Pathfinder Concoction & Supports in Ascendancy Skills

TLDR: If you unspec a temp ascendancy skill, please refund the supports in it. I know you thought, like I did, it's an ascendancy skill, so it'll be amazeballs, no one would ever unspec an ascendancy skill... Buff Concoctions.

Just a few words. Set the scene:

Pick Ranger, avoiding damage passives for survivability, in fact I'm getting all the flask passives because lulz why not. Things take forever to kill, Storm...shot...uhh... Exploding Arrow but lightning as a main skill, is that supposed to be? Probably not, it has an 800% shock effect mod so I'm sure it's a utility skill and therefore meant to suck. I'm trying my best to ruin this experience obviously, sigh.

Spent the end of Act 1 using a 2H mace because a good one dropped, and found myself using base attack almost all the time. Earthquake feels sooooo slow, I used it, but there's no way it was worth with how often the aftershock would just miss everything. Get bored of spamming base attack, so I commit to ditching the mace, back to bow, find out "armor shred" is basically required to deal with "armored" monsters, so now I have another utility skill in the form of poison to throw at things. Total it all up: Slow arrow, shock arrow, poison/armor shred arrow, fire wall (which I ditched shortly after not being able to keep up with the int req), and then base attack because it says it's highest dps.

That paint the picture good? Sorry, it ranted a bit because I haven't vented to anyone yet as to my general reaction to PoE 2. Ignore those parts, or not, but we're at the topic now.

Got my ascendancy, picked Pathfinder because I'm a hipster. Realize I shouldn't grab concoctions because they look awful... but convince myself "It's 2 WHOLE Ascendancy points. There's no way it can be trash. That just... doesn't make sense. It's not just a vehicle for exposure, Ascendancy Elemental Weakness... no way" I picked Lightning, it made the most sense. Go to the next zone, give it LMP and 25% lightning damage boost... and it's trash. Like, the trash I used it on to test its damage, they died fast, but so did my mana pot. Like, even if it cost 1 flask charge I'd be hesitating. I went through 50 charges to clear one pack.

So the more substantive part of this feedback is here: I moved some lame supports to it and tried it as a utility skill, but like I said earlier, I already have 3 utility skills I'm cycling in for extra effects, adding another which also bleeds my mana flask dry? No, not worth. I port to town and unspec that thing so fast!... Too fast... I forgot to grab my Innervate and bonus Shock. Well, they aren't that good of supports, and I'm not burning 5k gold to get them back.

End of on-topic post.


I know it's off topic, but quick general feedback. Skills feel off. Every skill is always 3 link for the entirety of A1-2? No sense of growth there... Every skill gem is uncut, it's both overwhelming and boring, because each one that drops is 100s of options, but not really, attributes are super restrictive. I honestly want the skills to have color slots too, everything as white is boring. I both want and don't want my basic skill to get more support slots. I don't want it, because it's basic attack, it's very bland. I want to use a skill like concoction as my "basic attack". 2H mace basic attack was used because every skill was utility. Ain't no way I'm using rhythmic 2-hits-per-5-seconds cyclone (what was it, rolling strikes?) as my base attack. Earthquake, 4 seconds? K, Guess I'll use it every 4 seconds, and the boss moved, guess I shouldn't've. The armor break skill? Ew... wait for person's head to glow attack, not a fan.