Path of Exile 2

Wondering if this is intended or not

League start Act 1 difficulty has never made sense to me. You're supposed to hook the player and then increase difficulty as you go but instead the campaign starts out as a pain in the ass to then gets easier. Going through it with a skill that isn't very good or you aren't meshing is horrendous and the time to get access to the skills you do want to try can be substantial. Once you've put Act 2 behind you the game gets way better but I hate the getting there part of every league.

I think they really fucked themselves on the new gem system. You really cant experiment a whole ton as a new player swapping out main skills and weapons to see what you like cause you are gated so heavily in skill gem drops. Address that and I think you can address the early game fun of this game.

Also respecs should be free until maps.

Decided to give it one more shot getting through the campaign while it's still the weekend.

What's this mean? "Repulsion is a new godly curse we can use to blast our enemies to another dimension. You can create it by pressing B with the 0.5 league mechanic." (the how to create it part)

Penance said:

I think they really fucked themselves on the new gem system. You really cant experiment a whole ton as a new player swapping out main skills and weapons to see what you like cause you are gated so heavily in skill gem drops. Address that and I think you can address the early game fun of this game.

Also respecs should be free until maps.

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I didn't like Huntress Whirling Slash, spent a gem on Explosive Spear, hated it too, looked at options, refuse to Lightning Arrow any more, rerolled Druid. I still want to check out Spirit Walker stuff later but I'm not doing it until I have some resources to work with.

Entangle instantly immediately good.

Penance said:

I think they really fucked themselves on the new gem system. You really cant experiment a whole ton as a new player swapping out main skills and weapons to see what you like cause you are gated so heavily in skill gem drops. Address that and I think you can address the early game fun of this game.

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The new league mechanic helps massively in this area. That's one of the things they'll need to adjust once the mechanic goes "core". But the fact you can start getting extra gems to experiment with now in the early game (when it's most important) is huge.

The bigger problem is that PoE 2 still needs a substantially larger skill pool, along with balance passes on a number of the existing skills and supports that don't feel good to use. With the current roster of skills being relatively small, every weak or underperforming skill stands out far more than it would with a roster of more skills (like PoE1).

That's also why so many builds end up feeling "samey", especially during the campaign. When the total number of available skills is limited, every bad skill effectively shrinks the pool of viable options. The result is that players gravitate toward the same handful of abilities because they're the only ones that actually feel effective, making the early game seem far more repetitive than it probably needs to be.

Penance said:

Also respecs should be free until maps.

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I don't agree with free, but I do think the gold cost needs to come down until about level 60-65ish (right about the time you hit maps).

Deathwing said:

The former is Lochtonial Caress, right?

How does the latter work?

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Be martial artist to generate nearly infinite combo+spending combo starts ES recharge

Mantra of destruction costs 20 combo with delayed gratification and can be activated twice, so each one starts ES recharge

Wear prayers for rain to prevent ES recharge being interrupted (you can upgrade bases now so its like a ~450es chest)

The only problem with this is you have to activate mantra of destruction manually, so you're either mashing that button a ton, or need to cheat and automate it with a macro