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

Build diversity is severely lacking. It could be very easily fixed, but GGG seems to have taken a hardline stance on so many things that could quickly make the game far more enjoyable for everyone including the casual players to the top 1% elitists. The community is extremely dissatisfied with many of their game mechanics and design decisions. GGG appears to be out of touch with the community. Player retention is what will suffer if something doesn't change.

Simplest answer is its unfinished.

Skill balance is honestly very poor right now, like placeholder poor.

I wouldn't even consider diversity a goal until they paper over the most obvious holes.

In PoE1 skills are roughly normalised to similar values (which is why any skill with an extra scaling vector tends to overperform).

In PoE2 that isn't the case yet, its the equivalent of having skills with 50% damage effectiveness mixed in with skills with 2000% its all over the place. There are plenty of things that work, but there are also lots of middle of the road things that should be perfectly fine that are borderline unplayable without a scaling cheese from archmage, demon form or stat stacking BS.

Honestly i'd give them a pass if this was a new project from a new dev but GGG absolutely do know better so bitching about it seems fine to me.

PoB for PoE2 is out and playing around with things (not everything works in it yet) just makes it so obvious how bad everything is. Even if you can find a way to scale things to reasonable values, the mana cost is so high you have to build mana, at which point you might as well turn on archmage and explode screens.

Honestly I think I'm just done trying to get fun things to work. I'll come back and play the game when spell totem or huntress/spears comes out.

Overall, +1.

They don't just want 1-shot zoom zoom build variety -- lol -- again, there's PoE1 for that -- so many folks have said they'll just either go back to PoE1 instead -- or just straight up not tolerate a clone of PoE1 -- lol [but look at the playerbase now for the game -- lol]

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Draegnarrr#2823 wrote:

Simplest answer is its unfinished.

Skill balance is honestly very poor right now, like placeholder poor.

I wouldn't even consider diversity a goal until they paper over the most obvious holes.

yeah balance is almost non-existent.



the op is right in a lot of what they say.

but were playing a first draft of 1/2 the classes, 1/3 of the ascendancies, 1/2 the skills, almost no mid-end game uniques, a dysfunctional first attempt at the crafting systems and none of it has even had a first major balance pass.


i dont really know what im looking at to even begin judging, and i dont think the devs even know yet. theyre going to have to look at what is actually happening on the live servers right now, figure out what bits of it they like the feel of and try rebalance everything else in the game to match that power curve.


probably fail and try again at least 3 times before it begins to resemble something consistent like poe1.



so yeah, i just dont rly know what to think just yet.

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RedaOu#0533 wrote:

PoB for PoE2 is out and playing around with things (not everything works in it yet) just makes it so obvious how bad everything is. Even if you can find a way to scale things to reasonable values, the mana cost is so high you have to build mana, at which point you might as well turn on archmage and explode screens.

Honestly I think I'm just done trying to get fun things to work. I'll come back and play the game when spell totem or huntress/spears comes out.

The absurd mana costs are another part of the problem. I thought it was a problem exclusive to melee, but casters and ranged suffer from it, too. Leech doesn't seem to scale properly, either, which compounds the problem.

I did 1 citadel boss and noticed if you're not archmage/MoM/EB and you don't have shitload of mana gear, don't even bother slogging through that.

Funny to brag about complex skill tree and then lock everyone out who try to actually experiment with it.

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saturninecult#7044 wrote:

I did 1 citadel boss and noticed if you're not archmage/MoM/EB and you don't have shitload of mana gear, don't even bother slogging through that.

Funny to brag about complex skill tree and then lock everyone out who try to actually experiment with it.

Having to set up a portal outside the boss arena, log out, then log back in just to tap the well because your build goes dry in 7 cycles feels awful. The solution here is to link your primary damage skill with Soul Thief, but that feels awful, too, because you're giving up damage or utility for basic mana sustain.

It's even worse now with the Arbiter, because leaving the fight forfeits your run and forces you to start all over again.

I agree with alot of the problems talked here.

Mana bit too much of a problem as Melee, leech not helping enough. Only way is %-Mana on Kill Jewels and Unique-Mana Flask for high Mana pools with MoM as Defense-Layer (Archmage).

PoE-1 with 5-6 link system in Body Armor/2h-Weapons, or 4 links etc., is easier to experiment with than with greater/perfect Jewelers for every Skill u want to invest in.

Only 1 support gem, if not gemling, also limits alot of choices. Maybe that gets better with more supports.
But at the moment most builds either use some HoWA setup or Archmage or Trigger per Seconds.

The thing i dislike the most are skills with "+ seconds to attack/cast time". Bosses don't really allow u to stand still and cast something for 2 seconds without being punished for it.
So every skill with this modifier is useless to play or trying to scale it.
You can only integrate them in Trigger-Conditions.

I tried some Frost Wall + Comet selfcast setup with 10-11k ES, 20k with Grim Feast. This does clear t16, but it feels awfull to play and some bosses, or abilites, doesnt allow u to stand still for almost 2 seconds casttime even when u Freeze them before.
One example Expediton Pinnacle Boss, the frost laser still tracks u, and things like that.
And even if u get 1-2 Comets to cast, the dmg feels bad for the time and risk invested to cast them.

Please get rid of +attack/cast time, so we can properly scale abilities with attack speed/cast speed or they will never find a way into the game, beside of trigger-setups. The game is too fast paced in Endgame/Bosses for such long casttimes.

TLDR: Bumpity Bump Bump.