Trying Very Hard To Enjoy PoE 2 But It's Not Quite Happening

It's not even just about being so slowed down compared to PoE 1, it's that whatever kind of attack you want to do in the game feels slow as molasses, on top of this new meta that seems to want us to "combo" skills together.

I'm trying poison ranged skills and some of the new ones are fun and look great, like the new version of what appears to be modeled after Toxic Rain and the other AoE skill where you jump up and launch alien eggs you have to poison.

The thing is, half the time they completely miss the mark by the time the pods/alien eggs land and the mobs/boss aren't even standing in them anymore.
That or I get hit or die sometimes while I'm stuck in the animation of jumping on top of a mountain first before attacking...and you can't roll (dodge) out of the casting animation, let alone survive until you come back down and finish the whole attack.

On top of that, you need to use another attack to poison/layer on top of the pods to get any real benefit out of them, while also trying to use your main attack.

Some of the skills are unresponsive half the time and don't happen when you press the button. I notice this mostly with Plague Bearer active ability and Barrage Support.
I'm not sure if it's because these have quite long cast times/animations now, but either way, it's extremely annoying...it's something about Diablo 4 that grinds my gears so bad.

I just want things to work when I press the button.

I'm about to take off my AoE support gem from Plaguebearer that gives it a cooldown because I'm trying to activate it, but then I need to dodge a mechanic and it goes on CD *without* even performing the attack.

I get that they want us to dodge constantly and pay attention to mechs, OK fine.
But can things just function properly and be a bit more smooth?

I linked Faster Proj support gem or whatever it's called in hopes that the pods and alien eggs would drop down quicker, and/or my character would jump up/back down quicker but that doesn't seem to do anything.

What's the point of using Barrage to get 1-2 extra arrows when the skill doesn't respond/activate half the time (yes when it's off CD)? When I could just be normal attacking instead of stressing over if its cast buff is being activated.

I won't get started on trials either as it seems like the whole community has brought that up quite a lot lately so I'll just say how much I despise Sanctum league.

I like that Heralds are back, but we no longer have defensive or DPS auras like Grace/Determination/Discipline or Anger/Hatred/Wrath/Haste.
The (current) selection feels low and limited.

The main thing right now is how extremely frustrating it is to makes attacks/chaining combos together just work when they're supposed to work and feel some kind of sense of smoothness.

You can find multiple forum posts about skills in Diablo 4 not activating when you press your hotkeys and how frustrating it is. I remember that being such an annoyance when I played D4, but D4 you can walk around blindly and ignore mechanics.
You can't do that in PoE 2.

Everything feels way too unresponsive and fragmented.

It's not fun \(o.o)/

Later on you get gas arrow and can just blast with RMB

I felt this way when I was playing warrior with sunder. Later on ill try earthshatter and use upheaval on it (I didnt think about that before and i hated the 1 spike gameplay)

Swapped to monk and all is right in the world.

You could very well just be playing something you dont like. We also dont even have half of the playable ascendancies.

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Mr_Vagtastic#4761 wrote:

Later on you get gas arrow and can just blast with RMB

Ya, it will be nice to have 1 RMB to function as my main skill that does AoE + single target dmg, but I'm enjoying the other new skills.
I do like the idea of using 1 skill to empower the other but it's way too slow and unresponsive.

Even manually weapon swapping to do anything like that is annoying since the skill bar doesn't change when you weap swap.

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009Status#6939 wrote:

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Mr_Vagtastic#4761 wrote:

Later on you get gas arrow and can just blast with RMB

Ya, it will be nice to have 1 RMB to function as my main skill that does AoE + single target dmg, but I'm enjoying the other new skills.
I do like the idea of using 1 skill to empower the other but it's way too slow and unresponsive.

Even manually weapon swapping to do anything like that is annoying since the skill bar doesn't change when you weap swap.

I took the dex stack and dex attack speed nodes since you need it for bows and armor anyway and it feels good. Also got the speed node leaving the start point and I think that was it

Edit: another tip is the mana Regen wheel that increases mana Regen when not on low mana, huge QoL.