Guess here skill diversity ≠ build diversity

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Mav2125#5750 wrote:

I really thought with all the skills and complexity, this game would have more horizontal growth—more ways to play, not just higher numbers to chase.
But it’s clear now PoE2 is a vertical climb. It persuades you that there are endless options, yet most of them don’t work well enough to feel worth it. It’s less about creative expression and more a contest between developers and optimizers—players trying to break the system, GGG trying to patch it back together. I guess I wanted customization, not another efficiency treadmill. Just sucks that I had to spend so much time to figure that out. Anyway, enjoy my money, GGG.

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epicfredo#7259 wrote:

Some skills just perform better than others both numerically or mechanically.
For example, why do you think people love Spark so much? I personally would attribute it to the layout design of this game, there is a lot of thin corridor and tight corners where other skills just fail to cover, plus you can pre-arm and ramp your DPS with its lasting active damage area, which enable more unconventional DPS scaling methods such as Duration or Additional Projectile.

When Spark give so much utilities and also being a damage based skill in number instead of utility based (like Ball Lightning), plus it have advantage in scaling methods varieties, there is little consideration for other skills such as Arc or Ball Lightning. When the choices are obvious it's not really a choice. But this is what they are actively addressing.

For example, just look at Blood Mage after the mess it was in 0.2. There was many threads talking about how 49% of poebuild Blood Mage have Tangle Tongue in their weapon slot and another 48% use Crit Spell ascendancy branch with Spell Leech node, and how the ascendancy is just not viable until you can do the 4th trial due to its detriment. And they improved it. Now the ascendancy feel good to campaign with, you are no longer required to build into crit to offset the first node (no longer requires critical hit to generate remnant), and the negative node is free. Now even though 63% are still on Spark, but you start to see Comet (prob a large portion was priming CoC using Spark), Ember Fusillade, Hex Blast, Fire Ball, Frost Bolt, Frost Wall heck people even start playing bleeding Blood Mage with crossbow Plasma Blast.
https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/abyss?class=Blood+Mage&skills=Plasma+Blast&sort=dps

People are starting to experiment to see what they can do (aside from professional build cloners) and imho, it's a positive step toward build diversity.

My point is I agree with you that the game doesn't offer a lot of options right now, but they are actively working on it behind the scene. Just enjoy the game for what it is for now and leave it to them to fix the build diversity for the following versions.

P/S: Also, speaking from personal experience, our feedbacks are read and implemented. Even if they are quiet about it.

Spoiler

I personally made a small thread about revealing the "random boon / affliction" options in Sekhema trial neutral shrine rooms and you can tell they have adjusted the chance of an option to be random. The random is still here but a lot less prominent now.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3713429

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Mav2125#5750 wrote:

Aren't you a persuasive one. You're minimizing valid critiques by reframing it as impatience and redirecting the discussion toward faith in developer intent. That’s not engaging with the argument — it’s damage control. I’m talking about design philosophy and systemic direction, while you bury the issue under isolated mechanics and patch trivia. This kind of discourse is exactly why the game stays stagnant.