Please give us back endgame items

By far the biggest bummer about 0.2 compared to 0.1 for me were the changes to nearly all good boss drop uniques and endgame items from the previous season. I thought a slight nerf might be incoming - but they were all absolutely murdered. One big reason is due to the changes to the passive tree, removing 12 jewel sockets was just an absolute overkill. Removing 2-3 would have been fine.

Instead of 8-12 jewel sockets per build we can now access...2? At least my LV 90 char wouldn't know how to reasonably get to a third one without giving up way too much power/survivability? That begs the question what the devs think all their previously designed endgame jewels should be there for now?

- Grand Spectrum: Unusable as it needs 3 copies equipped. Since you cannot get to 3 jewel slots reasonably, this item is straight up dead.
- Adorned Diamond: Nerfed to oblivion by again the passive tree changes. With 2 slots available on average, this gem does exactly nothing as it consumes one of the 2 slots, doubling the other gem but instead you could just socket 2 of the same gems. Dead item.
- Against the Darkness: Not only did they have to remove its best jewel slot in the passive tree, they also had to completely overkill it by reducing its radius. Dead item.
- Heroic Tragedy: Best jewel slot was removed and Queen of the Forest was absolutely nerfhammered to the ground additionally. Dead item.

Other nerfed to the ground items include Temporalis, Ingenuity Belt or HoWA gloves. All of these items are pinnacle boss drops (or available from chest after Zarokh for Grand Spectrum) previously gave the player an incentive to farm for them and keep upgrading your character to beat the pinnacles while at the same time trivializing mapping to be faster and further optimize. That was, in one term, good ARPG design.

Now all of them are dead or just really really really not worth it anymore. Since all of them are unique boss drops, the question arises why on earth should we want to beat the pinnacles now? They do not have a single great drop anymore so why bother? For 2 points on a part of the atlas passive tree where one point only increases the difficulty and the other only makes you farm the materials for the boss faster? Sry but most ARPG players want an actual reward in terms of a powerful item to make their character eventually become a god. If the reward is not there, there is no incentive to even try.

I strongly suggest going back on the changes to the passive tree and reinsert about 7-8 of the removed jewel sockets again as well as at least going back on the nerfs to the mentioned items at least by a bit (Temporalis could go to -3 to -2 for example as -3 is required for the perma blink build). These items in 0.1 were one of the main reasons why ppl loved to keep playing and upgrading their character.

I know that zooming/teleporting is not exactly in line with the "vision" of the game but in PoE2 0.1 it was not like in D3 where this is handed out for free after 10h of playing and finishing chapter IV of the season journey. In 0.1, obtaining Temporalis or QotF builds required hundreds of hours of farming and optimizing gear to work. These builds were worth 150-400+ div to be able to play them. Its not a bad thing to give players the ability to become god after a long and hard journey. On the contrary, for most players its a mandatory perspective in an ARPG. And you can design the pinnacles in a way that those still remain hard btw. Just mapping/farming should be able to become fast and effective at some point, a concept which these items perfectly encapsulated in 0.1.

When PoE2 EA was released, I thought GGG wanted to try another direction, in the sense that we have the same starting point, but take a new path, which still leads to the same destination - fun.

The new path would be a modernised route, you cannot only use with a car, but also has a lane for bikes and even a sidewalk for ppl who enjoy it.

Instead, they went in the opposite direction, where the destination is no longer fun, but some sort of art project - we are forced to admire crawling.

Unique drops from bosses that actually matter a lot and create a great incentive? If the PoE1 community had not fought back every single time, GGG would have removed worthy boss uniques in PoE and just added all of them to the core drop pool.
They would rather nerf an awesome item into the ground before they increase the rarity.

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JakkerONAIR#4902 wrote:

When PoE2 EA was released, I thought GGG wanted to try another direction, in the sense that we have the same starting point, but take a new path, which still leads to the same destination - fun.

The new path would be a modernised route, you cannot only use with a car, but also has a lane for bikes and even a sidewalk for ppl who enjoy it.

Instead, they went in the opposite direction, where the destination is no longer fun, but some sort of art project - we are forced to admire crawling.

Unique drops from bosses that actually matter a lot and create a great incentive? If the PoE1 community had not fought back every single time, GGG would have removed worthy boss uniques in PoE and just added all of them to the core drop pool.
They would rather nerf an awesome item into the ground before they increase the rarity.

Thats a very nice metaphor and spot on man:) And as for me, well I dont admire crawling...

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LW187#4876 wrote:

Thats a very nice metaphor and spot on man:) And as for me, well I dont admire crawling...

Yeah... an ARPG is probably the last game I would play for sightseeing gameplay.
And it's not about the zoom-zoom boom-boom, it's about "there is only environment that's pleasing".

+1 all the pinnacle boss drops r big dog sh*ts in this patch. I have no motivation for challenging any pinnacle boss.

+1 for more chase items

there is zero character progression here

Yep, this is why I lost my interest and I am not playing anymore, sadly. In 0.1 I was addicted, constantly thinking about awesome builds and powerful items to get. But now I don't have that. If this is how the game will be I will come back just to play the 3 missing acts when they are released and that's it.
At least now I'm happy I have more time to sleep and to play some other games XD

I dont actually know if you played the game or not. 12 jewel sockets were removed from evenly distributed points in the tree. Bringing 8 back would still leave sections of the tree without it, so you are saying certain builds shouldnt have jewel slots??? Which is exactly where we are now because you CAN have more than 3 jewel slots currently if you build for it, as plenty of builds do this naturally. If you want more slots, path into them.

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JakkerONAIR#4902 wrote:

When PoE2 EA was released, I thought GGG wanted to try another direction, in the sense that we have the same starting point, but take a new path, which still leads to the same destination - fun.

The new path would be a modernised route, you cannot only use with a car, but also has a lane for bikes and even a sidewalk for ppl who enjoy it.

Instead, they went in the opposite direction, where the destination is no longer fun, but some sort of art project - we are forced to admire crawling.

Unique drops from bosses that actually matter a lot and create a great incentive? If the PoE1 community had not fought back every single time, GGG would have removed worthy boss uniques in PoE and just added all of them to the core drop pool.
They would rather nerf an awesome item into the ground before they increase the rarity.

It's funny, I remember both of us were defending this game pretty hard in 0.1 and both coming to the same conclusions now.

It's as if this game is built for the devs to watch people struggle with on youtube. When nothing is killable or rewarding then they can say "Yes, we've finally done it". Like they saw people melting the bosses away and cried because all of their hard work in designing mechanics was wasted.. But it is not fun for the player to play the game they want it played

Why did they actually remove jewel slots? Min maxing this is one of the late endgame activities and i also enjoy getting jewels upgrades.
Maybe something was overpowered? But the passive tree feels dumbed down now.