Some thoughts related to meta skills (literally and figurative), channeling, demon form.

Greetings. First of all I'd like to thank devs for the opportunity to join the forces of Beidat. I really like the design of demons in PoE1 and was really hyped when I first saw that the witch will have a demon form. So I enjoyed the gameplay for a while, especially her dash animation.

So about the "meta" skills. It feels like spark outranges everything else in this game. I tried to play around incinerate, flameblast, fireball, bone cage and bonestorm. Unlike the aoe skills, spark doesn't need any aoe investment to cover few screens and even go around the corner, while most obstacles mess the clearspeed of any other skills. And astral projection looks like a joke because you lose aoe.

As for the meta skills, I'd like to see few more in game like cast on pin/bleed/poison for physical spells.

Imo channeling skills (both in PoE1 and PoE2) need toggle button to instantly release at full stacks. It never was fun to time the release the things like scourge arrow, flameblast, bonestorm. I also hoped that incinerate will be a hit skill for crits, not a renamed scorching ray, but well.

Demon form, despite being gorgeous, is really limited. I'm not complaining, but you're not able to build it around melee skills, current and future unique weapons and shields is restricted too. You can't use sigil of power because of the same reasons. The only way to be on par with the users of weapons is to achieve and keep high stacks of demonflame, but even then you miss crit and ailment bonuses from weapon. You can't use CI (that's understandable, just another thing people who use demon form are restricted from).
First minutes of map clearing and bossfights are nothing but a disadvantage.
I believe later there will be more ways to keep the demon form up because of new uniques or maybe reworks, but that's the other thing which is limiting building around it. You can't play around Expert Steel Plate for % health regen (and around high life overall), there should be more options to use other gear slots esp since demon form already lacks using weapons.

My thoughts about how demon form could work better: more options for health regen, maybe big % health regen builds; maybe instead of degen it could use spirit to reserve a specific amount of stacks (like pledging your soul for power, huh. Could be also fun to play around health stack + Beidat's Will with such mechanics); maybe a rework of Mastered Darkness for some ability which would generate and/or consume the stacks of demonflame for a defensive/offensive buff.

Well, I've made my choice for main character for all the future leagues anyway. Hail the Beidat!

Going to bump because of the patchnotes:
The Demon Form Skill granted by the Demonic Possession Ascendancy Passive Skill now has a Cooldown of 15 seconds (previously 20), and a maximum Demonflame of 10 (previously uncapped). You now lose a flat amount of Life per second per Demonflame (scaling with Skill level), rather than a percentage of your Maximum Life. The dodge roll while in Demon Form has also had its distance reduced.
The Mastered Darkness Ascendancy Passive Skill now grants "Demonflame has no maximum".

While you "fixed" the part with the health dependency so the builds will become % life regen now instead of flat and low base life, all of this look like a big nerf and no fixing the main issues. We don't know how much degen it will be, maybe it will be doable with high % regen and life to get same or even more ammount of stacks or maybe it's a straight nerf.
I don't think that nerfing the distance of the dodge roll was necessary as there are many other options which are still much better in terms of movement.
Instead of making extra interaction with demon form with second ascendancy, you decided to switch it to make a mandatory since who would ever run demon form with 10 stacks, it gives less than it grants comparing to regular gameplay as I mentioned in this thread.
As for the main issue: you still have to wait during pinacle boss fights to get the damage other players have from the beginning because they use weapons (you can always just rework demon form so it will be able to use weapons, but with less damage from form/rework it entirely). Just let us somehow get stacks instantly with a skill which could be unlocked via ascendancy, or rework the system entirely.

Also less jewel sockets, so no extra % life regen rate and removing corruption for % life regen from rings and helmet doesn't make it any better. Overall, the more I read the patchnotes, the more disappointed I become.

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serpetma4#0892 wrote:

My thoughts about how demon form could work better: more options for health regen, maybe big % health regen builds; maybe instead of degen it could use spirit to reserve a specific amount of stacks (like pledging your soul for power, huh.

As I posted earlier, infernalist ascendancy makes no sense right now. I would be totally fine having the ascendancy all around the fact to play in a demon form and giving perks for that in the tree.