my opinion regarding class/specc/skills PoE1 > PoE2

first off: there is some interesting class ideas here. 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 also dislike the hardwiring weapon-type to skill.
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.

the appeal of poe always has been its extremely wide array of playstyle per class and per ascendancy. 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, which totally lost its pure summoner build. and i really hate that.

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.

id rather seen poe2 to be an addon to poe1 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. compelte 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.