new player experience

Hi everyone,
I started playing PoE 2 with zero experience in PoE 1. I must say, I love the game, but after 1k hours, I just realized something.

There are so many passive skills, but only like 10% of them actually matter. The other 90% feel like useless crap. It just gives you the illusion that you can make something special if you think enough, but the reality is that everything is about gear.

I made a Blood Mage this league and only chose some crit and crit damage nodes, plus a bit of extra spell damage. Even with many nodes left untouched, this build performs better than my Monk. So why are there so many passives when every league I almost pick the same nodes over and over again? There’s nothing really special about the passive tree.

Why can some characters clear the entire screen with one button and like 2 divines worth of gear, while others need to do 4 combos and spend 3–4 times more currency to achieve the same thing?

Why are melee characters punished so much in this game? Today I encountered some elite mobs in my maps with so many auras and debuffs that I couldn’t even get close to them—I died instantly. Meanwhile, with my archer, I just boom boom and clear them instantly.

Why do parry and block exist when I have to perfectly time a parry while 50 mobs rush me during a Breach?

I honestly think the devs don’t fully know which direction they want to take this game. Why does every league force me to play a class I don’t like just to reach endgame faster, farm efficiently, and not fall behind?

I really hope the Vaal Temple doesn’t stay, because it’s the most annoying feature added to the game.

Why add things from PoE 1 into PoE 2? Why not take a risk and try something different? Aren’t people just playing the same game with better graphics? There’s almost nothing special. I’ve watched some PoE 1 team gameplay, and the pacing of combat in PoE 2 is slowly becoming PoE 1 again.

I think the devs seriously need to reconsider the direction they want to go with this game.

Thank you all. No hate toward the game—just an honest opinion from a new player and a noob.

the passive tree seems kinda thrown together. there are a lot of hyper efficient nodes, and some that just make you think "really?"

there are also a ton of clusters with niche stats that just take too many passives and are a "nice to haves" but really just too expensive with how much investment it takes. many of those clusters and stats give just too little bonus. for 4 passives, do you really care about getting some extra stun buildup when stun duration is so low and you can't stun time after time? they get like an immunity to stun after having been stunned

there are so many clusters like this. where the base stat is kinda meh, and the notable isn't powerful enough to justify the investment.

im sure they'll iron out the passive tree a bunch over time. afterall they do have a LOT they need to add to it, with all the new classes and weapon types to come.

with all of these little things, not to mention each patch wanting to bring a new league mechanic etc, i'd say it would be ambitious for poe2 to fully release even in 2027


i fully agree with you about the poe1 stuff in poe2. i wish poe2 wasn't just importing everything from poe1 because you're right, it doesn't really have its own identity right now. it has better graphics and a different skill/support system.
i'd much prefer poe2 get its own leagues and uniques and passives and ascendancies

The only differences with the classes are the starting point on the skill tree and your ascendancies.
You can play any class with any weapon using spirit buffs from any class.
How you choose to play the class is up to you.

I am playing a crossbow wielding poison titan using the druid spirit buff Eternal Rage and Tacati's Ire to supercharge my poison damage.

Just because a class is melee doesn't mean you have to go that route you have enough skill points by endgame to take the useful passives from the other side of the skill tree if you want.