Endgame gear progression feels bad

Endgame gear progression feels like the biggest missing piece in the game today. In trade league, everyone just buys items off trade because crafting "basically doesn't exist". In SSF, you quickly plateau and have little-no agency to continue improving your Rare quality gear. Too many layers of RNG makes it hard to craft even a decent 1- or 2-mod item, let alone 3-mod or more. The whole system is stacked against the player getting the gear they want, and overall it's very frustrating rather than rewarding.

In PoE1, we could deterministically craft many 6-mod items. Clearly _The Vision_ is that deterministic 6-mod crafts are too much except at mirror-tier investment. I'm actually fine with that, but we need to be able to get a few guaranteed-ish mods to actually feel like crafting exists and to enable some semblance of gear progression without trade.

That said, there's some little things they could do within the current systems to make it feel infinitely better and actually enable gear progression. Just contextualize the following discussion, my experience is in SSF with a 92 Boneshatter Titan having a little over 3 days played and 10 hour campaign time.

# Modifier Weightings

We need to talk about mod weights before we can dive into specific mechanics.

Mod weights feel similar to PoE1 in that mods like T1 flat phys are around 70/70,000 (1/1,000) to roll on a weapon. The lowest tiers of flat phys are closer to 1,000/70,000 or 1/70. Other mods like life tend to always have weights around 1,000 and not become more rare with better tiers.

We knew these mod weights in poe1 because they are available in the client files, but in poe2 they are not. The craftofexile folks did an analysis on trade site data to infer mod weights based on the frequency at which mods are seeing on gear for sale, and that data showed it's pretty similar to PoE1. Their analysis can be seen in the calculator on craftofexile.com.

In PoE1, it was _trivial_ to get a 1-mod item due to alteration orbs--even those 1-in-1,000 rolls like T1 flat phys. In PoE2, the "equivalent" to alteration orb spamming for a single mod is to pick up every instance of a specific base type you're interested in and ID/craft on it. This is an _insane_ amount of friction compared to PoE1. Even finding highly weighted mods like life takes many, many maps just to get one instance of that affix. In short, it's **harder** and more **time-consuming** in PoE2 to get even one mod you want on a piece of gear.

# Stash Management

This is a good point to talk about inventory management since the PoE2 approach is "pick up every base you find, ID, craft, and 3:1 for first mod".

The sheer quantity of bases we collect makes for some tedious inventory management in and between maps. It would be great if we had a more**sophisticated Stash Tab Affinity system** (eg, based on _.filter_ syntax) where we could send specific base types to specific stash tabs (eg, Sacred Maul to one tab, Vaal Mitts to another). There's a nice alignment of incentives between GGG and the players because GGG would probably sell more stash tabs, and players' stash would be more organized without spending tons of time between every map.

# Recombinators

Recombinators are the most exciting thing to happen to crafting in PoE2 so far, but they feel awful due to how they work.

The chance of success with semi-decent mods is way too low. I tried to recomb a _140 Max Life_ and _30 Strength_ gloves, and it was only a 15% chance of success. Simply finding items with those specific mods already takes an eternity, and recomb is saying I would need to find about 5 copies of them to have more than a 50% chance of success overall. That's an incredible grind for just two mods. The current approach to getting feeders for a two mod item is too onerous for this low chance of success. If GGG wants to keep this approach of picking up tons of ground loot, the recomb chance needs to be made much higher.

The next issue is that the output item is always _Rare_ which prevents any synergy with Greater Essences. My idea with the Life + Strength gloves was that if I put in two magic bases and ask for only 1 prefix and 1 suffix that the output item should still be magic and I could use a greater essence on it. Nope, all you can do now (if recomb is successful) is exalt and pray. This would be an easy fix, **make 2-mod items with 1 prefix and 1 suffix always magic coming out of recomb**, or at least if both feeder items were magic.

Finally, both items are deleted if it fails. Maybe this wouldn't be such a problem if the chance of success was better for two mods, and even in PoE1 it wouldn't be that bad since alterations are a thing. In any case, this feels really bad in its current state. I could imagine a system where it **gives you back _some_ of the requested mods if the original recomb fails**. For instance, if you selected 3 mods and it failed, perhaps it could try again with 2 of the 3 mods, and if that fails, finally give you back an item with 1 of the 3 mods chosen at random.

Collecting feeder items in SSF is such a pain that recomb hardly feels worth it, and the lack of synergy with Greater Essences feels like a missed opportunity.

# Expedition Vendors

These guys still feel very underpowered and unrewarding, especially now that the currency competes with recombinators. I think this could be fixed if the "upgrade mod tiers" action came back from PoE1.

One thing I do like about expedition vendors today is they can be a good source of 1-2 mod magic items for use with a Greater Essence.

# Essences

Essences are one of our best crafting options today, but they are rather frustrating due to the number of mods with certain tags such as life or phys.

For instance, if you use an Essence of Torment (physical mods) on a martial weapon, you can roll one of five mods including flat phys, %inc phys, hybrid accuracy + %inc phys, and mana/life leech. Even if you happen to roll one of the prefixes here, it's unlikely to be a good tier due to low weights of good tiers.

I think this could actually be fine *if* we had some omens to change the behavior of essences. I would *love* to see two omens introduced:

* _Omen of Sinistral Crystalization_: While this item is active in your inventory, your next Essence or Greater Essence will add only prefix modifiers.
* _Omen of Dextral Crystalization_: While this item is active in your inventory, your next Essence or Greater Essence will add only suffix modifiers.

Being able to use a Greater Essence with one of these would feel amazing. Still no guarantee that it's a good tier, but at least it's more likely to be the modifier kind that the player is looking for.

# Fracturing Orbs

So far in end game, I've found a total of 2 fracturing orbs and used 1. The drop rate of these feels ok; it certainly feels good when one drops.

My one experience using a fracturing orb was that it targeted the lowest tier mod on the item. Was hoping for my T2 flat phys. Only feedback on this is that they need to be evenly weighted to feel good; it shouldn't matter if a mod is T1 or T12, it should have a 1/4 chance (on 4 mod item) to be fractured. No idea if that's the case, but wanted to note it. I only bring this up because other currencies feel like they typically give the most undesirable mods to the player--low life regen on body essence, chaos targeting valuable attack mods, etc. (and if that truly is the case, please for Exiles' sanity make it purely random rather than weight based)

# Meaningful bases

GGG keeps talking about wanting ground loot to be meaningful, but I think it's missing the mark right now. We pick up tons of ground loot because we have to due to stacked layers of RNG, not because it's likely to be a good item. Ground loot feels like a chore.

Bases in PoE1 felt more meangingful than bases in PoE2. Over-quality items in PoE1 were rare, and they were exciting to find. They could be used to craft the best items, items you couldn't create with simple crafting currency. It would be great if over-quality items could make a return. With recombinator, we have a chance to actually put a couple of decent affixes on such items, and fracturing orbs would let us really craft on it.

# Omens

A positive change was making Omens like prefix/suffix for alch/regal/ex and extra mods plentiful; they feel good to find and use. It's nice being able to use them regularly.

There are several omens I have still never seen in SSF (including 0.1) such as Whittling, Chaos prefix/suffix, and annul prefix/suffix. Whittling is clearly very powerful and seems fine being rare, but the chaos and annulment prefix/suffix would potentially open up 4-mod+ crafting to regular players. Crafting would feel a lot better if we could use the chaos/annul omens more frequently. **Drop rate for dextral/sinistral chaos omens should be same order of magnitude as other dextral/sinistral omens.**

# Lake of Kalandra bases

Quick note, but so far after getting 26/40 in my atlas, I've seen only one of these maps, and the reward item dropped with a bunch of garbage affixes on it. It's basically useless. **Lake of Kalandra bases should drop as Normal items**.

# Summary

The current crafting options are not just unrewarding but too rare and also punishing. Players struggle to craft even 2-mod items, and as a result, endgame gear progression quickly plateaus. I would personally have a lot more fun in end game and spend a lot more time on my late game characters if we could reliably craft 3-mod items, but the current state of 0.2 is very far from that.

GGG has said that more crafting options will be coming with later leagues, but that shouldn't mean today's gear progression should feel bad. The existing systems should be balanced around the currently available systems, not the future systems that we don't have access to. Systems can always be rebalanced as new ones are introduced.

Ultimately, I just want some more agency (and progression!) in my end game gear progression and less player hostile RNG. At the current rate, I can't even gear out a single character in the timespan of a single league, let alone play multiple characters to decent gear levels.

+

pretty much agree with everything here, particularly

wrt weightings:
i would absolutely love if the weight of the lowest tier mod that can be rolled on an item was reduced as the item level increased. I think GGG would never REMOVE the chance for a T1 roll on a ilvl 82 piece of gear, but it should taper off. But i sadly think this is never going to happen

wrt 3:1 and/or better stash affinities:
I really wouldn't mind 3:1 if it was easier to sort/store bases and the UI/clunkiness got improved. I don't mind the philosophy of it, but I do mind the tedium of sorting SO many items. I would absolutely pay money for a stash tab (kind of like the unique tab) that would store and sort based on bases.

this is all from a SSF perspective

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gingerpauls#2326 wrote:

T1 roll on a ilvl 82 piece of gear should taper off.

This would actually make a lot of sense with PoE2's "append-only" crafting. +1

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gingerpauls#2326 wrote:

I would absolutely pay money for a stash tab (kind of like the unique tab) that would store and sort based on bases.

This never crossed my mind, but I LOVE this idea. +1

I think the bingo sheet was sufficient to bring your point across ! :)



Most of your concerns are actually mentioned in recent GGG interviews with a surprising awareness of those issues on Mark's behalf and an even more surprising perplexed Jonathan. But he probably played on a dev client, who really knows.

Imagine the experience a casual player has , they will literally never find anything lol

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Schranzfranz#4329 wrote:

Most of your concerns are actually mentioned in recent GGG interviews

That wasn't the impression I got from the Ziz interview this week so I'm hoping to start that discussion.

instead of using alterations we are collecting and spamming bases. its exactly the same but 10 times more tedious. on top 50% of loot is gold (from monsters lol) so i can buy gear from vendors.....loot in this game is terrible

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Pl4t1numX#4325 wrote:

instead of using alterations we are collecting and spamming bases. its exactly the same but 10 times more tedious. on top 50% of loot is gold (from monsters lol) so i can buy gear from vendors.....loot in this game is terrible

I don't foresee ggg changing this philosophy anytime soon, so we're trying to find ways to reduce that tedium. Do you have any suggestions?

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gingerpauls#2326 wrote:

"

Pl4t1numX#4325 wrote:

instead of using alterations we are collecting and spamming bases. its exactly the same but 10 times more tedious. on top 50% of loot is gold (from monsters lol) so i can buy gear from vendors.....loot in this game is terrible

I don't foresee ggg changing this philosophy anytime soon, so we're trying to find ways to reduce that tedium. Do you have any suggestions?

tedious collecting and hoarding of item bases is only solved by being able to reset an item in the crafting process. im fine with not being able to reset items after a certain point of crafting. but not being able to reset a 1 mod blue item is ridiculous. if we are not even able to halfway deterministic craft a blue 2mod item in the first place, there is no need of on top mechanics. if the base mechanic sucks then its not a matter of diverse options after that.