Skill tree provides "fake options" to create builds

Skill tree provides "fake options" to create builds. For example.
- You can't make bigger AOE for MONK as it's to far. So best Monk is Gemlink. As it's best stacker to make everything possible.


DEX/INT area should also have more options of area of effect possibilities for attacks as well STR/INT should get some critical strike for better build variety.
Everything basicaly in tree is set - you are doing ice? cool - you can't increase the AOE - all of your options ale crit version or freeze buildup version for cold build and it's about everything. You will not be able to create a warrior with staff and do the proper armor breaking build for physical skill type on monk due to lack of Agility and nodes.


While AOE should be more popular as it's just increasing AOE without increasing dmg at all (it's but.. you know) for bosses it's still a just "-". For example by adding new "physical- wind element" with new Wind mechanics. Like increasing knockback/phys/aoe on cost of lower elemental dmg

As well all afixes are poor and just null like in generic POE 1. Everything no matter which skill we are using barely using the same afixes. Loot should have about 10x times of afixes - with class/item specific afixes that for example increase aoe on certain skill - more skill and more loot but harder to hit the BIS item we search for.. as well as same afixes all cold/crit builds no matter which skill we are using are utylizing the same points in skill tree +/- 5/8 Skill points.

I'm not an expert theory crafter but in my opinion there is simply not enough on the tree that is interesting or transformative.
Things like stun threshold, flask/charm effect, amount of leech, knockback distance etc...who cares ?
In the end I find myself chasing all the damage nodes I can get, and towards the end some defenses, ailments magnitude and maybe a few key notables here and there with actually interesting effect.

I think ggg is so affraid of making anything too strong they ended up neutering almost every combat mechanic, by making them too complicated and restraining to use, while having a super weak payoff.
Just look at volatility, could have been a cool concept but at the end you have to jump through so many hoops and deal with such strong penalty with such a weak payoff that you end up not wanting to go anywhere near it, it's absolutely ridiculous.

In the end just stacking pure damage seems like the simplest and most effective thing to do.

I'm not sure if you were implying this but Monks absolutely can do an Armour-Break build. It's what I use. You have to stack Stun (+/- Daze)Buildup though and use the Devastate support gem. It automatically breaks the armour of anything you Heavy-Stun.

GGG need to rework too many things ins this game, skill tree, gems, atlas, monsters. I don't know maybe POE2 is doomed, time will tell.

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LFA01#0120 wrote:

Things like stun threshold, flask/charm effect, amount of leech, knockback distance etc...who cares ?

This is such an absolutely telling comment. "Who cares about Stun Threshold?" when there have been daily posts complaining about being chain-stunned by white mobs since 0.2 dropped, and right next to them threads talking about how XP loss on death is too harsh and needs to be removed.

I think some people absolutely do care they're just not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to their BIG DEEPS in order to create more balanced builds and instead expect GGG to come to their rescue by removing XP loss so they can go on ignoring these choices and investing exclusively in boom boom pew pew.

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MarniBR#0438 wrote:

GGG need to rework too many things ins this game, skill tree, gems, atlas, monsters. I don't know maybe POE2 is doomed, time will tell.

Too true. If they were smarter they would have planned an indefinite period of time in which they would have iteratively and gradually refined and polished all of those mechanics and more with the benefit of player feedback prior to fully releasing the game but alas, instead they chose to... hey, wait a just a darn minute!

You know all of these issues about build diversity would be solved if our baseline main class could start from any direction on the tree. I've seen a lot of peoples so called "build diverse" builds, and its literally just them losing 20-30 points just pathing to another side of the tree to grab nodes.

Spell based ranger? No you're dropping 20.
Melee based witch? Hell no, you're dropping 20.
Spell based Mercenary? Nope....you're dropping at least 40.

And then the solution all the fake theory crafters use is "Well if you just get this one unique item"

THERES 20 DIFFERENT MONK STAFF SKILLS WHY THE HELL AM I ITEM LOCKED JUST TO MAKE SOMETHING WORK!!!

Its so god damn frustrating dude. And it doesn't help that the support gems have so many draw backs or force you into using elemental or hit or DOT combinations that are so god damn far removed from each other it removes the logic the supports had in the first place.

This game....on a base level alone with what we have and the pace its built. Its gonna be at least 6 years before we see anything outside of the box.

And don't get me started on their "combo" logic that completely ignores the basis of why combos in video games exist in the first place, I'm gonna crash out if I keep thinking about it...I'm gonna crash out.

Sadly this is absolutely true, buildcrafting in PoE 2 is tiring for the oposite reason as it is fun in PoE 1: it lacks minimally viable options.

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Kerchunk#7797 wrote:

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LFA01#0120 wrote:

Things like stun threshold, flask/charm effect, amount of leech, knockback distance etc...who cares ?

This is such an absolutely telling comment. "Who cares about Stun Threshold?" when there have been daily posts complaining about being chain-stunned by white mobs since 0.2 dropped, and right next to them threads talking about how XP loss on death is too harsh and needs to be removed.

I think some people absolutely do care they're just not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to their BIG DEEPS in order to create more balanced builds and instead expect GGG to come to their rescue by removing XP loss so they can go on ignoring these choices and investing exclusively in boom boom pew pew.

"

MarniBR#0438 wrote:

GGG need to rework too many things ins this game, skill tree, gems, atlas, monsters. I don't know maybe POE2 is doomed, time will tell.

Too true. If they were smarter they would have planned an indefinite period of time in which they would have iteratively and gradually refined and polished all of those mechanics and more with the benefit of player feedback prior to fully releasing the game but alas, instead they chose to... hey, wait a just a darn minute!

Being chain stunned is only a problem if you go 1 life.
And then a stone charm will basically fix that that for you.
There are concerns about stuns, like how you would lose charges if interrupted during attack/cast time without the skill coming off, or how stun meter on players would never come down. It's possible some of these issues have already been corrected (Not sure). But if you browse these forums, nobody really complains about chain stuns, a simple stone charm will fix that for you.
Unless maybe for very specific niches, stun threshold on the tree will never compete againt more damage or reaching to get that jewel socket.
If that stuff is going to be on the tree it needs to have some real additional bonus coming with it or it's not even competing.
To bo honest stun threshold is probably the least useless thing out of those I mentionned. It's not nothing, but still mostly not worth putting points into.

In my opinion GGG should stop being afraid of things being "too OP". Just let people have fun.
There is no point in having so many mechanics if 80% of them go unused because the developers made them so weak and painfully restrictive in case it might end up being OP.
We're not having fun here.

On the current passive tree, as far as I'm concerned there is very little that beats "increased damage" because everything else is just too weak and/or restriced by other factors. (simple exemple with leech)

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AndromedaDelux#1272 wrote:

You know all of these issues about build diversity would be solved if our baseline main class could start from any direction on the tree. I've seen a lot of peoples so called "build diverse" builds, and its literally just them losing 20-30 points just pathing to another side of the tree to grab nodes.

Spell based ranger? No you're dropping 20.
Melee based witch? Hell no, you're dropping 20.
Spell based Mercenary? Nope....you're dropping at least 40.

And then the solution all the fake theory crafters use is "Well if you just get this one unique item"

THERES 20 DIFFERENT MONK STAFF SKILLS WHY THE HELL AM I ITEM LOCKED JUST TO MAKE SOMETHING WORK!!!

Its so god damn frustrating dude. And it doesn't help that the support gems have so many draw backs or force you into using elemental or hit or DOT combinations that are so god damn far removed from each other it removes the logic the supports had in the first place.

This game....on a base level alone with what we have and the pace its built. Its gonna be at least 6 years before we see anything outside of the box.

And don't get me started on their "combo" logic that completely ignores the basis of why combos in video games exist in the first place, I'm gonna crash out if I keep thinking about it...I'm gonna crash out.

Actually yes. Most blatant exemple I think is minions. Unless you are starting from the top of the tree you can basically forget about it.
Maybe you can get a couple useful tokens to use for exemple for profane ritual but that's about it.
Otherwise, you ain't scaling those minion's damage and you ains't scaling those minion's life. There pretty much nothing you can do with them save for a few interaction here and there.

And yeah there's also the fact that this game seems like it does not want to give anything without taking something in return. There's just too many restrictions at some point. You just go "why bother ?" and take the simplest route.
Putting in effort is usually not worth it anyway (case in point: the volatility mechanic)

Actually i see the comittment for this topic, but a class shall still say a class as doing something really good as well as something really bad to enforce the variety of choosing a dedication.

As an option, i already have suggested for exactly his point, offering a general Skill-Gem let a Character switch to a complete other Entity as example turning from a Monk into a Witch for 30 seconds... I dont know if you like this idea ?!

Greetings.