Wolcen Hype Release!

From what I can see, The Crucible is paid DLC and not built-in, but so is Adventure Mode (being a feature of Reaper of Souls). So I'd argue Wolcen might actually be unique as an ARPG that has a consistent, story-independent levelling method accessible from level 1 built into its release.

Boem: Alright, I see I don't have to answer -- you got there! Thanks for that. I didn't mean to imply that Wolcen might not have a meta. It is new and has outright broken skills and mechanics. Of course that passes for a 'meta'...except that I'd argue a 'meta' requires something Wolcen doesn't have as a game: online competition. When you can just cheat a game with mods, 'meta' is sort of a moot point. And where TencentGGG encourage people to use meta skills, for now at least Wolcen Studio are trying to discourage it by nerfing/balancing. In the terms of the metaphor I presented, Wolcen Studio do not want people relying on the string. This means NOT turning their story mode into a cakewalk, and thus replaying it is something of a drudgery; it is not designed to be played over and again. Hence CoS' superiority as a bespoke levelling method from scratch! :)

^Your free to argue that but it doesn't make much sense.

First of all it doesn't align with the definition of meta.
Secondly in todays day and age there is so much online connectivity that a game hardly requires an online component to be considered an online community event.

It only seems like a personal rationalization to back up your earlier statements.

For example, the fact that wolcens "meta" was already figured out a solid week after launch in the absence of a ladder or an online competitive environment illustrates this.
Youtube,twitch and other platforms automatically import games into their inherent competitive environment and exploit them.

The first one to figure out the "meta" is going to get clicks and views by a tremendous amount of eager people on the hunt for that dopamine rush even if technically they don't deserve it.(= in the sense that they didn't "figure it out" on their own merits)

As for your second and third point, somewhat related to one another.

The notion that GGG doesn't want to discourage "meta" seems foolish, they have been actively trying to do that and considering a game like wolcen which was entirely new in every way being figured out in a week should give some credence to GGG where the meta usually takes longer to evolve in a new balance patch even with the tremendous amount of tools to distribute it once found.

That doesn't mean they will ever be succesfull, neither will wolcen, it's simply a factor of numbers similar to how hackers always beat out the security programs. Nothing really surprising about either of these things.

Then there is the observation that PoE's story mode is a cakewalk, which is far from the truth and simply seems like the perspective of somebody that has played the game for a long time.
And even then, racers show us exactly what is possible in the PoE story content and i doubt even 1% reach that potential of speed and trivializing.

This demonstrates the different layers of people playing this game, some racers kill act10 kitava in 2hours 30 minutes +-, others do it in 4 hours with all trials and skill points and are "endgame ready" and most regular people probably do it in 6 to 10 hours.

I would argue that wolcen lacks the inherent toolkit to formulate such a distribution of player-experiences which means there is very little to improve upon past a modicum of differentiation.
But we will see if this bears out in the future.

Also im only using the comparison method because these threads seem to demand them from participants, im much happier looking at both games individually and judging them on their own merrits.
I think its foolish to compare wolcen to PoE because it has a seven year lead on it, similar to the reverse appearing foolish to me because wolcen has the benefit of that lead to draw conclusions from.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Ugh, what dire days that I agree with Mr Snow. League content doesn't integrate well with the core levelling experience at all. It can be abused to break the innate difficulty scaling; it can be too difficult for the majority of builds. It's absolutely torture in SSF early on if you don't go the known meta routes.

I mean, eh, depends on definition of torture.

GGG been trying to make many archetypes playable for masses while leveling, so player power in the beginning is super strong. its not like invasion (my fav league btw), where in some rng cases you had no shot at beating league content in the beginning.

like, Ive 'practiced' for this league start by running a wander shadow through first three acts before you get all the gems in library. just looking at wand skills and quest rewards and such. wander leveling is pretty much one of the slowest leveling techniques you can do in poe (next to bow leveling). and it wasnt so bad with metamorph content. was it slow ? oh yeah, slower than a lot of builds, but it was still fun. good ol power siphon does work. player power is too damn high.

"

Think of it like Daedalus, Theseus, and the string in the labyrinth. GGG as Daedalus; ARPG design issues as the labyrinth; GGG's obvious meta-feeding is the string. The players are collectively Theseus. The string provides the solution to getting through Daedalus' labyrinth, but it's still twisting and turning around the corners. Fine for that labyrinth, but outside that it's a mess. PoE created a new concept of a straight line through its own labyrinth, and that string became sacred. The concept of the labyrinth became immutable. The two are, for those who keep diving into the labyrinth, inextricable. Even when the labyrinth shifts and the string bends to match it, it's still the same string bending around different corners. The relationship does not change. League to league, people are doing pretty much the same thing, ad nauseum.

So when someone comes along talking about actual straight lines, simplified pathing, or outright ignoring the string to just enjoy a labyrinth for its original purpose (to get lost), it might as well be a foreign language to someone who can't conceive of the labyrinth without the string to guide them. Indeed, they scorn those who try to find their own way, because it takes longer, because it's not optimal...without grasping that getting through the labyrinth is only a race because GGG, who first designed the labyrinth but then placed the string, told them it was a race. Because GGG did not trust you to find your own way to enjoy their labyrinth.

this is written extremely well, and I agree with this as a concept, a lot...but somehow, I don't agree with your conclusion. I dunno, I guess I just dont mind the campaign in poe...the story is nonsense and most tilesets could be randomized a lot more, but aside from that I like it more than 'adventure mode'.

In fact, Id rather play wolcen campaign again than play their adventure mode or whatever it's called. Mini-missions with rewards in the end don't appeal to me. Maybe it's just me.

Yeah, NGL grepman, I kind of got lost in the labyrinth of writing it. I know I had a point and I know it was good but then I was like '...too many labyrinths, fuck it, keep going'. Oh well, give a man enough string...but to the point: I'll just reiterate. I think those least happy to re-run the same long story are those who really enjoyed it the first few times. Really connected with the characters. Read the quest text. Listened to the extraneous but interesting lore interactions. Because for people like us, being forced through the same well fleshed-out world but at an accelerated, 'please ignore all this' pace is infuriating. For us, a separate mode with its own treadmill, its own loop, is far superior for replayability. Even if it's harder, which CoS absolutely is. It's a breeze to get to level 40 or so in the story, boss spikes notwithstanding, because most areas are crafted to pull you through it difficulty-wise. But in CoS, you're facing 'map' modded bosses from level 1. Sure, the health and damage is scaled down, but a few 'imbuments' can bury a low level character in an instant.

I mean, if you want to replay the story, that's perfectly fine. Always an option. But once I unlocked CoS and saw an actual post-story fate for the city that sat at the centre of that story, that actually changed throughout that story, I didn't look back. I unironically and unscathingly see Wolcen's story (so far) as a 'primer'. It gives meaning and context to otherwise random mobs and areas in its repeatable dungeon mode, in a way that PoE's map system simply couldn't, given Maps are less 'enjoying the world you helped save' and more 'fucking off because you outgrew it the world you incidentally might have saved in the relentless pursuit of power you goddamn psychopath'.

It's only been a few weeks and three chapters, but I already care more for Wolcen and its living people than I ever did Wraeclast and its weird dead civilisations; an endgame that completely abandons an in-game world built up over ten acts does nothing to change that. I LOVE that Wolcen's 'other' mode is 100% connected to its story. That's awesome.

So...moving on!

Invasion was hardcore (literally!) and I tip my hat to you for loving it. I remember alpha-testing it and thinking, holy shit, this is going to be brutal. Particularly replicating bug queens in The Coast. Like, at level 2-3. Those were the quickest low level deaths I've ever experienced in PoE. And I agree -- since then, they've been more conscientious to implement league gimmicks that don't wreck the game straight out of the gate...but I would argue they haven't been 100% successful in doing so. Bestiary was still not 'voluntary', for example. It's interesting that my favourite 'voluntary' league came at the exact same time as Invasion: Ambush, which I believe has become the most subtly influential of all the leagues to date. See box, open box? Leave box? It doesn't get more voluntary than that. And has any league gimmick become more taken-for-granted than the strongbox? How many league gimmicks got their own unique designs that integrate perfectly with all game modes? Ambush was just incredible.

But so was Anarchy, although I think it was far less balanced on landing than Ambush (which mostly suffered from technical issues). And Domination. Those early leagues added to PoE things that PoE had room for. These latter ones? They're just fat by comparison, sometimes making the core experience flat-out less fun. Although it is fun to imagine what the game would be like had Bestiary, Legion, and Metamorph been the early leagues rather than Ambush, Anarchy and Domination...

And what I mean by torture? In context, the sensation that not only are you choosing a more challenging mode, you're doing so against the design of the game. And that's fine to a certain point but the more GGG leaned into the expectation that people would trade (ironically, they did this after introducing the SSF mode), the earlier that point became.

To bring it around, I don't get that feeling from Wolcen at all. At no point do I think, crap, if only I could trade for better gear, I could get through this. Mostly I think, crap, if only this boss were better balanced or crap, if only I had gone ailments...these are problems, for sure, but they are not SSF problems.

'player power is too damn high' is absolutely true, but can you say why? The answer, I believe, loops back to the beginning of this post. GGG want to keep making these gimmicks (have to, really, because they're what sell packs, give or take) but they don't want to have another Invasion situation. So there's the quandary: how do we implement almost objectively more difficult modes without overwhelming players on new characters? Simple: control the meta; outright tell players before the league drops what's going to work, what probably won't. This kills more than two birds with one stone, but another bird caught by this is their long-running struggle against players who break the meta mid-league. Player power has always been high because PoE's systems are just that flexible and susceptible, but now it's largely moderated by the state, in this case GGG themselves. Pre-release hype now contains carefully doled-out skill 'previews' and item 'teasers', priming players for what they should be excited about, what's effectively going to be pulled out of rotation -- how many games do that as regularly as PoE, really? It's a brilliant information control campaign. Kind of ironic, when you think about who now owns them...

Yeah, I think I'll leave it there.

"

IIPheXII wrote:

Grim Dawn has a "born in ultimate" feature where after you first complete ultimate difficulty on a character you can buy a stone or whatever for like half a million gold from an npc and use it on a new char and you get all the passive points from the normal and elite quests and have ultimate difficulty unlocked. It was added not long ago though. Jumping to ultimate with a level 1 char also not a good idea there.

You can level up pretty quickly in crucible though, including getting your devotion points. I was level 55-60 in almost no time. Just like in PoE, there are gear/sets that are good for leveling up.

Or, you can use GD defiler, and drop your level 100 character in the game in ultimate, and have a build ready to go. A lot of people do this, they don't actually play the game normally, they more or less just test drive builds. The great thing about GD, is that a whole lot of builds are viable, there are several dozen builds and class combos that can beat the end game content. You could realistically spend hundreds of hours just test driving builds.

Shattered Realm content gets extremely tough around shard 60-75 for most builds. Your boss fights are 4+ nemesis mobs, along with a couple boss tier mobs and champs with 7-8 mods (like map mods in PoE), which are almost always (95% of the time) nerfs to your stats, or buffs to the mobs. I ran into a combo of Grava Thul (a beast by himself) + Zantarin (notorious for shotgun oneshots with vitality damage), Mooseluke (not too bad by himself, but he can freeze you easily so the others can rip you), + Archmage Alexander (has a meteor move that's notorious for oneshots, even the tankiest builds want to move to avoid this) + several random bosses and champs. Even my retaliation warlord can't beat a combo like that, and neither can the pet conjurer, because pets with 60-100k HP and max resists get ripped faster than the cooldowns to resummon the pets, which is basically a stalemate, even if I kite extremely good. Any combo with Grava Thul in it is just a bad combo, he's nearly super boss tier, hits just as hard, doesn't have the HP amount though. So there is an extreme challenge to be had in GD, as far as content goes.

Test driving builds is basically what people in PoE do. They don't play the game, they just trade and flip items, and test drive builds.

That's one of the reasons I like single player offline games, because when I reach the point where leveling and grinding becomes tiresome, I can test drive builds without having to play economy in a game to get there.

The problem with Wolcen, is you're shoe horned into a specific meta. Anyone claiming otherwise hasn't played Wolcen enough to know better. If someone hasn't cleared floor 187-189, and beaten the ubers, then they don't have an opinion worth anything about Wolcen with regards to balancing. You need extremely strong builds to beat that content, and insane gear. And it's absolutely not possible using a "whatever" build.

The balancing is so busted in Wolcen, it's not even funny. And recent patches haven't done anything other than make it worse.

I suggest people avoid Wolcen for 6 months to a year, come back and check on it then. This development team is going to need some time to get it right, because they're clearly not experienced with this kinda thing. They're going to ignore everyone, and do it their way, at their own pace, and that's fine, but they're going to need some time. If they're not too stubborn, they could hire some consultants, either developers with experience balancing ARPGs, or possibly some professional gamers who're respected in the genre. Someone like Kripp could tell them precisely what's wrong with their game in ways they can understand and fix.

"

Yeah, NGL grepman, I kind of got lost in the labyrinth of writing it. I know I had a point and I know it was good but then I was like '...too many labyrinths, fuck it, keep going'. Oh well, give a man enough string...but to the point: I'll just reiterate.

I actually started thinking of another thing with your analogy. The game is well known to the point GGG basically decides on meta (to your later point, actually) and things get figured out quickly.

It would be immensely interesting this string you're talking about would get completely lost. like, poe engine remains but all skills, scaling, vendor recipes, link systems, EVERYTHING changes in a matter of one patch. kinda like poe2, but just to the extreme power.

how many people would leave and how many people would be giddy as shit to test out stuff and figure it out, again ? I know I would be in the latter category, even tho I have very little time nowadays.

"

I think those least happy to re-run the same long story are those who really enjoyed it the first few times. Really connected with the characters. Read the quest text. Listened to the extraneous but interesting lore interactions. Because for people like us, being forced through the same well fleshed-out world but at an accelerated, 'please ignore all this' pace is infuriating. For us, a separate mode with its own treadmill, its own loop, is far superior for replayability. Even if it's harder, which CoS absolutely is. It's a breeze to get to level 40 or so in the story, boss spikes notwithstanding, because most areas are crafted to pull you through it difficulty-wise. But in CoS, you're facing 'map' modded bosses from level 1. Sure, the health and damage is scaled down, but a few 'imbuments' can bury a low level character in an instant.

I never connected with poes story, its dumb aside from first couple of acts imo. dominus and piety the first time are decent I guess. everything past the 3rd act is a mess imo. I dont know what to say, I think I just dont mind running story mode in arpgs. I dont like crucible either, I prefer campaign in GD.

I agree with your point about it being harder. I was watching ziggy do a true reroll and some of the earlier wolcen leveling stuff was hard. that's good.

"

It's only been a few weeks and three chapters, but I already care more for Wolcen and its living people than I ever did Wraeclast and its weird dead civilisations; an endgame that completely abandons an in-game world built up over ten acts does nothing to change that. I LOVE that Wolcen's 'other' mode is 100% connected to its story. That's awesome.

I dont really care for wolcen story either tbh. I dont like warhammer stylistics and I dont like d3 feel. and the constant betrayals felt cheap. but thats beside the point I guess.

"

So...moving on!

Invasion was hardcore (literally!) and I tip my hat to you for loving it. I remember alpha-testing it and thinking, holy shit, this is going to be brutal. Particularly replicating bug queens in The Coast. Like, at level 2-3. Those were the quickest low level deaths I've ever experienced in PoE. And I agree -- since then, they've been more conscientious to implement league gimmicks that don't wreck the game straight out of the gate...but I would argue they haven't been 100% successful in doing so. Bestiary was still not 'voluntary', for example. It's interesting that my favourite 'voluntary' league came at the exact same time as Invasion: Ambush, which I believe has become the most subtly influential of all the leagues to date. See box, open box? Leave box? It doesn't get more voluntary than that. And has any league gimmick become more taken-for-granted than the strongbox? How many league gimmicks got their own unique designs that integrate perfectly with all game modes? Ambush was just incredible.

I guess we just like different things. I like mandatory league mechanics. The problem with voluntary is that risk-reward can be calculated too easily. basically if expected value is positive you do it, if its not, you dont do it. too binary to me. I like the 'you're here, now deal with the problem' approach.

"

But so was Anarchy, although I think it was far less balanced on landing than Ambush (which mostly suffered from technical issues). And Domination. Those early leagues added to PoE things that PoE had room for. These latter ones? They're just fat by comparison, sometimes making the core experience flat-out less fun. Although it is fun to imagine what the game would be like had Bestiary, Legion, and Metamorph been the early leagues rather than Ambush, Anarchy and Domination...

I really liked betrayal. metamorph was very fun, wish I had more time to play, but it had some issues. betrayal and metamorph were two leagues where building defensively actually wasnt strictly suboptimal, and I enjoy that, glass cannons are boring to me. I really liked anarchy back in the day too because the concept was very cool back then. Anarchy and descent race came around same time, and I was absolutely hooked on the game. Good times. summer of 2013

"

'player power is too damn high' is absolutely true, but can you say why? The answer, I believe, loops back to the beginning of this post. GGG want to keep making these gimmicks (have to, really, because they're what sell packs, give or take) but they don't want to have another Invasion situation. So there's the quandary: how do we implement almost objectively more difficult modes without overwhelming players on new characters? Simple: control the meta; outright tell players before the league drops what's going to work, what probably won't. This kills more than two birds with one stone, but another bird caught by this is their long-running struggle against players who break the meta mid-league. Player power has always been high because PoE's systems are just that flexible and susceptible, but now it's largely moderated by the state, in this case GGG themselves. Pre-release hype now contains carefully doled-out skill 'previews' and item 'teasers', priming players for what they should be excited about, what's effectively going to be pulled out of rotation -- how many games do that as regularly as PoE, really? It's a brilliant information control campaign. Kind of ironic, when you think about who now owns them...

Yeah, I think I'll leave it there.

I think power is high because GGG doesnt want players to pick a skill to level with that clearly is suboptimal. in todays gaming where everyone looks at streamers and the top end, they really dont want to discourage certain styles in the beginning. and in the beginning, many builds are very limited by supports and get very barebones setup. so by cranking damage up, you simulate being 'good' at the game.

I honestly havent had more fun with poe than when projectpt ran his no lube leagues (prior to 3.9). leveling was amazing, scary as hell and it brought back knowing mob types, mousing over them, etc. but once the build picked up steam, it just became modern poe at some point, damage just overtakes everything else.

I dont know, I have a soft spot for leveling, especially for builds/subclasses I have less knowledge of.

I'm back after some experimenting so I'll address a few things that caught my eye.

"

Boem wrote:

It's hard to take your argument seriously exactly because of the thing you pointed out.

PoE is seven years into live development and wolcen is a month in.

And you have to be willfully ignorant at this point to not already realize that wolcen has a formed meta a month in.

As for the centre, middle it all depends which kind of exile/wolcen player you are and where you find yourself on the game-knowledge spectrum or community engagement angle.

I think this meta is something that needs a lot more focus going forward. The Wolcen "meta" as it were is seemingly the result of people attempting to shoehorn the PoE "meta" into a game, but this is erroneous.

There's fundamental differences in PoE's meta that automatically make it terrible to place in Wolcen.

1) PoE's meta exemplifies speed in its utmost form. This is because its online only format and trade platform creates an unspoken pressure on the player to "go go go, faster faster faster, grind grind grind" in order to have enough currency to do whatever. This entire problem is further exacerbated by TGGG's design philosophy in that they actively balance all drops on the expectation that this is exactly how you'll play.

On both the forums and PoE reddit, it's a meme that this game (PoE) is balanced around no lifers and streamers. As it is with most jokes, there's a heavy element in truth behind it in that there are some people that haven't naturally 6 linked, haven't seen a mirror, or go an entire league without an exalted orb drop.

The only remedy for these problems is kill faster.

2) Because of 1, build experimentation goes out the window as there's no inherent gameplay reward, and if your build isn't fast you're always going to be stuck feeling like your build is underperforming in metrics like currency drops/hr.

And this might seem like a low blow, but you yourself have acknowledged this, Boem. I quoted you in a post I made last year.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2569312#p22156459

I'll bring up the contrast with the end of your post.

"

All of this to say, no you don't need to be entrenched in PoE to find the current flaws in wolcen obvious and far outweigh it's gift of not having to do a story mode. I would take a forced story mode if it enabled a more diverse endgame because just like in PoE it ends up being the majority of your
play-time.

Peace,

-Boem-

While this question of flaws in Wolcen outside of non-working talents is subjective, I wonder if your perceived flaws of Wolcen are coming from still trying to erroneously apply PoE "meta".

You say Wolcen has a meta, I disagree.

1)The reward of Wolcen is neither the item drop itself, nor winning the rng, though those things can make a player feel happy. The reward of Wolcen is simply the combat and what you can do with it. This is further exhibited in the capacity of offline play, where those currency and grind metrics are absent or subdued. You can take a slow build or a fast build and not suffer any perceived penalty as there's not only a difficulty slider, but item affix tiers have caps. You can very well just farm 151 for weapons or 160 for armor if that's what you want.

The equivalent of an exalted orb there is easily farmable through the endgame and it actively encourages you to craft, unlike here where you hoard it in some sense to buy your way out of TGGG's skewed RNG system.

2) Because of 1, my build experimentation there is much higher than it is here, as I'm constantly considering new options. I will say that some of the non-working passives do damper this somewhat, but as soon as fixes are in it's completely go time for me. Right now I'm utilizing a block 2h build based around Proud Reprisal, Shadow Damage solely for curse, and Tracker's Reach and Blood for Blood for gathering enemies. I'm currently working on a 2h Dodge build utilizing Waltzing Smoke.

Now, perhaps I've rambled on, but the point I'm making is that attempting to define Wolcen's meta in context of PoE's meta is incorrect in my view. The outset of each game is fundamentally different in what they reward and attempting to bring the each respective game's meta into the other seems to result in dissatisfaction. I know this much because I've been looking for Wolcen's meta but could never find it in PoE.

"

Tsokushin wrote:

Now, perhaps I've rambled on, but the point I'm making is that attempting to define Wolcen's meta in context of PoE's meta is incorrect in my view. The outset of each game is fundamentally different in what they reward and attempting to bring the each respective game's meta into the other seems to result in dissatisfaction. I know this much because I've been looking for Wolcen's meta but could never find it in PoE.

Think back to the first time you discovered PoE and how you played then, what kind of posibilities you thought were possible and how grand the skill + crafting system looked.

Knowledge is a double edged sword, exactly because it removes the romantic attribute of objects it touches.

This will sound like a hollow argument and i am perfectly aware of that, but perhaps the fact that i already pushed around 75+- hours into wolcen simply means my knowledge progression is further which enables me to make better projections.

I also never argued the meta is a mirror of PoE, both are different games ultimately but similar to how people think passive tree's of general build concepts look the same in PoE the same convergence already took place in wolcen a week in.

Whats even worse in wolcen is that all builds route true most of them because they are general nodes rather then specified.

Now your fine to claim this isn't necessary to make a fun and functioning build, but then i would simply throw back that the same applies to PoE, but if you want to do wolcen paragon 189 similar to when you wanna do poe red tier maps the possible solutions to the problems shrink heavily reducing most passive lay-outs to standardized patterns which have been figured out one week into release and haven't moved since then.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Boem wrote:

Think back to the first time you discovered PoE and how you played then, what kind of posibilities you thought were possible and how grand the skill + crafting system looked.

Knowledge is a double edged sword, exactly because it removes the romantic attribute of objects it touches.

This will sound like a hollow argument and i am perfectly aware of that, but perhaps the fact that i already pushed around 75+- hours into wolcen simply means my knowledge progression is further which enables me to make better projections.

I also never argued the meta is a mirror of PoE, both are different games ultimately but similar to how people think passive tree's of general build concepts look the same in PoE the same convergence already took place in wolcen a week in.

Whats even worse in wolcen is that all builds route true most of them because they are general nodes rather then specified.

It's not a hollow argument at all, and I agree that the initial impression of the poe skill tree is something else. However I wouldn't go so far as to say that it was romantic, more like information overload. In that the sheer size and scale of it was daunting upon first introduction, but most builds in PoE still boil down to Effective HP, mitigation, avoidance, and damage.

I'm over 100 hours myself in Wolcen, and while I can agree that it's very easy to take a build to the next level with a few Time Weaver talents (Cabalist isn't actually necessary, just makes things much faster), the "romantic" part is still there because of talents. Also, it's a mixed blessing that some passives don't work in that it's unfortunate that they do not function, but it's leaving a giant theorycrafting potential for me when they actually are functional. I want to see what I can make with them.

My main point in this whole "it's erroneous to apply PoE meta to Wolcen" point is that everyone keeps attempting to shove the PoE-style-thinking of passives into Wolcen.

I think I need to underline this point here. Most passives in Wolcen change how you actually approach combat. Most passives in PoE just give flat power to what you're doing. A good example of this in Wolcen is Static Transferral, wherein you're weaving Basic Attacks to build/maintain stacks and using a skill to Deplete them for the bonus. Or Disallowing Vessel allowing a ramp up for remaining stationary but also slowing you down.

Contrast this to PoE wherein most of it is simply more damage, the power to kill things faster, or take reduced damage, but in the end it still devolves into 1 shotting bosses, or getting 1 shot yourself. There's rarely an inbetween.

"

Now your fine to claim this isn't necessary to make a fun and functioning build, but then i would simply throw back that the same applies to PoE, but if you want to do wolcen paragon 189 similar to when you wanna do poe red tier maps the possible solutions to the problems shrink heavily reducing most passive lay-outs to standardized patterns which have been figured out one week into release and haven't moved since then.

Peace,

-Boem-

There's a couple of caveats here. A point I think you missed is that builds in PoE are operating under the unspoken pressure to be fast, to kill as quickly as possible because of a combination of lacking combat and how loot operates in it. Even ilvl 84 items can roll affixes meant for a level 1 character. This means the only way to progress item wise is to

1)throw as many numbers against the RNG as possible or
2)or farm up as much currency as you can (which is still essentially doing the same thing) and buy from someone who won against RNG.

Furthermore, the game is balanced from the ground up on the expectation that you'll play like this. The existence of timed trials further cements this. So, already a build that's fun and functional in PoE is required to be fast on many different levels. Let's be frank, there are 0 league starter builds that do not focus on speed. In the endgame, finding a build that doesn't 1 shot entire screens is the scant minority.

And in contrast we have Wolcen, where there's no selective pressure on speed, moreover the existence of offline play further means there's also 0 pressure on trading. That means you can generally make any build you really want and not feel left behind.

Does this mean that every build will reach 189? No. But, you only need to clear 160 to get access to the highest tiers of crafting. Also, there's a surprisingly large amount of builds that can currently clear 187. Now, some of them are not going to be as fast as the "meta" bleeding edge and that's why you rarely see them, but they are good at what they do.

I'll give you an example of a build I completed. Pugilist's Momentum from Arms Maestro gives you stun with a 2h on 4th basic attack. Roll Stun duration on every support gem slot you have, get a weapon with Frost damage main, Tracker's Reach Stun and Stasis runes and I could literally chain stun+freeze entire mob waves for any party play. Even 189 elites and bosses, with that much stun duration, the 4th basic attack will automatically stun through the full bar. Wasn't the best against unstoppable bosses, but it functioned quite well.

But this again underlines the thinking behind Wolcen and PoE. Wolcen is a combat options approach. PoE is a RNG loot grinder. Notice that people didn't want to tinker or experiment and try to make an idea of a build work in Wolcen, they tried to turn the combat into that which is found in PoE. And are oft disappointed because PoE's combat is one shot the screen for the loot and move on and they missed the fluid combat in Wolcen.

I get what your saying but it doesn't change my opinion very much.

For example your play-style argument on the passive tree interaction in PoE relates to keynodes and keystones and not to smaller passives, but it also functions within the skill gem system of PoE as opposed to wolcen not having this.

Both games proport to deliver very similar forms of engagement and being fickle about the minutiea doesn't really help anybody, it's probably why threads like this go back and forth like a volleyball game from one side to the other.

My guess is that if wolcen didn't have its hack tools already set-up to exploit the game we would see a clear speed meta in much bigger proportions because it would enable the altholism and crafting most people desire from these games.
Which is why PoE has it beyond racers, set up a speed char to collect loot and then invest in actual niche concepts, the notion that a big part of the playerbase keeps playing a speed build after they grinded the basic currency doesn't really align for me.

The one thing that wolcen has going for it as far as i can tell is that you can get some mechanics working a lot earlier then PoE which usually delays the really complex stuff towards endgame.
But from personal experience it just ended up crashing when i started making loops of effects so even that wasn't much of a boon for me.

I'm not blind to the appeal of both games, i just wanna see what happens next with wolcen and how it survives over time. For me personally it was to buggy on release given its development time already, melee seemed fine but once i went theorycrafting with spells and passives it ended up being a crash fiesta.
Hope they fix that and i will probably revisit it again in the next PoE league down-time sort of speak.

Peace,

-Boem-