Everything feels kinda castrated [PoE2 Theorycrafting Feedback]

My background (so that you understand the feedback better)

Ive played a lot of D2LoD, then D3.. then I joined for the start of PoE Open beta, and that was the last day I ever lauched any Diablo game

I was amazed by complexity of mechanics and endless theorycrafting possiblilities .These were really large despite the fact there were not much of content yet. We had 3 acts, endgame maps and that was it. No side mechanics, no ascendancies

Over the years, as my game knowledge developed, Ive thorycrafted hundreds of builds, often very crazy, complicated, always off-meta. Everywhere I looked there were build opportunities and ideas. Almost everthing felt possible.

This has been the strongest aspect of the game that kept me playing and supporting the game for a long time

Now, In PoE2, it seems almost gone. We are now in par with other ARPG games, where there are only handful of opportunities for each (sub)class. Then most of the people play they the same builds, seeking for the same items, with all the negative consequences this creates (including mass rage when you nerf it)

Here is a breakdown of things that cause poor theorycrafting opportunities:

1) Skill weapon restrictions - While I understand why this makes sense, I find it a bit harsh and limiting. This could be at least mixed, with some specific skills being restricted and other more generic ones being usable with different weapon types

2) Attribute requirements - attributes from the tree have been more than halved (including no more notables) and requirements went up by roughly 30%. Most of the time you dont even get enough from the tree for the primary attribute(s). Every item/skill which has a different atttribute comes with large opportunity cost of multiple affixes of a stat which most of the time has no other benefit. This has huge impact on available build itemizations and skill setups

3) Predetermined skill roles - we now have huge range of base damage on skills, unscallable speed values, skills/weapons with large base crit range with limited crit chance sources. This means: I can no longer make weak skill strong, slow skill fast, skill/weapon predetermines if I go crit or not

4) Anti synergy stuff - reworked mechanics like penetration - this now does nothing most of the time, unless there are resistances from some outer sources like map mod. Builds using single element already use exposure/curse, so for them it does nothing even more often. Conversion (and damage added as) used to be a great source of fun and creativity, now it feels very bad. if you want to benefit fully, you have to use generic modifiers only, they are hard to find especially on support gems. Also, Avatar of Fire, good luck finding fire damage passives and supports as warrior. terrible

5) Underwhelming support gems - supports used to be very impactfull and could fix stuff, like missing (or none) weapon base damage, low base crit, crit multiplier etc. Now they in general dont do much. Combined with usage limit, I struggle to find good supports even for the most common use case, which is having different setups for AoE and single target

6) Auras and other buffs - auras used to be an important part of the puzzle, being able to fix missing things in a build. Anger/Wrath could help fix base damage, and Grace, oh boi, how useful that was, able to fix missing Evasion (usually when using build enabling unique body armor) or even Armour (iron reflexes)

7) underwhelming build enabling uniques - I am actually not sure about this one, it feels so, but could as well be result of previous points, especially 2,5 and 6

8) probably lots of other stuff I forgot about, like missing utility skills that actually did something useful, charges (endurance, power, frenzy) now provide no benefits, underwhelming trigger skills, underwhelning Keystones (rip EE)..

sure, we now have other things to work with, lots of different status effects, payoff skills, combo, active block/parry and other stuff, but as I discussed in this feedback post, there is no time for tactical reactive combat in current endgame pacing.

the obvious question is WHY? why to butcher the strongest aspect of the franchise? for what? Or do I exaggerate and it is not that important? Do most of the players not care and just copy the build from their favorite content creator? Or do you aim for different audience?

Please Exiles, let me know down bellow how do you feel about current theorycrafting possibilities and how iportant is this game aspect for you.

Thanks for reading

Agree with most for sure.

I have said it before, but this 'vision' is an absolute diversity killer from the POE1 we all know. If you from POE1 that is. It really does seem to have put POE2 on the same base as all other ARPG's. Pretty simplistic. Very restrictive.

ARPGs are not made to be in the pace of soulslikes, especially on something like PoE. We saw at league launch what happened, THEY EVEN PUT TEMPEST BELL ON 10 COMBO. Playing league launch before the hotfix WHICH I DID, IT FELT TERRIBLE. It was worse than Kalandra league for crying out loud. My suggestion is PoE 2 can learn a lot from PoE 1. The recipe is there you don't need to fix something that doesn't need fixing. Let's take some basic steps, i made a post about this, fix the atlas tree, fix sekhemas loot, GIVE US CRAFTING. Like damn bro, you can't just take everything out like that. You made our passive tree more restrictive to the point you need attributes on gear to fill requirements, you straight up killed build defining uniques like HowA and everything just feels so watered down that i am asking myself am i even playing PoE ?

If you want build diversity you can't enforce it by nerfing something and buffing something else, that's just balance thrashing. Open the floodgates instead, give the tree more freedom, give it more stats give it better nodes. Because as is now you are boxing us into some very specific paths you have to follow for each build otherwise you just can't clear. And again there is all this bullshit with being able to get a half decent item that it's almost impossible except if you straight up luck it out. I feel like the guy designing this mess confuses difficulty with tediousness and frustration. Take a step back. Now it's not all bad, there is things i like here, there is potential here in this new way of things but it's being dragged down by this "vision", so much that it became a meme. Now also i have to say there have been improvements from the problems created from launch but if you guys don't do something drastic people are gonna keep leaving. And it's because we are here to play PoE, we are not here to play "not PoE".

In the first weeks of PoE2, I felt the best I ever had in the PoE franchise. I, like many others, was able to assemble a decent build by just reading the tree and picking nodes. Later, to make endgame content more manageable, only then looked up guides.

This is all gone now. Allowing 1-2 viable builds in total, is counter-fun in my book. The pleasure of copying build guides to just be able to play is no greater than miserably flunking a class and having to copy somebody else's homework.

Id like to add that in PoE1 I believed that "meta" there meant popular rather than the strongest.

there were just so many possibilities. I actually enjoyed making strong builds out of the skills people called not viable. Or against the "meta". It also meant I was able to get items for cheap most of the time (as majority of the players were looking for different stuff)

I mean, I "worked" hard to gain the game knowledge (mechanics, items, modifiers) which allowed me to see build ideas everywhere.

I no longer feel rewarded for game knowledge in PoE2, because the options/synergies are not really there or are severely limited

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Ludvator#6587 wrote:

the options/synergies are not really there or are severely limited

I have to agree with this here...

I don't know if it's because it's early acess or because it wasn't thought on the bigger picture...

but this season it seems it was lacking of choices.
We had 1 very good build (LS) and almost all others bad and very bad.

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GatoPreto1718#7829 wrote:

I don't know if it's because it's early acess or because it wasn't thought on the bigger picture...

surely we get more stuff later, but I remember PoE1 beta, and it felt completely different

its a matter of many multipliers. If you cut all of them in half, the final difference is enormous, and adding more of them does not help that much