"Your Build is Bad" Proves POE2 Missed the Mark. POE1 is Much Easier to Understand

One of the stated goals of POE2 is that POE1 is too complex for newbies to understand so it had to be simplified. This was stated in numerous DEV interviews but they blew it and actually went the other way.

However, I would contend that that POE1 is significantly easier to understand than POE2. Even for a newbie. A two videos I recently posted basically proved that.

For the videos, I took the idea of INTENTIONALLY playing Huntress Fangs of Frost and based the build only on the skills, the synergies in the descriptions and the empowering aspects laid out in the skill videos. I wasn't trying to build a meta build.

Starting from the beach the tone is set. Assuming you are new to the game you can cut one of four skills for a spear huntress. You get whirling slash off the beach. You can get twister, and its guide says you can power it up with whirling slash. You can cut disengage and use it to get frenzy charges as long as you parry. Then you can power up your tiny little firecracker explosive spear to a fire spitting BOMB with a frenzy charge. Right out the door they have set the tone. So you go out in clearfell and parry and throw a spear or use twister after powering up. You say "man I need more speed, or defense or parry power and you get those passive nodes.

By the time you get to cut Fangs of Frost, the demo video talks about how Parrying allows you to do a big explosion. "Now that is cool!" you say while cutting and socketing it. Now we are going down thi route. Our passive tree starts to pick up atttack speed and parry help and goes for some defense. To support FoF we notice Embitter and Ice bite and they seem a natural fit Then we get into later areas and enemies are charging us down in mass. We put up the shield to parry and are stun locked .. dead. Wait ... I was supposed to parry and blow stuff up?! We find explosive spear is not good without a frenzy charge but to get off the parry is tough when there are 30 mobs chasing you down to beat your brains in.

And then a player posts a video of a cold build. People on the forums deride them and say "you suck at the game, quit now lol" (they always have to put the "lol" at the end.) But this is exactly the path curated by the DEVs. They introduced the skills and interactions with videos (on infinite repeating loop no less), you took their word for it and people say you suck. They say, "OMG your gear sucks" but you crafted what you could. You had 5 exalts drop and added some modifiers to your gear. You didnt drop a spear with +2 melee skills or +100% phys and there is no way for you to get them (unless you trade but you have nothing to trade with). The dismissive players show you the spear they bought for 15 exalts or crafted from the vast stash of their alt and say "see the game works." They say "Don't get parry nodes from the tree if you aren't parrying more, go to this obscure node over here and by the way if you don't weave in lightning with your skills it wont work, oh yeah and i never parry look at my videos."

Frankly the game has been lying to you. You dont have the currency to fix it and all you can do is slog along hoping to drop that spear. You get frustrated and quit.

The reality is that POE1 is much easier to play. I can harvest alt orbs from low level drops and re roll my item until I get what I want. I can pick up virtually any skill in game and get to end game with it, knowing jack all about the system. I have a slight learning curve of the sockets colors and support gems. The tutorials for the bench arent really there but that could be improved. Oh later I get cooler more powerful gems? Nice. OK maybe now I want to play molten strike, I want more projectiles, woot I am more powerful. I just beat Kitava, oh my resists are down. You know what I remember that crafting bench, I will go there and use some JUNK currency my stash is overflowing with and add some fire resist to my gear. Ok patched. I need more damage for sure to deal with act 5, let me sell some of my junk currency for better currency. I have 25 alc orbs and a bunch of scours now. Ok thats not a bad sword, and better than what I got. Whew now I defeated Kitava the second time. I am starting end game and getting my butt kicked.

By now you know about the systems, the crafting, the passive tree. You can go and re tune your gear with drops, or crafting. You have ventured in the passive tree being about level 60 and know basically how things work. you can look up a righteous fire or molten strike build and actually understand how it's played. A league later your next char is blasting smoothly through the opening acts on the way to being strong enough to kill Shaper or get to 200 in delve. The struggles you are facing is not having enough orbs to respec your whole tree and not having better tutorials about systems. But the systems are all there to be had and when you figure them out they work great.

The problem with POE2 is its not easy to make a good build. It lies to you all the time about what a good build is. This is what happens when you play it the way the "Vision" wants you to play. We know its the vision because it is in the skill tutorial videos and programmed into the tree. Its MUCH MUCH harder to be successful at POE2 than POE1. Can I personally wipe the game? Sure, all i have to do is pick the meta build and then the game gets one-shotted, until they nerf my meta build and I cant kill anything anymore. Can I do it with any skill I pick up? Lord no, only a few meta combos work.

POE2 went backwards. I can put anyone in POE1, explain a few things and they will beat the campaign. The rolling synchronized blaster builds dont happen until much later with much more playtime invested. Most newer players I have watched play POE2 get frustrated before they get to cruel and very few of them make it to end game.

I want POE2 to be successful so the vision needs some serious corrective lenses. You should have stuck to making a sequel to a game that was 90% genius.

A+ post in terms of clarity—and while I mostly agree with you, I keep wondering if this is a knowledge issue or a balance issue.

The game definitely presents certain build paths in a way that feels curated or intentional, but then those same paths fall apart later, and it’s hard to tell if that’s on the player for not understanding the deeper mechanics, or on the game for setting them up to fail.

Either way, there needs to be more room to pivot without feeling punished. Right now, it feels like you either already know what works—or you find out the hard way that what you picked doesn’t.

Really solid breakdown overall.

Great post +1!

And there will be people saying "PoE 1 is too complicated" or "We need a PhD to play PoE 1".

PoE 1 compared to PoE 2 is pretty easy to learn, the learn curve can be a bit steep but after we get the hang of most activities, becomes easier and easier.

On the other end, PoE 2 there is no learn curve because the game gatekeep us at every turn - no entry level crafting, poor loot, itemizationg is bad, passive tree has no juice, skills have to work on combos to kill !!!white mobs!!! and the worst of all the tedium to set up one map for hours and do it in minutes or die in seconds.

POE2 is terrible at teaching anyone how to play the game. One of the main problems is the terrible skill system/UI that suggests support gems that are pure garbage for the skill in question and hiding the best support gems behind a terribly unfriendly UI that makes finding or searching for good supports a nightmare. Even experienced players that know what supports they want can't easily find them (initially) as GGG inexplicably decided the to change the names of the known POE1 support gems.

The amount of things changed from POE1 to POE2 for no reason other than to change it is ridiculous.

Didn't you stop playing this game like weeks ago? Why are you still talking about a game that you clearly don't like and stopped playing

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Galtrovan#5344 wrote:

POE2 is terrible at teaching anyone how to play the game. One of the main problems is the terrible skill system/UI that suggests support gems that are pure garbage for the skill in question and hiding the best support gems behind a terribly unfriendly UI that makes finding or searching for good supports a nightmare. Even experienced players that know what supports they want can't easily find them (initially) as GGG inexplicably decided the to change the names of the known POE1 support gems.

The amount of things changed from POE1 to POE2 for no reason other than to change it is ridiculous.

That is actually a great point. I didn't even think of that. Support gems are another red herring that misdirects the player. And without currency to change items you are basically screwed. You reroll or quit.

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Hyperspacing#5593 wrote:

Didn't you stop playing this game like weeks ago? Why are you still talking about a game that you clearly don't like and stopped playing

All you do is bump my posts. Thanks.

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N3vangel#0037 wrote:

A+ post in terms of clarity—and while I mostly agree with you, I keep wondering if this is a knowledge issue or a balance issue.

The game definitely presents certain build paths in a way that feels curated or intentional, but then those same paths fall apart later, and it’s hard to tell if that’s on the player for not understanding the deeper mechanics, or on the game for setting them up to fail.

Either way, there needs to be more room to pivot without feeling punished. Right now, it feels like you either already know what works—or you find out the hard way that what you picked doesn’t.

Really solid breakdown overall.

In my opinion this is a design issue. They experimented with ruthless and people like me who werer bored with a league gave it a try but they decided, no THAT was the vision. Ruthless was the vision.

Now consider POE1 in ruthless mode as the seed of the vision and everything makes sense. The problem is MOST people dont want to play ruthless. They dont want anemic loot, struggle at every mob.

Kripparian even commented in his first reaction to POE2 is that it was ruthless. He likes ruthless but even he said most poeple probably wont. He was right.

In PoE1, when finishing one of the first quests in act 2, I get a choice between a bunch of herald aura skills.
I pick Herald of Agony, because I have chance to poison on me and it says it works with poison. It works alright, but it isn't consistent and is starting to feel like a waste.
No problem, I just go back to town and buy a different one, but oh no! I don't have the currency to buy it! Well, no matter, I didn't feel like my damage was that bad anyways and those orbs aren't too rare.

In PoE2, I just finished the Freythorn and get my first spirit gem. I'm feeling a bit squishy, so I take Scavenged Plating. Getting more armor by breaking armor? Sounds nice.
However, I don't feel any more tanky than I did before. Maybe I should try some of the other auras instead and see how they feel. When do I get another spirit gem? It's been almost an entire act since Freythorn. I got a bunch of skill gems, but nothing for the aura I messed up. Hope another one drops soon.

This has basically been the experience of messing up a aura gem choice in both games. PoE2 has so many things that, if you don't already know what you need to have and what is good, you can go insane amounts of time without a way to fix it.

(Yes, I know the lost city, or something, has a guaranteed spirit gem drop, but again, that's a full act after you could have already wasted an entire gem)

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AlexiaRP#4088 wrote:

In PoE1, when finishing one of the first quests in act 2, I get a choice between a bunch of herald aura skills.
I pick Herald of Agony, because I have chance to poison on me and it says it works with poison. It works alright, but it isn't consistent and is starting to feel like a waste.
No problem, I just go back to town and buy a different one, but oh no! I don't have the currency to buy it! Well, no matter, I didn't feel like my damage was that bad anyways and those orbs aren't too rare.

In PoE2, I just finished the Freythorn and get my first spirit gem. I'm feeling a bit squishy, so I take Scavenged Plating. Getting more armor by breaking armor? Sounds nice.
However, I don't feel any more tanky than I did before. Maybe I should try some of the other auras instead and see how they feel. When do I get another spirit gem? It's been almost an entire act since Freythorn. I got a bunch of skill gems, but nothing for the aura I messed up. Hope another one drops soon.

This has basically been the experience of messing up a aura gem choice in both games. PoE2 has so many things that, if you don't already know what you need to have and what is good, you can go insane amounts of time without a way to fix it.

(Yes, I know the lost city, or something, has a guaranteed spirit gem drop, but again, that's a full act after you could have already wasted an entire gem)

This is another excellent point. I have had this exact thing happen.