Is the game too restrictive in terms of what skills/items work with?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R9clutdRVU
This guy makes that argument. It seems that PoE has the design philosophy that anything can be combined with anything. But that means every balance decision affects the whole game. So in order to keep the balance possibilities within a manageble number they disabled all kinds of interactions.

Compared to LE where skills can only be used by 1 class, so the balance possibilities remain limited. Item attributes can be class-only or have class-only bonuses. In theory this limits build variety, but it allows developers to balance each class in some degree of isolation. Making them much easier to balance. Maybe there are less surprising builds, but there are still tons of good builds.

Guy is 100% correct. Every skill/item has one use "Intended by GOD" and you're not allowed to stray from the path

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Resand#5831 wrote:

Guy is 100% correct. Every skill/item has one use "Intended by GOD" and you're not allowed to stray from the path

This is just not true at all. If you think this you're just lacking in creativity.

The restrictions are good because they give skills and weapons identity and keep them separate from each other. People love to claim that in PoE 1 you have great build diversity because you can do everything with every skill. But this just leads to every skill becoming the same screen clearing machine that plays the same. Where's the diversity in that?

He says it himself in the title of the video, he's not the target audience but rather the archetype of the poe1 player that want poe2 to be poe1 with a new campaign.
In his point of view, build creativity is finding the niche broken interraction that makes a build completly broken that the devs didn't think about. He also believes in exponantiallly increasing power but it justs makes disparity accross build even more noticable and therefore result in less diversity.

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RealRoodvlees#0379 wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R9clutdRVU
This guy makes that argument. It seems that PoE has the design philosophy that anything can be combined with anything. But that means every balance decision affects the whole game. So in order to keep the balance possibilities within a manageble number they disabled all kinds of interactions.

Compared to LE where skills can only be used by 1 class, so the balance possibilities remain limited. Item attributes can be class-only or have class-only bonuses. In theory this limits build variety, but it allows developers to balance each class in some degree of isolation. Making them much easier to balance. Maybe there are less surprising builds, but there are still tons of good builds.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3761163

(I hate that any topic we make goes to page n in 10 minutes, but I can just copy my thread if that's what you want)

Tldr it doesn't matter if we have 20 skills and 200 gems, you funnel your stats into a direction.

Like there's the skill Sunder. Consumes Fully Broken armor for a guaranteed crit. If you don't get crit dmg multiplier and boosts it off the charts you just wont use it. But once you minmax to that direction you exclude yourself from other skills.

Other issue is too short or practically no cooldowns.
Above example if you use Sunder, it will be your main ability that you just spam.

Theres a shield wall ability that is technically Claymore mine: the only reason you put it down to have more damage (your slam ability makes it explode)
But if you focus on that explosion your only reasonable option is to put a totem down, and use shield wall instead of autoattack. Ending up in another 2 skill build...


I think this is why endgame gets boring. Around lvl 55 you already have your build, its unlikely your rotation will change, especially because your stat boost that 1 skill so much, you have to admit, whatever else you had on your skill bar is waste of dps...
After that you only check how far you can push that.

The game needs more combo interaction, but I would make more crown control abilities. Yeah... there are always glasscannon builds, but in a swarm environment we should have counter mechanics, not just "I must wipe the screen with a single tap or else I die" builds.

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HolmesinJussi#1854 wrote:

"

Resand#5831 wrote:

Guy is 100% correct. Every skill/item has one use "Intended by GOD" and you're not allowed to stray from the path

This is just not true at all. If you think this you're just lacking in creativity.

The restrictions are good because they give skills and weapons identity and keep them separate from each other. People love to claim that in PoE 1 you have great build diversity because you can do everything with every skill. But this just leads to every skill becoming the same screen clearing machine that plays the same. Where's the diversity in that?

Then please show me some "of the golden path" builds.
A warrior that freezes or uses any charge other then endurance.
A mage using a bow in second weapon set.
A monk using a mace skill

Or something to that effect

"

Resand#5831 wrote:

"

HolmesinJussi#1854 wrote:

"

Resand#5831 wrote:

Guy is 100% correct. Every skill/item has one use "Intended by GOD" and you're not allowed to stray from the path

This is just not true at all. If you think this you're just lacking in creativity.

The restrictions are good because they give skills and weapons identity and keep them separate from each other. People love to claim that in PoE 1 you have great build diversity because you can do everything with every skill. But this just leads to every skill becoming the same screen clearing machine that plays the same. Where's the diversity in that?

Then please show me some "of the golden path" builds.
A warrior that freezes or uses any charge other then endurance.
A mage using a bow in second weapon set.
A monk using a mace skill

Or something to that effect

I'm not gonna look these up for you but off the top of my head:

Warrior that permafreezes pinnacle bosses with Frostbreath mace
Molten Blast Deadeye
Bow spark was one of the meta builds last patch
Quarterstaff warrior
Slow aura titan
Minion titan
Crossbow bloodmage
Hammer chronomancer
Poison lightning spear

Etc.