Tedious skill chains

Hello,

often times I feel like I fall into the trap of thinking I have to use skills in a certain chain. But on the other hand I can clearly see this game makes attempts to incentivise me not to play that way. Like: "Oh, I'm getting surrounded by a lot of small mobs, I'm gonna use frost nova here.", or: "I see a big mob in front of me, I'm gonna use Ember Fusillade here."

Well, but at the same time, even this kind of thinking seems to be incentivised against through game design, or at least tried to. Like, if I just had to ember fusillade every time I saw a big mob and do nothing else, that wouldn't be much of a game there would it.

Good games live from the prospect of giving the player the feeling of some kind of understanding of the game and being able to play well through this understanding. I like to play Overwatch 2, for example. When I play Soldier, I like to use his sprint to get to the high ground in a quick enough pace to be able to participate in battle where other DPS maybe couldn't. Or I sometimes use my healing ability to heal my teammates and not only myself. Sometimes I hide behind corners alone, because I can heal myself and other DPS can't and that's something I maybe wouldn't do with other DPS, because of this.

Path of Exile 2 tries to be the same way, I presume. You don't just ember fusillade big mobs and nothing else. You use all your skills, somehow in an intuitive way, with an understanding that comes with time. I really like this. This is high art of game design. But I think many players don't understand this, maybe because of the comparisons to Diablo 2, where you'd just use one or two skills and that's it. It was a different time for video games and the science of gaming has developed since then. Maybe, because of the misunderstanding that some players have towards this game, they don't really have as much fun as if they didn't have these.

I think this game wants me to play it like I am getting some kind of understanding. I am now juking mobs with movement, maybe burning some of them, leaving them behind, progressing already, killing them later together with another pack of mobs, but then they're low hp, so they won't bother me anymore. Maybe use some crowd control skills in order to not have to take care of mobs immediately, but leave them for later. Maybe chain some stuns on bosses, etc.

The game becomes less interesting when you get into that mindset of: "I have to use skills in this order every singe encounter". It's just not fun playing this way. But I think also most build guides try to incentivise this kind of playstyle.

Maybe the view of the community on this game and how it should be played is the game's biggest problem.



In kind regards