how they decided it should go, it sadly feels like what some Korean MMO/ARPG do more than what PoE should be about. In Korean MMO/ARPG, you're almost always kind of tied to a gender-locked character that use a particular weapon. PoE2 sadly feels similar so far. PoE2 isn't as limitative, but you're still limited to a specific weapon if you want to use said skills.