My biggest problem with PoE2 - Weapon Specific Skills/Uniques

Yeah, right now skills like Shield Charge and Ancestral Totem are locked to mace, which makes no sense. Honestly, why not change the system to where you have recommended gems for the class you are using, just like there are recommended support gems already? You get the angle of helping new players out without forcing really weird weapon requirements like the two I mentioned above. I know animation stuff is a big point of contension since the weapon limit helps with animations, but it comes at the cost of build fluidity.

Right now melee builds suffer heavily because they lack skills and the ability to readily dip into other skill pools, doubly so since there aren't many other melee weapons in the game at the moment. Casters in comparison have far more freedom in terms of skill choice and thus they feel much more satisfying to play.

As someone who tried out only Warrior so far in POE 2, I agree and really hope the skill system changes to allow for more skill options.

+1

This is my biggest problem with the new skill system. It makes the builds tied to a weapon and less diverse or flexible because of this.

There should be skills that:
- Work with two or more weapons (i.e. bow and crossbow)
- Work with types of weapons (i.e. all that can smash/ cut/ pierce)
- Work without any weapon (i.e. totems/ traps/ granades etc. but also shield charge and similar not related to weapon)

Bumping for visibility.
I feel like this is a major issue for practically all attack builds. The limitations will make the game feel stale way faster even when all weapons have been added.

Agreed. I tried looking through available classes this morning -- and by that I mean I created one of each and looked at what was around their starting point on the talent tree -- and I wasn't really able to think of a build I wanted to try.

I feel like picking a class locks me into a weapon type, and something I deeply enjoyed about PoE originally is that it wasn't that way at all. I could do anything with any character, whether it was done well or not was a matter of passive selection and gear.

I don't feel that way at all with PoE2. Perhaps this may change when more weapons are added, but I doubt it as things stand. Even if they do, with skills being locked to weapons, the mechanics of weapon-swapping aren't very polished as they are now.

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ReggShanks#0071 wrote:

Agreed. I tried looking through available classes this morning -- and by that I mean I created one of each and looked at what was around their starting point on the talent tree -- and I wasn't really able to think of a build I wanted to try.

I feel like picking a class locks me into a weapon type, and something I deeply enjoyed about PoE originally is that it wasn't that way at all. I could do anything with any character, whether it was done well or not was a matter of passive selection and gear.

I don't feel that way at all with PoE2. Perhaps this may change when more weapons are added, but I doubt it as things stand. Even if they do, with skills being locked to weapons, the mechanics of weapon-swapping aren't very polished as they are now.

I'm very surprised that streamers/long term players haven't discussed this more, it makes me think I'm perhaps being dumb and not realising something?

But honestly, my only hope is that the other weapons fulfil "hybrid" spots, for example that Spears can also use charged staff etc, and quarterstaves can perhaps use some spear abilities? Likewise perhaps axes bridge the gap between swords and maces?

Without it, it feels like you'll always be using the same skills on new characters, I played Monk the first time through and had a blast, but now I'm high level I thought "If I were to play Monk again, what different skills would I use?" and I kind of realised I'd have to use some of the same skills no matter what..

Again, this might just be a skill issue (on my build creation side), But in my opinion some slams should be useable on monk, the molten ones for example because making a fire monk seems very suspect with the current skill system.