Everything is so locked down, I can't make my own build

In PoE1 I can look at some random shit and cobble together something that looks cool and it will work totally fine, easily up to T16 maps. Anything I get inspired to do is basically guaranteed to work. We have enough tools that work synergistically with each other that I can figure how how to get the build to work without much fuss.

Sure, I'm not the greatest builder ever, so it won't 1 hit Ubers or do hyper juiced T17s in under a minute. BUT it gets far enough and does well enough to do what I want, and I have fun that I was able to make a cool build.

So far, every single thing I've tried in PoE2 JUST DOESN'T WORK. The game literally locks down the interactions between everything so hard that I can't get anything resembling a working build going. My first character does T15 maps just fine. She was going to be ED+contagion but it sucks so fucking much that the instant I got hexblast I just swapped to that and it's extremely unfun to play but it's the only way I can do any damage, and only AoE it sucks on bosses.

Yes obviously I could look up the meta builds but I don't want to play them, they look boring, I'm doing my own thing, and I COULD do that in PoE1.

One thing I thought might be cool is like, fire wall fortress wildshards ED to shoot firey chaos projectiles everywhere. If only I can get some support or effect that reduces or removes the DoT for increased HIT damage. Nope, doesn't exist. Or maybe I can go a bloodmage and stack HP and find a way to sac HP for HP scaling damage... NOPE. Pretty much the only option is archmage which literally everyone is using on every build because it's the one thing that is an unconditional combo, it adds damage to anything you want to scale.

Same thing with effigy build, I have to go archmage if I want totems to do damage and it's still clunky as fuck because Effigies won't just attack stuff that isn't already DoTTed... and even trying to make that smoother, like saying doing a decaying hex + hex bloom to turn hexes into contagion literally just doesn't function, though I'm hoping that is a bug.

(Also can I just say it's fucking weird that they have contagion + ED as a combo, but then decaying hex + hex bloom, and then they also have hexblast but also impending doom? Why does Occult have multiple set ups that have the exact same concept, it's very weird. Give me variety please!).

Right now there are really only a couple canonical solutions to everything in the game that every build is tapping into because there is NO OTHER WAY to build right now. There are a couple creative things like the decompose builds, but mostly you have to go all in on heralds or archmage or some kind of HP% scaling build like DD or decompose.

It's almost certainly going to be nerfed though so do I really want to invest a 30 hour campaign into that? Thats the other thing: progress is so fucking slow in the game that it takes a major commiment just to get to experiment with something and find out it doesn't fucking work. In PoE1 I can get to maps in a couple hours and experiment, it's also easy to respec since you find so many regrets (and in 3.25 Kingsmarch respeccing is pretty cheap too). But respeccing is utter shite in PoE2, so it's almost impossible to experiment.

PoE2 is terrible for the player who wants to experiment and play with builds and isn't a full time PoE content creator who can spend all day doing that for their job. This mode of play is completely crushed by how locked down the synergies are in PoE2. Worse: the game is bad at communicating whether or not something will work ahead of time so you waste hours getting up to the part of the campaign where you can actually get the skills you need only to find out they're actually not compatible somehow.

This is doubly compounded if you're playing SSF because this game has an INSANE amount of character power locked behind gear (like literally +9 skill levels), your power from the passive tree is tiny. It's almost entirely cracked gear you can only get on Trade leagues and OP universal combos like Archmage.

Yeah there are really just a handful of builds worth doing and the items are very expensive.

Do you think this is an inherent game design flaw or is it due to lack of options?
What would you suggest as a solution?

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Jaenisch#6703 wrote:

Yeah there are really just a handful of builds worth doing and the items are very expensive.

And then there are other builds. Not promoted by content creators. Which are not as powerful as those meta builds but they are definitely fine in endgame.

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raV#3445 wrote:

Do you think this is an inherent game design flaw or is it due to lack of options?
What would you suggest as a solution?

The problem is that their entire ethos coming into this game is aimed at locking down player options and choice and highly restricting things as compared to PoE1. If they weren't stubbornly obsessed with that goal they could just open things up and let us make our own combos again. But I highly doubt they will completely change their entire design philosophy for PoE2.

More support gems might help a bit but it still won't be good imo. It will be like a walled garden of a fake sandbox with highly curated combos that are predefined for you.

OP, you make some very good, important points.

PoE 2 EA, in all respects, is a veritably barren landscape when it comes to player agency and creative determinacy. Presumably, it was born out of a marriage between:

- hindsight regrets on the part of developers with respect to choices made in PoE 1, when viewing long-term interplay of designed game variables
- realistic fear of collective player response (read: petulant, shortsighted, eruptive outrage) to corrective steps needed to address those regrets: retroactive nerfs to legacy unique items and legacy crafted gear, and removal of or heavy modification to loads of game mechanics already present in PoE 1

The move forward, if a lesson is to be learned from PoE 1, is in the form of a second child born to once-starry-eyed, now-conservative parents with a firm grip on the reins of indulgence, governing a spartan household. The parents are the lead developers at GGG.

The first child, spoiled with riches and now running amok with its entourage, is named "Path of Exile". The newborn sibling is named "Path of Exile 2". PoE's entourage seeks to lure the baby down the same path, but the parents will have nothing of it, intent on careful, meticulous sculpting of this second child to its maturation, in the hope of avoiding mistakes they believe they made with their firstborn.

Remember, PoE 2 is still a baby. Let's hope its parents succeed brilliantly in their intentions, and don't starve the child too severely of toys and playtime with friends.

-

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RedaOu#0533 wrote:

In PoE1 I can look at some random shit and cobble together something that looks cool and it will work totally fine, easily up to T16 maps. Anything I get inspired to do is basically guaranteed to work. We have enough tools that work synergistically with each other that I can figure how how to get the build to work without much fuss.

So, there are two explanations here.

1. You are very familiar with POE1 and are able to understand how things may work in a way a noob could not. No noob is going to cobble together a build that clears T16 with no issue.

2. You're full of shit.

In the case of 1, let me remind you that this is POE2 and not POE1. You are a noob here. We are all noobs here.

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raV#3445 wrote:

Do you think this is an inherent game design flaw or is it due to lack of options?
What would you suggest as a solution?

It's mostly due to a lack of options right now. There are a decent-ish number of builds out there right now that can farm T15-18s and kill pinnacles just fine. Funny Merc grenade builds, Wind Blast Armor Break + Bell Warrior/Monk, and so on are out there! A big part of the problem is that we simply lack active skills and Ascendancies that help them scale. Fire Sorc would probably not be in such a pitiful place if she had a fire-themed ascecndancy, for example (bring on the str-stacking Perfect Strike Infernalists!), and physical Monk lacks meaningful ways to scale physical damage at the moment without an ascendancy to help boost these builds. We're also lacking entire subclasses - both str/int classes, Duelist, etc. - which might help melee builds once they're introduced.

That said, the dominant builds are leaps and bounds ahead of everything else at the moment. It doesn't help that the tree, support skill gems, and ascendancies all synergize with one another to further boost top tier builds: Spark Sorc, Lightning Ranger, Ice Strike Monk. Notice anything common between all of these builds? Yeah, it's elemental damage and easy access to ES nodes on the tree. They all have far more options to scale their offenses and defenses than other builds, at least right now.

"

Valsacar#0268 wrote:

"

RedaOu#0533 wrote:

In PoE1 I can look at some random shit and cobble together something that looks cool and it will work totally fine, easily up to T16 maps. Anything I get inspired to do is basically guaranteed to work. We have enough tools that work synergistically with each other that I can figure how how to get the build to work without much fuss.

So, there are two explanations here.

1. You are very familiar with POE1 and are able to understand how things may work in a way a noob could not. No noob is going to cobble together a build that clears T16 with no issue.

2. You're full of shit.

In the case of 1, let me remind you that this is POE2 and not POE1. You are a noob here. We are all noobs here.

A very new player? Sure, they won't know the meta. But even a new player can spend a few months poring over build guides and the ladder to pick up on PoE1's core synergies: Determination + CWDT Molten Shell for basic defenses, Cyclone + CWC to automate corpse generation and passive forms of damage, etc. Once you learn those, you can mix and match those core components around even low-tier skills to make them perform decently in red maps. It's really not that hard.

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Gwonam#5505 wrote:

But even a new player can spend a few months poring over build guides and the ladder to pick up on PoE1's core synergies: Determination + CWDT Molten Shell for basic defenses, Cyclone + CWC to automate corpse generation and passive forms of damage, etc.

So that's the point - a new player need months to get into PoE 1 and even that he/she porbably barely scratch the surface. So it's not that simple as you say.