Unarmed is Inherently Flawed! Thoughts on 0.3.0 from a punch build veteran.

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The monk, as a true martial artist, now has the ability to learn the Hollow Palm Technique. A keystone that lets you use all quarterstaff skills while unarmed. All quarterstaff attacks now have a special unarmed version, and you get further bonuses to all your attacks form stacking Energy Shield and Evasion on your character.

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Johnnyappseed#6969 wrote:

Good evening Exiles,

0.3.0 is upon us, and GGG is giving punch-oholics like us a real treat.

From the "POE 2: The Third Edict Content Reveal" YouTube video, timestamped at 28 minutes:

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The monk, as a true martial artist, now has the ability to learn the Hollow Palm Technique. A keystone that lets you use all quarterstaff skills while unarmed. All quarterstaff attacks now have a special unarmed version, and you get further bonuses to all your attacks form stacking Energy Shield and Evasion on your character.

Insane! Unique hand-and-foot-applied-directly-to-face attack animations!
Can your body finally be your weapon?! Can you crush your enemies under foot?! Can you break someone's face with a single magnificently executed punch?!
NO! Sadly, you are as weak as ever. I'll explain.

History/POE 1 Build Options: (TL;DR: POE1 has 4 punching options & even fewer build options.)
In POE 1 you must go through lengths to make punching a viable form of damage, and it is an exercise in restraint and sacrifice.
To start, you have three constricting build options:
+Want physical damage? No mainhand weapon, and your gloves will be Facebreakers.
+Don't like that, and still want physical damage? No mainhand weapon, no offhand item, and no gloves. Go find Hollow Palm Technique.
+Oh, you don't care about physical? See Hollow Palm, or no mainhand weapon, your gloves will be Doryani's Fists, and have fun smacking the ground.
+Oh, you don't want to smack the ground? Sorry. 7 out of 13 unarmed attack skills (not including throwing concoctions, warcries, or retaliations) will be you smacking the ground. 8 out of 13 if you count Smite as smacking the ground, and I do.
Your 5 remaining attack skills for punching are as follows:
+Cyclone - Not the aesthetic. No punch animation.
+Elemental Hit - 100% elemental. Fine if you like jazz hands as a dance move.
+Infernal Blow - 60% fire and try to multi-hit.
+Frenzy on Onslaught - This is a supportive attack option.
+Dominating Blow - Summons minions.
From here, you pick your poison and begin.

POE 1 is a game exalted for its build diversity, and while it is truly top of its class, you have generously 2 options for fulfilling the wild battle strategy of walking up to your enemy, and executing them with raw physical damage delivered through your fists.

How did we get here?
1.) Your character is not strong; your equipment is.
A Marauder can swing his maul with the strength to fissure the ground, rend the earth asunder, and do untold amounts of damage... But if he drops his maul, then he does 8 damage round up. He is not strong by himself, but his skill tree has re-enforced his affinity to a powerful weapon, and when he attunes himself to that weapon he can execute various attack skills chosen by the GGG lords within the domain of that weapon.
This is not a problem. It is fine if your character is the sum of your equipment, as long as all characters get the same amount of equipment.
2.) How to make your hands do damage?
In POE, for your character to execute a punch you must achieve the "Unarmed" status by emptying your mainhand slot. If you do this, you can punch someone, but it will not hurt. You know you must 'attune' to something to get damage. The only alternatives here are to dedicate your glove slot to either use Facebreakers or Doryani's Fists. 'Attuning' to these gloves can yield considerable damage. Otherwise, you will need to achieve the "Unencumbered" status by removing both hand slots and your glove slot to 'attune' to the Hallow Palm Technique. This cost is simply unreasonable.
3.) Every fighting style has a weapon except one.
Why? Weapons don't have to be grasped in the hand and swung about to qualify as a weapon. I don't care what qualifies as a weapon. What I care about is using the fighting style I prefer. Some people like swords, some wands, but me- I throw hands. I don't care how you justify it. What I know is you've made all other styles of fighting viable my putting something in that slot I'm not allowed to use. I don't care what needs to go in that slot for me to get comparable damage to a weapon. Put a roll of pennies there. I don't have my inventory up on my screen when I'm committing slaughter. Fuck the "Unarmed" status! Give me some brass knuckles! You have such a fun crafting system, and I don't like being removed from it.

Let the hand-to-hand fighting style stand alone with its own unique craftable weapon bases!!

Where do we go?
You've shown me in that POE 2 0.3.0 trailer that GGG can make clean af looking hand-to-hand combat animations.
Maybe GGG doesn't like the idea of punches doing comparable damage to a conventional weapon. Ok, no problem! Make the skills scaling dog water. The skills could be as simple as upper-cut, jab, round-house hammer fist, hollow-palm push, and distancing kick! Then give me that craftable roll of pennies or brass knuckles and also make the damage rolls shit. Maybe some knuckles could have the added effect of causing bleeding. Maybe some knuckles have the effect of causing an AOE combustion around my target to give me a little room to duel. Maybe the two effects could overlap; oil him up and light him up. Higher-tier wrist and hand attachments could cause more harm or be wackier. Sound fun? Maybe hand-to-hand combat weapons get substantially lower damage, but could get some damage negation affix rolls like "20% damage resistance while in skill animation." Or maybe some unique mobility options since I'll be fighting the enemies longer. Maybe I can have a stance that when struck during the stance, it swaps the location of me and the attacker, and make the attacker briefly vulnerable to other enemy attacks. IDK.
I have two hands, a dodge roll, and the determination to figure it out. Let me dance around my enemies, casting a blast of "hollow palm" that has a guaranteed daze (like Wind Blast) and then close the distance with an vaulted-kick that breaks my enemies stance (like Vaulting Impact) and positions me next to the target, then I can go into a vulnerable stance were I charge up a devastating upper-cut that can only hit very close enemies. This is what I am looking for, and I can see that it's so close to being a reality. Don't give yourself the messy swamp of having quarterstaff skills "fill-in" for this other style of fighting. Don't let this be "just a keystone," because it doesn't quality for it at all. We don't need the Hollow Palm Technique Keystone, and we don't need Facebreakers! We need craftable weapons that attach to our hands! Let us use the system that works for everything else!



Extra Reading
Personal Experience:
--- I have ~2,000 hours on POE1. 8 out of my 11 character that made it over lvl 80 were completely self-designed using out of game utilities. On the first release of Ruthless, I made it to the top 25 in character experience for trade league. Most of my characters are experimental builds geared towards the idea of "how hard can I punch that guy?" GGG makes a clean punch animation.
-- My favorite build of all time was Infernal Blow (previous to version 3.3.0 which moved more of the power into multiple hits rather than one explosive smack) with pre-1.0.0 version Facebreakers.
With that build, I kept the slowest attack speed possible to ramp raw damage per hit as hit as possible. Every time I punched there was a moment of repose, a time for reflection, when I committed my character to standing still, and standing fast on business. My character would slowly clench his hand into a fist, draw his arm back, and beginning its inevitable pursuit to the nearest jaw available. The attack took so long to execute that I would be flanked by all sides before completing the animation. But. When my fist connected, when the attack finally finished, sweet serenity would explode and wash over my character in the form of blood and sinew. It was divine.
- Only one other build I've made competes with the old Infernal Blow setup and it uses the most recent Dominating Blow to leverage increases to damage from minions to apply to that skills damage. As well as, legacy magic ghastly eye jewels to combo with The Adorned Crimson Jewel to get disgusting amounts of increased damage. But, you may ask, "wouldn't you now also have minions impeding on your serenity?" Yes, sir. You would. Until you pickup the Wraithlord Bone Circlet unique helmet to immediately de-spawn your minions before they appear, because you are not a minion enthusiast. You are the weapon.
Also, I am not excited about the 0.3.0 hollow technique keystone asking me to scale up evasion and energy shield. What does being fast(dex) and smart(int) have to do with applying hand to face?

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thawn4444#3507 wrote:

are not claw weapons also going to count as unarmed when they release with the druid?

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Kage#1250 wrote:

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thawn4444#3507 wrote:

are not claw weapons also going to count as unarmed when they release with the druid?

There is no claw weapon, this the full weapon list. There is only primal which is for shapeshifting.