POE2 EA day2 feedback

Crafting

- Barely got into PROPER crafting but being "diablo1/2esque", there are 2 ways to craft. either start from a good blue item which has 1-2 good mods. slap an aug. if good cont. if fail stop. if good regal. if good slap exalt. if good slap exalt. then another. if you're full. if you already have another weapon waiting you could gamble a chaos to get rid of a shitty mod to replace with another. the most important things are the 2 mods you started off from. this can grant this biggest amount of power.2nd way is same as above but using white bases and simply trans'ing em to get a good start.

Vendors

- Shops are awesome. secret shops are awesome too! dont want to rely on crafting too much and RNGsus hasn't been treating you good? try your luck with the vendors. Sometimes i get bonkers good items from vendors. But that said a glaring issue with vendors is that UNLIKE d1/2, vendors don't seem to refresh enough. For sure back in d1/2 players cheesed by reloading repeatedly to refresh the vendors. but at least vendors WAS a way to get loot if you're stuck in a rut. and you still needed to farm gold in order to afford the goodies. Not being able to refresh the vendors sucks. And it severely hampers players ability to progress.

Gambling

- Sometimes when stuck in a rut and the vendors dont sell anything worth it, gambling can be the only way forward. The problem is, gambling vendors tend to usually end up having equipment that are "lower tier" than what the player actually wants.

2 cents on itemization

- It's a very good system which is a simplified version from POE1. but undecember does it better. when i played undecember i crafted all the way from beginning till end. but not poe2. reason being is in undecember, despite the p2wness, crafting currency drops were GENEROUS. when i was stuck in a rut, unable to progress. itemization is crucial, poe2 gives players access to 3 ways to gain gear progression but all 3 are VERY stingy.
- Drops feel similar to d2. you WANT whites/blues/yellows. whatever you can get your greedy little hands on. Which makes drops VERY meaningful but its slightly too "ruthless".

Suggestions:

Vendor V2.0
- Vendors need to be able to refresh their goods, either by time passed, or by player progression.
- If refreshing is a thing, locking items for purchase needs to be a thing too.
- GGG actually SOLVED this partially with the implementations of master "so long ago".
- With vendors 2.0, vendors are essentially like masters. Players can run REPEATABLE side quests. NO LIMIT. Players can choose from a random list of bounties that the vendor request. maybe killing a specific boss, killing a number of rares or even a large number of non rares. completing such quests gives players "Vendor Points" to spend. These vendor points have 2 uses. 1 is to refresh the store, another is to "hold/lock/book" items so that they do not get removed when the shop is refreshed. this is important so players that lack gold can "save up" for locked goods.
- Completing vendor sidemissions also grant vendor reputation. at higher levels, it can grant benefits such as "better rolled" items/more quantity of items sold etc. This benefit will allow STRUGGLING players to progress more steadily and balanced around the fact that the item bases are "weak" and you would always want better item bases as you progress through the story.
- GGG could even allow vendors to sell low tier currency for gold too.

The other suggestions would be to simply improve the drop rates are make items disenchant for more. disenchant for a scrap/shard? bro, thats gonna take me forever for me to gamble on a white item.

Skill based combat
- I LOVE IT. if you are skilled enough you can chip at the monsters health while evading damage through smart play. but....
- HATE IT! sometimes theres a lot of things happening at screen at once, its hard to play "smart".
- I love the boss battles but at times it seems that theres a huge lot of problems players have to solve. such as getting movespeed. movespeed feels too crucial to ignore.
- I also HATE how GGG loves to have monster mods be pure RNG. GGG stubbornly REFUSES to run checks on mod combinations which INVALIDATE any notion of skill and instead make it back to the regular "outdps or outlast" everything playstyle. For example an aggressive melee enemy with mana drain aura. By itself, it can be a very interesting fight for melee where you need to stay VERY close to the enemy. But pair that with lightning mirages or novas at regular interval as well as the enemy having large slams around itself and it becomes pure misery. run away and all your mana is drained. continue fighting and get damaged. i've also encountered a rare with REGEN. he outhealed all damage. i hate frost bombs in POE1. now we dont even have ANY tools to deal with this. we just have to outdps the mob.

Melee combat
- LOVE IT! melee feels VERY impactful and theres a lot of thought taken on how melee can sidestep/dodge roll and sneak hits in. but......
- HATE IT! a lot of mace skills with payoff take "forever" and it goes against the notion of "smart" playstyle. finding safe periods to sneak em in safely is difficult.
- It gets worse when certain mods stack as mentioned earlier.
- Area denials affect melee VERY BADLY. i like how players need to GTFO of the way but at the same time i hate it whenever GGG uses RNG to dictate the fight. I had encountered an ultimatum where i had little choice over the detriments and ended up with 1001 area of denials happening which are annoying OR huge. So what happens is when i get to the boss fight, i can hit the boss safely 2-3 times and then i need to get out of the area due to some huge ass area denial. it feels like i m being punished for being melee rather than "skillful combat".
- I want to note that despite a lot of of boss mechanics allowing melee to fight skillfully, it really feels bad when theres a bad combo of area denials.
- Melee is lacking a autominidash to closeby enemies more of a "attack while moving" feature. monk has a lot of built in movement. but for maces, its like moving. stopping still to hit. then moving again to get in range if the monster ran away or got knocked back.
- Also whats up with the huge windups for certain melee skills? focused shots make sense for ranged. charging up attacks in melee in a way makes sense but if we're talking skilled based combat theres only a few opportunities to actually use em without getting hit in return. if we're MEANT to get hit, then melee should gain melee bonuses inherent to melee without any investment of passives points. such as during windups we have built in stun immunity or we recoup a certain portion of health if hit during such windups. BUT NO. its all risk for reward. while other classes could just pop of a finished "instantly" from a safe range.

RNG based combat
- GGG please, theres only a certain amount of RNG you can include if you insist on making the game skill based. As a good example on release sanctum was balanced around "not getting hit". but when reworked its now balanced around rare mobs having random mods, traps being very hard to avoid and player defences now matter. if you want to make it so we play skillfully get rid of some of the randomness.
- Similarly I fucking hate ultimatum. 1-2 detriments in i pick the "safest". 3rd one fucks me. sometimes if the very first 3 are all really bad. i rather just NOT engage. As of such the BEST way for me going forward is to simply outlevel and outgear the content so i can outdps everything before they can become a problem (sounds like poe1 no?). If i ever clear the sanctum and ultimatum trials it will only be for getting my ascendencies. i will NOT engage after that.
- I would also add that area denial effects, which serve to challenge players, penalize melee a huge lot as they have to find ways to engage/disengage the enemy.

Death and retrials
- I died a gazillion times fighting bosses. i am sometimes frustrated but i keep trying until i nail it down. AND BOY OH BOY THATS SO MUCH PRIDE AND ACCOMPLISHMENT. its been a long time i felt this way. i am however in campaign. and not in maps. what i would comment is, if you're going to make mapping bosses ONE TRY ONLY, if i reach mapping, thats a good way to make me fucking ragequit poe2. i like skill based games and one key feature about skillbased games/soulslike is you get to LEARN boss fights and learn to get better. if i only get ONE TRY, thats really bullshit and not enough. players would want to overlevel and overgear if thats the case and will feel like they should put off bossing until theyre stronger. or use a highly efficient build, or just pussy out and get a carry service. i have not reached mapping. i am overleveled but undergeared and i die alot. bad build? perhaps. bad gear? also perhaps. but i still manage to push on. all because i literally gitgud fighting the bosses.
- i will admit i did cheese ONE boss, which was the undead elephant and the necro. thats kinda bullshit for melee as the elephant attacks are hard to see to begin with and even if i can see it some other shit is going on in the background. doesnt help the arena is cramped. i LEARNED NOTHING from that except to get more dps and kill one of em off faster.
- Having to retry a boss encounter from start instead of having 6 portal defence is really challenging. i actually like it a lot, but i m not keen on how thats going to be when i reach maps.

One final sidenote on combat. payoffs/finishers are really good but if you dont rely on them its going to be difficult to do damage.

Ascendancy notes

1. I like how the ascendancies dont feel TOO strong. it makes me feel that i could play ANY BUILD using ANY ascendency. Tho some ascendancies definitely are better at specific things.
2. I'm still conflicted between the choice to lock ascendancies. on one hand this game really feels diablo2esque. the permanency, the pacing etc. i appreciate permanency BUT i really dont like the idea that a player can spend 20-30 hours, realize his ascendancy choice is not what he wanted, or wants to try a different one but is forced to reroll. we're not living in 2000s anymore. this can be a ragequit moment for more casual players.

Passive tree notes

1. I really like how GGG many nodes now are more general. for example listing "increased attack damage" instead of "increased physical attack damage".
2. Tho i like the above, one thing i "like less" is that a lot of nodes now no longer include ailment damage. previously we would have "attack and ailment damage with two handed weapons" passives but now it's usually just "attack damage with two handed weapons".

1. Skill gem system. so fucking good. i m no longer a slave to stupid ass socket number/links and colours. for sure socket numbers are important in poe2 but it feels like a natural progression.

2. Meaningful support gem choices. its EXACTLY as how i imagined it. we're forced to pay attention and carefully select supports that we want to use.

3. Not funneled into 1 button build stereotype. due to skill gems being solved we now have a buttload of different skills to use.i traditionally dont like maces but oh boy it felt real good. stun, then combo it with a stun finisher (crushing blow). shred an enemies armor and use a finisher skill to consume the armor break. for sure theres a lot of aoe going on but it doesnt feel like poe1's "i hit the entire screen a million times a second" sort of deal. it feels much more deliberate. all thanks to the fact i can use many different skills and not worry that each skill would not be as strong as another due to poe1's lack of 6L availability.

4. Melee "feels good". it really does, but there are fundamental issues in combat mechanics which i mentioned earlier. but overall its how i want a real melee archtype to feel in an arpg. i CANNOT go back to POE1 now.

5. Animations/graphics. Another reason why i cant go back to POE1. POE1 has good graphics for sure. but now, i m loving how POE2 looks so much detail. fuck, i look at most of my old poe1 mtx (not that i can use em) and i feel like i'd spoil the esthetics if i equipped them.

6. Game pace. Zoomers hate POE1. its way to slow for them. to me the change in combat pace actually made me take my sweet time playing the game. i m not in a temp league. time does not matter. i do not NEED to zoom zoom. i m no longer in a rat race where more maps cleared = more currency. its legit SSF. i shit on the ascendancy trials but on the flip side it feels like i can actually make good progress by playing slow and steady (until i pick up some bullshit detriments that fuck everything up). Its really interesting that when the entire game is slow, i dont feel FOMO. i dont feel like i should be going any faster so i play more carefully. going back to my monster hunter roots. dont get hit, hit it till it dies.

7. Homogenization of the passive tree. we finally get to choose what stat we want, which can help tailor our build to a very high degree. A lot of nodes have been changed from "Physical attack damage " to "attack damage" as an example and the leading nodes in the ascendency tree are much more general. this can lead to more build diversity.

8. Atlas tree "ACTUAL BENEFITS". one thing i hated about poe1's atlas tree is it's a no brainer. choose a few mechanics, then make a tree based on those mechanics to focus on them. if you get other mechanics that you did not spec into, those mechanics would give a "meh" experience. the new atlas tree, based on what i m seeing allows players to "fully" enjoy each mechanic individually. and to get more points its organic where the player has to complete objectives tied to that specific mechanic in order to reap the rewards.

9. Weaponauto swap skills. Fuck these are good. autoswapping for the finishing palm is just so badass especially against bosses. in poe1 alternate weapons were only used either to exploit hotswapping mechanics or leveling gems. now we actually get rewarded for em.

I really. really. really love how the game felt. it reminded me so much of d2. even in d2 i struggled with bosses but i zerged them. now i'm actually getting good rather than zerging. just that it can be stupid difficult trying to hit shit with melee when the boss is standing in a literal sand storm. or a huge ass aoe is about to detonate (thank ultimatum) and the safe spot in the centre is being denied by the boss so i have to literally run out to a different screen to avoid all of that.

its still epic tho. the boss fights where i keep dodging while sneaking in damage. finally getting the final blow etc. epic.

1-2 days later i m still not yet finished with act 3. i m overleveled by 7? maybe. my gear is kinda shit. but thats how it used to be. gear was never easy to find. tho its slightly on the more punishing side tho. its slightly TOO difficult to gear up. my resists are shit. i dont know how i can make it to maps. but i will definitely try.

it certainly is a struggle but dayum. melee feels so... melee. the only exception is that i m doing a lot of "aftershocks" tho i ll attribute that to hitting enemies so hard that it caused an aoe.

monk feels like a melee caster but i guess its fine. he's meant to channel forces of energy anyway and its a good mix of melee and ranged.

progress is... slow. but i m making progress. my guildie joked, with the current drop rate neversink will be out of a job! lol he jokes. maybe i should add poe2 not having requiring a lootfilter as a feature.

speaking of which. this reminds me of all the people who said POE was meant to be focused on temp league only. back when POE first released the game state was actually this "slow". i got to 84 without a single exalt for the longest time. farming fusings took "forever". poe2 reminds me of exactly how things used to be. progress was SLOW. the speed players zoom thru in POE1 now is really a blaze. it reminds me how and why i remember POE not being temp league focused on launch. simply put, progress is REALLY SLOW. if POE2 is how the drops are gonna be like on release. you can bet my ass i m very likely NOT going to play poe2 temp leagues. many standard andies were standard andies because of this slow progress.

which brings up a new thing to ponder. how can poe2's temp leagues be successful??

its a very hard sell. the only way to convince me to play poe2 temp league mechanic is if it's also baked into standard. i m never going through the hell i went thru pushing my character to ascend and progress. probably i will actually but, i definitely am not keen on doing it repeatedly.

i wonder if people who play poe2 will revert back to being standard andies.

based on reddit i can see the divide already happening. zoomers are asking for ggg to focus on poe1 and they will stick to poe1. i really prefer if ggg balanced their team so that poe1 does get more temp league love. the number of poe1 lovers still are huge. but i m not kidding when i say i no longer want to play poe1. poe2 does so many things better. if poe2 makes me rage quit one day, then that will just be the sad end of my poe story. tho i really think i m still inclined to return to poe2 regardless. fucking hell good job ggg. just please add more fun to the game.