General 0.2.0 Feedback

I feel like the options that these essences provide are great, but I think they need a bit of their POE1 touch added back to them, the ability to reroll a single item.

For Standard Essences, this would make them akin to Alteration Orbs from POE1, with the bonus of still guaranteeing a mod for its pool of affixes. This reduces the need to collect/hoard Normal Item Bases to work with. It doesn't eliminate it as it does not prevent bad luck with the rest of the process, but it does eliminate a lot of the tedium of using them.

For Greater Essences, this makes them similar to the Essences of POE1; however, unlike using them on a Magic Item, which, while it'd still be possible to use them this way, they still only guarantee one affix when rerolling. This, combined with Fracturing Orbs, leads to still having a potential 2 guaranteed Affixes, but in a way that offers more control.

Fracturing Orbs were a great addition to the game, but their current inability to interact with any means of crafting beyond Chaos Orbs puts them in a weird spot. Getting a good Fractured Mod and Chaos Spamming with or without Omens often tends to be one of the better crafting options currently.

However, as alluded to with my suggestions for Essences, Fracturing Orbs get more value from being able to interact with more crafting methods. Which is currently limited to Chaos Orbs and Omens.

This also leads to a confusing interaction with Recombination. If a Fractured Affix exists on either item used in Recombination, these Affixes cannot be selected or transferred over, even if only one exists. I understand this was absurdly broken on POE1, in particular with allowing Double Fractured Affixes. However, in the current state of POE2, this only serves as a way to minimize the amount of RNG to craft something decent, as POE2 lacks many of POE1's powerful and more deterministic crafting methods.

The current state of Recombination is just awful. When it was mentioned as being added, it was said that this system would have a high chance of creating 2-Affix items in theory, with the odds being reduced for more Affixes.

However, this immediately falls apart in practice. At the point in the game where we get access to this option, we'd be likely to go after higher-tier Affixes, which consequently have super low odds, often around 1-2% for two of the stronger and necessary Affixes to make an item worth throwing more currency at. High Tier Damage, Gem Levels, Cast, Speed, and other similar high-demand stats just tax the hell out of the Recombination rate.

I understand that this is a limiter for allowing us to easily get any Affixes we want, but these poor odds just relegate it to a "Streamer Clip Farm". That is to say that it's a miserable experience for all but the more veteran blasters, who can build up the items and resources quickly enough to make the current low odds viable.

Unlike POE1's Recombinator, we don't even have a chance at getting the other stats on the item, so no chance of combining two intermediary items to get the affixes we want with a chance of landing an insane item if it pulls extra affixes in. Just an all-or-nothing gambling machine.

My suggestion for improving this iteration of the Recombinator is to set lower limits based on the number of affixes chosen. Just to throw numbers out that seem fair, but not incredibly overpowered, I'd suggest 10% minimum for 2 Affixes, 5% for 3, and no limit after. These, of course, can be adjusted as you see fit, but allow the Recombinator to better serve its new function without being incredibly tedious or endless base collection and crafting in combination with Essence Changes.

At the current moment, Expedition currency is best spent on crafting items with the NPCs. This often results in a strong item with 4+ Affixes

Omens are fairly accessible in the endgame, at least most of them. However, even after the changes that more or less guarantee an Omen appears, it doesn't keep the most useful options for these Omens from being exceptionally rare.

This is specifically the Omens for Chaos Orbs and Annulment Orbs, which offer the most control over our items. Unfortunately, their rarity also means they end up being prohibitively expensive to trade for by the average player, relegating them to only being used by the top players.

Getting these reliably improves the more accessible crafting options to such a degree that it's a night and day difference when you do have reliable access to them.

I'd consider adding additional Omens that have other useful effects, like Chaos Orbs targeting specific affix categories, and have an increased chance to roll an affix of the same category, an adjacent category, or something to that effect. This would give access to the most useful aspects of POE1's harvest crafting, which enables a lot of POE1's deterministic crafting options, alongside the Meta Crafts. Without Meta Crafts, it won't be fully deterministic, but it does allow a decent item to become a great item if it rolls favorably, combined with other affixes.

This was my starter for the league, and it felt good. Even before the nerfed monster and the bug fix (which mostly only applied to bosses for the way I played), it had no issues clearing content. Even after the bug fix, it's still clearing juiced T15/T16s with very minimal issues.

I'd highly suggest giving Whirling Slash a small bump in Attack Speed though. It almost requires Dance With Death and the Spear cluster to feel smooth early on, and late game, you'd be too frail without a Shield or Buckler to even consider using Dance With Death. It's a great combo skill that works with many others, but how slow it is early slows any potential combos to a crawl, and if you get light stunned in the middle of any of the buildup attacks, you have to start it over again.

Another thing I have been disappointed with is the Ritualist's Ritual Sacrifice Skill. I had planned to use it as a means of having more consistent access to Elemental Ground Effects to power it up. It's incredibly slow to use and its buffs do not last long enough to warrant stopping for anything that doesn't directly provide Speed, Damage, or both.

I had hoped I'd be able to get this to a point where it'd last long enough to be very impactful, or at least have a way to more easily maintain a set of buffs from it. Even Corpse Conservation doesn't help it, as it just gives an option to refresh the buffs, but it's tied to the corpse on the ground, It'd be nice if using this support and harvesting the same corpse multiple times would allow it to boost the timer above whatever its current limit is. Say it's the base 20 seconds, you spend another 1-2 seconds grabbing the buffs again, and the timer goes to 30 or 40 instead.

Unfortunately, my original plan of using Specters with "Trail of X" modifiers and other useful bonuses alongside the Sacrifice Spirit Gem as a means of having a portable buff for Sacrificing just doesn't work. Spectres are stripped of any affixes they had, and thus don't work for this as I had hoped. Tamed Beasts also don't work with this, though it'd be interesting to try to fit in two beasts with the sole purpose of one being sacrificed.

So instead of relying on RNG, I had two options to get the Shocked Ground I wanted. Either use Parry + Storm Lance as I did before trying Spectres or trade for Kitoko's Current to enable consistent use of Combat Frenzy alongside either Storm Lance or Explosive Spear.

I opted to invest more in Parry, and that worked, sort of. Parry + Disengage works okay, but Parry is heavily reliant on Evasion to be good. Without a high chance of ignoring the stun build-up, you're more likely to just get instantly Heavy Stunned. Even being fairly high Life and putting excess Attribute into Strength, Parrying still doesn't have a strong enough of a starting point to reliably parry more than one boss hit at most, which is where it's the most useful.

I'd highly recommend giving Parry a better base stun threshold similar to Shields, those can at least take a couple of hits before being heavily stunned. It's also weird that Shield Skills can't be used with Bucklers either. I imagine it's likely because of their strength requirement, compared to a Buckler's Dex requirement, but to me, that's just another build optimization to make to get access to those skills if I wanted them, even for utility purposes.

I played this in 0.1.0 as an Infernalist and gave it a try again with the new supports using Lich as the class instead.

It needed the monster nerfs to deal with the early game. While it's strong, it's so reliant on getting early damage that you're often left much more frail unless you get lucky with gear. Once it gets going, though, it has no real issues in the campaign now. It's one of the few combos that works well, but still has its issues.

Namely, one QoL thing I'd like for Contagion specifically is to prefer a target that already has Essence Drain on it, when possible. Often, it feels like it targets a random enemy near the cursor, even if you're hovering the monster with Essence Drain already applied. The same could be true of the reverse as well, allowing Chain to allow for an even more reliable combo.

The only thing I dislike about the Chaos DoT archetype, is that there are plenty of skills to pick from, but the support for it is still a bit underwhelming. It's amusing that of all Supports added with the patch, Zenith is easily its more reliable damage boost next to Swift Affliction and Considered Casting. Intense Agony is good, but feels incredibly unreliable without having Brutality on Contagion to prevent it from breaking the "Full Life" requirement.

Derange either needs to be massively buffed in terms of its %Damage per Threshold or have its threshold lowered. Even at the very late stages with high Intelligence on everything, we're still going to average somewhere in the 300 range at most, even perfect Intelligence across gear, with the exception of Rings not being Catalyzed for them, the upper limit is around 450, maybe 500 when pushing to Level 100. So it's more reasonable to expect high 300s at best for most players.

So, keeping both the early and endgame in mind, I see two options for making this support more worth using. Change the percentage per threshold to 12%, or move the threshold to 80 Intelligence. Changing the percentage to 12%, would make the average 3 stacks (at 300 Intelligence); it would provide 36% damage, keeping in on par with its competing supports like Swift Affliction, Drain Ailments, Zenith, Considered Casting, etc. and push the top end to potentially 48% or 60% damage when fully min-maxed. Instead, opting for a lower threshold means the early thresholds are hit earlier, but at the very late game, more thresholds can also be hit, ultimately capping out around 480 Intelligence for a 48% bonus in a very min-maxed setup.

This character is still in the process of leveling yet, and I was disappointed to find out that Watch How I Do It doesn't work for Totems. Totem are Allies, and therefore should benefit from this effect. Totems were the original plan for this character until I heard that was the case. So Now, I'm pivoting to minions instead.

Unfortunately, their special minion from Unleash Hell! is incredibly useless. The Cooldown for the skill is absurdly long and does pitiful damage, even with the early combination of Commandment, Bidding, and Ingenuity. Maybe once it get more support slots, it might start getting okay, but it's already at a disadvantage of also being unaffected by Watch How I Do It, as they're not considered to be in presence range ever.

Not thrilled by the idea of figuring out how best to keep the minions alive consistently, since that's their biggest issue right now.

Still more to test with this character yet.

This barely worked with the Widowhail setup, giving it a boost of damage. Even outside of that, the increased costs basically leave it non-viable, as Inspiration or Mana Bounty, maybe even both are forced to make it work properly. Even then, Unarmed has zero scaling options right now. At best, we get access to a Shield or Buckler.

The only slightly interesting potential between those is trying to leverage the Parried Debuff on Bucklers, which unfortunately is incredibly weak and doesn't last that long even with Investment. At the very least, Shields would offer a more consistent Movement option and better defenses maybe.

This character was my attempt at making Incinerate a more viable skill outside of things like Demon Form by mitigating the downside of channeling as much as possible. Overall, I think the character could be better with some more work put into it, but it's ultimately a Cast on Ignite build that also stacks Fire Exposure. Sadly, there aren't many options outside of Avatar of Fire to convert damage to Fire to leverage the Exposure.

I've tried every Fire Spell with it to make use of its massive ~100% Fire Exposure it offers, but they all had issues.

Fire Storm doesn't appear to consume more than an initial set of Ignites, making it very lackluster as a skill, even in a setup that provides endless Ignites, and its damage is spread too thin over its area, even when using Concentrated Effect.

Flame Wall is okay, playing well into the Ignite Magnitude and Fire Exposure that is already Stacked, but Incinernate is just a stronger version of that already, with its massive, built-in multiplier.

Fireball felt the best, offering decent burst damage, but was unable to fire off consistently outside of Rares/bosses due to its cast time in most cases.Ember Fusilade would trigger too fast in many cases, resulting in it dealing little to no damage. Solar Orb just didn't feel impactful.

The Pathfinder and Tree Changes did help a bit with its less-than-stellar mobility, and that feels pretty good. Now, it just needs more Fire Spell options to leverage the Cast On Ignite (or eventually Cast on Channeling if that ever comes to POE2 any time soon).

Brink Support was a game changer for this build, allowing Leap Slam to be a very consistent setup for Bone Shatter. Though it seems the interaction I used previously between Devastate, Armour Explosion, and Impact Shockwave was nerfed a bit. It doesn't seem to clear as reliably as it did, but it's not terrible overall. Just more skill needed for very large groups.

Other than that, mostly the same as it was in 0.1.0.

Despite the skill taking a huge hit to the wall damage in 0.2.0, it's still pretty good. Though it's AoE is lacking even more as it heavily relies on Herald of Frost to clear well. Thankfully, it's still decent at shredding bosses with moderate investment.

I'd very much appreciate having Fragmentation Rounds be a better combo skill for it. It does great damage, but it's very inconsistent about how it interacts with the walls of Glacial Bolt. Sometimes it will just Pierce or even Chain off them without causing them to explode, or ignore them entirely in favor of enemies on the other side of a wall.

Now that a lot of it's AoE stems from the walls themselves, this need to be fixed to be a more reliable interaction.

Wasn't hit super hard overall, but a lot of this character's clearing power came from Three Dragons and multiple Heralds. It's in Standard, so I have no reason to invest in making it decent again, even though it certainly can be, as the Crossbow Buffs kept it a viable starter option.

Minions are not in a good place right now. Even after their buffs, and with heavy investment into their defenses, they just fall over. Due to the other Changes, Last Gasp no longer even helps with their uptime on on being able to deal damage.

They're still capable of decent damage, but getting them to survive is the hard part. There's just not much in terms of tools to fix this either.

I have no interest in revisiting this character after its changes. It was nerfed in every possible way, so it's assuredly far weaker than it was before. It's only saving grace might be legacy gear saving some of its mana scaling