These skills must be added to Mace to have proper build variety and "slower" combat.

TL:DR -
Necessary:
1. 180° front arc knockback+stun on terrain. Yrel Righteous Hammer
2. Ground stomp knocking down or slowing+daze.
3. Charge through small enemies. Alternatively drag them with (can be support gem).
Nice to have:
4. Fissure wall. Dota Earthshaker fissure. Linear version of Shield wall.
5. Mighty throw. Boomerang return always to front of Warrior.
6. Sprint steroid. Yrel Righteous Momentum with hammer poised to strike.
7. Hyper Armour on long wind-up attacks like Supercharged- or Rolling Slam.
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Merry Christmas. Many players are unable to articulate precisely why PoE2 combat is zooming (losing the "methodical" combat that was promised and is sort of present in early Acts). At current, the PoE2 Warrior with mace feels like an earth-themed mage lacking close quarters options and crowd control measures for breathing room or hyper armour with slow wind-up skills.

Using Mace skills as basis for thought experiments, we see 2 main areas that affect perceived combat experience:
A) Skill rotation
B) Enemy behavior/AI. (This is another discussion)

Aside from balancing damage, AOE multipliers and defenses, the following defensive + utility skills need be added to facilitate slower, combo-based combat:


1. Yrel Righteous Hammer (Instant version). https://imgur.com/a/6pABFrW

- Horizontal hammer swing 180° frontal arc knockback.
- The cast point must be rapid.
- Enemies that collide with terrain are stunned.
- The knockback distance must be considerable: ~3-4m with a decaying 90% ms penalty


2. Ground Stomp (D4 barbarian Stomp). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtrUF7zzjlo&t=1m46s

- Rapid cast point hammer slam into ground, upheaving earth in 360° AOE. ~3-4m radius.
- Enemies are knocked down and dazed.
- Can have combo generators like ignite or fire exposure through molten aftershock etc.

3. Shoulder Charge. (D4 Barbarian charge) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtrUF7zzjlo&t=2m16s

- Must be able to push through small mobs or drag them along. (Current Shield Charge and Stampede stops against 1 small enemy, and cannot reposition enemies).

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The next skills are a recommendation but a long shot:

4. Fissure wall (DotA Earthshaker fissure). https://imgur.com/a/m119Aei

- Slam down hammer creating an impassable linear wall of rock.
- Can be destroyed.
- Can much more reliably block chokepoints than Shield wall at distance and cut mob rushes in half.

5. Yrel Righteous Momentum. https://imgur.com/a/bzjwAjT

- Cast point must be rapid.
PoE2 Maces lack the thematic charge in hammer raised, or short sprint burst. The PoE2 brutes have this, but players
The Mace needs this to satisfy the power fantasy of wading into a crowd hammer raised and empowered, currently doesn't.


6. Mighty Throw (D4 Barbarian). I suggest following changes:

- Hammer always returns to the front of Warrior.
- Changing character facing direction will send the hammer laterally on the path of return to the front of Warrior. (You can S-curve the return wake through adjacent mobs)
- Leaves a phantom ancestral version of hammer in hands to continue using other skills. (Or throws phantom version)


7. Hyper Armour on long wind-up attacks. See Dark Souls or Monster Hunter.

- Can be support gem or passive tree node.
- Can have stat threshold.
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P.S. Auto Attack behavior needs to be changed too. Shift + attack + true attack in place. Normal click should more reliably move Warrior closer to target that cursor is hovering over if not body blocked. See D4 Barbarian for example.

P.S.S. PoE2 characters cannot reposition enemies. D4 has Steel Grasp (bring them to you) and Charge (bring them with you). This allows players to tear off chunks of crowds into manageable portions if there is no screen-clearing 1 button build that PoE2 needs to mostly get rid of to have the combat that was promised.

Sorry friend. The 'vision' is that you have to tank all the enemy hits and hope you dont get stunned while charging up an attack that doesnt even oneshot white mobs. Also enemies are 5x faster than you, have push priority and have access to CC that you do not have.

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Sorry friend. The 'vision' is that you have to tank all the enemy hits and hope you dont get stunned while charging up an attack that doesnt even oneshot white mobs

This is the whole point of my post.
Aside from my preamble on the balancing issues you need these skills. The balancing will be done and is not the scope of this thread.

If you get rushed, you use Righteous Hammer skill for breathing room.
If you get burst down in a long wind up you could look at hyper armour cast, if the first 3 skills dont address the issue of swarm and surround and burst down.

Downtime on action before and after casting slow skills is getting us killed (aside from the balancing issues). Adding these skills also increases player skill expression and build variety.

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Suncatcher#5513 wrote:

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Sorry friend. The 'vision' is that you have to tank all the enemy hits and hope you dont get stunned while charging up an attack that doesnt even oneshot white mobs

This is the whole point of my post.
Aside from my preamble on the balancing issues you need these skills. The balancing will be done and is not the scope of this thread.

If you get rushed, you use Righteous Hammer skill for breathing room.
If you get burst down in a long wind up you could look at hyper armour cast, if the first 3 skills dont address the issue of swarm and surround and burst down.

Downtime on action before and after casting slow skills is getting us killed (aside from the balancing issues). Adding these skills also increases player skill expression and build variety.

While those things would be nice, I highly doubt GGG will implement any of them any time soon. If the player can crowd control the enemies, then the game won't be challenging enough or something. Vision > gameplay and fun.

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fouquet#0993 wrote:

While those things would be nice, I highly doubt GGG will implement any of them any time soon. If the player can crowd control the enemies, then the game won't be challenging enough or something. Vision > gameplay and fun.

I’m not so negative. I just understand that whether GGG implements these skills or not, these are the types of utilities the game will need to make the “methodical” combat they market for PoE 2 a reality. Balancing issues aside.
This doesn’t automatically make enemies trivial, it adds more metrics to balance the game around.
The absence of these types of skills means that with enemy AI that rushes and attacks without formation and all at once PoE 1-style, you have to burst them down before they burst you. Hence the 1-button builds that clear entire screens become the requirement and this means you arent really interacting with the enemy which is the opposite of GGG stated goals for PoE 2.

Many players dont want to play PoE 1 for this very reason. Now we get past 3 Acts of PoE2 and realized that the game in its current state will still have PoE1 combat

Honestly playing off-meta builds i already tend to use every single button available and a couple with ctrl. And it sucks. The game isn't designed for slow and smart gameplay. It's not a turn-based roguelike. People will always gravitate towards builds that use one button even if another build achieves higher damage and what not but the gameplay is piano. Because you rarely have the time to think really. One reliable button (or maybe a combination but one that is in muscle memory) is always preferable.

idk, spark, ball lightning, conductivity, weapon swap, blink, detonate dead, flame wall, tempest.

Thats at least for my spark AM. Started it day 1 - still having a blast.

Playstyle never became 1button just because it popped up as being a meta build last week.

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

Honestly playing off-meta builds i already tend to use every single button available and a couple with ctrl. And it sucks. The game isn't designed for slow and smart gameplay. It's not a turn-based roguelike. People will always gravitate towards builds that use one button even if another build achieves higher damage and what not but the gameplay is piano. Because you rarely have the time to think really. One reliable button (or maybe a combination but one that is in muscle memory) is always preferable.

That’s why I said that the shift to off meta and slower cadence must be facilitated not only by the proper tools in the skills rotation but also enemy behavior.

The fact that this is your experience just falls in line with the point I am making. These tools were not given to Mace in this PoE2 EA. Yet.

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Suncatcher#5513 wrote:

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

Honestly playing off-meta builds i already tend to use every single button available and a couple with ctrl. And it sucks. The game isn't designed for slow and smart gameplay. It's not a turn-based roguelike. People will always gravitate towards builds that use one button even if another build achieves higher damage and what not but the gameplay is piano. Because you rarely have the time to think really. One reliable button (or maybe a combination but one that is in muscle memory) is always preferable.

That’s why I said that the shift to off meta and slower cadence must be facilitated not only by the proper tools in the skills rotation but also enemy behavior.

The fact that this is your experience just falls in line with the point I am making. These tools were not given to Mace in this PoE2 EA. Yet.

Well the skills you suggest are all very situational and some kinda feel too clunky. Why bother if i can just flicker around or throw gas grenades while auto igniting enemies with a unique.

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

Well the skills you suggest are all very situational and some kinda feel too clunky. Why bother if i can just flicker around or throw gas grenades while auto igniting enemies with a unique.

Did you read the preamble to the OP?
This is the entire point if you wanted the “slow, visceral, methodical” combat (where you can and preferably have to use a greater variety of skills, even if they are niche). You need more situational skills.
Not sure what you mean by “clunky”. Some of the CC skills have a recommended low cast point. This in conjunction with balancing and potentially tweaking enemy AI is what’s needed in slowing the oace of combat down or we essentially have PoE1.5.

As the EA is now, you need to explode the screen before you die. Simple auto attack can now be built with massive AOE multipliers and armor explosion etc to explode entire screens. You just go 1-button clicking through maps.

This is the opposite of what we were told to expect for PoE2