POE2 - Weapon Locked Skills reduces build diversity

i kinda voiced out my opinion about it some time back.

i dont like weapon skills being locked behind weapon types.

really hope they can homogenize the skills more.

its also one reason why i fell in love with poe in the first place.

i loved the idea of being classless (back before ascendencies were introduced), i also like the idea that we had a lot of different skills that can be used by different weapons.

i like how you can viper strike using a multitude of one handers and even a 2 handed sword

i like how you could use frenzy/puncture on a bow as well as melee.

how did exiles regress to a state where flicker strike is quarterstaff only?

Hopefully this doesn't make anyone feel attacked, but I think you guys who are saying this hurts build diversity are really showing your lack of actual endgame-viable buildcrafting experience here.

In PoE1, most slam skills can be used with any axe, mace, or staff. We'll look at Earthshatter because (as far as I know) it's the most popular Slam right now, and it can be used with 1h maces, 2h maces, scepters, 1h axes, 2h axes, staves, and even unarmed. Seven categories of weapons = lots of build diversity, right?

So why, with all these options, are 97% of Earthshatter players using a 2h axe? The answer is incredibly obvious to anyone who's played Earthshatter: because it's objectively better than the alternatives. There is no build diversity here, only the illusion of diversity and the real-world possibility of new players making a horrible mistake. Locking skills to specific weapons creates a reason to use different combinations of weapons, which is an increase to build diversity.

And that's before we even get into how awesome the idea of "different sets of skills in a seamless weapon swap" is. I already know I'm starting PoE2 as a mercenary, with some kind of melee+shield backup option to be determined when I see the skills available to 1h swords/maces/flails/etc. But later on, when we get the other classes and their skills added to the game, I might have a werebear shapeshifter option as my melee backup. Or maybe even some kind of caster setup, if there's a good way to scale generic projectile damage so it would apply to attacks and spells. And that's all subject to change the moment I find a unique spear with some crazy synergy I want to test out... you get the idea.

you're not wrong. 2handed weapons are better at slamming.

but what you're talking about is going into build diversity topic, which is intrinsically tied to build viability.

when the game first started, we did not have the shaper. we had more diversity.

100k-500k dps was considered god tier high back in the day.

when ggg introduced harder content, the requirement for players to be more efficient with their builds, diversity got pruned.

the common counter argument is "wtf you talking about, we still have a ton of diversity and viable builds now". which is true, we still have a ton of build diversity now, but compared to back then we had even more build diversity as we didnt need to be too efficient.

the next thing you mention is that if its objectively better, by locking it, then players will avoid making mistakes.

if we want players to avoid making mistakes why bother with a unified passive tree? each class should only have certain passive clusters made available to them.

why do minion clusters exist if you're playing a marauder? minion clusters are obviously not good for the marauder too.

earth shatter is a good example of one skill that has only one obvious choice. but its NOT the only choice, based on POE ninja, there despite 88% of the users using 2 handed axes, there are others use other 2 handers or even 1 handers.

that is the beauty of diversity. you're not tied to just that one weapon.

take a look at viper strike. most people are using dual weapon setups but some people are using echoforge which is a huge ass 2 hander.

i cant help but appreciate the creativity players have with this diversity.

forcing everyone to just use the same weapons for all skills.. might as well remove the skill tree and let everyone use an optimized talent tree like in MMORPGs.

if going for pure optimization, we're all gonna end up taking the same nodes with very little variance.

in fact, we already are near that level of optimization. we can see the passive tree heatmaps.

what diversity do we have then when everyones funneled into just playing the same builds?

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exsea#1724 wrote:

Spoiler

you're not wrong. 2handed weapons are better at slamming.

but what you're talking about is going into build diversity topic, which is intrinsically tied to build viability.

when the game first started, we did not have the shaper. we had more diversity.

100k-500k dps was considered god tier high back in the day.

when ggg introduced harder content, the requirement for players to be more efficient with their builds, diversity got pruned.

the common counter argument is "wtf you talking about, we still have a ton of diversity and viable builds now". which is true, we still have a ton of build diversity now, but compared to back then we had even more build diversity as we didnt need to be too efficient.

the next thing you mention is that if its objectively better, by locking it, then players will avoid making mistakes.

if we want players to avoid making mistakes why bother with a unified passive tree? each class should only have certain passive clusters made available to them.

why do minion clusters exist if you're playing a marauder? minion clusters are obviously not good for the marauder too.

earth shatter is a good example of one skill that has only one obvious choice. but its NOT the only choice, based on POE ninja, there despite 88% of the users using 2 handed axes, there are others use other 2 handers or even 1 handers.

that is the beauty of diversity. you're not tied to just that one weapon.

take a look at viper strike. most people are using dual weapon setups but some people are using echoforge which is a huge ass 2 hander.

i cant help but appreciate the creativity players have with this diversity.

forcing everyone to just use the same weapons for all skills.. might as well remove the skill tree and let everyone use an optimized talent tree like in MMORPGs.

if going for pure optimization, we're all gonna end up taking the same nodes with very little variance.

in fact, we already are near that level of optimization. we can see the passive tree heatmaps.

what diversity do we have then when everyones funneled into just playing the same builds?

What you're missing is that PoE2 is completely built from the ground up around players using more than one primary skill on every single build. JR has said more than once that they're going out of their way to make sure one-button builds perform worse than 2-button builds. There's almost no way to do this in PoE1, especially where weapon-centric skills are concerned, because we don't have the ability to allocate some passives for Skills X and Y and other passives for Skill Z. You can't take passives for axes and maces without weakening both skills overall, so locking earthshatter to axes and earthquake to maces wouldn't make sense and nobody would make a build using both.

This is not at all the case in PoE2. You can set up one skill for single target and another for pack clearing, a third skill as a gap-closer and CC delivery system, and so on. There's so much more build diversity there because you have to make a hard choice about which skills, plural, you are using on your build. Players really need to get out of this single-skill mindset or they're just going to be holding themselves back once the game launches.

"

ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

"

exsea#1724 wrote:

Spoiler

you're not wrong. 2handed weapons are better at slamming.

but what you're talking about is going into build diversity topic, which is intrinsically tied to build viability.

when the game first started, we did not have the shaper. we had more diversity.

100k-500k dps was considered god tier high back in the day.

when ggg introduced harder content, the requirement for players to be more efficient with their builds, diversity got pruned.

the common counter argument is "wtf you talking about, we still have a ton of diversity and viable builds now". which is true, we still have a ton of build diversity now, but compared to back then we had even more build diversity as we didnt need to be too efficient.

the next thing you mention is that if its objectively better, by locking it, then players will avoid making mistakes.

if we want players to avoid making mistakes why bother with a unified passive tree? each class should only have certain passive clusters made available to them.

why do minion clusters exist if you're playing a marauder? minion clusters are obviously not good for the marauder too.

earth shatter is a good example of one skill that has only one obvious choice. but its NOT the only choice, based on POE ninja, there despite 88% of the users using 2 handed axes, there are others use other 2 handers or even 1 handers.

that is the beauty of diversity. you're not tied to just that one weapon.

take a look at viper strike. most people are using dual weapon setups but some people are using echoforge which is a huge ass 2 hander.

i cant help but appreciate the creativity players have with this diversity.

forcing everyone to just use the same weapons for all skills.. might as well remove the skill tree and let everyone use an optimized talent tree like in MMORPGs.

if going for pure optimization, we're all gonna end up taking the same nodes with very little variance.

in fact, we already are near that level of optimization. we can see the passive tree heatmaps.

what diversity do we have then when everyones funneled into just playing the same builds?

What you're missing is that PoE2 is completely built from the ground up around players using more than one primary skill on every single build. JR has said more than once that they're going out of their way to make sure one-button builds perform worse than 2-button builds. There's almost no way to do this in PoE1, especially where weapon-centric skills are concerned, because we don't have the ability to allocate some passives for Skills X and Y and other passives for Skill Z. You can't take passives for axes and maces without weakening both skills overall, so locking earthshatter to axes and earthquake to maces wouldn't make sense and nobody would make a build using both.

This is not at all the case in PoE2. You can set up one skill for single target and another for pack clearing, a third skill as a gap-closer and CC delivery system, and so on. There's so much more build diversity there because you have to make a hard choice about which skills, plural, you are using on your build. Players really need to get out of this single-skill mindset or they're just going to be holding themselves back once the game launches.

the reason we cant do it in poe1 is simple, we dont have enough slots.

give us more slots and players will use more combos. a good example is vengeance, cdwt, etc. we cant afford to have more than 1-2 main skills as we just dont have enough sockets. if you cant get em to 6L its never gonna be worth it.

Too much skills locked to a one or two weapons will narrow down possibilities. Watching the latest video it looked like a whole class is locked to a single weapon which sounds even worse.

Of course there are those that for balance or theme reasons can be locked to a single weapon type.

from my understanding its intentional because all the attacks requires animation rigs.

in order to make a single attack skill work with different weapons, they might need to rerig the entire attacks based on weapon type.

which is also why besides the specific unarmed skills, unarmed has no access to other weapon locked skills as they lack the rigging/animation.

Sorry but to use hypothetical skills for the sake of example, if you expect to ‘axe throw’ a wand that’s thematically wrong and GGG are right to limit that. An actual poe1 skill would be how can you ‘Cleave’ with a wand (basically a stick)?
There are skills in poe1 that work on everything and kinda shouldn’t, seems like they are fixing that to make things thematically correct and as long as they’ve not gone to far with it why not imo.

"

Timbo Zero#8289 wrote:

Sorry but to use hypothetical skills for the sake of example, if you expect to ‘axe throw’ a wand that’s thematically wrong and GGG are right to limit that. An actual poe1 skill would be how can you ‘Cleave’ with a wand (basically a stick)?
There are skills in poe1 that work on everything and kinda shouldn’t, seems like they are fixing that to make things thematically correct and as long as they’ve not gone to far with it why not imo.

you're absolutely right on that when you talk about cleave with wands, but thats not what we're asking for are we?

poe1 cleave can be used by a variety of different weapon types.

similarly flicker strike can be used by ALL melee weapons.

in poe2 flicker strike is staff only.

how does "cleave" not work with axes/swords? they logically should work.

a lot of things logically and thematically work with many weapons.

but then again its good to stop and realize, we're talking about a fantasy game where people can cast magic and summon monsters to do their bidding.

if we're going proper thematic, dominating blows should be a curse/debuff rather than a melee attack. lightning strike should become a spell rather than a melee attack. etc

This game was always a sandbox to make things in, By making such changes certainly the developers life is easier and the cost lower but the product that much more shallow for it.

The elder scrolls which is still a fine game and likely will continue to be because of the modders has seen massive change to suit the market over the years with nearly every single released elder scrolls having almost 1/2 the content of the previous in almost all areas including the length of and amount of books down to the types of weapons and magic.

I came to this game because of its complexity and allowing me to make choices much in the same way morrowind did and then oblviion/etc but the way the current game is proceeding here makes me feel like its going to be just another clone with only half the dna of the original.

I hope that i am wrong for the sake of those who are excited for the coming game.