I just can't really find myself liking PoE2, for several reasons

its not my opinion. it is an objective fact that back in the early days of diablo II the necro was the black sheep, outcast, annoying asshole who no one wanted to play with. we didn't have supercomputers and loading 15 minions caused a huge amount of lag. like you say, the character also lacked the ability to contribute in any meaningful way, so it was a complete troll and people would not send you party invites

And again you're continuing to inject your own personal dislike of an archetype and claiming it as fact.

Regardless, nothing you said has anything to do with my complaint about PoE2 summoning. They took what worked just fine in PoE1 and turned it into this sad husk that looks like GGG took inspiration directly from Diablo 3.

And the worst part is, it performs way worse than other classes, compared to the difference of PoE1 summoners versus non-summoners. There's only like 1 synergy involving arsonists, fire spells, and SRS. Frost, lightning, poison, and all flavors of melee skeleton have nothing you can boost them with. Minions that require corpses are temporary which makes them nearly worthless against bosses since there's no way to create corpses (currently).

Your personal opinion about D2 necro has no relevance about how bad summoning is in PoE2.

+1 OP.

POE2 Minion builds suck in comparison to POE1

IMO the whole Azmeri Wisp design shows GGG's left hand doesn't know what its right hand is doing.

They tout slow and methodical combat, then they go on to design a mechanic that requires fast full-pack clears to keep up with the wisp or else you lose the wisp.

They tout slow and methodical combat, then they go on and make ritual sites tiny spaces with a tornado chasing you and mobs putting down floor effects and damaging auras everywhere.

And the worst thing about it? It's that I don't see them acknowledging any of these problems.

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By the way, the best way to do wisps is to clear the map of everything except one rare nearest to the wisp, then activate the wisp. Shows how badly designed this content is.

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kumogakure#7381 wrote:

By the way, the best way to do wisps is to clear the map of everything except one rare nearest to the wisp, then activate the wisp. Shows how badly designed this content is.

I just ingore the wisp, pos anyways. Doesnt do much cept deviate you from your map pathing.

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

The pacing for me felt off. Very slow gameplay for the acts, then all of the sudden you're zooming.

I would've expected a gradual climb, or for it to stay relatively the same. Not be so drastic.

As for the IIR. I've made many posts about loot in this game being god awful. ARPG's are about the loot. I love magic find in some ARPG's, but the base game also needs to be adequate, and PoE just isn't.

Exploding enemies is only fun for so long till you get bored, because you're not getting that reward.

I know nothing about summoning in PoE 2. So i won't comment on that.

The base game needs to be adequate I think sums everything up. Content creep is not a good substitute for solid core mechanics. League mechanics have to be something that adds a fun new system to something that works on its own.

The game needs a gradually expanding craft system. And/or it needs some gradually expanding target-farm mechanic. It needs some deterministic crafting in mid game. I get that the recombinator can provide this to an extent, but it's a pretty janky way of doing it and feels tacked-on. You can't make expedition feel core.

The game needs to work out wtf it wants to do about trade. It needs to work out which players to balance around, or whether it can separate out balance somehow.

And yeah, needs to work out its pacing. You have to use fast builds to do the things the game is suggesting you do. Big maps, speed based mechanics, the need to get through maps as quickly as possible. You can obviously play slower builds, but again - this is not what the game is telling you to do. It is not the encouraged core playstyle and always feels out of sync with progression.

There's a lot of vaguely conspiracist talk about the devs chasing money, or having some kind of actively malicious approach to game design, or just being incompetent. The reality is they're not actually a huge company and they've relied heavily on things that have worked in the past. Partly because that's literally how they built POE 2.

I'm concerned that they've got into a spot where they think it's ok. That from here out it's more about leagues and additions than making any fundamental changes. There are solutions to all of these issues, but they're not going to be found in poe 1's code.

Oh and it's not good to rely on streamers so much for feedback. They will only ever represent a fraction of the player base. Even where they're fielding questions from their audience, that audience is self-selecting.

i also will probably never like PoE2 the way i learnt to love Poe1 (after playing 1k hours before actually getting used to the game)



first off: there is some interesting class ideas here and there. i really like the druid/transforming come to this game.

also some base mechanics are indeed interesting.

others lost their appeal really fast (like that movement while casting thing, its rather annoying cause you cant precisely avoid attacks, its like drifting ...)

but, but:

i really do not like the idea of narrowed down classes and ascension speccs.

i don't like the pacing of the game, it feels like hammering down mobs in wow with 3 rotations of 5 buttons again and again.

i also dislike the hardwiring weapon-type to skill and the limiting of modifying skills.

i do not like the foreshadowing, the classes/ascendencies might become as "preset"/narrowed as in diablo IV.

i like poe1s class/asc/skill system way better.

some new/old classes in poe2 outright lost their flavor totally - like the outliners for the templar, which will be reduced to an elemental dmg warrior only (so templar would actually be a subspecc asc of the warrior better ...).

the appeal of poe always has been its extremely wide array of playstyle per class and per ascendancy. (even if some where not as good endgame as while progressing)

in poe1 i got like 7 templars, ALL different (totem hierophant, brand hierophant, a holy summoner with an army, a melee, etc etc)

but you could also totem gameplay a warrior with its fire asc. or a witch, or or or.

same with the witch itself, which totally lost its pure summoner build. and i really hate that. i do not want decorative minions or running dots.

its really sad to see you hurdling over obstacles in the completely wrong and already failed direction diablo IV was/is still heading, with extremely narrow builds, button bloat (really i cannot and i will not use more than one or two active buttons, rest is buff, emergency defense and so on, if i want to press 5 different buttons regularly as a rotation, im playing WoW) and overcomplexity in gameplay.

i'd rather seen poe2 to be an addon to poe1 (like it was originally planned) and keeping all thats so good about the game, instead of completely abandoning everything and now loosing all its appeal.

the appeal of starting anew is also killing it for me. complete loss of everything dumped into poe1 - im still waiting if we ever about to get our already bought MTX in the game, so far they released a ton of "new" mtx, and old ones are still not there but one or two things.


with the direction you are taking the "one skill tree for all" doesnt even make sense anymore, cause there will not be any build variety cause chars are so hardlocked by ascendancy and weapon restrictions AND spell restrictions AND spell modifier restrictions, you could just make seperate skill-twigs like diablo IV did, where everyone speccs its ascendency the same but one or two points.



and before the point turns up: making classes narrower for balance does not work out, look at diablo IVs simple classes and its still not balanced even between 2 playsyles within the same darn class ...

of course this is just an opinion, but it is my sincere opinion.