Early Campaign vs. Endgame Skills - How to Solve This?

Early Campaign - slow, methodical, favours skill interactions that takes time. Looks like most of the skills and their interactions were designed for early campaign (although some skills require lvl 52/58 to use :).

Endgame - pack of mobs jumping on your head, hundreds of projectiles flying around, you have 1 second to kill large groups of enemies, otherwise they kill you. No time for most of the skill interactions, unless automatized. Favourize one-tap screen clear builds. Most of the skill interactions shown in the skill videos on a pack of 3 slow-moving zombies are not viable and are not played endgame (those videos always makes me smile :).

Now, is there a way out of this? What is your take. Is it fine to have one build for early campaign, then completely re-do it for efficient late game with different skills? Do you think late game design have to change to make more skills viable (towards slow "meaningful" gameplay), or many skill designs have to change to make them more viable in the current fast-paced "swarming" endgame?

Examples of some main dmg skills that are played by <0.1% players (according to poe2 ninja) that require some mechanic that makes them bad in maps (unless 20+ div investment or some weird interaction saves them, etc.):

-Falling Thunder - otherwise great skill that would make nice Titan with Quarterstaff build, but require power charge generation mechanic to make it more viable
-Fang of Frost - requires parried debuff. Especcialy surprising that it made this list considering 57% play spear this league, but noone play this skill.
-Frozen Locus - no time to jump backwards in maps :) also you are dead before you manage to shatter the locus to deal that small aoe dmg
-Flameblast - like you have time to channel something in maps while moving in a snail's pace :) before you reach stage 2 you are stunned and dead
-Supercharged Slam - same as Flameblast, but you can't even move and it takes even more time to reach maximum stages
-Volcanic Fissure - I never got this skill even in the campaign - you make a tiny fissure and then you need to detonate it with other slam skill, while instead, you can just jump in with leap slam and everything dead on first slam. Dunno :)
-Whirling Assault - +1.4s cast time - you start spinning and before you finish you are stunned and dead.
-Detonating Arrow - I'm starting to see a pattern here with skills that needs to chanel for ages while stationary to do some damage :)
-Earthquake - I used earthquake before starting to write this post, it still haven't erupted.

I can go on, but I think this is enough to illustrate the problem in skill design early vs. late game. Is it a late game problem, or is it a skill design problem? Let's discuss.

Personally, I would like to see a little more methodical late game, but a huge rework in some of the skills (not fun to use these slow skills with interactions 12327x in maps where you have to kill 100k enemies fast to get to the Arbiter).


Last bumped on May 11, 2025, 9:59:54 AM

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