Collected Acts to Early End Game

So, I've just recently made it to T4/5 Waystones, and I feel I have a good enough collection of feedback to actually put (many) words to my experiences and thoughts on what I've played. I'll do my best to organize my thoughts in a way that at least makes a bit of sense, but no promises. For context, I'm around level 75 playing a Bloodmage, and just started dipping in Tier 5 maps. I have almost a thousand hours in PoE 1 with each non-league specific pinnacle boss downed at least once, and have just breached 60~ish hours on PoE 2 playing pretty casually.

Early Acts

I generally enjoyed my experience in the acts after the first balance patch. I think we could use a little more power in terms of crafting early on. The introduction to the game was phenomenal. Early tutorials, aesthetic, and the first couple bosses were a lot of fun. The leveling and gear upgrading experience early felt fine, up until the first big act boss.

The Mad Wolf needs a pass at balancing. His fog phase in particular was maddening. The tells for his attacks felt like they should have been at the end of each line in the poem, but often were totally off. That bit felt incredibly unfair with no real way to "get good". Most of the bosses that I had died to up until that point I could more or less tell what killed me and how I could improve my next attempt, but count Geonor was frustrating as hell.

Lachlann as well felt a touch overtuned. With how slow you move in PoE 2, trying dodge his homing ghosts felt damn near impossible. Especially when they phase through walls or he combos the spinny shot them with a slam. The only other boss in the first 2 acts I felt was a poor experience was the hyena fight. The dudes raining spears from off camera were aggravating to say the least. They dealt far too much damage for that stage of the game.

One specific note, the Sisters of Garukhan quest marker is practically invisible on the "U" map. I didn't even realize there was something there until Cruel Act 2, and had to backtrack to Normal Act 2 to get the resistance boost.

Mid Acts

Act 3 was where I started noticing some of the flaws. Firstly, chaos damage is introduced poorly. You have no options to defend against it, and suddenly a bunch of mobs are hitting you with it. Normally, this is where I'd start looking at the tree for chaos resist or maybe a benchcraft, but most defensive power has been removed from the tree and my beloved crafting bench is gone. This feels a touch too punishing to start testing a build's defenses.

Additionally, Act 3 is where the maps started getting huge and more difficult to traverse. Many felt maze like with tons of backtracking, dead ends, and a couple quest markers on the maps that didn't actually do anything. A couple of those map icons were removed with patches, but many of the camps led to a random vendor with a rare monster that never grayed out the marker on the menu. The last push of areas were particularly egregious, starting at the Drowned City. These maps, quite frankly, sucked. So many dead ends, terrible map generations, and the most INFURIATING enemies coming at you in swarms. River hags with death balls and ground degens that persist after death, exploding dudes, dudes that flee, swarming dudes that come out of the walls... I hated that place.

To compound this, draw distance for objectives is pretty terrible. I actually missed the exit from the Chimeral Wetlands after the Chimera boss (which needs to STAY ON THE DAMN GROUND) because I didn't get close enough to render it on the minimap. The draw distance for important stuff like that needs to be buffed, because this wasn't the only time I had to backtrack for upwards of 20 minutes to find where I needed to go since I couldn't see the doorway icon unless I was basically halfway through it.

Ascendancy

Ok, Ascending was pretty awful. Sanctum and Ultimatum feel absolutely terrible to do in the acts. Even if you wait until you super outlevel the content, nothing is more infuriating than the many, MANY "bullshit" deaths that occur. That, and the rampant crashes and DC's killing an otherwise promising run made me dread going for the 3rd and 4th trials. What makes things worse is that the DC protection I so adored when I discovered during the acts is nowhere to be seen! You have the technology to pause the game and return our character to exactly where they were when the crash happened, but you don't use it here where it matters most? Why?

Cruel Acts

I get that these are a placeholder, but it honestly only magnified the problems that I had already experienced. Huge maps that I didn't feel nearly well equipped enough to handle and a bunch of enemies that felt frustrating to fight (damn river hags...). Additionally, the transition from Act 3 to Cruel Act 1 is... Buggy, to say the least. After beating Doryani, I wanted to go back and finish some map markers I had missed in Act 3, but the teleporter in the past that your waypoint dumps you at always seemed to shove me at the beginning of Cruel Act 1 rather than back in town (the present). And, to my shock, you CAN'T TELEPORT TO TOWN ONCE YOU DO THAT. You have to run the first area of Cruel Act 1 AGAIN. Perhaps remove this limitation once the town is discovered?

Beyond that, I feel the need to echo the notion that crafting in acts feels bad. I was running around with the same rare ring I found in normal Act 1 up until mid Cruel Act 3 because what rings I did find and attempt to craft were terrible. I had seen maybe 6 or so artificer's orbs from all that I had scavenged, and used them all on upgrades desperately trying to plug gaps in my defense. It made swapping out for a far superior piece of gear an agonizing decision, because I'd lose 24 resists while I waited for another 16 slotted gear pieces drop so I could actually socket the damn thing and not get one shot.

That aside, I feel the Cruel Acts were a fair compromise to get the Early Access ball rolling. Plus, the story was actually pretty good when compared to PoE 1, so I get to look forward to the conclusion of it when the game is out in 1.0!

Starting End Game

One minor gripe that I couldn't really fit in elsewhere: I had no idea how hideouts and mapping worked up until this point. In PoE 1, you got your first hideout super early on and you knew you could start mapping if you already had one unlocked. Plus, you get a taste for the general idea of the process in Act 7 with Maligaro's map thingy. It was a bit jarring to learn that you MUST use the map device in the end game area at the end of Act 3 without much prompting. It would be very helpful if the game either allowed you to use your map device you already have, or tutorialize this section specifically to force the player to interact with the device found there.

Early Mapping

Overall, I felt the structure of the early mapping experience (aside from the above) was solid. The quests from Doryani asking you to do 10 of each tier was a good pace for someone just getting into it. Honestly, a more fun experience than PoE 1. There's a few things I dislike over all, most of which I've already covered, but I'll reiterate for posterity.

I felt weak. If I didn't trade for some decent gear at this point, I would have probably quit after the first few maps. The jump from Cruel Act 3 to maps with even 1 negative mod was overwhelming. I can't imagine how a casual SSF player felt if they didn't get decent resists at this point. The map layouts continued to be way too big for how slow you move. Similarly, not being able to see your objectives on the maps forces a ton of backtracking. You could easily halve the amount of time spent hunting for rares/bosses/map encounters if we knew where they were from the start.

I haven't died in maps very much since I geared very defensively with the power of trade and anime on my side, but one portal for maps felt really bad when I did die. Especially if it was to "bullshit", which only got worse when getting into maps. This is an absolutely terrible direction to take the end game. It feels way too punishing to go from infinite retries with the campaign to super hardcore ironman mode where you lose everything you didn't pick up, the waystone you may or may not have used currency on, any content on the node, AND a bunch of XP. Maybe allow a few retries for early tiers and scale it down as you get to higher tiers? Maybe have an "All or Nothing" mode where you only get one try but get increased rewards?

The Atlas

The atlas is great, but a little overwhelming. The towers feel wonky to interact with as a mechanic to basically replace Sextants. It's also a bit counterintuitive since you can't rerun nodes, but I haven't interacted enough with that mechanic enough to form a total opinion on it. I love the layout and how it resembles Delve. A great marriage of the two systems, in my opinion. I also like how I know what content is on what node before I run it. Though, I would like more bosses since they are arguably the most fun part of PoE 2 I have experienced so far.

Loot

This is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, most "bubblegum" currency feels like it's in a good spot. During maps, I never felt like I was going to run out of Waystones or Transmutes/Augmentations. I got enough Exalts to feel confident slamming a decent rare, using an Alchemy or Chaos here and there for funzies was OK, and I've never had a shortage of Artificer's since the loot is worlds better than in the Acts. On the other, some parts that feel necessary (like Jeweler's) are nowhere to be seen. I have yet to see a single Greater Jeweler's drop and had to trade for a couple to not feel like I was poking mobs with a particularly brittle stick. Regals tend to be what I plow through the most, attempting to get some decent rares of the basetypes I'm going for. Quality currency needs some looking into as well. I don't feel like nearly enough dropped, even salvaging every last superior item I could get my mitts on.

Uniques are also in a weird spot. Outside of a couple end game items, most uniques are pretty garbage. There's a few that felt nice for leveling, but outside of stuff like Morior Invictus, most feel useless.

The Reforger was a nice addition, but I feel like that thing needs a tutorial all its own so people know how powerful it is. I learned randomly reading about something on Reddit that it could be used to reroll 3 items of the same base types into a new one, basically acting as a Chaos/Alteration orb. To those of you who managed to read this far, yes: You get a FREE Chaos/Alteration by combining 3 of the same item (as an example, 3 rare Expert Plumed Foci smashed in it will get you an unidentified rare Expert Plumed Focus). You can use this for flasks, jewels, rings, plus you can smash Waystones of the same tier and get one a tier higher. So if you've moved on to Tier 2 Waystones and still have a dozen Tier 1s, you can turn those into 4 Tier 2s. I haven't tried it yet, but I think there's a whole recipe list for converting 3 distilled emotions into another of a higher tier, just like the old vendor recipe.

"Crafting"

I've heard the phrase "ID'ing with extra steps" thrown around, and that feels kind of accurate. Yes, yes, early access, no league content, I get it. But still, no crafting bench to get some early stat requirements, defenses, or power is a huge let down. The only real options you have before you get to the late end-game boils down to picking up decent base types and gambling in one of several ways. That's it.

Gameplay and Systems

Tooltips

I see GGG has copied the homework of Baldur's Gate 3/Rogue Trader. The tooltips within tooltips is a stellar addition to the game, 10/10.

Skills

Each skill I tried felt pretty unique. I've only played my Bloodmage, but I've tried several variations from summoner, to bone blaster, to fire slinger, and dabbling a bit in zappy stuff. Each skill I tried felt well thought out and had it's own style. I wound up sticking with the bone blaster, and honestly it felt great when some lightbulbs started flicking on and I unchecked the "recommended" supports to experiment. After the cost decrease for respeccing, it was really fun playing around with some of the supports to change up the playstyle and find what worked for me. The only thing that feels a little bad is that there aren't a whole lot of skills and supports to play around with in the physical spells department. It's basically Bone Storm and Bone Cage, unless you're running a wand for Bone Blast. Similarly, they mostly want the same supports.

However, there's some balance problems. Mana costs are way too high. Gem levels scale VERY hard, and it feels pointless for any piece of gear that doesn't have [+X to your element spells] mod to even be considered. However, going for gem levels further increases the mana costs. This is doubly punishing on Bloodmage (I'll get to THAT can of worms, trust me) since it reduces your survivability. The mana multipliers on top of all of that make upgrading feel even worse when you finally manage to get your 5th and 6th gem socket. Similarly, the stat requirements are ludicrous. Needing to meet so many thresholds for your skills, gear, and how many supports you can socket is a nightmare. It kneecaps build diversity and just adds another set of checkboxes to the stuff you need to plan for to optimize/experiment with a build.

Another bit that feels really bad is tying a skill to a weapon. It sucks when you're leveling and find a cool weapon skill only to have to make a decision later when a better weapon drops but without that skill. I'd love to run Bone Blast and have a 3rd button to press, however I have yet to drop a wand that I can run with that's better than my staff.

There also seems to be some buggy auto-aim system for someskills. I noticed it most with Unearth and Flameblast. Unearth in particular always found a way to target exactly one corpse in a pile despite me aiming in a completely different direction. Let us turn that nonsense off.

And finally, the Skill window needs a pass or two for user experience. It's a bit unintuitive to access and manipulate. Sometimes I'd just like to browse the available supports without needing to right click an uncut one, but that can be fixed with a button on the UI. It'd also be nice if there was a way to access it without having to know the hotkey, something discoverable. Perhaps a button on the inventory screen?

Bonestorm

It feels clunky. Often, the spikes generate behind my character and hit stuff before being fired. Like enemies I'm not aiming at or, more frustratingly, terrain. The hitbox on the spikes is also terrible. Many small enemies can just walk through the bones without being hit at all. There's also a mechanic to consume power charges baked into the skill, but outside of slotting the Combat Frenzy aura and taking the Resonance keystone, there's no reliable way to actually generate charges to use. I'm assuming there will be what with this being early access and a ton of skills are "Coming Soon!", but still...

Spirit

I'm actually pretty impressed with the Spirit mechanic. I think it solves the problems PoE 1 had with reservation and aura stacking nicely. I think it needs some tweaks, but I'm pretty happy with how it all works out. Although I tend to think that having Scepters being one of the few ways to specialize in auras/minions is a bit of a shame, I still prefer it to the clunky way PoE 1 handled it. Meta gems need a complete numbers rework, though. I get they needed to be toned down, but dropping a pre-nerf Comet on Crit on Comet on Crit was too far. There's a happy medium somewhere in there.

Minions and Corpse Requirements

I think Spirit is a good home for minions, but these skills feel a little lacking from a usability stand point. Anything that requires corpses is utterly gimped on boss fights or for stuff like trials. Similarly, the exclusion of Convocation and Desecrate feels like a swift kick in the gut. Surely there's a way to incorporate those skills and make them balanced. Hell, I'd take a 10 second cooldown Desecrate if it meant I could run Detonate Dead without needing a handful of divines and level 80 to be viable!

Passive Skill Tree

My favorite aspect of PoE 1. It feels... Lackluster? I get that we're missing over a decade's worth of content that's basically second nature to plan a build around, but most of the skill tree feels kind of bland. Couple that with the removal of most defensive options, and it's basically just hitting Ctrl+F for whatever basic damage scaling your build uses. Outside of Keystones, there's hardly anything interesting on the tree to go for.

Jewels, outside of uniques, are also very lackluster. They are basically a "Build a Bland Notable", but with a ton of gambling.

Miscellaneous Feedback

There are some things that were carried over from PoE 1 that need to be put to rest. Or taken out behind the shed and shot. Either one.

On death effects have never, and will never be fun or challenging. No one likes this, they tolerate it at best. Yes, even you, the forum poster furiously typing away about how you've learned to stand still for 4 seconds waiting after each rare-kill before you go loot your currency about to tell me how not hard that is.

Ground degens need to be taken behind the shed for a firing squad right next to on-death effects. There are far too many, they aren't communicated to the player well (if at all), and are always, ALWAYS massively overtuned. Same as on death mechanics, they serve only as a speed bump at best, and a brick wall you careen into a in a dazzling shower of sparks and gore that you can't even see.

I-Frames are ALSO not fun or challenging. I get it for some bosses with phase transitions and the like, but rare and magic mobs occasionally just saying "no" to damage is frustrating, especially if whatever triggered is off screen or poorly communicated with things like the proximity tangibility whispyness or whatever. Same goes for the shielded Expidition mobs. Put a damage cap during those effects instead. Total immunity in a game as fast as PoE reeeeally screws with your pacing. Not to mention the travesty that is the Chimera boss fight in Ultimatum.

Speed is out of whack. Players were massively slowed down (which is fine, I don't mind this TOO much as a design decision), but mobs were not. It's not uncommon to get mobbed by giant packs of small enemies that lock you in place, even with the buffed dodge roll. Can't kite worth a damn anymore, and melee feels even more boned than it did in PoE 1.

There are very few instances where one shots should be appropriate if you're decently geared and skilled. A well telegraphed boss attack that a player can learn and reasonably respond to? Sure. An off screen rare named "Grumblestink" with some roided out mods firing an arrow with the speed and ferocity of GGG's nerf bat? Nah.

Bloodmage

Ok, where to start. The first big node on the tree can cripple your character. I love the theming, it's kind of fun to pick up your blood balls and get super swole. But early on it feels REAL bad to smack yourself for a fifth of your healthbar to cast a skill. This, coupled with the fact that that part of the skill is vastly inferior to the actual Blood Magic keystone seeing as you still have to pay mana costs along side life feels really bad. Most non-masochistic players (unlike me) don't even bother allocating this skill until they at least have the second or third set of points.

With that, I felt strong armed into having to take a defensive Ascendancy as my second set, further putting Bloodmage behind the eight ball when compared to other Ascendancies. Hell, most of her worthwhile nodes ARE defensive. Personally, I'd love to see the Ascendancy tree reworked a bit. Maybe soften the initial burst of downside and spread it to other nodes and give her more flavor/options to tailor your character.

Instead of railroading Bloodmage into the blood orbs and health cost, Make all of her basic notables activate a part of the Bargain Bin Blood Magic theme. Each one takes a quarter of the mana cost and converts it to life, and reduces the mana spent on a skill by like 15%. As an example, a 100 mana skill would turn into a 85 mana and 25 life cost skill for the first minor node. Once all 4 minor nodes are selected at max ascendancy, it becomes a 40 mana cost and 100 life cost skill. All that'd need to happen after is moving the blood orb node to be on the same selectable tier as Vitality Siphon, Blood Barbs and Open Sores. That'd solve the vast majority of problems Bloodmages face in the early and late game.

Way Too Long; Didn't Read

1. Acts are fun, will be better with some balance passes and macro adjustments to things like speed/map size/itemizing power
2. Some aspects of the game aren't turorialized well enough. Reforger is huge, but there's nowhere to learn about it as an example
3. Most new and reworked systems are great! Some tweaks are needed here and there to balance it out and make it more fun. Overall, the base of each new system promises to be a huge improvement over its predecessor
4. Early mapping is too punishing, especially for non-veterans. One portal feels bad
5. Some parts of playstyles seem to be left out or haven't been added yet. Stuff like Convocation and Desecrate are sorely missed as an example
6. Bosses are really, really good. Easily the best improvement over PoE 1, no contest. Some need adjustments to be more fair/less buggy
7. Skills need a numbers pass. Stat requirements, mana costs, and scaling are all a little wacky at the moment
8. Ascending is a bad time. Even with infinite retries on the first 2, it's far more frustrating than Labs ever were
9. Bloodmage needs some serious work, especially around her required "Sanguimancy" node
10. Passive skill tree feels very bland. I'd like to see more interesting choices and less attribute/generic "+ X% [Insert damage flavor here]" nodes
11. "Crafting" currently does not exist. It's just several layers of RNG with no way to get what you need without paryer
12. Some minor user experience gripes. Skill/support window is a bit hidden, most of the Atlas mechanics are obfuscated, etc. A couple iterations on it should fix it